Tier 3 talents for pve

[Reinholder]

What's everyone taking? Elusiveness has been my pick but wondering if leeching is worth a shot?

[Kael]

Leeching is trash on almost every encounter as every spec. There are a couple of potential exceptions, basically limited to small DoT for the entire encounter which isn't always covered with overhealing by AoE... and even then, not really for assassination, since the gain is so small (from weapon attacks only) it's trivial. IMO, if leeching is the best for a given encounter as assassination, it's probably not worth the effort to swap to it (unless you're bleeding edge progression and always do everything).

Edit: generally elusiveness, cheat death where required by the encounter [likely surprise 1-shots (H dogs in MSV, H Empress), or by design (H Lei Shen)].

[fierydemise]

In general elusiveness is a strong choice on encounters that involve heavy AoE without a lot of spiky/gibby damage, think magera. It can also be very useful if you need to soak damage often, on heroic will for example. Cheat death is strong on fights that do have more gibby damage. Leeching poison is rarely used for PvE.

I use Cheat Death as my default talent because most of the time the combination of feint and cloak is sufficient for survivability and so having that free otherwise lethal mistake is very valuable. Basically not all DR is created equal, DR that prevents an otherwise lethal blow from killing or DR that prevents you from being in imminent danger of death are more valuable than other forms of DR. The advantage of cheat death is that it will always prevent a lethal blow whereas elusiveness rarely will.

This logic is from a 25 man perspective and based somewhat on the relative efficiency of AoE heals in 25 man and may not be applicable to 10 man.

[Galufio]

I use Cheat death as my default talent (10 heroic perspective). Rarely changing to Elusiveness on fights where needed ofc (WotE soaking, Garalon tanking, Ra-Den etc)

[Coldkil]

I take elusiveness, but i don't do heroics. There aren't many things that can oneshot you and aren't avoidable, so cheat death is way less useful than in heroic.

[jtstormrage]

I get a nosebleed without Elusiveness.

It is just so strong and having weaker aoe protection and losing the direct damage component makes me uncomfortable on almost every fight. Leeching is just not worth it (in raids). I would rather take Cheat Death over that.

[Sturmgewehr86]

personal choice for me 1 - elusiveness 2nd Cheat death 3rd Cheat death 4 th elusiveness 5 th cheat death 6 th elusiveness 7 th cheat death 8 th cheat death 9th (not doing heroic on animus yet so doesnt matter cheat death is a good choice) 10 th elusiveness 11 th cheat death not doing lei shen and ra den heroic so cant speak for those yet , all other choices are for heroic for me. Second life if u accidently die too stronk

[Reinholder]

I trialed leeching again (hadn't seriously used it since it was introduced basically) on heroic iron qon and consorts last night, and I can't really see why anyone would use it outside of soloing old stuff maybe. For example in a 9min H:Iron Qon kill it accounted for 12% of my total healing taken (1,695,868 total), but 47% of it was over healing. Kind of feels like leeching should be a baseline poison tbh. I mean the heal is nice but hardly game breaking. Now we are progressing more in to heroics I'll probably start using cheat death a little more often, but I have to say t3 talents have been a set and forget tier for me for a while.

[Warstar]

I trialed leeching again (hadn't seriously used it since it was introduced basically) on heroic iron qon and consorts last night, and I can't really see why anyone would use it outside of soloing old stuff maybe. For example in a 9min H:Iron Qon kill it accounted for 12% of my total healing taken (1,695,868 total), but 47% of it was over healing. Kind of feels like leeching should be a baseline poison tbh. I mean the heal is nice but hardly game breaking. Now we are progressing more in to heroics I'll probably start using cheat death a little more often, but I have to say t3 talents have been a set and forget tier for me for a while.

All rogue healing is kinda pathetic. Recoup isn't worth the cp. Leeching hardly heals anything even with using shiv. Only real use leeching is good for is for questing/leveling up/old content but in a raid or any sort of pve content that maters it's a waste of a talent.

The sad thing is that without leeching there's almost no viable "utility" poison for a raid.

Baseline would be awesome with a new talent to replace it that's actually viable in raids would be wonderful.

[shadowboy]

I get a nosebleed without Elusiveness.

It is just so strong and having weaker aoe protection and losing the direct damage component makes me uncomfortable on almost every fight. Leeching is just not worth it (in raids). I would rather take Cheat Death over that.

You'd be surprised just what leeching can do.

Anecdote time: In our progression on ji-kun on heroic, a wipe was called, so just to see what would happen, during a quills phase I popped cooldowns (healers were already dead). Leeching poison healed me through quills on heroic (granted, with cooldowns), without any external heals (as soon as quills ended, I was killed by a melee swing, but it was a wipe anyway). No doubt without primal nutriment it wouldn't have healed through it though. The extra damage helps given that's what leeching scales with.

That said, I prefer elusiveness too (I was combat for ji-kun for nest duty and I normally run leeching as combat since that is my questing/soloing spec and I had forgotten to change).

Also with respect to leeching versus recuperate. Leeching scales MUCH better with gear than recuperate does. Since being a fresh 90 I've gained about 50% health (so recup heals for 50% more) but I've gained approximately 200% dps (so leeching heals for three times as much).

[Verain]

That is an interesting tale about HJK and leeching. I will say that quills can also be lucked out of (you can dodge them, making evasion pretty splendid), and of course elusiveness works on them, but feint all by itself is pretty solid (they also count as AoE).

Still, with all cooldowns running rogues will do well over double their sustained, and then you doubled it again. It's possible you were in the 600k to 1 million range of dps during that, and I'm not TOO surprised that 50-80k hps might result. So I suspect that, whatever buff leeching needs, it probably shouldn't be quintupled in damage :P



In honesty, I haven't touched anything outside of elusiveness for this whole tier, or last. Leeching was so frustrating in PvP that I instantly gave it up, and only specced it for a couple fights where elu doesn't work (HGAR last tier, for instance). Cheat Death I haven't messed with like, at all.

[Squirl]

Elusiveness always. 30% overall damage reduction and 65% AoE reduction for a small energy cost (vs 0% overall and 50% AoE with plain Feint and the same energy cost) is just too strong to ignore.

Jin'rohk doing Thunderstorm? No problem; I don't even need heals. Kazra'jin doing Discharge? S'all good just top me up. Oh, and I'll hold Shadowed Soul to 30 stacks so others continue taking less damage. Tortos doing Quake Stomp? That's cool. Spirit Shell didn't even break and I'm still at full capacity Crystal Shell. Etc.

Feint is really strong and Elusiveness makes it even stronger.


I've only used Cheat Death on H Empress (last tier) because getting fixated would instantly 1-shot, so it allowed a full swing timer to react with Vanish. Some people use it on Lei Shen so they can solo soak Static Shock twice, but I'm always paired with a tank and Elusiveness+Bomb+a small CD on their end lets us both come out safely. I can solo soak twice just with Elusiveness+Bomb+Sym Growl (always on me if our boomkin is in) too. Elusiveness is useful enough on the rest of the encounter that I don't think ChD is really worth using here unless your quadrant will absolutely die if you can't solo soak two.

If you're taking damage that you know healers won't be able to handle, predicting that with Feint will save you better than ChD can. If you find yourself dying often and you really can't tell when you should be using Feint, ChD can be a good crutch; however, it's almost never as good as Elusiveness when fully utilized.


I only use Leeching for soloing so I don't have to maintain Recup (or for even better healing when combined with Recup). As others have stated, it heals for very little as Assassination and most of it is overhealing anyways. It heals for significantly more as Combat, but again, it's mostly overhealing.

Even if it healed for more, the design of the talent is just "meh". Nobody dies in a raid over such a long period of time that Leeching (or a similar weak HoT mechanic) would have saved them. If people do die in this manner, your healers are bad. People die from burst damage, which Leeching cannot counter.

[shadowboy]

I messed with cheat death a little on heroic will. Found I didn't like it after about 2 pulls and went back to elusiveness. Leeching is nice in any fight where you have constant aoe damage and optionally (but better with) some sort of damage buff, but those kinds of fights are few and far between, making leeching far more situational. Elusiveness is just a better all-around talent.

That said, most of the benefit from feint is the aoe reduction, not the 30% direct damage from elusiveness. 30% direct damage reduction is pretty good for a non-tank cooldown. I'd say its very good but it comes at the price of energy. I would say that elusiveness is far better than than most non-tank defensive cooldowns right now, but most of those are baseline, and elusiveness costs a talent point, so that it to be expected.

[Discomboz]

During T14 elusiveness was my go-to talent mainly because there was almost no damage that could really one shot you. Outside of H Will and H Empress and H Sha I used elusiveness full time. H Will for soaking balls of course, and for Empress that was said earlier that if you get focused it could lead to a one shot. For H Sha I used it so I could help the tank soak and not worry about dying if I run out to get a orb while dancing on the outside platforms.

This tier however I've been using cheat death quite a lot, during progression for a lot of fights a lot of things could lead to one shots, I used elusiveness on a few fights Jin'rohk, Council, Tortos, Meg, and Iron Qon but outside of those I favor cheat death more.

[Deleted]

I normally use Elusiveness except on lei shen where i use cheat death so i can soak 2 static shocks