Going from T15 BiS to T16 BiS (PTR build 17337)

[Shinob1]

Here is how different gear will affect your dps when you go from T15 BiS to T16 BiS for Assassination and Combat. From cloak upgrade and on it's assumed you have the previous mentioned upgrade.


T15 BiS when 5.4 hits live. (Assassination T15 2-set)
Assassination_256263.0 DPS
Combat_____245196.3 DPS


T16 Warforged upgrades

Cloak upgrade
Assassination 267131.3 DPS
Combat ___ _258488.1 DPS

Assurance of Consequence warforged upgrade
Assassination 271837.7 DPS
Combat _ ___ 292093.8 DPS

T15 HC 4-set -> T15 HC 2-set and T16 normal 2-set (Assassination goes from T15 2-set to T15 2-set and T16 2-set)
Assassination______________ __288109.8 DPS
Combat T15 4-set _________ __ 292093.8 DPS
Combat T15 2-set and T16 2-set _286526.7 DPS

Warforged Haromm's Talisman trinket upgrade
Assassination _ _ _____________292009.2 DPS
Combat T15 2-set and T16 2-set_ 291558.2 DPS
Combat T15 4-set _______ __ ___295740.5 DPS

T16 warforged weapons upgrade
Assassination _ _ _____________303945.0 DPS
Combat T15 2-set and T16 2-set_ 307663.0 DPS
Combat T15 4-set _____ ____ ___311633.5 DPS

T16 normal 4-set + T16 off-piece (bye T15 4-set)
Assassination _ _ _321316.0 DPS
Combat T16 4-set _326894.6 DPS
Combat T15 4-set _317371.6 DPS

T16 warforged offset item upgrades
Assassination __ _339874.4 DPS
Combat T16 4-set 347755.5 DPS
Combat T15 4-set 340224.8 DPS


T16 Heroic Warforged upgrades

Assurance of Consequence warforged upgrade
Assassination_____344579.7 DPS
Combat T16 4-set _355562.8 DPS
Combat T15 4-set _350002.5 DPS


Warforged Haromm's Talisman (A) and Ticking Ebon Detonator (C) trinket upgrade
Assassination______351962.8 DPS
Combat T16 4-set _ 360402.4 DPS
Combat T15 4-set _ 356290.3 DPS

T16 warforged weapons upgrade
Assassination _____364928.7 DPS
Combat T16 4-set _377966.5 DPS
Combat T15 4-set _374023.0 DPS


T16 4-set -> T16 HC 4-set + T16 HC WF off-piece
Assassination________ 388493.5 DPS
Combat T16 HC 4-set _ 394879.4 DPS
Combat T15 HC 4-set _ 378937.5 DPS

T16 warforged offset item upgrades [BiS]
Assassination _____414426.8 DPS (by Dextar)
Combat T16 4-set__414457.9 DPS
Combat T15 4-set__401483.1 DPS

[Fluorescent0]

Nice seeing combat overtake assassination without needing to use 4pc t15, should make up for a far more relaxed rotation during cooldowns.

[Shinob1]

It's scary that combat is so close to assassination especially considering those are single target numbers that most people would be able to pull (on a scale similar to assassination). Also 9/14 fights in SoO have adds that could be cleaved with Blade Flurry makes me think combat will be better for T16 (just my opinion).

Immerseus (assassination by far)
The Fallen Protectors (combat due to lots of cleave possibilities)
Norushen (combat, standing between boss and small adds (and dodging their shit or soaking if needed), you can blade flurry the adds while being on the boss)
Sha of Pride (combat due to reflections, not enough in numbers to give assassinations FoK an advantage)
Galakras (combat by far)
Iron Juggernaut (assassination I'd say due to possible dps downtime)
Kor'kron Dark Shaman (combat)
General Nazgrim (combat depending on how the adds are handled)
Malkorok (assassination, single target with possible downtime if you have to soak something outside of boss' range)
Spoils of Pandaria (combat period)
Thok the Bloodthirsty (assassination due to pure single target and possible dps downtime)
Siegecrafter Blackfuse (haven't seen the heroic fight so, not sure)
Paragons of the Klaxxi (combat if you cheese, otherwise not sure)
Garrosh Hellscream (combat due to adds)

[DakonBlackblade]

It's scary that combat is so close to assassination especially considering those are single target numbers that most people would be able to pull (on a scale similar to assassination). Also 9/14 fights in SoO have adds that could be cleaved with Blade Flurry makes me think combat will be better for T16 (just my opinion).

Immerseus (assassination by far)
The Fallen Protectors (combat due to lots of cleave possibilities)
Norushen (combat, standing between boss and small adds (and dodging their shit or soaking if needed), you can blade flurry the adds while being on the boss)
Sha of Pride (combat due to reflections, not enough in numbers to give assassinations FoK an advantage)
Galakras (combat by far)
Iron Juggernaut (assassination I'd say due to possible dps downtime)
Kor'kron Dark Shaman (combat)
General Nazgrim (combat depending on how the adds are handled)
Malkorok (assassination, single target with possible downtime if you have to soak something outside of boss' range)
Spoils of Pandaria (combat period)
Thok the Bloodthirsty (assassination due to pure single target and possible dps downtime)
Siegecrafter Blackfuse (haven't seen the heroic fight so, not sure)
Paragons of the Klaxxi (combat if you cheese, otherwise not sure)
Garrosh Hellscream (combat due to adds)

You forget that combat sims better than it actualy performs on live due to lag and speed of the players finger lol. Combat has simmed better than assas for most of the tier and never performed near as well. Maybe on the multiple add fights BF can make combat pull ahead but Im not sure, the jury is still out we need some actual fight data from live to see whats better.

[fierydemise]

It's scary that combat is so close to assassination especially considering those are single target numbers that most people would be able to pull (on a scale similar to assassination). Also 9/14 fights in SoO have adds that could be cleaved with Blade Flurry makes me think combat will be better for T16 (just my opinion).

Couple points:
1) Please don't use ShadowCraft for cross spec comparisons. Each model uses different underlying assumptions so cross spec comparisons aren't nessessarily valid.
2) Disagree on Sha of Pride being a combat fight, reflections felt pretty quick to burn down during testing, maybe they are alive for 10 seconds at most, hardly seem like something you'd spec to handle.

[Maelstrom51]

I was rather confused by the numbers you were getting until I noticed your T16 heroic Warforged set only had one T16 heroic warforged item in it.

[Deleted]

Like Fierydemise noted, comparing Combat to Assassination in ShC isn't the best thing to do. In almost every scenario you won't be pulling that kind of DPS in combat for various reasons, including filling every GCD with human reactions.

Immerseus (assassination by far)
The Fallen Protectors (combat due to lots of cleave possibilities)
Norushen (combat, standing between boss and small adds (and dodging their shit or soaking if needed), you can blade flurry the adds while being on the boss)
Sha of Pride (combat due to reflections, not enough in numbers to give assassinations FoK an advantage)
Galakras (combat by far)
Iron Juggernaut (assassination I'd say due to possible dps downtime)
Kor'kron Dark Shaman (combat)
General Nazgrim (combat depending on how the adds are handled)
Malkorok (assassination, single target with possible downtime if you have to soak something outside of boss' range)
Spoils of Pandaria (combat period)
Thok the Bloodthirsty (assassination due to pure single target and possible dps downtime)
Siegecrafter Blackfuse (haven't seen the heroic fight so, not sure)
Paragons of the Klaxxi (combat if you cheese, otherwise not sure)
Garrosh Hellscream (combat due to adds)

I have to say i disagree with these choices quite a lot. Of course it's personal preference, but if you looking at maximising both your own (and the entire raids') DPS in order to down the boss, you definitely wont want to be playing Combat on some of those.

These are my opinions on boss spec choice from a decent progression guild. Take this with a pinch of salt because it varies between every raid group, and I'm also not talking about "topping the skada" kinds of DPS. Only DPS that actually matters to the raid and doesn't involve cleaving on useless mobs just to pad.

With Fallen protectors you could play combat if your raid setup isn't littered with multi-dotters and passive cleavers already, but the time between the Desperate Measures (in our heroic testing at least) was very short so there was 0 need for more cleave. if anything, playing assassination to push the individual bosses over to the phase was more effective.

Norushen would be Assassination 100%. The adds HP pools were nerfed so significantly on 25hc testing that they would die before you could even spend 2-3 globals on them, and that therefore favored single target DPS by a big margin. This, combined with the 2 minute Purified buff after exiting the trial, made Assassination Rogues exceptionally strong on this encounter. So much so that myself and our other rogue were ~10% ahead of any other DPS in the raid group. Considering this fight is going to be a tight enrage on first kills, and that any single target damage lost in order to cleave is entirely wasted, playing combat is not really an option at the high end.

Sha of Pride would also favor playing Assassination to be honest. Pretty much for the same reason as Norushen - we'll be pulling way ahead of any other class and cleave via BF is just wasted as the adds die from other sources of aoe. Assassination will be much stronger with lower uptime on the boss (taking HC changes into account), and it is just as / if not more effective at killing "reflection adds" with snap aoe.

Galakras is a tricky one. If you're not on tower duty then by all means run Combat. If your on towers, however its probably worth rolling with Assassination. Bursty single target is pretty important, and depending on how much they tune the long final phase in the next week or so could be a decisive factor in spec choice. For me though, Galakras is probably the most likely out of all bosses where you'll play combat.

Iron Juggernaut - Assassination. Again, myself and our guilds' other rogue were significantly ahead on this boss because of our incredibly potent single target DPS. Being on track to comfortably kill the boss at 20%, we were already a long distance ahead of any other class or spec.

Kor'kron Dark Shamans depends on your tactic, but i see Assassination being on top. Cleaving the dogs / blobs is pointless, and considering this could be an extremely tight enrage Assassination would be superior unless you find a way to keep the bosses together for the entirety of the encounter.

General Nazgrim doesn't really provide enough cleave situations to go combat - particularly on heroic. If you happen to conjure a tactic where you can cleave then go combat, but Berserker Stance accommodates Assassination with AOC trinket significantly. For me, this encounter requires too much focused, snappy single target to make Combat the better choice.

for Malkorok i'm picking Assassination. Not really much debate there.

Spoils heavily depends on your strat, but either spec works very well. The new Redirect makes Assassination work much better than before here, but Combat isn't going to be far / at all ahead if you decide to play it. By the end of the testing only tanks and warriors(?) were pulling more than myself in Assassination.

Thok = Assassination, nothing to consider.

Siegecrafter Blackfuse would be Assassination. Other classes handle Mines a lot more effectively, so we're either going to be on bitch duty on the Conveyor Belts, or just tunneling the boss - hence my choice.

Paragons of the Klaxxi is a debatable one. I'm pretty sure everyone will run Assassination so you don't get moaned at by your raid leader for pointless cleaving. This, on top of the tight DPS checks with Amber Prisons & dispatch capability is why. There's no reason to cleave unless your tactic involves something extremely dodgy.

With Garrosh you DONT want to play Combat "because of adds". Doing so is outright stupid. Adds are only in P1 which makes up 1/3 of the fight. let the warriors, rets, monks and tanks have their fun and do decent aoe, because by the time P3 comes around Assassination rogues are ahead due to the ridiculous single target capability on such a long fight. In addition to this, the adds may not even be cleave-able on heroic difficulty due to the most recent dungeon journal changes, rendering Combat ineffective.

[Shinob1]

I was rather confused by the numbers you were getting until I noticed your T16 heroic Warforged set only had one T16 heroic warforged item in it.

From cloak upgrade and on it's assumed you have the "last previous" mentioned gear. So you go from the top to bottom and by the time you get to the bottom of the list you have a assumed "BiS" list of T16. Everything in between the start and finish seems to be nicely balanced, which I found interesting.

[Carp The Fish]

Couple points:
1) Please don't use ShadowCraft for cross spec comparisons. Each model uses different underlying assumptions so cross spec comparisons aren't nessessarily valid.
2) Disagree on Sha of Pride being a combat fight, reflections felt pretty quick to burn down during testing, maybe they are alive for 10 seconds at most, hardly seem like something you'd spec to handle.

This.
I think it's also been said somewhere by a Shadowcraft developer that the point of that DPS ESTIMATE on the right side of the screen is to compare gear sets (ex. when you get an upgrade), not to show your actual DPS.

As a lot of the other posters has pointed out, for most Rogues, Combat always sims higher than what is actually feasible for the human behind the keyboard to pull off.

[KoolGuyDags28]

I actually love how combat and assassination are pretty much tied and you would just go with BiS gear.

[Shinob1]

@filmflop

Norushen would be Assassination 100%. The adds HP pools were nerfed so significantly on 25hc testing that they would die before you could even spend 2-3 globals on them, and that therefore favored single target DPS by a big margin. This, combined with the 2 minute Purified buff after exiting the trial, made Assassination Rogues exceptionally strong on this encounter. So much so that myself and our other rogue were ~10% ahead of any other DPS in the raid group. Considering this fight is going to be a tight enrage on first kills, and that any single target damage lost in order to cleave is entirely wasted, playing combat is not really an option at the high end.

Latest build has some tweaks to the fight.
- The initial anti-zerg mechanic that spawned an add for every person in raid that has 75+ corruption on 50%, 40%, 30%, 20% and 10% is removed.
- Increased boss' hp (you can't zerg it anymore, you need to go down do the test, drop the corruption and kill the adds).
- Foul Link any damage done to the adds in the normal realm is also transferred to the boss.

Soo, cleaving makes a lot of sense to me.

Due to nature of the other realm, you can't exactly measure the dps accurately. Everyones meter will show something different.

[Deleted]

I'm fully aware that, and even when testing after the changes, the adds die so ridiculously quickly that its hardly even worth toggling on Blade flurry for the 2(?) gcd's that it will be alive for. As a priority kill target those adds shouldn't be alive for a long enough period to make any significant difference. Unless your tactic involves sending down obscene amounts of players at any one time during the encounter (to the extent that you will have multiple adds at once) Combat will not be as strong. And if you are going to be sending down a lot of people, you're most likely doing it wrong.

If you are the first person to go down, and that is the only time you DO go down, you can measure DPS with the assistance of another player in the raid perfectly fine. Same thing goes if you are one of the last people to go down.

The point is... if you play Assassination you will do considerably more DPS than any of the other classes on Norushen. I can see that from just a simple few pulls on the 25hc testing, sending an Assassination rogue down multiple times when CD's allign will be much more viable than sending down one of the weaker classes such as mages.

FYI, the zerg tactic is still a viable option. The HP increase was nowhere near enough. From the most recent testing we had the boss @ ~8%, without any optimization and just a pull 'for the lols'.

[whathump]

@filmflop

Latest build has some tweaks to the fight.
- The initial anti-zerg mechanic that spawned an add for every person in raid that has 75+ corruption on 50%, 40%, 30%, 20% and 10% is removed.
- Increased boss' hp (you can't zerg it anymore, you need to go down do the test, drop the corruption and kill the adds).
- Foul Link any damage done to the adds in the normal realm is also transferred to the boss.

Soo, cleaving makes a lot of sense to me.

Due to nature of the other realm, you can't exactly measure the dps accurately. Everyones meter will show something different.

Having tested the fight myself, the adds really do not live long enough to cleave onto. The only time you would want to be cleaving is from the adds onto the boss because if you cleave from boss onto the adds, then the adds get the reduced damage from your corruption level. It's most likely melee will be sent down to cleanse corruption first anyway because ranged will be far more effective at dpsing the adds than melee, and as long as you have the purified buff (which only increases damage done to the boss, not adds) you will want to focus the boss over adds anyway.

[Shinob1]

We tried many different things on heroic, zerg was not one of them. At points we had like 2-3 groups of small adds with 2-3 adds per group. There was lots of cleave opportunity as people neglected adds.

[Chult]

You forget that combat sims better than it actualy performs on live due to lag and speed of the players finger lol. Combat has simmed better than assas for most of the tier and never performed near as well. Maybe on the multiple add fights BF can make combat pull ahead but Im not sure, the jury is still out we need some actual fight data from live to see whats better.

Combat was only difficult to hit target numbers with the T15 4pc. With it slowed down considerably on PTR, it should be pretty easy for most anyone.

[Warstar]

Combat was only difficult to hit target numbers with the T15 4pc. With it slowed down considerably on PTR, it should be pretty easy for most anyone.

Ya it seems like they might have fixed that problem but inflating SS to 50 energy and then reducing the T15 4 pc. Even now it seems like with the GCD reduction that it isn't as necessary since that was implemented for the prevention of energy capping and if that's a lot harder to do now it seems like people will be able to live up to their potential. They won't be GCD capped and they never were meant to be. If a rogue doesn't fill every GCD and yet properly manages their resources (not energy/CP capping) then they're really getting all that they can out of it. While an adrenaline rush during heroism will be pretty nuts that's a once a fight mechanic and should still be rather manageable.

Combat wasn't hitting the numbers before due to fight mechanics preventing them from KsPing on CD, physical limitations of not being able to hit the GCDs on time and energy capping and probably other goofy stuff. But now the GCD issue seems solved for a higher level, the t15 seems to be nerfed out of the picture and t16 from what people are saying combat is doing ok.

[Shinob1]

It would be so much easier to play combat with a higher energy total.

Mutilate 55e
Dispatch 30e
Slow energy gain
max energy 120

Sinister Strike 50e
Revealing Strike 40e
Fast energy gain
max energy 100

I'm not sure what exactly is justifying the 120 energy for (pve) assassination if combat is still on 100? Combat is stuck without room to breath on a ridiculous paced gameplay. If Vigor was a glyph that gives 20 energy in 5.4 and assassination had 100 base energy... I'm not sure many pve assassination rogues would be going for Vigor next to glyphs like Redirect/Vendetta/Smoke Bomb. It would be a very small dps increase but you would be yelled at by the raid leader if you drop Smoke Bomb glyph . On Immerseus, Iron Juggernaut, Malkorok and Siegecrafter Blackfuse (if you are not on the conveyor belts) you could drop Redirect to get Vigor but thats basically it.

[fierydemise]

the t15 seems to be nerfed out of the picture and t16 from what people are saying combat is doing ok.

That is overstating things somewhat I feel. It looks like there is a mistake in the warforged gearsets linked in the OP, specifically the T16 set is using a heroic T16 helm rather than a regular T16 helm. When you use a regular T16 helm you get a gearset slightly below the T15 4pc gear set at 335K. Its hard to generalize exactly when you'll want to replace T15 4pc because there are a lot of moving parts that impact that decision. In certain gear sets it may be possible to do so as early as 1 pc of heroic tier and it others it may require 2-3 depending on exact haste levels and the ilvl of your AoC.

The other important consideration is about loot distribution. Obviously different guild loot systems work differently but I suspect given a player who requires a full 4pc with at least one of those pieces being heroic for a 1-3% upgrade they are probably going to be low on the tier priority list vs. a player who only needs 2pc. There are other complications such as people gearing an assassination spec which are harder to reason about but suffice it to say that as a combat rogue you are probably better off passing on tier until its going off spec or pretty close.

On the general point about spec balance I was thinking about this a few days ago and assassination is in many ways the perfect single target dps spec. Certainly it has sustained AoE and multi-dotting capabilities but the overall spec kit is basically built around single target with strong sustained, burst and execute damage. Especially in a 25 man raid setting this is very valuable, there are lots of specs that have far better aoe/multitarget capabilities so you can specialize in single target. The problem combat runs into is that for those 2-4 target cleave fights where combat shines there are multi-dot specs that also shine that are far less limited in terms of target positioning. That said combat with AoC should be competitive single target dps to the point where it probably isn't going to be a liability to run it as a full time spec.

The other point about spec balance is that spec swapping is going to be hard next tier. In T14 BF was so powerful that running combat with some reforges but not regemming was still a pretty substantial dps increase. Also while haste was certainly better than mastery for combat it wasn't so much better (1.4 vs. 1.3 EP or thereabouts) so agi/mastery gems with some haste heavy reforges weren't that bad. In T16 that isn't the case because of the energy changes, look at the T15 heroic warforged build linked, in that build the haste EP is 2.2 and I've seen haste EPs as high as 2.4 EP. That is to say that haste is almost competing with agi 1 to 1 rather than 2 to 1 as it has during T14 and T15. This means to run combat for a fight is going to require a full regem and reforge which while certainly not prohibitive is something that you are only going to be for a 50+ pull boss of which there are typically only a few each tier. Additionally combat and assassination have completely different gear acquisition targets this tier, combat is basically going to shun tier gear, assassination really wants it, especially 2pc. Combat desperately needs AoC to be competitive on single target, assassination gets much less out of it than many agi specs. All of this is to say I expect most rogues, even those in top end guilds to basically pick one spec and run with it because the hassle of switching is really only going to be worth it for a couple fights this tier and then only if one spec is strongly favored.

[shadowboy]

Fiery: don't forget that in T15, all the rppm items propped haste for assassination so much that you really did use nearly identical gemming & reforging for combat and assassination (if you chose to go the haste route for assassination). All you really needed to do was swap out a dagger for a non-dagger main hand. Assuming that neither the dagger nor the nondagger had hit or expertise on them, then it was a drop-in replacement and you were optimal in both specs simultaneously.

[Dextar]

I tweaked around the Assassination BiS - 414426.8