DFA for Combat

[Black Jack]

i have a few questions about dfa, i keep seeing that alot of combat rogues are using this. Just like to know what the benefits of it and when/if i should use since ive heard its good at single and multi target dps and for challenge mode should i be using MfD or anticipation conmfused about which is better

[Karry]

It's horrible for PvE since most of our dmg comes from poisons and autos. Unless they overhaul the rogues class and make it so that we rely more on active than passive dmg this will never be a good skill for PvE ( unless there would be a mechanic you could cheese with this skill but that's about it ).

In PvE anticipation is boss, it makes things much easier. Tho you could make a case for MfD if a specific fight requiers it or is easier with it because of a mechanic.

[Deleted]

People are taking DfA atm because it's refunding CPs based on targets hit by the AoE and the 50% additional damage evis. It's pretty good on trash, and not that dreadful on bosses either.

MfD vs. Anticipation is sort of personal preference, but I'd advise you to take MfD. I haven't used Anticipation for PvE as any spec since I hit 100, MfD is just too good when you abuse it properly in dungeons. You are able to cut the cooldown on KS/AR by a shit ton when you know what targets will die first in trash pulls, making the whole dungeon much quicker overall, since your cleave will be better + faster regen on bosses w/ adds. You don't get the benefit of being able to pool CPs for Deep Insight, but I think it makes up for it.

Using it in dungeons also makes good practice for when you want to get your Proving Grounds Endless 30 achieve, MfD is pretty much your key ability there.

[Dendalaus]

Kinda confusing, you're asking two different questions. DFA is really good for Combat because it refunds CPs a lot in cleave scenarios. You basically get an extra finisher on top of your empowered finisher. Using that and MFD is making dungeons a lot more fast paced than they were before. Even for bosses, MFD doesn't feel that bad to have atm. You rarely need (or can even manage to GET) more than your five combo points. The haste levels are just not there. I'd say to play around with it. In raids things will be different I'm sure, but MFD+DFA is just insane right now.

[Deleted]

In PvE anticipation is boss, it makes things much easier. Tho you could make a case for MfD if a specific fight requiers it or is easier with it because of a mechanic.

Sorry but, no, its not. Anticipation was boss because of the way Shadow Blades and AR used to work together, and will be boss again, once we get to higher haste levels.

However, as it stands right now, with combat including tremendous downtimes and being much less spamy, anticipation doesn't really serve any purpose, so I take those free 5 combo points/min any day of the week...moreso on fights where I can use the ability on fast dying adds.

[Deleted]

The reason you see Rogues with DfA and MfD is mostly challenge modes, those 2 talents are amazing there, and a lot of groups doing gold have a combat rogue.

As for actual raiding, on single target DfA is way behind Venom Rush and Shadow Reflection so never pick it for a boss fight.

For lvl90 talents, I see a lot of people here saying they pick MfD over Anticipation but I honestly disagree. 5 Cps every min probably make up for wasting a CP when SS procs @ 4 CP but for me the real gain with Anticipation is that you can progress insight without having to spend CP @ 5. The main thing is being able to SS over 5 CPs which allows you to get more eviscerates in during Deep Insight (or better Insight in general). It also gives you better burst which gets increased a lot in a raid scenario when let's say you stack it with bl and a pot.

[AgilityTank]

5 Cps every min

Have you read the tooltip on Mark for Death?

[Black Jack]

Interesting so does DFA replace eviscerate? im confused on how the ability works

[Deleted]

Sorry but, no, its not. Anticipation was boss because of the way Shadow Blades and AR used to work together, and will be boss again, once we get to higher haste levels.

However, as it stands right now, with combat including tremendous downtimes and being much less spamy, anticipation doesn't really serve any purpose, so I take those free 5 combo points/min any day of the week...moreso on fights where I can use the ability on fast dying adds.

Anticipation allows you to freely pool combo points and dish out little bursts at crucial times much easier. With the BG perk granting 50%, getting as much out of red state as you can is important, and Anticipation helps a lot with that. You will inevitably lose combo points when using MFD due to this, especially once you get the 2-set bonus which increases the chance for sinister strike to grant an additional combo point by 20%.

So those 5 combo points you gain from MFD (and in reality it's only 4 due to Ruthlessness), you're probably losing from SS procs, in addition to not being able to control red state burst as easily.

[reynesthan1]

No DFA is a separate ability that has a cd.

[Deleted]

As for actual raiding, on single target DfA is way behind Venom Rush and Shadow Reflection so never pick it for a boss fight.

Please don't post BS until you do some research or check out some threads on this forum. DfA in its current state (returning 2CP + 1 for target hit in combat) is a dps increase over every other T100 talent when used properly in both single and multiple target scenarios. Though it's harder to use than passive LZ (venom rush) and the dps increase compared to LZ in single-target scenario is just a few percent.

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Anticipation allows you to freely pool combo points and dish out little bursts at crucial times much easier. With the BG perk granting 50%, getting as much out of red state as you can is important, and Anticipation helps a lot with that. You will inevitably lose combo points when using MFD due to this, especially once you get the 2-set bonus which increases the chance for sinister strike to grant an additional combo point by 20%.

So those 5 combo points you gain from MFD (and in reality it's only 4 due to Ruthlessness), you're probably losing from SS procs, in addition to not being able to control red state burst as easily.

MfD is still simming higher than Anticipation for Combat and Subtlety (and roughly the same as Anticipation for Assassination), so I guess you are not losing that much if you manage your combo points carefully. And who is saying you cannot save MfD for Deep Insight?

[Deleted]

MfD is still simming higher than Anticipation for Combat and Subtlety (and roughly the same as Anticipation for Assassination), so I guess you are not losing that much if you manage your combo points carefully. And who is saying you cannot save MfD for Deep Insight?

I don't doubt that it sims higher because it generates combo points from thin air, unlike Anticipation which is a utility. So on encounters where you can use MFD quicker than the cooldown it'll be good. And there's nothing to suggest you can't keep MFD for DI, but the longer you leave it off cooldown the lower its overall value. Personally I think the two are close, it's just that I feel as though, especially once we get the 2-set, we would inevitably lose 4 combo points per minute, which is why I'd prefer Anticipation since it gives a bit more freedom than MFD. It's not really to do with managing combo points either, if you're on 4 then you will definitely Sinister Strike again if you're about to use a finisher, and if that SS procs RvS effect then you lose a combo point, and there's no way to prevent that.

Call it personal preference if you like, I just don't see myself getting as much benefit from MFD as I do with Anticipation.

[T18Z]

Please don't post BS until you do some research or check out some threads on this forum. DfA in its current state (returning 2CP + 1 for target hit in combat) is a dps increase over every other T100 talent when used properly in both single and multiple target scenarios. Though it's harder to use than passive LZ (venom rush) and the dps increase compared to LZ in single-target scenario is just a few percent.

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MfD is still simming higher than Anticipation for Combat and Subtlety (and roughly the same as Anticipation for Assassination), so I guess you are not losing that much if you manage your combo points carefully. And who is saying you cannot save MfD for Deep Insight?

As stated previously though shadowcraft is showing a very, very minor increase from DFA (40-100 dps generally), where as simcraft is showing a decrease. Apparently both are modelling it with it's combo point returns already taken into consideration too. Now, consider the effective micromanagement required of a 20 second cooldown and it's most likely obvious that it will not be worth using for the majority of the time.

It generally comes down to if you believe you will never make a mistake in your rotation and will be able to truly maximize cooldown abilities like MFD and DFA during progression, both of which I doubt will be the case. In my opinion VR and anticipation will be the bread and butter for now, providing much more versatility to our rotation than without and allowing you to make better use of deep insight as stated earlier in this thread.

[Deleted]

As stated previously though shadowcraft is showing a very, very minor increase from DFA (40-100 dps generally), where as simcraft is showing a decrease

It seems that Simulationcraft profiles for Combat have not been optimized for DfA. But I've seen some work being done in the rogue Simulationcraft thread. After some profile tweaking it seems DfA would be properly showing as a dps increase even in Simulationcraft (somewhere around 1-2%).

I'm not saying that it necessarily has to replace LZ for every combat rogue because of this small increase in pure single target dps output, but stating that DfA is bad choice for raiding is a false information that needed to be corrected.

[-Raer-]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post30856431


Here is where there are optimized Simc profiles, showing that DFA is simming higher on single target than LZ. I didn't see them mention SR recently though...

As far as Anticipation vs MFD, personally I'm going to run MFD. At some point during ToT/SoO there was a discussion on the average combo points gained via either one and that in ToT MFD generated more CP than Anticipation saved over the course of a 6-8 minute encounter. In SoO Anticipation saved more CP than MFD generated.

At this point I'm fairly confident that with such abysmally low haste levels that MFD will generate more CP than Anticipation will save, but I have no proof on this.

[Packing an i5]

Probably sux for combat because combat has no armor pen, Sub has find weakness a sub rogue DFAed me with find weakness buff and crit me 22 thousand with it today.

My highest crit with Envenom with it as Mutilate is 18k I still think thats pretty good not even full geared. Envenom hits low but it almost completely ignores armor it will only do any damage as combat with 30% insight even then a high armor target will absorb the brunt of the dps.

[Mormolyce]

It's amazing for AoE (ie CMs!). It feels a bit clunky at the moment, you wind up energy starved a lot IMO, should improve with haste. Of course that won't help much in CMs...

Personally I'm using SR with Assass because it lines up with Vendetta and DfA with combat because (a) Combat is my AoE spec and (b) it looks freaking awesome.

Interesting so does DFA replace eviscerate? im confused on how the ability works

No it's an additional button with a short CD, basically every other eviscerate is a DFA instead.

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As stated previously though shadowcraft is showing a very, very minor increase from DFA (40-100 dps generally), where as simcraft is showing a decrease. Apparently both are modelling it with it's combo point returns already taken into consideration too. Now, consider the effective micromanagement required of a 20 second cooldown and it's most likely obvious that it will not be worth using for the majority of the time.

My read on it is that DfA is roughly even with the rest of the row on ST (at least it's in my "not a huge gimp so I don't give a shit" region), but its real strength is burst AoE.

[Nykko]

Probably sux for combat because combat has no armor pen, Sub has find weakness a sub rogue DFAed me with find weakness buff and crit me 22 thousand with it today.

My highest crit with Envenom with it as Mutilate is 18k I still think thats pretty good not even full geared. Envenom hits low but it almost completely ignores armor it will only do any damage as combat with 30% insight even then a high armor target will absorb the brunt of the dps.

I had a crit for 64K earlier in a guild-run Heroic. Slow/Slow Combat with Deep Insight.

[shadowboy]

I think the value of DfA in AoE is not so much the combo points but in blade flurry.

Each hit of the DfA initial AoE has a chance (per target) to proc main gauche, and those main gauche hits can cleave via blade flurry to every other target. Then you get a +50% damage evis upon landing that also cleaves via blade flurry. It's pretty substantial burst aoe that increases rapidly with number of targets (similar to the way flame shock + fire nova do, for similar reasons).

[Deleted]

At this point I'm fairly confident that with such abysmally low haste levels that MFD will generate more CP than Anticipation will save, but I have no proof on this.

I would once again point towards the 2-set bonus - even with low haste, an additional 20% chance to grant the second combo point makes it increasingly likely that we will be unable to prevent wasting them with MFD. Even with perfect play I still think you'd lose as many (or at best, gain 1) as you gain.