Combat - MfD/Ant

[Tekkommo]

Now I only play a Rogue as an alt, but I thought the obvious choice for Combat would be MfD.

Having looked at a lot of top Rogues, they all use Anticipation and I am not sure why. Especially with all the adds in today's raids where you can abuse MfD.

Can anyone explain why Anticipation is the better choice? For Assassination it's obviously the best choice because you have to wait to use Envenom, so you have to use extra Mut so you don't cap energy, but with Combat, you can use Evis whenever you want really, so capping combo points is no issue.

[Deleted]

Mostly because of the 2P and 4P bonus from T17.
It becomes a lot easier to manage with Anticipation.

In case you are unfamiliar:
2P bonus - Increases the chance for Revealing Strike to generate an extra Combo Point by 20%.
4P bonus - Your finishing moves have a 4% chance per combo point to generate 5 combo points and cause your next Eviscerate to consume no Energy.

[Tekkommo]

Mostly because of the 2P and 4P bonus from T17.
It becomes a lot easier to manage with Anticipation.

In case you are unfamiliar:
2P bonus - Increases the chance for Revealing Strike to generate an extra Combo Point by 20%.
4P bonus - Your finishing moves have a 4% chance per combo point to generate 5 combo points and cause your next Eviscerate to consume no Energy.

Understand the 4P part, not really the 2P, as I have 2P and it hardly ever procs, it's pretty shit.

Also, most of the Rogues I checked aren't using 4P.

Now you said easier to manage, is it just that a 1%-2% increase to damage isn't worth the extra management as if MfD isn't used optimally then it could lower DPS?

[Kourvith]

Also, without T17 bonus, it's aimed at stacking combo points while building up Red Insight.

[Sinthanor]

Understand the 4P part, not really the 2P, as I have 2P and it hardly ever procs, it's pretty shit.

The wording of the 2P is quite bad. It refers to the extra combopoint-gain chance of SS when using it on a target where RS is applied.

[racthalas]

How many combo points (max) can be stored by anticipation?

[Tekkommo]

Also, without T17 bonus, it's aimed at stacking combo points while building up Red Insight.

Thanks this makes sense. Is it a proven DPS gain, or just used because for such a small difference it is much easier to manage.

The wording of the 2P is quite bad. It refers to the extra combopoint-gain chance of SS when using it on a target where RS is applied.

Wow, that is some bad wording, still makes me feel retarded that I didn't know that, but I do put little research into my Rogue

[Deleted]

How many combo points (max) can be stored by anticipation?

Read the skill description. 5 normal points and 5 anticipation points. So a grand total of 10. However anticipation cp's works a lil diffrent from normal ones when you use SnD. SnD never uses the Anticipation points so you always need 5 normal points to get a 5cp snd.

This can be very confusing when playing sub once you hit T17 4p. @ max points during dance etc you need to atleast evi/rupture twice before applying SnD cause if you do the anticipation points wont be used and you have to get 5 normal cp's again. I wish they would change how anticipation interacts with SnD and T17 4p(Sub)

[Deleted]

The main advantage of Anticipation over MfD is not only that it allows you to pool combo points but also that it's passive, therefore much easier to manage. With MfD, it's quite easy to use it poorly to no dps benefit.

[Athonel]

At decent gear levels (i'm 678 currently), anticipation is almost 100% required, ESPECIALLY, when 4 piece procs. It is extremely easy to energy cap if you're worried about not CP capping with MFD.

That being said, I got 7 4 piece procs in a row, and I peaked at 174k dps on heroic maidens last night. It felt pretty good. lol.

[shaithis]

MfD is amazing on Blast Furnace in my experience, for other cleave fights I would take Anticipation in a heartbeat and I don't even have 4pc yet.

[Kourvith]

Thanks this makes sense. Is it a proven DPS gain, or just used because for such a small difference it is much easier to manage.

It is as much DPS gain as an additional 5pts Red Buff Evisc
(Plus, this evisc provides an additional KS CD reduction, as you often KS right after Red Buff kicks in.)

[B L A D E]

MfD is a very slight DPS gain for Combat if you don't got 2p, we are talking 1%. But on any fights where you can get MfD resets, it becomes instantly better so like Beastlord for example. But to make it good, you really need to use it for it's full potential, you can't go in and only complete 4 MfD resets. We are talking about 20+ above on a fight like Beastlord.

Else on any singletarget fight or any fight where resets doesn't occur throughout the entire fight then Anticipation is better. Not only because you don't lose as many CPs but also because, it's easier to spend a lot more energy on SS to build up insight when using AR compared to MfD, where you need to SS to 5 - Eviscerate - 5 - Eviscerate etc. It's almost the same but Anticipation pulls very slightly ahead of MfD on that subject.

By the end of the day, it's a matter of personal choice depending on if you are capable of pulling both talents off at their full potential. Anticipation is the easiest one to go and that's why most people prefer to play with it.

[Dendalaus]

I was never fond of Anticipation as Combat personally. I think the playing around red buff is pretty gross as is, and anticipation makes it even worse. I personally run MfD on every fight that I play Combat. To be fair, the only one where I think it doesn't pay off is hanz/franz since there isn't any reset opportunity. I guess Maidens might be off the table for some, if you dont have to go up for any boats (I personally do both boats, and boat two is really nice for MfD).

Take this with a grain of salt, I guess. My combat parses are starting to decay a bit these days (from mid 90s to 80s, if that on certain fights). I don't even know how far ahead using a 680 dagger instead of my 685 bladefists is, so maybe I could make up some space with that, but who knows. I honestly hoped/thought they would hotfix the dagger mainhand behavior by now. It is clearly unintended, but I guess some would just look at it as a nerf.



Edit: More on-topic. MfD got loads easier for me to use personally when I made a /cast [@mouseover] Marked for Death macro. You can focus a target that stays alive (so you dont have to re-apply RvS to everything), MfD a weak add, evis, MfD, evis, etc. If adds stay in range for cleave (My guild's lack of good DKs on thogar makes me sad) you can get a lot off. Same for Beastlord. On Brackenspore back in Highmaul I usually stayed on the boss and just MfD the plants when they were in range. Never use it on the boss. Same thing on Butcher (mythic) when I was still combat because I didn't have a dagger (it was awful. it was rarely ever safe to KS) you could get soooo many CPs from MfD on the adds slowly trailing towards the boss.

[Razzdu]

I personally just find the thought of "marking something for death" with a spec whose highest source of damage is auto attacks kind of... Stupid? lol

[shadowboy]

The main advantage of Anticipation over MfD is not only that it allows you to pool combo points but also that it's passive, therefore much easier to manage. With MfD, it's quite easy to use it poorly to no dps benefit.

Wrong. Anticipation has a 15sec buff duration. If you mismanage that, you lose the stored combo points. For good. No getting them back. You have to be almost clinically brain dead to use MfD poorly (ie, casting it only when at 5 combo points).

My searching into MfD vs anticipation for combat was during MoP when we had shadow blades and even THEN it was a gain to use MfD ON COOLDOWN regardless of combo point count over anticipation? Why? Because not every MfD cast was at 5 combo points.

The advantage of MfD over anticipation is that it's FREE combo points. Points you spend ZERO energy on. Even if you use it at 3 combo points that's 2 combo points that you spent NO energy on. MfD causes you to use more finishers over the course of a fight and given that energy is a limited resource (you only get so much over a certain time span), it shifts that energy consumption a little bit away from builders and towards finishers (which deal FAR more damage per energy).

The T17 4pc might make anticipation slightly better, but not by much, and I doubt it would be enough to make anticipation better on any fight where you can abuse the cd reset mechanic of MfD.

[Sanctify]

When played well, MfD is an increase over Anticipation. If you mess up you lose that increase.

[Larinnian]

Probably the main draw of Anticipation is the fact that it's passive, as has been mentioned. It's one less button to manage, and storing the extra 5CP for Red Insight is very simple and easy to get the hang of.

[Deleted]

Wrong. Anticipation has a 15sec buff duration. If you mismanage that, you lose the stored combo points. For good. No getting them back.

How can you mismanage anticipation other than not using any finisher in 15 seconds? Really hard to fail there even without thinking about it.

You have to be almost clinically brain dead to use MfD poorly (ie, casting it only when at 5 combo points).

The main problem with MfD is that for it to be worth using, you need to use it on adds that die quickly to reset in under the 1m CD, otherwise the dps gain over Anticipation would be marginal if any. And it's not that hard to:
a) cast MfD on the boss, which means no shorter reset
b) cast MfD on an add that doesn't "die" - like slags in Blast Furnace
c) cast MfD on an add that will live longer than desired - like Operator on Furnace
d) cast MfD with 1 or more CPs, therefore diminishing the gains
e) not cast MfD on cooldown - you might for instance need a second or two to determine the best target available

The main point is: I'm not arguing that perfect use of MfD will yield better results than Anticipation. But the real-world scenarios prove that Anticipation will give you comparable results simply because it's passive and easier to manage.

[shaithis]

Quick note here - when using MfD, you definitely want to actually switch targets to the add that you are casting it on in order to speed up refresh. For Furnace, this means that you will generally not ever be directly attacking Feldspar. Also, given that MfD will always refresh on death, it is economical to wait on yellow or red buff before using it (esp. Elementalists, operators). Finally, due to Ruthlessness, you will always be using it at 1cp as opposed to zero.