Managing Envenom

[lolbubble]

Hello all,

I just dinged 100 on my rogue last night and love assassination except for 1 thing....the damn management of the envenom buff.

How important is managing uptime on the buff for both extra change application of your poisons + 30% bonus to mut and dispatch?

Thanks in advance.

[Pleeb]

Pool energy before you use envenom (with 5 cp), and try to only use Mutilate / dispatch during the envenom buff. With low gear / crit you will have a hard time reaching high levels of uptime due to energy and cp starvation.

I have a buff-tracker for the envenom buff (there are several good weakauras or addons on this forum if you just search for it) and always use my energy during envenom buff, and wait for the energy to get up (80+) before I use envenom and the following builders.

A typical rotation might look like this: Mutilate-> Mutilate -> wait for energy to reach 80+ -> Mutilate -> Mutilate -> Mutilate -> wait for energy to reach 80+. This way you can fit all your mutilate / dispatches into the envenom buff for extra damage. I also try to stay at rather high energy levels due to proccs, so that I can burst out as much damage as possible during whatever trinket, ring or enchant-procc is up.

Once you reach higher crit levels and get tier pieces envenom uptime will come much easier as you will have an increased CP generation from Seal fate.

[Djspw]

Hello Moalim. I've been in a break for some time due to health problems. I've returned and I want to gear pretty decent and start raiding / pvping. I can't make it to decide what to play mutilate/sub or combat - combat i have some problems with 2.6 weapons.

I will link my armory if you are willing to help me (please) http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...jspawny/simple

[Pleeb]

What you play should in the end be entirely up to what you enjoy playing the most and how you wish to play. If you want to progress mythic content you should play the spec that your character sims the highest with, and if you are fine with just normal / heroic content you can pretty much play whatever you want and be fine.

Having combat + sass / sub is a good way to handle both cleave and single target encounters. In 6.2 sass is stronger than sub until you can get set pieces and class trinket due to the recent buffs to sass and the set bonus synergy to sub. sass is also less stressful to play as you are fewer mechanics to take into consideration.

A tips for weapons is to go to tanaan and farm rares and get the baleful weapons (which you can upgrade to 695).

[Larinnian]

Don't be too concerned with your uptime at lower gear levels, you need higher levels of crit (so you get the extra crit combo points) which helps with your uptime on the envenom buff.

You should look to refresh your envenom with 5 CPs when your current buff has under 1 second left because of the roll-over duration you get nowadays, it'll add the tiny bit of time you had left on to the new one.

If your Envenom buff runs out, you should look to pool your energy as much as you can before you hit your next Envenom, to get the highest possible number of mutilates before the buff runs out yet again.

It's a pain because of how short the duration of the buff is, but the spec is so simple to play, not to mention the buffs we just got heading into 6.2 that it makes it such a great spec for either beginners to the rogue class or stress-free progression raiding

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I can't make it to decide what to play mutilate/sub or combat - combat i have some problems with 2.6 weapons.

My suggestion to you would be mutilate/combat so that you can easily transfer between single target and cleave fights with little penalty. With your gear you might be able to find yourself some heroic BRF pug runs, because the Forgehammer's from Hans'gar/Franzok are wonderfully optimised for combat spec.

[Athonel]

At lower gear levels, managing envenom is really important. It's also significantly more difficult than at higher gear levels. At low levels, you have almost no crit or haste, both of which directly effect envenom uptime. Once you start getting the set bonuses, those help with increasing your envenom uptime. With 4t17 and around 685 ilvl, I was able to fairly easily maintain 80%+ in envenom, especially on fights like Butcher. As you get more comfortable with mutilate, it becomes easier. I use tell me when to monitor this and several other buffs. The optimal time to refresh envenom is at 1.8 seconds remaining because of pandemic. Once you get a strong level of gear (690+++) you will learn that it's not envenom uptime that is most important, but the number of envenoms per minute that more directly effects your dps. With the recent buffs in 6.2, envenom hits really hard. Figure out the butter zone of when you can cast envenom, and your dps goes through the roof.