1. #1

    Quick Assassination PVE guide

    Stats

    Agility>
    Mastery>
    Haste=>
    Hit => Expertise>
    Crit

    Keep in mind some of these change depending on caps or just pure amount you can get. First off Hit and Exp obviously lose any value after 7.5% However Hit and Expertise can be more worthwhile than haste if you just cannot get a decent amount while maintaining atleast close to cap on both hit and expertise, it is likely safer in normal modes and early heroic tiers to maintain hit @ cap and expertise you can be a little more iffy about in favor of more haste. Crit even w/ all of blizzards changes is still not worth trying to attain.

    Talents

    Tier 1 Nightstalker Subterfuge Shadow Focus - Optimally in a patchwerk fight subterfuge is superior, a bleeding ambush into a rupture is pretty hard to pass up. However the easiest choice would be Shadow Focus this is really just going to make energy management easier at the opening and vanishing points.

    Tier 2 Irrelevant for DPS, unless your forced to range DPS then clearly deadly throw is a dps increase.

    Tier 3 Again no "true" dps increase, procs can occur from Leeching poison but its your most obvious choice in pve anyways.

    Tier 4 Preparation Shadow Step Burst of speed - Raw DPS goes to preparation, Shadow Step mobility will usually win out, and burst of speed can be a nice raid utility.

    Tier 5 No dps increases to be found.

    Tier 6 Assassination hands down anticipation even in Heavy switching fights your ramp up time is not long enough to pass up being able to manage rupture and get as many envenoms out as possible w/ horrible resource regeneration currently.

    Glyphs

    This has honestly become the worst possible addition to the game and very trivial, Vendetta can be a dps increase if you can get full duration 100% uptime.

    Rotation

    Opener[Shadow Focus] - Prepot stealth, Shadowstep unless something is coming quick you may need it for, and begin your damage with a garrote, this will allow you to open right away w/ a bleed and a 1 or 2 pt Slice and Dice for going rupture.(If preparation specced donot rupture until you have vanished and your 2nd garrote is running out.)

    Opener[Subterfuge] - Prepot stealth, this go round you will open w/ an ambush then go directly into a garrote, mutilate once to get a 5+ pt envenom off then SnD asap afterwards.

    p.s. in both cases you want to use Shadow Blades and Vendetta before you begin any part of an unstealthed DPS rotation.

    Filler - Mutilate and Dispatch procs will be the main fill of your "ACTIVE" dps. If you do not have a garrote or rupture present or running dangerously low Rupture will be your goto finisher(alternatively if you have Vanish off CD use garrote). You will never apply a Rupture or Envenom w/o having 5pts, unless Rupture or Slice and Dice are dangerously low on duration, however unless you have weird offtime you shouldnt have trouble maintain both of these.

    Dispatch Pre Execute - Using dispatch on proc and holding it can both be DPS increases, you will need to know when you need to sit on it or not. If it procs on a mutilate and you already have 5pts just Envenom even if its going to heavily clip your Envenom buff, using it before a finisher or directly after while having medium or high energy is going to possibly cause energy capping this is severely bad in assassination. Now it is also wise to sit on a dispatch if for w/e reason you need to get SnD back up (i.e you have CD's and Pot's running with 1-4 combo points w/ 1-3 seconds left on SnD, you should not reapply SnD w/ a 5< Ev or a 3+ SnD it is more ideal to continue with your big hits and manage your energy.)

    Dispatch Execute - This will mostly replace your mutilate during execute, except when a good crit string and or finisher string puts you at high enough energy to use mutilate @ which point to prevent any possibility of energy capping dumping a mutilate is going to be a better idea. During this phase Envenom will begin to teeter above keeping rupturing rolling, so you will want to keep an eye on the boss health as putting a full duration rupture up @ 10 seconds of boss health is going to net you lower numbers, if your stuck w/o energy it is not a bad idea if you can gauge it well to apply a rupture w/ a shortened duration Venomous wounds is just too nice to pass up. Shadow Blades is best used in this phase so holding your cool down for a SHORT time rather than using it on CD can be a DPS increase.


    AOE Simply Fan of Knives til 5 combo points and envenom, keep envenom rolling and keep using FOK. Fan does not suffer from AOE cap, and in assassination spec the instant poison applications of deadly poison are just better than Crimson Tempest.
    This concludes My shorthanded and quick Assassination guide.
    Last edited by Milkshake86; 2012-11-17 at 08:06 AM.

  2. #2
    So much is wrong with this. What are you basing any of this on?

    Stat priority:

    Agi > Hit (7.5%) > Mastery > everything else (which fluctuates a lot in priority)

    Shadowcraft will give you exact weights, but only the first three stay consistent or meaningfully better/worse.

    Talents:

    SF is the absolute best option. Subterfuge provides pretty much no DPS increase, as Ambush ~= Mut and Garrote is VERY BAD. Nightstalker is not as good as SF because a free Mut is better than a Mut x1.25.

    ShS is better than Prep for every fight this tier in terms of DPS. It takes very little uptime gained from ShS (2-3s) to outdo Prep.

    Glyphs:

    Glyphs are absolutely not useless. Vendetta is a DPS increase if you can use the full duration, as you said, but Sprint can provide more uptime = more DPS, and Feint is extremely useful on a lot of fights this tier.

    Opener:

    Do not use Vendetta or SB before you open; that's completely wasted uptime and there is no burst during your opener worth sacrificing GCDs of uptime on the boss AND your CDs for. Garrote is inferior because it's a 3s tick vs Rupture's 2s tick and the bleed itself does incredibly low damage. Ambush ~= Mut for opening.

    As far as what you do after that (5cp rupt, 1cp snd, 5cp env; 2-3cp rupt, 1-2cp snd, 5cp env; etc.) matters very, very little. There are numbers on EJ and the biggest difference is a few hundred DPS for the first ~20s of a fight. The opener sequence does not significantly contribute to your overall DPS unless you do something really dumb (like prepop CDs or use Garrote).

    Rotation:

    Using Mut with a Dispatch proc is like completely wasting 30% of a Dispatch, on average. It is never a DPS gain to hold a proc unless you have 5+CPs, a healthy Rupture, and do not have Env buff. In this case, you would Env and then Dispatch during the buff for the increased poison proc on your Dispatch.

    You also never want to let SnD drop. If is going to drop because you fail or there is a lot of downtime (only Amber-Shaper, really), then you want to just hit Env. If it actually falls off, use as little CPs as possible throwing it back up. You certainly don't want to "continue with your big hits and manage your energy" whatever that means. Your "big hits" are Deadly Poison and autoattacks, both of which are significantly increased by SnD. SnD is our best finisher. Period.

    All your execute advice is garbage. You should save your last use of Vendetta and SB for execute (and pref Hero, if not used before) as well as your agi pot. That means the once there is <2m in the fight, hold Vendetta; and at <3m, hold SB. It does not matter how long you hold them as long as it is less than the CD of the ability; and you do often end up holding them for more than a "SHORT" time.

    You should not ever have to use Mut in execute. Dispatch is not the old Backstab. The DPS of Rupture and Env do not "teeter"; sure, you don't want to put up a full Rupture if most of it will be wasted, but that's literally in the last 10s of the boss fight where you make that decision. 10s of a fight is not going to matter at all.

    The best AoE rotation has yet to be determined afaik and it will vary by the number of mobs. 5-8 targets, you will most likely want to maintain SnD and Rupture while using FoK as your builder. CT is not complete garbage either. It returns double your Anticipation charges, up to 5. That means a 7CP CT leaves you with 4CP.

    Seriously, how did you become so misinformed?

    EDIT: This all sounds much meaner than I intended. It's great that you put the effort into writing this up, but simply reading what's already available and backed up by sims would be good.
    Last edited by Squirl; 2012-11-17 at 09:34 AM.

  3. #3
    "Agility>
    Mastery>
    Haste=>
    Hit => Expertise>
    Crit"
    Where did you get those numbers from? Because Im fairly sure hit until cap has always outweight almost every other stat, and it is the same in MoP. Every site/tool points to this.
    And saying "Crit even w/ all of blizzards changes is still not worth trying to attain." is just not telling the whole truth. Both SimC and ShadowC has crit simming higher then Haste in my gear, Im not saying this is the same for every gear setup, but saying Crit is just not worth it in combination with you saying that Haste is higher then hit/exp makes for a wierd picture. Maybe Im missing something tho.

    Also where did you get your info about our AoE rotation? Because as far as I know thats the most debated thing about the assass rotation and no one seems to have a clear cut answer.
    Ty!

  4. #4
    Deleted
    With all respect, there are many errors in this guide. Normally I would provide my own feedback but Squirl pretty much explained everything already.

    Only part I don't fully agree on with Squirl is the AoE rotation part. I personally think multi-dotting 5 combo point Ruptures while spamming Fan of Knives is better on 6 targets or less and Crimson Tempest instead of Ruptures on 6+ targets. Whether this is actually true is something I'm not completely sure on. It seems to be marginally better in practice.
    Last edited by mmoc973e6c390d; 2012-11-17 at 10:25 AM.

  5. #5
    i want to say u;re welcome u try to improve ppl out there but i stoped reading your topic when u placed Haste over Hit > expertize like i said is ok u try to improve but if u have your facts wrong dont do it at all

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Squirl View Post
    So much is wrong with this. What are you basing any of this on?

    Stat priority:

    Agi > Hit (7.5%) > Mastery > everything else (which fluctuates a lot in priority)

    Shadowcraft will give you exact weights, but only the first three stay consistent or meaningfully better/worse.

    Talents:

    SF is the absolute best option. Subterfuge provides pretty much no DPS increase, as Ambush ~= Mut and Garrote is VERY BAD. Nightstalker is not as good as SF because a free Mut is better than a Mut x1.25.

    ShS is better than Prep for every fight this tier in terms of DPS. It takes very little uptime gained from ShS (2-3s) to outdo Prep.

    Glyphs:

    Glyphs are absolutely not useless. Vendetta is a DPS increase if you can use the full duration, as you said, but Sprint can provide more uptime = more DPS, and Feint is extremely useful on a lot of fights this tier.

    Opener:

    Do not use Vendetta or SB before you open; that's completely wasted uptime and there is no burst during your opener worth sacrificing GCDs of uptime on the boss AND your CDs for. Garrote is inferior because it's a 3s tick vs Rupture's 2s tick and the bleed itself does incredibly low damage. Ambush ~= Mut for opening.

    As far as what you do after that (5cp rupt, 1cp snd, 5cp env; 2-3cp rupt, 1-2cp snd, 5cp env; etc.) matters very, very little. There are numbers on EJ and the biggest difference is a few hundred DPS for the first ~20s of a fight. The opener sequence does not significantly contribute to your overall DPS unless you do something really dumb (like prepop CDs or use Garrote).

    Rotation:

    Using Mut with a Dispatch proc is like completely wasting 30% of a Dispatch, on average. It is never a DPS gain to hold a proc unless you have 5+CPs, a healthy Rupture, and do not have Env buff. In this case, you would Env and then Dispatch during the buff for the increased poison proc on your Dispatch.

    You also never want to let SnD drop. If is going to drop because you fail or there is a lot of downtime (only Amber-Shaper, really), then you want to just hit Env. If it actually falls off, use as little CPs as possible throwing it back up. You certainly don't want to "continue with your big hits and manage your energy" whatever that means. Your "big hits" are Deadly Poison and autoattacks, both of which are significantly increased by SnD. SnD is our best finisher. Period.

    All your execute advice is garbage. You should save your last use of Vendetta and SB for execute (and pref Hero, if not used before) as well as your agi pot. That means the once there is <2m in the fight, hold Vendetta; and at <3m, hold SB. It does not matter how long you hold them as long as it is less than the CD of the ability; and you do often end up holding them for more than a "SHORT" time.

    You should not ever have to use Mut in execute. Dispatch is not the old Backstab. The DPS of Rupture and Env do not "teeter"; sure, you don't want to put up a full Rupture if most of it will be wasted, but that's literally in the last 10s of the boss fight where you make that decision. 10s of a fight is not going to matter at all.

    The best AoE rotation has yet to be determined afaik and it will vary by the number of mobs. 5-8 targets, you will most likely want to maintain SnD and Rupture while using FoK as your builder. CT is not complete garbage either. It returns double your Anticipation charges, up to 5. That means a 7CP CT leaves you with 4CP.

    Seriously, how did you become so misinformed?

    EDIT: This all sounds much meaner than I intended. It's great that you put the effort into writing this up, but simply reading what's already available and backed up by sims would be good.
    Your a dumb ass period, SnD is not Mutilates #1 finisher RUPTURE is next is Envenom, You use Garrote for the bleed dumb ass cuz the dmg of rupture is abysmal aswell its about Vwounds ROFL which is affected by mastery, Im sorry you kids have no idea what your talking about at all, the fact you didnt know dropping rupture for a garote to spend combo points differently is optimal is straight up trash.

    Onto even more moronic crap not only did I not say to SB/Vendetta during your opener but PRIOR to your unstealthed rotation I.e no during stealth but during active dps, Feint sprint etc are NOT dps increases, even if you argue the uptime they can bring, feint your also overvaluing but doing the math between moving for x time or feinting for so much energy rather than a yellow isnt worth the time.

    Facts are facts no rogue I have ever met denies my skill in Assassination EVER, I have played MUT when it was GOOD BAD and UGLY, arguing your point w/ me puts 30+ personal friends who are rogues into gutteral laughter as non of them have used SIMC in a long time, some of your probably even have one of my rogues on Realid and dont even know its me.

    AOE - If you havent tested all AOE rotations yourself why even bother saying AFAIK cuz you don't know, where as I spent opening of MoP testing everything myself up to and including the sliding values of haste @ certain levels of hit, again the most optimal ASSASSINATION AOE is to maintain an envenom fok rotation period VW will not compare to the splashes of DP instant effect, HOWEVER this is a PURE aoe rotation, I never said if you need to burn a boss and AOE then do this. If the boss has to be killed or dpsed w/ the adds CT would prevail, Yorsahj comes to mind w/o legendary you'd definitely fan your poison up finish w/ an CT first time and only reaaply CT if its off.

    P.S. This is quick shorthand guide for people who actually know stat weighting and how they shift upon each other.

    SF is the absolute best option. Subterfuge provides pretty much no DPS increase, as Ambush ~= Mut and Garrote is VERY BAD. Nightstalker is not as good as SF because a free Mut is better than a Mut x1.25.

    ShS is better than Prep for every fight this tier in terms of DPS. It takes very little uptime gained from ShS (2-3s) to outdo Prep.
    So awfully incorrect it hurts, #1 SF only provides a free ambush not a free mutilate seriously did you even read the talent? Vanish in all specs is currently a huge DPS cooldown assuming you can maintain a 100% uptime using garrote to apply a bleed instead of combo points is a DPS increase. Again your top dmg should be

    DP
    melee
    DP dot
    VW/EV this will be determined by actual uptime as more EV use will put it ahead of your VW, VW is however a substantial portion of assassination dps.

    This concludes my arguing w/ BAD combat rogues who have no clue how to rogue and rerolled for oranges. If you want to argue my points go elsewhere I am top 20 on every fight (for rogues), but you guys are so stuck on what SIMC/EJ say yet EJ has been wrong on near every class since ICC when they lost a ton of the actual theory crafters. Fact is rogue information is incorrect nearly everywhere and you all flock to it like gospel, you honestly should think about rerolling.

    Mod edit: User was infracted for this post.
    Last edited by Kelticfox; 2012-11-17 at 05:04 PM.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    Holy hell someone can't take a little bit of criticism.

  8. #8
    Deleted
    you guys are so stuck on what SIMC/EJ say yet EJ has been wrong on near every class since ICC when they lost a ton of the actual theory crafters
    .

    Care to evalutate whats been wrong on EJ with almost every class then?

  9. #9
    @Milkshake dude before u bash the guy and make him retard or whatever u should read the tooltip at SF talking about retards u havent read the talent either as u said this conclude that bad rogues are bad and u;re one of them u simply walked here and bashed the poor guys and proved that your knowladge is as bad as his enjoy beeing a troll

  10. #10
    Sorry but I'm going to take my theorycrafting rather from EJ than from a person who gets mad and starts yelling he's the best when someone comes to criticize him, for a reason.

  11. #11
    If you're uploading a guide, and people who are pretty much better than you give you criticism about your guide, you shouldn't explode in a rage-fit. This thread has been sadly derailed by the OP who is spouting misinformation as a guide.

  12. #12
    Tried to find your armory milkshake. Mind posting a link? Curious to see how geared you are for top 20 on every fight.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Bovan View Post
    Holy hell someone can't take a little bit of criticism.

    Lol, I know right. Jesus chirst.

  14. #14
    So much wrong, how will you AoE efficiently without bleeding target for energy regen? Read your talents again dude

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Milkshake86 View Post
    Facts are facts no rogue I have ever met denies my skill in Assassination EVER, I have played MUT when it was GOOD BAD and UGLY, arguing your point w/ me puts 30+ personal friends who are rogues into gutteral laughter as non of them have used SIMC in a long time, some of your probably even have one of my rogues on Realid and dont even know its me.


    This concludes my arguing w/ BAD combat rogues who have no clue how to rogue and rerolled for oranges. If you want to argue my points go elsewhere I am top 20 on every fight (for rogues), but you guys are so stuck on what SIMC/EJ say yet EJ has been wrong on near every class since ICC when they lost a ton of the actual theory crafters. Fact is rogue information is incorrect nearly everywhere and you all flock to it like gospel, you honestly should think about rerolling.
    I see your bragging and counter you with:

    I've been a Rogue(main) since t7 and alt since 2.1, I've ranked consistently since t9 and in top 20s since t11.

    I've used Vulajin's Roguecraft spreadsheet, Aldriana's spreadsheets in TBC and WotLK, SimC, Mavanas' Simulation Spreadsheet, Rawr.Rogue, iDPS(the Rogue Java app), the original version of ShadowCraft, the recent pre-GUI version of ShadowCraft and ShadowCraft.

    Most of these I've edited("hacked") for specific purposes at some point or to improve their simulation or theorycrafting.

    In this tier I've had 4 #1 ranks, and several top 5 ranks, some of which I still hold. I've ranked with every specc since I started maining my Rogue, that includes HaT, pre-buff WotLK Mut, buffed WotLK Mut, several different incarnations of Sub with and without ShD, including #1 on almost all bosses in t11 before there was any "official" theorycrafting on it.


    So hey, I think I'm also not a bad Rogue, but I have a much lower opinion of your knowledge of your class and the game than you do, I'd go so far as to say that half the shit you just posted is complete bullshit.

    P.S. Shadow Focus: "Abilities [...] while you are stealthed." =/= "Abilities which require stealth."

  16. #16
    Care to link to all this extensive testing that you have done. Because lets face it you must have been spending days upon days of testing, loads of logs, so much written calculations and not saving all that info would be insane. Especially since you prob wanna double check that info with other rogues.

    Just saying that "Im an amazing rogue, better then all of you, Im right." really doesnt cut it.

  17. #17
    i hardly think we will hear about the OP here since he got to much criticism and he was proved he cant even read the tooltip of the SF , but like most of the ppl here asked for evidence about his findings i'd like to see them aswell (like NoxxusKT said is not enough to get your word for it like u are the best rogue or w/e)

  18. #18
    Deleted
    i'm currently working on an assassination guide as we speak. this entire thread is a goldmine on what NOT to put in

  19. #19
    Herald of the Titans Kael's Avatar
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    Squirl may have pointed out a bunch of issues with the guide itself, but this thread could be used as an example of "how to get a thread locked". Please remember that even if you think something is wrong or someone is angry, you should only reply with correct information, inquiries as to sources, or reporting the (angry/trolling/flaming) post for moderators to deal with.

    Closing this thread before the discussion becomes more out of hand.

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