Reason why combat is bad.

[Warstar]

Game play aside. Capping energy aside. Missed GCDs aside. It all comes down to numbers. Every simcraft type thing out there will tell you that combat currently sims higher than any other spec especially with the T15 4 pc. bonus. Math doesn't lie. If 1 + 1 = 2 then combat should have some insane parses out there but it doesn't. Especially now after so many people have gotten used to playing with the 4 pc. bonus and are used to all the boss mechanics it should be almost reflex by now for some people. There's also a reason that so many fire mages are popping up around WoL because of RNG and random mages are getting the blessing of RNJesus and pulling insane numbers. So with all the geared combat rogues out there. All the random RNG that gives some combat kid a perfect fight.

Let me ask you this my friends: Why hasn't some insane Asian kid out there with like 600 APM and an awesome internet connection with 0 latency pulled higher numbers than assassination? Why is it that on every fight assassination simply out performs combat time and time again? Why is it that even though the math says it should be so and that there has been enough fights for RNG to proc some perfect fights for combat that combat is no where to be seen on the logs?

The class is just under tuned. Even with a perfect game play assassination still pulls higher numbers. Combat needs more than just simple tweaks here and there. It needs pretty big buffs. Even if everything stays the same the fact of the matter is that combat needs to have its damage raised up. While QoL issues would be nice to be addressed combat needs a straight buff to bring it in line with assassination.

[Kulestu]

Damage parses are BARELY lower as combat than Sin on most fights. Only problem is that I'm willing to bet you'll find no more than a handful of rogues that are allowed to be Combat for progression. Room for error is too high for too low of a payoff.

The problem isn't that it's severely worse than Sin, it's just worse in almost every way. It needs some serious help and I'm severely ticked off that Blizzard is giving paladins, warlocks and mages so much time (when the latter are both completely fine), and entirely ignoring Rogues.

[Warstar]

Damage parses are BARELY lower as combat than Sin on most fights. Only problem is that I'm willing to bet you'll find no more than a handful of rogues that are allowed to be Combat for progression. Room for error is too high for too low of a payoff.

The problem isn't that it's severely worse than Sin, it's just worse in almost every way. It needs some serious help and I'm severely ticked off that Blizzard is giving paladins, warlocks and mages so much time (when the latter are both completely fine), and entirely ignoring Rogues.

Thing is that math wise combat is ahead of assassination in sims so there should be people beating it on parses. There are a lot of guilds with everything on farm that people should be trying for super high parses just for funsies but no one can do it because the class is badly tuned.

[Carp The Fish]

I feel like we've been here before, have we been here before? Whatever.

Just for some fun, since you're saying it should be possible to do the numbers that the sims says we can do, let's look at some World of Logs results on Ra-Den from a high-level rogue. (shouts out to Kym from Apophasis for being Rank 1 Rogue for all 3 specs on Ra-Den)
Here's the Subtlety log, here's the Assassination log, and here's the Combat log.
The only major difference between the three parses is that in the Combat log, Kym hit Blade Flurry for the "free" cleave damage. I'm also 99% sure that Ra-den doesn't have any damage-done or damage-taken buffs like Jin'rokh, Ji-kun and Primordius have, so there's no discrepancy with the kinds of buffs Kym could have.

Subtlety did 60M, Combat almost did 65M, and Assassination did 68M. The fight duration was 4:28 (Subtlety), 4:20 (Combat), and 4:30 (Assassination).

Between the three, Subtlety is the clear loser. Even though Subtlety has the most "cooldown uptime" (Find Weakness, AR/SB, and Vendetta are the three I'm looking at), and even though the Subtlety fight was barely shorter than the Assassination parse, it still lost.
Meanwhile, Combat (with 10 less seconds to the fight) pulled 4M more than Subtlety with 10 less seconds to the fight.

We can look at these logs all day and come up with reasons as to why Combat couldn't get an extra 3M damage out (SND uptime, not-optimal cooldown usage, etc.), but in all honesty, is there any gigantic problem with how Combat has been tuned when you're looking at these logs? No.
Based on these logs, is Combat bad? HELL NO.

Other point I'd like to bring up:

Game play aside. Capping energy aside. Missed GCDs aside. It all comes down to numbers. Every simcraft type thing out there will tell you that combat currently sims higher than any other spec especially with the T15 4 pc. bonus. Math doesn't lie. If 1 + 1 = 2 then combat should have some insane parses out there but it doesn't. Especially now after so many people have gotten used to playing with the 4 pc. bonus and are used to all the boss mechanics it should be almost reflex by now for some people.

Pretty sure I just brought up a bunch of awesome parses, and it's clear proof that it has nothing to do with "Why can't anyone playing Combat pull as good of numbers as the sims say?!" It has ENTIRELY to do with the thing you're just brushing aside; you simply CAN'T hit the number of GCDs that the computer can. It has NOTHING to do with "Combat is bad" (that's the thread's title, after all), it has to do with poor Tier bonus design.

I'm gonna go now, since my brain is somewhat turning into mush.

[Kael]

I'm... not seeing the #1 combat rogues so far behind #1 assassination rogues. I see a much fast deprecation from #1 to, say, #100, but that has as much to do with perception and resulting play as anything else. I know some fights have an advantage specifically for combat due it's cleave, but for example check 25H IQ and Megaera - the first I looked at because they're most likely to see combat "keep up" even if it were to fall behind in scaling for higher ilevels - and combat's not only keeping up, it's ahead in Asia (for Megaera, and not really behind on IQ - note that there are 113 more WoL-parsed and ranked assassination rogues on that fight).

Imagine that.

That said, I personally find it nearly impossible to execute the combat rotation under AR/SB with the 4p and not all that comfortable without it, but I'm also not the fastest player in the world. I've always had a lower but better-thought-out APM than most of the people I've played with. I was terrible at playing a Fury warrior with its occasionally frantic pace and off-GCD abilities (I don't remember when I played it last) as well. I wouldn't take that to mean the spec is suffering or bad, just that I shouldn't play it because I can't bring it to the height of its power. That power does exist.

[Warstar]

These other couple posts all but prove my point. While some people might not be the fastest or what not there are people out there who are really fast and who like that button mash play style. There are even people out there who use 3rd party software/hardware that "auto fires" actions super fast that should be able to hit the intended number of GCDs during CDs.

I just don't understand why combat "keeping up" just barely is ok to some people when by all measures there should be parses of it destroying assassination even if there's only 1 or 2.

[D3athsting]

Combat was sooo good and strong back in wotlk (with the retarded full ArPen gemming ), then cata came and blizz started to mess with the spec so badly that with 4.0 combat was behind tanks in icc (not joking) and mastery was absolute sh*t and did less than 1% of total dmg, after some months they tuned it up but imho the spec is so bad designed and so much gear-based that a complete overhaul is more than needed.

[Nightsorrow12]

Combat was sooo good and strong back in wotlk (with the retarded full ArPen gemming ), then cata came and blizz started to mess with the spec so badly that with 4.0 combat was behind tanks in icc (not joking) and mastery was absolute sh*t and did less than 1% of total dmg, after some months they tuned it up but imho the spec is so bad designed and so much gear-based that a complete overhaul is more than needed.

Icc was in wotlk fyi, not cata. In cata if you were below your tanks in dps you were doing something wrong. But there was a shift from combat to sub, backstab spam was just too good. Also RIP swords in mop.

[mongoose6]

Most sims assume 100 percent uptime on target. Combat suffers greatly for any time off target. No amount of auto-firing third party software or xenophobic stereotypes will bring out numbers from combat that match its theoretical max. There are far too many variables for any math to account for.

[D3athsting]

Icc was in wotlk fyi, not cata

4.0 came out before cata (with all related pre-expasion events such as elemental invasion) and ppl raided icc with revisited classes and i remember exactly how bad combat was, on the other hand arcane mages were totally out of control because class was balanced for lvl85 and their high mana regen combined with the very low mana cost of AB allowed them to constantly have 90-100% mana and pull insane numbers by simply spamming AB from the start to the end of fights

[Carp The Fish]

These other couple posts all but prove my point. While some people might not be the fastest or what not there are people out there who are really fast and who like that button mash play style. There are even people out there who use 3rd party software/hardware that "auto fires" actions super fast that should be able to hit the intended number of GCDs during CDs.

If you bothered to read my post, I smashed your argument that "Combat is undertuned" to pieces. Sorry.

Most sims assume 100 percent uptime on target. Combat suffers greatly for any time off target. No amount of auto-firing third party software or xenophobic stereotypes will bring out numbers from combat that match its theoretical max. There are far too many variables for any math to account for.

Also, this. The software you're describing still wouldn't take into account the server lag that makes it LITERALLY impossible to do the simulated numbers.

[fierydemise]

Also, this. The software you're describing still wouldn't take into account the server lag that makes it LITERALLY impossible to do the simulated numbers.

Both SimCraft and ShadowCraft account for latency.

The ShadowCraft combat model is very aggressive but it does consider latency and player response time.

[Carp The Fish]

Both SimCraft and ShadowCraft account for latency.

Correction so that I'm a bit more clear in what I meant: The PROGRAMS WHERE THE PROGRAM HITS THE BUTTONS FOR YOU still wouldn't take into account the server lag during CDs.

[Totaltotemic]

Two things are going on here: loot and player skill

Assa and Sub rogues are the only specs in the game to use agility daggers, while Combat has to share agility weapons with Monks (BrM and WW) and Enhance Shamans. If everything else was equal, there would be fewer Combat Rogues with heroic TF weapons than there are Assa rogues, simply because their weapons are completely different and the former has no competition.

To compound that, the best players have been playing Assa for longer, especially in this expansion, because it was the best in T14. To say that a sizable amount of skilled players would be able to get heroic TF slow weapons over Monks and Shamans, 4 piece, and switch their entire spec and play it at the same level as they had been playing Assa is absurd. The few Combat Rogues that are both skilled and have weapons are of such a small sample size that there is no trend of them peaking higher than Assa.

[Trbodsl]

I feel like we've been here before, have we been here before? Whatever.

Just for some fun, since you're saying it should be possible to do the numbers that the sims says we can do, let's look at some World of Logs results on Ra-Den from a high-level rogue. (shouts out to Kym from Apophasis for being Rank 1 Rogue for all 3 specs on Ra-Den)
Here's the Subtlety log, here's the Assassination log, and here's the Combat log.
The only major difference between the three parses is that in the Combat log, Kym hit Blade Flurry for the "free" cleave damage. I'm also 99% sure that Ra-den doesn't have any damage-done or damage-taken buffs like Jin'rokh, Ji-kun and Primordius have, so there's no discrepancy with the kinds of buffs Kym could have.

Subtlety did 60M, Combat almost did 65M, and Assassination did 68M. The fight duration was 4:28 (Subtlety), 4:20 (Combat), and 4:30 (Assassination).

Between the three, Subtlety is the clear loser. Even though Subtlety has the most "cooldown uptime" (Find Weakness, AR/SB, and Vendetta are the three I'm looking at), and even though the Subtlety fight was barely shorter than the Assassination parse, it still lost.
Meanwhile, Combat (with 10 less seconds to the fight) pulled 4M more than Subtlety with 10 less seconds to the fight.

We can look at these logs all day and come up with reasons as to why Combat couldn't get an extra 3M damage out (SND uptime, not-optimal cooldown usage, etc.), but in all honesty, is there any gigantic problem with how Combat has been tuned when you're looking at these logs? No.
Based on these logs, is Combat bad? HELL NO.

Other point I'd like to bring up:



Pretty sure I just brought up a bunch of awesome parses, and it's clear proof that it has nothing to do with "Why can't anyone playing Combat pull as good of numbers as the sims say?!" It has ENTIRELY to do with the thing you're just brushing aside; you simply CAN'T hit the number of GCDs that the computer can. It has NOTHING to do with "Combat is bad" (that's the thread's title, after all), it has to do with poor Tier bonus design.

I'm gonna go now, since my brain is somewhat turning into mush.

Looks like all 3 specs are exactly where the should be to me also. I don't see the need for urgent concern on Blizzards part.

[ymirsson]

Two things are going on here: loot and player skill

Assa and Sub rogues are the only specs in the game to use agility daggers, while Combat has to share agility weapons with Monks (BrM and WW) and Enhance Shamans. If everything else was equal, there would be fewer Combat Rogues with heroic TF weapons than there are Assa rogues, simply because their weapons are completely different and the former has no competition.

To compound that, the best players have been playing Assa for longer, especially in this expansion, because it was the best in T14. To say that a sizable amount of skilled players would be able to get heroic TF slow weapons over Monks and Shamans, 4 piece, and switch their entire spec and play it at the same level as they had been playing Assa is absurd. The few Combat Rogues that are both skilled and have weapons are of such a small sample size that there is no trend of them peaking higher than Assa.

But there are 4 Weapon types for combat rogues, so the drop chances are for a given weapon type feasible for combat are higher, which makes the fact that they share loot a lot less important. Also, they can put a dagger in their offhand, whereas assassination rogues are forced to have 2 daggers.

[shadowboy]

I'm... not seeing the #1 combat rogues so far behind #1 assassination rogues. I see a much fast deprecation from #1 to, say, #100,

This is a sampling bias issue. On Jin Rohk, 25H, for example, the top 100 of assassination is the top 2.3%. The top 100 for combat is the top 31%, the top 100 for sub is, well, the entire sample. It'd be instructive to compare combat's #100 to Assassination's #1302.

[Lochton]

I must admit... I have been thinking of going combat, just so I can complete my transmog set.. But I can't make myself do it. Is it really that bad?

[Kael]

This is a sampling bias issue. On Jin Rohk, 25H, for example, the top 100 of assassination is the top 2.3%. The top 100 for combat is the top 31%, the top 100 for sub is, well, the entire sample. It'd be instructive to compare combat's #100 to Assassination's #1302.

That's what I was trying to point out; just because people aren't playing it doesn't mean it's far behind - there are hundreds (over a thousand!) more rogues playing assassination at the level of the #100 combat rogue for some of these fights. It doesn't mean combat's bad or really behind at all, but that there are many fewer people playing it. With fewer playing it, there's also less competition for those #1-5 slots, which means RNG is playing less of a factor in those "fantastic" assassination parses.

Combat's really not suffering.

Personally, I can't play it as well as assassination, and even more personally, I don't like the conceptual style as much... but if combat were my best spec, and I had full heroic gear for my rogue, combat would keep up with or surpass assassination in (most) situations.

If you're arguing that combat should be far ahead that's another story, but "keeping up" with what's regarded as the top spec means... it's tied for the top spec.

[Stryk]

Subtlety did 60M, Combat almost did 65M, and Assassination did 68M. The fight duration was 4:28 (Subtlety), 4:20 (Combat), and 4:30 (Assassination).

Thanks for the shout out <3! There were a couple of variables between the three logs due to the fact that it took three weeks of farm. First, I am playing on an East Coast server (Shattered Hand) but currently reside in California which gives me a ping of about 80-85ms. I would have loved to played combat on a West Coast server with my old 20-25ms and see how much higher my DPS could have been. Another factor is the ilvl difference between my weapons. For the two specs, I used identical gear except my weapon setup was (549/543) for Assassination and (543/549) for Combat leaving a 6 ilvl difference on the MH weapon. I'm not sure whether of not these two factors could make up for the damage difference but I am assuming it would.

I wouldn't necessarily agree with the OP's title of "Combat is bad" but Assassination is much easier to play and much more forgiving that Combat. With the new changes to Subtlety and Combat, it would definitely be worthwhile to practice all three specs during farm in preparation for 5.4 progression.