1. #1

    Smile Challenge Modes - Combat or Assassination?

    A group of guildies and I will be attempting to get all gold in the challenge modes soon!

    At the launch of MoP, if I remember correctly, a majority of Rogues played Combat. Now with 5.2 released, what now? Is Combat still preferred or is assassination just fine? I don't mind either spec - I can play both well. I would guess Combat, since the cooldowns/rotation is easier for trash, as opposed to assassination (vendetta isn't so great for trash, unless a mob is up for 20 or 30 secs for sure).

    And some random questions...

    1) Paralytic poison the best non-lethal for this?
    2) If combat with the BF glyph, and with Paralytic poison - would the aoe cause a blanket of stuns? Or does it take too long to stack for Para. poison?
    3) Marked for Death good? I'd assume if I can manage to swap MfD for Anticipation on bosses, that would be ideal - but what about MfD for the adds?
    4) I only ever did 1 challenge mode when mop first released, and got a silver. But how does reforging work with the scale down? Do hit/exp caps change? And what are the caps? level 93 mobs or are they level 92? Can't remember.

    Thanks! Any extra pointers would be appreciated!

  2. #2
    Your hit and expertise are retained. Combat is even better in 5.2 due to the new blade flurry. Paralytic poison takes too long to stack. You'd be better off using kidney shot on significant trash mobs with prey on the weak (total party dps would increase). Also to be efficient you could run healerless so you can get use out of leeching. Elusiveness is also good.

  3. #3
    I'm liking MfD a lot, but I've been using assassination. BF glyph doesn't make BF hits apply poisons, it just increases the chance you do so you will not get an AE stun. It will make you stun your single target with it faster, but it still takes too long to stack.

    Quote Originally Posted by shadowboy View Post
    Your hit and expertise are retained. Combat is even better in 5.2 due to the new blade flurry. Paralytic poison takes too long to stack. You'd be better off using kidney shot on significant trash mobs with prey on the weak (total party dps would increase). Also to be efficient you could run healerless so you can get use out of leeching. Elusiveness is also good.
    Are you saying you think combat is equal or better than assassination? I tried combat before the patch and I wasn't doing near the damage I was overall with assassination, but I would really like to not need to respec assassination for the couple hours once a week we are putting into it.

  4. #4
    Deleted
    Did them all before 5.2, so you'll need to take patch changes into account. I finished all but two (brewery and something I can't remember) with combat. I liked being able to blow up some hard hitting trash packs with AR + BF (first packs in Mogu'shan palace, packs in scarlet halls, etc.). We ended up pulling smaller packs than some people so assassination's large scale aoe wasn't really working. With yesterdays hotfix to Blade Flurry range and BF hitting more targets as of 5.2 combat may be even better.

    Assassination felt very slow at 463 gear level and if you got unlucky and had your mob with combo points die, you'd stand there auto attacking waiting for energy. Marked for Death may greatly help here. If your group isn't very bursty (I had frost mage and a warlock often, adds died fast), assassination may work better for you than it did for me.

    In the end - both can surely work. Adapt to your group tactics for given dungeon. You will probably spend some time there, so you may try both specs. I finished some not even reforging properly on spec change.

  5. #5
    well i've done all challange modes gold in assassination tried combat once and didnt like it my haste went from like 9,5 down to 6k and felt very slow i just took MfD and just kept multi rupture all the adds and it felt very fluid
    the ultimate answer's to all rogue issues :

    -Rogues might still be dealing with the changes to combo points {2014}

  6. #6
    I tend to prefer Assassination over Combat for Challenge Modes. The reduced gear level just hurts a gear reliant spec like combat way too much. Assassination has the benefit of better single target, not worrying about Killing Spree, and better 5+ target aoe with Deadly Poison spread. Two to three target cleave was the one major advantage that Combat had before 5.2, but since the change to BF, Assassination with multi-rupture isn't that far behind in the 2-3 target cleave area.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    I did the Gold Challenge modes after 1 month of mop release. Personal i was changing spec depends for the dungeon and how are the trash.. I played assassination for: Niuzao, Shado-pan, Brewery, Jade Serpent and combat for the rest (scarlet halls - monastery, gate of the setting sun, mogu'shan palace and scholomance)

  8. #8
    Also note that challenge modes will get easier over time. There is stat creep on gear that stems from an incorrect scaling method when applied to socketed items. I'll edit this post in a bit to demonstrate.
    Last edited by shadowboy; 2013-03-31 at 02:05 AM.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by shadowboy View Post
    Also note that challenge modes will get easier over time. There is stat creep on gear that stems from an incorrect scaling method when applied to socketed items. I'll edit this post in a bit to demonstrate.
    so pretty much - use items with more sockets than other pieces?

    And do set bonus' work in CM's?

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by RemJay24 View Post
    so pretty much - use items with more sockets than other pieces?

    And do set bonus' work in CM's?
    Tier set bonus and Sha touched gems do not work in CMs.
    Last edited by Newbie95816; 2013-03-31 at 09:36 PM.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by RemJay24 View Post
    so pretty much - use items with more sockets than other pieces?

    And do set bonus' work in CM's?
    Set bonuses do not work. Here is a long-winded explanation of why socketed items lead to stat creep:

    The reason is this. There is a formula that determines how much stamina is on an item, based on slot and item level. Agility is then 2/3 of the stamina amount, and the secondary stat total is approximately 4/3 of the agility mount (or 8/9 of the stamina amount). Then for each socket on the piece, 80 agility and 80 secondary stats are removed.

    Let's look at heroic nine-tailed helmet as an example, it has 2639 stamina. 2639*8/9 = 2345.7. Subtract 240 (80 per socket, meta counts as two sockets) to get 2105.7 secondary stat. Divide by two since there are two secondary stats and you get 1052.8. The actual amount of each secondary stat is 1053, which is consistent with rounding.

    Now to get to the nitty gritty:

    To scale the gear, they take the stats and multiply them by a scaling factor that's basically target_amt / actual_amt, where target_amt is what you'd see on a 463 item in that slot. Let's call this scale factor n.

    So let's look at the 496 to 463 conversion:
    Actual agility of tier gloves is 909 agi. Let's look at an unsocketed 463 glove to see target. Target amount is 668 agility, so scaling factor of 496 > 463 is 668/909 = 0.735. So to get the new value, all stats are multiplied by this.
    909 * 0.735 = 668.

    Now let's look at something socketed, tier chest:\
    this chest has 1063 agility, so using naieve method, scaled agility would be 1063 * 0.735 = 781.2 agi. Actual scaled amount is 782.
    Using the correct method it would be: (1063 + 80*2) * 0.735 - 80*2 = 738.8

    To demonstrate that this is the correct method, the 509 scale factor is 0.651.
    Gloves: 1026 * 0.651 = 668
    Chest (naive): 1220 * 0.651 = 794.3 (actual in game value is 795).
    Chest (correct): = (1220 + 2*80) * 0.651 - 2*80 = 738.4, within roundoff error of the same value for scaling from 496.

    The stat creep will trail off though, because you won't ever see the agility go more than 80*numsockets over the target. The reason is that the actual scaling factor is agi*n but it should be (agi+80*numsockets)*n-80*numsockets. If you remove the naive method from that you get agi*n - 80*numsockets*(1-n). At high item levels, n approaches zero so the limit of the correction factor becomes 80*numsockets.

    Gloves have no socket and they are, in fact, all the same:


    Chest, however, has two sockets. If the scaling were not done naively, then it would still look--but they don't.


    Now to demonstrate how extreme the difference can be, here is LFR t14 helm vs heroic T15 helm--the item level difference is 52 item levels. Note the difference in agility (it SHOULD be the same, but it's not--and the difference is fairly large).

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by shadowboy View Post
    -long post above-
    I didn't understand any of that but I'll go ahead and take your word for it.

    Snipped quote - Mugajak
    Last edited by Kael; 2013-04-05 at 05:47 PM.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    Shadowboy nailed it - Blizzard's way of scaling down is simplistic and will favor higher ilvl/socket items. For anyone who's done Challenge Modes since they shipped, you will likely have experienced that they "seem easier" nowadays - a lot of it due a to poor scaling formula. Add to this that higher ilvl gear 'frees up' more secondary stats on other things than hit/exp caps, so in Challenge Modes you effectively get more crit/haste/mastery at your disposal. For the time hunters out there, this inconsistency in scaling is a pretty big deal as it basically requires them to do high end raiding to maintain their ranking.

    To answer OP's question: combat is better on trash and worse on bosses. Seeing that trash take out much more of the total time allotted, in my experience it is simply the better overall spec for Challenge Modes.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    this is outdated right?

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by pinpinpula View Post
    this is outdated right?
    Yes. They fixed the scaling (I don't know when).
    Mods: Please lock necro.

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