Inconsistent Assassination DPS

[Thumbtacks]

I hate how inconsistent my damage is, I'm almost positive I'm doing something wrong. On fights like Sha of Fear where I can just sit and DPS for three minutes, sometimes I'll pull like 60k and other times I'll pull 100k. If there's a fight with heavy movement it's almost always under 70k. I don't think I'm really doing anything wrong (I have Vendetta and Shadow Blades macroed together, which might be part of the problem), but otherwise I'm reasonably confident in my rotation. Sometimes I fuck up my opener but that shouldn't have a HUGE impact.

Armory. I know it's in combat (I swapped for Protectors) but when I do Assassination my offhand is Spiritsever (raid finder) with the wrathion gem thing. It's not great, but it'll work I guess.

The only thing I know I haven't done is reforge everything and gem it, but I'm running low on money so I was going to try and wait a bit longer.


I'm not sure why that trinket slot is empty, but I'm using the 496 one from Timeless Isle because for now it's the best I have.

[xquizite]

Assuming you didnt reforge to swap specs for protectors....

You have no mastery and need to stack that extremely high right now. Until BIS values mastery is going to give you your best results and honestly mastery is 10x more reliable when stacked then haste is. You have literally no enchants and not to be mean but on Mal'ganis not having enough money is a bad excuse.

What you should do is get 2 professions leveled up, the easiest way to do this will either be to do Mining - Blacksmith - drop mining and do either eng / alch / inscript / jc. Or do herbing - inscript + alch. Or enchanting in there somewhere.

You can level herbing and mining without leaving MoP... you can fast skill blacksmith to max with just ghost iron, and either look up a guide for another mining spec and farm what you need or grab chanting and maybe just do old dungeons to skill up.


All of your damage in Assassination comes from white swings + poisons. Essencially you need to maintain your time on target, dont let snd or rupture fall off and get as many full duration envenoms in as humanly possible.... Openning rotation // cd usage ect will help achieve min max numbers but your biggest improvements from what i see are simply gems, enchants, reforges, professions ect.

Not to mention given the state of your armory profile i assume you arn't abusing your racial by atleast stocking and using 275 food (550 for you).

TLDR - Stack mastery, Get some professions, Chant your gear.

[Thumbtacks]

All of those things are true, yes. Okay thanks, I'll do that. I've only got like 6k at the moment but I haven't really done anything to GET money so it's not particularly surprising. because of that i've been wary of enchants and gems because it costs money and i'll replace the gear anyway, but i see your point.

[xquizite]

If this is your only character and you don't plan on making others, and don't plan on ever being in a situation where you would be required to have 2 dps professions i recommend doing Herbing and Alchemy, or Herbing and Chanting.

Herbing will give you a haste buff CD you can macro into your other cd's or simply in envenom and a way to make money while doing everything else in game (just always stop for nodes). Alchemy gives you double duration flasks and procs on flasks or pots (makes life in a raiding guild cost you literally half as much sometimes). Chanting would allow you to get mats and sell them for gold or use them for free enchants, both helping you maintain or accumulate more income.

Mal'Ganis has an economy that is always in need of materials, hence why i said you can't be poor on mal'ganis. If you can gather or craft you can make income for your time spent.

[Thumbtacks]

Wouldn't it be smarter for me to take Engineering or something? Everyone always suggests synapse strings (although I always have preferred passive bonuses).

[xquizite]

Eng is one of the best due to the ability to time synapse with cd's and lust ect to compoud buffs and get huge damage spikes. So yes there are better professions out there to min max. If you use synapse wrong, as in bake it into an attack and not time it properly you might as well go with any other proffession.

There are many resources that will tell you how to achieve your best possible dps, also keep in mind that no site, or software can tell you how to get a top 1 dps rank or even tell you your best stats / reforges. Everything available is a suggestion or a guide to get better prior to spending the time and gold to actually try different things and figure it out on your own.

Shadowcraft, elitist jerks, MMO, manaflask, WoL are great resources to use to get yourself ready for high end raiding.

The suggestions i made previously were how to casually raid and get better than 60-100k dps without having to spend a significant amount of time or gold.

[Maelstrom51]

If you use synapse wrong, as in bake it into an attack and not time it properly you might as well go with any other proffession.

Actually, its better than any other profession even if you bake it into your attacks.

The worst case scenario for using synapse strings this way is for it to come off cooldown right as the fight ends, which is quite unlikely to happen. In this case, the synapse strings provide the same average agility as any other profession.

More likely, there will be some cooldown remaining on them as the fight ends. When this happens, the average agility they provide is higher than any other profession.

[broggernaut]

EDIT: Wrong thread

[Oggiva]

The worst case scenario for using synapse strings this way is for it to come off cooldown right as the fight ends, which is quite unlikely to happen. In this case, the synapse strings provide the same average agility as any other profession.

The worst case scenario is to use it right before you have to stop attack/run for a bit to switch mob/boss turns immune/etc. Lei Shi and Megaera springs to mind.

[Larinnian]

Not counting the Blindside procs which can now make up a rather nice chunk of dps, mastery seems to be where you were lacking. I've noticed slight DPS variations as you mentioned, but not on the scale you're talking about

[Deleted]

I went back to Mastery day before 5.4 and we cleared 14/14 normal and i was seeing pretty consistent dps in general, i'd guess thats the main issue

[xquizite]

I used haste after getting HTF JuJu for one clear and was not happy with the consistancy in my burst and my dmg overall. I had done 1-2 bosses with higher dps then normal and the rest were equal or lower.

I have maintained mastery build for that reason all of tier 15, mastery is also the preferred stat of rogues in method and other top guilds. Granted this is all out the window now and i will have to start experimenting with crit. I assume something like 33.3 - 35 % will be what we want to achieve with crit and haste then go mastery.

[Saruuhh]

I've found that missing sunders makes a large difference since a significant chuck of damage is either from dispatch or plain autoattacks (physical). If youre not stacking mastery the impact of missing sunders will be larger due a greater % of your damage being physical. I'd always stack my own sunders if they are missing, atleast in execute range.

[xquizite]

I've found that missing sunders makes a large difference since a significant chuck of damage is either from dispatch or plain autoattacks (physical). If youre not stacking mastery the impact of missing sunders will be larger due a greater % of your damage being physical. I'd always stack my own sunders if they are missing, atleast in execute range.

This should never really be a problem, if you have a warrior or hunter and they are either prot or can maintain the buff they should be doing so. If they are using a diff pet per say for haste or something you need to be the one to glyph weakened armor and apply it yourself.

Even with a hunter who uses armorshred pet i often will apply the first weakened anyway since glyphd we start at 3 stacks and his pet will maintain it for me. If i have to do the whole thing by myself then monitoring and weaving in the strike is not too difficult. I even find there are times where my envenom is up, i have 8 cps and will refresh weakened early since it doesn't really cost me anything at that point.

The only thing i need to fix and others would want to fix is make sure you can see other peoples weakened or make sure yours is always on first.

The only time i cant use the glyph is when I need something like smoke or clos glyph and can't afford to lose the 2 second increase on feint. Otherwise i typically like to use it on most target swaps and to guarantee a 3 stack on pull.