Rogue DPS (Assassination and Combat)

[qantum1]

Hello guys, im rather PVE player than pvp, and i still cant decide what spec is better (regarding DPS)...
I tried to kill all bosses in ToT in mutilate with full forge\gems in Mastery, and also i killed them in Combat spec (full haste, MH 2.6, OH 1.8 dagger) and there was almost the same DPS.
For the test i tried to dps DUMMY to check my % uptime of trinkets and DPS and here a results (including video with my rotation):

• Assassination: 120k DPS in 30 millions damage

• Combat: 115k DPS in 50 millions damage

As you can see, the dps in almost the same. Maybe its due to my trinkets, coz i dont have good Renataki for mutilate, im using Primordius and Council Trinkets...
I heard that even on mutilate after 530+ itl HASTE is better than mastery, how do you think, is it true?

So guys, i need your ALL oppinions and versions, the pros and cons. What spec do you think better for PVE and why?

[Deleted]

Well first of all linking DPS on a training dummies means nothing compared to a raid environment. What I will say though is that we need a little bit more information. What are your daggers like, what sort of gear are you in right now? Do you have any world of log reports we could look at?

That said, Assassination right now is the strongest melee dps in Tier 15 right now, maybe that has changed slightly since the buffs to Enhancement in 5.3. If your Assassination gear is decent then in a ToT normal clear Assassination should be pulling ahead of Combat in terms of DPS, if it isn't then you're perhaps failing on your rotation slightly. Are you sure you're not capping energy during encounters as Assassination? Keep an eye out on whether you are pooling energy efficiently before a envenom and finally if you're coordinating your cooldowns correctly, i.e. not popping vendetta when you do not have 30 seconds time on the boss.

Assassination right now is miles ahead of Combat this tier. I can only really think that Combat may be stronger on Horridon or Ji-Kun if you are nesting. The only time I spec into Combat myself is when we do Horridon HC because our composition needs the cleave damage.

In relation to your question about Assassination needing haste. It's not about item level where haste pulls ahead. It's to do with RPPM trinkets and your legendary meta. Once you get 2x RPPM trinkets and your legendary meta then haste EP values do indeed pull ahead of mastery. But this doesn't mean we simply neglect Mastery, there is a certain breakpoint. We want to float around 75-80% mastery and around 35-40% haste if you are going for the haste > mastery strategy. The actual reason we change to more haste is to allow our RPPM trinkets and legendary gem to proc more as it is based around haste. The difference in dps isn't huge and you wouldn't be wrong in sticking with a mastery gearing strategy even with your 2x RPPM trinkets and legendary. The gearing strategy is rather a personal taste.

Your trinkets could be playing a big part, Talisman of Bloodlust from Primordius is a rather terrible trinket for Assassination, but Bad JuJu is one of our BiS. So I think that may cancel it out and personally I'm still sceptical that combat could still on par with Assassination this tier even with the trinkets you have. Right now I am currently using Renataki + VP trinket until Bad Juju drops.

The last part is purely anecdotal, but in my HC raiding guild none of us are combat main spec, indeed in other guilds we actively compete against for progress they do not have any combat MS rogues. I've only ever come across one MS combat rogue raiding at a competitive level this raid tier and even then he was considering switching to Assassination.

[Warstar]

I think the only time you'd really want to go ms combat would be if you had garbage assassination weapon drops but good combat weapons. From what I've noticed is that combat sims waaaaay higher than assassination but assassination generally reaches it's simmed damage and even surpasses it but combat hardly ever reaches it's maximum capacity. The combat game play just in general seems counter productive to reaching it's maximum dps. Look at Jin'rokh which is the fight that on WoL rogues absolutely dominate when you play as assassination everything is pretty awesome and you can line your CDs and stand in pools like normal and nothing changes but as combat it's pretty easy to have KS take you out of the pools causing you to lose dps. Combat is a really cool spec but it just seems like it's the emo kid of the specs that keeps trying to hurt it self.

[Daltin]

The Primordius trinket isn't that bad. Going from a Heroic Primordius +2 to a Heroic Renataki +2 only nets me a 2,000 DPS increase (~1%).

It's not Best in Slot, but it's not like you're in a terrible position for using it. I'd recommend using the VP trinket and the Bad Juju if you don't have the meta gem yet. If you do have the Meta Gem, Juju, and Bloodlust Talisman, plug your character into shadowcraft.mmo-mumble.com and see what you get. Haste should likely overtake Mastery at this point.

[Madcaptn]

bad juju + renataki + assassination spec is top in 5.3

You don't need to respec to haste because by the time you get the gear to do that you'll be farming 13/13h anyway

T16 will make mastery value pretty high so we'll most likely be playing assassination again for that tier with mastery being the top stat

[Phookah]

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but I have some crappy assassination weapons (510 Iron qons boot knife and a 504 spiritsever) but decent combat weapons (530 tia tia and 530 dark animus mace) and the vp trinket with the primodius haste trinket, and so far switching to combat has netted me some rather large increases... I usually pulled around 115k~ on durumu, after switching to combat and playing with my reforges a bit (lost about 2000 mastery, gained about 1800 haste) I was pulling 140k~ fairly easily, all while not being entirely comfortable with combat.

[Deleted]

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but I have some crappy assassination weapons (510 Iron qons boot knife and a 504 spiritsever) but decent combat weapons (530 tia tia and 530 dark animus mace) and the vp trinket with the primodius haste trinket, and so far switching to combat has netted me some rather large increases... I usually pulled around 115k~ on durumu, after switching to combat and playing with my reforges a bit (lost about 2000 mastery, gained about 1800 haste) I was pulling 140k~ fairly easily, all while not being entirely comfortable with combat.

Makes sense. Tia Tia and Dark Animus Mace is the combat BiS. Lucky you!

Talking of combat, slightly OT; have you seen how insane it is when you pop SB+AR with your 4pc bonus? Jesus christ I don't have a cool down and my energy regen is up to 30 per second.

---------- Post added 2013-06-17 at 12:27 AM ----------

bad juju + renataki + assassination spec is top in 5.3

You don't need to respec to haste because by the time you get the gear to do that you'll be farming 13/13h anyway

T16 will make mastery value pretty high so we'll most likely be playing assassination again for that tier with mastery being the top stat

This is wrong. Shadowcraft will tell you to respec haste as soon as you get your legendary and at least 1 RPPM trinkets. This is hardly 13/13 HC farming. Of course it is your prerogative to follow a haste gearing strategy as the differences between both haste/mastery reforges is negligible.

Item level has nothing to do why the EP weights shift in favour of haste.

[Verain]

Could be a million eps, it don't matter. It just makes our resources into the global cooldown. Disappointed with that about combat above all else.

[RogueOlf]

So I have 2 piece and recently switched from Assassination to Combat because the Thunderforged Axe dropped off of Council (I have 510 Iron Qon dagger). While my dps seems ok...it does not seem like it is blowing things away. For example, in terms of opening with all my CDs, I reached higher numbers as assassination than I am with Combat.

Does that sound about right? Or am I just not doing it right? Or is Combat only better with 4 piece?

[Verain]

EDIT: Didn't see you don't have 4 piece. You'll really need 4 piece I think.


----

Do you have AR glyphed? You have to.

I recommend you try this exercise:

On your way to a target dummy, clear recount. When you get there, open on it with expose armor or revealing strike to five, then slice and dice. Now press your AR/Blades burst, and run that rotation as hard as you can, with the following restriction- the MOMENT blades fades, stop attacking entirely.


Now, look at your sinisters and eviscerates. Did you do as many as you thought you were going to do with a half second global cooldown?

[RogueOlf]

Ah, I see. Shadowcraft was telling me that moving from Assassination to Combat with that Axe should result in about 4k increase. I felt like if I saw half of that it would be good. Perhaps that sims are more difficult to hit than I thought.

[Kael]

Ah, I see. Shadowcraft was telling me that moving from Assassination to Combat with that Axe should result in about 4k increase. I felt like if I saw half of that it would be good. Perhaps that sims are more difficult to hit than I thought.

It's a lot harder to hit simm'd DPS as combat than as assassination, along with some qualifiers that don't have to do with your personal quality - if you experience any input or server-lag, don't expect to match your combat levels, ever. If you get the 4p, though, you should definitely revisit the idea - in your current gear, the gap would probably look closer to 20k than 4k.