Rogue News: Wooah! DPS after patch 3.3 and Hunger for Blood
December 16, 2009
Everyone: “Check out the DPS!”
Assassination Rogue flexes his muscles, oooh so strong!
Combat Rogue sulks
What can I say? It’s great to be up there at the top of the damage charts. It’s especially satisfying since Combat Rogues have being outdoing Assassination Rogues for far too long. I really enjoy playing as an Assassination Rogue and, despite all the top Rogues using Combat spec, I’ve stuck with it. My DPS has always been competitive with Combat Rogues with them usually beating me but only by a reasonable margin so why change?
As I’ve said before in previous posts; REAL Rogues use daggers!
You simply cannot NOT notice the whopping difference in damage done following changes to Deadly Poison, Improved Poisons and the update to Murder. I’m sure Combat Rogues are feeling a little bruised at the moment having “ruled the roost” for too long…. Good!
I wonder how many Combat Rogues are now going to be switching over?
Both Sam (Slice and Dice) and Dinear (Forever a Noob) have written great articles covering the DPS increase from before and after patch 3.3 for Assassination Rogues. According to their numbers their DPS has increased between 20% and 25% (on a stationary target dummy).
Of course we’re already hearing “NERF ASS ROUGES” and I have to hold my hands up and just admit it; I am loving it! (I’m not going to deny it).
Unfortunately, I do have to agree this sort of DPS increase does seem a little overboard, we’ve been expecting an “adjustment” and sure enough…
“We wanted to increase Assassination rogue damage, and we were succesful, but we overshot the mark. We buffed Hunger for Blood back when Assassination needed a damage boost, so we’re more than happy that this talent won’t account for such a huge dps increase. Because of the nature of hotfixes, it is unlikely the tooltip will change to 10% right away”
It was only to be expected really wasn’t it?
As Dinear says; “mutilate still has a significant buff overall from the patch” and in all fairness we are still looking at a buff of between 15% – 20% after this nerf (on a stationary target dummy).
Are you a Combat Rogue? Will you be changing to Assasination spec?
December 16, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Hey, I love your blog! when sam first notified his readers of it, i jumped on over and fell in love with it, you are definitely one of the better rogue blogs out there! anyways, as a combat rogue, i don’t really feel jealous of assassinations newfound power. i consider assassination to be a much harder spec to play, especially with the complicated bossfights of endgame raiding such as the twin worms of ToC, and other fights where a great deal of movement is required. I prefer combat for this reason, as it is much easier to keep up very decent dps in a bossfight while focusing on the mechanics. I also enjoy the cooldowns that combat has where assassination has a joke of a cooldown (cold blood) no hard feelings, but in todays world of 30-40 percent crit while raid buffed, one crit every 3 mins is a joke! I enjoy both playstyles, and have decent wepns for both, but honestly, in spite of these changes, i dont feel i will be switching. Plus, swords make my rogue look Badass!!
December 16, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Hi Enaelis, I’m glad you like the blog. I try to keep up-to-date with news and developments that affect the rogue class so thought why not share them all in one place?
I can appreciate your view… Yes, combat rogues are so much better when it comes to fights which involve quite a bit of movement. I’m not sure whether the movement factor is still going to affect Assassination as much as it did with the rupture-less rotation now. We’ll see.
Haha… I never thought of that… Cold Blood on a crappy cooldown is quite funny.
SWORDS??! Tsk tsk tsk
December 16, 2009 at 4:46 pm
hey, don’t be hatin on mah swords, not all rogues are stabby ALL the time, i dabble in daggers myself
December 29, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Whoaaa there buddy!30-40% while raid buffed? There there, no. My rogue is at 42% unbuffed crit, with 4200 ap and 207 haste, (which i will be ramping up.) Haste is low because i haven’t decided to spend my frosts on my badge items.. But anyway. You are right, combat rogues do more dps on fights where target switching is required, but on fights such as Jaraxxus, Lord Marrogore, and Highlord Saurfang, Mutilate remains superior. Plus, daggers aren’t that difficult to get with Blood Weaper in a decent dagger from Forge of Souls, not awful ones from ToC10, and Gouge of the Frigid heart doesn’t have too high a drop chance but if you run ToC25 you’ll get Stygian Blade Breaker. Plus, as you stated the only main strength of combat in patch 3.3 is the switching target dps fights. Well, who frankly posts those fights? Noone cares about dps on fights like phase1 of Lady Deathwhisper, or Faction Champions. Effectivity is dps on Single target fights (as i noted some of those examples earlier), but not so much on target switching fights.
December 29, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Back to my comment on the accesibility to Daggers, we mutilate rogues aren’t competeing with anyone but ourselves with daggers. Wherea how do you want to complete with Enhance Shamans, and the few Dual Wield Frost dk’s there are left?
December 16, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I like the blog too! I’ve always played combat because I’m not so good with all the positionality, but maybe I’ll have to get some stabbystabs and try assassassination, just for grins
December 17, 2009 at 12:38 am
I used to be combat in TBC but switch in WoTLK and never looked back. Play whatever style you like/enjoy the most
Damn rogue sword-wielding warrior wannabes!
^ joke
December 16, 2009 at 4:47 pm
by that i mean that i spec mut-prep or sometimes shadow dance for pvp as my Off spec
December 17, 2009 at 7:39 pm
I’ll do what I’ve always been doing. I play Combat most of the time, and by default, but Mutilate is my offspec. I have daggers ready for use in the fights where one spec is favored over the other. I still prefer the combat style of play over assassination, but as a result of me using both specs, I’m probably one of the few (mostly) combat rogues who wholeheartedly appreciate the Assassination buff.
December 29, 2009 at 4:26 pm
If you’re saying that you’re switching between them based soley on the content of the fight that you’re dpsing, then don’t. The gems of 51/18/2 and whatever combat spec you choose are completely different. Combat, gemming armor pen and a mix of attack power and sometimes haste/agility when you become cap, when Mutilate is a mix of Ap/Haste, Ap, and sometimes hit if you need it. Many people question the value of expertise, and i say that you don’t need to be capped, and 21/21 is definitely enough. You also want a good ammount of hit, over the hit cap beacuse of the current issues with crit capping and white hits.. etc. We don’t need to get into that. Some rogues believe in gemming Ap/crit, Agil/crit, I don’t reccomend this unless you’re somewhere in the area of under 37% crit, which many mutilate rogues aren’t. Why? Because being a rogue with 42% crit unbuffed, i find myself in raids with a Feral druid (25mans) with a crit chance of above 50%. Based upon solid dps effectivity, this does not help you, and you do NOT want over 50%, because your possible gems could be spent on something else. Anyway, the strategies for gearing the two are different and so your dps is probably hindered by your strategy. If you have any questions you can respond to this post, or my other one above, and i’ll right back.
Mestycio-Tichondrius (Horde)
January 6, 2010 at 1:13 am
Loving getting back to daggers. Mutilate is sinfully good, and I love the sound Envenom makes.
January 10, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Have to say I’ve always been 100% behind daggers. Anything else just seems… Wrong. Yes I love the hearing the “Swooooooooooosh” of Envenom too… Especially when you see a nice big fat yellow crit number on the UI too XD