Questioning CombatFollow

Well, I was thinking about different hybrid specs that might be fun to play around with. I got to thinking about what you really got from Combat. Mid tier assassination has some pretty powerful talents, and I decided I'd play around on the test realm with some new builds and post my results. I'm not expecting to find a new "best raid build", but maybe I can find some fun alternatives to cookie cutter combat, or 11/28/22.

My gear can be found in my armory link. Tests will go until I'm at less than 500 health, which is generally about 6 minutes.


Seal Fate Hemo

I know, poor critrate makes a poor Seal Fate partner, but increased poison damage, along with CP generation almost as good as Mutilate makes this an interesting idea. The spreadsheet says this is a DPS increase of about 3 with my stats. My tests show otherwise. Lack of raid buffs could be the culprit, as I'm missing a whole lot of crit and AP.

Selling points:
-Only 8 points in combat. How's that for a raid build?
-5/5 Lethality
-5/5 Imp. Poisons
-5/5 Seal Fate
-Cold Blood

Result - 1113 DPS

38 Assassination Hemo

Got your attention yet? This oddball build promises to be interesting at the very least. Find Weakness combined with Dirty Deeds and Lethality make this a Hard Hitting Hemo Power House (yay alliteration!). That's a damage multiplier of 159% on all Hemos below 35%. That's 365.7% of normal damage on a crit! The lack of any points in combat promise low white DPS, but hopefully the huge yellow DPS will make up for it, along with greatly increased poison damage. The spreadsheet says I get about 8.5 DPS increase on this.

Selling points:
-Hemo is going to hit HARD
-Huge damage multipliers on specials
-Seal Fate
-Vigor
-My favorite talent of all time, Find Weakness
-Opens Envenom up as a viable finisher when paired with Cold Blood (~2k non crits without raid buffs)
-Hit cap is increased beyond the point where anyone will ever reach, making gear choices easier at high gear levels
-100% movement speed in stealth

Result - 1132 DPS

Control (standard 11/28/22)

Result - 1138 DPS


Problems with my testing:

One of the things not covered by my test is Precision. I'm hit capped by a long shot on the mobs in Blasted Lands, so that's 5% white DPS I'm not losing when I should be. The same goes for Weapon Expertise.

Going to get a control test once I get my other copy down here to test.

Edited, Nov 25th 2007 9:50pm by Nooblestick

Edited, Nov 25th 2007 10:03pm by Nooblestick

Meh, even without Precision I've only got like a 9% chance to miss. 5% hit is a nice chunk of DPS, but so is 20% deadly poison damage, 80% instant poison damage and massively increasing your instant attack damage.

Anyway, the results thus far are in. 11/28/22 did better without raid buffs on hit capped mobs. Next time my guild does SSC I'm gonna respec to one of these goofy builds and see what happens. It's nice to think that Rogues might have several raid viable specs, rather than just Combat.

Edited, Nov 25th 2007 10:12pm by Nooblestick

Nooble, on the ***/hemo build would improved poisons be needed with shiv?

Wasn't thinking in a raid context..thx

My guild's short on shammies, so I don't always have WF. If you can count on WF, Vile > Imp. any day.

As for Eviscerate, it never happens in the 38 deep build. You spend lots of CPs on Slice and Dice without Improved SnD. Perfecting the cycle on that is going to take work. Basically I built up 5 CPs, then hit SnD, then built up 5, and did Rupture. Then I'd continue building CPs until SnD wore off, hit it, and go for another 5 point Rupture. In the event that I got 5 points after two Hemos (that's just plain sexy), I'd wait for energy to regen and start all over.

Not really. The unpredictable CP generation makes it difficult to plan out your cycle with much depth.

Interesting.

Not sure what vigor really buys you in a sword build though.

thats kind of how i felt about it.
besides when youre locked down in arena (i.e stunned, polymorphed, blinded, feared etc.) and your energy is regenerating or you vanish and your energy regenerates, thats ten more or with four pieces of glad, twenty.

For the second time, this is not for PvP. My raid buffed crit is about 35%, which is enough to power Seal Fate pretty well.

Only thing i'd change regarding the '38 assassin/hemo' build would be to switch Fleet Footed with Quick Recovery as you will see a bunch of dodges/parries without expertise. But that build does look really fun. Just the insane # of hemos that you can spam during a raid encounter at 30-35% crit should make that pretty viable.

Edited, Nov 27th 2007 3:05pm by mahlerite