2.3.2 Spec DiscussionFollow

ShS. Much more mobility than Fleet Footed, even after the nice buff, and it comes with other fun goodies like Dirty Tricks, Elusiveness, Prep and Premed.

A Shadowstepped, DD buffed 5 point Eviscerate would be some pretty ridiculous burst damage. Anyone low enough to get the Dirty Deeds bonus would almost certainly die if it crit.

i live with 1v1 in mind.... and i like having unique counter talents, over useful to everyone

introducing

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=f0ebkhLZZxrfoGGRoLsp

imp poisons for druids and shams, setup for rogue mirror, 1pt imp ea for warlocks and priests

i wish i could buff evis too, but the overall damage will help more then the big crits, since i need to get a target below 35% to make evis shine

figuring i might enlist a full demon warlock for my 2v2.... i honestly think that me be the biggest help in terms of a partner (felguard intercept, the extra dps, just overall higher dps then sl/sl... while having soul link for some survivability, just seems more my style then my current frost mage, or the more suggested healer or sl/sl lock)

Edited, Dec 16th 2007 7:06pm by mongoosexcore

Why you'd want to go mutilate is a bit beyond me to be honest.

Combat was better in 2.2... nothing really happened to change that, the 15% speed increase won't solve your kitting problem.

I'm actually going to give ShS a try, but I don't expect it to work out.

Well i'm probably going w/ tyr on this one i've always liked rogue/tanking w/ cmbt maces. The only reason I switched was because of ar/prep and hemo finally being decent enough to use. Now that I see both are rollin out...forget about it!

edit: before any1 starts freakin out i call it rogue tank cause it always reminds me of a fury warrior seeing a mace rogue ;P

Mutilate for sure. ShS pwns yes, but if you're not paired with a healer who can easily survive on their own, muti is better. ShS requires you to go off and dance around the map tricking your opponents, which doesn't leave a lot of space for a feral druid to follow the enemy around and try to get some mangles in. Also, mutilate is much better burst damage then ShS- After the initial damage boost, it is very lacking in damage overall. Missing prep might be sad, but still I would personally choose mutilate.

I'm thinking of going back to muti myself for PvP. It was always just fluid for me. When you play with a build for 15 levels, then PvP/raid w/ it for 3 months, you usually find a niche. Muti was my niche.

If you are doing arena w/ that spec, you need some help bro.

ShS here. I cant believe its, its..... viable! (not best, but not worst either)

Well, here's a more in depth answer.

Blizzard did succeed in making us use the 41 points talents. I really don't see people going hybrid anymore. As such, it comes down to which of the build you want to take - Assassination, Combat or Subtlety.


Assassination (a.k.a. Mutilate):

There's only 2 viable variant on this one, and it depends on if you go with Combat or Subtlety.

It's my firm belief that Mut/Com is simply a better build. More dps, longer gouge and Imp Sprint makes it the way to go. While Mut/Sub isn't total crap, it's definitly the weaker of the two.

Mutilate is not a bad build. It was still somewhat viable even during the HARP phase. However, it's my opinion that it is much weaker then Combat Mace. I was Mutilate for the entirity of S1 and I remember being litterally in shock at how much more powerful I felt when I switched to Combat. The only thing that has changed for Mutilate since then is a 7% speed increase, which I don't believe will make up for it's shortcoming.

The positional requirement and Resilience scores being what they are make Mutilate fall short. Simply put, for all the requirement the ability requires, it should be more powerful then it currently is. Mutilate's rogue burst damage and imp KS would really help in a 5v5 4dps team, but this set up is now too easily countered by a Discipline Priest.

Another rather big drawback of going Mutilate - you have to buy good daggers. If you end up not liking it, switching spec is going to be fairly horrible.

And if that wasn't enough, this spec is heavily affected by the 'ranged bug'.

A big no no overall.


Combat (a.k.a Combat Mace :P):

We all know this one really well by now. Combat has proven it is better then Mutilate has far as I'm concerned. The only question is if it's better then Shadowstep. I got to say that I'm pretty confident Combat will edge out and we'll all be back to Surprise Attack sooner then later.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know the strenght and weakness of this one. Other specs then mace are somewhat viable (Sword especially), but Maces are simply better for pvp.


Subtlety (a.k.a. Shadowstep, a.k.a. lolstep):

It's funny to think shadowstep might end being viable after being a joke ability for so long.

Speccing Shadowstep is stepping into the shadows of uncertaincy (+1 pun) - we don't really know if it's going to be good or not. It looks good on paper, but the change to it hardly seem like they're big enough to make it compete with Combat. Still, I, like many others, will give it a try.

The main concern is damage. Shadowstep should make us much harder to kite... but what's the point if we can't finish off a target when we're on them? A good exemple is on druids... they're hard enough to kill even with double AR and Blade Flurry, how the hell are we supposed to do it as shadowstep (which has no AR)?

The other concern is the lost of Weapon Spec - No mace stun. Ugh. This is going to suck.

There's still a lot of possible variant on this one, due to it being so new, we haven't locked down what works and what is stupid :P.

Combat Shadowstep is the one I'm the most interested in. With imp sprint, prep and shadowstep, kiting isn't going to be a problem, and thanks to dual wield spec and precision, you should still be able to keep your overall dps pretty solid (In fact, with imp s&d/Deadlyness/Sinister Calling/Hemo/Serrated Blade/Precision/DW spec - your white damage will be the highest it can be).

Assassination Shadowstep is also somewhat interesting. You get better crits (nice syngery with Sinister Calling), your Hemo crits will be fairly massive and you get very good energy/combo management... and you get to use the poison talents to a degree, which is something I miss from Mutilate (Getting 5 stack of wound up is sooo much easier with imp poison!). That being said, I think your overall dps of this spec is lower then Combat Shadowstep (math genius care to find out?) and you do lose Imp Sprint, which might be a big deal (depending on how good shadowstep is at countering kiters).

Hybrid Shadowstep is the other variant that I believe could work. You get to keep imp sprint, but you lose S&D and DW Spec - which will be a pretty big hit to your white damage. You do get the excellent reckleness and 5% more crit, which might balance things out.

I don't think Dagger Shadowstep will work at all, so I'm not including it here. All the problem of mutilate applies to Backstab (position, resilience, range bug, stuck with daggers) and on top of that, since you'll need imp BS, you pretty much have to go 19/0/41+1 which limits your options.

"Hey, why did you take X talent over Y!?"

You're more then welcome to critic my builds, this is after all, a talent discussion :P.

This is merely the way I would make the following builds, fillers talents will of course change between players according to preferences.



Edited, Dec 17th 2007 5:25pm by Tyrandor

So you'd take Imp over Vile in ShS Tyr?

I'm thinking that if I go ShS I may end up switching my Wound to offhand for applications, since I'll be hemoing a lot to keep up crip.

Losing crip on shivs might not be ideal, but I'll be sure to keep wound up that way.

Hemo Daggers with 2/2 Blade Twisting

First, lol Hemo daggers you are better off with Mace/Sword/Fist in almost all opinion's.

But also some advice and also opinion.

Going basically a AR/Prep (if you are going to Hemo, there is honestly no reason to short change your point investment potential here so close to Prep) getting deeper in combat with your points remaining can be tedious. I see your reason for Blade Twisting. Fast hits, a lot of swings a lot of procs, but when you get to AR and have the few remaining points you want to somehow work in Nerves of Steel. At least over Blade Twisting. Also sometimes if you have those 1-3 points that just hover taking Blade Twisting over the help/utility in middle/upper Sub is somewhat shortchanging. I personally would much more utilize 2 points spent in mid Sub than what you would gain from Blade Twisting.