Hemo (two parts)Follow

It is great for grinding I'm sure.

The hate on Hemo is that for everything outside of PvP, Combat is better. That is a proven fact.

PvP of course Subtlety is the best, though Assassination at times can be better depending on what comp you run.



Ambush sucks.

In PvE Raiding its an opener, and you open with Ambush than the boss/mob is going to turn around and gank your ***.

In PvP Resilience killed Ambush.

Solo PvE I mean I guess you could but it seems like a waste of time.

And by the way, Ambush sucks. It REALLY sucks.



In theory I think you can, not that in-depth but there is definitely a weapon swap macro floating around, people use it alot in Arena for switching OH weapons for diff poisons I think.(Don't quote me on that)

The other thing is it is just inefficient. Since Ambush/Backstab really aren't that good compared to SS/Hemo/Muti it doesn't really make sense to add another button click when you could still be using your rotation.

Hope that helped!

makes sense, overall, I was only looking into ambush cause of the attack speed/movement speed buffs in wrath, and because it might be nice to have ambush during the whole shadow dance thing

thanks for the quick replies :)


Edit :went to

the obvious place

and found all the macros I could want, but I'm still interested in people's input :)

Edited, Oct 5th 2008 5:23am by concolor

Edited, Oct 5th 2008 5:24am by concolor

*before I start, this relates purely to solo grinding mobs of the same level ... not instancing / raiding*

It's interesting you bring this up ... I've been pretty bored recently, I've really got nothing to do (game wise) while waiting for the patch and xpac.

I, too tried a full sub spec (leaving off things like stealth detection and cheat death, which are more PvP oriented) ... just to see how it compared to my tried and tested (and favourite) combat spec. I thought I noticed it being more efficient .. so I check here to see what people in the past said ... combat > sub ... I checked on other sites ... combat > sub ... I googled it ... combat > sub.

Theo even said he'd done the math, and ... combat > sub ...

So, what did I do;

The spreadsheet

I drew up a spreadsheet ... a little different to the standard ones out there, in that this one concentrates purely on a 15 second fight (a touch longer than your typical mob fight)

I encorporated energy ticks at 2 sec intervals, combat potency ticks (using a rng @ 20%) to determine when 15 energy would be refunded ... I catered for +10% damage in the first 6 seconds from a sub point of view ... I even factored in that your first attack (assuming you shadowstepped) would.

I RNG'd crits, hit rating, and everything else that has an RNG component ... this is instead of saying .. 10000 damage was done, and 10% misses, therefore only 9000 damage was done.

Why did I use an RNG, because in a 10-15 second fight ... averages are a waste of time .. it's quite conceivable that you would hit 100% of the time, and get zero crits ... in which case an average calculation would not reflect a "real life" scenario.

Heck, I even factored in sword spec, and had a 5% RNG calculate the possibility of an extra attack.

What I didn't take into consideration ... 1) armour mitigation.. which would skew the numbers slightly in favour of combat, but not much imo (if you consider my end results). 2) .. I ignored all talents in Assass you would pick up .. simply because they would apply in both scenarios, essentially negating them for the purposes of the comparison.

I would then run re-calcing of the spreadsheet for the RNG's to determine crits, misses, combat potency procs, sword spec procs. I can do this over and over, and after each run, I would flag which spec did the most damage, and keep a rolling counter every time I re-calced.

The results

87% of the time, combat does more damage over the 15 second time period.

I was surprised to say the least, but there it is ... every time I zero out the numbers and run several interations (until the % which represents the differential stabilised) .. the numbers settle on 85-87% in favour of combat.

Most of the time when Hemo won, it was because of 1 of 2 or 3 things.

1) Combat potency procs being low ... if there were no proc ... it's generally a guarenteed Hemo win
2) Lucky string of crits on Hemo's side (50-75% crits ensured a win)
3) Unlucky string of misses in combat ensured a Hemo win.

So why did I get the impression hemo was faster .. well, I put it down to a big burst up front ... hemo hits harder that SS, I have around 2k ap when full sub spec, which results in about 5-7% extra hemo damage per hit. add 10% to that (within 6 seconds of breaking stealth), and the numbers look big if you crit ... this gives the overall impression that you're taking things down faster (which you may be doing occasionally, but not as a rule).

And this is the reason people seem to like Ambush so much ... the feeling of getting that initial burst overshadows the fact that you don't have very much after that.

Pros and cons

Pros - Sub

Sub allows easier mobility (well, it is THE PvP spec ;>) .. you can stealth past mobs easier with Master of Deception, and you can move faster while stealthed with Camouflage. ShS allows the last jump to a mob for a quick opener, and provides a nice damage boost with your first strike.

Your damage from your main special (hemo) is higher, and a lucky string of crits in the first 6 seconds can finish the fight before stunlock is finished.

You have vanish available more often.

cons - Sub

You may find yourseld waiting for energy ticks more that you might feel comfortable.

You do less damage overall ...

Pros - Combat

You do significantly more damage than sub(hemo)

You have blade flurry (omg .. ******) .. and no - that was not factored into the spreadsheet, and after I got the initial numbers, I didn't see factoring it in as being necessary any more.

You have adrenaline rush (omg ... double ******) .. wtb dropping 4 - 5 mobs at a time with Blade Flurry/Adrenaline Rush/Evasion available.

You can have evasion available more often

You can sprint out of nasty situations.

cons - combat

You move slower in stealth, and need to be a lot more careful when stealthing in and around mobs.

You can only vanish every 5 mins ;-D

Bottom line

They both work just as well as each other ... combat is just more efficient, does more damage, and keeps you alive longer when things go wrong.

*edited*
Some grammar mistakes I picked up upon reading.

Edited, Oct 5th 2008 6:00pm by robertlofthouse

What they said, basically. I'm a dagger freak and even I only use Ambush when A) I'm 100% sure ambush will kill my target right away (I'm not going to Cheap Shot a mage on 10% hp when I'm not sure what his druid buddy is doing) or B) It can replace Backstab. And B is only when I'm using Shadowdance. Which will probably be never.

The only place I can somewhat see Ambush working is in a rogue/rogue comp, when one launches a cheap shot+kidney shot and the other goes shadowdance and wastes all his energy on Ambushing. But that's highly situational and prone to failure. Aside from the fact that a Shadowdance rogue will be out of energy too soon.

A rogue pall of mine intends to go shadowdance daggers in WOTLK... I suppose I'll see how well it works for him, but I don't have too much hope for Ambush to be useable for more situations than what I'm currently using it for.

Just an extention to my previous post (I figured if I edited it, this would get lost ;->)

I fiddled with a few things to see how the numbers changed.

First set of fiddling:

Over 15 secs of fighting:

Standard Combat vs Hemo builds : Combat ahead 87% of the time.
Combat vs Hemo w/o taking Combat Potency procs into account : combat ahead 70% of the time.
Combat vs Hemo w/ Combat Potency and w/o DW spec : combat ahead 60% of the time.
Combat vs Hemo w/o Combat Potency and DW spec : combat ahead 55% of the time.

Conclusion ... one of the driving factors for combat appears to be DW spec, and when combined with COmbat Potency, it makes for a ... uuuh ... potent combat build ;-) (terrible pun intended)

Second set of fiddling:

Full combat build (w/ CP and DW) vs full hemo build:

15 Second fight : combat ahead 87% of the time
10 second fight (full stunlock cycle with CS and 5pt KS) : combat ahead 60% of the time
6 second fight (period of time where Hemo shines the most) : combat ahead 70% of the time

Note that the 10 second cycle did not include a KS as a second finisher, I merely used the 10 second mark because it COULD be used as a stunlock cycle ... and 10 seconds sounds like a normal length fight to measure against.

The 6 second fight was measured because of Master of Subtely (increased damage for 6 seconds after breaking stealth).

What really interested me was the performance of Hemo over 6 seconds ... it should be streets ahead, but isn't. Then I realised why ... 1) no energy to do more specials, and 2) DW spec allows white damage under combat to more than make up for the increased damage from the Sub build within those first few seconds.

If it were possible to get another Hemo in within 6 seconds, then the hemo build would shine in that scenario ... but there just isn't enough energy available. Opportunity from Assass would probably provide more energy for this to happen, but then that means more energy to perform a SS as well, which would probably even things out again to round about the numbers shown.

Another thing to take away from this is that from 10 seconds to 15 seconds, Combat pulls ahead by about 30% ... which means the longer the fight goes on, the more combat will perform. I'd say that by about 30 seconds (maybe even less), combat will win out 100% of the time ... this answers the question as to whether Hemo will perform as well in raids as combat (ofc, not that that particular matter needed to be confirmed, but there it is anyway).

Thanks for listening / reading ... as I said, I was bored of playing the game, but not necessarily bored of the game itself. This was the ideal way to keep myself in the game, without actually playing.

Edited, Oct 6th 2008 11:43am by robertlofthouse

heh, relentless strikes - 20% chance per combo point of gaining 25 energy on a finishing move.

now to see how well that works :P

I don't think you understand; that's basically a large chance that your finishing is essentially or mostly free, since the cost is immediately refunded.

That's pretty awesome.

Edited, Oct 8th 2008 4:53am by zepoodle

It's actually being moved from it's current spot in Assassination, where it's a one point talent, to it's new spot in Sub, where it's a 5 point talent. Yes, that's a nerf, but will still be taken in all it's 5 point glory, specifically for how good it is.