Merits of combat PvPFollow

Compared to Mutilate:

Overkill makes Hemo 25 energy, evis 25 energy, cheap shot 30 energy (with dirty deeds), garrote 25 energy(with dirty deeds), shiv 25 energy, evis 25 energy, etcetc. This spec also comes with premed, so you can open right off the bat with a 5 CP evis. It gives +10% attack and +15% agility, something mutilate does not give. Agility is armor, crit chance, and AP. It gives better white damage, better garrote and rupture damage (from the much higher AP), and much higher poison damage (from more AP). +10% attack and +15% agility *IS* a lot of attack. I believe that attack gives OOMPH to evis crits as well, as i've been hitting 7.5k evis crits on cloth/leather.

The burst damage from 31/0/40 is less then mutilate, because mutilate is two attacks within one second (plus Puncturing Wounds is +15% crit, even though Sinister Calling would counter that some), while it would take hemo 2 seconds to make two attacks. The ability to use Pre-med to open with an evis right off the bat is a large advantage to this over mut. Basically, it's what you feel comfortable with. I can kill a level 80 mob in 4 seconds with 31/0/40 too

Compared to shadow dance:

Shadow Dance is on a timer. It can only be activated 10 out of 120 seconds. That's about 8.3% of the time (that's if you use it when the timer comes back up right away, which you wont). Plus if you are going ShD you probably are going ambush, which if you are using ambush you're not using Cheap Shot. I prefer to open with Cheap Shot in PVP. If you're going sword spec in a ShD spec you lose out on Cold Blood, which is a huge damage control ability that prep cools down. You lose out on Fleet Footed (Which is the highest natural movement speed a rogue can get, plus it increases your stealth movement speed), and Quick Recovery, which is a godsend. Also lose out on Overkill, which allows you to let loose for about 10 seconds without energy EVER becoming a problem. 31/0/40 spends less energy to open, and spends a lot less energy to DPS after stealth breaks.

Is ShD bad? hell no! It comes with ShS too. I liked it much more then Mutilate. It's just, like I said, I prefer 31/0/40. It's a very good spec. It's kind of the hybrid between mut and sub.



Edited, Nov 27th 2008 10:14pm by Zafire

You realize that as 8/0/53 I was hitting 2.2k BSes at 70, right? With a 97 DPS weapon.

That's 45 energy BSes versus your 35 energy Hemos.

Just saying.

Personally I've felt that BS has been strong since Slaughter from the Shadows, and being able to take Lethality at 80 makes it even more viable in a ShD build.

Then again, I also played mut in S2, so take that with a grain of salt, since I usually have a 60-150ms ping.

Resil doesn't effect it too bad, at least at 70 it didn't. It might turn my 2.2k hemo's into 1900 hemo's, but that's not really so bad. More crit rate is coming with the patches to come, so i'll be critting a lot more then I am now anyways
Opener is less of a problem when your stealth movement speed is a little over 90% of regular movement speed



Return to stealth. It's a bit easier for a night elf then other races, I guess, since shadowmeld is basically a free return-to-stealth ability. Yeah, this requires stealth. Theres always vanish and prep, though. If you get knocked out of stealth you can still lay down the hurt for a few seconds if you put premed up first.



Mut is kited just as easily as 31/0/40. Mut has no advantage for mobility. They both more or less provide the same mobility utilities. It's not really so much a problem, you get two vanishes. (Night elves get 3, I guess)



I really haven't found a spec that performs better so far that uses swords. I have tried a lot. The white damage comes from the huge AP bonus that sinister calling and deadliness give. I'm hitting nearly 2k with my regular melee swing on clothies with my mainhand weapon, Fan of Knives is very impressive too. (40 energy FoK under overkill btw). What I meant when I said better white damage then mut, is Deadliness + Sinister calling is better white damage then DW spec. Mut does not get access to either.

It doesn't just rely on hemo, either, Garrote, Rupture, and Deadly Poison are crazy with this much AP. I mean, i'm hitting nearly 800/tick Deadly Poison proc's on plate. I'm seeing as high as 680/tick ruptures too. I guess I shouldn't claim it to be the "best sword spec" but for sword spec's it's up there.



They're 25 energy hemo's a lot too. And my evis is 25 energy, or rupture is 15 energy, etcetc...I don't think you realize how awesome Overkill is when you're not using Mut. A change from 35->25 energy is a lot bigger then a change from 60->50. I can use 4 hemo's under overkill in less energy then it takes me to use 3 without. Plus all my openers and finishing moves get the bonus too. I really cannot explain how much overkill helps this spec. With Premed you can open with a 5 point evis and spend *nothing* to use it, because ruthlessness gives you the 25 energy back that you used on evis. You only spend 30 energy on cheap shot or 25 energy on garrote as well. It's just insane how amazing energy consumption is under overkill. I rarely rarely EVER try to assault if i'm not stealthed. I will ofton times run behind a tree or house, return to stealth, then sprint back out and re-assault. Is the *need to be stealthed* penalty really so bad for me? not really, it's rarely a problem. Unless i'm smacking someone who gets healed, then it's a whole new story entirely.

But, again, like I said, it might be because i'm Night Elf and have an extra way to return to stealth.



Backstab is positional, hemo is not. One trinket will ruin you. Backstab is 45 energy, hemo under overkill is 25 energy. Doesn't really take a genius to figure out why hemo is good in this way. 6 seconds is all you need to pretty much take out anyone that doesn't wear plate.

Edited, Nov 28th 2008 9:12am by Zafire

Edited, Nov 28th 2008 9:13am by Zafire

Cheap Shot, 7500 CB evis, Hemo a few times, you'll be back at 5CP after 3 hemo's most likely from Seal Fate, then evis again. Not all that hard <_<. I'll make a video for you, if you need me to that badly. Although youtube isn't liking my frap AVI's for some reason. Nothing hard about killing anyone in 6 seconds.



How does it have worse mobility then mutilate? The ONLY thing assassination gives is Fleet Footed for mobility, and I have everything in sub mutilate would have. Please, elaborate.

The same can go for backstab, all someone has to to do is neutralize you after you open and you're useless.

Like I said, it's the hybrid between the two.

I don't even dare mingle in this, but one thing I'd like to see clarified. Like Zafire's pointing out, how does 30/0/41 have worse mobility than any mutilate spec?

The only "mobility" talents mut/prep has over 30/0/41 are Deadly Brew and Master Poisoner. But well, yeah, I suppose you see as well they are too lame to even argue about. A mutilate/combat build would have Endurance and Imp sprint as mobility talents, but would have to sacrifice prep for it. And some points in either Elusiveness, Dirty Tricks, Camouflage, or Master of Deception.

They aren't lame.



You are not figthing level 80 players in level 80 PvP gear, then. In fact, I believe you are fighting someone with 0 resilience and 0 armour - a critter, mayhap:

3k AP, 5CP evi:

(1977 + 450) + (1977 + 1050) / 2 = 2727

2727 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 2 = 7199.28

That's the average crit on a 0 armour, 0 resi target when you have imp evi and MoS. The highest possible crit on this same critter is 7991.28.

Seeing as you have not used EA on them yet, you will not get anything like this number EVEN if they did have 0 resi and, I remind you, we are not tlaking about people with 0 resi.

Taking a target with 20% armour mitigation after SB (a clothie) and at the resi cap, let's see the top possible damage:

(1 977 + 1 050) * 2 * 0.8 * 0.75 * 1.1 * 1.2 = 4794.768

Yeah. You see what I'm saying now?



I said it had worse mobility than Mutilate, which I noted had poor mobility. Yes, Mutilate suffers from it, too, but it makes up for it in other ways, whereas your build needs to have good mobility to be good because it fails so badly at pressure.

P.S. A deep sub BS build has control, awesome CP gen and good mobility, things that your spec lacks, which means that it is less reliant on opening bursts.


Edited, Nov 28th 2008 10:12am by Kavekk

Look at my numbers. 1.2 is imp evi, 1.1 MoS.

I'm still laughing because Zafire thinks that Overkill and Seal Fate are better than HAT, ShS, and SftS.

I'm not even going to bother to argue. Smart rogues will listen to me and use my specs. Bad rogues will continue to listen to Zaphire and use his crap builds.

For reference, though: my build, his build.

I played a build somewhat like Zafire's, now that I see it linked. It's fun, but yeah, you're prolly better off going ShD or Mut/prep. While you can indeed kill a couple of players in under 6 seconds, that's not going to cut it for you once 80 PvP gear starts rolling into the BG's. And it's definitely not going to cut it in the arenas, even though I can't deny even Zafire akknowledged that last time we discussed it.

On a side-note Theo, this is the ShD build I came up with myself somewhere around patch time, without ever having seen the one you just linked. Once again, just saying.

And Kavekk; that's fair enough, but I really don't think those changes are significant when talking about PvP and comparing "mut builds" (Which I took to be specs along the line of 41/30/0, 41/5/25, 44/27/0 or 44/5/22). As a raw estimation, I'd say that out of 30 losses, there might be 1 you would've won if you had Deadly Brew so your crippling poison wasn't dispelled. At the very least, they are far from as significant as talents like ShS, prep, or even imp Sprint.

Edited, Nov 28th 2008 8:48pm by Mozared

Edited, Nov 28th 2008 8:50pm by Mozared

That´s an argument to my advantage, really. It wasn´t all that dumb before the patch. I simply hadn´t really experienced the damage increase and the way evis worked after it. If I had, I probably would´ve included it, bringing my spec even closer to the one you posted.

What I´m trying to say is that even though I like to play around a lot, I´ll make sure my spec stays close enough to be viable if I want to be serious. Even more, I rarely read EJ for builds or anything (I never do actually, unless I need detailed math information about something); I just invented my own mut/prep build which turned out to be very similar to what's probably mathematically proven to be the most effective build around.

Which leaves you with 3 options. Either you take the easy way out and claim all this is lied (it's the easy way since I cannot prove it's the truth), or you state the mut/prep build you posted up there is sub-par, or you simply akknowledge that (yes, once again) I'm not as horrible as you're making me look. Seeing as I intend to seriously go into PvP once I become able to, I trust that point will be proven eventually, but 'till then, this is my way of 'demanding' respect.

Why are you posting PvE data in a PvP thread? I have almost 400 more AP in PvE than PvP, this has no correlation to your build. We have been talking PvP all along. Stay relevant or quit posting. I choose option 2.


Edit: Drunk

Edited, Nov 29th 2008 1:08am by ThomasMagnum