Assassination Vs Subtlety DPS in 4.0

 Rogues  Comments Off on Assassination Vs Subtlety DPS in 4.0
Oct 172010
 

I ran a short test on the target dummies in Silvermoon. One build was Assassination, the other Subtlety, both 4.0. The Assassination build is ElitistJerk’s DPS build, and the Sub is more PvP oriented. Just a short test along the lines of getting the rust polished off.

Note that you need 31 points to grab talents from the other trees, but you do not need to have the top talent in whichever tree. Mastery happens at 80.

Sub. did about 24-2500 DPS on the 83 target dummy and Assassination was close to 4k.I’m not claiming to be an expert anything, but that’s a pretty big difference. I didn’t even have Vendetta up on the Assassination test, showing what a nub I am.  Before 4.0 it was about 2k DPS or so with an Assassination build and the same gear.

  • Mongoose on both daggers
  • Instant poison on the MH, Deadly on the OH
  • No other buffs
  • About 4562 Gearscore (I know, it sucks.)

Assassination build (4.0:)

  1. 3/3 Coup de Grace
  2. 3/3 Lethality
  3. 3/3 Ruthlessness
  4. 2/2 Quickening
  5. 3/3 Puncturing Wounds
  6. 1/2 Deadly Brew
  7. 1/1 Cold Blood
  8. 3/3 Vile Poisons
  9. 2/2 Seal Fate
  10. 2/2 Murderous Intent
  11. Overkill
  12. Master Poisoner
  13. 3/3 Cut to the Chase
  14. 2/2 Venomous Wounds
  15. Vendetta
  16. 2/3 Precision
  17. 3/3 Relentless Strikes

Prime glyphs: Mutilate, Backstab, Rupture

Major Glyphs: Feint, Garrote, Fan of Knives

Minor Glyphs: Whatever. I have Pick Lock, Poisons, Safe Fall

Subtlety Build for 4.0

  1. 2/2 Nightstalker
  2. 3/3 Improved Ambush
  3. 3/3 Relentless Strikes
  4. 1/3 Elusiveness
  5. 2/2 Waylay
  6. 3/3 Opportunity
  7. 2/2 Initiative
  8. 2/2 Find Weakness
  9. Hemorrhage
  10. 3/3 Honor Among Thieves (will probably lose this. Your group gets the extra crit rating, so it’s useful for group fights, but it seems to be bugged right now.)
  11. Premeditation
  12. 2/3 Cheat Death
  13. Preparation
  14. 2/2 Sanguinary Vein
  15. 3/3 Slaughter from the Shadows
  16. Shadowdance
  17. 3/3 Precision
  18. 1/3 Coup de Grace

More DPS?

  1. Drop Nightstalker and Elusiveness for 3/3 Energetic Recovery (more energy)
  2. Drop Cheat Death for 2/2 Serrated Blades

Glyphs:

  • Prime: Hemo, Evisc, Backstab
  • Major: Ambush, Garrote, Cloak of Shadows
  • Minor: Safe Fall, Blurred Speed, Poisons

Macros:

Opener macro, since I can never remember to hit that Premeditation button. The pickpocket is in there for when you’re not fighting players:

#showtooltip Ambush
/cast Pick Pocket
/cast Premeditation
/cast Ambush

#showtooltip Eviscerate (or change to Envenom)
/cast  Cold Blood
/cast Eviscerate (or change to Envenom)

Ambush is looking really brutal in PvP. Glyph for Ambush (adds range) and Eviscerate (adds crit chance to Ev.) Ambush gives 5 combo points with the above build, then Evisc/Rupture

Leveling

At this moment in time all the trees are good for leveling. Combat has better consistent DPS than the others and Subtlety has the huge opener. I haven’t leveled Assassination yet, but it should be between the two, at first guess.

If you’re leveling a Rogue then take a glance at our Rogue leveling page.

They Go Up and They Go Down and They Go…

 wow news  2 Responses »
Oct 142010
 

Rumor has it (Ok, it’s only a rumor with me) that the quakes you’ve been seeing in-game are the result of Mage crits with their spells. Another mountain being destroyed or crater being created. Probably the main reason for the upcoming Cataclysm is the damage the spell casters are causing.

You thought your warrior was tough? Here, eat this 100k crit.

From MMO-CHampion:

We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don’t see a specific change referenced below, doesn’t mean it didn’t change.

With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post:

1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many warrior dps abilities. We didn’t do as much to tanking abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Feral cat abilities.

2) We lowered the base points and coefficients of many mage abilities, but lowered Fire more than the other two.

3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn’t nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow’s biggest spell.

4) We returned Searing Pain’s damage to its 3.3.5 levels.

5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change.

We don’t have any other changes to announce at this time. I am reluctant to mention additional classes or specs that we are looking at currently for fear of instilling excitement or panic.

I heard rumors that long time players (one or two, anyway) were quitting over the 4.0 changes. I don’t get it. Those are the players, more than anyone, who should know what happens after patches.Yeah, I know that players leave for any numbers of reasons, including boredom, it just seems that giving a reason like “the patch broke my game!” is silly. But, what do I know?

All Your Addons Are Doomed!

 Miscellaneous  Comments Off on All Your Addons Are Doomed!
Oct 112010
 

Hey all,

The 4.0 patch is a few hours away. Consider that this is a huge patch and it will likely break many or most of your addons, especially any that deal with game mechanics, talents, or abilities. Time to head back to Curse and start looking for updates.

Forewarned is forearmed. 🙂

Edit: Yep, they’re broken. So are many of the macros.

 Posted by at 6:18 pm  Tagged with:

Over 12 Million!

 wow news  Comments Off on Over 12 Million!
Oct 082010
 

Really it’s only abut 2 mill, because everyone has 6 accounts, right? 😉

Bliz announced yesterday that WoW has over 12 million subs. Regardless of how snarky one wants to get with the numbers of real players that’s what… 5x the #2 game?

Blizzard Entertainment said Thursday that the number of players now subscribed to “World of Warcraft” and its expansions has reached 12 million.

The multiplayer online game topped 11 million subscribers in October 2008.

The rest is on PC World (and a few zillion other places)

I want Aion’s graphics, animations, and some of the mechanics combined with WoW’s depth and cool features. Ah well, WoW’s what’s taking my game time. Guess that says it all.

edit: Just a last minute thought – people play Aion and the other games for a couple of weeks or months, they play WoW for years. I think that says it all.

 Posted by at 9:04 am

4.0 & Cataclysm Mage & Druid Builds

 Druids, Mages  Comments Off on 4.0 & Cataclysm Mage & Druid Builds
Oct 072010
 

The 4.0 patch will likely hit on or about the 12th or October and, as you probably already know, it will change a lot of things. Talents, for one.

Instead of 71 talent points at 80 you’ll have 41 at 85.

Instead of putting a few points her and a few there, you will be locked into one tree until you buy the top tier talent. Those 41 points will buy every talent in any one specialization, but you can go 31/5/5 or 31/10 or 39/2 or something like that. Obviously this means that your Pally will be Protection or Holy or Retribution.

That nice 31/20/20 build of yours? Poof! It’s gone!

Each specialization will automatically get certain abilities. For example, all Subtlety rogues will get Shadowstep. These aren’t optional abilities. The top tier ability is Mastery, which is trainable. Mastery gives a bonus to some defining characteristic of your builds. Fire mages, for example, get increased periodic damage. Mastery rating will be on gear and can be stacked.

Whether you will want to stack it depends on all the usual things. Some on the forums are saying that you do not want to stack Warrior Mastery, but on other classes it’s great.

I expect there will be a lot of tuning for awhile.

Abilities have changed, too. You no longer get them every other level and you no longer have to get levels in the ability. Instead of Shiftypoke1 through 12, you just get Shiftypoke once and it scales with your level. I’m sure there will be plenty of forum remarks regarding that change, in addition to all the others.

Glyphs? There will be a made rush for glyphs on patch day. 85s will have 9 glyphs that they can slot (prime, major, minor, 3 of each) but every class can learn all the glyphs to their class and swap them as they like. Kinda like if you have several gear sets which you swap depending on that you’re doing. If you class has 20 glyphs you just buy all of then and then figure out which is the best set. Once you’ve bought the set you’ll never have to buy them again.

Mad rush on patch day? I think so. My inscription is 450 so I’ll be ready.

Oh yeah, the builds.

I’ve taken a shot at putting up 4.0 leveling builds for Druids and mages. Check them out if you like and tell me here if they’re good, bad, or ugly. I have not leveled anything 1-85 in the beta (though Zygor has) so it’s quite possible that an “interesting” error will creep in.

 Posted by at 12:07 pm

If There’s a Press Release it Must Be Real – Dec 7 Cataclysm

 Cataclysm  Comments Off on If There’s a Press Release it Must Be Real – Dec 7 Cataclysm
Oct 042010
 

It looks like it’s official: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will be released on December 7th, the same date as another event of particular interest to many.

MMO-Champion has the press release, but it’ll be on many sites.(Any emphasis below is mine.)

IRVINE, Calif., Oct 04, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft(R): Cataclysm(TM), the highly anticipated third expansion for the world’s most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game*, will be released starting on December 7, 2010. The expansion will be available on DVD-ROM for Windows(R) XP/Windows Vista(R)/Windows(R) 7 and Macintosh(R) at a suggested retail price of $39.99 and will also be offered as a digital download from the Blizzard Store. A special Collector’s Edition packed with bonus items will be available exclusively in retail stores for a suggested retail price of $79.99.

“Cataclysm includes the best content we’ve ever created for World of Warcraft. It’s not just an expansion, but a re-creation of much of the original Azeroth, complete with epic new high-level adventures for current players and a redesigned leveling experience for those just starting out,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “With the help of our beta testers, we’re putting on the final polish, and we look forward to welcoming gamers around the world to enjoy it in just a couple of months.”

The first two World of Warcraft expansions, The Burning Crusade(R) and Wrath of the Lich King(R), each shattered PC game sales records upon their release.* In Cataclysm, the face of Azeroth will be forever altered by the return of the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing. Players will explore once-familiar areas of the world that have now been reshaped by the devastation and filled with new adventures. In an effort to survive the planet-shattering cataclysm, two new playable races — worgen and goblins — will join the struggle between the Alliance and the Horde. As players journey to the new level cap of 85, they’ll discover newly revealed locations, acquire new levels of power, and come face to face with Deathwing in a battle to determine the fate of the world.

The beta test for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is currently underway. Visit the official Battle.net(R) website at http://www.battle.net to set up a Battle.net account and sign up for a chance to participate. To learn more about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, visit http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm.

It’s not an open beta, yet, so signing up gives you that chance to participate.

It sounds to me like Blizzard is pretty confident in their development process and progress. The new zones are looking great, and not only of the new zones. Have you seen the pics of the Undead area?

Some people are saying that it will take only 36 hours to level from 80 to 85.  (70 to 80 in Wrath only took 27ish.) How well caffeinated are you? Me? It’ll be a couple of weeks, real time, at best, to get there. It’s the real life stuff that gets in the way of the 36 hour grind fests.

Will it be a solo Pally or DK that gets to 85 first? Warrior and healer team? What do you think and how much time will it take you?

 Posted by at 8:38 am

Cataclysm Release Date is Dec. 7

 Beta  Comments Off on Cataclysm Release Date is Dec. 7
Oct 012010
 

From MMO-Champion the release date is one week before the start of the new arena season, which is Dec 14.

Don’t be surprised if it’s pushed back.

Rumor has the 4.0 patch coming in next week. Time to plan to rebuild all your builds.

 Posted by at 1:36 pm