Tuesday, March 23, 2010

LOLHEMODAGGERS?!1?

A couple interesting changes to Rogues in 3.3.3, and they all tend to deal with wearing daggers in PvP, while NOT MUTILATING:

Ghostly Strike: If the rogue has a dagger equipped, this ability now deals 180% weapon damage instead of 125%.

Hemorrhage: If the rogue has a dagger equipped, this ability now deals 160% weapon damage instead of 110%.

Slaughter from the Shadows: Now adds 1/2/3/4/5% damage to all attacks and reduces the energy cost of Backstab and Ambush by 4/8/12/16/20, up from 3/6/9/12/15.

Waylay: The debuff from this talent can now be caused by Backstab in addition to Ambush and can be triggered by all hits from these abilities rather than just critical strikes, but the snare component is now 50%, down from 70%.


These are all subtlety talents, and deal specifically with having a dagger main-handed. Hemorrhage (Hemo), for those out of the loop with behind-the-scenes-mechanics, had a special loophole regarding weapon normalization. Most attacks scale based on weapon type, not weapon SPEED. Basically, for a Sinister Strike, top end damage is important, but a sword is a sword is a sword. For Hemo, having a 2.6 speed weapon (or ZOMG 2.8, drool...) was way better than having a 2.2 speed (or, god forbid, 1.7). Hemo took the weapon speed and multiplied the attack by its weapon speed, resulting in bigger hits for slower weapons.

This changed, eventually, and Hemo gave a flat 125% damage boost to weapon damage around patch 2.3. This was still pretty high, and was subsequently nerfed to 110%. BUT! The fact remained that daggers were still a horrible choice for Hemo, as 110% of dagger damage (low but fast) was worse than that of a big mace or sword (high and slow). Now though, the damage is multiplied by 160% if the weapon equipped is a dagger. With Sinister Calling, that number is bumped up further to 121% (regular) / 175% (dagger).

Using my horribly non scientific method of "updating DrDamage, then logging in and swapping weapons, and reading the tooltip" we can see that Hemo will hit for 2910 with my old Hemo sword, and 3008 with a dagger. It's not a huge difference, except that you also need to realize that daggers offer more options... Ambushes and Backstabs if stealth and positioning line up... very nice.


Ghostly Strike got a nice buff, in a similar way, 180% (up from 125%) if a dagger is equipped. Sword: 3164, Dagger: 3187. Again, not ground breaking, but it's a bigger number. With the speed increase of dagger swings, you'll have better chance to proc poisons with white swings, too.

The other change is Waylay hitting with Backstab as well as Ambush, which fits nicely with playing Subtlety Daggers. While sinking points into it before was stupid, because if you were that deep in Sub you were playing Hemo with something that wasn't a dagger, and even if you were, Ambushes were rare, the ability to switch from Hemo to Backstab if you have the energy and positioning lining up makes it a tactical decision... something that's always a nice option.

In all honesty, I like the idea of PvPing with daggers, but ever since they allowed you to use Mutilate as a 'face stab' (and removed the 'behind the target' requirement), I feel like finesse amongst rogues is a lost cause. Rogues are like berserker warriors that wear leather and can disappear. : /

I'm going to be poking around in the new BG finder with a Sub Dagger build to see how it pans out... maybe something like THIS ...?

*EDIT* I just realized I didn't take into consideration the disparity with the two weapons being different iLevels... the dagger is 264, with the Sword being 251, so perhaps apples to apples it isn't such a boost, but the swing speed proccing poisons is still a pretty useful function. I'll dig around and see if I can find more similar weaps.

7 comments:

Hatch said...

Seeing those patch notes made me interested in the spec for PvP too. I miss Shadowstep.

Tal said...

Aren't poison procs ppm-based? Weapon speed shouldn't have any effect on them...

HP said...

For some reason, I just don't get rogues. Whenever someone starts talking about them, I feel like I blank out in completely incomprehension. The only thing I really know about rogues are poisons, lotsa fast mini-attacks that quickly build up, moves, PVP and ToTT. Good luck explaining anything about them to me though =X

Rich said...

@Tal: to be totally honest I'm not sure... I've always been told to put a 1.4 speed OH for quick poison applications...?

@HP: pvping with my priest got the same reaction from me about paladins... after a 2v2 scrimmage, I sent a tell to a holy paly along the lines of 'damn, you guys NEVER run out of mana', to which he replied 'yeah, well you never dispelled my pleas' to which I replied 'huzzah wha?'

: /

Kensai said...

Instant Poison is now ppm, Deadly is still "chance on hit". That's why until they changed the way IP procs, dual librarian cutters done better dps than ulduar 10 daggers.

Anyway. The problem with Sub is not the dmg per se, it has a lot of utility that would enable one to wear down his enemies, but firstly, the retarded burst nowadays is too retarded, the roguery faded away from the rogues, it's blow all your CDs as fast as you can, burst or get bursted; and secondly Sub has horrible energy regen and CP generation, it just fell behind.

Not to mention the dagger talents are all over the place, more importantly, the talents that deal with Backstab are very spread out -- you can't maximize it like you can max Mutilate, no way you can pick up blade twisting, aggression, slaughter from the shadows AND puncturing wounds. But probably i'll give it a shot myself.

Rich said...

@Kensai: really good point about them being everywhere.

I considered going close combat, but couldn't with where i was putting points in assassination. hopefully cata will consolidate a bunch of that into one tree.

Dink said...

Don't forget Glyph of Ghostly Strike.