Getting to the point:

In the next minor patch (3.2.2) Assassination's 'Master Poisoner' is getting a rework. Instead of increasing the chance of Deadly poison applying increased, it will make Envenom not remove Deadly poison at all.

This sort of mechanic puts forth that Deadly poison is only on your weapon to keep the 12 second DoT up on your target. That gives rise to the clunky, irritating mechanic of Weapon Swap for Poison utility.

The premise is that you have a dagger with Deadly poison, and two weapons with Instant poison. You get the 5 dose of Deadly poison on your target, then swap the the double Instant setup and continue to expend and build your energy and combo points as you would. After eight(8) seconds, you swap back to your Deadly poison dagger, make sure it reapplies, then swap back.

This mechanic is clunky as all hell, and requires no more skill than say the Combat rotation, or the existing Assassination rotation. It's just, in Ghostcrawler's words from the Rogue QandA:"Not supported well by the UI".

Possible changes include redesigning Deadly Brew:
-Instant procs Deadly
-Wound procs Crippling
-Mind Numbing procs Crippling
Seeing as PvP rogues would never be using Instant over wound; and the talent point investment outweighs to an extent the boost from Instant proccing Deadly

Another alternative is to 'wipe poisons clean' when you swap weapons..Though it should be known, I'm pretty certain most Rogues agree with me when I say that's the last thing we want to see - Function taken from our class =)

Didn't you post a thread exactly like this a couple days ago? I remember someone did and your name rings a bell for some reason.

Same response as I gave last week:
The deadly brew change you are suggesting would be hugely OP, it would be a flat 500+ dps increase without any extra work on the rogues part. While no weapon switching doesn't require a lot of skill simply making sure you swap weapons every 8 seconds for an entire fight could be taxing, especially on fights where there are many other factors to worry about (mimi hard for example).

The wipe poisons clean mechanic is similarly stupid and would further push rogue utility poisons to uselessness. For example think of a fight like Gluth, in the absence of a hunter it is a rogue's responsibility to shiv on anesthetic poison. If your the wipe poisons mechanic existed a rogue could not put anesthetic on a backup dagger and swap shiv to dispel the enrage.

Yes; I posted a thread like this two days back. I bookmarked it; but it seems it was removed or buried abnormally fast, as I come up with a "Post does not exist" error when trying to visit it.

I hear what you're saying, but I can't really think of another change that could be done to alleviate being forced to do a gimpy mechanic to achieve max DPS - The current rotation is fine and needs no more factors to balance. Your DPS rotation should not demand that you swap a weapon every 8 seconds.

edit-Reviving the topic just this once; to be sure it's seen and noted.

to be honest i think the best course of action (that is, to prevent weapon swapping) is to keep MP as is on live, yes we'll lose that extra damage buff from having to still rebuild stacks but overall i think that's better for the playstyle

the DB change you suggested would make assassination rogues run IP/IP, and im pretty sure that blizzard likes rogue utilising 2 different poisons, which is most likely why the IP->DP effect it had in beta was removed
EDIT: as for the poison wiping mechanic i think that having the ability to swap between weapons for certain things (ie swapping to anesthetic for an enraged mob/player) is highly valuable and should be encouraged, but swapping back and forth quickly should be discouraged, in my opinion there is a fine line between the two.

however i think you are on the right track and if i may i would like to tweak the idea, you should be limited to 2 weapon swaps in combat every minute with a 30 second period between the first and second swap to set them on cooldown

for example,

say t = time
at t=0 i swap my weapon setup
at t=10 i swap again (to my first setup, it doesnt matter if you swap to the original or not, only that you have changed weapons in combat a second time within 30 seconds of the first time)
you are no longer able to swap weapons (main hand, offhand/shield, or ranged/relics) until t= 70 (10 + 60)

another example
t = 0, weapon swap
t=31, weapon swap
since it has been 30 seconds since the last swap i do not incur the 1 minute weapon swap penalty

whatcha think?

are you even sure at this point that a weapon swap would infact be a dps up?

thats 3 GCDs wasted ever time you have to refresh DP(swap, shiv, swap)

i think everything will be the same as it is now for max dps, but DP stacks wont be falling off(unless you catch some horrid RNG)

Rogues have one of the easiest DPS rotations in the game, and get to place up good numbers because of it.

Warriors have had to use macro's for gear swap for a long time to make their class successful and have learned to endure with it.

If a rogue can lock down weapon swapping for even more dps tunage, then by all means utilize it. They pretty much provided an opportunity for Rogues to gain even more dps because of players with the skill to weapon swap and manage a more complex DPS rotation.

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Q u o t e:
are you even sure at this point that a weapon swap would infact be a dps up?

thats 3 GCDs wasted ever time you have to refresh DP(swap, shiv, swap)

i think everything will be the same as it is now for max dps, but DP stacks wont be falling off(unless you catch some horrid RNG)

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last i checked it was showing that even with the +DP application rate during envenom buff taken off of MP that swaping still provided a meaningful DPS buff

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Q u o t e:
Rogues have one of the easiest DPS rotations in the game, and get to place up good numbers because of it.

Warriors have had to use macro's for gear swap for a long time to make their class successful and have learned to endure with it.

If a rogue can lock down weapon swapping for even more dps tunage, then by all means utilize it. They pretty much provided an opportunity for Rogues to gain even more dps because of players with the skill to weapon swap and manage a more complex DPS rotation.

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yes, but that was before blizzard changed it's policy on what they wanted weapon swapping to be used for, check the QA

just becuase you had to use weapon swaps in the past doesnt mean that we should have to now to be "fair"

tht's like saying "well resto druids were OP in season 4 so now they have to be useless in season 7" it's childish

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Q u o t e:
yes, but that was before blizzard changed it's policy on what they wanted weapon swapping to be used for, check the QA

just becuase you had to use weapon swaps in the past doesnt mean that we should have to now to be "fair"

tht's like saying "well resto druids were OP in season 4 so now they have to be useless in season 7" it's childish

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They haven't changed their policy. They just said to feel less clunky, and where they'd like it to be.

I'm not stating, use it to be "fair", I stated use the opportunity to be better and tune out more DPS because you can weapon swap for that advantage, but don't be down on it because other classes are already doing it (they just have to do it out of necessity).

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Q u o t e:


They haven't changed their policy. They just said to feel less clunky, and where they'd like it to be.

I'm not stating, use it to be "fair", I stated use the opportunity to be better and tune out more DPS because you can weapon swap for that advantage, but don't be down on it because other classes are already doing it (they just have to do it out of necessity).

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my stance has always been that weapon swaps should be used for utility, not DPS

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Q u o t e:

my stance has always been that weapon swaps should be used for utility, not DPS

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So the basic argument comes down to:

With the Ability to gain more DPS through weapon swapping in the Assassination Tree because of upcoming changes, does Blizzard feel this is the appropriate direction to go for the tree? Reasons being, in the Rogue Q&A we were told as a community that Blizzard wanted weapon swapping to become less clunky, yet with theory crafting and competitive raiding as it is, Weapon swapping will be a staple in the Rogues rotation for this tree. And if it's more DPS then Combat, Rogues will abandon Combat to Assassination where players will then have to become competent Weapon Swappers.

Does this break it down to the basic question and concern?

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Q u o t e:
are you even sure at this point that a weapon swap would infact be a dps up?

thats 3 GCDs wasted ever time you have to refresh DP(swap, shiv, swap)

i think everything will be the same as it is now for max dps, but DP stacks wont be falling off(unless you catch some horrid RNG)

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it is absolutely a DPS up.
The swing reset is not nearly as bad as you think, and Assassination isn't strapped for GCDs as you seem to think. Also, it's only 2 GCDs.

You would only need Instant to proc twice to make up for the white swings.

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Q u o t e:


So the basic argument comes down to:

With the Ability to gain more DPS through weapon swapping in the Assassination Tree because of upcoming changes, does Blizzard feel this is the appropriate direction to go for the tree? Reasons being, in the Rogue Q&A we were told as a community that Blizzard wanted weapon swapping to become less clunky, yet with theory crafting and competitive raiding as it is, Weapon swapping will be a staple in the Rogues rotation for this tree. And if it's more DPS then Combat, Rogues will abandon Combat to Assassination where players will then have to become competent Weapon Swappers.

Does this break it down to the basic question and concern?

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That's the gist of it, with a comment: "Competent Weapon Swapping" for warriors is doing their rotation with a Weapon swap macro. Rogues will not be able to do this, as Weapon swaps will have to be done pertaining to the timer on Deadly poison. If I am wrong in this respect, then I feel that the Warrior rotation that forces a weapon swap based on a timer needs to be adjusted as well.
Also, with the ArPen nerf coming up in the same patch, Combat will be behind Assassination, even without Weapon swapping.

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Q u o t e:
Rogues have one of the easiest DPS rotations in the game, and get to place up good numbers because of it.

Warriors have had to use macro's for gear swap for a long time to make their class successful and have learned to endure with it.

If a rogue can lock down weapon swapping for even more dps tunage, then by all means utilize it. They pretty much provided an opportunity for Rogues to gain even more dps because of players with the skill to weapon swap and manage a more complex DPS rotation.

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I am almost entirely certain that the Warrior rotation has a weapon swap macroed into a certain ability.
Macroes cannot be done in comparison to timers, which is what's going on here, and will require a clunky mechanic to swap weapons every -eight seconds-.

Assassination rotation is no more or less complicated than what you listed as your example.
It isn't skill to utilize a clunky, unsupported mechanic for Poison utility. It utterly destroys the flow of Assassination.

I was talking about the rotation in general is very easy to perform compared to other melee classes. The energy gain and combo point mechanic allows the class to pick up their next spells in the rotation faster then other classes, that's all.

So if weapon swapping did become a staple to the tree, there's plenty of room to incorporate it.

Wait.

Why do you want it to be nerfed?

Your a rogue. Weapon swap, do more damage, profit.

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Q u o t e:
Wait.

Why do you want it to be nerfed?

Your a rogue. Weapon swap, do more damage, profit.

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Because it's clunky, annoying, and most likely not intended.

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Q u o t e:


Because it's clunky, annoying, and most likely not intended.

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Then don't do it.

They really would have to balance max assassination dps around either using the swap or not using it. If they balance it around using the swap it is going to be a pain for assissinaton rogues to keep up thier dps in non tank and spank fights and require an extra dagger even.

If they balance around not using the swap then rogues that d use it will end up above where the rogue class is supposed to be. Either way if what the OP says is true i'm sure it will be addressed eventually as it will be a problem