I wholeheartedly agree with removing the weapon swap playstyle. I did ruptureless Mut for a while with dagger swapping, and it was clunky and definitely not fun. I eventually dropped my beloved PvE Mutilate spec and started raiding as combat.

I think poisons, specifically instant and deadly, need to scale with AP better. I have absolutely zero data to back this up, but seems to me that IP and DP damage hasn't really increased from starting Ulduar to T9 level gear.

Also, Rupture needs to be in every PvE rotation. We're seeing now, with dagger swapping and combat Armor Pen stacking, that Rupture is being left behind. There should be talents in the deep Assassination AND Combat trees that promote using Rupture. Easy idea: New Mut talent that makes Ruptures crit, and a new Combat talent that mimics the 2 piece T9 set bonus (albeit with a much higher proc rate; 2 piece T9 rarely procs).

Lastly, Mutilate needs a real DPS increasing cooldown. Cold Blood is pretty useless when you're at 50%+ crit, raid buffed. My idea: 3 minute cooldown, 15 second duration. For the duration, your instant poison has a 100% to proc. In addition, your poison and envenom damage is increased by 25 (maybe 50?) percent.

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Q u o t e:
I wholeheartedly agree with removing the weapon swap playstyle. I did ruptureless Mut for a while with dagger swapping, and it was clunky and definitely not fun. I eventually dropped my beloved PvE Mutilate spec and started raiding as combat.

I think poisons, specifically instant and deadly, need to scale with AP better. I have absolutely zero data to back this up, but seems to me that IP and DP damage hasn't really increased from starting Ulduar to T9 level gear.

Also, Rupture needs to be in every PvE rotation. We're seeing now, with dagger swapping and combat Armor Pen stacking, that Rupture is being left behind. There should be talents in the deep Assassination AND Combat trees that promote using Rupture. Easy idea: New Mut talent that makes Ruptures crit, and a new Combat talent that mimics the 2 piece T9 set bonus (albeit with a much higher proc rate; 2 piece T9 rarely procs).

Lastly, Mutilate needs a real DPS increasing cooldown. Cold Blood is pretty useless when you're at 50%+ crit, raid buffed. My idea: 3 minute cooldown, 15 second duration. For the duration, your instant poison has a 100% to proc. In addition, your poison and envenom damage is increased by 25 (maybe 50?) percent.

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i agree that rupture needs to be brough back into our rotations but i dont think talents mimicking the t8 and 9 set bonuses would be appropriate for wrath of the lich king since the effects exist on gear

as for the CB statement. yes, CB needs to be useful in pve and the suggestion you give is similar to what mine is (double all poison damage for 15 seconds) but CB should NOT buff envenom's damage, it would cause issues with pvp by allowing an already powerful move to deal even more spell damage. poisons are fine to buff, envenom isnt

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Q u o t e:
I think poisons, specifically instant and deadly, need to scale with AP better. I have absolutely zero data to back this up, but seems to me that IP and DP damage hasn't really increased from starting Ulduar to T9 level gear.

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They do scale with AP. In fact, a few patches ago, I'm pretty sure DP got its AP coefficient buffed. "Enough" is tough to judge.

The problem is what poisons scale with.

IP scales with most things (not arpen), though it only scales half as well with crit as other things, due to the 150% crit bonus on spells (as opposed to 200% on crits from physical damage). But thisdoesn't really matter, since IP will always be used. Obviously I mean assassination - replace with WP for combat.

OTOH, DP scaling is much worse. It doesn't scale at all with crit. But furthermore, it doesn't scale at all with haste or hit (post spell cap), unless you're weapon swapping. You will always refresh a DP before it runs out, assuming no weapon swapping. Past spell hit cap, pre-white hit cap, at least more white hit will generate more IP procs - you don't need more DP procs though, except when stacking.

Interestingly, with weapon swapping, getting that extra white swing to land and proc DP becomes more important, because you have a much smaller refresh window. So weapon swapping actually brings more scaling stats to DP uptime.

On that note, I really need more expertise. It's killin me.

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Q u o t e:

Also, Rupture needs to be in every PvE rotation. We're seeing now, with dagger swapping and combat Armor Pen stacking, that Rupture is being left behind. There should be talents in the deep Assassination AND Combat trees that promote using Rupture. Easy idea: New Mut talent that makes Ruptures crit, and a new Combat talent that mimics the 2 piece T9 set bonus (albeit with a much higher proc rate; 2 piece T9 rarely procs).

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Been suggested a million times already. I think they don't want to give away set bonuses as freebies, so they're gonna do something different. Hopefully it won't mean that all future bonuses will be boring.

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Q u o t e:

Lastly, Mutilate needs a real DPS increasing cooldown. Cold Blood is pretty useless when you're at 50%+ crit, raid buffed. My idea: 3 minute cooldown, 15 second duration. For the duration, your instant poison has a 100% to proc. In addition, your poison and envenom damage is increased by 25 (maybe 50?) percent.

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Gotta watch PvP. Sadly, that's what this comes down to. While you would think that making a poison/envenom based cooldown will mitigate this, sneaky rogues will find ways around it. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but for whatever reason, it looks like they want to push assassination away from cooldowns. But seriously, fix Cold Blood. Please.

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Q u o t e:


They do scale with AP. In fact, a few patches ago, I'm pretty sure DP got its AP coefficient buffed. "Enough" is tough to judge.

The problem is what poisons scale with.

IP scales with most things (not arpen), though it only scales half as well with crit as other things, due to the 150% crit bonus on spells (as opposed to 200% on crits from physical damage). But this doesn't really matter, since IP will always be used. Obviously I mean assassination - replace with WP for combat.

OTOH, DP scaling is much worse. It doesn't scale at all with crit. But furthermore, it doesn't scale at all with haste or hit (post spell cap), unless you're weapon swapping. You will always refresh a DP before it runs out, assuming no weapon swapping. Past spell hit cap, pre-white hit cap, at least more white hit will generate more IP procs - you don't need more DP procs though, except when stacking.

Interestingly, with weapon swapping, getting that extra white swing to land and proc DP becomes more important, because you have a much smaller refresh window. So weapon swapping actually brings more scaling stats to DP uptime.

On that note, I really need more expertise. It's killin me.




Been suggested a million times already. I think they don't want to give away set bonuses as freebies, so they're gonna do something different. Hopefully it won't mean that all future bonuses will be boring.



Gotta watch PvP. Sadly, that's what this comes down to. While you would think that making a poison/envenom based cooldown will mitigate this, sneaky rogues will find ways around it. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but for whatever reason, it looks like they want to push assassination away from cooldowns. But seriously, fix Cold Blood. Please.

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Well said.

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Q u o t e:
Haste and white hit buffs would not stomp the desire to weapon swap to maximize dps. The only way that would happen would have to be a number of changes:

Deadly poison's proc would have to be dropped down to a level where it'll essentially only proc once every 12 seconds.That itself is horribly annoying, but is the ONLY way I wouldn't weapon swap on my rogue. Since it'll take a full minute to get a full stack of deadly on a target, that means Deadly poison tick damage has to be altered extensively for anything below a stack of 5. As does Envenom's damage for anything less then 5 deadly's on the target.

The ONLY way to discourage rogue weapon swaps is to make the likelihood of deadly falling off a very real concern.

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Or a small but significant penalty for swapping, mixed in with a small damage bonus (possibly talented) for when deadly poison is applied to a target that already has 5 stacks.

Combat rogues arn't quite there yet since, they don't get any bonus to apply deadly and thus it's very unreliable to swap weapons. Assassination rogues go huge though...

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Q u o t e:
Haste and white hit buffs would not stomp the desire to weapon swap to maximize dps. The only way that would happen would have to be a number of changes:

Deadly poison's proc would have to be dropped down to a level where it'll essentially only proc once every 12 seconds.That itself is horribly annoying, but is the ONLY way I wouldn't weapon swap on my rogue. Since it'll take a full minute to get a full stack of deadly on a target, that means Deadly poison tick damage has to be altered extensively for anything below a stack of 5. As does Envenom's damage for anything less then 5 deadly's on the target.

The ONLY way to discourage rogue weapon swaps is to make the likelihood of deadly falling off a very real concern.

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it already is a real concern without weapon swapping........

cant tell you how many times DP has fallen off while im attacking the boss.

of course, my luck is completly terrible.

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Q u o t e:


I like weapon swapping. Seperates the good rogues from the bad ones. It's easy to tell who weapon swaps and who doesn't just by taking a look at instant poison damage vs mutilate damage on recount.

If blizz wants to give something to rogues then how about that 5% dodge aura. It'll solve rogues utility problem without making us OP in damage.

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Please don't be a slow kid on the block.

Weapon swapping is incredibly annoying, has no place in a raiding environment aside from swapping to de-enrage adds or to account for a phase in a fight.

Who in their right mind would want to potentially switch their offhand weapon at exact 6-8 second intervals for 5-10 minutes. I'd rather not.

weapon swapping isn't so bad with Ippon's swap macro but I hardly imagine it's intended for every mutilate rogue to use it

I just hope it dies and assassination gets some love.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'd much rather see rupture come back in the rotation, than this become the norm.

I do think we should be more proactive if we want this to change... Make guides and mods that make it very easy for a rogue to pick up on weapon swapping. Post them on Rogue forums and ask for a sticky as a guide. Show even the fail-rogue how to get started.

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Q u o t e:
weapon swapping isn't so bad with Ippon's swap macro but I hardly imagine it's intended for every mutilate rogue to use it

I just hope it dies and assassination gets some love.

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TBH Pinch it's possible and fairly easy to make use of macro's but the thing of watching as soon as your DP proc's to switch the weapon than making sure (aside from accounting for all the fight mechanics) that you switch back before the 3s mark and then being lucky to get a proc before it ends only to repeat it again just makes me nauseous.

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Q u o t e:

TBH Pinch it's possible and fairly easy to make use of macro's but the thing of watching as soon as your DP proc's to switch the weapon than making sure (aside from accounting for all the fight mechanics) that you switch back before the 3s mark and then being lucky to get a proc before it ends only to repeat it again just makes me nauseous.

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I don't think you've seen the macro. It swaps for you automatically using weapon sets so you don't have to pay attention to poison timers

2 macros:

hit this one when you log on (initialization macro)
/run ws=CreateFrame("FRAME","WS")u=UseEquipmentSet function g()d=nil for i=1,40 do n,_,_,s,_,_,x,c=UnitDebuff("target",i)if n=="Deadly Poison IX" and c=="player" then d=(x-GetTime()>5 and s==5) end end if d then u("IP") else u("DP") end end

this turns weapon swapping on/off
/run if not aso then ws:RegisterEvent("UNIT_COMBAT")ws:SetScript("OnEvent",g)DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Autoswap On")aso=true else ws:UnregisterEvent("UNIT_COMBAT")DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Autoswap Off")aso=nil end

you'll need 2 item sets in the blizzard itemrack, one named IP and one named DP

For anyone that can't read the code, here is what it does:
- You target something that is in combat that doesn't have a 5 stack of your deadly poison, it swaps to the DP set
- When you hit 5 stacks of deadly poison, it'll swap to the IP set
- When DP has 5 seconds remaining, it'll swap back to the DP set
- When DP is refreshed, it'll swap back to the IP set

You have to do nothing. The only thing on your end is the annoying GCD's caused by the swaps.

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Q u o t e:
I wholeheartedly agree with removing the weapon swap playstyle. I did ruptureless Mut for a while with dagger swapping, and it was clunky and definitely not fun. I eventually dropped my beloved PvE Mutilate spec and started raiding as combat.

I think poisons, specifically instant and deadly, need to scale with AP better. I have absolutely zero data to back this up, but seems to me that IP and DP damage hasn't really increased from starting Ulduar to T9 level gear.

Also, Rupture needs to be in every PvE rotation. We're seeing now, with dagger swapping and combat Armor Pen stacking, that Rupture is being left behind. There should be talents in the deep Assassination AND Combat trees that promote using Rupture. Easy idea: New Mut talent that makes Ruptures crit, and a new Combat talent that mimics the 2 piece T9 set bonus (albeit with a much higher proc rate; 2 piece T9 rarely procs).

Lastly, Mutilate needs a real DPS increasing cooldown. Cold Blood is pretty useless when you're at 50%+ crit, raid buffed. My idea: 3 minute cooldown, 15 second duration. For the duration, your instant poison has a 100% to proc. In addition, your poison and envenom damage is increased by 25 (maybe 50?) percent.

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A friend and I have been talking about Cold Blood lately, and while I love the ability (Good old 21/8/22), it needs an overhaul.

Repeatedly in raids I'm told to "go all out" with dps, and while Assassination will always be my favorite tree, it doesn't have an Adrenaline Rush or Blady Flurry. I can't "blow cooldowns" because I don't have any. Cold Blood, at three minutes, is hardly a "cooldown." When I'm already critting every other Mutilate, it seems pretty blah.

We thought that decreasing the cooldown would be an easy buff, but then again, it'd be pretty gross in pvp. I just wish it had more oomph.

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Q u o t e:


I don't think you've seen the macro. It swaps for you automatically using weapon sets so you don't have to pay attention to poison timers

2 macros:
...

you'll need 2 item sets in the blizzard itemrack, one named IP and one named DP

For anyone that can't read the code, here is what it does:
- You target something that is in combat that doesn't have a 5 stack of your deadly poison, it swaps to the DP set
- When you hit 5 stacks of deadly poison, it'll swap to the IP set
- When DP has 5 seconds remaining, it'll swap back to the DP set
- When DP is refreshed, it'll swap back to the IP set

You have to do nothing. The only thing on your end is the annoying GCD's caused by the swaps.

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You're right, I hadn't seen the macro yet, but you do know Blizzards stance on macro's that do the work for you?

Maybe you should hide it at least until they fix us so this does not need to be done.

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Q u o t e:

You're right, I hadn't seen the macro yet, but you do know Blizzards stance on macro's that do the work for you?

Maybe you should hide it at least until they fix us so this does not need to be done.

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Actually quite the opposite, more people should learn to use this macro, if nothing is changed it will just make more rogues better (which to be honest isn't a horrible thing) and give a little incentive to blizzard to changing something...

I just hope the stance they take is not: well lets break the macros.

Edit: As for people going: well lets hide it so I can be better longer... Blizzard sees the macros we use, probably even more so if I rogue from Premonition is using it.

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Q u o t e:


This is a myth. We haven't made a change like that.

We think the problems with swapping weapons get overstated a lot. There is some theoretical evidence that you can get a small dps increase by swapping weapons. In reality, many of the rogues who try it find that it's too prone to error given the marginal benefit. If you can make it work, that's great for you, but we don't think that weapon swapping will be the typical way for rogues to max out their dps.

Now if it got the point where the typical raiding rogue was dependent on swapping weapons, we'd probably do something about it.

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I find using the macro I posted is little effort for a 300-600 dps increase on mostly static fights without too much swapping (i.e. not Jaraxxus).

Do you consider it a problem, or will everyone just learn to adopt it, like Hunters in Sunwell with their steadyshot macro?

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Q u o t e:
For anyone that can't read the code, here is what it does:
- You target something that is in combat that doesn't have a 5 stack of your deadly poison, it swaps to the DP set
- When you hit 5 stacks of deadly poison, it'll swap to the IP set
- When DP has 5 seconds remaining, it'll swap back to the DP set
- When DP is refreshed, it'll swap back to the IP set

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Wow I didn't think those conditionals and functions were usable on the WoW client. The passivity of this concerns me.