Let's talk about Assassination once again [PvE state in 10.2 patch]

Classes Rogue
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Assassination spec was overnerfed and you know it.

According to Warcraftlogs it’s currently the worst DPS spec for rogues. You may say “but Assa was best at the start, duh?”, yes, it was. Because it was the main target for the outside buffs(such as Power Infusion) and most of the people were undergeared.
Then it was nerfed… and nerfed once again. Currently it is in the middle of the pack. You could say “so that’s good I guess, seems balanced?” - no, it’s not. Because why other specs that are doing the same damage as Assassination in the previous weeks aren’t nerfed? And keep in mind that Assassination damage is kinda inflated because of the outside buffs, not because it’s actually a good spec. That doesn’t seem fair at all.

Second problem - the bane of Assassination spec: M+. After the rework Assassination heavely depends on the burst damage. It’s fine, but in M+ it’s either good damage or bottom of the list. Considering that Assassination is balanced around having the perfect environment to actually perform and we know it’s a very rare opportunity to do so in M+ it’s harder for that spec to do competitive damage. I haven’t seen yet a class that have so complicated AoE rotation. To get the most of it Assa need to use: Mutilate(1), Garrote(2), Rupture(3), Slice and Dice(4), Fan of Knives(5), Envenom(6), Crimson Tempest(7). Keep in mind that I am not even counting ANY CDs… and that we still have combo points mechanics on top of it! So we cannot just press them randomly, we have to calculate it more than most of the other specs and there also other factors(for example the energy pooling for Envenom damage from 4 Tier Set bonus or timing Kingsbane + Shivs for the burst window).

This spec feels like you are putting much effort for a really low gain.
Assassination suffers once again and that’s because it was a great spec in the beginning of the season, but now it’s gonna be at the bottom, just as it was in Dragonflight second season(Aberrus).

My suggestions to make it more competitive and fun to play:
-make SnD passive to reduce the complexity a little and make opener/M+ rotation simplier,
-Fan of Knives should also apply Caustic Spatter debuff on the enemy you are currently attacking, using a single target ability and keeping eye on the timer of it to actually do more AoE/splash damage feels really bad,
-maybe revert the 3% nerf or buff some abilities damage, I would even say that it would be good to reduce the burst damage window in favor of more sustained damage,

Any suggestions? Maybe even objections or supports? Forums were made to have constructive discussion about topics, so I would like to know your opinion about it also!

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Assa always gets nerfed because its borrowed power the spec, blizzard are always fast to nerf the flat % on spells and then usually gear or tier setswill bring us briefly back upto par until that gets nerfed too, been that way since i want to say legion now.

Until they acknowledge that its a pure damage class and should be a top represented class / spec since it can only do damage in terms of role participation, ive just stopped playing rogue cause getting a high for 1 week before being chained nerf isnt worth my mental fortitude anymore.

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One spec has got to be the “worst” at any stage. The fact that our “worst” is still well established in the middle of the pack gives us very little reason to complain honestly.

If you truly care about your performance in general you will learn to play all the specs at a level where you can use them interchangably

I mean I can do that too;

Pistol Shot, Sinister Strike, Dispatch, Slice and Dice, Between the Eyes, Blade Flurry, Echoing Reprimand

And most of your ones are just fire and forget, make sure that they are on thats it.
Pistol Shot and Blade Flurry have rules on when they are to be used as builders.
ER might have a “CD” however its not used as a traditional cooldown in that sense. You just use it when you have it and then play the combopoint game.

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BF and ER have 30s and 45s cooldowns. Different case.

But the point still stands - rogues have it harder than other classes because of such a nuances.

Yes, but why it’s always Assassination though? Outlaw was almost always king of M+.

Wouldn’t say that I agree.
You play Retribution paladin and want to do highest keys possible? Go Protection then.

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Due to the way restless blades works BF is more of a 3-8 second cooldown. Perfectly interchangable as a builder, except that it has decisionmaking on top of that. ER has another effect after its use; The “supercharged” combopoint. And aside from a few lucky cases, you’ll be dealing with that for most of the duration that the ability itself is on cooldown.

That’s exactly my point though?

I don’t think that it is, that sounds like a pretty heavily biased take to me. I mean I get it, you like Assa and now you can’t beat people that play the other 2 specs with it. Thats a far cry from it being bad, though.

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Totally forgot about that, didn’t play Outlaw for a long time. You are right.

Thats true, but this ability adds another layer of complexity, even if it’s just “use finisher at exact combo points number”. Not saying that’s hard or something impossible to control, but if you add others things and play other classes you notice that rogues are one of the most “skill-capped” class.

There’s just one thing… I hate playing other classes/specs more.

There were never a patch where Assa was top spec, maybe in WOTLK. Sub and Outlaw were almost always better. I don’t count first 2-3 weeks of this season, because it was just a start(people are undergeared, so we couldn’t see the full spec potential).

I fear that exactly will happen. After the nerfs other specs are better, other classes/specs will get outside buffs and Assa will end as last 3 once gain.

According to Warcraftlogs Rogues were top in the first 5 weeks, on the sixth after the nerfs Assassination fall 10 places down. Right now, in the week 7, it falls even lower by 3 places, even though that spec didn’t get any nerfs in the meantime. It could mean a few things:
-people(raid leaders) stopped to care about that spec, so they stopped using buffs on it, which eventually made it much weaker,
-other classes got gear and they at last reach their higher potential,

You could also say that “maybe Assa rogues did respec because they noticed that other specs are better now?”, which could also be true, but I wouldn’t say that’s the reason why Assa is getting lower place on the DPS charts. There are still plenty of good Assassination rogues parsing as high as before with almost/bis gear.

Damn, there are classes which are doing more than 103% DMG of the Assassination rogues!
Let’s say that the top logs are from actual top players(duh?) who are playing their classes to the maximum:

Gnarlroot:
Top Assa rog: 376k DPS
Top DPS(Sub rog): 420k DPS
(~11% difference)
Igira:
Top Assa rog: 289k DPS
Top DPS(Fury war): 313k DPS
(~8% difference)
Volcoross:
Top Assa rog: 256k DPS
Top DPS(Sub rog): 283k DPS
(~10% difference)
Larodar:
Top Assa rog: 262k DPS
Top DPS(Forst mage): 292k DPS
(~9% difference)
etc.

Time to respec to Subtlety :stuck_out_tongue:

All that I am saying is the 3% second nerf was just stupid and totally unnecessary.

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Im not sure if you understand but they were nerfed twice because the first nerfs still had Assassination pass everything else by a good 5-7%. The reason a 3% nerf could lead to a 10%+ loss is because the outside buffs are so good on Assassination.

If anything, that needs to be tackled and then Assassination can stand on its own legs again.

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I don’t think I am following your logic… are you saying that the second, 3% nerf, led to +10% dps loss for Assa?

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Yes. Aura nerf or no aura nerf in the end any change not specifically designed otherwise will have an impact on how good (or not) it is to use outside buffs on Assasination.

So if you flat nerf the scaling of the spec by 3% that will for sure end in a bigger than 3% nerf. Especially if those nerfs now mean Assassination is no longer the preferred target of outside buffs. That can scale very hard very quickly

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But wouldn’t that itself make the nerf less impactful? Considering that not everything in our DPS comes from our abilities.
So it should’ve been like 2,4-2,8% instead of 3%?

If we also take the outside buffs in consideration then yeah. That even means Assassination should’ve been buffed, because that spec will underperform even more than before.

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What? If anything it makes them overly impactful. Which you seem to understand because you say this right after;

But no I don’t think they should’ve done that.
This just required more finesse than a flat aura nerf

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I think in Raids it feels fine, but in M+ (mostly PUG) the main Problem is, that damage is so balanced around Kingsbane and Garrote, that it lets you no big space to improvise on any CDs … If you use Bane on the wrong mob that dies to fast it can not splatter any dmg to other mobs//or have just short living (in Splatter Build) Deathmark and Bane are so strong as CD it matters more than every other class CD ever when used wrong. Garrote and Rupture hits 3 targets but only 10 sec after Stealth, and Garrote is even 50% stronger 3 sec after… most Tanks don’t even know or care about. And you wont use Vanish or Dance because you need it paired with kingsbane…

I feel actually I need a complete other spec for every different difficulty, but its hard to see in before if your group is doing Big pulls or small or if they kill fast or not… btw I needed to wrote a macro to tell tanks to not Chainpull if possible just to compete with 10 ilvl lower DDs that pumping with no efforts.

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