21/20/10 anyone?
I'm a dagger user since the very beginning. Even though WoW offers countless talent combinations most dagger using rogues sooner or later end up with one of three basic approaches: Preparation build, Sealfate build or Combat-Dagger build. What these builds have in common is that they focus on high crits and moves performed from behind (Ambush, Backstab), thus they all have points spend in Lethality, Improved Backstab and Opportunity.
Apart from that there are big differences in what the builds focus on.
Preparation build
This spec combines the two powerful talents Preparation and Coldblood. It focuses on openers and cooldowns. In PvP you have large breaks between fights and thus your cooldowns including Preparation will be ready most of the time when you need them. Combined with your powerful openers they will help you win a fight. This spec enables you to perform great stunlocks and get off two critting Eviscerates per fight, when you are prepared. The fact that Eviscerate is mostly independant from gear makes this spec very powerful even if you have weak gear.
In raid situations however a Preparation build is comparably weak. You won't get to attack often out of stealth, so half your points are wasted. You won't have many breaks between fights so your cooldowns won't cut it for you either. You will have access to great epic items, however this spec doesn't buff white damage which profits the most from obtaining better equipment.
Sealfate Build
The Sealfate dagger spec acknowledges the fact that backstabs have a very high crit chance by putting 5 points into Sealfate. That way you have a very nice combopoint generation without being dependant on openers like a prep build is. Especially with weaker gear the frequent finishers, be it Eviscerate, Rupture or Slice&Dice, result in a good bunch of extra dps.
However, as mentioned before, finishers aren't really scaling with better gear. On a certain gear level combat heavy builds will outdamage this build.
And there's another problem: SF builds are weak if the individual fights are too short to really build up CP.
Still this build does a bit better in most PvE situations than a Preparation spec while it's still quite powerful in PvP. 110 Energy allow you to do powerful opening combinations like Ambush-Gauge or CS-SS-Gauge. Coldblood, Imp Eviscerate and Imp Ambush all buff your burst damage potential which is especially useful vs casters.
Combat-Dagger Build
Combat-Dagger specs were non-existent when the game was young. This changed when more and more players were doing end-game raids.
As said before, finisher efficiency is mostly independant from your equipment, and Backstabs also derive large portions of their overall damage from a fixed bonus which is not affected by weapon damage. So the only source of damage that scales perfectly with better equipment are normal melee attacks: A better weapon or increased attack power is raising your weapon damage which is directly reflected by a proportional increase of your white damage. The same holds true for crit and hit bonuses. With a certain gear level the best way to deal highest possible damage in raids is to have Slice&Dice up as often as possible and invest talent points into Dual-Wield spec and Precision to make sure you score as many melee hits as possible. The remaining talent points are usually put into Dagger spec and Blade Flurry.
This means incredible high sustained dps, but it also means no Coldblood, no Imp Eviscerate, no Preparation, no 50 energy Cheap-Shot, awful cp generation... Combat-dagger builds lack burst damage and stunlock ablities, making them pretty weak in PvP.
Now many dagger rogues are in a quandary. They spend lots of time in raids, and they get invited as main dps. But while speccing combat dagger is the best you can do for the raid (or that's at least the common opinion), it's really giving you a hard time when you want to PvP which is also an important aspect of the game.
Isn't there a dagger spec with higher sustained damage than the Sealfate spec but with more viability in PvP than a combat dagger spec?
Well, I think this 21/20/10 build might offer a solution to rogues that can't decide between topping damage meter and PvP viability. Compared to a classical Combat-Dagger build you lose 4% crit and Bladeflurry, but you get a longer Slice&Dice duration and Coldblood and have 3 points left to either buff your poisons or go for Improved Eviscerate.
Especially with some of the Bonescythe set bonuses in mind, Coldblood might prove handy:
4 parts of Bonescythe and you'll get "Your Backstab, Sinister Strike and Hemorrhage critical hits cause you to regain 5 energy."
Imagine a typical PvE fight: You approach the mob unstealthed with full energy. If one of your Backstabs crits, you get a 2 secs headstart on S&D worth about 50 damage. If your first Backstab is a normal hit, pop CB and you are on the safe side.
Or imagine a PvP 1on1 fight: Either start with Cheap Shot - CB-Sinisterstrike - Gauge - restealth giving you a nice headstart that wouldn't be possible with a normal combat-build - or start the fight with a 100% crit Ambush.
8 parts of Bonescythe and you'll get "Your Eviscerate has a chance per combo point to reveal a flaw in your opponent's armor, granting a 100% critical hit chance for your next Backstab, Sinister Strike or Hemorrhage."
An Eviscerate that will let the next Backstab auto crit sounds worth the cp and energy spent when you can make it crit aswell. Especially as 3 points in Imp S&D allow you to keep S&D up all the time even though you eviscerate occasionally.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the 21/20/10 spec becoming more popular over the coming months.
Apart from that there are big differences in what the builds focus on.
Preparation build
This spec combines the two powerful talents Preparation and Coldblood. It focuses on openers and cooldowns. In PvP you have large breaks between fights and thus your cooldowns including Preparation will be ready most of the time when you need them. Combined with your powerful openers they will help you win a fight. This spec enables you to perform great stunlocks and get off two critting Eviscerates per fight, when you are prepared. The fact that Eviscerate is mostly independant from gear makes this spec very powerful even if you have weak gear.
In raid situations however a Preparation build is comparably weak. You won't get to attack often out of stealth, so half your points are wasted. You won't have many breaks between fights so your cooldowns won't cut it for you either. You will have access to great epic items, however this spec doesn't buff white damage which profits the most from obtaining better equipment.
Sealfate Build
The Sealfate dagger spec acknowledges the fact that backstabs have a very high crit chance by putting 5 points into Sealfate. That way you have a very nice combopoint generation without being dependant on openers like a prep build is. Especially with weaker gear the frequent finishers, be it Eviscerate, Rupture or Slice&Dice, result in a good bunch of extra dps.
However, as mentioned before, finishers aren't really scaling with better gear. On a certain gear level combat heavy builds will outdamage this build.
And there's another problem: SF builds are weak if the individual fights are too short to really build up CP.
Still this build does a bit better in most PvE situations than a Preparation spec while it's still quite powerful in PvP. 110 Energy allow you to do powerful opening combinations like Ambush-Gauge or CS-SS-Gauge. Coldblood, Imp Eviscerate and Imp Ambush all buff your burst damage potential which is especially useful vs casters.
Combat-Dagger Build
Combat-Dagger specs were non-existent when the game was young. This changed when more and more players were doing end-game raids.
As said before, finisher efficiency is mostly independant from your equipment, and Backstabs also derive large portions of their overall damage from a fixed bonus which is not affected by weapon damage. So the only source of damage that scales perfectly with better equipment are normal melee attacks: A better weapon or increased attack power is raising your weapon damage which is directly reflected by a proportional increase of your white damage. The same holds true for crit and hit bonuses. With a certain gear level the best way to deal highest possible damage in raids is to have Slice&Dice up as often as possible and invest talent points into Dual-Wield spec and Precision to make sure you score as many melee hits as possible. The remaining talent points are usually put into Dagger spec and Blade Flurry.
This means incredible high sustained dps, but it also means no Coldblood, no Imp Eviscerate, no Preparation, no 50 energy Cheap-Shot, awful cp generation... Combat-dagger builds lack burst damage and stunlock ablities, making them pretty weak in PvP.
Now many dagger rogues are in a quandary. They spend lots of time in raids, and they get invited as main dps. But while speccing combat dagger is the best you can do for the raid (or that's at least the common opinion), it's really giving you a hard time when you want to PvP which is also an important aspect of the game.
Isn't there a dagger spec with higher sustained damage than the Sealfate spec but with more viability in PvP than a combat dagger spec?
Well, I think this 21/20/10 build might offer a solution to rogues that can't decide between topping damage meter and PvP viability. Compared to a classical Combat-Dagger build you lose 4% crit and Bladeflurry, but you get a longer Slice&Dice duration and Coldblood and have 3 points left to either buff your poisons or go for Improved Eviscerate.
Especially with some of the Bonescythe set bonuses in mind, Coldblood might prove handy:
4 parts of Bonescythe and you'll get "Your Backstab, Sinister Strike and Hemorrhage critical hits cause you to regain 5 energy."
Imagine a typical PvE fight: You approach the mob unstealthed with full energy. If one of your Backstabs crits, you get a 2 secs headstart on S&D worth about 50 damage. If your first Backstab is a normal hit, pop CB and you are on the safe side.
Or imagine a PvP 1on1 fight: Either start with Cheap Shot - CB-Sinisterstrike - Gauge - restealth giving you a nice headstart that wouldn't be possible with a normal combat-build - or start the fight with a 100% crit Ambush.
8 parts of Bonescythe and you'll get "Your Eviscerate has a chance per combo point to reveal a flaw in your opponent's armor, granting a 100% critical hit chance for your next Backstab, Sinister Strike or Hemorrhage."
An Eviscerate that will let the next Backstab auto crit sounds worth the cp and energy spent when you can make it crit aswell. Especially as 3 points in Imp S&D allow you to keep S&D up all the time even though you eviscerate occasionally.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the 21/20/10 spec becoming more popular over the coming months.
posted by lithander at 1:32 AM
6 Comments:
Hey, I have been a seal fate rogue for the longest time. My guild has been raiding MC, BWL, and now starting AQ40 so this week I figured for the sake of the guild I should change over to a more "combat" build. I think I'm going to try a 21/20/10 build out. Should alow me to do some PVP and still put out some good white damage in raids. We'll see.
I'd love to see the the 21/20/10 spec list but the link has to be messed up, this can't be the talent spec your talking about?
Assassination Talents - 21 points
Malice - rank 5/5
Ruthlessness - rank 3/3
Improved Slice and Dice - rank 3/3
Relentless Strikes - rank 1/1
Lethality - rank 5/5
Improved Poisons - rank 3/5
Improved Kidney Shot - rank 1/3
Combat Talents - 20 points
Improved Sinister Strike - rank 3/2
Lightning Reflexes - rank 2/5
Deflection - rank 3/5
Endurance - rank 5/2
Riposte - rank 2/1
Mace Specialization - rank 5/5
Subtlety Talents - 10 points
Elusiveness - rank 5/2
Initiative - rank 5/3
Can you please list the correct spec or fix this one?
The rogue review changed it all. The spec I had in mind doesnt exist anymore.
I think the "best" combat dagger spec now is 15/31/5.
When I was lvling I used 2 b combat dagger 15/25/11 (4/5 dual wield with BF and ghostly strike from subt just 2 mention) but that was pre-patch. I've been playing since 1.7 and it helped me a lot at grinding. Though I changed a couple of specs at 60 after 1.12 patch I respecced for free vigor-ini (31/8/12) due 2 having full NS quite some time and wanted 2 try teh 120 energy stuff. But I consider respeccing again and after a big thought and few tries that I've done at test server I considered dumping Adrenaline Rush and delve a bit deeper in Assassination tree with the 18/26/7 build that I link here http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=ihxroxZhjV00EzZVb well many will wonder why I went 2/2 SoH and 2/3 Imp SnD and why a 4/5 Lightning Ref and not something else... I'll explain. SoH all and all is great not for the second benefit (that still is good) but for the 20% increased Feint threat reduction and I don't believe that in raid terms U never use Feint! Plus it increases actual DPS cause rogues without it may need 2 use this ability 3-4 times more than the ones with SoH so it is energy conservative at long term fights, or in other hands instead of Feint and get back for a few secs you can do this and mentain your normal DPS. I've chosen 2/3 Imp SnD cause if u keep opening it at 3 points and higher with 1 at imp SnD there is no chance that there will be a gap between the buffs. At last 4/5 Lightning Ref instead of some other combat filler.... Well it is alwayz nice dodging at PvE cause u help healers at your own way if u get hitten less. Thnx for reading my long post!
Level 60 Rogue (31/8/12)
Assassination (31 points)
Improved Eviscerate - Rank 3/3
Remorseless Attacks - Rank 1/2
Malice - Rank 5/5
Ruthlessness - Rank 3/3
Murder - Rank 2/2
Relentless Strikes - Rank 1/1
Lethality - Rank 5/5
Vile Poisons - Rank 4/5
Cold Blood - Rank 1/1
Seal Fate - Rank 5/5
Vigor - Rank 1/1
Combat (8 points)
Improved Gouge - Rank 3/3
Improved Sinister Strike - Rank 2/2
Improved Backstab - Rank 3/3
Subtlety (12 points)
Opportunity - Rank 5/5
Camouflage - Rank 5/5
Improved Ambush - Rank 2/3
Hi ;)
oh... what mad news!
what do you consider about it?
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