Raivyne Is Hemorrhaging!! Get a Doctor – STAT!

Raivyne Is Hemorrhaging!! Get a Doctor – STAT!

Ruh? WTH? Does this mean what I think it means?!?!? I’m afraid so good citizens of Azeroth… Your trusty Combat Sword Rogue has gone soft err ahh umm Subtle.

ZOMG WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!??

Psst… I am still asking myself the same thing…

Anyway, I’m an adventurous sort of gal so when some rogue said, “man I wish one of us was Hemo” I thought hmm… I’ve been hemo before, and I kinda liked it… Why not try it out again? There was also some mention of raid damage being increased by @ 35% if we had a Hemo rogue. Now, I don’t know about all that… the figure sounds kind of high to me considering Hemo only affects Physical damage. However, I’m too lazy to run the numbers myself, so I’ll accept the figure.

Hey, what the heck – right?

On Tuesday, August 29, 2006 I showed up to raid Hemo – 16/5/30

Assassination Tree: Same as my original 1.12 spec

Combat Tree: 3/3 Imp Gouge and 2/2 Imp SS (oops… meant 2/5 Lightning Reflexes… force of habit)

Subtlety Tree:
MoD – 5/5
Sleight of Hand – 2/2 (Reduces the chance you are hit by melee and ranged attacks by 2% and increases the threat reduced by your feint ability by 20%)
Elusiveness – 2/2 (Reduces the cool down of your vanish and blind abilities by 1.5 minutes)
Camouflage – 2/5 (Increases speed in stealth by 6% and reduces stealth cool down by 2 seconds)
Initiative – 3/3 (75% chance to add an extra combo point when using ambush, garrote or cheap shot)
Ghostly Strike – 1/1 (does 125% weapon damage and increases dodge chance by 15% for 7 seconds)
Imp Sap – 3/3 (90% chance to return to stealth after sapping a target)
Serrated Blades – 3/3 (ignores 5 armor/per level of your target’s armor and increases rupture damage 30%)
Heightened Senses – 2/2 (Increased stealth detection and reduces chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 4%)
Preparation – 1/1
Hemorrhage – 1/1
Deadliness – 5/5 (AP increased by 10%)

What I like:

Sleight of Hand – Assuming your feint normally reduces 100 pts of threat (pulled a number out of thin air for argument’s sake) then it would reduce 120 pts with this talent. Reduced chance to be hit by a crit is just the frosting.

Elusiveness – I always did like this talent, it’s saved my butt a few times!

Ghostly Strike – I love this attack! It crits for like 800 damage (for me) and increases my survivability for 7 seconds, every 20 seconds… It crits a lot btw! (could have just been luck…)

Serrated Blades – any attack that increases my damage to enemies – I like. Increased rupture damage… meh I don’t care.

Heightened Senses – Increases stealth detection (great PvP talent!!) Reduces chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 4% (I barely got hit by firemaw’s spells with this – could have just been a coincidence, but I don’t really believe in coincidences…)

Deadliness – I LOVE THIS!! I have always been a believer in AP (yes AP over crit for me. AP in the form of AGI? even better), so this talent just made me drool. With the 1.12 changes I hunger for AP even more.

What I hated

Talents I had to use just to get to hemo. It’s like this – hemo does better damage with swords, but most of the talents going down are completely useless for a sword rogue in PvE (and PvP for a lot of them). I mean how many times do you cheap shot or garrote anything in a 40 man? Garrote, ok maybe… Cheap Shot – fuhgeddaboudit 90%+ of mobs are immune to it.

Imp Sap is fun for PvP, but for 40 raids its completely useless. Camo could be useful (help get to traps in suppression room faster) but there are so many more rogue talents more useful for raiding.

As for a LOT of the other talents on the way down…

Daggers much?

Ick.

My conclusion?

**News Flash**

Going hemo as a raider makes you a 100% utility class FIRST, damage class last.

Duh.

It’s not that your damage is so horrible that you aren’t even on the meters, in fact I was surprised with how much damage I do as a hemo spec. However, it’s a big shocker going from top 3 – 5 to top 10 –15 as a ROGUE. I went from watching yellow ticks of mostly 500+ to yellow ticks of 200ish. My white damage MH crits were in the 700 – 800’s.

That hurt.

A lot.

Hold me… Please?

~raiv

Holy, FREEEEEEEEEE RESPEC!!!! Batman!

16/35/0

The Breakdown:

Assassination Talents – 16 pts
Improved Eviscerate – 3/3 (+15% damage to Eviscerate)
Malice – 5/5 (+5% to crit)
Murder – 2/2 (+2% (all) damage to Humanoids, Giants, Dragonkin…)
Relentless Strikes – 1/1 (20% chance per combo point to resore 25 energy on finishers)
Lethality – 5/5 (+30% crit damage for Sinister Strike*)
*yes there are more, but they don’t concern me…

Combat Talents – 35 pts
Improved Gouge – 3/3 (Increases the duration of gouge by 1.5seconds)
Improved Sinister Strike – 2/2 (Decreases the energy cost of Sinister Strike by 5)
Deflection – 5/5 (+5% chance to parry)
Riposte – 1/1 (Deals 150% weapon damage and disarms the opponent for 6 seconds)
Precision – 5/5 (+5% chance to hit)
Endurance – 2/2 (Decreases the cool down of Sprint and Evasion by 1.5 minutes)
Improved Sprint – 2/2 (100% chance to remove movement impairing effects when sprint is activated)
Dual Wield Specialization – 5/5 (Increases the damage of your OH weapon by 50%)
Blade Flurry – 1/1 (Increases attack speed by 20%; attacks hit up to other 2 nearby enemies – lasts 15 seconds)
Sword Specialization – 5/5 (5% chance to gain an extra attack)
Weapon Expertise – 2/2 (+5 to weapon skill)
Aggression – 1/3 (+2% damage to Sinister Strike and Eviscerate)
Adrenaline Rush – 1/1 (+100% energy regeneration for 15 seconds)

What I changed…
Assassination Tree: Picked up 2 pts in murder and dropped 3 in Ruthlessness.

Why? Ruthlessness was a 60% chance to award a combo point after a finisher… Murder ALWAYS does 2% more damage…

Murder Math
Assume – SS = 500 damage/1000 crit
Assume – 5 pt Evis – 1000/2000 crit
Assume – 15 SS + 3 – 5 pt Evis per minute (ideal conditions)
Assume – 25% crit chance

Average SS damage over 100 hits = 625
Average Evis damage over 20 hits = 1250

SS damage over 1 min = 9375 (625*15)
Evis damage over 1 min = 3750 (1250*3)

Average SS damage with Murder = 637.5
Average Evis damage with Murder = 1275

SS damage over 1 min with Murder = 9562.5 (637.5*15)
Evis damage over 1 min with Murder = 3825 (1275*3)

The difference:
1 min damage without murder = 13,125
1 min damage with murder = 13,387.5

That’s 262.5 more damage in one minute with murder than without which = @ 4.38 DPS

Gamebreaking?

Nope, but I doubt the math for 1 to 2 extra combo point(s) per minute (based on 60% chance and 3 finishers a min) comes close to that…

AND I saved a point with Murder…

Combat Tree: Dumped Improved Kick for Endurance. Dumped 2 pts of Aggression for Weapon Expertise. Last but not least… with my extra point from dropping Ruthlessness and my spare point I always have with a combat build I took Improved Sprint.

Why? Endurance > Improved Kick IMO for PvE or PvP. I really only took the 2 pts from Aggression for lack of anything better to dump. Lastly… Improved Sprint rocks! That is all.

Seriously though, I dumped some damage ability for some PvP talents, so I could play with them. They were just too tempting to resist…

All in all this is a nice little spec. I saw some decent improvement in damage from 1.11 to 1.12, despite dropping 2 points of aggression. What can I say? I love the combat tree almost as much as I <3 my swords!

Greetings Sports Fans!!!

I am for real going to update this blog! (really this time) I have lots of things to write about, just haven’t made the time to do it.

Articles to follow (in no particular order):

What I did with my free 1.12 respec
What I did with my 40g 1.12 respec and why
The xpac rogue
Guild Premades
Thoughts on AB (might not do this one…)
Darnassus: The low level horde invasion. (Illidan server)
Nefarian Gets Neutered by the new Destined
Down to business with Discord
Photoshop Journey
A New Chapter for Shadow Guard

I will try to finish one a night for the next week or so.

~raiv

Update coming soon!

OMG I had no idea it had been over a month since my last entry! I went on vacation for two weeks and everything just went to shit! lol anyway i'll write up and update this weekend from home. And i'll try to do weekly updates from now on.

~raiv