Bored.

Assassination bores the shit out of me.

There is one debuff you have to actually work to keep up: Rupture.  Other than that it's just Mutilate, Dispatch, Envenom in some order and try not to fall asleep while you "pool" energy.  I say "pool" because I think it's just a fancy way of saying "wait around and do nothing".  Assassination also has one, ONE!, cooldown (cooldown) which is unique to the spec, and it is possibly the most unimaginative and boring ability in the history of video games.  It changes nothing about your rotation, you just hit it and continue on as if nothing happened.

So, why do I care? Why not just play one of the other specs?

Because I care about killing bosses.  Assassination is about 10k DPS ahead of Combat and about 5k ahead of Subtlety in single target encounters for my current gear.  This makes it the default spec for most boss fights, unless of course there is a cleave involved.

Oh the curse of the cleave.

Hooray!  This fight has a cleave!  I can play Combat! This all sounds great, except that with Blade Flurry on you have even less energy than when playing Assassination.  Since Rupture isn't transferred to the second target you also drop it from the rotation. In the one case where another spec is viable that spec is rendered boring by the very ability which makes it viable.

I wish I could laugh at the irony, but I fell asleep between Mutilates.

Food Fight

So I am stuck at work while my guild is raiding. So instead of killing myself I decided to run some sims! 

Sim 1

Sim 2

Can anyone find the difference between these 2 sims?

C'mon! I gave you a hint right there in the title of the post..

I'll wait..

Ok fine I'll tell you... 25 agility.

Those 2 sims represent the difference between the very best food available (300 stats) and the next best thing (275 stats).

So roughly 50 DPS or 18,000 damage over the course of a 6 minute fight. This represents slightly less than 1 melee swing at these gear levels (T14 Heroic).

1 melee swing...

But here is the kicker, these sims actually show a 50 DPS loss from using the very best food available.

Go check if you don't believe me.

So what is the deal?

R.N.G.

In full BiS Heroic T14 gear, over the course of 10,000 fights lasting ~7.5 minutes, the benefits of using the 300 stat food can be completely and totally lost to randomness. 

That is how pathetically small the difference is.

Now, this is not to say that there is no actual benefit. Using a higher number of sims (500,000) the damage increase is around 88 DPS, or 31,500 damage in a 6 minute fight.

But think about the incredible amount of time, effort and gold it takes to make the 300 stat foods as opposed to 275 stat feasts where mats can be gathered by all members of the raid.

Is this really worth it?

No.

Now, before you freak out and call me a lazy, useless, bottom-feeding, mouth-breathing scrub of a rogue hear me out. I am not advocating just saying "Fuck it, it doesn't do anything, don't bother, go play Borderlands 2 instead." What I am saying is that if you really want to improve your output there are much better uses of your time, energy and gold.

You can use the gold to buy gear, enchants, gems, flasks and potions. You can use your time and effort to watch videos, study fight mechanics, examine logs, run sims and actually play your character! Any of these things will yield a much greater boost to your output than 25 measly stats ever will.

Level Up: Enhancement Shaman

I just got my little Dwarf Shaman up to 85 this week. Enhancement is a pretty fun spec to play, it definitely has its shortcomings, but overall I enjoyed it. Here is a little rundown of the ups and downs of leveling an enhancement shaman.

Fun stuff:

AoE – Large numbers are cool, but many little numbers are pretty damn cool too. Throw up a Flame Shock, spread it around with some Lava Lash, pop Fire Nova and enjoy. The kicker here is that every mob with Flame Shock explodes hitting every other mob within 10 yards. The damage scaling with each new mob is exponential; with 2 mobs you get 2 hits, 3 mobs is 6 hits, 4 mobs is 12 hits. If you get a group of 10 mobs all clumped up within 10 yards you get 90 hits with 1 ability. With this many mobs your screen is literally filled with sexy little yellow numbers, blanketing you in their warm glow.

This is your face on Fire Nova.

Ranged attacks – Coming from playing a rogue I'm not accustomed to being able to do anything without standing right next to the enemy. Having a wide variety of attacks to use while running in or changing targets is definitely a plus.

Ghost Wolf – So, so, so ridiculously awesome for leveling. Not quite as useful as stealth but amazing when paired up with Earthgrab Totem. Basically you can just run past mobs, pick up quest items while staying shape-shifted, drop your earth grab and be out of combat before they even get out of the root. Works wonders in caves and buildings where you can't mount too.

Not so fun stuff:

Quick burn the boss!

Heroism!

Ascendance!

Elemental Mastery!

Feral Spirit!

Fire Elemental Totem!

Stormlash Totem!

Wait?! What do you mean the boss is dead?! I didn't even do anything yet!

Now I know some of these are optional talents and all of this of course only applies at level 90 but the principle is the same at lower levels just with slightly less abilities. I'm also sure the order of a lot of these is wrong, but that really isn't the point. The point us that the set up time to start getting into your normal rotation is frustratingly long and repetitive.

A good dungeon is fast paced. Tanks know how to chain pull, healers know how to get mana back on the run, and DPS know how to keep up. Bosses die quickly, especially in low level instances. All of this ramp up time means that you spend very little time, if any at all, actually going through your rotation.

The verdict:

All in all I like the spec, and my main issues are somewhat nullified by longer encounters, so I think this spec would be a ton of fun to play in raid. I'll have to wait until MoP launches to find out though; I'm running out of time and I need to get my 5^th and final melee class up to 85. Only retribution paladin remains. And for those keeping score its only 5 because feral druids don't count. I'm all about stabbing, hitting, smashing and slicing not pawing, scratching, purring and whatever else you crazy kitties do.

Stay tuned after launch for my rundown of rogue leveling in MoP as well as my Level Up post for the paladin.

Welcome!

Welcome to Hit That With This. A World of Warcraft blog dedicated to melee DPS.

I'm Star, a rogue and raider guilded with Apotheosis of Eldre'Thalas. When I'm not on my rogue sticking daggers into raid bosses you can find me on my many melee alts; smashing, stabbing, poking and crushing whatever I can get my hands on.

Thanks for visiting and check back for updates throughout Mists of Pandaria for everything you ever wanted to know about smashing things with other things.