Sleeping used to be my favorite pastime but recently I seem to have forgot how to do it. SO last night decided to fire up the MoP beta and have a play with my rogue.
Now all through vanilla and up to 85 was always combat spec, when I started cata raiding though switched to assassination. Dragon Soul though doesnt seem to favour the spec though as lots of things that you simply cannot stand behind so couple of weeks ago went back to combat. It only lasted a raid though, couple of fights did higher dps than normal most though was the same or less and for last nights raid slipped back into Assassination spec and out dps’ed my combat self in every fight .
So I do now consider myself Assassination spec and my first thought with playing a rogue in MoP was “OMG Shadowstep!!!!” Now let me explain how amazingly awesome that sounded.
In Combat spec stealth is fairly pointless, you simply run up to something and start hitting it. Doesnt matter if you are standing to the front, side or rear of it the bulk of DPS comes from hitting things with poisons doing a little extra damage.
Assassination spec is different though, poisons play a much larger part of your DPS so items are reforged to Mastery which increases poison damage, this comes at a cost of Expertise which means if you want to hit something you need to hit from behind (Also will use Backstab towards end of fight so obviously need to be behind it then as well). To get behind something at start of fight Stealth is fairly important, when you come out of stealth also get a nice Overkill buff which increases energy regen.
So Shadowstep for an assassination spec rogue is something to get excited about, that plus vanish is an awesome combination in a fight where you have to move away from the boss for a while (lets throw in tricks of the trade too so tank gets aggro). Only no, it won't work like that.
Assassination spec seems to be hit with the “Why bother” stick. The overkill bonus is gone, changes to talent tree means poisons got nerfed, shadowstep itself has been nerfed with the 30% increase in damage to your next Garrote or Ambush gone the movement speed bonus of 70% for 3 seconds is now done to 2 seconds but frankly in pve that won't make a lick of difference.
Every MoP patch I look at the rogue changes and every MoP patch there is nothing but the odd slight change. Which is fine, we work well at the moment and dont need huge drastic changes. However, the small tiny ones have me worried. Assassination and combat seem to be merging into the same thing with slightly different spells. Never really played subtlety but what made that special is now available to everyone so guess thats in the same boat. So looking at things come MoP a rogue will just be a rogue and your spec will just decide what rotation you use rather than how you play the game.
Its still early days and me on my level 85 while being half asleep isn't really the best indication of where rogues are heading and in a years time when I have raiding gear I won't remember what all the fuss was about
