Oranges taste delicious

Here they are, in all their legendary glory.

Golad, Twilight of Aspects
Tiriosh, Nightmare of Ages

The proc takes forever to build (as the stacking agi did in the previous stages) and if you don't pool energy properly in certain specs at the proper time you can waste a few seconds of an already short proc.

I haven't PvP'd much since season 5, which was during WotLK, but I do find the occasional battleground fun. PvP is particularly fun when it resembles vanilla WoW where you could gear people to death and 3 shot them; or stunlock them to death with or without mace specialization.

After the 25 man last night I hearthed to Hinterlands, flew for 15 seconds and turned in. Ravenholdt manner was in flames! I won't ruin the ending for anyone else doing the line though. So I turned in, got my goodies, used my landslide scrolls and pre-cut queen's garnets, and invited a few people from guild to do an AB (BG weekend). I of course hadn't PvP'd in a while, as I mentioned, so I solo queued (oops), got in, and no one else did, and all was ruined. Afterwards I did an AB with Levik and Skone and we destroyed everyone but still lost 1550/1600 or round about.

If you haven't seen the video of Eclipsy-Darkspear (he has since xferred) it is quite hilarious pvping with the legendaries. I would kill most anyone within 3 seconds if they didn't burn their trinket quickly. I should note it is considerably more fun to kill clothies who are rolling around in Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest form.

I'm quite curious what kind of damage increase it is going to be in a raid since I am PvE focused typically, I might hop in an LFR or two before next week's raid and see how everything is rolling.

As always thanks for reading, please leave comments or questions below!

-Ochiru

Edit: Fixed html coloring for legendaries, can't get the TGS java roll-over to work for some reason. Removed introduction.

Clarity

Just to quickly explain in case there was any confusion in the previous post; I would only recommend using the Deadened Nerves spec in Zon'ozz heroic and Ultraxion reg/heroic, due to the inability to backstab throughout the entire fight on Ultraxion, and due to the inability to stay behind Zon'ozz during black (for group heals and survivability). That spec will however help greatly if you are staying Assassination since it gives you an extra 10% damage reduction and +20% healing recieved, the other option would be of course to have one of your specs be Combat. If you have a second set of gear with forging to haste/expertise (if not capped or close) Combat dual would be smart to use.

-Ochiru

Dual Assassination

Other than the obviousness of the title there is good reason for being dual Assassination spec in my opinion, especially if you're main spec is Assassination anyway. There is a less obvious difference in my main spec from most traditional Assassination specs, but I'm sure if you looked for a minute you'd see it.

I was browsing Elitist Jerks a while back and checking some work of mine with their Assassination guide, and it turns out they have very little math actually shown on their reasoning for choosing certain aspects to a spec or BiS list. I've said before and I'll say again I appreciate Aldriana and Antiarc's theorycrafting and I think they're very good, and great with mods and math. As for other people who post guides on Ej, I find them less credible and less reliable. An IRL friend of mine who is a highly skilled rogue (in both theory and execution) also used to do some major theorycrafting with his own spreadsheets and math told me that one of the guide writers was not very good and to not really trust his word without my own testing. Most of the time I do my own testing, but since Cataclysm I've had/put in less time doing my own testing. I do still test a decent amount, but nothing like I once did. My friend hasn't been playing in t13 so I can't really bounce anything off of him anymore either. With that, I'll get back into my Assassination dual speccing with reasoning you will probably not find elsewhere.

There are two fairly common Assassination specs, one is 31/2/8 the other is 31/3/7. For my "main" raiding spec I do the 31/2/8. The adjustment in my main spec is that I use the Vendetta Glyph ever since I obtained 4pc t13, and I drop the Backstab Glyph in its place since it is the least valuable. For those who don't know, the Vendetta glyph's 20% bonus is factored after the 4pc so you may think it is 30 (base) x1.2 = 36 + 9 (4pc bonus) = 45 seconds, however it is 30 (base) + 9 = 39 x 1.2 = 47.8s; so roughly a 20% damage bonus for 48 seconds.

The alternate spec I use is specifically for Ultraxion, and it would be great for heroic Ultraxion if I were doing that in my 1-night-a-week semi-pug group. Since you cannot Backstab on Ultraxion anyway, there is no point to have the Backstab Glyph or Murderous Intent. When you drop the 2 talent points you need to typically put into Murderous Intent you can also drop the 1 point in Deadly Brew (a typical filler talent people take), and use all 3 of those now available talent points into Deadened Nerves x3 which reduces all damage you take by 10%. Now you might be thinking, "Well Sub gets Enveloping Shadows alternatively which is 30% reduction in AoE + feint and that is 80% reduction every third Hour." True, except you get the debuff each time you stay out on an Hour in heroic so you have to Heroic Will two of every three anyway. Sub also loses FAR more damage with the inability to Ambush during Shadowdance, and losing Backstab in their main rotation, so that isn't a positive at all for a fight with such a severe DPS requirement and enrage timer.

While you're alternating Cloak/Feint and staying out every third hour you take 135k instead of 150k each Feint and of course nothing when you Cloak. I was hoping the incoming damage would only be 120k instead of 135k, however the damage reduction is of course of the original value of 300k making it 270k/2, 135k. The frontal damage of Assassination is quite high due to the current value weight on Expertise; and most rogues of all specs shouldn't have trouble getting close to the Expertise cap. Additionally having Vendetta glyph instead of the "normal" Backstab glyph improves the frontal/single target damage by even more. Something less-experienced Assassination rogues also might not know is that once you're 2pc t13 and a boss is below 35% you need to weave Mutilates with Backstabs depending on your energy generation. When you have Heroism, or Overkill, or Tricks of the Trade active (6s every 30s) you will need to weave, drastically lowering the bonus you get from Murderous Intent anyway. As as side note: fights like Zon'ozz where you need to be in "front" during black phase for AoE heals and damage reduction it also helps possibly dropping Murderous Intent for the damage reduction, since you need to be in frontal below 35% quite a bit anyway, and of course....the weaving issues.

Quick Recovery is something that a lot of people forget about. When you're pushing heroics or in a progression oriented guild it helps quite a bit to have some of these things that are standard in Assassination, but unavailable in other specs. People often, especially lately, think Assassination is a poor quality spec, hopefully this post will change some peoples minds about the benefits it has.

Now I'm only 396 item level (as of tonight) and I hadn't put my Synapse Springs on my newly turned in 397 vanq gloves, but for people who think Assassination damage is low...this is for you.

Now in fairness World of Logs has Combat and Sub still parsing higher, even on Ultrax, but those guys are all 400il+ and 4-5 item levels can make a pretty massive difference.

Edit: changed link colors.

Well!

Clearly my judgement was off on my first post of 4.3. My "guess" for which specs would be most successful was completely opposite of what is true. According to Simcraft, and most logs, it goes Sub > Comb > Assass for single target, Comb > Sub > Assass (probably) for a 2-3 target fight, and I would expect Assass > Comb > Sub for a frequent 5+ target encounter since it has the best aoe but not the best "cleave".

I still value Assassination much higher than Simcraft does since I feel you get more benefit out of 2pc/4pc than other specs might, I think sub benefits immensely as well, but combat I would anticipate nothing but more energy capping issues, especially as the gear progresses.

Sub has a large dps drop if you can't backstab / ambush on an encounter, which currently Ultraxion you cannot do either at any point in the fight, but most others you can. It is more difficult to do so on Zon'ozz during black phase when he faces the raid and you are "supposed" to be grouped up, but with feint and perma recup you can probably stay out and not get yourself killed, but you may irritate your healers. Someone told me you can't backstab on spine originally and I guess they meant tendons specifically, but I vanish garrote and I tested backstabbing and it works so that wasn't accurate.

If Sim is correct, and it typically is, about single target fights then Sub in full t13 heroic will be topping the others, minus Ultraxion, and possibly Zon'ozz depending on your raid and what you're required to do.

I am strongly considering going back to Sub for a couple weeks to see how much better I parse, but currently I'm still nearly always the top of my 1 night raid and I rank quite well on worldoflogs.com. I have many top 10 parses.

Sub is considerably harder than Assass and Comb, I used to be able to do it successfully so I'm sure I'd be fine after a bit of practice in LFR or w/e. I'll keep you posted!

As usual if you ever have any questions for me or anything to say feel free to mail me/msg me in game on Lightbringer if you can find me or commenting here would be even better.