Finally, Assassination’s (and WoW’s) last hero class tree is available to test and it is one of the worst to date via lack of direction, synergy, and quality of life.
The Good: Deathstalker’s Mark is conceptually thematic and appears to focus on prio damage which is fine. Singular focus doubles down on this by adding legitmate funnel which works well with toxic splatter. Corrupt the Blood adds ramping bleed damage which could be neat. Bait and Switch seems decently impactful and adds versatility to Assassination’s defensive CDs.
The Bad: Hunt Them Down is one of the most boring hero talents thus far, even if used as a tuning knob, Lingering Darkness has to be missing a zero somewhere in its numeric values… 10% for 3sec is trash and has no interaction with the keystone talent. Symbolic Victory could be a tuning knob but at 10% per shiv is underwhelming in every way, and has no interaction with the keynote. Flensing knives is basically copied and pasted from Systemic Failure. Wouldn’t be a horrible replacement in the spec tree but doesn’t belong here. Clear the witnesses is underwhelming for only being used every two minutes. Follow the blood and Momentum of despair are both aoe centric, but don’t mirror each other for some reason.
The meh: Shadewalker is alright, nothing to write home about but decent quality of life. Shroud of Night and Ethereal Cloak each probably have their own niche uses but wont be defaults.
The egregious: YOU CAN’T USE THE CAPSTONE IN SINGLE TARGET. If you cap your stacks of Deathstalker’s mark, you can’t get the envenom refresh and are forced to burn a vanish. If your target dies while still having deathstalker’s mark, you don’t get the refresh and have to burn a vanish.
All together, the tree lacks any direction, lacks overall impactful gameplay, worsens quality of life via the time for marks and darkest night, lacks originality, and in general shows a significant amount of time wasted.
I would recommend removing Hunt them down, clear the witnesses, flensing knives for bleeds that interact with Deathstalker’s mark by dealing plague damage. Additionally, get rid of the debuf timer or as others have suggested, change the way stacks are built and consumed. Finally Darkest Night NEEDS to proc off marked target deaths.
Really? I must be missing something because everyone of those talents reads “does nothing” to me.
I guess “Hunt them Down” is decent numerically. Pretty much doubles you auto attack damage, but what else is there? Everything else seems to be tuned incredibly low, and Sub can’t even get the cap stone talent to ever proc without stop using Shadowdance.
my concern is that it looks to be massively better for sub than it is for assa
the same can be said of fatebound as well.
both trees benefit from more envenom/dispatch/evis casts, but assa envenoms the least.
for deathstalker, assuming the capstone will be made to work right (in the sense that you apply mark, spend stacks, reapply mark), especially during shadow blades, you evis every second cast. whereas envenom, you gotta get 2 mutilates off, especially with 7cps. the bar just fills slower. so fewer mark charges spent, fewer reapplied, fewer uses of the capstone overall.
gonna be a tuning nightmare and sub will swim in energy
Going to be completely garbage in any target swapping fight, but Any fight where you can sit on one target it might be the best single target spec in the game depending on tuning.
Yeah, agree. Both of the two hero specs for Assassination feels bolted on. I mean why would an assassin be fliping magical coins. That feels a lot more like it would have been for Outlaw/Sub. The former for obvious reasons and the latter has a magic twist to it.
it will not dude. On paper it is the worst. Have you read it? It starts off okay then just goes downhill. Read ANY warlock hero talent and see their overhauled spec tree THEN go beck to sub or Sin and then reply to me to tell me, wow WE ARE DOGSH*T. Id nod with sadness and hug you while we cry in our own tears. I wish i was wrong SO BAD>
the idea is to apply a mark with 3 charges. consume the charges, then start over again.
currently, each time you SS, the 3 charges are reapplied and added up, you never end up consuming them, so the capstone never procs
it’s a simple fix, if the target is marked, do not increase stack count
The whole tree seems forced or placeholder like. Also just the whole idea of having a target that lives long enough for 4 envenoms gives me a huge headache. You’d be lucky for this to even go off twice in a world boss fight let alone even a single time for any solo content.
Rogues are a forgotten left behind class at the moment.
It does have the most ramp up time but if they reduce the need from 4 envenoms to say 3 then it improves substantially.
I think for Assassination 4 envenoms doesn’t make sense given the CP generation of the spec. Realistically 3 envenoms IMO and leave 4 Eviscerates for Sub since it is the spec with the best CP generation.
Yes. If you cap your stacks, you are not going to be able to use them all up before they fall off and using up all the stacks is the entire point of the hero spec.
The question is why Deathstalker’s Mark stack up higher than 3 to begin with. There is no benefit to having more stacks. On the contrary, you want them to be as low as possible to repeatedly proc the capstone talent.
Well yes…all of the trees are…“forced.” Isn’t that the point of designing them?
Idk man I think the tree sounds amazing besides the bug and 3 boring talents. This whole woe is me attitude calling rogues forgotten just kinda comes across as melodramatic. Shrug.
I used world boss as an example. Think about m+ too. How many times has a trash mob lived long enough to take 4 envenoms, while you are still trying to aoe as well. It’s like they only made this entire hero tree with raiding in mind but this game is more than just raiding.
