The changes to Saber Slash are extremely welcome. However, it still needs some work. I picked up Dragon’s Cry earlier this evening and, even with that, could not do nearly the same amount of damage I could with Mutilate. The problem is that it only generates one combo point instead of two. In order to fix this, either lower the energy cost of saber slash to 20 or allow it to also generate two combo points. With the bursty meta being the way it is, lowering the cost would not work as well as increasing the amount of points it generates because of the global cooldown. It would still take twice as long to generate each combo point and by the time I generated two with SS (without having to pop tea, which would be the point of lowering the cost), I would still have 4 with Muti. The only difference is I would save myself having to pop tea to keep attacking. Tea that would be better used later in a fight when I need to pop a finisher but i’m out of energy.
Therefore, SS needs to generate two combo points to be able to be a viable alternative to Mutilate. And no, raising Mutilate’s cost to 60 would only serve to weaken rogues to a point of unviability (which, of course, is every other class’s wet dream).
Haven’t you heard the bursty meta is over they added like a 40% damage reduction in PVP.
I agree that SS should provide two combo points. Maybe have it so only the first saber slash stack could provide two combo points? So mut doesn’t completely lose it’s niche.
If that’s the concern, then i’d at least do 50% chance to do two points per slash or increasing chance to do two points with every subsequent slash.
If you spec into seal fate you will almost always generate 2 combo points. Adjust your talents for this build…it still uses the assassination tree.
Definitely not “always” as it requires you to crit.
The issue i have w SS ( I also got Dragon’s Cry and had BiS daggers prior to form a comparison) is requiring five stacks to get the full benefit, making SS only competitive on a very small percentage of fights/encounters (i.e. full buffs, fights longer than 1 minute) and objectively worse in every other context, which is the vast majority of gameplay.
I agree, step in the right direction- i reaaaally want to be a sword rogue, but an additional tweak is still needed to be a reasonable selection over Mutilate.
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Nah just reduce it back to 3 stacks with 6% ap scaling on the bleed ticks per stack and 40% increased impact damage per stack. Problem with it is it takes too long to ramp up for a 40 energy ability. It should do more impact damage than mutilate at max stacks because it takes time to ramp and rewards 1 less combo point.
3 Likes
What are you talking about? Saber Slash beats mutilate on longer single target fights. It’s also way easier to get an inventor’s focal sword than Julie’s dagger.
“When using two swords eviscerate now causes your bleeds to be removed from the target and apply “gushing wound”. Gushing wound causes the combined damage of all prior bleeds every second over 15 seconds, any damage caused during gushing wound refreshes further bleeds applied by the rogue to their highest combo point values and duration(does not reapply gushing wound).”
This is a weird idea i had, and is sort of off the cuff…but it was to make SS builds get away from the poison/assass tree and offer a slow ramp up and then sustain build via bleeds. This would also feel completely different from Mut builds. I’m sure the damage would be too high in this example(i think it would tick for like 1k+ per second) but the values are easily changed to make it reasonable.
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source? or did you just make this number up
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If they would just combine Saber Slash and Sinister Strike and reduce the energy cost to 40 (35 with Improved Sinister Strike), I think it would be enough to bring it on par with Mutilate. Especially once combat sword spec can be fully realized in P4.
with this, we could forego having to use envenom and just keep deadly brew on for the passive poison. Combo points could go towards stuns instead of damage output. Not a bad idea at all!
i think combo points would be used for slice and dice and eviscerates still in pve. The rotation would be similar to vanilla(prio evisc and SnD) but would create incentive to take other talents. This rune would be on the chest so you couldn’t take deadly brew at the same time(this is necessary to push people out of assass/poison dmg tree). Builds(in theory) would prio talents which increase bleed damage/bleed combo point generation. At the maximum potential you would have 100% uptime of “gushing wound” and also other bleeds(vanish and reapply garrote would be worth it because it would refresh and not fall off).
The biggest thing with SS is it requires a bis group because SS is massively reliant on the HAT rune.
what build are you using
its performs higher going full assassination tree with carnage rune and HAT with a good crit party. thistle tea should be used to decrease ramp time at opener. it also sounds like you arent managing energy properly
I’m using simonize’s build and rotation. I’m trying to make SS something more than only situationally viable as it only works in a raid with a group.
The problem I was having was my lack of energy to use Sinister Strike, which is supposed to be part of the rotation.
Since I’m using HaT + 5/5 Seal Fate, I’m flooding with combo points and have to dump it into either envenom or slice and dice. So I spend my energy with those and by the time I have energy to use Sinister Strike, my Saber Slash stacks are already falling off and that takes priority.
I’m not sure where I’m messing up, but I liked the idea of Saber Slash buffing Sinister Strike and not being able to use it because I either already have more than enough combo points or don’t have enough energy is kinda annoying. Would you have an idea of what I could be doing wrong and suggestions to fix it?