Random bits of information by a developer

02 November 2008

Final level 80 rogue build

After playing around with variations to the Assassination / Hunger for Blood (HfB) build I think I have finally determined the build that I will be using which is actually the same build I saw from an Orc Rogue on the closed beta. Here's the link to the build. This is probably the highest raid Damage Per Second (DPS) build, assuming you can keep it up. My current build at level 70 is the same but I only have five points into the combat tree (Dual Wield Specialization). The extra Hit rating, 3% crit and longer Slice and Dice (SnD) times will really help when I hit 80. You have to watch SnD, HfB, and Rupture, all of which are DoTs (Damage over Time) or effects that last for a duration. The SnD is refreshed with Envenom which out does Eviscerate by quite a bit of damage now that it scales with Attack Power (AP) at constant 35% of your AP. Envenom is also a direct damage unlike Eviscerate which must factor in armor. Looking the numbers from Dr Damage (looks like Rogues are the only one which are completely done) Envenom at 5 Combo Points (cp) does about 500 more damage on average than Eviscerate, yeah it consumes your Deadly Poison charges, but it has that nice buff for 1 second per combo point which gives you an additional 15% to apply Deadly Poison, so you can get your five charges back up pretty quickly. So far (okay just on test dummies as I just respecced today) it seems like it should be very fun. I was easily hitting 700 DPS without HfB and not really trying all that hard. Granted I'm not in very good gear either, I'm in basically first part Kara gear and my +Hit is actually pretty low, I really need to increase that so I'm at least up to 100% hit preferably 103% so I can always hit on bosses. The next thing to work on is Crit rating because the HfB is pretty dependent on critical strikes (as I get 2 energy per crit). Unbuffed I'm only at 21% :( Granted these numbers will change in a raid when I'm fully buffed, so I'm thinking DPS should look pretty good. I was constantly at 1k DPS with my other builds on bosses, so I'm not worried at all. Wrath of the Lich King looks like it should be pretty fun, plus the guild is shaping up to be a pretty good raid oriented guild. I'm looking forward to it.