Posted by Heartbourne on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 - 14 Comments
Tags: poison, Rogue, weapon swapping
There is a recent fad among top-level Rogues. Its a throwback to the old weapon swap + Shiv that was so popular in the early Burning Crusade days. Thanks to things like Cut to the Chase and Glyph of Envenom, its becoming easier and easier to keep 5 stacks of Deadly Poison (DP) on your target at all times. Practically always within a couple seconds, that 5 stack of DP gets refreshed pretty fast. If only there was some way to use Instant Poison or Wound Poison when you don’t need to refresh your DP stacks.
Well, its a common desire by many Rogues. Weapon swapping does just that. If you are Assassination specced and use Deadly Poison on one dagger and Instant on the other, you can put Instant Poison on a third dagger, and swap it in whenever you get a 5 stack of Deadly Poison. Whenever your Deadly Poison has only a few seconds left, the Rogue then swaps the Deadly Poison dagger back in to refresh the stack, then swaps back to Instant Poison. This same setup works for Combat and a Wound/Deadly/Wound configuration on swords/axes/fists/daggers.
Sounds complicated? Its getting easier. There is now a mainstream addon that manages all of this for you. Whenever you have a 5 stack of Deadly Poison with more than 5 seconds remaining, it equips your Instant/Wound poison weapons. When the debuff falls below 5 seconds remaining, it swaps for a Deadly Poison weapon. Now, without any micromanagement, any Rogue can achieve this previously complicated task.
Keep in mind that changing weapons triggers the GCD. Using this technique, you’ll be swapping weapons about every 7 seconds. However, the makers of PoisonSwapper claim a 300 DPS increase for top-tier combat Rogues and a 600 DPS increase for top-tier Assassination Rogues. If a Rogue is putting out 6k DPS, that is about a 10% increase in DPS. I’ve heard many Rogues claim that the Envenom effect of increasing Instant Poison applications makes Envenom much more powerful than Rupture, and they have abandoned Rupture all together.
I personally am messing with a script that one of my guildmates wrote, or at least discovered:
– $EVENTS TIMER UNIT_COMBAT
local dp_name=”Deadly Poison IX”
local switch_time = 5
if UnitAffectingCombat(”player”) then
for i=1,40 do
local n,_,_,s,_,_,x,c,_=UnitDebuff(”target”,i);
if n==dp_name and c==”player” then
equip = ( x-GetTime() > switch_time and s == 5 )
end
end
else
equip = false
end
By using this script with an addon like Outfitter, you can achieve the same effect as PoisonSwapper.
It seems ripe for a nerf, but I don’t know how Blizzard can directly prevent this. Blue posters have said that it seems non-essential for Rogues right now and they do not believe it gives significant DPS increases, and they see no reason to nerf it.
Take advantage of it now, and see if it helps you sweep the deeps!
Related Posts: Rogue, PTR 3.3: Patch Notes Update 11/17 (Build 10835), Patch 2.4.3 and Me, Warrior, Why Do We Even Bother With Weapon Skill?,
By lolfirst? on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
FIRST!
By asdf on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
second
By Nepples on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 12:36 am
third
By gill on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 2:03 am
Fourth
By higaiz on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 2:18 am
eleventyeth
By Skeels on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 2:36 am
over 9000th!
Seriously though, if I had a rogue (at 80, I have one at 76, but it’s really not the same, now is it?) I’d play around with that one, although if it gets out of control and they nerf the damage instead of the macro (or whatever), rogues not using it will be left behind. Imo, that’s not fair, but I guess I’ll see the difference myself now that it’s probably getting more popular
By Nextgener on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 2:38 am
my god you all fail hard.
Anyway, wouldn’t know since I’ll only make a rogue next xpac. By then it’ll most likely be gone (nerfed), but meh, nothing gained nothing lost.
Now, as for how they nerf it, I’m thinking something like.
“Adding poison to an weapon makes it bound to that slot type.”
EX: Applying poison to an Offhand weapon makes it an Offhand weapon.
By Daemonbane on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 3:41 am
INFINITY! you all just got pwnd
By Amatera on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 4:50 am
It might be worth playing around with for a little bit, but using the add-on (or anything like it) has the potential to set a really bad precedent. Weapon-swapping, even though it’s available in the game for very specific reasons, is the kind of mechanic that should never be relied on for a permanent increase in DPS.
By chimpski on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 7:51 am
@amatera
Why shouldn’t weapon swapping be used this way? I’m no leet rogue, but it seems perfectly reasonable to do so.
It does not smell of exploit, nor does it seem like an unintended consequence of the mechanic. I’m all for the rogues figuring out how to max our their dps.
@PL
How about some articles about other classes and their dps? I would totally eat up something besides rogue talk.
By Weaknsquishy on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned the recent change to rogues where master poisoner now allows for envenom to not use any applications of WP anymore. You just shiv to 5 then only do one weapon swap and only use one GCD.
By Crosis The Pally on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Ok i’m kind of confused. I thought you couldn’t change weapons or any armor in the middle of the battle so how is it that rouges can do it with weapons?
By chimpski on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Ghostcrawler
2009-11-10 17:39:07
Re: “Rogue weapon swapping isn’t a big deal”
Let me put it this way….
Fine: A rogue changes targets so needs to swap weapons to get a different poison on that target. This is more of a strategic thing — something you only do a few times per fight.
Not fine: A rogue swaps weapons constantly on the same target in order to get lots of poisons on that target. This is more of a hassle, not an interesting decision the player is making. This is more in line with a caster switching weapons to maximize a proc and then swapping back. It’s not fun and it feels like you have to do this annoying and unintuitive (unless you read the forums a lot) trick to maximize your dps.
Now like someone said above, you could make a weapon swapping mod for say Feral druids and few people would feel the need to use it. It’s not the existence of a mod that’s a problem. Mods do lots of crazy things. It’s a problem if it feels mandatory to raiding rogues. That however is a very subjective call and one that’s ultimately up to us to make. We’re keeping an eye on it.
By Rogue4Life on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
@ chimpski - thanks for posting that, I can’t get to the forums from work (but I can get to them on PL, damn IT).
interesting response from GC. i suppose for those rogues that really want that extra 300-600? dps you would do it, but it does sound like a hassle and i can’t see other party/raid members critisizing me for not doing it. guess we will have to watch it as well and ponder what kind of a nerf there would be to keep rogues from doing this and how it would effect other mechanic’s.