Playing Assassination on Icecrown, got 2 Lungbreakers Heroic and 1 Heaven's Fall Normal. Most guides I've seen say double Lungbreaker would be the way to go but I've seen people say otherwise.
Any tips on what's best and which dagger should go on which hand?
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Weapon Combinations
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According to Fluffybully's guide your main hand weapon should be the slowest and highest DPS dagger that you have, Apparently the slower your main hand weapon is the more chance it has to apply instant poison, the off hand dagger should be the fastest because once your deadly poison reaches 5 stacks on a target you will have a 30% or 50% chance with talents to refresh your deadly poison on the target. you can find his guide here: https://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=360782
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Thanks, I've seen that guide and it seems pretty thorough but my issue is because I've looked at different guides which say different things. See this video for example and skip to the final section where he talks about weapon combos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKOCDId1ks0
He puts double Lungbreaker H as the third best weapon combo and even when combo'ed with Heaven's Fall his guide puts the slowest weapon on the off-hand instead of main.
So you see my problem is I'm getting conflicting info with people telling me opposite things.
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Although i'm not an Assassination specialist – i've been playing mostly Subtlety PvE for these last years – i'll give you my 2 cents on this topic.
First of all, about your weapons availability, imho double Lungbreaker HC is far superior than Lungbreaker HC + Heaven's Fall NM due to higher ilvl (277 vs 271) which nets you more stats and DPS, period. Therefore, doesn't matter much which weapon goes where (since both are the same), you'll be using Deadly MH + Instant OH on both Lungbreakers.
Unlike Combat and Subtlety that your main CP generation ability – Sinister Strike and Backstab/Hemorrhage, respectively – strikes ONLY with your MH weapon, and for this reason a slower weapon + Instant Poison on MH is more favorable due to higher damage + higher chance to proc Instant Poison on slower ones, the Assassination spec, on the other hand, relies on Mutilate that strikes with both weapons, so you are not necessarily required to use the slower weapon on the main hand.
The reason for that is how Deadly Poison works ("Once stacked to 5 times, each application of Deadly Poison also causes the poison on the Rogue's other weapon to apply.") and Assassination being a spec that highly relies on poison damage, it is favorable to have a setup of MH (fast/deadly) + OH (slow/instant) since you will be applying double stacks on your abilities (instead of single ones) without the drawback that other specs suffers due to their CP abilities. However, despite the long discussions people have about the setup, the difference even on BiS gear is almost negligible, but still a min-max improvement.
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As someone who only plays assa for pve (no combat, ever), this was something I thought a lot about and did my own digging on as well. I don't profess to be anywhere close to an expert on the matter but I'd like to share my thoughts.
First of all, it's important to keep in mind that poisons constitute a large portion of assa rogues' dps and therefore is a major point of focus when thinking about gear.
Assa rogues having the MH as a fast weapon + deadly poison on it seems contrary to every other dual-wielding spec, but there's a reason for that. From what I gathered, mutilate has a chance to proc the MH poison twice and the OH weapon once. As we know, deadly poison has a flat 50% chance to proc per hit (with the appropriate talents maxed out), while instant poison works on a proc-per-minute (PPM) mechanic which means it changes based on weapon speed. However, because the slowest possible daggers in BiS level gears are 1.8, the proc on instant poison is still lower than that of deadly poison. According to a Wowhead user's math, instant poison only has a 38+% chance to hit using a 1.8 speed dagger. Since 50% is greater than 38%, you'd obviously want a double proc of the bigger number. You do lose mutilate dmg of course, but remember, a larger part of your dps comes from poisons, not mutilate.
So now that's settled, what about the OH? To me, this is where it gets a little iffy. You'd think you would always want the slowest possible weapon to maximize instant poison procs, so why is double fast weapons the 3rd best weapon combination? Personally, I think this has to do with the focused attacks talent or energy generation in other words. The faster you attack, the more crits you do, the more energy you generate. This allows you to maximize your envenom uptime, therefore maximizing your poison potential. Personally, even if I didn't watch the video you linked, I would prefer 2x Lungbreakers myself for that very reason.
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Wind of Northrend - Rehabilitated
How to gap your damage 101.
I did write in the guide...
"Weapons:
- Slow Dagger + Fast dagger
- Highest DPS dagger + fast dagger"
And for the above guy. Mutilate doesn't proc MH poison twice. It's mutilate MH poison proccing and OH deadly poison proccing the MH poison.. nothing special so to say
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If you reached the off-hand hit cap of 27% this convo literally does not matter since mutilate+envenom (or rupture if your being fancy) has no main weapon damage increase unlike sinister strike for combat rogues, but no rogue gems/gears to aim for that off-hand hit cap (and I'm sitting at around 17% with precision) so its why this convo always comes up since the damage outputs are so close to each other, within 1000 dps at most, but more like 100-300 dps thats usually within the error margin of a run anyway.
You can certainly go 2x 1.4 lungbreakers if you can't get your hands on the 1.8 Heaven's Fall but I don't recommend 2 1.4x after the fact.
My own rule of thumb is 1.8 in MH = stronger auto dps, while 1.8 in OH = more energy due to less misses on swings with your 1.4 dagger. I prefer the 1.8 MH in the more popular, easier haste build. And prefer 1.8 in the OH with the 4pc more risky rupture+energy RNG build
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on wotlk classic it DID proc mh poison twice AND oh poison once.
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Short answer:
According to some simulations at https://wowsims.github.io/wotlk/rogue/, it seems that a 271 slow dagger outperforms a 277 faster one. Similarly, a 264 slow dagger is nearly equal to a 277 fast dagger when used for Instant Poison. You should use the weapon with better raw DPS in your main hand, which, in your case, is the faster weapon. Always use Deadly Poison on your faster weapon and Instant Poison on the slower one.
Long answer:
I'm not sure if any single response here is 100% correct ?? — except maybe Fluffybully, who didn’t say anything wrong. Here are the key facts and rules:
1. Deadly Poison should go on your fastest weapon. This is because it has a fixed chance to apply on each hit. For example, a 1.4-speed weapon applies 1.8 / 1.4 = ~1.29x more poisons than a 1.8-speed weapon.
2. Instant Poison benefits from being on a slower weapon due to a higher proc chance per hit, but slower weapons also hit less frequently. Therefore, for autoattacks, the overall damage caused by Instant Poison remains the same regardless of weapon speed.
3. Poison proc chance and damage are not affected by whether the weapon is in the main hand or off-hand in any circumstances. Except Shiv ability which prefers deadly poison on your off hand (and which is in fact your best possible choise of open ability for assasination rogue).
4. Your off-hand deals only 75% of its DPS, so you generally want the higher DPS weapon in your main hand for better autoattacks. For abilities, there’s a slight preference for higher raw damage (not DPS) in the main hand, but the difference is minimal.
5. Your ABILITY damage and poisons from ABILITIES are the only reason why slower weapons are better for a weapon with Instant Poison. This applies to abilities like Mutilate and Fan of Knives (FoK for AoE). Mutilate doesn’t cause a huge number of poison procs compared to autoattacks, but it’s measurable. So yes, slower weapons are better for Instant Poison if you're using them with abilities, but the difference is small unless you’re in heavy AoE situations where Fan of Knives is your primary source of damage.
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