Intro to the Tier Set
For Assassination Rogues in 10.2, we have two nature-themed effects. For our two-piece, we have Rogue Assassination 10.2 Class Set 2pc, which, aside from being a nature damage buff, is also an attack speed buff, which is slightly more interesting. For our four-piece, we’re getting some extra Envenom damage through Rogue Assassination 10.2 Class Set 4pc. Let’s break them down and go over some interactions to explore the bonuses!
Natureblight and You
For the 2-set effect, the stacks from Rogue Assassination 10.2 Class Set 2pc, also called “Natureblight,” can be thought of very similarly to Ironfur from Guardian Druid. Each application has its own duration, so you will have ups and downs in stack count. The good thing about this is that our main cooldowns, such as Deathmark already grant increased energy through the duplicated bleeds, meaning we will see a naturally higher stack count in the moments we want to have them for.
That being said, there are some bugs with some new talents that need to be accounted for currently. Those being:
- The energy consumption from the new Exsanguinate and Exsanguinate are not counting toward stacks of Natureblight at all. This is a massive loss to the strength of these talents
- The energy cost increase from the reworked Vicious Venoms also is not accounted for. In this case, you would be spending 60 energy on a Mutilate and only getting five stacks, or 50 energy worth of Natureblight
- The last bug here is a dps gain and a bit of grey area. This may be intended but it is a bit unclear. Free Ambush casts through Blindside currently count towards the stack increase. They follow the second bug, only counting the base energy cost of 50. Free proc effects like this in the past have been calculated at their base value, so it wouldn’t be unusual if it stays. On the other hand, something like Anger Management doesn’t count the rage cost on free casts.
Regardless of the intention, I would like to see some more precise wording on tooltips in the future to give clarity to players about the effect.
Natureblight, in general, has two VERY obvious synergies: poison applications and Caustic Spatter. Increasing nature damage on the player means more nature damage to spread through Caustic Spatter. More attack speed means more poisons, which do more nature damage, meaning more Caustic Spatter hits. It’s a simple but effective synergy with one of our new talents. Dashing Scoundrel being buffed in the 10.2 PTR also appears as a winner from the two piece. For all of the raiders out there, this should also prop up our damage from Windfury Totem, so keep an eye on the simulations for that going into the next raid.
Not-Very Envenomous Explosion
I’m just going to get the big topic out of the way first. The damage from Rogue Assassination 10.2 Class Set 4pc is simply terrible right now. It’s so bad that the current idea is to never swap into the new 4-piece, even with the massive 36 item-level increase going into the next raid. I can’t quite understand what the intention is in the tuning here, but some early napkin math suggests that it needs (conservatively) around 500% worth of buffs for it to start doing some actual reasonable damage. Typically, tuning this poor is reserved for placeholder effects, but the design of the bonus is well thought out, and I really like the effect itself. That makes the tuning even more baffling to me, and I hope it is thoroughly looked at to balance the effect. The other weird thing is regarding that Assassination is tuned down to 5 targets on the PTR. Fan of Knives, Crimson Tempest, and Caustic Spatter all deal reduced damage beyond 5 targets. Being tuned to 5 targets isn’t an issue, but the tier bonus still reads reduced beyond 8 targets, which is just a confusing juxtaposition to the shift the rest of the spec has gotten in 10.2. Speculatively, that may be why the number is tuned so poorly.
The numbers are plenty weird, but the gameplay and design are more important, so with that frustration out of the way, I want to lighten the mood and say that I really like the trigger for the effect. Requiring players to Envenom during the buff from Envenom to get some extra AoE might initially sound a bit questionable. There was some groaning about the effect (and the damage). Still, I think it plays beautifully into some underlying concepts for Assassination in 10.2.
With Crimson Tempest being turned into a pure bleed effect that you should not be spamming, Caustic Spatter being added, the range increase on Poison Bomb, the increased poison application chance from Envenom itself; there’s a lot of support for using Envenom in AoE situations already as a core finisher, which only got even more potent in 10.2. When the effect is appropriately tuned, you can think of it as a secondary Poison Bomb, the trigger of which is guaranteed and controllable. In my opinion, that’s a cool and interesting way to move Assassination away from the more traditional “my bleeds are my aoe” philosophy we’ve been seeing for the last couple of expansions.
Conclusion
I think, overall, this tier piece is just okay. There are interesting ideas pushing us toward poison/nature-based AoE effects, and the 4-piece provides some slight gameplay adjustments to make the rotation just a bit different from the usual. There’s stuff to iron out before the patch goes live, very obvious bugs to fix with the 2-piece, and a massive tuning issue with the 4-piece. I’m hopeful that it gets adequately adjusted and excited about what Assassination’s future looks like.
