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!
Heartbourne
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:
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