On Rogue Poison and Poison Utility in WOTLK.

Recently –Especially prior to the Hunger for Blood nerf – players have been going nuts for assassination because of Deadly Brew. For those of you who do not know, the new talent Deadly Brew will make all poisons apply crippling in addition to their normal poison. This being the case, when one procs wound or mind numbing poison crippling will also be applied. This makes it easy to cover wound by almost always having Wound + Crip + Mind Numbing on the target. Moreover, poison proc rates for wound, mind numbing, and crippling have been increased to 50% per hit. This being the case any target a rogue is on should permanently be wounded, have mind numbing, and crippling on it. This is a great and very advantageous buff to rogues.

On the other hand, while assassination rogues have always been considered the strong poison oriented damage dealers, recent changes seem to have removed this notation. At this point, there is only one real advantage for deep assassination rogues over any other spec of rogue and that is the application of mind numbing on attacks. However, the more instant-centric arenas become the less mind numbing is necessary and the less necessary poison talents are. With a 50% wound proc rate along with a 50% crippling proc rate there are still going to be few times where a target is not debuffed with wound poison and/or crippling poison. Even if abolish can entirely remove wound in a single tick it should be reapplied with a matter of a second or two from main hand swings alone.

So what is the real advantage of assassination if the poison advantage is very slight? Well, there is no doubt that mutilate has scaled to all hell and is without a doubt the most ridiculously high damage and burst rogue ability at the moment. However, is a bit more burst with moderate to low mobility worth the sacrifice of Shadow Step and the utility of Shadow Dance? The answer is the same it always has been with specs in WoW, it all depends on who you’re playing with. Fortunately I can see both being used relatively often in in competitive arenas and I look forward to messing around with both, although I think I’ll most likely be drawn to Shadow Dance for the utility.