Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 11:55 PM |  
I mentioned this spec briefly in a previous post but I wanted to go a bit more in depth on it.

The spec is 27 Bladedancer / 21 Nightblade / 18 Asssassin and it focuses on utilizing Deadly Dance to boost all your combo boosters. I only use 2 macros, and they are pretty self explanatory:

2 CP Macro
suppressmacrofailures
cast Precision Strike
cast Puncture
cast Dusk Strike
cast Quick Strike
cast Keen Strike
cast Flash of Steel
cast Fiery Spike
cast Weapon Barrage

1 CP Macro
suppressmacrofailures
cast Backstab
cast Quick Strike
cast Keen Strike
cast Fiery Spike
cast Weapon Barrage

The rotation basically comes down to this:

2CP > Fiery Spike > 2CP > Deadly Strike
2CP > Fiery Spike > 2CP > 1 CP > Deadly Strike

Various things can interfere with it, but always make sure to get Fiery Spike applied while Deadly Dance is active. It makes a huge difference in your DPS.

You use the 2 CP macro the majority of the time, and only use the 1 CP macro when you have 1 CP to go. A few things you may notice or disagree with: Flash of Steel and Fiery Spike in the macros.

I use Flash of Steel to "fix" my rotation if I accidentally flame out and fumble something up. This extra 2 pointer gets me back on track. Its also nice to automatically rush back to the mob if you have to run out for some reason or if he moves. You have to be careful with this because on some fights (like Warmaster), you dont want to go charges after the boss when he teleports, so you need to be judicious in its use.

I keep fiery spike in the macro so if the boss is out of melee range and I hit it, I haven't wasted that key press. I still keep FS on its own key.

For cooldowns, you have Ebon Fury and Blade Tempo. I also use the Words of War trinket from Codex reputation. I synchronize my cooldowns by popping Ebon Fury and Words of War together every 2 minutes, then at the very tail end of Ebon Fury, popping Blade Tempo. Make sure to get both your CDs into the Words of War duration or you're losing damage. You can do the same thing with any on-demand damage trinket such as the Token of Stolen Souls from Alsbeth or even the blue trinket from normal CC (forget the name).

I've had good results from this build getting about 1.4k+ DPS (without Spotter's, so estimate 1.6k with) on Plutonus.
Posted by Dunsparrow Labels:

14 comments:

Vanity said...

I tried your spec, have to say... hands down best DPS I've pulled. Just parsed 1250 in a mix of t1/t2 (t2 weapons). Do you use Poison Malice in your rotation? I pop with with Ebon fury and my trinket for a lil extra dmg.

June 20, 2011 at 10:45 AM  
Vanity said...

One other thing... because I spend most of my time in 5-mans, do you think (lacking a bard) dauntless strike would be worth keeping up for 5% crit for the group? or just a waste of a finisher?

June 20, 2011 at 10:51 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

Glad you're liking the spec. I don't use Poison Malice because I don't use poisons, typically. I run Hellfire Blades and Molten Blades in raid. In a 5 man its probably worth using Lethal Poison and thus Poison Malice and the timing is right during Ebon Fury, when you'll have some extra energy.

Dauntless is worth using once per minute if you don't have a Bard.

June 21, 2011 at 4:21 PM  
Estra said...

Just a question. Is there a perticular reason the Quick Strike, Keen Strike, and Weapon Barrage are in both macros?
I am probably missing something.
But, even so, I parsed today with sub T2 gear, probably not a smooth rotation and hit 600ish. So props for the info and Spec.
I also have just a general question, what spec do you use to do dailys, killing the elites and such?
Thanks again for your time.

June 25, 2011 at 4:48 PM  
Erin said...

I'm enjoying this spec myself, however I'm also curious like Estra if you've got a good PvE spec for soloing dailies, and elite mobs.

Thanks!

June 25, 2011 at 5:27 PM  
Zissoulander said...

Check out this spec for soloing:
http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?194175-Guide-The-Cuisinart-%28Or-how-I-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-Rogue%29

June 26, 2011 at 7:35 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

Zissoulander's link is a very good spec for soloing mobs very quickly. It's not very good for soloing elites though. For that, you should try something like this

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0McTV.VszaVoskqz.VVRcEb0k0oz

You basically mez the enemy. Load up your Blast Charges detonate, re-mez, load up more charges, detonate, re-mez, etc. Works great on any elite that can be mezzed.

June 26, 2011 at 2:13 PM  
Strife said...

I run through your rotation and hit in the 780 range, and I run a 40 sab/22 sin/2 ranger build and parse over 800 from range. I see you mentioned a trinket, is that helping the DPS that much? I ran just a straight 2 minute parse using both cooldowns you mentioned and was around 780.

You said you use molten blades, I presume that is smoldering blades as I can't find an ability called molten blades.

June 27, 2011 at 12:38 AM  
Estra said...

Is there a perticular reason the Quick Strike, Keen Strike, and Weapon Barrage are in both macros?
I am probably missing something.

June 27, 2011 at 10:26 AM  
chile said...

the problem with ur rotation is that fiery spike get out dmg by quick strike and and precision strike once ur passed 700 ish ap therefore it aint scaling as well where if u dont use fp u ll end with way better scalling and a simpler dps rotation too

July 1, 2011 at 12:51 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

Without Fiery Spike in the rotation, I don't see much point in having Nightblade at all. That's probably how you get to the Hoko spec, when you break past the point where FS is not worth using.

July 3, 2011 at 5:34 AM  
Rosas said...

That's funny this is my spec and didn't know it was one of the top three. my rotation is different though and I pull around 1860 dps on Plutonus.

I prefer my rotation though.Great stuff. If you want to know my rotation message me.

July 31, 2011 at 3:09 AM  
Temko Firewing said...

kinda wondering what the idea was behind taking 1pt in heat retention as opposed to going 2/2 on murderous intent.

from my own testing i pull ahead by a small margin 100% of the time doing that with dps. as opposed to going with heat retention.

also, do yuo not initiate with stealth > expose > malady > flash of steel... thats 4 combo - 1 fp and you basicly open up with a finisher.

just curious... i cooked this spec up myself with 1.2 and been using it since with minor changes... so piqued my interest.

also, what ratio AP:CR do you see going on this spec. i go with ±500 base AP followed by stacking crit to soft-cap.

August 8, 2011 at 11:16 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

@Temko for my money the first point in Heat Retention is about the best single point you spend anywhere. When I did the math a long time ago, it came out to about a 4.5% DPS increase, which is pretty incredible.

I have about 800 AP and 950 crit unbuffed. I could probably use a bit more crit without reaching cap but as I add HK gear, that will happen naturally, so I'm not worried about it.

August 9, 2011 at 5:51 PM