Igneous's Blink'Blade Spec (test shard)

[Igneous25]

Single target PVE spec

20 riftstalker
27 Bladedancer
19 assassin

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1M...0s0M0b.0VRcxob

This of course doesn't match up exactly with the test shard, but you should be able to use the breakdown to rebuild it on test shard since even the names are the same.


buffs:

Stalker phase
Poisons
plane bound resilience

I'm using 3 macros

A)

#show backstab
cast expose weakness
cast poison malice
suppressmacrofailures
cast backstab
cast puncture
cast precision strike
cast shadow stalk
cast quick strike
cast keen strike

B)

#show backstab
suppressmacrofailures
cast backstab
cast puncture
cast precision strike
cast shadow blitz
cast quick strike
cast flash of steel
cast keen strike

c)

#show backstab
suppressmacrofailures
cast blade tempo
cast Shadow Assault
cast backstab
cast puncture
cast precision strike
cast shadow blitz
cast shadow stalk
cast quick strike
cast flash of steel
cast keen strike

You are going to use 3 warps to keep up your 10 sec buff from Stalker phase.

Use macro A to engage: using this at range will cause expose weakness and poison malice to be cast on target and Shadow stalk is not considered an attack...so will give a few seconds more for tank to gain aggro etc. your first finisher will be Annihilate you will use this every 60 seconds from now on to keep up your extra ap buff. Every finisher besides that should be using Deadly strike.

After 8-9 seconds Switch to macro B. This will auto fire your second Blink and keep attacking.

After another 8-9 seconds start using macro C. This is the macro you will use for the remaining fight. This will autofire every blink on its cooldown which should be approx 10 sec apart with a 25 sec cooldown...at times you should have a few seconds overlap. Assuming you had the first 3 jumps at the right times they should autofire at regular intervals, keeping your buff up indefinitely until the fight is over. I placed flash of steel in the macro in case you were off cooldown for your jumps and the boss was on the move (aka merdantix fight). if your out of range for the jumps you can always use the Shadow shift ability to get in range.

So:

Macro A until 5 combo points- Annihilate
Macro A until 5 combo points- Deadly strike (Should be close to 9-10 seconds) switch to macro B
Macro B until 5 combo points- Deadly
Macro B until 5 combo points - Deadly (At around 10 seconds start using macro C)
Macro C until 5 Deadly strike - Annihilate every 60 seconds

I originally had expose weakness and Poison malice in B and C but it seemed to lower overall DPS, might be worth it to throw it back in with raid buffs, (needs more testing)

This is pulling 100-200 more dps self buffed than sabodancer on test in my gear. This is build should scale with gear much better than Sabodancer. Right now I'm running what i use in live which is T3 gloves and Helm and the rest R8 including main hand, offhand Relic fang + cold heart trinket.

self buffed PTS:
AP-960
CRIT-1044

parsed 1630 last night over 5 min parse and was still rising slowly

Self buffed with
lethal, virulent poisons
combat pose
ancient tablet
exquisite whetstone.

No bard or raid buffs. I'll try and post a parse later.

The benefits of this build are quite a few


Assassin:

new changes to expose weakness are nice even though we may not take advantage of them.

Backstab is now 150% ap which meshes well with riftsttalkers AP bonus

Blade dancer:

Quick and precision strike 100% buff from ap

Contra tempo changed to quick strike and precision strike (100% chance to add extra combo point)

Your getting energy back from combat efficiency

blade tempo for your 30% 15 sec buff.

and Deadly dance of course buffs next three attacks by roughly 100%.


Riftstalker:

The new buffs from the Riftstalker tree are nothing to scoff at, current bonuses on pts are:

Damage from shadow assault is very nice now...almost up there with precision strike and backstab

20% Ap from the annihilate finisher.

15% crit from the Blinks as well as 15% and 10% damage buffs from stalker phase and threat reduction of 50%.

unseen fury passive (15% bonus to ap)-Annihilates 20% only counts base ap at this time as far as i can tell and doesn't count the ap given from this passive.

The icing on the cake is the fact that ALL aoe damage you'll be taking with this build will reflect 15% back to the boss, which over the course of a fight could improve your dps significantly....not to mention your improved survivability using the shield (15% reflected back at opponent up to 60% of your life), extra stamina from Great Fortitude( 15% stam) and Planebound Resilience (42 stam).

So with these changes to precision and quick strike plus using the 2 combo point builder from puncture you should have most attacks buffed from deadly strike... you could manually fire off your puncture, back stab and precision first to make sure your getting max dps but really all your attacks are hitting hard and most will receive the buff.. so there is room for improvement over the macro.

Best of all: It's a freeking fun Build to run.... it's got great survivability, amazing mobility for a melee spec and great (SCALABLE) dps. It does take a little skill to get the timing right on the jumps and keep your annihilate bonus up but overall i think it's way more fun single target melee dps than the alternatives.

Alot of people are saying i reserve X spec or Y spec....I don't care if this spec gets named after me or not, and fact is it may never make it live in it's current form but i did have a hell of alot of fun making it and i think it's a pretty unique spec with alot of perks.

Have fun.

[Nnnxia]

Very fun spec indeed!

Its a 1.6 to 1.7k++ dps spec with no energy issues under fervor buff.

[potis]

Kinda too deep into BD.

The 10% extra damage is awesome but i also tried.

20 RS 24 Sin 22 BD

Parses higher cause of the poisons hitting for 230-250 dmg.

Shadow Stalk also might be a dps loss even if it gives extra damage for 4 seconds that you are without, 1 global + 20 Energy.

Anyways the spec overall is one of the best 1.5 ones right now easily.

The 20 rs base the 19 sin base and rest you can shape them how you want.

Parsing 1.7-1.8k with fervor and stones etc with a 44.7 DPS dagger.

[Arrinx]

are you really that bad to macro every single teleport? kind of ironic how people like your self bash warriors for only having 2 macros

[Draegan]

Thats almost exactly the same spec I was thinking about but I wanted to test some differences with poisons.

Nicely done, I like what you did with the macros.

[Igneous25]

ya i definitely tried using just 2 jumps, without shadow stalk, unfortunately you lose out on at least 5 seconds of 25% damage bonus and 15% crit if you were to throw them up completely perfect.
My testing showed it was more of a problem just using two than having the full 3 and being up 100% of the time with room for a few seconds of error.

As far as the poisons i tried it both ways and it seemed to me after a few 5 min parses that the poison increase was also a dps loss, (but again i only tried a few parses with those numbers) since the majority of the damage is coming from the Bd tree. 10% of a 2k Deadly or the 1.7k plus precisions and quick strikes add up pretty quickly. But ya it's nice to have a few choices as to where you want to spend those last few points.... your definitely not locked down. I'll run a few more parses though you make a good point.

[Ninjahax]

Does expose weakness have a cooldown now in 1.5? Otherwise wouldn't your macro A just spam expose weakness the whole time?

[htomeht]

EW has a cool down yes.

[Igneous25]

are you really that bad to macro every single teleport? kind of ironic how people like your self bash warriors for only having 2 macros

The point was for it to make it easy to use for those reading and trying it out. The bigger question is why not macro something like that so you can focus on other things in your raid. Are you telling me you purposely leave things out out of your macro's so you can do them manually? Does that make you feel like a better player? I did say that there is room for improvement not macroing backstab, precision or puncture to make sure it gets the use of deady. so if you need to have more buttons to hit you can always use those. LOL

[Gyle]

I remember building a spec very similar to this way back when i had no idea what spec were what, and thinking to myself "Damn this is a lot of fun" i would love to see something like this be viable, and the idea for the macro's is brilliant. Im not going to call it the Igneous spec, but ill certainly be testing it out and calling it the "Blink-Blade." Great post, thanks very much.

[EasymodeX]

This will autofire every blink on its cooldown which should be approx 10 sec apart with a 25 sec cooldown...

Remove the point in the heal buff in tier2, and one point from Rift barrier, and put them into Shadow Mastery. According to your numbers, the base cooldown is down to 30s. 4 points into Shadow Mastery will enable you to keep 100% buff uptime with only Shadow Assault and Blitz.

Also, losing 1 point from Vivacity to gain 25% to poison damage is a potential upgrade. That one requires a detailed parse to estimate, however.

Blinkblade, Riftdancer, or Bladestalker.

Hurrrr.

[Igneous25]

I remember building a spec very similar to this way back when i had no idea what spec were what, and thinking to myself "Damn this is a lot of fun" i would love to see something like this be viable, and the idea for the macro's is brilliant. Im not going to call it the Igneous spec, but ill certainly be testing it out and calling it the "Blink-Blade." Great post, thanks very much.

LOL it is fun, i'm like you and played around with a spec like this on live just for fun when i hit 50. I thought the same exact thing... damn i wish something like this was viable. then when the new changes hit i played with it again...and it still wasnt quite as good as sabdancer or other specs... but the last few changes that have gone through with RS and BD have really made this a viable spec I'm glad it is ... lets just hope it stays that way for launch.

[Mithran83]

This spec definitely parses highest for me.

self-buffs +
exquisite whetstone
mighty powersurge

1692: http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/5...adesinrift.jpg

[EasymodeX]

Ironically it's very close to the spec I used to level with. Thanks CuisinArt.

[Igneous25]

Remove the point in the heal buff in tier2, and one point from Rift barrier, and put them into Shadow Mastery. According to your numbers, the base cooldown is down to 30s. 4 points into Shadow Mastery will enable you to keep 100% buff uptime with only Shadow Assault and Blitz.

Also, losing 1 point from Vivacity to gain 25% to poison damage is a potential upgrade. That one requires a detailed parse to estimate, however.

Blinkblade, Riftdancer, or Bladestalker.

Hurrrr.

The points on test is different than live... there are only 2 levels to shadow mastery. the last point in the heal buff is a filler in order to get shadow blitz. So you cant go below a 25 sec cd for the blinks.


I agree about the poisons, It's definitely worth looking into.