Igneous's Blink'Blade Spec (test shard) part II

[Igneous25]

For all of you who have been following along the original thread.

http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...est-shard.html

Post changes we had to alter the build a bit, and since the thread is getting increasingly hard to follow( as noted by some others) and my summary got buried fairly quickly I decided to start a new thread.

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1M...f0G0s.0VRcxsbV

20RS /19BD /27 ASSN

of course the skills on Zam arnt going to match PTS.

This is the macro's and rotation so far.

BS macro

#show backstab
cast backstab
cast expose weakness
cast poison malice
cast blade tempo
/cast maim

Blink Macro

#show shadow assault
cast Shadow assault
cast Shadow Blitz
cast Shadow Stalk
cast keen strike

Rotation to make maximum use of DD and all the heavy hitters.

BS macro, Keen strike, Precision strike, keen strike, Deadly dance
BS macro, Puncture, quick strike, Blink macro, Deadly strike.
( i put keen in this macro at the end so you can hit the macro twice to get the missing combo point when Shadow stalk fires off.)

Rinse and repeat. of course you will need to substitute Annihilate for deadly strike one every 60 seconds to maintain the buff.

Problems with this rotation is having to wait a second for Backstab to refresh...in the meantime you can spam the macro to get all your CD's to fire ( figured this would be the best place to put them. Could actually hit one more keen strike in the time your waiting for Backstab.....this is some quick and dirty testing we did last night...the others may have a better rotation/macros.

of course you can still use the Face roll macro as well... your choice of whether to move the Blinks to the top or not... i originally had them at the top until the combo point Nerf.

#show backstab
cast backstab
cast precision strike
cast puncture
cast Shadow Assault
cast shadow blitz
cast shadow stalk
cast quick strike
cast flash of steel
cast keen strike
cast expose weakness
cast poison malice
cast blade tempo


I did change one thing, which was to add maim to the Backstab macro so when your spamming the macro waiting for backstab to come off cooldown maim will fire, hated that i was doing no dps whatsoever....this will fire and do no combo point so your not wasting your Deadly Dance buff on Keen strike (the only alternative i could think of) but still doing some damage during that small wait.

[Hokonoso]

your name sux, i prefer shadowdancer

and test all you want on a dummy but the Hoko 1 button mash is always more dps in real world, i did some mastermodes and the rotation is hard enough with the Hoko Button™ (yes i'm trademarking the use of my 1 button macro made many moons ago, since i cant have a spec anymore ill steal a rotation!)

edit: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0M...0s.0VRcxkbV00M is the right spec, you need 2/2 trauma over 3/3 poison potency.

[Igneous25]

your name sux, i prefer shadowdancer

honestly no more stupid dancer names....I don't about anyone else but I'm sick of all the lame X dancer spec names out there....Blink blade works just fine thank you

[potis]

Physical Trauma is indeed better, tried Poison Potency, its a tooltip increase in damage, literaly gives 9-10 damage to Poisons, its useless.

Anyways the spec is still awesome but i also tried some Sin variations.

As the RJ rogue poster, Draeg something posted something i recalled and tried something.

Basically Sin/RS/MM is a great combo, i cant test if 5/5 at Penetrating (25% armor ignore) is worth anything in raids so i cant comment exactly on the numbers, just know that:

20 RS obviously, Poison Potency is useless, Final Blow hitting for 4k-4.5k when Impale is on, Impale hitting for 800-1k with the crystal etc etc.

So we are looking at a 32 for impale, 20 RS and 10 MM, and 4 points for debate.

Specs parses way too much with just Fervor and Stones, i couldnt parse fully mainly because there are 5 guards banging the dummy for some reason and god knows what other debuffs so any parsing would be inaccurate.

But generally its kind of an annoying spec, keeping impale up etc but the DPS is a lot, probably because of the crystal also.

[Igneous25]

Physical Trauma is indeed better, tried Poison Potency, its a tooltip increase in damage, literaly gives 9-10 damage to Poisons, its useless.

Anyways the spec is still awesome but i also tried some Sin variations.

As the RJ rogue poster, Draeg something posted something i recalled and tried something.

Basically Sin/RS/MM is a great combo, i cant test if 5/5 at Penetrating (25% armor ignore) is worth anything in raids so i cant comment exactly on the numbers, just know that:

20 RS obviously, Poison Potency is useless, Final Blow hitting for 4k-4.5k when Impale is on, Impale hitting for 800-1k with the crystal etc etc.

So we are looking at a 32 for impale, 20 RS and 10 MM, and 4 points for debate.

Specs parses way too much with just Fervor and Stones, i couldnt parse fully mainly because there are 5 guards banging the dummy for some reason and god knows what other debuffs so any parsing would be inaccurate.

But generally its kind of an annoying spec, keeping impale up etc but the DPS is a lot, probably because of the crystal also.

what does this parse without crystal? I dont want to bank on the T3 crystal keeping the 2pt HK crystal abilites. Although trion is a bit lazy and this would keep them having to do some work.

[potis]

what does this parse without crystal? I dont want to bank on the T3 crystal keeping the 2pt HK crystal abilites. Although trion is a bit lazy and this would keep them having to do some work.

I didnt parse without the crystal, had no time to do so, since i wont be near a PC for a few hours.

Just made the post here after noticing Draeg's post about a Sin variety so i had to check it out.

With fervor and stones its quite high, but as i said the dummy was getting banged so i cant call it "accurate" someone that has time later at night when the dummy is free could parse.

Basic: 32 Sin/20 RS/10 MM (4 for debate if the -20% armor matters in raids or extra talents in Sin)

[Kurieg]

Sin/RS/MM is here - http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...dps-build.html

[Hokonoso]

I didnt parse without the crystal, had no time to do so, since i wont be near a PC for a few hours.

Just made the post here after noticing Draeg's post about a Sin variety so i had to check it out.

With fervor and stones its quite high, but as i said the dummy was getting banged so i cant call it "accurate" someone that has time later at night when the dummy is free could parse.

Basic: 32 Sin/20 RS/10 MM (4 for debate if the -20% armor matters in raids or extra talents in Sin)

parses varied for me due to the rng of impale and final blow critting. but some parses were higher than the 27sin version and others were lower, all around the 1950-2k range (i parse without crystals, full t4 relic with just fervor). but in a raid setting the dps is less than 27sin due to the rotation and movement causing you to miss times where you only get 1 final blow off before impale drops. i'll stick with the "dancer" version for 2 reasons, easier rotation (uses the Hoko Button™) and has charge which is another gap closer giving you 5 different ones in this spec! I like to use it with the free blink away, turn then charge back (for mechanics where one needs to move at the last second etc...).

[Spungey]

The 32sin/20rs/14mm is the build i am playing with on PTS...its parses about 1600 on dummy and thats with the same gear i have on live with no consumbables/no whetstones..just me self buffed..Im pretty sure your the guy on my server and you know what gear I have.

The one thing imo that makes this build annoying is only having Puncture, Backstab and Savage Strike. Yes there are the 3 blinks, but idk. The main damage comes from the impale and final blow..the 45% increase in AP will carry over nicely once fully raid buffed I bet.

but once again..it seems like every build that gets linked on Forums from PTS gets some kind of nerf..there is a point to hide things because of the recent track record from trion..idk just how i feel

[Spungey]

well this was meant to go in another thread..

[Draegan]

I'm going to refer to the Assassn/RS/MM spec as the "Sin20" spec for simplicity sake. Essentially an Assassin based spec with /20RS so that can capture all variations. You can name it whatever you want.

That being said, I spent about 4-8 hours on and off during the day on Sunday playing with Dancer and Sin with full HK gear and crystals.

Sin parsed higher than Dancer by about 100 dps every time for me with 4-6min parses. And I did a lot of them.

A few things about the T2 Assassin Crystal

1. The 30% bleed damage effects serrated blades which increased my dps by 30-40 alone.
2. The Final Blow augment does not effect the cooldown of Exposed Weakness so you can actually clip your charges if you spam it in a macro.

The rotation is pretty easy compared to the Dancer spec except that you have to make sure Impale stays up.

If you go 36 rather than 34 you pick up utility and a little bit of burst damage from Jagged/Assassinate and Cloak and Dagger.

These specs will probably change since I doubt Blade Dancer is going to stay the way it is right now.

[Nadili]

I have tried both 36 vs the 24 I just feel like impale is going to be a pita to keep up with in raid. I also tried running the dancer version with no blinks it only loses about 40 dps. The reason, I wanted to see what the dps would be like in cases where you can't be behind the mob. It still parses well without

[Draegan]

So the, what... 25%? damage increase from blinking is only giving you 40dps?

[Nadili]

So the, what... 25%? damage increase from blinking is only giving you 40dps?

Pretty much yeah parses running without blinks abour 1480-1500 and with blinks 1530-1550. This is just in T1 gear with BD crystal no fervor or anything. It makes sense you still have the 10% perma buff all you miss by not blinking is 15%.

Edit

Not saying it's optimal but situational it's still decent even without blinks.

[Dragedo]

Pretty much yeah parses running without blinks abour 1480-1500 and with blinks 1530-1550. This is just in T1 gear with BD crystal no fervor or anything. It makes sense you still have the 10% perma buff all you miss by not blinking is 15%.

Edit

Not saying it's optimal but situational it's still decent even without blinks.

its not just 15% dmg boost you are missing
there's 15% crit chance missing and 15% reflect (if the fight has any aoe dmg that you get hit with), which should be calculated as dps