Posts Tagged ambush
Assassination – Garrote or Ambush?
Posted by mortice in World of Warcraft on March 12th, 2009
This was originally posted to my guild’s website.
Introduction
Starting a fight as a rogue is crucial. You have to get Slice and Dice going and begin your rotation as quickly as possible. This process of ‘getting things started’ is even more crucial as an assassination rogue, as you need a full-length (5 combo point) Slice and Dice going as quickly as possible to support your 4-5e/4-5r1 rotation. This article describes and evaluates approaches to getting a fight started as an assassination rogue.
First six seconds
Wrath added a new talent to Assassination – Overkill. This reduces the energy cost of abilities used after coming out of stealth by 10, allowing massive burst AoE, amongst other things. It also greatly influences our discussion of the optimal starting ability, since every assassination rogue will have Overkill, it being a prerequisite for Mutilate. What follows is a breakdown of energy use and abilities used in the first six seconds of a fight with Ambush, Garrote and starting out of stealth. Note that many variables differ here, notably the amount of energy gained from Focused Attacks.2 The assumed talent build contains 2 points in Blood Spatter.
Garrote (no glyph)
| Time from start (seconds) | Ability used | Energy remaining | Damage done by opener |
| 0 | Garotte | 60 | 0 |
| 1 | Slice and Dice | 56.75 | 161 |
| 2 | Mutilate | 18.75 | 322 |
| 3.2(ish) | Envenom3 | 354 | 483(ish) |
| 4.5(ish) | Mutilate | 0 | 724(ish) |
| 6(ish) | Rupture | 0 | 966(ish) |
Garrote will continue for the remainder of its 18 second duration to do a total of 2900 damage.
Garrote (with Glyph of Garrote)
As above, but Garrote will do 3025 damage.
Ambush (without crit)
| Time from start (seconds) | Ability used | Energy remaining | Damage done by opener |
| 0 | Ambush | 50 | 1840 |
| 1 | Slice and Dice | 46.5 | 1840 |
| 2 | Mutilate | 8 | 1840 |
| 3.5(ish) | Envenom | 25 | 1840 |
| 5.5(ish) | Mutilate | 3 | 1840 |
Ambush (with crit)
As above, but Ambush will deal approximately 5520 damage (5685 with Relentless Earthsiege Diamond active).
Numerical analysis & Summary
The tables above use reasonable stats as their model and assume optimal procs. With procs optimal and using garrote, it is possible to get rupture active within the first 6 seconds. With ambush, you appear to lag behind by a second in these circumstances, but actually lag by more, since your rupture requires 35 energy as opposed to the lucky garotter’s 25. Since your aim as an assassination rogue is to keep any of the four bars (Deadly Poison, Rupture, Slice and Dice, Hunger for Blood x 3) from hitting 0 and to do this you need to get them all started, Garrote makes for a more stable opener.
On the other hand, it is possible to deal more damage with Ambush. Normalised damage for Ambush is 2392, taking crit % as 35 and assuming a meta-slot gem. Thus, if you have Tricks of the Trade on the tank (since Ambush causes a threat spike), have a Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, do not have Blood Spatter and do not have Glyph of Garrote, open with Ambush. Otherwise, you will be better off with Garrote for stability and average damage. On the other hand, if you don’t have blood spatter, what are you doing playing assassination? 
Footnotes
1. 4-5 combo point envenom/4-5 combo point rupture.
2. A value of 1.5 additional energy per second has been taken for focused attacks. This is based on weapon speeds of 0.8/0.8, which seem reasonable with 10-man buffs, slice and dice the majority of the time and fast daggers. You are using fast daggers for mutilate pve, right? . Attack power has been set to 4500, again a reasonable value with 10-man buffs and gear
3. Assumes a mutilate crit first time and Ruthlessness giving a combo point from SnD. This is an assumption we’ll make in every table, since it makes no difference to opener choice.
4. Assumes a Relentless Strikes proc. Again, we’ll make this assumption throughout.
