Rogueland

For the first subject to be covered on RogueLand, I thought that it would be apropos to cover something that I have been giving a great deal of thought of late: Poisons.  Why have I been giving poisons a great deal of thought lately?  It’s yellow, non-armor blocked, damage, so I had better have a damn good grasp on it!  Any other questions, no?  Didn’t think so, let’s kick right off and start looking down the list of the deadly concoctions that we all carry around. (For the calculations, I’ll be using my current paltry 2168 AP for DPS)

Wound poison VII (231+(0.04*AP)DMG):

The beginnings of my interest in poisons was started by a fellow rogue on Duskwood that I PUG’d up with to run Gundrak.  After the instance, he started to pull out his stats and we had a great chat about the fact that the Deadly poison I was using was only going to hit 30% of the time and that I could get much further if I started using Wound poison which is applied 50% of the time.  It makes sense right, if I hit with Wound Poison 7 50% of 100 attacks, doing 318 dmg each, I’ll dole out 15,900 points of poison fun while the 30% chance with Deadly Poison 9 hits for only 14,083.  Yes, I did actually facepalm myself when that rogue made such a blatant and obvious comment to me.  His suggestion replacing the poison on both my weapons was followed through on immediately.

Wound poison also has the useful prevention of 50% of healing to your target, so this vial is a natch choice for me when I’m heading into the battlegrounds.  “Hello there Mr. Clothie. You aren’t going to be healing yourself as I whale on you.”  Of course, this depends on whether or not I’m going down the Warsong path of stun blocking everyone, or just forcing out 10K of damage in under 5 seconds.

Anesthetic Poison II (218-249Dmg):

Of course, our friendly rogue that suggested the wound poison change in my weaponry got me started thinking.  If I can do 15,900 points of non-armor blocked yellow damage in 100 swings with Wound Poison, what can I do with Anesthetic Poison 2 which is still a 50% hit poison but does between 218 and 280 damage while dispeling a rage effect, not to mention causing no additional threat.  Certainly the average damage done is about 60 points less than the Wound Poison giving us a yellow total out at 12,450.  Nothing to scoff at, but not as strong as Wound.  That said, there is certainly something to be said about both the enrage remover and the threat mitigation of this poison. The threat mitigation alone makes it my choice in most instance runs as lately I’ve been running with a Feral Druid tanking and a DK off-tank.  Just in Oculus yesterday this helped me from pulling aggro away from the off-tank as we went up against Mage-Lord Urom’s bunches of beasts (and before you ask, yea, that was a 20G repair bill…).

Instant Poison IX (300+(0.10*AP)DMG):

Of course, the previous two poisons, while fantastic for the fact they hit 50% of the time, don’t bring the raw power that Instant Poison brings.  Certainly, the 300+(0.10*AP) points of damage that Instant Poison 9 does is far superior to both of the above, but we also have to take into consideration that it only hits 20% of the time, which gives it a piss-poor total of 10,336 points of damage in our 100 swing example.

Were it just that, you would never find this poison on me, but as a hemo rogue, I am constantly using my Shiv ability, which instantly hits with the poison on my off-hand.  To carry our 100 swing example further, 100 Shivs with Instant Poison 9 brings out 51,680 points of non-armor blocked damage, and yes, that’s for the win.  That means Instant Poison gets my seal of approval for off-hand application pretty much every where I go.

Keep in mind, however, that this is only for you rogues out there that are using Shiv as constantly as I am.  Moving forward, I’ve been thinking about playing around with a mutilate respec which is going to mean my instant poison will be staying at home.

Deadly Poison IX (296+(.08*AP)DMG):

I can only see 1 possible use of this and that is for those of you out there that are regularly using the Envenom ability and just to show what a nonsensical path to go down that is, let’s run some more numbers.  Deadly Poison 9 will hit30% of the time meaning in the 100 swing example, Deadly Poison 9 will knock your foes down for 9,389 points of damage (of course, that’s dole’d out to the mob who is CURRENTLY POUNDING ON YOU over 12 seconds.  Personally, I have never much cared for standing around and getting pounded on by mobs) and with 30 hits, you’ll get 6 full Envenoms kicked off to add 6(740+(2168(AP)*.35)) or 8,993 extra points of damage, but because you’re consuming those points of deadly poison, you’re also losing damage as that poison clicks through the 12 second damage period it needs.  That means, that if you kick off your Envenom with 5 points of Deadly Poison cooking on your mob at 6 seconds into its delivery period as it attempts to deliver 2,347 points of damage, you would be throwing away 1,173 points of damage.  Yes, the 1,499 points of damage that Envenom is going to be doing instantly is more, but it sure hurts to have to use 35 energy to try and get another 300 points of damage.  Isn’t that why we have Hemo?

Mind-numbing Poison:

And last but not least, we have this little gem of a poison which is about as target specific as it can be.  This one comes with a very simple definition: To be used only when in an instance or raid where you need to be controling casters more.  Certainly, very useful to help you get your kick and gouges cycling properly against mass casters when you are increasing their cast time by 60%.

And so my dear reader, we have come to the end of my first RogueLand blog post.  I certainly hope you have enjoyed it and it has made you think a little bit more about poisons.  The fact that they are not blocked by armor makes them one of the most useful tools we in the shadows have against those other pesky DPS classes. Stay Stealthed!