I’ve finally been able to properly play with the new Master Poisoner buff and it’s looking strong indeed, despite my weapon speed not being ideal. Getting a stack of 5 deadly poison on a plate wearer seems to really put out massive pressure – the only issue I’ve had has been with getting 5 doses applied and keeping them there. Druid and Paladin cleanses can keep the stack down to only 1-2 doses, and unlucky procs can see your full stack of 5 drop away to nothing.
I’m missing relentless weapons at the moment (playing with 1.8 speed daggers), but soon I’ll be swapping to the 1.4 speed Relentless Gladiator’s Shiv. Hopefully this faster weapon will help to keep deadly poison stacked – unlike wound/instant, deadly procs aren’t normalized to a certain number per minute.
For a rough idea of PPM with the different weapon speeds, I spent 30mins auto-attacking a training dummy with three different weapons. The test is far from ideal as it doesn’t factor in time you spend kiting, (and I didn’t use Slice’n'Dice or Mutilate) but the results are enough to make me consider swapping my Mutilator for a Murder. The faster the speed the better, as your shivs will cost less energy and Focused Attacks will proc more often from the extra chances you get to crit.
1.4 speed – 12 procs per minute
1.6 speed – 9.2 procs per minute
1.8 speed – 6.8 procs per minute
If running with a 1.4 dagger means not having to shiv at all, it might be worth main-handing deadly and keeping wound on the offhand instead. This would give back the ability to shiv crippling when you’re peeling (or chasing form-switching druids), but unfortunately this is probably something better suited to high-level raiders, as there are no fast mainhand daggers available from PVP. If someone is able to try this out, please let me know how you get on with keeping 5/5 deadly doses applied!
All in all, I’m more than happy with the buffs to Master Poisoner and Envenom – with a full stack of deadly and plenty of combo points you can really burn peoples HP. Who needs ArP when you can put out 7k crits on plate!
Apologies for the wierd post I made earlier today – I was playing around with Spotify and accidentally created a tweet for a random album, which was picked up by WordPress and inserted into this blog……
I’m testing this spec too. I didn’t remember DP wasn’t normalized, that’s why the poison stack used to drop so often!
Given that against certain setups purging the stack you will rarely have 5 stacks (and for certain quick target switch too) we will probably need to keep Eviscerate on the bar still. But do you think keeping 3 points in Imp Eviscerate would be necessary too? I have the impression that Ruthlessness is more worthwhile.
I’ve also read about a possibile weapon swap trick: you get 5 DP stacks, pool energy, switch to two IP daggers, cc the healer, and do Envenom, mutilatex2, envenom. The first Envenom is going to skyrocket IP proc chance: on arenajunkes one calculated this should bring around 4k more damage (maybe even more if you take improved IP). Talking about Imp IP, this would also raise DP proc chance.. but requires many points, do you think it could be worth?
The weapon swap with 2xIP sounds crazy, with the +75% incr to proc rate you should be able to put out a lot of procs before the DP wears off. The weapon swap could give higher mutilate hits as well if you’re swapping your fast OH to a 1.8 speed one.
As for taking Imp Poisons, I haven’t tried, but I just read Ming’s article about Master Poisoner and he didn’t seem too impressed with losing 5pts just for increased poison procs. I can’t think what I’d want to take points out of to get Improved Poisons though. I guess it would mean losing pts from Dual Wield, Focused Attacks, or Find Weakness. I want to try out a 1.4 weapon before experimenting with Improved Poisons, maybe I’m being too optimistic but I have my fingers crossed the extra procs will be enough to make deadly poison stay up (maybe with the occasional low-energy shiv!).
I still have eviscerate on my bar, but dropped Improved Eviscerate as you said for Relentlessness.
I was missing a good fast offhand but managed to get one on my first Naxx25 try this week (well, actually, I just corrupted the roll winner to trade it to me for 2k
). Now the poison actually stays on a lot more, but still I need to shiv quite a bit, since in arena it’s not always possible to stick on a target the whole time.. still thinking about putting at least a couple of points into imp poisons, as a Ming’s post suggested.
I am also wondering about putting a couple of points into FA too. Usually it’s not considered so great for pvp, but with a very fast offhand and slice and dice up for more DP procs anyway, it seems worthwhile.
Overall, I find the spec great and managed to raise my rating a bit more probably just thanks to it. Dispel protection and 7k crits on plate are just too awesome. It takes a bit to build up damage when you switch target, but that’s ok.. I often end the arena doing a frackload of damage.
I’m also trying to experiment the IP weapon switch macro, but it’s not always easy to be in the right situation (5 DP stacks, full energy, full combo points, cc the trinketed healer).