Noxxic's guide for Madness Assassin - another epic fail

Starting our next series articles with a look on the Madness Assassin guide that Noxxic has.

1. Stat priority

There is plenty wrong about what Noxxic says about stats. I mentioned some of it on my previous text, so not going to repeat it all here.
http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2014/04/noxxic-and-dps-stats.html

Power and critical rating use same itemization points. A Madness Assassin will want about 300 critical rating and the rest power.
Obviously you should not even look at the total critical chance percentage as that is useless in determining how much critical rating to put in your gear. Even if the actual total critical chance at some gear levels did get close to the 25% that Noxxic tells every class to get, it is out of pure coincidence.

Surge and Accuracy use same itemization points. You will want to put accuracy as close to 435 as possible and put surge on all the rest of the gear that have accuracy or surge, no matter how much that ends up being. Neither of them should be 395 at this point like Noxxic falsely claims.

Now for the more interesting part...

2. Skill tree build

Just what the hell is this? I have no words to describe how bad this is. This looks like it is made by someone who just blindly clicks all over the skill tree without paying any attention to what he ends up putting the points on.

It would take too long to explain everything wrong with it so just pointing out few of the most obvious mistakes.
- Why so many talents with 2/3 or 1/2 points? Seriously, in some rare cases I would understand it in some filler points needed to get higher up in the tree or just spending the last leftover point somewhere, but this does not appear to be the case here, especially not with that many. This is just someone spending points completely randomly without even looking at it.
- There is one unspent point left there!!! Whoever made this was so lazy that they did not even bother to check if they had spent all the points they have to spend.
- There is no point in Creeping Terror (we'll get to that shortly)
- In a PVE dps build they suggest wasting points on useless talents such as Shapeless Spirit, which does nothing to help your dps and is almost completely useless in PVE in any sense, even while they are missing points in several talents that would affect your dps. There are number of other talents that you should not have such as Chain Shock, but not going to list them all.

moving on...

ROTATIONS

Would it be too much to ask to just remove this piece of text or at least remove the part that says "maximum threat" when you have a guide for a DPS spec? 

And the rotation itself... Not sure which is worse, this or their randomly generated skill tree build.

Where to even begin? Just going to list few of the most obvious mistakes.

- Discharge is way too far down the list. It should be just on the second place just after Death Field. To make matters worse, they even put it below some melee attacks. One of the main points of the Madness Assassin rotation is to hit melee attacks on targets that have the dot from Discharge on them first, to proc Raze.

- The "key to the spec" part tells to to "maintain Crushing Darkness and Creeping Terror dots, but neglects to say Discharge dot needs to be maintained 100% uptime too. (also Crushing Darkness can't be maintained 100% uptime)

- This rotations lists Creeping Terror even though their skill tree build does not even put point into Creeping Terror. (and yes I know it had one unspent point which could be put there but with so many talents with 2/3 or 1/2 points in them it is not at all clear where, whoever made the skill tree build, even intended to put that last point)

- And the worst of all: Noxxic tells us to use Maul when exploit weakness procs from Duplicity, which is a talent so up in the Deception skill tree. Duplicity is unavailable for any kind of full Madness spec build and has been unavailable since the game changes in the Patch 2.0 over a year ago. Maul has no place in the Madness rotation under normal circumstances.

- Shock should not be there either.

Overall Noxxic only ever describes any rotations only as a simple priority list. In many cases listing also and example of the actual order in which abilities are used would be more useful.

Moving on...

Ok, again with the nonsense about "optimal threat or healing" on a dps guide. Is it really that hard to make different templates for different roles?

Normally I mock Noxxic for listing knockback abilities like Overload in their guides for dps rotation, but I admit using Overload can be ok for a DPS Assassin, since their other AoE moves are crap if, and only if, the targets are all immune to knockbacks, which should be at least mentioned if you are going to list it.

Well offensive cooldowns are not always "used on every single cooldown" as there are situations where it is better save them for a phase where you need to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

The way this tells to use Recklessness is also wrong since it is telling one to use it to buff Shock, which should not even be part of the rotation.

"Survivability cooldowns"

This is again just a list of defensive cooldowns and also other utility abilities. It doesn't really tell anything about how to use them best, as it should.

The only thing where Noxxic suggests something about how these abilities should be used is when they list Force Cloak + Force Shroud together as if these two abilities should be used together, which is just wrong and a huge mistake.
While there could be some (extremely rare) situations where they could be used at the same time, these abilities are used separately and independently far more often than they are used together.
Force Cloak is used to remove yourself from combat to be able to stealth ress or to reset your threat if you happen to overaggro or in some cases for Dark Embrace buff, often at times when there is no need to use Force Shroud at the same time but it would be important to save Shroud for later use.
Force Shroud is used to cleanse yourself to remove any dots or debuffs on yourself or alternatively to resist all damage from an incoming force/tech attack, and often used at times when there is no need to use Force Cloak at the same time, but that should be saved for later use.

I've given Noxxic some feedback countless times telling them to list these abilities separately, not together connected with a plus sign. They have nothing to do with each-other. After months of spamming them with messages, Noxxic eventually gave in and agreed to correct this mistake in their Assassin tank guide, but they still insist keeping this nonsense in their dps guides.

Update:

Few weeks after patch 2.7 Noxxic did "update their guide for patch 2.7" but unlike their usual rutine of just writing "updated for patch 2.7" on their guide, they actually did one more change.

They "fixed" their "talent build" to no longer have a one unspent point. However the end result is worse than I thought it would be:

So they did not even put the missing point to Creeping Terror which would have at least made some sense as they tell us to use it in the attack rotation.

Overall this spec is total nonsense with several useless talents taken, and points missing in talents that would have been important for dps.

And the rotation Noxxic presents is still exactly the same as seen above.
The rotation is of course completely impossible for any kind of build as it is not possible to have Creeping Terror and Duplicity at the same time. Duplicity is only available to Deception or some kind of Deception/Madness hybrid spec. Creeping Terror is only available to full Madness spec.

To make it worse Noxxic tells you to spec into a build that does not have either of these and still in the same guide tells you to use both of them.

So basically the guide tells you to use 2 abilities in your attack rotation that you do not even have.

Noxxic and dps stats

After being busy with other stuff for a while, I thought it is time to come back and make some new posts here.
The next few texts are going to focus Noxxic's guides on some dps specs and point out some of the more obvious stupid errors in those.

Before we start going into actual class guides in this post I will look into what Noxxic says about secondary stats for dps.

First of all a typical stat priority list Noxxic has:

I took this one from their guide for the Madness Assassin, which is one I will go to look into next, but Noxxic has exactly the same stat priority for every dps spec of every class (with the only difference being replace Willpower with whatever is the primary stat of any given class) and that is pretty bad, especially when it comes to the part that says 25% crit for every spec of every class.

Also their explanations on how each of these stats work, are pretty bad and in many cases just plain wrong
Here we go:

Let's look into each of these stats.

Willpower: This explanation with the statement "increases the damage and healing done by your abilities" would be generally correct for a Sorcerer but as I mentioned above, I took this from the guide for the Madness Assassin, and for them Willpower only increases damage done, not healing.

Well you could say that Assassins don't really have proper healing abilities, but I could also say that especially in Madness spec Assassins actually do have several abilities that do cause self-healing, but those generally heal based on percentage of your maximum health. So they do have abilities that do healing, but Willpower does not increase the amount of healing done.
Unlike the other errors here, this is a point of minor importance, but can still be misleading to some people.

Accuracy Rating: This is actually isn't as bad as it has been in the past. Some of the past versions of Noxxic have had the explanation on how accuracy works much more horribly wrong but now they have removed some of the false claims there.

You do indeed want 100% M/R accuracy and 110% F/T accuracy for every dps spec now. However their claim that the optimal accuracy is gained at 395 accuracy rating is just plain wrong.

With few exceptions most specs of any class to go from the baseline 90%/100% to the 100%/110% will need to get 3% from their skill trees + 1% from the companion legacy buff + remaining 6% from accuracy rating on gear (and would need more from gear if you don't have all these)

To get that 6% from gear, you will need 435 accuracy rating. 395 is not enough, but will give you only about 5.52% or something like that.
(One exception worth mentioning is the Carnage Marauder who gets another 3% accuracy from Ataru Form and therefore needs only 3% accuracy from gear, only half as much as most other specs, but in their inability to recognize the differences between specs Noxxic has the same 395 even on the Carnage Marauder guide even though it is way too much for them.)

So where does that 395 come from? There are other websites with good (at least at the time when they were written) guides that tell you to have 395 accuracy rating. The catch is that those guides were written back when the Underworld (72) gear was the best you could have. Even then 435 would have been the actual optimal amount, but you can't get that exact amount so they had to settle for getting as close as they can. With 7 items with enhancement slot + implants and earpiece you have 10 items in total that can have accuracy or surge. With 79 of these stats per item if you went with 5 pieces of gear with accuracy and 5 with surge, you would get 395 each, putting your accuracy slightly below the optimal 435. With 6 items with accuracy and 4 with surge, you would get 474 accuracy, giving you slightly too much accuracy. At that stat budget getting that last half a percent was not considered worth loosing 79 surge for.

So 395 accuracy would be your goal if and only if you had only underworld 72 gear and nothing at all from any other gear tier. If you have higher tier (75 or 78) or lower tier (66 or 69) items at all, then 395 is definitely not your goal. And Noxxic says (at this moment in time) that their guides are for someone with Dread Forged (78) gear.

Of course if whoever made the Noxxic guide would have actually bothered to read whatever guide they copied the number 395 from, instead of just taking that number and skipping the rest of the text, they would know all this already.

Critical Rating: As I mentioned earlier, Noxxic telling every spec of every class to get 25% is what is most wrong in their guides when it comes to stat priority.

For several reasons:

1. Different specs of different classes will benefit from crit in different ways. 

Some specs get some additional benefits from crit (such as Lethality Sniper getting energy back when their dots crit) and therefore will want a bit more crit than most other classes in general.

Some specs have talents that make some abilities guaranteed crit and therefore will benefit less from critical rating than other classes in general as the autocrits will always crit no matter how much you have and so one of their hardest hitting ability does not benefit from crit.

Different specs of different classes want very different amounts of critical rating.

2. Some classes have different buffs and talents that affect your critical chance. One class getting less critical chance from other sources does not mean they necessarily want more from critical rating stat.

Now everyone has 5% base crit chance and you get 5% from a buff and probably biggest part of your total crit chance from your main stat and different amounts from skill trees and then what you get from any critical rating you might have.

Now for example a Sniper has a 3% critical chance talent in their skill trees as well as 9% main stat talent (which means also more crit from main stat) so with amounts of main stat in 78 gear they get pretty close to the 25% critical chance with literally 0 critical rating stat.

A Marauder does not have either of those kinds of talents in their skill trees so they would need a lot more critical rating stat on their gear, like 300 or more, to reach the same percentage.

So if someone followed the guides from Noxxic which tells to get 25% for every spec of every class, they would end up putting a lot more critical rating on their Marauder's gear than on their Sniper's gear, but this is doing it completely wrong. 

In reality if you look at any guides from theorycrafters who know what they are doing then it is actually the Sniper that is one of those classes that depending on spec, may want more critical rating (up to 300 or more) than most other classes, while Marauder in most specs is one of those that want less critical rating than others (usually none at all). So following Noxxic guides would make you do the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

3. Listing your total critical chance in percentage is completely useless way to tell someone how much critical rating you need. Even if you take all the skills and talents into account (which Noxxic does not take into account even those) then even then there would be other variables like how much mains stat you have in there.

In short: How much critical rating you want, does not depend on how much main stat you have. Your total critical chance percentage does however depend on how much main stat you have.

Conclusion: Therefore you should not even look at the percentage of your total crit chance, but only watch for raw amounts of critical rating stat and have your guide tell you that.

Surge Rating: Another one that is just partially true. Yes surge increases your critical multiplier.

First of all, this 200% that Noxxic mentions is complete and utter nonsense. It does not exist.

At 0 surge rating your critical multiplier is 50% (or actually 51% with the 1% from legacy companion buff). So critical hits do 51% more damage, so if we count normal hit as 100% then critical hit would be 151%. There is no 200% in there anywhere.
With Surge Rating on your gear, the critical multiplier goes up.
Neither the 70% crit multiplier nor the 395 surge rating are not any kind of goals you should have in mind. I already explained above with accuracy, where this 395 came from. With any gear higher than 72 level, you will end up with more than that for most specs.

Basically there is no need to give specific numbers for surge. For most specs of most classes, take accuracy until you reach the cap and then put surge rating in all the rest of your items that can have these stats.
(Assuming you need the accuracy as close as you can get to 435 and that you're not playing one of those few specs that may want a little bit of alacrity too, you will with 78 gear most likely end up closer to 74% crit multiplier.)

Power/Force Power: I see no problem with their explanations of these stats.