Raiding as Hemorrhage (Review)

You have almost all of the hard-hitting and valuable Combat talents, but you trade the investment in Assassination for points in Subtlety to unlock Serrated Blades and Hemorrhage. The other 17 points in Subtlety mostly don’t matter – some people prefer to take Opportunity and use Garrote as an opener. This is only good when you can position behind the mob before the pull happens, like on the Channelers for Magtheridon. If you lose attack time due to moving up to a mob in stealth, opening with Garrote is not worth it.

The raid benefit from Hemorrhage debuff is mostly a flat gain – 10 charges per cast, 42 damage per charge, increased by critical strikes and reduced by mob armor. There is no doubt that one rogue applying Hemorrhage provides less raid benefit than an active Expose Armor debuff. However, the rogue will apply Hemorrhage to every mob they attack, boss and trash, whereas Expose Armor is only applied to bosses and other long-lived mobs. The balance is that Hemorrhage is providing less benefit per second but is applied for more seconds, whereas Expose provides more benefit per second but is not active as much throughout a raid.

Another consideration for the Combat Hemorrhage build is that the rotation is much more fluid and much less punishing if you make a mistake. If you make a mistake and drop Expose Armor debuff, a typical raid is losing over 1000 DPS until you can reapply it. There is no dramatic necessity like the Expose Armor debuff when you are playing Hemorrhage. It may be worth considering that you want a simpler rotation (and less punishing if you make a mistake) especially on complex fights, fights with frequent interrupted uptime, or on fights where you are still learning the mechanics.