Fixing Rogues, Part 1

Ever since Blizzard released its Cataclysm Talents Tree Post-Mortem, I've been thinking about the structure of our class and talent trees; as for all that Blizzard asserts that the trees are mostly good with just a few "clunker talents" and "traps for the unwary", an honest assessment of the Assassination tree reveals more talents and abilities in need of fixing than not, which seems to me to go a bit beyond the handful of talents that Blizzard seemed to indicate. Additionally, now is a time when we clearly need help; I've enumerated a portion of the myriad flaws afflicting our class in other recent posts.

Hence, between the need for change and Blizzard's apparent unawareness of the scope of the problem, now seems like a good time to propose some changes that address both these problems. However, before I begin, a few caveats are in order.

First, I freely confess that I am not a PvP expert; as such, there are some issues that I intend to refrain from discussing. While trained Shadowstep certainly sounds like fun, the balance implications of such a change are minimal from a PvE perspective but potentially major in PvP. Hence, I leave that discussion and others like it to those that understand PvP better than I. And while I will try to avoid significant disruption to PvP, I freely admit that there are probably PvP consequences to some of my proposals that I have not considered.

Second, while I am making some effort to suggest changes that are balanced and sensible, the simple fact remains that only Blizzard has access to all the data necessary to fully assess these changes. I also have neither the time nor inclination to fully model all these out to make sure they wind up precisely balanced; I do this as a hobby, not as a job, and there's only so much time I can devote to it. Hence: while I try to propose sensible things that aren't horribly broken, I make no guarantees that I will actually succeed in doing so.

Finally, it should be noted that many of these changes are larger than is reasonable to expect for mid-expansion, and intentionally so. I don't believe our current predicament can be fully resolved via tweaking. I can't say I relish the idea of spending another year languishing in mediocrity, but at this point I think its more important to do it right than do it fast. Incremental changes that they can squeeze in in minor patches is what got us into this situation; it will require more radical changes to get us out.

So, without further ado: lets take a look at the first proposal:

1. Remove Deadly Poison

• Remove Deadly Poison in its current form from the game.
• Envenom damage no longer depends on poison stacks.
• Improved Poisons (assassination tree passive), in addition to increasing Instant Poison proc rate, also causes successful IP procs to apply a nature damage DoT lasting 18 seconds and stacking up to 5 times.
• Vile Poisons no longer affects FoK, but increases Envenom damage instead.

When discussing the problems with rogue burst, Deadly Poison stacking was a major concern cited; at the time, I suggested having DP always proc your other hand's poison, regardless of current stacks. It was pointed out that this feels sort of wrong, and I agree; hence, lets fix the problem another way: by getting rid of DP entirely. Instead, lets make it a bonus proc off IP for Assassination rogues, and just let Combat and Subtlety double up on Instant (or, depending on balance, Wound) poison.

First, this significantly reduces the ramp up for all three specs. In ToC, when Combat was using double WP because it was actually optimal, they actually had quite reasonable burst for short-lived targets. Combat and Subtlety would return to that era of poison application, and while Assassination will still lose damage from the DoT while ramping up on a new target, at least they get their Instant procs from the get-go. Additionally, the increased duration allows them to survive modest interruptions on their current target without losing the stack, so even the loss of DoT damage will be somewhat reduced.

Second, poison damage no longer mandates a fast OH; Mutilate would thus start using double slow daggers for extra poison procs and larger Mutilates, thus increasing the direct damage potential of the spec as well. Hence, in addition to reducing ramp-up time, it also increases burst, if admittedly by a fairly modest amount.

Third, it reduces the Assassination FoK advantage relative to the other specs. Instead of rolling a DP stack plus getting 3 chances to proc IP with every FoK, there is only one poison application per FoK and a slower-building stack. The DoT will still provide some bonus damage, but the overall damage of a single FoK is reduced by half or more. This allows them to make a much-needed global buff to FoK without imbalancing Assassination's AoE, while simultaneously reducing Assassination's ramp-up penalty.

Fourth, adding Envenom to Vile Poisons provides a modest (~20%) burst to Envenom damage, another valuable increase to our active damage sources and thus, our burst. Additionally, it becomes more viable as burst on new targets as it need no longer wait for DP to stack up to be fully effective.

Finally, it allows all three specs to lose less damage when providing debuffs via alternate poisons. Assassination still is hurt more than the other specs in applying Wound or Mind-Numbing, but at least it only loses half its IP damage instead of all of it; and depending on the damage balance of Wound poison, we could easily see a return to the Wrath days where Combat (and Sub) could apply WP without losing DPS at all, much as Arms warriors do. Currently Mind Numbing and Wound Poison might as well not exist in PvE, a significant blow to our utility, particularly in smaller raid sizes; by allowing them to be used again, we regain valuable utility that we are currently sorely lacking.

There are, however, a few problems yet to be resolved, which I intend to address in future installments:

• Assassination and Subtlety no longer care about fast daggers, leaving Combat as the only spec in the game that still desires a 1.4 speed weapon. Combat Potency thus needs to be adjusted to be less reliant on OH speed, so as to allow all daggers to be itemized in the 1.7-1.9 range while being useful to all 3 specs.
• Master Poisoner is now purely a utility talent. This is not entirely a bad thing, in that previously it was to some extent what Blizzard referred to as a "trap" talent - incredibly critical to the tree's DPS, but not necessarily obviously good to the casual observer. However, the raid buff component probably should be shifted to a legitimate DPS talent in order to avoid the TBC-style issue of a raid buff coming at the cost of personal utility or DPS.
• The nature of a suitable FoK buff remains somewhat elusive; making it cheaper or giving it a damage multiplier would only increase the odd over-reliance on the quality of a slot thats otherwise mostly irrelevant. AoE damage should be a function of the overall quality of your gear (as it is for casters), with perhaps a bit of extra weight on your primary weapon (like hunters); it should not depend primarily on your throwing weapon any more than it should on your wand or relic. Hence, while we now have room to make the large FoK buff that is needed for Subtlety and Combat to compete, we still need to figure out an appropriate mechanism to dramatically increase its efficacy in a way that scales appropriately with gear.