5.0 Talents
Posted 11/13/11 at 8:30 PM by Aldriana
One of the major announcements at Blizzcon was the revelation that the talent trees are being revamped (again) in Mists - and much more thoroughly than they were for Cataclysm. Instead of having a single talent tree comprising both “essential” and “utility” talents, they’ve split these into two different systems. Then, since the “essential” stuff is, well, essential, they simply give it all to you (at appropriate levels) just for choosing your spec, and all character customization beyond class and spec is done through selection of utility talents. And from a conceptual perspective, this makes a lot of sense - if you have a lot of abilities that everyone is going to take anyway, there’s little point in making them do talent selection to get them. And this all sounds great in theory, but in practice there are significant flaws with system - in a number of key respects, I’m not sure its any better than what we have now.
First, it doesn’t really make it any easier to create balanced talents. Cookie-cutter specs exist not because of any inherent property of how you choose them, but the simple fact that some of the available options are a lot better than others; for the most part, the only choice we get is between options that are equally useless - and a choice between abilities you’re never going to use anyway isn’t that meaningful. And the new system does little to change that - in order to allow meaningful customization and end cookie-cutter specs they will need to do something that they’ve been failing at for years: design equally useful but clearly distinct talent choices. If they’re balanced to the same standard as the filler in the existing trees, it will still be a collection of meaningless and obvious choices.
Second, the new system lacks any ability to separate PvP choices from PvE ones. One of the great challenges of balance is that different types of content have very different priorities, so its almost impossible to create choices that are meaningful for all players at the same time. The current system handles this elegantly - there are enough points to spend that you can always afford to take the talents that are essential for the content you’re doing. By the time you get down to the 31st-best talent in the tree, you’re picking between things that are (hopefully) useful but (always) nonessential, regardless of what your priorities happen to be. So while a raiding Assassination rogue might be deciding between Deadly Brew and Deadened Nerves for that last point, and that decision might be obvious for a PvP rogue... it doesn’t matter, because a PvP Assassination rogue will by choosing between completely different talents in some other part of the tree.
The new system doesn’t have this flexibility. All rogues, regardless of spec or content type, are picking between the same options - and it simply will not be possible to make those choices meaningful for all rogues at the same time. I they want to give PvE rogues interesting choices, they will inevitably create some decisions that are obvious or meaningless for PvP rogues, and vice versa. Options that are balanced for one spec may not be balanced for all of them. So when it comes time to make decisions about how to pick talents for a particular spec and content type, you won’t have 6 meaningful choices to make - you’ll have perhaps 2, as the rest will have been balanced with other types of content in mind. You’ll have, in other words, about the same amount of choice you have now.
Blizzard said a major goal of the new system was to spell an end to cookie-cutter specs, to help you feel different than the rogue standing next to you in town. And as far as I can tell, that’s only true to the extent that it feels better to differ by 2 talents out of 6 instead of 2 out of 41. If you’re a raiding rogue, and you’re standing next to another raiding rogue, you’re still going to have mostly the same abilities. And while you’ll probably have more than 2 talents different when comparing to a PvP rogue, that’s true of the current system as well. In terms of spec differentiation, I don’t know that the new system is any better than the current one.
Which is not to say, mind you, that the changes are pointless - its just that the gains are not in choice, but in usability. At current, the average casual raider has little chance of figuring out what the “right” spec is on their own - he sheer number of options can be intimidating, and the benefits of some talents can be quite subtle and hard to compare. Hence, the expectation right now is that if you’re in any way serious about your performance as a rogue, you do some research online - at EJ or one of the other sites where such things are discussed - and read up on what the consensus choices by the community are. Blizzard has indicated dissatisfaction with this state of events - they’d rather the choices were simple and clear enough for the average player to be able to come up with a strong, viable spec without relying on extensive external guidance. And while the new system might not fully realize that goal, it certainly is closer than the current one. What they’ve done, then, is create a system that provides about as much choice as the current one, but is hopefully much simpler and easier to use. This might not be a meaningful improvement for more serious players (which probably includes the entire audience of this blog), but its hard to argue that “simpler and about as good” isn’t a reasonable step forward for the system as a whole.
Of course, to even do that much relies on the talents being well balanced, and currently, they’re... not. Lets take a quick look through the tree from a PvE perspective:
Level 15: Stealth
Nightstalker is a cool toy that lets you move around more quickly in noncombat situations. Subterfuge lets you launch a couple of extra stealthed attacks following a Vanish, which mostly means extra ambushes for Subtlety. And Shadow Focus makes Vanish into a DPS cooldown, or improves it if already was one. Hence there’s no actual choice here - everyone will just take whichever option gives them the most damage - usually Shadow Focus, but possible Subterfuge for Sub rogues.
Also note that (as I’ve previously discussed) I think having vanish be a DPS cooldown is a mistake, and while I’m sort of okay with the notion of it remaining one for Sub, we absolutely don’t need a talent that guarantees it will be for all specs. Shadow Focus is just a bad idea, and needs to be replaced.
Level 30: Damage Reduction... and Deadly Throw
Combat Readiness and Deadly Throw are both already available to us, and I don’t believe I’ve used either of them in a raid setting since the launch of Cataclysm. Nor do I see any reason to believe that will change. Nerve Strike might be a little better, but its still nothing we’re going to use on anything close to a regular basis. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the fact that this tree offers little to interest the raiding rogue - PvP rogues deserve interesting choices too - but it does put us 0 for 2 in the “interesting choices for PvE” department.
I’d also note that Deadly Throw’s inclusion in this tier is a little bit odd - the other two talents deal pretty specifically with increasing survivability, and Deadly Throw... doesn’t. At least not directly. So the obvious approach to fixing this tier is replacing it with something that better fits the theme. The problem being: either said replacement will be good in PvE, in which case it will be the obvious choice; or it will be equally useless in PvE, which still leaves us with no interesting choices.
Level 45: Self-Healing
Its almost comical how poorly balanced Improved Recuperate and Leeching Poison are for PvE. In current content I have roughly 150k HP and do 35k DPS; hence Improved Recuperate increases my healing by 500 HPS (but only while I have Recuperate up) and Leeching Poison heals me for seven times that. And Improved Recuperate costs me damage to put up, while Leeching Poison doesn’t. And while its true that Improved Recuperate also gives 6% damage reduction, that will only make up a defecit of 3k HPS if I’m taking more than 50k DPS - which should basically never happen. This might be an interesting choice in PvP, where your utility poison is more valuable, Recuperate is more likely to be up, and your damage is quite a bit lower; but from a PvE perspective Leeching Poison is the runaway winner between these two.
Fortunately, the decision between Cheat Death and Leeching Poison is rather more interesting. In general you’d expect Cheat Death to be better than passive healing - the safety net it provides, in terms of surviving mistakes and negating mechanics - is quite powerful, and passive healing tends to be more about saving healer mana than about saving your life. But Leeching Poison is healing on a completely different magnitude than previous options - its literally all the healing you need on most fights in Firelands, including H:Rag. On fights where healing is tight - for instance, if you’re stacking DPS to beat a berserk timer - the ability to be completely self-sufficient in terms of healing needed could be very valuable. So while I suspect Cheat Death will be the more popular choice, it is very much a choice - some rogues will prefer Leeching Poison, and I can’t say they’re wrong to do so.
Level 60: Movement
I can’t help but feel that Burst of Speed is too expensive to see much use in PvE. I don’t know that it can realistically be made cheaper, but 60 energy is a lot to spend unless you’re out of range of your target for a pretty significant amount of time - enough that you were going to energy cap anyway, basically. And in most fights, that sort of situation is rare enough that you can cover it with Sprint, so there’s little need to have Burst of Speed as well. I can imagine using it on P4 Rag on Deluge duty, but in the vast majority of circumstances you’d rather have Shadowstep, which both costs less and gets you where you’re going faster. Admittedly it only helps with running out and not running in, but usually those are paired so I don’t know to what extent the distinction matters.
I’m not even going to bother assessing how either option stacks up to Preparation, because, frankly, Preparation has no business being a talent. The whole point of this talent refactor is to not make you spend talent points on essential abilities, and Preparation in PvP is about as close to essential as it gets. It either needs to be a trained ability - for all rogues or selected trees - or it needs to be removed entirely. There’s absolutely no point in wasting a tier of the talent tree with an ability that’s going to be virtually impossible to balance, and doesn’t really fit the theme defined by the other two abilities anyway. There are a number of interesting talents they could put here - Deadly Throw and a passive run speed bonus a la Quickening or the new Feral Swiftness are the first two options that come to mind - but Preparation isn’t one of them.
Tier 75: Immobilization
Much like Tier 30, this is all useless in PvE. Deadly Brew we use about once an expansion, Paralytic Poison would be lucky to get used even that much, and Dirty Tricks pretty much only matters when you’re the only person attacking your target which is... rare, in raids. I’m fine with writing this off as “balanced for PvP” - I don’t see that there’s much other choice - but I do feel obligated to note that we’re at one tier out of five with a remotely interesting decision to make.
Tier 90: Cooldowns
The first thing to notice is that which one to use is going to be purely a function of which one gives you the most damage. And while that answer might change somewhat from fight to fight, my expectation is that we’re going to run some numbers, conclude that one of them gives an extra half a percent DPS, and use that on 95% of fights. Its sort of the inherent problem with DPS abilities in talents - one of them will always be best, unless they’re explicitly made highly circumstantial.
It should also be noted that all of the options here are deeply flawed. Shadow Dance is pretty much only of interest to Sub rogues - no PvE rogue will ever take it as any other spec. Vendetta’s contribution to our regular single-target damage is just as boring as ever, and while it theoretically gives us some amount of viability from range, the current incarnation of the ability... doesn’t. Combo point generating strikes are all well and good, but without autoattacks and finishers we’re going to do maybe 20% of our total damage output to a target at range. Killing Spree is still completely capable of killing us in unrecoverable fashion, and while the combo point generating aspect of it is interesting I can’t help but feel that the free finishers would be more interesting without the teleporting mechanic. It feels like two potentially interesting cooldowns kludged together, resulting in an ability that isn’t as fun or interesting as either.
In short: about half the talents in tree are in need of significant revision for the tree to wind up in any way interesting for PvE rogues. And there’s plenty of time for that to happen - Blizzard was quite clear that this is primarily and early preview, and there’s lots of balancing yet to be done. But I do hope they’re serious about fixing them, as the current incarnation would be a significant step back in terms of interesting and balanced gameplay for rogues.
First, it doesn’t really make it any easier to create balanced talents. Cookie-cutter specs exist not because of any inherent property of how you choose them, but the simple fact that some of the available options are a lot better than others; for the most part, the only choice we get is between options that are equally useless - and a choice between abilities you’re never going to use anyway isn’t that meaningful. And the new system does little to change that - in order to allow meaningful customization and end cookie-cutter specs they will need to do something that they’ve been failing at for years: design equally useful but clearly distinct talent choices. If they’re balanced to the same standard as the filler in the existing trees, it will still be a collection of meaningless and obvious choices.
Second, the new system lacks any ability to separate PvP choices from PvE ones. One of the great challenges of balance is that different types of content have very different priorities, so its almost impossible to create choices that are meaningful for all players at the same time. The current system handles this elegantly - there are enough points to spend that you can always afford to take the talents that are essential for the content you’re doing. By the time you get down to the 31st-best talent in the tree, you’re picking between things that are (hopefully) useful but (always) nonessential, regardless of what your priorities happen to be. So while a raiding Assassination rogue might be deciding between Deadly Brew and Deadened Nerves for that last point, and that decision might be obvious for a PvP rogue... it doesn’t matter, because a PvP Assassination rogue will by choosing between completely different talents in some other part of the tree.
The new system doesn’t have this flexibility. All rogues, regardless of spec or content type, are picking between the same options - and it simply will not be possible to make those choices meaningful for all rogues at the same time. I they want to give PvE rogues interesting choices, they will inevitably create some decisions that are obvious or meaningless for PvP rogues, and vice versa. Options that are balanced for one spec may not be balanced for all of them. So when it comes time to make decisions about how to pick talents for a particular spec and content type, you won’t have 6 meaningful choices to make - you’ll have perhaps 2, as the rest will have been balanced with other types of content in mind. You’ll have, in other words, about the same amount of choice you have now.
Blizzard said a major goal of the new system was to spell an end to cookie-cutter specs, to help you feel different than the rogue standing next to you in town. And as far as I can tell, that’s only true to the extent that it feels better to differ by 2 talents out of 6 instead of 2 out of 41. If you’re a raiding rogue, and you’re standing next to another raiding rogue, you’re still going to have mostly the same abilities. And while you’ll probably have more than 2 talents different when comparing to a PvP rogue, that’s true of the current system as well. In terms of spec differentiation, I don’t know that the new system is any better than the current one.
Which is not to say, mind you, that the changes are pointless - its just that the gains are not in choice, but in usability. At current, the average casual raider has little chance of figuring out what the “right” spec is on their own - he sheer number of options can be intimidating, and the benefits of some talents can be quite subtle and hard to compare. Hence, the expectation right now is that if you’re in any way serious about your performance as a rogue, you do some research online - at EJ or one of the other sites where such things are discussed - and read up on what the consensus choices by the community are. Blizzard has indicated dissatisfaction with this state of events - they’d rather the choices were simple and clear enough for the average player to be able to come up with a strong, viable spec without relying on extensive external guidance. And while the new system might not fully realize that goal, it certainly is closer than the current one. What they’ve done, then, is create a system that provides about as much choice as the current one, but is hopefully much simpler and easier to use. This might not be a meaningful improvement for more serious players (which probably includes the entire audience of this blog), but its hard to argue that “simpler and about as good” isn’t a reasonable step forward for the system as a whole.
Of course, to even do that much relies on the talents being well balanced, and currently, they’re... not. Lets take a quick look through the tree from a PvE perspective:
Level 15: Stealth
Nightstalker is a cool toy that lets you move around more quickly in noncombat situations. Subterfuge lets you launch a couple of extra stealthed attacks following a Vanish, which mostly means extra ambushes for Subtlety. And Shadow Focus makes Vanish into a DPS cooldown, or improves it if already was one. Hence there’s no actual choice here - everyone will just take whichever option gives them the most damage - usually Shadow Focus, but possible Subterfuge for Sub rogues.
Also note that (as I’ve previously discussed) I think having vanish be a DPS cooldown is a mistake, and while I’m sort of okay with the notion of it remaining one for Sub, we absolutely don’t need a talent that guarantees it will be for all specs. Shadow Focus is just a bad idea, and needs to be replaced.
Level 30: Damage Reduction... and Deadly Throw
Combat Readiness and Deadly Throw are both already available to us, and I don’t believe I’ve used either of them in a raid setting since the launch of Cataclysm. Nor do I see any reason to believe that will change. Nerve Strike might be a little better, but its still nothing we’re going to use on anything close to a regular basis. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the fact that this tree offers little to interest the raiding rogue - PvP rogues deserve interesting choices too - but it does put us 0 for 2 in the “interesting choices for PvE” department.
I’d also note that Deadly Throw’s inclusion in this tier is a little bit odd - the other two talents deal pretty specifically with increasing survivability, and Deadly Throw... doesn’t. At least not directly. So the obvious approach to fixing this tier is replacing it with something that better fits the theme. The problem being: either said replacement will be good in PvE, in which case it will be the obvious choice; or it will be equally useless in PvE, which still leaves us with no interesting choices.
Level 45: Self-Healing
Its almost comical how poorly balanced Improved Recuperate and Leeching Poison are for PvE. In current content I have roughly 150k HP and do 35k DPS; hence Improved Recuperate increases my healing by 500 HPS (but only while I have Recuperate up) and Leeching Poison heals me for seven times that. And Improved Recuperate costs me damage to put up, while Leeching Poison doesn’t. And while its true that Improved Recuperate also gives 6% damage reduction, that will only make up a defecit of 3k HPS if I’m taking more than 50k DPS - which should basically never happen. This might be an interesting choice in PvP, where your utility poison is more valuable, Recuperate is more likely to be up, and your damage is quite a bit lower; but from a PvE perspective Leeching Poison is the runaway winner between these two.
Fortunately, the decision between Cheat Death and Leeching Poison is rather more interesting. In general you’d expect Cheat Death to be better than passive healing - the safety net it provides, in terms of surviving mistakes and negating mechanics - is quite powerful, and passive healing tends to be more about saving healer mana than about saving your life. But Leeching Poison is healing on a completely different magnitude than previous options - its literally all the healing you need on most fights in Firelands, including H:Rag. On fights where healing is tight - for instance, if you’re stacking DPS to beat a berserk timer - the ability to be completely self-sufficient in terms of healing needed could be very valuable. So while I suspect Cheat Death will be the more popular choice, it is very much a choice - some rogues will prefer Leeching Poison, and I can’t say they’re wrong to do so.
Level 60: Movement
I can’t help but feel that Burst of Speed is too expensive to see much use in PvE. I don’t know that it can realistically be made cheaper, but 60 energy is a lot to spend unless you’re out of range of your target for a pretty significant amount of time - enough that you were going to energy cap anyway, basically. And in most fights, that sort of situation is rare enough that you can cover it with Sprint, so there’s little need to have Burst of Speed as well. I can imagine using it on P4 Rag on Deluge duty, but in the vast majority of circumstances you’d rather have Shadowstep, which both costs less and gets you where you’re going faster. Admittedly it only helps with running out and not running in, but usually those are paired so I don’t know to what extent the distinction matters.
I’m not even going to bother assessing how either option stacks up to Preparation, because, frankly, Preparation has no business being a talent. The whole point of this talent refactor is to not make you spend talent points on essential abilities, and Preparation in PvP is about as close to essential as it gets. It either needs to be a trained ability - for all rogues or selected trees - or it needs to be removed entirely. There’s absolutely no point in wasting a tier of the talent tree with an ability that’s going to be virtually impossible to balance, and doesn’t really fit the theme defined by the other two abilities anyway. There are a number of interesting talents they could put here - Deadly Throw and a passive run speed bonus a la Quickening or the new Feral Swiftness are the first two options that come to mind - but Preparation isn’t one of them.
Tier 75: Immobilization
Much like Tier 30, this is all useless in PvE. Deadly Brew we use about once an expansion, Paralytic Poison would be lucky to get used even that much, and Dirty Tricks pretty much only matters when you’re the only person attacking your target which is... rare, in raids. I’m fine with writing this off as “balanced for PvP” - I don’t see that there’s much other choice - but I do feel obligated to note that we’re at one tier out of five with a remotely interesting decision to make.
Tier 90: Cooldowns
The first thing to notice is that which one to use is going to be purely a function of which one gives you the most damage. And while that answer might change somewhat from fight to fight, my expectation is that we’re going to run some numbers, conclude that one of them gives an extra half a percent DPS, and use that on 95% of fights. Its sort of the inherent problem with DPS abilities in talents - one of them will always be best, unless they’re explicitly made highly circumstantial.
It should also be noted that all of the options here are deeply flawed. Shadow Dance is pretty much only of interest to Sub rogues - no PvE rogue will ever take it as any other spec. Vendetta’s contribution to our regular single-target damage is just as boring as ever, and while it theoretically gives us some amount of viability from range, the current incarnation of the ability... doesn’t. Combo point generating strikes are all well and good, but without autoattacks and finishers we’re going to do maybe 20% of our total damage output to a target at range. Killing Spree is still completely capable of killing us in unrecoverable fashion, and while the combo point generating aspect of it is interesting I can’t help but feel that the free finishers would be more interesting without the teleporting mechanic. It feels like two potentially interesting cooldowns kludged together, resulting in an ability that isn’t as fun or interesting as either.
In short: about half the talents in tree are in need of significant revision for the tree to wind up in any way interesting for PvE rogues. And there’s plenty of time for that to happen - Blizzard was quite clear that this is primarily and early preview, and there’s lots of balancing yet to be done. But I do hope they’re serious about fixing them, as the current incarnation would be a significant step back in terms of interesting and balanced gameplay for rogues.
Total Comments 14
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As always, thanks for taking the time. Much appreciated. Any way that deadly throw damagE plus vendetta could result in 80% of our melee damage?
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Not really, no. You might get it up to 30%, but you're nowhere close to 80%.
If the goal is to let us DPS from range, they need to make *all* attacks 30 yard range. Or give us a voodoo-doll type functionality where we create a target in melee range which we can DPS, and the damage copies onto the target. Or some such thing. Autoattack and poisons are just too important to get away with just providing a few damaging moves that work at range. Also note that I'm not entirely sure I like the idea of a talent granting us DPS capabilities from range. It doesn't seem very fitting with the rogue style, and I think it has unfortunate implications for balance (i.e., either fights are balanced under the assumption that melee can't DPS from range for part of the fight, in which case rogues are OP; or fights are balanced under the assumption that you need the ability to attack from range, in which case you sit *all* the melee in favor of casters). I do intend to get into more detail with what's wrong with the current talents and how to fix them at some point, but this post was long enough already. |
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I love your voodoo-doll idea, but I agree with the balance implications of letting us range DPS. The current Vendetta CD limits it to 15 seconds every 2mn though; enough for us to start ramp up during a target switch (if Vengeful Strike stacks DP/BG), but not enough to DPS an Atramedes air phase for example (even if it allowed us do 100% DPS from range).
The new Vendetta may be designed as an aid to rogue ramp up problems, and not as a way to range DPS. In which case we woud have to choose between a pure DPS CD for mainly single target fights (KS or SD), and Vendetta+Redirect for fights where we have to move between targets regularly. Couldn't this be balanced so that Vendetta gives us good DPS on fights where we are currently very weak due to mecanics forcing too many target switches? Although I think Ghostcrawler already expressed the intention of removing DP stacking for MoP, in which case Vendetta would only serve to get Combo Points (and BG) at range, which would still let us precast SnD if it's down and prepare Rupture (speaking as Assassination). |
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Updated 11/15/11 at 12:51 PM by Enzo90910 |
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Quote:
It doesn't seem very fitting with the rogue style, and I think it has unfortunate implications for balance (i.e., either fights are balanced under the assumption that melee can't DPS from range for part of the fight, in which case rogues are OP;
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So here's the thing.
If you pop Vendetta at a time when you would normally be doing your full, base, 100% DPS, it will increase that to 120% DPS; hence, you gain an extra 20% DPS for the 15 seconds it is up. If you pop Vendetta a time when you would normally be doing 0 damage, and it lets you do (say) 80% of your normal damage instead, you are thus increasing your damage by 80% of your normal output for the 15 seconds it is up - the damage gain is thus 4 times larger. Hence, in terms of total damage done, if there's a time when a target will be otherwise out of range it would absolutely be worth saving Vendetta to use during that period, pretty much no matter how many uses of the normal melee-range sort it costs you. Now, admittedly, its only 15 seconds out of every 2 minutes. But they're unlikely to make bosses that have significantly more "out of range" time than that, as such fights tend to screw melee over badly at the expense of ranged. And even on a fight that matches up poorly with Vendetta's cooldown - say, 2:30 on the boss, 30 seconds off - still gives a Vendetta rogue nearly a 10% advantage relative to other melee. And while that may not be completely crippling to balance, its definitely significant. |
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Thinking from the assassination perspective: I look at the damage breakdown of mutilate now, and vendetta strike is roughly similar. 1 vendetta strike every little more than 2s (with a rupture ticking) for 30e, damage/e and CP/e looks like they will be fairly similar, but a slight advantage to vendetta strike. With no hard numbers, I can't imagine how we could sustain 80% of our DPS while at ranged. I guess we just have to wait and see how much DPS we do (and the damage breakdown) at 90 to say for sure though.
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Well, as noted, with the current design of the move, we wouldn't. We'd do about 20% - which you'll note makes it about as good at range as it is in melee - but Blizzard has made clear that they intend it to be stronger:
Quote:
Q: The new "Vendetta" talent allows the rogue to perform a ranged attack. What is the main aim of this ability?
A: The requirement to be in melee range to deal damage to an enemy is an inherent restriction of the Rogue class. We think that being able to essentially "break the rules" for a short period of time will allow for some fun gameplay. Obviously the final numbers will be important, but the intent is for a rogue to be able to operate at nearly full damage capacity against the marked target from range, while Vendetta remains active. |
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I remember that, but to "operate at nearly full damage capacity" would end up requiring vendetta strike to hit for well over 50k. You then have to deal with rogues using vendetta strike in melee range, as that would crush the damage from Mutilate, and would result in players still using vendetta in melee range on cooldown. The options at that point are to keep vendetta strike as a weak CP builder such that Mutilate still beats it, or implement a minimum range.
To be honest, I don't like adding a min range. That seems like an ugly workaround to fix a problem that was created by forcing a square peg into a round hole. Unless they want vendetta strike to replace the primary CP builder for each spec while it's up. That would be, interesting. |
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Something that concerns me is the lack of equality in the new talent trees. Mages and druids are getting a "vanish" that is arguably stronger than ours. Greater Invisibility removes 2 dots and provides 20 seconds of stealth, and Displacer Beast removes all periodic damage effects and provides 10 seconds of stealth. Shouldn't rogues have the best vanish? Are we going to see CoS baked into our vanish?
Also, druids will get an AoE deathgrip through Ursol's Vortex. On that tier we get to choose between two rather weak/rng based slows, or Dirty Tricks (which most classes get from a glyph). I know that it is very early, but I feel like in general rogues are being forced to choose between abilities that we used to have instead of getting something new, while other classes are getting incredible new talents. If we don't get some more raid utility I feel like 5.0 is a nerf overall as currently advertised as many raids will choose to bring a class that is more useful. As an RL I would rather have a mage with iceblock to trivialize mechanics, AoE CC, and Time Warp, or a druid with B-rez, AoE deathgrip, stampede, etc. |
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You have voiced (and far better than I ever could) exactly what I was concerned about myself. I have most of my guildies really excited about their classes' new trees and new abilities and the decisions they're going to have to make. I look at the Rogue tree and... meh. The choices for a PvE Rogue are either no-brainers or no use.
As has been pointed out by yourself and Blizz themselves, these are very sketchy trees at the moment and will likely change quite a bit before 5.0 hits. I really hope they do for Rogues and provide us with actual choices but, given their track record so far for the class, I'm not holding out much hope. |
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A great blog post as always. As noted by others you've covered many of the concerns some of us share. Like you pointed out Blizz has stated this is just a rough draft and we're all going to cross our fingers and hope that things get better, but as Shadefoot said, their track record isn't too good for that. Inherently a part of the problem with getting change has always meant dealing with the forums and either the other classes voicing their un-informed opinions or rogues who have no clue deciding to chime in and say how great things are already and nothing needs to be done. A possible use for your "celebrity" could be in making a post of these concerns on the official forums, a lot of the EJ lurkers and contributors might come out of the woodworks to back something with your name on it.
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You're assuming that I know the answer - I don't. And even if I did, there's nothing that says that Blizzard would agree with it, and all the community consensus in the world won't change that.
Fundamentally: the problem is not that Blizzard listens to ignorant players and makes poor decisions as a result; the problem is that they make decisions that seem good, but neither they nor we realize the negative consequences until too late. I don't recall any great outroar during Cata Beta about how Bandit's Guile was going to cripple our rampup time - it wasn't until we got to T11 and started using it on a regular basis that the scope of the problem became clear. Hence, I think the focus should be on identifying the problems in the current design, and maybe doing a bit of brainstorming to indicate the sort of things we're hoping to see instead. If we come up with a single unified plan and put all our energy behind it, and Blizzard doesn't like it... then what? Whereas if we take the time to explain what we do and don't like about what we're seeing, and then let Blizzard pick something that fits both with that and their own internal goals, we have a much better chance at being satisfied by the outcome. |
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I am very glad to see this post. I do, in fact, have opinions!
Level 15: Stealth 1- We don't know if Subterfuge keeps you stealthed for the purposes of attacks or not. As written, it sure does. We also don't know if it works with vanish, as certain things treat the two differently. This talent's value will be very high in pvp, as it will allow for a "rogue bubble"- vanish and open, and you can't be CCed off by even the most vigilant of enemies. I can't see it going live like that, but if it does, stupendous. 2- Shadow Focus, as you say, is almost assuredly the pve option. It will also deliver in pvp, essentially cutting the majority of the cost of openers (making them free means you don't get that first second of energy regen). I can't imagine that subterfuge will compare for damage for any spec- if the extra opener or two make that large of a difference, then Shadow Focus would be a non-option. 3- Nightstalker, an excellent talent, is horribly outmatched. Outside of BGs and some solo content this talent will have little to recommend it. I don't feel this is a good talent choice, but it's better than a lot of other ones. Also, I'm enamored of the definite power increase I'll experience with any of the two good ones. I'll also take this time to point something out, but go into it later at final tier: these talents are essentially obligating the devs to normalize a lot of things that aren't currently- combo point generation, opener strength, and finisher strength, specifically. If ambush isn't worth pressing unless you are sub (for instance), then shadow dance and subterfuge lose much of their appeal for the class as a whole, and shouldn't be taking up space and presenting false choices. Level 30: Damage Reduction... and Deadly Throw I'm with you here. This is a pvp only tier. I also don't know what Deadly Throw did to get thrown under the bus. I'm also puzzled as to the meaning of putting combat readiness here. Blizzard already used Combat Readiness as a dial to tone up, then later down, rogue survivability in pvp. It is actually a rather good cooldown- and it seems very odd to have it appear here. I suspect that with the general frequency of kidney shots in pvp, that nerve strike will be better if your team needs peels, and combat readiness if you are the kill target, with deadly throw being more for battlegrounds and solo combat. It's also likely to be the winner for pve, simply because it might, at some point, be relevant. Ultimately, I don't see why deadly throw should be tradeable for anything, much less odd stuff like this, and I think it will be difficult to balance rogues around maybe having shield wall, and maybe not. We also don't know if any specs get to keep deadly throw interrupt- currently a combat specialty, but it seems to have gone away (in fact, all of combat and assassination's pvp talents, from 10% reduced damage taken to 70% physical snare to improved sprint, seem to be MIA). Level 45: Self-Healing Since poisons are apparently up in the air, it's hard to say whether we can run Leeching Poison or not. When this was first announced, we assumed we would run instant/deadly, and this would be 100% not an option in pve (and probably terrible in pvp). Then we were told that we would get one "utility" poison (two if deadly brew), and one damage poison, that would act like deadly+instant. Suddenly, it became the only possible choice here. And it's not because of the 7x example: it's because our utility poisons bring no such thing to a raid at all- they are all dead in almost all encounters. Having one that mysteriously healed us would suddenly bring a thing where no such thing existed before. Improved Recuperate, by comparison, is only freely used by subtlety (and only if energetic recuperation stays around), and as you point out, is a mathematically inferior. I don't even know how to make Leeching Poison work right, to be honest. Certainly, it is a choice to use it in pvp or not- but in pvp, a rogue's damage is not stupendous, and can be turned off- recuperate is usually active on any rogue as he dies, as controlling it is not really likely. Additionally, it is a serious loss to ignore cripple in pvp, and with deadly brew selected, it is often a pretty big loss to lose wound. Regardless, with the new poison model, in pve we have no choice here, and unless they add utility to poisons that makes them worth bringing (they said something about this, but without specifics I will assume they have no ideas), it will be the only one that does anything at all in pve, and will be selected. In pvp, it is at least interesting. Level 60: Movement I agree with you 100%. I am also glad to see you say it- I think Blizzard might read you, maybe. Prep should be baseline (I'd be very sad if they removed it total), or if it IS a talent, it should be with other big boy cooldowns that would be new. Much like how the DK tier 6 is full of powerful pvp cooldowns that are new. The takeaway is that while burst of speed is a well thought out new talent (it may be too expensive in pve, but I could make a case for it in pvp), we could use a third one of those to round out this tree. Maybe you could spear them with a chain on your weapon, and then you both meet in the middle! But in seriousness, I know there are only so many ways to close gaps, but it doesn't seem like it would be impossible to come up with something fresh, that compares well with both shadowstep and burst of speed. In pve, I think the real reason you don't like burst of speed is this: any fight where it is better than shadowstep is going to be so awful for melee that the choice is not relevant. While in pvp, such situations can happen, and it is by design. Tier 75: Immobilization As you say, pvp only tree. Even for pvp rogues, it seems pretty obvious that deadly brew will be the champ. Dirty Tricks is by no means terrible, but the second "utility poison" will apparently be needed to do things that we have taken for granted since level 70, such as wound+cripple. Paralytic Poison might be useful in some situations. If it only shares DR with itself, then I suspect we might see a decent bit of it, whereas if it messes up your kidney shots and also turns you off from using any sort of snare... I just don't see how to swing it. Tier 90: Cooldowns I think you could have been a lot ruder with this. I'll flat out say that this is lazy, poor design, and buys them more effort than they can afford to pay down. 1- It is lazy because it just takes our level 70 abilities and makes us choose one... at level 90. These abilities are conceptually tied with the trees. Vendetta is a latecomer, but it expresses the obsession of the assassin. Shadowstep is a perfect match for sub thematically- and the description on the tree even references it. Sub is the "ninja magic" tree, and this is that. Meanwhile, killing spree is the sleight of hand of the pirate or swashbuckler, the flurry of attacks so fast that you can't defend against it. This means that they didn't bother to think of a damned new thing for us, much less the three that this would have required. That is lazy. 2- It is poor design because the existing cooldowns are crafted to work with the tree, and this breaks that. As written, the killing spree doesn't even work at all. Wait, who do you get combo points on? Does it change targets now? Do you have combo points on some dude and you have to guess? It has a duration in seconds... if you press KiS->Evis->KiS->Evis->Kis->Evis, which is presumably your optimum single target here, then do you GET that third KiS, or is it entirely lag dependent? I don't even know what they mean! So, we assume that they mean it is something like the current killing spree with eviscerates thrown in. If the current specs remain at all similar, then it will be calculated which one is top in pve for each spec, and they will only use that (you said as much). 3- It buys them more effort than they can afford to pay down because if they want it to not be poorly designed (2), then they need to make these totally disparate cooldowns somehow comparable. Currently, the specs do reasonably similar damage, but they get that damage in different ways. Subtlety has essentially free combo points. While shadow dance makes a bunch of combo points, the charming part is access to openers, which sub has talents boosting, and expose weakness, which said openers trigger, a passive +damage-to-target debuff that continues for 10 seconds after your last finisher. Assassination doesn't have many combo points or energy- it has powerful hits though. What does shadowdance offer assassination? Or with a reasonable ambush, might it offer TOO much? Combat, in the meantime, has plenty of energy, and a decent number of combo points, and no use for openers at all. Where do you balance the openers such that the benefit is similar per spec? Moving to killing spree, we see a bunch of combo points and free finishers. Presumably, then, your finishers need to be powerful for this to work. Right away this seems to have poor synergy with revealing strike- the finishers in question would be subpar compared to what combat expects, but the envenoms would be perfectly fine for mutilate, and the eviscerates standard strength for subtlety. For this move to be similar to shadow dance for any given spec, the benefit of a few ambushes and finishers needs to be similar in weight to a bunch of finishers. Currently, there is no need for such balance. Finally stopping at vendetta, we at least see a move with a percentage, and also interesting utility attached. As a percent, it actually makes the same demands as the other- the damage boost, over that time, must be similar to the boost provided by the small window burst cooldowns. So Blizzard has bitten off a lot of balancing with this change, and if they ignore it, then we basically don't even get a tier 6- in pve, you'll just take whichever one is best for your spec, and it's likely that one will be good for absolutely nothing at all. We can't figure out, right now, which of these three is "best" in pve- but Blizzard will have to that legwork, for every tier. I don't understand what these talents buy us. We aren't the only one in this very confusing boat- some other classes have very similar issues going on. Your previous blog entry on utility talents was honestly where I thought Blizzard was going to go with this- a bunch of choices of utility that any rogues might want in some cases. Of all the tiers, the only ones that have a real shot at actually being choices in pve are tier 3 (self healing, once balanced) and tier 6 (once balanced). The utility provided by vendetta (damage on the move) might be useful on some fights, even if the cooldown itself is otherwise poor (and currently it does not appear to be). I was really expecting choices more like: +healing taken OR -damage taken OR -aoe damage taken With a choice like that, we would be saying stuff like, "ok, the extra healing is the best on average, but if the fight has aoe the passive reduction is really signifigant, but sometimes if there is a big dot then -damage wins". Each fight might have a "right answer", and it would be like the choices we (mostly) make now with our utility talents. I understand these are supposed to be early beta, but we do have official Blizzard calculators, and also they have publicly defended Tier 4 (Prep/ShS/BoS) in an interview already. With the very likely fast tracked (ie, not final quarter 2012) expansion, we have every reason to make noise now.. Aldrianna, my apologies with such a sky-is-falling post. I truly think we need to speak now or have some very strange things happen to rogues soon. |
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Quote:
It feels like two potentially interesting cooldowns kludged together, resulting in an ability that isn’t as fun or interesting as either.
One ability would allow us to attack at range for a few seconds, and it could be on the same tier as movement cooldowns such as shadowstep. And another that would give us infinite combo points for a few seconds and it would be on a tier with other dps cooldowns. |
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Recent Blog Entries by Aldriana
- Ten Things Blizzard Should Change About Rogues Before Mists (08/30/12)
- Mists Beta Thoughts: Feint (03/29/12)
- 5.0 Talents (11/13/11)
- On Monks (10/25/11)
- Fixing Rogues, Part 5: Filler (09/24/11)
