Mbobo

What bothers me about the changes to haste and DST so far is it's all being done at once. The nerf to DST wasn't surprising, it was perhaps too good for its position in progression, but it seems to be that it was designed as such, given the total lack of other trinket options from pretty much Gruul on through BT. Such an item is not without precedent, things like LGG and Reguv Gem come to mind.

So they nerf it, fine, we can then test that in a real raid setting, see how it works out. But no, they nerf haste effects across the board as well, changing gear priorities entirely. We're now in a situation where we are essentially playing an entirely different game as melee. Where once we said X stat was more valuable than Y unless under certain circumstances, and gear was itemized as such, we now say X stat is not worth sacrificing Y unless under circumstances unattainable with current itemization.

I hate to be a whiner about nerfs, but this one seems rather short sighted. We've all seen the WWS of Twin Blades of Azzinoth rogues tearing up the meters, and pulling numbers that really couldn't be considered balanced. But is the fix for that making most of the unique gear from BT and Hyjal worse than gear from a tier below it, making months worth of gear selection choices useless, and forcing us to re-equip almost entirely? I think not.

 

◊ Praetorian

This is a new and original point.

Counterpoint: Haste is still a fine stat. The problem is that the haste items from BT/Hyjal are horribly itemized. Put haste on an item with sockets and a mix of haste/AP/+hit for example, and suddenly you have a good item. Almost all the +haste items that are now inferior are socketless items that barely spread their budget around. That's the problem. The fact that those items used to be the best in the game despite being horribly designed is because melee haste was too good -- it was strictly than any other possible use of budget, point for point, which makes no sense. There should be tradeoffs involved. Redesign the haste items, with haste at 15.75, and they can still be just fine.

And of course DST was too good. Everyone knew it was too good.

 

Mbobo

I absolutely agree with you, I wasn't trying to play off the arguments made against the haste nerf as something new and my own, they've been stated numerous times here and on the WoW forums. Rather, I was trying to say the haste nerf, combined with the DST nerf that, while may have been expected, was only recently shown to actually be on the PTR, is perhaps too much. Not that either one taken separately are unreasonable, but together, the effect they may or may not have on raid selection and certainly gear selection is a bit extreme. Perhaps the math models and internal QA team say it's not too big, but when numbers like 50% nerf, and 33% nerf start getting tossed around, people become concerned.

With the patch coming out in the next couple weeks, it's likely far too late for any significant changes to be made. If it does turn out to be too severe of a nerf, things may be changed in 2.3, like itemization updates, as you mention.

 

Morelis

This simply isn't true for warriors and shaman; haste is not the best way for a T6 geared player to spend item points. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid stat pre-nerf but to say point for point it's the best stat is just false. Were the new value balanced those items would still be competitive with non-haste alternatives. The nerf is severe enough that haste is now the worst way to spend item budget for those classes, that's why those items are now looked down upon.

I don't know the details on how effective haste was for rogues or hunters, maybe it's still good for them, but that won't be true for the other physical damage classes.

 

Roywyn

Try being a caster! The only two upgrades from Nefarian to Illidan are from running heroics (heroic badge trinket) and from fishing the auction house/being lucky on world drops (darkmoon card)

Back on topic - any estimate of the internal cooldown yet? My guesses would be 30s or 45s from similar trinkets, and I'd be glad if someone found out which one it actually is

 

Mazz

While I agree a nerf to the DST proc is well deserved, is this trinket really that good that it a cumulative 33 and 50% nerf were needed? Don't get me wrong, it might be needed but those numbers sure seem harsh.

Am I right in thinking that this puts the proc at roughly one third of its previous power? That is just... massive Oo

 

Yellowstar

Its slightly better then warp spring coil and madness of the betray from a rogues standpoint.


Its no longer "that" item in the game anymore.

 

LenniZ

Well as someone else mentioned when the trinket is so ridiculously overpowered that you can nerf it into oblivion and its STILL the best trinket, then there is something wrong and a change was needed. The bad thing is that one part of the nerf almost makes every passive haste item from BT totally shit. >.<

 

Gryzemuis

Exponential scaling.
Flat nerfs.

I'm in a slow guild. That started raiding past Gruul only recently. Maghteridon down 8 days ago. VR down 6 days ago. Lurker almost down yesterday. I picked up a DST 4 days ago. I'm in Karazhan/T4 gear.

On some single-target fights I do good damage. Still mixed with mages, warlocks and hunters. On other fights (like the Lurker), my damage is a lot lower than ranged dps. This has always been the case for melee dps, they have more positioning requirements, need to dodge aoe more, dodge cleaves and whirls. As a result, we used to get more single-target dps.

The balance between ranged and melee dps was completely broken when TBC was released. many rogues rerolled. I personally didn't come back to the game until 2.1. Many Karazhan groups refused to bring rogues. After the 2.1 buf the majority of rogues (in blues or Karazhan gear) were at par with ranged dps again. The exponential scaling factor made it so that after a certain point rogues scaled better than intentional. The fix should be a fix for the exponential scaling. (Yes, O(n^1.01) is also exponential scaling).

Now we are getting flat nerfs. This will bring the dps of T6 rogues back onpar with T6 ranged dps. However, it lowers the dps of T4 rogues by enough so that they will be considered useless again. Maybe we won't be the mana-sponges that we used to be pre-2.1. But the lackluster dps in static single-target fights, and the below-par dps on other fights, will bring us back to the situation of pre-2.1.

Now you might consider this a whine-post. But my point is: you don't fix exponential scaling problems with linear solutions.

In another thread people report that they think proc-rates are now changing with haste changes. So that ppm stays ppm, regardless of the current weapon speed. If that is the case, then it remains to be seen what procs will be affected by this change. If all procs are affected, then even things like poison procs or windfury procs will get reduced, as rogues usually always have s&d up.
All these nerfs together are becoming huge overkill. Especially for T4-level rogues. Not fun.

 

suicuique

(Emphasize mine.)
For warriors it was not the case as you make it to be. The (haste) belt/bracers/shoulders and gloves were not univocally considered the best against (better itemized) alternatives for the slot. They were adequate. Even with massed haste stats (that you consider best prenerf for melee) passive haste items were not overpowered per se. They were on par.
Now they are clearly not.

And keep in mind that DST was nerfed (understandable). Melee haste gets nerfed.

And now some tests appear that indicate that haste does not beget procs. If it is really changed the way the tests by the OP indicate, and proc chance does consider the current weapon speed (hasted and all), then in fact haste negatively affects effective PPM values (via the instants). See Proc Per Minute Mechanics & Haste for referance.

As you certainly know, a multitude of concurrent changes can result in an unintended synergy. This is not the correct procedure to change a stats value.
Just as weapon skill stat was once fine by itself (as a PvE stat), and the itemisation was horrible wrong, Blizzard seems to overreact to voiced change wishes.

 

dukes

Gryzemuis - the main issue with the nerfs is that although rogues need it, the rest of the classes these nerfs affect pretty much don't.

Also, windfury is a straight % chance from a totem, so nerfing PPM effects will have no effect on it.

 

Gryzemuis

That is just not true.
I'm not saying anything about other classes. You are probably right that they don't deserve it. I can not judge, as I don't know as much about shaman or warrior dps as I know about rogue dps.

But saying "rogues need nerfs" is non-sense too.
Some rogues need nerfs.
Some rogues don't.

I am a rogue in T4 gear. In some fights our rogues out-dps mages, warlocks and hunters. In some other fights the mages, warlocks and hunters out-dps us. I don't see rogues at T4 being overpowered compared to the other dps classes. There is no justification to nerf all rogues in a flat way. And that is what is happening now. It's the exponential scaling at T6 level that needed to be fixed. All rogues below that get punished now.

Ok, so maybe any procs that have a straight percentage mentioned in their tooltip will not be affected by a nerf ? Like poisons and windfury. But maybe all the procs, trinkets, meta-gems, enchants, etc, that don't have a specific percentage mentioned will be affected by these 2 nerfs ? 1) hidden cooldowns, 2) procrate reducing under haste. That's still pretty bad.

 

Mearis

How does the haste nerf affect you? At most it will nerf an incredibly overpowered trinket.

 

◊ pewsey

I'm sorry - but I really don't see a problem with rogue damage being scaled back a touch. I'm still in mostly T4 gear. I have a SSC Sword (Talon), PvP S2 OH and SSC belt. A non-SSC raider can replace the Sword with the PvP S2 MH, and the belt from Gruul or Treachery from Kara.

I'm leading the DM on every single fight, and in many cases by a large margin.

This isn't epeen stroking, this is just how rogues are right now. Sure you could say that the other dps in my guild sucks, but I don't think that's the case, as comparing WWS parses from guilds with the same gear, you see similar effects.

If you have DST, and are currently not destroying everything in your path, then you probably need to evaluate how you're structuring your dps cycles, positioning, gemming or some other factor such as general fight strategy.

Pewsey has heard about tact and discretion, but tends to regard them much as children view vegetables.
Nemesis: "Pewsey is single-handedly turning around every guy in the BB that didn't want to have kids."
Viator: Because I had a baby so I'm better than non-breeders.

 

Brissa

While I agree with the sentiment that scaling needs to be looked at, can we please stop throwing around words like "exponential scaling". I havent seen any proof or even indication that rogues scale in O(x^n). There was an assumption that haste proccs could scale in a non linear manner but with it now being shown that increased haste reduces PPM that is no longer the case.

Rogues scale better than other classes but they arent scaling exponentially by any means.

 

dukes

SSC and TK fights are, in general, more caster friendly than melee friendly, especially if you use certain tactics. All the AoE fights (i.e. Hydross dependant on strategy, Morogrim, Solarian) automatically bias themselves towards mages and warlocks. Karathress has a number of short range nuke/stun effects. Leotheras has Whirlwind which disadvantages melee a lot more than casters. Lurker has a significant drawback for melee (threat cap, especially on adds). Al'ar just screws over melee in p1. Kael phase 1 is 50% melee unfriendly to the point of sitting over in a corner afk. Vashj is generally melee unfriendly too (roots, p2, static charge).

SSC and TK are clearly both biased directly away from melee, and yet (in general) melee hold their own. Once you move out of SSC/TK the fights start to become very melee friendly, or caster unfriendly (first 3 in Hyjal, Teron, Gurtogg (no moving in/out in general), RoS (zero armour), Shahraz (hi casters)). The effect of gaining haste gear and moving from melee unfriendly/caster friendly into zones where the fights are melee friendly/caster unfriendly is quite phenomenal. The raid game seems to have been balanced at the point where people leave SSC/TK, as at that point our melee were starting to slightly edge ahead, even on the melee unfriendly/caster friendly fights. If you're smart in where you position yourself to maximise DPS time and use bloodlust at the right point, you can do extremely well with the melee synergy that is in the game.

This is why you get what you call "Exponential scaling" while the rest of us are arguing that it's not exactly clear cut. The fight mechanics make it very hard to tell just what is going on, apart from rogues being obviously at the wrong point in T6 content.


When you get to the T6 level and see rogues doing 50% more damage than anyone else in the raid, it's pretty clear the balance is out of whack. From my experience and WWS parses I've seen, it's mostly rogues who are over the line. Everyone else is pretty well balanced, with the exception of particular fights for particular specs, which is just a "strength vs weakness" argument rather than things being amazingly out of balance (arcane mages on RoS as an example).

 

Gryzemuis

As I've posted before, I don't mind if Blizzard fixes the scaling being better than linear. I don't mind if they nerf the two haste items that are most overpowered, the DST and the swords from Illidan.

But since 2.1 they have nerfed sword spec (yellow->white, no procs of procs), windfury, flat haste nerf. Now they are introducing hidden internal cooldowns on many items. But if they indeed are adjusting procrate on the fly regarding current weapon speed, that gets really beyond what I can accept. It goes against everything rogues have done over the last 2.5 years. Every rogue knows to keep slice&dice up. Stacking haste was a nice strategy if you knew something about your class. I know many rogues (with better gear than me), who always follow these rules: "BT loot > Hiyal loot > TK loot > SSC loot > Karazhan loot > any blue loot". They don't think, they don't compare, they just take the loot dropping from the hardest boss.

I always liked it that you could compensate lack of gear a little bit by picking the right gear. All these nerfs basically make it so that the simplistic rogues are right when they say "BT > Hiyal > etc".

How does the haste nerf affect me ?

There is another thread about pvp weapons. And how hard it is to get a good pve mainhand weapon.

I was at over 25 Garr kills. Saw one Brutality blade drop, and was very lucky to get it.
I was at over 25 Onyxia kills. Never saw a Vis'Kag drop.
I was at 10 Chromaggus kills. Never saw a CTS drop.
I was at 10 Fankriss kills. Never saw a AQR drop.
There is was, at the first bosses in Naxx, with my mighty Brutality Blade.
After I left the game, my guild split up. 2 guilds, both killing Chrom and Fankriss for 3 months. Combined they got one AQR and no CTS.

I have a Vindicator's Brand. Got it the day I hit level 70. I killed Netherspite a few times, and never saw a Spiteblade. My guild doesn't do Kazzak.

I have learned from this. I don't expect to get a decent mainhand sword ever in this game. I'm not gonna wait for Morogrim to drop me a sword. Besides, it will take a while till we get there. And I'm not the only rogue.

I'm not gonna wait for it. I had decided to go blacksmithing and make a Dragonmaw/Dragonstrike. Those are good maces, and the haste proc balances the drawbacks that those maces have no others stats, and that mace spec is sub-par compared to sword spec.

I have done 4 weeks of arena games. I'll pick up my offhand sword on wednesday. I really dislike pvp. I refuse to act as content for other players. I am not gonna go through 8 more weeks of shitty pvp for the mainhand sword. If I have to do that, I rather go play another game. (BioShock is waiting).

Well, it turns out my reply turned into a whine-reply. Bye bye cruel world, I'm probably gonna get banned now.

But for me, these haste nerfs, and proc-rate nerfs all come together with the choice of my mainhand weapon. Now that we can expect Dragonstrike/Dragonmaw to be on par with my Vindicator's Brand, I'll be doomed to keep using my Vindicator's for a few more months. Like I have done since I hit level70. I guess I'll have to follow the same strategy as every other rogue: spend your dkp on T5 gear, and get pvp swords.

I feel more pushed into a "middle of the road" position in a game, then I feel that pressure in real life.

 

Gryzemuis

I'm sorry, my mistake. I didn't mean exponential (O(2^n)) but polynomial (O(n^2)).

The way it used to work, rogues scaled better than O(n). And you should realize that exponential does not only mean O(n^2). Even O(n^1.001) is polynomial.

There is a ceiling to proc-based haste rating. And that is when you have so much haste that all your haste items are proccing constantly, giving you a 100% uptime of all your haste-effects. Then the scaling goes back to a flat line. Someone called this a "S-curve" before. However, we haven't reached that yet. So for me, and my limited mathematical lingo, scaling beyond linear is called polynomial. Maybe there is a better term ?

Yes, I've read that only a few days ago. And this is another noticeable nerf. All nerfs together give rogues a substantial reduction in their dps. Which was maybe necessary at T6 levels. But I don't see the need to nerf rogues at T4 level. (Except nerfing the DST itself).

The scaling graph of rogues is curved. When you compare it to the graph of other classes. And probably also when you compare it to the graph of dps required to defeat harder bosses. That makes it beyond linear. Polynomial is the only word I know to describe it.

Introducing internal cooldowns reduces the polynomial effect. The reduced proc-chances under haste reduces the polynomial effect too. A flat haste nerf does not. I don't understand why they had to do the flat haste nerf, when the other two, in combination with a DST/glaives nerf would have fixed the problem. They are just throwing all possible solutions at the problem, and doing huge overkill.

 

Dulak

Could the observed reduced uptime on DST be an effect of the change to PPM staying constant regardless of haste and not a direct nerf to the item?

 

suicuique

Reduced uptime could be an effect of PPM changes, but it has been reported IIRC that DST does not refresh itself anymore. This can only be due to a cooldown associated with the proc.

 

david0925

What you have stated, has NOTHING to do haste nerfs. It is just a whine about how badly the dice roll has screwed you over in terms of PvE weapon, which I can relate to, but does not help your argument.

At your current standing in progression, there are 2 items that actually affect you, which are Dragonspine Trophy and the Dragonstrike Mace chain. Before 2.2 nerf, Dragonspine Trophy beats every trinket in the game, by a gigantic margin. Dragonmaw (the middle tier mace) was better than EVERY weapon in black temple, save for The Twin Blades. Do you really think it is justified that a Tier 2 Black smith weapon, with item level lower than Prince Malchezzar's drop table, should be more powerful than every other epic weapon in the game? Even as it stands right now on test server, Dragonstrike is STILL fine in terms of its place on loot progression: You can use it all the way through at least Kael'thas and Vashj. For Dragonspine Trophy, it is STILL the best trinket in the game, just not by huge margins anymore.

If you have further reasonings and evidences to back yourself up, feel free to. But so far what I have seen are whinings backed up by no evidence even from other threads. I do feel that they have gone a bit much with haste nerfs, but not by such a large margin that you have shown, especially when you don't even have access to most haste gear yet.

 

songster

Does anyone know if the PPM change affects haste from S'n'D and Blade Flurry, or just from haste rating? Rogues are inherently balanced around the 30% haste you get from S'n'D, so this is my main worry about the scaling changes. If this has changed, then it's not just the BS mace and DST that will be affected for Gryze, but every single item and/or enchant in the game with a PPM-based proc.

 

david0925

Don't really know what blizzard was thinking when they made melee-based procs. Arguments can go either way that they have SnD and Flurry in mind when they designed it (since all classes benefiting from them have such talents). However, they can very well not have that in mind.

If this nerf tons rogues down too much (like the druid nerf a while back in terms of threat generation in bear), they'll "hotfix" it back, so don't be too concerned about it.

 

koaschten

sorry, but LOL

I honestly can't remember a single occasion they positively hotfixed rogues.

But lets get back on topic, anyone else parsed data from the PTR?

 

Sapp

Well, now I'm worried about the collateral damage to other classes. I'm 100% based on a PPM mechanism here, to the degree that a significantly lower DPS weapon is better if it has that last .1 or .2 weapon speed.

Command is already strictly inferior in all situations to the faction limited Seal of Blood, making mongoose and dragonspine and Heroisms actively detrimental to me would be crushing.