Currently damage recovery from +skill is around 7.2% (30% of 40% of 60% of my damage.) I'm going to lose that; however, if the change is accurate (24% instead of 30%), the damage loss will become 5.76% instead.

A 6% damage loss is still a problem, when I don't see any reason to believe things will be adjusted back up to compensate.

(+skill isn't overpowered; it's situationally powerful. +defense isn't overpowered; it's situationally useful, to be sure, but it's minimally useful in PvP. +hit? Same thing - it's useful to stack in some cases, not useful in others.)

The amount of mitigation prevented by reaching 440 or so in + Defense is enormous. Let's change that too, by your logic. I think you are missing the point. The amount you gain from weapon skill is fine as long as the cost you pay to get it is sufficient. Currently, with it capping at 10 points for max effectiveness you get full benefit with minimal sacrifice.


I see no reasoning that reduction of glancing blows, or reduction of the damage penalty from glancing blows is, in of itself, overpowered. We can argue about itemization all we want, but in the end it is just semantics. Casters really dont have anything quite the equivalent to glancing blows, the real argument is " Is reducing the penalty from glancing blows overpowered?". I say no, its not a problem, especially not for a class that is soley one dimensional ( rogues). If anything, its one of the few things that allows me to keep ahead of my DPS counterparts in the perfect situation ( ie; Patchwerk). Without weapon skill, the odds of a mage outperforming me in my singular role in an ideal encounter are much much higher. Does that seem right?

old, assuming 35% crit, 5% miss, 5% dodge:

.4*1+.3*2+.2*1+.1*0 = 1.2

new:

.4*.76+.3*2+.2*1+.1*0 = 1.104

1.2/1.104 = 1.087 or 8.7% loss in white dps


So, assumine 60% white dps, the rogue will lose 8.7%*60% = 5.2% dps. This does not include any of the new benefits of +skill they are giving to us that we aren't exactly sure how to calculate.

I am by no means happy with a net 5% loss in dps, but I can see why the nerf was done. Everyone who is +skill isnt overpowered is mostly right. However, the Human Racials for rogues in particular do point to the stat being overpowered. Im human, and I wish there was simply a nerf to human racials, and proper itemization of the stat.

True, and there's also new classes and buffs to consider vis-a-vis today's raiding game. Your base white hits will generally be doing more damage with comparable gear when you're fully raid buffed, which should help (unleashed rage, warrior +4% physical dmg debuff, improved hunters marks, totems/blessings, etc.).

I haven't raided at all in TBC so I can't say for certain. I just know that we've received all these shiney new talents and buffs and most of them will just help me get back to where I was before. I find it disappointing and I'm concerned about how well they understand what they've done.

Please dont make the false arguement that just because the +10 skill on the gear you were wearing is gone, you will lose 7% of your total damage. Most of the items that had +skill on them can be easily replaced with higher ilvl gear that has more of some other stat and should have always been better anyhow. These items will cause a reduction in dps but not by as much as being claimed here. For example, instead of edgemasters you will be wearing cthun gauntlets and instead of ACLG you will be wearing tier 3. Its definitely a significant nerf to those using high end weapons but for those using lower level epics/rares, its not nearly as big.

Something had to be done, but I would have rather had them increase the cost of weapon skill by 2-300% and kept the same functionality or nerfed the glancing blow reduction so it would take more than 10 skill to cap out (maybe 75 skill instead).

What.

I'm going to replace my Death's Sting and 2 talent points with what, exactly?

I don't know; it really doesn't matter. I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but I'm not making a comment on total Rogue DPS. +skill as currently implemented is silly, regardless of whether or not it might cancel out what you perceive to be an overall balance error regarding Rogue DPS.

Why would you want to be permanently locked into a system where every Rogue has to scrap and claw for whichever new items have a bit of +skill itemized onto them, while the unlucky ones are stuck looting equal-level epics with "only" Agi,AP,hit, and crit?

They'll balance Rogue DPS at 70 to wherever they think it should it be, regardless of which mechanics they choose to employ. If they knock out the bad ones early on, you're better off in the long run.

Yes, their balancing involves statements like this one:
You'll forgive me, I hope, for being just a wee bit cynical about the whole deal.

WHen Im reffering to 12% of white dmg in loss, I simply meant the removal of weapon skill. In reality, its the 9.6% you posted, off of our melee dmg, which for me is about 60% of my overall, so its closer to 5-6% of a dmg drop, disregarding the new +weapon skill stat. The main comment I was trying to make, is there is no 30% overall loss, there is no 12% overall loss, there is a nerf, in which rogues with 10 weapon skill will lose about 5% of their dmg. Its a nerf, it sucks, but its nowhere near the massive numbers bing sported by so many people.

I mean, I do understand--everyone feels that way when changes are happening to their class. But I've developed a rather favorable impression of how Blizzard handles design issues (perhaps more so than most) over my time playing this game. And at the moment, when nobody's ever seen a level 70 25-man Black Citadel damage meter, that's all I really have to go on. If I didn't subscribe to the notion that Blizzard is enough in tune with their game to make this work, I might not still be playing.

You believe that because no matter the quanittiy of whines heard on the mage board mages have been one of the top classes pvp and pve since day 1. Since well before day one actually, they were completely filthy in beta.

I imagine the percentage of say warlocks, hunters, paladins, druids etc that believe blizzard does a fantastic job of balancing would be considerably lower. Look at how long and how ineffective most of the repairs to these classes has been. Look at how long Vanish has been broken. Then you will understand why we don't buy your rainbow and unicorn giggles version.

Asking us to wait until BC raids are being tested is a rather stupid thing to do. The time to change things is beta, after that there is considerable resistance to change.

Don't post like this. It makes your posts completely useless

Asking for things to change when you don't fully understand them is not any wiser.

It is being made next to worthless. Depending on implementation it will be 1% crit or .01% crit for 10WS.

This is ~8% nerf to a rogues dps, and it undoes 99.9% of our review.

We know from the lead dev that mages are the top dps class by a signifigant margin.
We know rogues are a one dimensional class, single target melee dps just incase you don't keep up on the other class roles.
We know there is no new utility yet discussed for rogues to date.
We know rogues are taking a huge dps hit from the weaponskill nerf.

Like I said before, beta is the time to push for changes. If you remeber how quickly things changed back in beta for WoW compared to how quickly things changed in release you know how suddely things just freeze once they hit live. If tbc hits live with rogues doing less damage than mages by any signifigant amount you will see that continue for a minimum of 6 months, possibly a lot longer.

I think we can all agree that +skill was severely underpriced for its effect. Anytime a level 44 epic is better than a drop off cthun something is horribly wrong and MUST be fixed.

My main arguement was for the nerfing of edgemasters, ACLG, muggers belt, etc. However the same core ilvl pricing flaw affects every +skill weapon and talent in the game

1 by 1 in order of creation date..
Human/Orc racials - Good enough to have people reroll, throwing away lots of hard won gear for the best passive available
ACLG/Muggers Belt/Edgemasters/warblades - All far better for dps than equivalent ilvl items. Approximately a 4-6 ilvl boost per +skill on the item
Death's Sting - Significantly better than Maexxna's Fang but only 1 ilvl higher.
Hungering Cold - Significantly better than Kingsfall
Weapon Expertise - 2 point passive talent approximately as good as the best 5 point passive talents like precision or cruelty

The problem obviously is with +skill and it HAD to be nerfed. You cant leave a glaring itemization formula flaw like that in the game forever

As to why they added the last 3 into the game after weapon skill had already been shown to be vastly underpriced in the item budget, we will never know. Now that +skill has been dealt with, they can balance dps around items/skills that arent severely underpriced. A new expansion is the perfect time to do this. Rogue and warrior dps could not be balanced so long as +skill remained in the game as it was.

On a similar vein, the biggest remaining itemization flaw is Thuderfury. This is the same type of itemization flaw where the ilvl cost associated with the Tfury proc is too low. The threat generated by thunderfury is underpriced in the ilvl budget and thunderfury will remain the best 1her for tanking well into the expansion. The mere existance of Thunderfury makes it impossible for warrior threat to be balanced. Its either too easy for those warriors with Thunderfurys or too hard for those without. You would think that Blizzard would have learned from the itemization flaws from EQ where gear like the bard epic weapon and the cleric complete heal bp were irreplacable due to overpowered/undercosted effects.

But we don't know how much this "significant margin" really is. It's easy to ask for a buff, but it's harder to say how much and where.

Do rogues only need help on +3 enemies, or do they need more damage on even level enemies as well? There are a lot of ways they can increase your dps but I don't think putting back the +skill mechanic to the old method is the way to do it.

Putting the +skill mechanic in is the BEST way to do it because it is the only method that doesnt affect PvP balance simultaineously.
Simply buffing rogue dps may lead to the point of overpowered Rogues in PvP. The best example of this is the current state of the TBC warlock after Blizzard buffed warlocks damage to (supposedly) increase PvE viability as DD.

will just let this stand uncommented :(

Sometimes I wonder, if item, class and lead designers meet each other at all...

There have been so many posts about what actually +skill is / will be doing in BC / 2.0 has there actually been some consensus over what exactly it adds, for example if it was .1% crit per skill rating, those gloves end up quite good.