djhbrd

That would work well, I think they should have done that instead of changing Sinister Calling. Cheat Death nerf is mostly warranted, in my opinion.

Regarding your first paragraph: What do you propose as the replacement for Preparation, then? Vanish being reliably fixed has been discussed nonstop since probably 2006, with the general answer being that vanish works in a 0 latency (LAN) situation, but not in the real game where the average player might have 100-200ms latency. As far as the damage decrease, I think it is unnecessary and as you said, they are trying to fix one problem by attacking another.

And to your second paragraph, I don't know what change would be needed if it isn't a change to Cheat Death. I think Rogues currently are fine as far as mobility, and fine as far as damage. That just leaves survivability to be adjusted. I think a longer cooldown and perhaps a flat decrease to Cheat Death's effect would have sufficed (80% mitigation, 2 minute cooldown, same absorb effect on attacks that would be killing blows as in 2.4.2).

 

Calantus

Suggestions on how to fix bugs are always problematic because it's impossible to know what will work without knowing the code and impossible to know for sure unless you try it. With that said, I'd imagine they could add a short immunity to being broken out of stealth by outside factors and your own autoattack. I imagine they haven't because it would stop AoE and DoT ticks from doing the same but honestly I think 1 second of guaranteed stealth is the better option than a broken vanish.

As for prep, the problem to my mind is the second vanish (when used to escape) and second evasion because they provide a lot of survivability when combined with cheat death. Even sprint can be used to survive if need be. As far as replacing it I don't like to suggest new talents and spells and suchlike because it tends to be rather pointless. I'm sure they could come up with something if they did remove prep. Nerfing the cheat death cooldown might be enough though. It's definitely too short a cooldown for what it does.

 

Currylaksa

That has significant PvE ramifications.

 

• Neto-

I can't tell if this is a serious post or not, but yeah, it would affect the whole 10 rogues who are tri-spec hemo.

 

drumbum

Anyone who specs Hemo for PVE and is already deep enough into T6 content to have 4 pieces of Slayers gear is doing it wrong. Dropping Hemo from the T6 4pc would have no effect at all on raiding.

 

andrewf87

Hey guys, I'm a 20/0/41 spec and with the changes made to cheat death i was thinking of maybe dropping it for something else. What are your thoughts on setup?
Thanks

 

Annihilus

That's a great question. How much offensive power do we want to give up in favor of more resilience? Without regemming I could get myself up to 403 resilience, but that's also by losing one of my T6 rings in favor of a Guardian Ring. If you're not going to hit the resilience cap, is Cheat Death truly worth taking over Master of Subtlety or dare I say it, Enveloping Shadows?

 

Excruciate

I was thinking maybe something like WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Rogue -> Talent Calculator might be interesting to try.

I figured, with this you can do some nice bleeds, get some good combo point generation (especially when you Evade/Ghostly Strike), and since crits arent really all that hot with resilience these days, drop those bonuses all together and instead up your gouge, spruce up the old Evis, and grab a bonus from Remorseless Attacks once in a while.

Just thought it might be something worth trying... any thoughts?

 

Annihilus

Interesting build. This past weekend I tried a series of games without 5/5 Vile Poisons and I'll be the first to say, as long as Druids are as dominant as they are I will never not spec 5 points into Vile Poisons again. Maybe 3 points into Opportunity? Not sure it's even worth it. Have any testing done on it? I just respecc'd myself and will get some testing in over the next couple days hopefully.

 

Towelette

Crit may not be the best stat in the world, but that doesn't mean 5% crit is bad. While Remorseless might make for some nice highlight clips, I don't think you can justify taking it in a legitimate PvP spec. I also can't think of many situations where the difference of a game would be made on whether or not I had talented Evis. Retracting my statement about still taking Cheat Death; the more I've been playing today the more useless it seems. Half the time I don't even realize it went off because I died almost instantly.. I think I'm going to pick up either Master of Subtlety or Enveloping Shadows instead, just not sure which.

I will say this: Imp Gouge being in Combat makes me cry a little bit inside everytime I respec to ShS.

 

Perilous

Yes, crits arent as good vs high resilience targets as they are vs low ones, but crits are still more damage. Ignoring them completely leads to a serious dps loss. Even more importantly it leads to loss of burst which wins games.

Setup is garbage except in a very few situations and even then it is marginal.

People dont like enveloping shadows for some reason but when facing mages and priests it is amazing. One key resist of a priest fear is pure sex and leads to an easy win in 2s and resisting frost nova/freeze/priest fear to bust up their cc chain on you in 3s vs PMR is great.

Improved gouge is interesting because it can lead to a gouge/sap combo. Not as easy to pull off as blind/sap but being able to pop a 10 second cc on someone when you need it is amazing.

I spec completely differently for 2s, 3s and 5s depending on my team. In 3s and 5s I take enveloping shadows and drop Vile. In 2s Vile or improved is almost mandatory.

 

Erebos_Agamaggan

I have been messing around with a few builds recently because of the cheat death changes. Haven't had an opportunity to play many games with them yet as you can see if you check my armory page. However, from what PvP I have played I noticed that most well geared rogues die very quickly, almost as if they didn't even have cheat death, although the animation was quite clear. I play 2v2 mostly and generally go double dps. Because of this fact I made up this build. It has Enveloping Shadows and Master of Subtlety. The Master of Subtlety can really help add back tot the damage we lost from Sinister Calling, while Enveloping Shadows allows us to avoid many abilities some of the time.

My Build

There are two possible other builds I was thinking of as well, the first is taking out Enveloping Shadows and placing those 3 points in Vile Poisons making them 4/5. This build might be more favorable in 2v2 and 3v3 as it allows for more burst damage.

The second is removing the 3 points from Master of Subtlety and adding them into Vile Poisons making them 4/5 yet again. I was thinking that this version of the build would be better for 5v5 and possibly 3v3 to avoid many AoE abilities.

I have always specced 3 points into Enveloping Shadows for 5v5, I tend to resist about 6-10 abilities that otherwise would have distracted or caused damage to me. These other 3 point talents seem to me to be quite good alternatives to cheat death, especially if you have low resilience but still seem to be much more worthwhile for even higher resilience rogues.

If anyone has any opinions about any of these I would be happy to hear back. I honestly don't think Cheat Death is a must have anymore.

Also, does anyone else think that maybe AR/Prep might be worth it again?

 

andrewf87

Can you please explain why? Unless i don't have the correct understanding of the talent, if you have a dodge rating of say 30% doesn't that mean you have a .45*.3=.135=13.5% chance to add a combo point when you are hit and more if you have evasion up and/or ghostly strike? I'm not to sure on the spell resist side of things except for when cloak of shadows is up.

 

Towelette

I can't see how it would be. Cheat Death was great, but the real strength of Sub is ShS and Prep. Combat Rogues are still far too easy to control and worthless after their cooldowns are used. Even with the CD nerf, Combat is still easily the worst Arena tree. Mobility is so crucial for melee classes that just I can't see myself speccing out of it anytime soon.

 

drumbum

The reason it isn't as good as it might at first sound is because it will only proc on attacks from your current target. If you are attacking player X and you dodge player Y's attack or resist player Z's spell, nothing will happen.

 

spankweasel

As you will be able to tell from my post history, armory link and arena ratings, I'm a fairly new level 70 rogue. I have a few pieces of gear from a few weeks camping in BGs and bought s4 gloves yesterday. My 2s partner is a dpriest with 495 res and 1500 healing.

I'm having a hard time playing my rogue in 2s because I feel that my lack of DPS is holding my team back. My major issue is I don't see where are the complaining about rogue DPS stems from? Do I seriously need 4 T6 and 4 S3/S4 before my DPS becomes totally abusive? Is it these rogues that cause people fits?

I was looking at rogue specs from AJ and while ShS is extremely popular, mutilate has way more burst (and is more reliant on gear) but HARP shows up every now and then. My question to you all is with only ~1450 ap, and limited arena experience, would a HARP build actually be better for me since it's got (I assume - correct me if I'm wrong) better burst and higher dps than my current 20/0/41 ShS build? I know I lose the poison control from the Assassination tree and the ability to jump all over the place with ShS, but if I can't do any damage in the first place, does any of that really matter or is the HARP build only possible when you have a huge amount of AP to begin with?

Here's an example build that I'm considering: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Thanks!

 

Perilous

The above explanation is a good one. The other thing is I rarely find myself wishing I had more combo points. If the talent added 35 energy everytime I dodged or resisted I would be all over it.

Frankly I consider master of subtlety and enveloping shadows to be far better and more useful. I actually like master of subtlety alot. I restealth ALOT in many games. Popping on someone with your full energy bar and doing 10 percent more damage is alot of burst. Unfortunately I cant find room for it in my 2s build. I take both that and enveloping in my 3s and 5s build.

 

Towelette

Where you encounter the difficulty of being as undergeared as you are (no offense) is going to vary from Battlegroup to Battlegroup, but you're going to run into it sooner or later. You and your partner are going to have to accept the fact that things will be difficult for a little while because of the gear discrepancy. Any spec is going to be an uphill battle if you're playing in mostly blues against teams in a minimum of full S2 with (likely) other, better pieces mixed in. This is just the nature of the game when you're coming into PvP when many other players have had several months worth of gearing and experience already.

Don't be discouraged or think that you must have T6 gear to be successful; you can be well over 30% crit and close to 2k AP with almost no high-end raiding or rating requirements involved. With enough S3\S4 gear and maybe a handful of PvE items thrown in, Rogue damage is very legitimate against equal or lower geared opponents. As far as T6 pieces, they're obviously a huge benefit if you can get them, but you can still put out very good damage without it. Many of the leather badge items from the Isle are close to, if not outright better in one or two cases, T6 level gear for PvP. For your case in particular, picking up the badge legs, chest, and ring would net you a substantial buff to your damage. 100 badges seems like quite a bit, but between daily heroics, KZ, and ZA if you can get into them, you'll pick them up at a very quick pace and should be able to get the legs within a month, which is around the same amount of time it would take you to get another Arena piece.

I think your main problem is just going to be gear at this point. Realistically, you should expect at least a month before seeing significant improvements gear-wise. Also being on a 1 DPS team where your partner may well be the most attractive target (until they realize your level of gear), you can sacrifice a bit of your defensive stats if you have significantly better PvE DPS gear. I'd say pick a spec that you enjoy playing, find interesting, and that you "get." As painful as it may sound, the quickest way of improving your performance at this point is going to be honor\badge farming -- being in blue rep gear means other teams can ignore you or blow you up as they see fit, and either way there's not a whole lot you can do about that until you catch up and your gear makes you a threat.

 

Halfdane

After the nerfs to deep Subtlety, I've been considering HARP or even combat builds. I'm curious about how strong Daze is. My understanding is that it doesn't disrupt spells, but is an undispellable snare. Is it possible to go up against a druid with mace stuns and daze (but no vile poisons?).

Additionally, is it possible to fight a warrior straight up in rogue/druid vs. warrior/druid? The theory is that you can 5-8 kite the warrior during daze rather than trying to 5-8 kite the warrior when crippling poison gets dispelled. If you have the mobility advantage, you can limit your fighting to when you have full energy.


Additionally, if you're a mediocre PvPer like myself and have limited weapon selection, I encourage you to think about the end of S4. I predict that just as before TBC there was a time when you got to play with all the new talents, before WotLK, there will be a time where you can arena with 51 point talents. (from a marketing standpoint this makes a ton of sense). So, what will you spec when you can get 51 point talents (but you're still 70)? I for one will be going 51/0/7, with the other 3 points probably in MoD, but possibly in assassination. But this means I should be thinking about getting daggers now. Just a heads up.

 

Towelette

Well, it may make up for not having Vile in terms of applying Crippling (though I think the % is still too low for relying on non-finisher specials only). The other poison you use will definitely suffer, though. I don't personally think it's a fair trade off, but it's one you'd have to think about if you went HARP.

The problem is that you can't rely on the dazes. A full energy bar won't add up to enough abilities that can proc the daze in order to even count on it.

 

Desaan

Crippling on OH, chase druids spamming shiv all day, laugh when they spam shift to get out of daze, confuses the hell out of them :p

Incidentally cheat death is now utterly utterly rubbish. I realize in it's old state it was ridiculous but I run my rogue with just over 400 resilience and 11.2k hp and I get wasted through cheat death on a regular basis, it's starting to look a waste of three talent points. I think they should of left it the way it was but increased the cooldown dramatically because right now, cheat death procs, dead 1 second after proc.

 

Luuca

Dessan: Usually, a cheat-reality(what i call them) rogue is the most frustrating opponent for me. Last night (post patch) in AB, it seemed like the only thing Cheat Death did for them was to simply provide a graphic/sound that let me know the the rogue I was killing would be dead within two swings. It seemed to have very little benefit, if any, compared to what it was.

I don't pvp much at all(obvious by armory); however, with raiding slowing down, it's becoming a much more attractive option. Forgive me if the questions I have were covered before, I have read and followed this thread for awhile now, and havent seen it addresed before.

1. I can achieve 1176 armor pen with ~2k AP, 32% crit, and 148 hit in my PvE gear mix. Im 16-48 Fist/sword. I have like 20 resil from Dorys'

Q: For now, considering I have no PvP gear, what stat should I focus on? I Noticed I was hitting very hard on softer targets, and did well on Plate, but I'm unsure if that was a direct result of my Armor Penn or what?

Q: Respeccing: In looking at my gear, I feel the Tri-spec Hemo may be best to start with. Any suggestions? Armory should have the Armor penn set as of 7-17. OH is not enchanted as I never thought I'd use it. I have BoS as well, but tried the dagger for the 210 Armor Penn.

Again, thanks for your input and help, and I apologize if Armor Penn in PvP has been discussed.

 

Mekila

What level of resilience makes Cheat Death worth speccing? Here is what I have found so far from having a mage do a shatter combo on me at 20%.

Assume you have 10,000 HP, and that a frost mage just proc'd Cheat Death on you at 20%, taking you to 10% (1000 HP). Now lets look at your chance of survival in the next 3 seconds.

100 resilience is 5.07% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 20.2% of incoming dmg for 3s. This means that you would be able to take 1254 dmg at most during CD before dying. Basically, a shatter combo will instagib you. A crit icelance would proc CD and the frostbolt right behind it would kill you, even if it does not crit. Cheat death animation would show posthumously. There is no point in having Cheat death with resilience this low.

150 resilience is 7.6% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 30% of incoming dmg for 3s. This means that you would be able to take 1429 dmg at most during CD before dying. Squishy.

200 resilience is 10.1% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 40.6% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 1683 dmg at most during CD before dying. Shatter combo would most likely kill you here.

225 resilience is 11.4% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 45.6% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 1838 dmg at most during CD before dying. Since a frostbolt does over 2k non-crit, so the shatter combo will still instagib you. Probably not worth getting Cheat Death here either.

250 resilience is 12.7% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 50.7% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 2032 dmg at most during CD before dying. Frostbolts hit for 2k. You are dead in a shatter!

275 resilience is 13.9% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 55.8% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 2262 dmg at most during CD before dying. There is a good chance that a shatter combo will still instagib you, but not always.

300 resilience is 15.2% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 60.8% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 2551 dmg at most during CD before dying. There is a good chance that a shatter combo will still instagib you. Icelance for 2k paired (1k dmg done, absorbed 1k) with a crit frostbolt for 3k (1.2k done, absorbed 1.8k). Chances are you will live if the frostbolt does not crit, but the fireblast that comes directly after the shatter combo would kill you. May or may not be worth speccing into CD.

325 resilience is 16.5% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 66% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 2941 dmg at most during CD before dying. This is pretty borderline as a frostbolt can crit for 3k.

350 resilience is 17.7% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 70.8% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 3424 dmg at most during CD before dying. Now this is a pretty good chance to survive a shatter combo. CD starts becoming useful here.

375 resilience is 19% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 76% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 4165 dmg at most during CD before dying. Benefits seem to scale better as you get closer to cap!

400 resilience is 20.3% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 81.2% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 5319 dmg at most during CD before dying. Very good chance of survival here.

425 resilience is 21.5% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 86.3% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 7300 dmg at most during CD before dying.

443 resilience is 22.5% crit dmg reduction. CD would reduce 90% of incoming dmg for 3s. You would be able to take 10,000 dmg at most during CD before dying. This is what CD was like pre-nerf.

90% is the cap for Cheat Death damage reduction, so it would have the same effect for resilience past 443. What do you guys think? Worth using pve gear still? Here are some examples of gear combinations:

• 2400 ap 36% crit 150 res with 6/2 and pve neck/rings
• 2300 ap 36.5% crit 225 res with 6/2 and guardian's neck/ring
• 2200 ap 35.8% crit 305 res with 4/4 and guardian's neck/ring
• 2100 ap 36.5% crit 327 res with 4/4 and guardian's neck/ring + vindicator's ring

300 ap loss worth having cheat death that can *sometimes* survive a shatter combo? On top of the ap loss, theres 5% less hemo dmg. Can we put out enough pressure with the hemo nerf? Seems like its all or nothing now. Maybe we should go back to daggers? (lol)

Edit: Cheat Death does not always proc above 10%, so here are some numbers at 5% (500 HP)

[Resil] -> [Dmg to die] :: [Effective Extra HP]

• 100 -> 626 :: +126
• 150 -> 714 :: +214
• 200 -> 841 :: +341
• 225 -> 919 :: +419
• 250 -> 1016 :: +516
• 275 -> 1131 :: +631
• 300 -> 1275 :: +775
• 325 -> 1470 :: +970
• 350 -> 1712 :: +1212
• 375 -> 2082 :: +1582
• 400 -> 2659 :: +2159
• 425 -> 3650 :: +3150
• 443 -> 5000 :: +4500

 

Fold

Thank you for that breakdown Mekila, very useful information.

The numbers in the 350-400 range seem reasonable, but when you think about being focused by 2 or more opponents that damage is going to come in awful quick. Cheat Death breaking an assist train is definitely a thing of the past, and opponents will once again be rewarded for focusing Rogues.

It's a shame that Blizzard seemed to break from their oft-stated design philosophy of "small changes", because the Cheat Death change forces us to stack a lot more PVP gear while losing offensive stats in the process. Why introduce a Hemo nerf at the same time before seeing how the CD changes shake out? As far as I know the Hemo nerf wasn't even tested on the PTR.

 

drumbum

It was added to the PTR 1 week before the release of the patch, but since it wasn't on the patch notes yet (it wasn't on them until the patch was released), not many people noticed at the time.