Hmm regarding level 80 I would most likely prefer 3/5 Precision over 3/3 Serrated Blades.

I did like the CttC build for PVP a lot but the nerf is so strong that there seems no way to make it viable again. Of course poison damage needed to be reduced and it seems kind of fair but I liked the playstyle, as it gave us a real PVP finisher.

The loss of Infectious Poisons is really bad, the ton of the strength of that talent allowed Mutilate rogues do what they do ever better, sticking on a target and making healers pay through focused damaged. Now the spec is once again incredibly vulnerable to druids just crippling us and making 51 talent points near useless since the spec lacks mobility. No more crippling druids while you focused their targets so your teammates could catch them. No more target switching to classes Infectious Poisons applied Wound to. The spec just got incredibly shallow. I would've much rather had them nerf damaging abilities in the tree into the ground and keeping Infectious Poisons. Got forbid something new and interesting talent wise be added.

The removal of improved apply rates is going to hurt the nerfed Wound poison along with the biggest problem, lower Crippling apply rates in conjunction with % decreases on snare durations some classes get. Really really bad changes with the Infectious Poisons nerf. The Focused Attacks 3/3 investment is probably worth it since the Hunger for Blood nerf. While it may not be providing as much damage as other specs between the high critrate of at least 1 hand from Mutilate and wielding 1.8/1.4 daggers you should be able to keep up with Hunger for Blood use. (This is assuming FA works with Mutilate? I don't know)

Read more carefully, the improved application rate was made base.

The base proc change of most poisons is now 50% (except Deadly and Instant). But with these changes my eyes are also turned towards alternative PVP specs. For level 70 as well as 80.

Edit: Tri-Spec PVP sounds like an alternative. High mobility with run-speed, 30% decreased snares, one-minute improved Sprint with the glyph, Poisons with Dispel resistance, overall very low cooldowns, very high white damage, preparation. Combined with the new never-failing escape artist or trolls even more lowered duration of snares this could be quite nice.

Glyphs:
Sprint (Cooldown decreased by one minute)
Gouge (Energy cost decreased by ten)
Shiv (Energy cost decreased by ten)
or
Hemo (bonus damage increased by 40%)

Assassination (22 points)

5/5 Malice
3/3 Ruthlessness
2/2 Blood Spatter
2/2 Improved Expose Armor
5/5 Lethality
3/3 Vile Poisons
2/2 Fleet Footed

Combat (17 points)

3/3 Improved Gouge
5/5 Dual Wield Specialization
5/5 Precision
2/2 Endurance
2/2 Improved Sprint

Subtlety (22 points)

5/5 Relentless Strikes
3/3 Master of Deception
2/2 Dirty Tricks
3/3 Camouflage
2/2 Elusiveness
1/1 Ghostly Strike
3/3 Serrated Blades
1/3 Setup
1/1 Preparation
1/1 Hemorrhage

My bad, read nerf nerf nerf and read that as decreased.

So, I think basically all Hunger for Blood PvP specs will be going this route up to 45 talent points spent in Assassination.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?rogu...00000000000000

Then you have 5 more points to spend on the following options.
0/3 Improved Evis
0/2 Blood Spatter
0/2 Improved Expose Armor
0/5 Improved Poisons
0/3 Deadened Nerves
0/3 Focused Attacks
0/5 Cut to the Chase

The removal of Infectious Poisons (InP) does allow you to use IP/Deadly setup more often now without the worry of messing up a key blind, making Improved Poisons still attractive. While Blood Splatter is nice, it doesn't help burst. And I wish Improved Expose Armor was just a bit more attractive for PvPers, either even more of a energy return or some other effect. Cut the Chase is just too situational, hoping to have SnD up while you land a 5/5 evis or envenom just isn't worth 5 talent points for a PvP rogue. For 5 points of investment I think it should also increase the haste of SnD by 1/2/3/4/5% or something.

Think I'm planning on going with 3/3 Focused Attacks and 2/3 Deadened Nerves for my final 5 points. Allowing for more Hunger for Blood defensive use and a little less incoming damage as you stick to targets.

@Hildegard
You're missing out on some of the best mid-tier Assassination/Subtlety talents with that build. No Cold Blood? No Quick Recovery? No Dirty Deeds?

I'm looking forward to using IP/Wound in my Hunger for the Blood build and unleashing a Cold Blood Envenom on targets.

Man, my reading comprehension is shit I guess. I had been thinking CttC was 20% per combo point this whole time. Still, if you're not using 4-5cp finishers you're really not using your Combo points effectively. But I guess with Cttc you basically get the refresh plus a little damage depending on what finisher you've used, which helps for times you're dropping ruptures just to prevent restealths – but you're not going to use it with Kidney Shot or Expose Armor with anything less than 4-5cp.

If Focused Attacks doesn't work with Mutilate I definitely would not get it, so if anyone could ask a Beta buddy?

Good point on the Overkilll while using HfB while stealthed. If Focused Attacks works with Mutilate it will be nice to Cheapshot > Mutilate > Mutilate and have them all be -10 less energy and very likely have a 6 energy return from both mutilates which is near halfway to a defensive HfB use.

I'll try it on beta tonight. Quite hard to tell what's proccing what though. Hopefully the turning-half-away-from-a-mob-to-stop-auto-attacks still works...

(In case I'm missing what you're saying... CTTC still only works with EV/ENV not with Rupture/Expose/KS etc. If it did, it'd be frickin' brilliant )

Yeah, just Evis and Envenom. I had been reading it as Cut to the Chase allowed a 20% chance per combo point to refresh your max SnD, instead of what it actually does per combo point with 5/5 (100% chance).

From the rogue forums regarding Focused Attacks:

Great synergy with COld Blood + Mutilate, basically a 10% energy decrease. Focused Attacks will definitely be the way to spend 3 of those final 5 points.

Since they changed Shadowdance to work regardless of stealth, does anyone know if Master of Subtlety will affect it? Seems like it wouldn't, but figured I'd ask to see if anyone on Beta noticed it.

The idea is a high mobility build that has more anti-snare Talents than even deep Assasination. Maybe this build will only start working on level 80 with Dirty Deeds, Cold Blood, Quick Recovery. But from my point of view 115% run speed and 30% snare reduction is better than any of these talents.

Just did some faffing on the Beta.

Focused Attacks is pretty insane for levelling against 0 resilience mobs in my current gear. Which is mostly S4 armor, so tons of crit. Including things like Master Poisoner, my natural crit is 39% and then I also took Turn The Tables for an extra 6% crit on combo point moves when I dodge/parry (which is rather a lot too). So I have ~60% crit on each hand for Mutilate (36 base + 3 poisons + 6 TtT + 15 talented).

Which meant the +3 energy messages on SCT were almost qualifying as spam.

Deadly Brew is currently bugged- Instant is applying Crippling instead of Deadly at the moment.

So yeah: Turn The Tables - may be half decent for PvP, since it'll probably have decent uptime, especially when you factor in your whole group. It may just be 3 talent points too far though.

Im copying this picture from the pve post, this gives you the answer to the FA proc:



About deadly brew, there is a gossip that the crippling proc is supposed to be there. Thats another effort to lower Muti's pve dps. But thats a gossip, so take it as you please.

If that's true it kinda ruins Envenom's marginal usefulness, which is a damn shame.

Far better for them to tune poisons down further than remove another interesting mechanic, IMO.

Every beta/PTR build, it seems that Hunger for Blood gets weaker for PvP (from removing Magic + Bleeds, to removing Physical Effects, to increasing damage less, to costing 15 energy when removing an effect, to now only removing Bleed Effects). Additionally, reports seem to indicate that it now breaks stealth.

At what point does it become better to grab Preparation rather than Hunger for Blood for PvP at level 80? Additionally, at what point at level 70 does it make more sense to take low level talents in other trees rather than going all the way for HFB? For example, this seems to get all the low level Subtlety talents in return for Hunger for Blood.

According to Aldriana's "DPS" numbers, it loses 78 dps from the alternative.

However, those numbers were for PvE builds. It's unlikely that Seal Fate will be worth anywhere near as much for a PvP build (see my previous analysis). For this possible loss in dps, you gain Elusiveness and Improved Sap. Is a normal length Cloak of Shadows worth being able to remove bleed effects?

Looks like Mutilate won't make it as the best PVP spec once again.

Oh my lord. Those changes are huge.

HfB is just trash now. Or as it's suprisingly amusingly being called on the official forums: Super Luffa

The Deadly Brew nerf isn't particularly good either.

HfB went from being excellent for mobility, to being utterly useless. If Blizz want a 51 pt.er that no one will take, they've just got it.

We now have 3 extremely weak 51pters, from a PvP perspective at least. I still don't believe Shadow Dance to be that great, quite apart from the keybind nightmare that it currently is.

Those Mutilate changes kinda leave you hamstrung with ~46-49 pts in Assassination and in the middle of nowhere though:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?rogu...00000000000000

This could work on level 80 for very good burst. Double rogue, one with Improved Kidney shot and four cold blood Mutilates within 3 seconds.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?rogu...00000000000000

But for level 70 I am still trying to find out where I want to go.

I'd say, apart from potentially swapping points between master poisoner and dirty deeds, this is about the cookie cutter spec. Really too bad they took most (*ahum* all) of the new talents away that were actually unique, but I suppose with a large company with no interest in costumer satisfaction past just enough to pay the fee, this is predictable. I'm not a person that is fast to call out blizzard for their "behaviour", but taking everything interesting away when they assume everyone has pre-ordered is despicable. Let's hope some of these dumb reverts are reverted.

Without wanting to come across as a whine, though... this is one:

It does seem like we basically have nothing new at 80. By far the least of any class. Trained-wise we really really got nothing: We got Dismantle, a disarm that's very similar to the Warrior (and now some other classes too) one. We got Tricks Of The Trade, a nice PvE utility skill. We got Fan Of Knives - by all accounts a trash AoE on a long long cooldown.

HfB is now Super Luffa - basically a weird 9% dmg increase that is 51 talent pts and costs 30e every 30s to keep up.

Overkill is about as weird as the old Premeditation - a skill no one ever took unless it was on the way to somewhere.

Improved Poisons is actually now strictly worse than it was pre-WoTLK.

Murder Spree - is this any good? When?

Shadow Dance - very weird to use, a bit of extra burst... only will be taken because the last 5 pts before it are pretty essential for the energy reduction in any Subt build.

In terms of extra buttons to push or any change whatever to playstyle... we got nothing!

Oh yeah, and they nerfed Cloak Of Shadows and Shadowstep. Great!




The only minor positive I can take from today is that it now doesn't seem worth getting any more than 1/2 Deadly Brew, so that does free up an extra point.

!!!

Regarding professions I plan to stick with Leatherworking and Engineering. I would never unlearn Engineering as I love the profession but I am still trying to figure out whether Inscription will be worth it. So far I don't see enough reasons to need a fourth glyph.

They are planning to remove the extra glyph.