If they change it so that Vanish allows use of Shadow Focus or Subterfuge during a boss fight then the highest dps option will become mandatory and will remove all choice from the matter. It also further increases reliance on Vanish as a DPS CD for raiding and on the whole I think that's a bad thing, not good. We'll have no choice in the first tier and we'll be forced into Prep in a later tier.

On the whole I think the talents should matter more to a raiding rogue than they currently do, but I'm ok with the first tier mattering not at all and being primarily something you take out of preference for other content you do in the game, (Leveling, 5 mans, challenge modes, daily questing, pvp etc). I would much rather have a real choice in the level 60 movement tier (by not being forced into Prep), and more fundamental changes to the rest of the talents to make them more meaningful to raiding. To be fair, given the two major new baseline abilities they just added, I think it's still a very reasonable time to advocate for major talent tree changes. if we approach the end of beta and the later tiers are still the same as they are now, then I might re-think how I feel about the usefulness of that first tier. But for now I'm happy to see them de-emphasizing vanish as a DPS cool down.

I think the real answer is that stealth needs a larger role in PvE. Its such a big part of the rogue identity, and you can see why Blizzard wants to give us talents and abilities based off of it; but when stealth is something you do for a split second once ever 3 minutes, there's just no way of integrating the bonuses into PvE without it being boring, useless, or both. If we could more reliably get back into stealth during combat, bonuses like the T1 talents would be a lot more relevant.

One way to do this would be to decouple the notion of "in combat" with "able to stealth". A significant aspect of PvP stealth is the fact that combat drops after 6 seconds without attacking or being hit, so you can get restealths while still being very much "in a fight" with someone. What if PvE stealth worked the same way? What if after 6 seconds without attacking or being hit, you could get a restealth? It wouldn't even have to drop threat - its not like the mob forgets you exist - but the simple fact that you're out of the fight for a moment causes them to lose track of you for a moment and thus gain the advantages of stealth when you reengage.

So how does this help? Well, on Ultraxion, it doesn't. And that's fine - I don't know that it makes sense that stealth provides significant advantages on a fight where you're standing toe-to-toe with your opponent for 5 minutes. But on any fight where you have to make a long swap - say, to and from Sons on Rag, or slimes on Yor'sahj - you can squeeze out some extra damage and/or mobility using the T1 talents by slipping into stealth while waiting. And given that a surprisingly large number of fights - and particularly hard fights - have this sort of mechanic, that could make stealth-based abilities a lot more interesting than they currently are. While helping out our weak target-switching capabilities in the process.

There are certainly other ways they could integrate stealth - for instance, I've seen the notion of a restealth finisher proposed - but I think the key idea is that if we're going to get stealth-based abilities - and as rogues, we should - we need a way to use them more than once every 3 minutes in PvE. Once they fix that, the other issues become a lot more manageable. It wouldn't fix Shadow Walk (which just isn't that interesting an idea in the first place) or Shroud of Concealment (which is mostly in need of graphical bolstering), but it would certainly clean up the first-tier talents elegantly, and allow them to tweak mechanics to make Vanish less of a DPS cooldown and more of a utility/defensive tool.

I wouldn't say I've seen a lot of people express interest in removing Vanish as a CD. I've certainly noticed Aldriana commenting on it, and a couple of others, but I wouldn't say that it's been something that has been vocally discussed at all, not in any larger sense. If that is what other people in this discussion feel then I wasn't really getting that impression.

My point was that as a design option it would be a lot *better* to pull away from Vanish as DPS and to advocate for that as much as possible, with the alternative being that the first tier be usable from Vanish, if, and only if we get stuck with the current model. Making the first tier usable from Vanish is something that can get tweaked late in the beta. Hell, it could even go live and be fixed in a patch note if it comes to that. It's a pretty easy fix to a lackluster idea.

What Blizzard want's to do with Vanish is up for debate. They haven't made a comment about it either way, and what they did in Cata is not written in stone. They are in fact in the process of redoing a lot of the things they did in Cata. So if people would rather Vanish NOT be a DPS CD now would be a good time to express it both here and on the public forums. We don't know what the design goals are in this instance, the beta is still early, and as of friday they are still implementing massive changes. To me that makes it fair game to talk about larger concepts like disentangling Vanish from DPS. Later on it will be time to settle for what they give us. Not now.

And just to make it 100% clear, my problem with Vanish as DPS is largely caught up in the problem of Prep. There are other ways to fix this, including removing Prep completely or making it baseline. So there's a lot of ways this could go. What's important to me is that the problem be clearly identified. Blizzard has multiple options for how to fix it, however they aren't going to if they think the community is largely happy with the design.

I'm curious why people are opposed to making Vanish a dps cooldown. If it isn't, then Vanish would only have 2 uses as far as I can tell. Either removing agro (which isn't necessary since we already have Tricks for agro control), or getting out of combat after everyone else has died so you can mass rez. Neither of these uses are very interesting.

And Aldriana, I think your suggestion to put more emphasis on the stealth mechanic is interesting, but it would not remove vanish as a dps cooldown, it would only make it even more important for dps.

I've commented before that Shadow Dance is a better "stealth" flavored PvE ability. Largely because it's technically not stealth and can be balanced according to it's own rules. It's a stealth based idea, but it's also balanced. Additionally it doesn't break on damage, so you actually spend some time in the state, using your traditionally stealthy abilities, as opposed to Vanish where you hit the button only to break out of it asap. SD was designed from the get go to be used as damage. Vanish however was always an escape utility, and the idea of it as a dps cd came much later and was kind of loaded on top of it. I think that's part of why one works and the other just feels tacked on.

The problem is the assumption that a circumstantial cooldown is a bad thing. The problem is that our cooldowns have ceased to be things that we hit because we need the benefits they provide, and have become things we hit merely because they're off cooldown. The problem is that Vanish in its current form more closely resembles a weak Adrenaline Rush with a crappy UI than anything to do with stealth.

Consider Sprint. We don't hit it on every fight - it is nothing if not circumstantial. And yet we do get significant use out of it - we hit it when we want to get someplace faster. Similarly, we don't use Cloak and Evasion on every fight - we hit them in those circumstances where we want to take less damage. Vanish (and Tricks) should work the same way. We should hit Tricks because we want to stick something to a tank, not every 30 seconds because its off cooldown. Vanish should be something we use when we wish to reenter stealth or dump aggro - not whenever its off cooldown for a pathetic amount of DPS.

Basically: I think an essential part of the rogue identity is that we have a tool for every situation - not that every tool is useful in every situation. I think our cooldowns - particularly our utility cooldowns - need to move towards more reactive usage and away from being merely part of our rotation.

Now, combat restealths does not fix this by itself. But what it does is give a clear integration point for stealth-based abilities in PvE, and thus allows them to finish what they've started with the T1 talents - make Vanish distinct from Stealth, such that it has no offensive benefits at all. If they did that at current it would render every single stealth-based ability we have completely pointless (as opposed to merely mostly pointless) in PvE; but if the give us a new, better integration point to take its place, Vanish can be reserved for when we truly need to vanish, while still giving us ways to use our stealth abilities.

The difference, though, is that Vanish's only use in pve content (if it were disconnected from dps) is to escape a wipe. When do we "wish to reenter stealth or dump aggro" if not for the dps benefit for Mut/Sub? Threat hasn't been a true concern since vanilla. And while escaping a boss during a wipe is a neat trick, I'd prefer if it felt more like a part of our combat toolbox than a glorified feign death or mage invis.

In a world where threat were actually a concern, I'd actually like in-combat stealth to play a significant role-- something like not generating any threat while stealthed (and stealth not immediately breaking on dealing damage). Since I think that mechanic is long dead and buried, we're left with not many other options. We can either do more damage, take less damage, move faster... that's about it as far as abilities we've seen so far.

Even with the tier 1 talents, I just don't find the idea of a rogue re-stealthing to have an interesting role in combat at the moment. At least for Sub stealth translates to Find Weakness and Assassination has Overkill, which would give a purpose to restealthing. Combat has effectively no purpose for restealthing (which may fit the theme of the spec). All of these are relatively static benefits though. If you have vanish up, use it for the stealth bonus (if it gives it). If you have something to attack, keep attacking it because the damage you lose from restealthing will outweigh the benefit. If you have downtime, the stealth bonus somewhat makes up for the lost damage. There isn't anything interesting to these decisions.

I'd far prefer if stealth had abilities that were attractive to each spec (think like Ambush for Sub), didn't break on dealing damage (so that this whole stealth thing isn't reduced to a single attack every few minutes), and there were some compelling reason to switch between in and out of stealth during encounters. Maybe stealth is the superior single-target mode but leaving stealth is necessarily for things like blade flurry, fok, crimson tempest, etc. Maybe stealth breaks when you switch targets at all, and you need to stop attacking or use vanish to restealth. Maybe the previously-mentioned restealth finisher could do the job instead of vanish. Maybe stealth accomplishes the role previously held by feint in 'free' damage reduction. Either way, I think stealth is central enough to the rogue that it would be very interesting to go in and out of stealth during combat-- ideally changing the style of the rotation at the same time.

As it is currently, I just don't think any amount of re-stealth potential proves very interesting in the grand scheme of things. Our toolbox of stealth abilities plays such a static and/or insignificant role that I can't see the point.

The problem with anything that leaves us in stealth for extended periods of time is that it breaks PvP unless you get rid of the most fundamental property of stealth: the fact that it leaves us unseen. And once you have stealth that isn't really stealth, you're basically redesigning Shadow Dance. And now that the unfortunate side effects on the Sub talent tree have been addressed, I think Shadow Dance works well as a sub cooldown, and see little incentive to try to make it a general rogue ability.

Thus, stealth, to be stealth, sort of has to prevent us from attacking if we want to remain stealthed, which right there sinks it for sustained PvE DPS situations. If you're stealthing you're not attacking, and in most PvE situations remaining attacking is really quite important.

Hence, my proposal was an effort to exploit times when you already can't attack; these do happen, and they are currently a weak area for rogues, so there's sort of a natural fit. Once you've introduced the idea of PvE restealths outside of vanish, there's any number of additional factors you can add. You can have us take reduced damage while stealthed, and thus use them as a defensive cooldown in emergencies. You can increase our movement capabilities while stealthed, to help us get to our new target faster. And this is on top of the DPS bonuses - through Find Weakness, Overkill, Garrote/Venomous Wounds, etc. that stealth provides. It becomes another tool in our arsenal; it allows us to make the best of otherwise disadvantageous situations. Yes, its not a total solution, but, lets face it - Sub will always be more useful to PvP than PvE; there's simply no way around this. And this significantly limits how good it can ever be in PvE. Maybe there's something better than what I've come up with, but I don't think its reasonable to expect that stealth will ever be something that we spend significant portions of a fight in.

Also, a big reason why threat is a total non-issue is because we use Tricks on cooldown; if we fix Tricks, we have no advantage over any other class. Now, threat isn't a major issue these days in general, but there are circumstances - fresh targets, fixates, etc. - where it does come up. It allows us to evasion tank for 15 seconds, and then vanish it off and keep attacking. While its easy to mock "surviving wipes" as a major usage of the ability, I have to say its one of my favorite parts about being a rogue, and I have to say that it rather annoys me that mages and hunters have to some extent co-opted that role.

Also, there are still times when you can use it to restealth - while it takes 3 seconds for stealth to kick in, there are plenty of times when you're not attacking for 3 seconds anyway where it can be squeezed in; even with my proposed combat-restealth plan it would take 6 seconds to get back in stealth; the ability to do it in 3 would still be valuable.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: its true that vanish wouldn't necessarily be our most valuable or interesting cooldown in the absence of DPS vanishes; its certainly the case that Combat vanishes somewhat rarely. But I'd argue vanishing every 3 minutes on cooldown and breaking it as fast as you possibly can isn't really any better; its not like we're losing any interesting combat mechanics, and it would be more thematic to have stealth be more about being, well, stealthy. So I think it would be a step in the right direction even if its still not quite ideal.

Edit: I think hard-casting stealth is actually a little bit less interesting in that it prevents casting it while, say, running out to a Yor'sahj ooze for a better opener. At the very least it would want to be less than 6 seconds - a 2 second cast would be plenty limiting on its power and far more usable. Although given our complete lack of other cast-time abilities, I have to say the flavor of it does seem a little odd to me as well.

Edit: Delete

I have to disagree with you on this one. What you are talking about is a patchwerk encounter, but we almost don't have any of those in recent raid tiers. I can think about at least three different usages of Vanish that has been seen on various encounters - spell dodger (Impales, Ice Lances, Gravity Crush, ...), roots/debuff breaker (Snowflakes, ...) and of course crowd control with Cheap Shot (Sappers, Initiates, Sons of Flame, ...). Aggro dump can be also very useful on many encounters that include killing adds.

To me, those little details that bring something more to the boss fight than just doing your rotation is what makes raiding interesting. And it's also one of the reasons why I always preferred Combat spec - because it has Vanish available as a utility cooldown.

I'm sort of opposed to making Shroud of Concealment a damage reduction cooldown, largely because there already are too many different AoE cooldowns in the game - they should be taking some out, not adding more in.

Realistically, I think Shroud is going to be a way of skipping trash and *maybe* resetting boss encounters - and if it did so with suitable visual flair, I think that'd be fine. Ultimately, not all abilities are going to be good in both PvP and PvE, and I have no problem with them adding some more PvP-leaning ones; the problem is simply that we haven't gotten anything cool and useful in PvE since... 3.0? Or so? The problem is not so much that they need to make every ability useful in all circumstances - they just need to add some cool toys for PvE for a change.