Aldriana, I love you. (But not in that way. Not that there would be anything wrong with that.) The combat restealth mechanic is by far the best suggestion I've heard for rogues since Deadly Throw. It is oh so very rogue-ish and...my favorite...it would let sub rogues use Ambush a lot more often in PvE. And it gives us some compensation for all those fights where we have nothing to do but mash the Throw button while ranged dps get all the glory.

As far as taking Vanish out of the rotation, two solutions would be to change the mechanics of Overkill and MoS slightly so that either:
1) You have to have been in stealth for several seconds before they are "primed" to activate, or
2) You have to actually be OOC for them to be similarly primed

So you could Vanish then wait several seconds and then re-open, but if you just hit Vanish and then immediately attacked they would not work. Since presumably several seconds of zero dps would outweight the dps benefit of the talents, it would effectively eliminate Vanish as a dps cooldown. Which I'm 100% in favor of. What I hate is when I need Vanish for it's intended use, i.e. getting out of trouble, but find it's on cooldown because I used it for a tiny bit of extra dps. But on the other hand I can't just sit there and NOT use it for dps.

On the contrary, I am ecstatic at the introduction of another cooldown. Cooldowns greatly increase our pve and pvp power. Sure, it doesn't increase our total sustained single target (aka, we're balanced around actually using our cooldowns), but who cares? We can use this during heroism and trinket and potion and do more damage when it matters, and let me tell you, as someone who has pvped as all specs this expansion, combat needs armor ignore BADLY.

Your assumptions about the specs are incorrect. And doing all eight hard modes in dragonsoul, I progress through all three rogue specs- though I'll agree, assassination needs work. Honestly, I think assassination shouldn't have that backstab requirement (and it won't in mop). Also, note how there's not really any fight that plays to assassination's strengths? That probably hurts representation a lot. No boss starts at 50%, no boss has long term sustained aoe (Maybe Yor'sahj in 25, but in 10 his adds summoned are pretty paltry), and the few times aoe matters there's no ramp-up. What if spellweave wasn't in there, would assassination be better at madness? I would suspect yes, but I'm not sure. Certainly I use it on that.



Sub should be first, actually. Because it has nothing except single target going for it, and it has a much more difficult rotation to perform optimally. You have to be behind a boss, you have three things to maintain, and a bunch of short term cooldowns that shouldn't always be pressed the very first moment they come off cooldown. Assasination is a very pleasing spec, but it doesn't have that depth. I am hoping blindside adds some spice- I'd definitely like a spec that has some more RNG, though I don't think we have to go full fire mage.

I'm sad to see cold blood go away. I really like that move, I'd be happy to see them buff it. Maybe it could grant 10 charges, and each charge is consumed by a crit, and each charge grants +10% to your chance to crit. Or four charges and each one grants +25%. Lots of design space for such an iconic move imo.

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Edit: Had missed some Aldrianna goodstuff.

Rogues could have some method of regaining the ABILITY to use a stealth based move- shadow dance being the most obvious one. But in pvp, I don't feel really hurt for stealth, especially not as a sub night elf- I don't ALWAYS have it when I need it, but that's because I've used it earlier for something else. The hard-cast idea might be ok, and give us something to do on transition. If you could restealth after 6 seconds of not taking damage, being subject to enemy player actions, or being the primary target of a mob, then we'd have a different thing, and it WOULD be useful on a non-patchwerk (or could be).

I'm also ok with vanish -> ambush being a small damage upgrade for ALL specs. I am a night elf, and I really do love actually having a damned damage racial- it's been fantastic. I think making overkill was a mistake, however, as it is pretty insistent about being used in pve. Without overkill and cold blood, I will say that assassination will be lacking a lot of pressure in pvp- though dispatch will be FAR superior to the old backstab crap (which, while just fine in pve, is ludicrous versus an opponent wavering between 28% and 45%- the last thing you need is to backstab and NOT get a refund because lolheal). Right now, I think shadowmeld adds about the right amount of damage in pve mutilate or sub- it doesn't trigger the spec specific bonuses that vanish does, but it does give you the opener. I think a boss that requires mobility might cause you to pick shadowstep over prep if the bonus was on par with shadowmeld instead of "here's a bunch of energy regeneration".

Or overkill could just be a button you press, though the effect would be too similar to AR.

When Aldriana suggested re-stealthing earlier, my mind instantly jumped to being a cast that is castable while moving (aka like slam). Thematically this fits, because the cast represents the rogue actively focusing on re-stealthing. In this manner the movement doesn't necessarily hurt it, because thematically (in large group situations at least) it could be explained as the rogue expending some effort trying to "blend into the crowd" and disappear.

If it was changed in this way, stealth could conceivably become something like:

It ends up being rather wordy, but makes stealth much more useful in pve, without seeming too good in pvp.
Granted, I don't pvp much so if I could get more feedback on that part of it that would be great.

As long as I grasp my head in concentration during the cast, I'm in for that.

Speaking of that animation, I think the next thing WoW should steal from SWTOR is XS Freighter Flyby for rogues next, now that they are grabbing Sneak and Smuggle and renaming them :P

A cast time on stealth is pretty clever, actually, but so is just letting the button light up based on not having aggro (top on meter) or dealing or receiving damage or enemy pvp abilities. No one in here wants to change the pvp mechanics of stealth I don't think- just a way to make better use in pvp should an enemy poof away.

But even then- wouldn't you still use vanish as a dps cooldown? I'm fine with it being one- I just think we should avoid it being a big one. Aka, don't nerf my shadowmeld!

Another solution instead of #1 is having the ability only activate in normal stealth, not improved "Vanish" stealth. Or you could just go with the Fade-out Finisher on a 30 second cooldown and make it to where those abilities won't activate on a Vanish at all. Personally, I love the idea of giving Sub (at the very least) a finisher that allows the use of a single ability that requires stealth. Much in the way Feral Druids can get a "free" Ravage.

Edit: Sub strikes me as the spec that should have a great deal to do with Stealth and the shadows in general, including a smidge of shadow damage potentially, as that quasi-mystical shadow warrior archetype.

I have played World of Warcraft from Vanilla through today as a rogue and I have made no "assumptions" about the specs, they are what they are as I stated.


So, you are saying that the spec that gets most of the mobility, survival and control should also be the top dps spec? That just goes against the whole principle of give and take in the choices one is supposed to make about an individuals role in a group.

I think you are confused about most of this, Cold Blood is a level 45 ability and has not changed or gone away which is just too bad. Almost 1/3 of our hits crit the way it is. In Wrath we were crit capped. Giving us one 100% crit chance every 2 minutes isn't very noticeable in a PvE setting. Adding the 25 energy refund helped this lackluster CD, but lets be honest it is no AR or KS.

Hey cool I did that too!

Combat was unquestionably the raid spec. I seriously doubt your 31 point talent of vigor was supposed to be a "single target" spec. I also doubt that any spec was multi target at inception- given that your ONLY aoe in vanilla was blade flurry, a medium cooldown with short duration.

So yes, the assumption that combat was anything but single target supremacy until QUITE recently is absolutely incorrect. The assumption that assassination was single target except for ganking someone is also incorrect. And while you were correct that sub was designed to be a pvp spec, these assumptions are all stale as of Lich King, to say nothing of Cataclysm.

Meanwhile, if we want to talk about the world post fan of knives and good blade flurry and sub honor among thieves, we see a very big thing going on:

1)- Assassination has the best sustained aoe. This isn't an accident- it's quite clearly intended, as it can apply three poisons per button press, the physical damage on the button press is a joke (on live), and assassination has a secondary stat that directly buffs the poison damage. This is one of its intended strengths on live, and if you take it to one of the few places with sustained aoe, it will blow EVERYTHING else out of the water. Of course, it isn't just an aoe spec- it also has amazing damage in execute, which often matters a lot, because many bosses have an execute phase that matters a lot, and doing more damage then is more important. Assassination also scales well with haste effects- it is a spec that does good things with the moderate amount of energy it has, so adding more has a proportionally greater effect, a bonus that has been very useful this expansion. Assassination has a passive run speed increase in addition to the plain old sprint cooldown. Assassination can comfortably glyph sprint, as it only uses two majors (feint and tricks) as part of its normal thing. Assassination has the easiest rotational complexity as well.

2)- Combat has the extremely powerful blade flurry as its special thing. It also deals strong damage regardless of position (our only spec to do so), and regardless of enemy life. It has a strange cyclical thing going on with bandit's guile which limits its flexibility under many situations, and it has more sprints than the other specs. Combat obviously is meant to excel on anything with a cleave, but with sustained or burst aoe, it does basically nothing.

3)- Sub has a bit more mobility with shadowstep than the other specs, but also the hardest rotation. Sub has nothing to offer at anything except single target. It can put up decent pressure on a target swap with a full bar of energy, not quite on par with the non-rogue specs that are good at that, and if the target swap is VERY important, a set of cooldowns can be timed and the damage can be absolutely amazing. The auxiliary strength of the spec is to have extreme survivability under some situations, with extremely little aoe damage being taken (at the cost of damage talents) and a sub rogue can even cheat death (also at the cost of damage talents). Specs taking these talents are clearly sacrificing damage for utility, however.


This isn't maybe the BEST way of writing this, but it should be obvious that it's more complex than somehow gleaning that assassination has some manifest destiny about highest single target, when in fact it brings at least two very powerful tricks (aoe and execute) that sub does not, in addition to the easier rotation- and this is before bringing the strongest aoe snare in the game rolled in with good damage- perhaps not the greatest feature of it, but if I'm bringing up heroic V+T for sub, then it might be relevant.



Yes I am confused- I heard that it was being removed. I'm glad it is not.

Crit capped (as you use it) never ever applied to yellow attacks, only white, and cold blood has never ever applied to white attacks, only yellow.

I'm aware, but the game isn't just the raid. My suggestion above there would make it a bit moreso, guaranteeing some crits and having a substantially more than a two in three chance of not being a throwaway cooldown. I'm not trying to tell you that the move is super, merely that it COULD be made good- and a dash of free energy is certainly at least more than not.

In honestly, I think that cold blood's big deal? The cooldown is ludicrously long. It's huge, it's like back when a crit eviscerate could take 60% of someone's life off so they had to regulate it. Cold blood with a 30 second cooldown would probably be welcomed, or with the buff I suggested, or a bunch of other things- but it just seems to fit assassination well thematically. I agree it's underpowered in pve, and not absolutely stunning in pvp either.

If you have seen the new spec/talent system, then you will know that all 3 specs now have access to Shadowstep (mobility), Cheat Death (survival), and Preparation (control). Subtlety no longer has exclusivity on any of those abilities, and no longer "gets most of the mobility, survival and control".

Regardless of what Blizzard's intent was in the past, it is clear that their intent for MoP is for all 3 specs to be viable in PVP, and thus we can also infer they want all 3 specs to be viable in PVE.

I think it would also be prudent, due to the loss of Puncturing Wounds to have the 5% crit bonus from HaT given back to the ability. Though I'd much rather have Puncturing Wounds as a passive for all rogues, and have it increase the crit chance of SS by 10-20% to give a reason for Combat to have it.

I jokingly refer to Vanish as "Vanish means never having to say you're sorry" in that I love the fact that it bails me out of bad situations/wipes. Stealth as a positioning tool/distracting pathing trash packs etc is fantastic and I hate that two of the three specs use it for a dps increase.

Honestly I wish Blizz would look at Stealth as a control/defensive state instead of an aggressive state. In PvP the main power stealth has isn't ambush/instant kills...it's sap and stuns and the damage we put out while our opponent is unable to respond. In PvE that isn't much of an issue, so Blizz gives us a reason to want to use stealth to gain dps, with the end result that we lose some of the classes flavor.

Actually, now that I think about it, the issue isn't so much about being stealthed as it is about leaving stealth. If *being stealthed* conferred some sort of advantage (I'm thinking about a stacking buff to our next attack as we get when Illidan cloaks us in the new 5mans) then it would still retain some flavour, but at the moment the actual act of being stealthed is meaningless and, in point of fact, we actively try to minimize it as much as possible through the use of /cancelaura or /startattack macros. I mean if you look at Sub/Assassination rogues, the initial 5 seconds of every pull are a frantic series of "drink pot, enter stealth" doing so as soon as possible to the fight starting so you don't waste any uptime on your buffs.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, at the moment, it looks like the trend is going to continue in MoP of rogues in PvE only using vanish as a dps cooldown. And so long as it is a dps gain to be able to vanish, then we have even fewer choices in terms of our talents than we have now. I mean honestly, what's the mechanical difference between Shadow Focus and the old "+5% crit" talents that Blizz told us were too boring to keep in the game.

A nerf to Vanish as a DPS cooldown for Assassination in the newest build:
This cuts it down to just Overkill, as opposed to Overkill and a chance to Garrote for the energy return.