So, new talent trees are up (here). I haven't had a chance to pick through them in detail, but there are two changes that immediately jump out at me.

1) Elusiveness replaces Improved Recuperate at Tier 3. As I discussed here, Leeching Poison and Cheat Death are reasonably well balanced against each other, but Improved Recuperate was woefully underpowered (at least from a PvE perspective). They have replaced it with Elusiveness, which is basically a mini shield wall - 30% damage reduction from all sources (instead of just AoE) for 5 seconds when you feint. This is definitely an improvement - the opportunity cost is a lot lower than for Improved Recuperate - but I'm not entirely sold on it being a legitimate competitor to Cheat Death and Leeching Poison yet. Leeching Poison, in my current gear, would heal for something in excess of 4k HPS, so unless the improved Feint is preventing at least 40k damage per usage - which works out to a raw hit of around 150k - its probably better to just take the healing. And I can't think of too many times when that actually happens. There might be some circumstantial usages for it, but I suspect for the most part rogues will be sticking with Leeching Poison and/or Cheat Death.

2) All three Tier 6 talents have been replaced. Shuriken Toss gives us the ability to maintain combo point generation at range, for use when a target is out of range for a moderate period of time. Versatility allows Redirect usage limited only by the GCD, which will make heavy target-switching fights more manageable. But I think the jewel of the new options - and the one we'll wind up taking on the vast majority of fights - is Anticipation, which gives two powerful advantages. First, it lets us execute perfect cycles. No longer will one have to skip RvS as Combat or finish at 4CP at Mutilate - you will always be able to do 5pt finishers without wasting combo points. And if you're at 5 CP but not ready to refresh Rupture or SnD for another few seconds, you can just throw an extra move or two to kill time instead of having to use a different finisher and refresh your buff/debuff with an undersized finisher. It gives more control than we've ever had about what size finisher you want to use when, and will thus result in a nontrivial increase to our single target DPS.

Additionally, it gives us a degree of controllable burst that we've never had before - you can build up 5 stacks of Anticipation on a target in order to release two finishers in a row. It looks like you may be able to build up Anticipation stacks on one target and then switch to another, thus getting an implicit redirect of 5 extra combo points the first time you do a finisher. Burst of that sort is something we've been lacking for a long time, so its good to see them add something to address it.

All in all, I think Anticipation (and to a lesser extent, Versatility) are the most fun and interesting talents they've proposed to date, and I'm very encouraged to see it. The rest of the tree still needs some work, and Anticipation might need better competition within its tier to keep all PvE rogues from taking it - but its definitely a step in the right direction.

Not sure all of these are actually new, but they're all things I don't remember seeing before:

• Swiftblade's Cunning - Rogues now passively give Windfury just by being rogues.
• Expose Armor - Now works like sunder. 25 energy to apply one stack of armor debuff, stacks three times. Appears that it also shares stacks with Sunder and similar effects.
• Blind - Now lasts one minute.
• Feint - No longer reduces threat; damage reduction only lasts 5 seconds.
• Shadow Walk - New ability which increases stealth effectiveness for 6 seconds.
• Shiv - There's some reference to applying a "concentrated form" of your utility poison. There don't appear to be any details about this, but my guess is that it might, for instance, cause Crippling Poison to root your opponent briefly.
• Shroud of Concealment - Gives your entire group stealth for a short period of time.
• Revealing Strike - Gives the benefit of Glyph of Sinister Strike in addition to increasing finisher damage. Its unclear as yet whether it still is consumed by doing a finisher.
• Restless Blades - Also reduces the cooldown of Sprint.
• Premed - I don't see stealth listed as a requirement. Might just be an unclear tooltip, or it might have changed.
• Energetic Recovery - Now works off SnD instead of Recup.

Three main comments here.

1) Between Sap and Blind, we can now keep a target out of the fight almost as well as a mage. This will be useful in 5mans.
2) Shadow Walk and Shroud of Concealment are flavorful, but its not clear to me that they're actually useful in the current game. Does this portend broader applications of stealth in the game, or is it just supposed to be flavorful?
3) Sub no longer weaves Recup. Definitely simplifies the cycle. Might make it a bit *too* simple, though.

Killing Spree: Step through the shadows to a random enemy within 10yrds, dealing a damaging strike and generating 5 combo points on that target. This ability may be activated multiple times withing 5 seconds of the first activation. ( I don't remember if the underlined portion was there prior to the update.)

Depending on the actual gameplay mechanic of Shroud, potentially enables the ability to reset encounters that are going downhill. Could prove to be very useful on progression content or just a bad attempt on farm content.

Revealing strike will likely move to the first attack to get the buff to SS, and with Anticipation talented at tier 6 the worries of lost combo points are a thing of the past.

Slightly disappointed the took Dance, Vengeance and killing spree out of the 6 layer talent options. Also still sad to see SStep competing with Prep in tier 4.

Shuriken Toss + Deadly Throw = We are a ranged class now, baby.



Elusiveness seems odd to me. Why tie it to Feint, which already has a massive shield wall like reduction to most incoming damage? It almost seems like Feint itself should be in that slot and just make the 50% reduction apply to everything.