I still consider that to be more fun than "Hit this button because it's off cooldown, or this button because these procs lined up." Which is how most other melee play.

Every spec has at least 2 timers to watch, plus resource management, which is not something any other class really has to deal with (theirs is more of a, "well I am getting a little low, time to hit this button", type thing, if anything) (Sans feral and now WW).

I'm not even going to touch on the BF changes (that would just be beating a dead horse). IMO there is no way that makes it to live without them specifically saying that they don't want rogues being a cleave class. I think BF has it's fights were it is OP and that ruins it as a whole. Garalon really established it, but outside of that, I really didn't see many fights rogue cleave had an amazing advantage over other class aoe. Oh well, time will tell with this one.

The major talent changes seem much more geared towards pvp than pve. It seems they are finally trying to give us back our mobility (considering they put in 100000000000000x more snares, etc.). Pretty much everything I read is "here is some mobility and utility in PVP", but very little change to pve environment. That isn't bad, but hopefully they find a way to spice it up a bit and let us use some of this utility crap in PvE. Bring out a boss that snares. Force us to have to teleport around. Force us to ranged interrupt.... something....please?!?!

Aldriana, as you are my go to expect number cruncher when I am feeling very lazy (right now :-D), have you done any math on the effect a 5% buff to AP would do to the single target damage of combat? I might have overlooked it and apologize if I have, but given BiS 5.1, what sort of change we looking at? I am okay with the idea (but not thrilled) of combat being a single target, but taking away the niche would require them bringing it a little more in line with assassin. I know the gap isn't THAT big, but if your crush the spec's niche, I think the compensation should be well enough that it is viable.... I STILLLLLLLL don't have 2 viable daggers :-\ I would have liked to see another change along with the 5% ap for combat. Combat rogue is really just autodamage and cooldown damage now. The 5% ap is just a buff across the board, sure, but I would like to see some skill based buff.... maybe some kinda buff to a finisher, or using an ability correctly, or if you keep SnD or Rupture up for 60 seconds it gives you a 15 seconds buff... idk... something that requires more than just stand and stab to get a benefit. I want something that is more skill based i guess.

I think it is safe to say that Shadow Focus is the most widely used pve talent, but someone said it already... poor designed tier isn't fixed by slightly nerfing the ability... I would still take shadow focus for 75% off the energy cost.

I feel like cloak and dagger has a lot of potential in PVP... that sounds like a fun ability to play with... Additionally, I think it will be one of the more used pve talents. Being able to teleport to the boss when opening with ambush (or vanish ambush) seems really strong (depending on the fights).

Burst of speed is better, but still won't use in pve.

The number of times that Marked + prep will be better than Shadowstep + anticipation would be interesting to see.

Since prep is baseline, and cloak and dagger only applies to stealth abilities...for combat and assassination at least you'll always have shadowstep unless some really particular fight calls for Burst of speed, so an additional teleport seems unlikely to be necessary (Marked for Death). So you're really just comparing Marked to Anticipation for add fights.

Prep is going baseline

At some fights some of dps classes have to respec, its not only us. Yes combat cleave is powerfull versus 2 even 3mob fights but the advantage that combat rogue have at some bosses is not breaking the melee class balance. it is just very good not overpowered and the logic on the nerf is just stupit. As Gc said 'Yes. Combat had just become "swap on cleave fights only." A cleave advantage is fine, but it was too far off.' Now combat has just become no fights at all. What next, Feint? We all know how powerfull ability feint is at emperor and i am pretty sure blizz may consider feint is too far off too.

Nerfing Bf is the easiest way, and generally Blizz prefers easy solutions. If you do not want combat as a swap on cleave fight spec why not consider make the BF as a rogue general ability instead of combat spec. It may be again 2min cd ability but for all specs. With the restless blades combat will be the best cleave spec however both subt. and assas will have something more. Even some kind of charge should be intresting like we can activate bf at any spec after x number combo point used. We can find 100 different ideas about this and i am pretty sure the %75 nerf will not be one of them.

Combat is boring? Maybe for some of us yes however assas. is too. Subt. means more fun for me but it is also broken not the damage output but spending a lot more work for same even lower damage than other specs. We first need some change about the class then the specs.

While rogue pvp will get one of the biggest buffs i ve ever seen i think vitality will be more effective, with new instances and higher level items combat will benefit much more than it seems. Cannot say anything about the sh.toss atm. Will those auto st drain energy dont think they will but what about cp generating from auto st? It was fun and also intersting using it instead of muti. in the early days of content while we ve low item level daggers. Even without cp i think it may be useful for assasination spec.

I'm curious where people are getting the differences between spec damage. If you go by sites that use WoL then the most popular specs will do the most dps. Simulations generally yield different results, though the ones I've seen have decided sub is the best (something very few of us can attest to, I myself haven't played assassination so I can't judge). I did see GC say that sub dps is a bit low, however I'm genuinely curious how people are deciding what spec is the best.

Also, the 4% damage buff to SV doesn't translate to 4% damage increase for sub, but rather about a 3.5% damage buff:

say dps w/o SV is 100:

DPS w/ SV at 16% is 116
DPS w/ SV at 20% is 120

120/116 = 1.03448275862, so the dps increase is ~3.45%.

To answer the question about how sub switches targets, the main factor is how long we are on the target. If we are only on the new target for 5 seconds getting SV up via rupture may actually cost dps since there will be so few ticks. If we are on the target for 25 secs a full 5 CP rupture will be worth it for dps even without SV, and thus getting CP during downtime will make sub switch quite well in relation to other specs. It's also worth noting that at a certain point it *could* be optimal to use CT for switching targets since it does half of its damage up-front, thus applying SV and starting out with slightly higher damage than rupture.

At what point would you say that the cleave advantage that Combat currently enjoys *is* "breaking the melee class balance"? I ask because, if we use Raidbots to take a look at how Combat's best players are currently doing against the best of other classes/specs on 10-H Stone Guard, we see a gap of about 30,000 DPS between Combat and the next-best specs -- which are, in fact, mages, not other melee cleave classes/specs. Combat is 15% better than mages on that fight, and from there the gap only grows as you compare to other classes.

Blizzard's goal is obviously not to make Combat unusable. It's to bring it down to roughly the same plane as the other specs, so fewer rogues feel obligated to switch to it.

Or, on the flip side, you could do exactly what Blizz appears to be planning (or at least considering): Bring Combat's cleave in line with the rest of the game, boost its single-target damage to keep it competitive with the other rogue specs, and consider finding a way to kick its multi-target AoE up a notch so it's not a complete waste to bring it on fights where that's needed. The end result would theoretically be a situation in which highly competitive PvE groups and players would still flock to the best proven performer, but the vast majority of end-game PvE-ers would no longer feel as though they were raid-killing idiots because they didn't want to switch specs from fight to fight.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not thrilled to see one of the few remaining defining features of our individual rogue specs lose much of its definition. But please, enough with the "this change doesn't make sense" stuff already. It makes plenty of sense. They wouldn't be making such a major adjustment in the middle of an expansion if it didn't.

To me, the much more interesting question is over whether the changes they've identified for Vitality and Sang. Vein, if they were to go live as-is, would truly be sufficient to make spec choice a matter of personal preference on most fights in the next raid tier. (And if not, what it *would* take to reach something approaching true parity -- as much as something like that can ever be achieved given how variable raid mechanics are from one fight to the next.)

Rfeann I think the general consensus is not that we shouldn't be getting a nerf, it's that it shouldn't be such a huge nerf. A lot of us are wondering what exactly the point of using BF is if, under ideal circumstances, the DPS increase is a measly 8%.

Especially since many of us who run as Sub or Assassination aren't gemmed / reforged / enchanted to min/max Combat. For us, this now means that trying to take advantage of an iconic Rogue skill for a few fights where it would seem advantageous will now give us close to 0 net gain in DPS. And depending on the nature of the fight (and if there are periods where BF isn't even being used) it could mean a DPS loss.

I, for one, actually enjoy switching up my spec a little bit because a fight is suitable to it. I like to main Assassination, but I don't hate swapping Combat for something different. Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way though? I don't know.

Wasn't the math such that a Mutilate reforge (high mastery) was ahead of the normal Combat reforge for a pure cleave fight?

I'm with nonmagical. I've enjoyed swapping specs to suit the fights (to an extent), and this ever since I've started playing my rogue. But lately, with reforges, enchants and more importantly double secondary stats gems, this has been terribly boring: swapping from Assassination to Combat means I'll be energy starved. BF allowed us to pump higher DPS on cleave fights even though we have subpar reforges and gems. I, for one, applaud the change: I'm no longer 'forced' into a spec I don't have an optimal gear for. But the extent of the nerf might be a bit too much.

I feel like a good thing to do to improve on pures vs hybrids would be to make EP weights roughly similar between pures's specs. Sure, we could farm a second set like most hybrids do, but frankly I feel like my raid wouldn't like it one bit: too many leather-wearing hybrids are counting on me passing agi loots... But I fear such change would destroy most of our theorycrafting, which I have to admit I love doing and I expect all of you do as well.

On a side note, GC was discussing passive damage vs active on Twitter. He felt like it was time to maybe change things. It'd be great if we could voice in. I personally would like them to remove Slice and Dice (and balance Combat and Sub's energy regen around that), make Rupture always worth to use for damage = ( %crit * EvisAvgCrit + ( 1 - %crit ) * EvisAvgNonCrit ), and buff CP builders across the board.

I also enjoyed to play 2 different specs depending on the fight needs. Some variations in the playstyle does not hurt (even if it's true that it's a pain to have so different stats weights across the specs.. ,i optimize for combat).

It will be sad to have equivalent specs, all mono target oriented

Their intention seems pretty clear (i think the given answer was not only for pvp reasons)
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...29461051125760