PvE DPS / WotLK Discussion - Page 2

RTM · 05/28/08, 10:50 AM

So over in the Wrath of the Lich King Stuff thread, Chicken has posted some of the datamined skills that rogues will be getting. Not new ones, just upgrades to current ones.

- Eviscerate rank 12: 1 point 497 to 751 damage, 2 points 867 to 1121 damage, 3 points 1237 to 1491 damage, 4 points 1607 to 1861 damage, 5 points 1977 to 2231 damage
- Rupture rank 8: 1 point 324 damage over 8 secs, 2 points 460 damage over 10 secs, 3 points 618 damage over 12 secs, 4 points 798 damage over 14 secs, 5 points 1000 damage over 16 secs.

Not sure if it's a mistake or not, but Rupture Rank 8 is exactly the same as the current rank 7. Assuming it stays the same until release and no new finishers are added that are way better, would this change our preferred finisher? Aside from armor/resilience/etc, I thought one of the reasons Eviscerate isn't used much is because the current highest rank we have comes from level 64. Looks like we'll be getting one closer to level 80 in the expansion, but only 1 "upgrade" to Rupture.

Salminella · 05/28/08, 11:47 AM

the extra attacks granted by Sword Specialization are always performed using your main hand weapon, regardless of which weapon caused the proc. As a result, if you combine Sword Specialization with another weapon specialization and equip a sword in your off hand with the other specialized weapon type in your main hand, your off hand attacks will proc extra main hand attacks which will receive the benefit of your second specialization. By way of example, if you take both fist and sword specializations, and equip a main hand fist with an off hand sword, your extra attacks will gain the 5% increased critical strike chance from your fist specialization.

Not true.

New recount tracks sword special attacks.

Last night in Hyjal I checked the stats of myself(sword/sword) vs. another rogue with badge fist MH/sword OH and his sword specials hits were less then half of mine in damage per attack.

I'll post actual numbers from tonights raid.

sp00n · 05/28/08, 12:01 PM

Originally Posted by Hanos

That is still purely a personal DPS buff, I am looking for something along the lines of a rogue Totem of Wrath or Ferocious Inspiration that not only buffs us, but buffs the rest of our party so that not only is there a reason to bring rogues for our DPS, but because we increase the DPS of everyone else. Think about it, right now in the melee group everyone but an additional rogue buffs the rest of the group, with the addition of Death Knights, you really need to increase the group synergy not just that rogues get, but that they provide in order to hold on to the 2-3 raid slots we have.

Hm ok, I was more referring to Jays' posting, which is consistent with weapon skill.

Originally Posted by Salminella

Not true.

New recount tracks sword special attacks.

Last night in Hyjal I checked the stats of myself(sword/sword) vs. another rogue with badge fist MH/sword OH and his sword specials hits were less then half of mine in damage per attack.

I'll post actual numbers from tonights raid.

Now, I'm *very* curious to see these results.

ge-off · 05/28/08, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by RTM

Not sure if it's a mistake or not, but Rupture Rank 8 is exactly the same as the current rank 7.

Unfortunately, all I can say at this point is that "I've heard tell..." but the way it sounds to me is that they're adding in a new rank of Rupture while leveling 1-70, so the current Rank 7 that we have is actually going to be Rank 8 come release day, whereas Rank 9 will actually be the new Rupture we receive.

Luuca · 05/28/08, 12:14 PM

Originally Posted by Hanos

That is still purely a personal DPS buff, I am looking for something along the lines of a rogue Totem of Wrath or Ferocious Inspiration that not only buffs us, but buffs the rest of our party so that not only is there a reason to bring rogues for our DPS, but because we increase the DPS of everyone else. Think about it, right now in the melee group everyone but an additional rogue buffs the rest of the group, with the addition of Death Knights, you really need to increase the group synergy not just that rogues get, but that they provide in order to hold on to the 2-3 raid slots we have.

The only "raid dps buff" i can think of that is obtainable for a combat rogue would be Sunder Armor. Does any raiding rogue use Sunder Armor with any regualarity? I'm not top end raiding rogue, and I may be wrong, but I don't even have Sunder Armor on my UI. I've never seen a raiding rogue use it.

It occured to me that Improved Kidney Shot is a current game mechanic that allows for this type of "raid dps buff" from rogues. It clearly does not apply to the non-stunnable raid bosses, and it's duration is too short for any real mobs, but its about right for trash (not that any Combat spec can get it) and definately a part of any PvP Mutilate build. The 9% overall damage increase form all sources would be a nice raid buff if it was somewhere in the Combat tree, and more of a combo-point based raid buff like Sunder Armor.

Originally Posted by Hanos

That is still purely a personal DPS buff, I am looking for something along the lines of a rogue Totem of Wrath or Ferocious Inspiration that not only buffs us, but buffs the rest of our party so that not only is there a reason to bring rogues for our DPS, but because we increase the DPS of everyone else. Think about it, right now in the melee group everyone but an additional rogue buffs the rest of the group, with the addition of Death Knights, you really need to increase the group synergy not just that rogues get, but that they provide in order to hold on to the 2-3 raid slots we have.

In terms of the pure synergy between Death Knights and Rogues, wouldn't it make some sense for there to be a specialized poison application that will qualify as a disease for the purpose of a Death Knight? Thats an easy, cheap fix to make rogues more valuable to Death Knights at least.

• Aldriana · 05/28/08, 2:01 PM

Originally Posted by Luuca

The only "raid dps buff" i can think of that is obtainable for a combat rogue would be Sunder Armor. Does any raiding rogue use Sunder Armor with any regualarity? I'm not top end raiding rogue, and I may be wrong, but I don't even have Sunder Armor on my UI. I've never seen a raiding rogue use it.

Assuming you mean Expose Armor: yes, there are rogues that use it regularly. With the rise of nonwarrior tanks, the value of Imp Expose armor is on the rise as well; many guilds use it on Brutallus, and I've used it on Twin Eredars as well. It's still certainly somewhat of a specialty ability - it's not used in all situations - but it does have it's place.

Originally Posted by Hanos

That is still purely a personal DPS buff, I am looking for something along the lines of a rogue Totem of Wrath or Ferocious Inspiration that not only buffs us, but buffs the rest of our party so that not only is there a reason to bring rogues for our DPS, but because we increase the DPS of everyone else. Think about it, right now in the melee group everyone but an additional rogue buffs the rest of the group, with the addition of Death Knights, you really need to increase the group synergy not just that rogues get, but that they provide in order to hold on to the 2-3 raid slots we have.

I think this is the real problem with rogue's right now. We, as rogues, do good damage assuming proper buffs... but we provide no buffs ourselves, nor any utility. Hence, with the advent of more and more utility meleers, the role of the rogue is increasing marginalized. On a melee friendly fight where you can bring all the utility meleers and a couple of rogues as well, there's no problem; but on a melee unfriendly fight, my experience is that the rogues are among the first to go. For instance, on my guild's first Brutallus kill, in terms of meleers, we had 2 ferals tanking, and then a Fury warrior, an Arms warrior, an Enhancement shaman, a Ret pally, and 3 Rogues - fine. But when it came time to do Felmyst and we wanted fewer melee in, the arms warrior respecced prot and tanks, and we swapped out the 2 ferals and 2 of the rogues, but kept the fury warrior, the enhancement shaman, and the ret pally. And with the advent of the Death Knight, I have to imagine that this situation only becomes even more pronounced. There are now 3 classes (DK, Warrior, Rogue) that can only be melee (either tanking or DPS); if you bring 2 or 3 of each, plus 1 of each utility melee spec (ret pally, prot pally, feral druid, enhancement shaman) you wind up with something like 10 or 11 tanks + melee, which is more than you're going to want on many fights - so something has to give, and the way things stand, I fear that that something would be rogues.

Hence, I think what is necessary - and what I hope they add - is some inherent reason why you want to bring 2 or 3 rogues to every fight. Just doing DPS is not enough anymore, when there are so many other melee classes that do competitive DPS plus provide raid utility. I think we really do need a raid buff or a boss debuff or some sort of reason why you might think about bringing rogues over utility meleers.

The other thing I'd note about the expansion talents so far is that it appears that they're making an effort to make all specs of a given class somewhat useful in a raid environment; the new talents seem designed such that you benefit from having a balance druid in addition to a feral and a resto; a disc priest in addition to a holy and a shadow; and so on. This is not currently at all true of rogues; most rogues are specced combat in the first place, and to the extent that you have ones that aren't (Mutilate, TSH, etc.) they're basically totally interchangable. So another thing they might be looking at doing is giving people a reason to specifically want a Subtlety rogue or an Assassination rogue in raids.

drumbum · 05/28/08, 2:24 PM

Originally Posted by Salminella

Not true.

New recount tracks sword special attacks.

Last night in Hyjal I checked the stats of myself(sword/sword) vs. another rogue with badge fist MH/sword OH and his sword specials hits were less then half of mine in damage per attack.

I'll post actual numbers from tonights raid.

It sounds like Recount is bugged, then. To be honest it's normally very difficult to tell regular autoattacks and sword specialization attacks apart, because the only difference indicated in the combat log is a message that says that sword specialization procced. The thing is that the message always precedes the attack that triggered sword specialization, so for example, this is roughly what it would look like:

Line 1: You gain an extra attack through Sword Specialization.
Line 2: Your melee swing hits for X damage. (this attack procced sword specialization)
Line 3: Your melee swing hits for Y damage. (this attack is the extra attack)

Indeed, in some situations when several events happen close together, there sometimes will even be other attacks that are reported in between lines 2 and 3, because sword specialization tends to lag behind by a few tenths of a second. Lines 1 and 2 will always have the exact same time stamp, however.

If I had to guess, I would say that Recount is counting line 2 as the sword specialization attacks, and not line 3. This would be consistent with what you just said about fist/sword reporting much lower "sword specialization" values than sword/sword. With sword/sword, line 2 above would just be any autoattack since both hands can proc sword specialization, but for a fist/sword rogue, line 2 is always an offhand attack (since only your offhand can proc sword specialization). This is just speculation, though, and could be some other caveat of Recount I'm not familiar with.

royaljester · 05/28/08, 4:07 PM

I'd agree with aldriana fully. Everything we do, dps, is easily reproduced by several other classes that ALSO buff the rest of the raid in some respect. True, we have one of the highest top end dps projections, but that is only with an immense amount of raid/group buffs. Hunters, using those same buffs and without their legendary bow are already pulling 3k on Brutallus. Has anyone seen a non-glaived rogue pull 3k on brutallus yet? Doubtful. Warlocks require an spriest or shaman and even doing their own CoS can pull 2500-2600 easily with the proper gear. Rogues need a plethora a buffs, mostly group buffs, to attain that level of dps currently, so our spot isn't safe.

I like the points Ald brought up about which kind of buff. I can see them allowing room for Mutilate back into raiding, but I doubt Subtlety makes a comeback. Giving rogues specialized poisons (increase bleed dmg, inscreases holy dmg/shad dmg/fire/frost/nature any dmg, giving group a haste or ap buff of some sort) would go a long ways of maintaining our identiy while still giving us utility.

Personally, I'd like to see some kind of group/raid buff that is clearly a rogues doing. By that, I mean a debuff to the boss mainly. Giving rogues the ability, after a crit, to provide haste to a group, while excellent, would seem to be more of a fury warrior or enhancement shaman buff, not a rogue. Where as, giving the boss vulnrability to certain types of damage, to shouts even (produce more threat by a tanks shouts) or allowing imp kidney to work on a boss, even without the stun being present. Maybe I'm asking for too specialized a raid/group buff, but I feel like giving us just ANYTHING will only serve to satisfy for the time, and not in the long run.

• Aldriana · 05/28/08, 4:20 PM

Well, it's not so much that Subtlety needs to "make a comeback", per se; the framework is already there. Hemo is, specifically, a boss debuff providing utility; the problem is simply that it's a small enough buff that even if it didn't cost you *any* personal DPS, it'd be barely worth worrying about - it's not like you're going to make someone respec TSH because your regular Hemo rogue is missing that particular day (as opposed to Ret Pally, Enh Shaman, or DPS Warrior, where you very well might do exactly that). But if they increased the power of TSH - say, make it +42 damage to all attacks, melee, ranged, or spell, with no limit on charges, just a duration - well, now it's starting to sound like something people might reasonably worry about having in the raid. The notion is already there - it's just not powerful enough.

jonnnney · 05/28/08, 5:28 PM

One thing that could be done, though it may be a bit too powerful, is to make it so combat potency and find weakness talents applied to the whole group instead of just the rogue who proc'ed them. It is a nice simple fix, they could do it with an improved CP or FW later in the talent tree and it allows rogues to buff each other or the melee group as a whole. Especially if the FW buff stacked

royaljester · 05/28/08, 5:34 PM

Well, I'd agree in some aspects Sinborn, except that you're very similar to a rogue dps with the new 40/21 spec (double iceblock-Fire). You have amazing survivability on fights like brut/felmyst/kalecgos while still putting up warlock numbers. True, your aoe is less than stellar when SoC is brought into the equation, but you're still really good, quality, almost agro free (if the fight allows a full invis cycle) class, similar to a rogue.

At that same time, you provide quality cc on trash/bosses (M'uru) and give food/water/int to the raid (Yea, not great buffs, but there none the less). In the end, you give more than a rogue in utility while being very similar to a rogue in damage considering the survivability and agro dump. In the end though, I think almost every mage would like to see the same utility or "need" that a warlock has been show in a raid. So in the end, you're probably right, we could both use something worthwhile in the raid utility buff department

.

That would be a great buff Ald. Being able to provide a +dmg taken debuff on a boss that affected either all dmg or a majority of dmg would be immense in the utility department, especially if they could confine it to Mut or Hemo. Allowing either of those spec's raiding room would def raise Rogue morale overall, as well as give us a little job security.

BlackCadian · 05/29/08, 6:02 AM

Originally Posted by jonnnney

One thing that could be done, though it may be a bit too powerful, is to make it so combat potency and find weakness talents applied to the whole group instead of just the rogue who proc'ed them. It is a nice simple fix, they could do it with an improved CP or FW later in the talent tree and it allows rogues to buff each other or the melee group as a whole. Especially if the FW buff stacked

I must say I like that idea, particulary if it'd apply to Find Weakness. I personally find Combat Swords soooo boring, especially since 99% of all raiding rogues are specced that way. I'm actually considering going back to CDaggers which, suprisingly, I found more fun than Swords.

But back on topic, my preferred solution to the problem at hand would be something unique to the rogue class that does not encompass any kind of group/raid buff. I never really saw the Rogue class as a buff class, to me it's just not rogue-ish and would be more of a band-aid. What that solution would be I don't know, but I'm sure Blizz could find something cool and fitting for us.
At the end of the day I'm a rogue, I don't care about buffing other people, I want to destroy my enemies and then quietly melt back into the shadows, if you get what I mean.

Capek · 05/29/08, 9:17 AM

How about combining the hemo debuff into sinister strike?

Hanos · 05/29/08, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by BlackCadian

At the end of the day I'm a rogue, I don't care about buffing other people, I want to destroy my enemies and then quietly melt back into the shadows, if you get what I mean.

The problem is if your value to the raid doesn't justify bringing you to the raid, then it is kind of hard to do that. As I said, something like the Hunter Buffs (Ferocious Inspiration or Expose Weakness) or Enhancement's Unleash Rage would be ideal, where it is simply based on us being on target, so it doesn't become an issue of which rogue is going to use the +Fire Poison and who is using the + Shadow, and who is doing whatever else. Basically if it is inline with most of the other melee synergy buffs/debuffs you won't even have to worry about it beyond spec.

astearns · 05/29/08, 12:11 PM

A raid or party DPS buff isn't the only path to raid slot justification. Abilities like Cloak of Shadows or Vanish could be extended - cloaking someone else, resetting someone else aggro, or some other new useful trick. Hunters have good DPS and some DPS buffs, but you bring a hunter for Misdirect. We need something indispensable - whether that's a buff or a trick doesn't really matter.