impossible!

I think it's pretty safe to say that Windfury Totem will no longer provide the extra attack we've grown to love. That will be left exclusively to Windfury Weapon for the shaman.

I'm kind of underwhelmed with everything so far. Our two new abilities and a hefty number of new talents are pretty dry, and don't seem to come with much PvE benefit. Maybe I just haven't digested enough information, but at this point, short of being excited that Mutilate is going to rule, I really don't see much in Combat or Subtlety to go crazy about.

Basically, my initial reaction is, "really? This is what we get?"

 

Thousand

I'm generally in this boat. Mutilate being amazing is great though. I also personally love the Turn the tables change. I t should be up all the time in a raid situation making eviscerate and envenom a more viable use than rupture. I think it also makes you choose between Turn the Tables or Blood Spatter. Nice to have some variety.

I guess i shouldn't say more viable than rupture. A viable alternative to rupture, depending on the talent path you choose is a better way to say it.

 

folderol

Don't underestimate the indirect benefits we gain from other changes like merged melee and spell critrate or the modified windfury. The new windfury has now synergy with combat potency, poison and sword spec and is always twisted thanks to the change to strength of earth totem. This alone is a nice boost to the current sword combat build.

Poison changes are also interesting. For example, even without considering Deadly Brew, a quick calculation indicates that Improved Poisons 5 + Windfury + instant poison VII gives more damage than a 100% uptime deadly poison VII 5-stack for a 1,4 OH and probably on 2,6 MH too, and that damage will scale with hit, expertise, haste and crit rating.
This means that unless Blizzard dramatically changes the base damage of IP and DP or provides some DP damage scaling, Combat builds probably won't be using DP at all in WotLK end game.

I would have liked to see some more raid utility for a rogue but we do get a lot of small direct and indirect buffs on our current talents, abilities and raid buffs that may have great synergies for WotLK end game even without taking into account completely new talents or abilities.

 

impossible!

I guess my gripe is, we're seeing new game play styles and abilities for a lot of classes. Mutilate certainly looks raid viable, but I'm just afraid that at L80 we'll be yet again running 3s/5r and doing nothing to benefit the raid. Conversely, Feral Druids are getting a +25% AP SnD-like finisher while providing LotP and a Mangle debuff. Hell, some of our new talents flat out leech our raidmates' actions for our benefit.

Also, does the Subtlety tree look like as big a mess to anyone else? More Ambush/Backstab talents? Really?

e: I really should reserve judgement, though. There's so much stuff to take in, and the users at work today aren't really helping to let me do that.

e2: Have people been looking at hybrid builds? 30/41 assass/combat?

 

◊ gwystyl

Don't underestimate how much more this change to Windfury will benefit Fury warriors and BM hunters in comparison to the benefits it gives rogues. The exchange of old Windfury for new Windfury will be a net positive event for rogues but that's only 1 perspective. Do you care if this results in a 2% buff to your damage if it buffs the other guy 10%?

 

Cos-

Beta people start complaining about weapon speeds early :P the "rogue offhand" is a 1.7 speed fist and the arm blade is 1.6. MH speeds are so far terrible too. Let's see if we can avoid the BM blue-> BT offhand gap non pvpers experienced in TBC.

 

• Vulajin

Are you really complaining about quest rewards and sub-80 instance drops? Do you happen to remember how many "proper" speed main hands and off hands you found while leveling through Outland? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't many.

 

Cos-

I'm not trying to complain about it so much but instead hope it's not a trend and as beta continues it will better illuminate any problem if there is in fact one. Blizzard is really into the whole gear reset and yet these items work against it. Can I at least be a little worried that someone is missing the point?

 

Crimsonsky

I believe his point is that he would like to avoid that, this time around. For those of us in full BT/Sunwell gear, the quest rewards and instance drops won't matter, for everyone else though it would be nice if the drops were actually good. I leveled in 6/9 Bonescythe in TBC and the only upgrade I used was the Mag'hari Fury Brand over the GM sword, which was pretty sad.

 

• Vulajin

I don't recall Blizzard ever stating the intention to have Wrath reset gear in the same way that BC did.

 

impossible!

I don't think the gear reset is going to be anywhere near as extreme as you think it is. If you remember back to vanilla WoW, the difference between a non-raiding player equipped in dungeon blues and craftables and a raiding player equipped in just MC gear was massive. They had to force a reset not just for STA, but also to make sure the content wasn't impossible for the former or trivial for the latter.

In the case of the Burning Crusade, there are countless ways for a non-raider to increase the quality of their gear. I mean, shit, a rogue is capable of getting the best gear in several slots until T6 from badges alone. They're expecting players to jump into this expansion with a less glaring disparity between the two camps. Anything you find in the two starting zones are most likely drops to tide over alts and rerolls without negating the power that every player had at the end of our current expansion.

Plus, yeah, beta with changes to come.

 

Cos-

Without being able to link you a post I'll admit defeat to a degree. Level 60 rep blue quality weapons in TBC were ~on par with non rag mc drops. Level 70 dungeon weapons in WotLK are quite nearly BT quality. If anything it would feel even more dramatic then release -> BC if it weren't for the lack of sockets and bad stat allocation on the new pieces.

Who liked itemization when we all hit 70 early in BC? I'm pretty sure it and certain terribly balanced encounters were the gripes people wouldn't shut up about. I'll call it quits til we see some leaked Naxx 2.0 loot etc.

 

Crimsonsky

When we do shut up for too long we get nerfed. The QQ must be endless, it would seem. You are correct here though, the early 70 stage and early endgame raiding, particularly SSC, rogues were in a laughable state of affairs.

Also, though the conversation is probably ended or whatever, the outcome of which is better for grinding PVE gear vs PVP should've been quite obvious from the get go. Take a look at Neilyo or any other strictly PVP geared rogue, then you can armory me or any other endgame rogue here, I have ~300 ap on him(as combat, him as sub), ~220 hit, and 128 haste. He has 7 crit on me. With his stam and res being worthless, since I can farm indefinitely without resting, the advantage here is clear.

 

• Maestroquark

Wait a second. Browsing through the skills on wowhead, am I really seeing that poisons still don't scale and there's no new poison ranks after level 70?

 

Andeh

Well if you really want to read between the lines (dangerous speculation, for sure), you could read (2) as an indication that (1) will be changed. Given the difficulty of revising the mechanics vs. adding new ranks of existing spells, I would wager this is more probable than the alternative.

 

Waywilder

So far only thing I'm excited about from the notes and talents is the fact that I have 10 points more to spend on old ones, deadly brew being an exception here, which also is sub-41 pointer. None of beyond 41 is even remotely interesting, since their strength seems so low compared to the other trees' lower tier alternatives, e.g. dagger spec+blade flurry from combat, and opportunity from subtlety for mutilate build. Also the return of throwing specialization gets me worried that the interrupt effect is going to be removed from pvp-gloves.

At least I can still hope that Blizzard would finally make good itemization choices from rogue's point of view, especially so if they decide to keep really high rating requirements on PvP-weapons. Fan of Knives being the only new ability that people have managed to mine information of (or I have just managed to not notice anything, which might well be the case) I'm hoping that will be WotLK:s Anesthetic Poison, and rest will be something useful, even if they end up being situational ones.

 

Hildegard

From a PVE point of view - yes. But this talent was incredible for arena. Downside was the rng, but it had the potential to make Mutilate really strong when fighting other melees. Reflecting physical effects would give Mutilate the survibality it needs. Perhabs they should change this into an active ability somehow. Right now Mutilate is just too vulnerable and without Shadowstep not really mobile in the arena.

The other problem is that Assasination has just too many good talents, while two to three extremly important ones (dual wield specialisaiton and Opportunity and maybe the buffed dagger specialisation) are in other trees, which means, that we will have to spent 25 to 30 points in other trees. I just don't see any talents in deep Assasination being stronger than these two.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Coffin Burier

This is how I see the rogue in the WotLK background for both PvE raids and PvP:

Mutilate/Dual Wield Spec 51/20 (very strong poisons, nice white damage, very high combo generation, must stay behind the target)
Combat/Assassination 20/51 (the usual combat sword spec, with increased crit damage and incresed burst damage)
Combat/Seal Fate 30/41 (the usual combat sword spec with increased combo generation and poison damage)
Seal Fate/Hemorrhage 47/24 (an evolution of my spec, very high poison damage, very strong bleeding effects, weak white damage)

Shadow Dance/Assassination 20/0/51 (spec pvp, very high survivability, very unpredictable damage output, must stay behind the target)
Shadowstep/Cold Blood 28/0/43 (spec pvp, very high survivability, increased healing and movement speed)
Shadowstep/Seal Fate 30/0/41 (spec pvp, the usuale pvp rogue with increased combo generation)
Combat Mace Spec/Assassination 20/51 (spec pvp, the old combat pvp spec with increased survivability and high burst damage)

I can't see anything else at the moment... there may be some other few specs for PvE, like an Hemo/Combat Potency or maybe a new kind of Three Spec Hemorrhage. I also see Mutilate viable in PvP, even if still weak in survivability.

The real problem for my spec (Seal Fate/Hemorrhage) is to understand how much can the poison damage be increased in WotLK. I'm litterally going crazy about that. :P

Combat/Seal Fate could be a nice spec at the beginning. It has only one new ability (Cold Blood) and may focus on Eviscerate as a third finisher. Agility would be stronger then ever.

P.S.
I have a question... which one do you think would work better? Find Weakness, Focussed Attacks or Turn the Tables? I'm making some calculations bases on my WWS parse. I know it's early, but I really spend a lot of time thinking about theese things, instead of playing. At the moment, they seem pretty similar in the damage output... but I'm not that sure about how they work, for example: would find weakness work for poisons as well o maybe for white damage? The combo moves of Turning the Tables are intended to be Mutilate, Hemo, Sinister Strike or does that include finishers? If you have any idea, please, let me know. :P

Indidh, Combat/Subtlety Rogue, Hakkar EU

 

impossible!

As I understand it, everyone is getting two new abilities at levels 75 and 80. Our others is this:

Dismantle - Spell - World of Warcraft

There isn't an emote that looks indifferent enough to express my feelings.

 

Eulenspiegel

If this is effective against a good amount of bosses it may be the "raid utility" that everyone is hoping for, as well as keeping in the lore/spiritof our class. I'm hoping it has more use than a gimmicky thing (ala warriors disarming Attumen when you have a druid/pally tank).

If you can remove weapons of a raid boss for 1/6th of the fight, I'd say that's a great addition to raid utility without having to give us a group buff - and a reason to have more than one rogue in a raid. 10 second duration with a one minute cooldown makes me think it wont be useful on most bosses though

 

relax_ok

Dismantle will NEVER work on raid bosses except very specific ones where it's part of the mechanics.

 

Alexsiss

You still play? Oo


In reality about gear though. Nothing matters other then trinkets with stupid procs. I think healers get a trinket equal to memnto almost in the first zone? I'm not in the beta yet but i could see a equal for WSC/DST to exsist soemwhere pre 75 from a quest. I doubt they will test anything more then 10man naxx for raid zones though so we might have to wait till the expansion comes out to even see upgrades if you are in full Sunwell.

 

ZypherIM

Curious as to people's thoughts on Cut to the Chase enabling less dependency on the Combat tree. Given the change to TtT, how does that work out to being able to keep S&D up? Then the question is can you keep a non-improved S&D up?

If you can keep non-improved S&D up, then 10 of the 20 standard Combat points aren't increasing DPS, while there are several DPS talents in Assassination that you can't get with just 51 points.


Keeping in mind I'm not sure of the best distribution of some of the points for poison talents (I recall the value for some shifting based off of which others you had), so the lower level Assassination points might not be optimally spent.

For a comparison, I think one of these would be a more 'standard' build: 46/20/5 or 41/25/5. Difference is mainly blood spatter+focused attacks vs dagger spec+BF.


56/10/5: This loses Dual Wield Spec, but gains in being able to get 10 Assassination DPS talents. Perhaps move 2 points out of poison talents for Blood Splatter.

66/0/5: Takes it another step, and loses Precision. In exchange, you pick up the rest of the poison talents and Blood Splatter. Then you have 4 points, which could go into Murder/Imp EA, or Imp Evis if Evis is better than losing the DP stack from using Envenom.


I'm not sure how scalable this would be, if poisons don't scale still in the expansion. The white damage scale from the combat talents would eventually (or maybe from the start =/ ) beat it out I think. It also hinges on being able to keep S&D up with CttC. Anyways, thoughts or maths would be at least interesting to read.

 

Maurice2u

Just a lot of pvp additions it seems. Boosting old specs w/ more of lower tier talents from another tree looks like the winner so-far. A lot of time to go yet though. Maybe Blizz will surprise us.

 

Densor

Okay, to get some numbers, we need to start with finding an optimal cycle for CttC builds. I'm envisioning a 6-8s cycle of mutilate -> finisher. The primary concern is on keeping S&D up. For builds that include Imp S&D, you'll be able to fit 4 cycles into the duration of S&D, otherwise you will be cutting it very close with 3 cycles, assuming there are no set bonuses that increase the duration of S&D, like 2T4.

It would be outside the scope of this to figure out if evis or envenom is better, but evis is easier to type, so I will be using it to refer to both for the rest of the post.

So, to have a 95% or 90% chance to keep S&D up with a 4 evis system, you'll need 47% or 38% crit rates respectively plus TtT. Using a 3 evis system, you need 56% or 47% crit rates respectively plus TtT. And for 2 evis systems, you'll need 72% or 62% crit rates respectively. Now, keep in mind that there will be several crit buffs running around. At a minimum, there should be 8% bonus crit from your raid members (paladin with HotC and feral druid), but there could be up to 20% bonus crit if things are viable (3% each from 3 paladins if they stack like that, 5 from feral, 6% from a survival hunter). I'm going to assume a 4 evis system @ 95% uptime to start with.

I don't see how a 51/20 build could be optimal for CttC, so I imagine a 58/8/5 build will be more likely. In entry level raiding, you'll be pretty hard pressed to keep a 4 evis system at 95%. Also note that if you are doing mutilate -> evis, you aren't keeping up rupture, so 2 points in Blood Spatter is worthless.

However, as gear gets better, you can switch to a 3 evis system. If you keep Imp S&D, this means that after every crit evis, you would insert a cycle using rupture instead of evis. Since you will be jumping between 3 and 4 CP finishers, the rupture will have a duration of 12 or 14 seconds, which will fit nicely with your cycles. 4 CP rupture -> mute -> crit evis -> mute -> rupture will take 12 to 16 seconds, depending on relentless strike and focused attacks procs. Alternatively, you can free up the 8 points used to get Imp S&D and pick up some of the other stuff you missed or additional utility.

In fights where you can get artificially high crit rates (like the one in Naxx), you can switch to a 2 evis cycle where you drop Imp S&D and use rupture after every crit, or keep Imp S&D and just use rupture every other finisher regardless of crits.

I imagine that energy may be very tricky with this build, though. You'll have 2 mutilate hits, 1 finisher hit, and some number of autoattack hits, we can call it 12, every cycle. With entry level gear, you can expect 6.67 energy from Focused Attacks per cycle, with 17.28 energy from Relentless Strikes per finisher. A string of bad Relentless Strikes procs will leave you energy starved, while a string of good procs won't really help much. It'd be nice if Relentless Strikes was changed to more accommodate CttC builds.

Additionally, you will be able to use Cold Blood to start fights with Garrote -> S&D -> Ruthlessness proc or shiv -> CB Evis, for a quick 5 point S&D. CB will also be useful for fixing bad cycles. If you end up low on energy, you can just pool until you get some back and guarantee the S&D refresh.

Anyway, someone else will have to run DPS numbers to compare to specs that skip CttC and get DW spec, although I suppose I could if nobody else wants to. I'm also not sure how the spec would fair if you're trying to keep up HfB without having bleeds or magic debuffs to burn off. I imagine you'd need a high crit rate for FA procs and would have to go to a 9s cycle in order to keep it going. You'd be very much reliant on good RS procs. It would be very nice if RS was changed to be "Returns 5 energy per combo point whenever you use a finisher."