I like the concept of using glyphs to help balance or integrate.
As mentioned above, things like reducing the dual weild penalty, making relentless strikes a glyph effect instead of a talent, increasing proc chances on any number of talents (cttc, ruthlessness, focused attacks, etc), decreasing energy costs of abilities like SS or hemo, making a +5% crit "weapons spec" talent and making sword spec a glyph, or increasing the length or number of "charges" of self buffs like find weakness or cold blooded all seem like reasonable options for greater glyphs that would help increase our deeps or scaling without increasing our dependancy on other classes.
Even assuming there are no changes to wotlk talents, I still think there is a lot of potential for balance if glyphs for rogues are well designed and scale.
Two ditch it as a talent and move it to inscription as a Greater Glyph that you can equip in your Glyph Slots. (thus making it balanceable in any way the devs see it fit)
While this would free up more talent specs it would limit Glyph selection in the exact same way it limits talent selection now. So while it would address the problem of 11 points in assassination for all reasonable PvE specs it would not fix the greater issue of limiting player choice.
What Tetracycloide said. Shifting the burden does not remove the burden.
BTW, note that 'polishing passes' by Blizzard are extremely far-reaching. The notion that they change only one or two points is incorrect. Look at the (rather sweeping) changes to the Mage's Arcane tree. Supposedly, the Shaman's Elemental tree is getting looked at currently, and hopefully the Rogue's will come soon.
While I don't mind Mutilate very much, I would like to see a wide variety of builds be viable for PvE.
There are two solutions to this problem: One is make it trainable, [...] Two ditch it as a talent and move it to inscription
There are certainly other solutions as well. At a macro level, the one I can think of that also solves the big picture problem is to nerf RS so that it no longer outstrips all other talents, meaning it is no longer a requirement for every build. Whatever loss in DPS this causes can then be addressed in sundry other ways - buffing other talents, buffing other skills, improving itemization, etc. This sort of balancing has to be done as a later step of class balancing anyway.
Even if they were to get rid of relentless strikes, what could possibly take over the talent points that are freed up? From the looks of things at the moment, it would be trading off murder spree for hemo, or still going into the assassination tree because of the lack of useful talents in combat after 51 and no useful in sub.
We will be really disappointed if there aren't bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that if not consistently as high as rouges, are at least a lot closer than they are now.
Does this make anyone else worry? Fury and Enhance were already significantly buffed, and now Blizz states that they want Feral Druid DPS to be more or less comparable to a Rogues.
It doesn't make me worry very much at all. I'm not exactly sure why it should.
It worries me because Blizzard has said explicitly that they feel a mages role is to be the top DPS caster - the kings of damage, and yet, they have been silent in their speaking directly to rogues, while telling other Melee DPS classes that they want them to be as good as us.
If we bring none of the buffs or utility that they are bringing, they are competing for our gear, and they bring comparable DPS... well, why bring us?
With regards to the discussion on baking in Relentless Strikes or DW Spec/Prescision, while I agree that Relentless Strikes is the significantly more limiting talent in terms of it's tree placement and restriction of talent builds, the early combat talents, if baked in, give us significantly more flexibility in gearing - something trainable Relentless wouldn't provide, and a valuable component worth keeping in mind.
Personally, I'm not sure we need either, so much as we need talents at the bottom of our trees that either sufficiently influence our stat balance to favor crit as much as Feral druids do - thereby reducing the dominance of hit in our stat priorities - or provide sufficient additional, incremental DPS value that we don't need to worry about somewhat less flexible gearing.
It doesn't make me worry very much at all. I'm not exactly sure why it should.
Seriously?
10 classes x 3 trees = 30 "primary" specs for 25 raid slots, and even less so in 10mans (and this is assuming no more than one of each spec in a raid). Fury Warriors can assist a bit with OTing trash and whatnot in a pinch and have far better AoE type damage, as well as Shouts. Feral Druids have BRez, Innervate, and Bear form when they need to OT in a pinch, as well as providing 5% crit to the group and maybe a small bit of spot healing when necessary. Enhancement Shaman can spot heal in a pinch, have excellent group buffs, and a self-rez. If all of these classes can do 90-95%+ of a Rogue's damage, why the hell bring a Rogue?
Seriously? If all of these classes can do 90-95%+ of a Rogue's damage, why the hell bring a Rogue?
While many of us are concerned, I think I speak for many when I say that it is FAR too early to have this "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" attitude about the Rogue class. I'm of the feeling that the team for class balances and raids are going to be so swamped with these changes that we'll be glossed over yet again until release of WotLK. For the first month of WotLK, most encounters will be "rogue unfriendly" and people will only grudgingly bring a rogue until the first major patch that will right the many slights and set the Rogue class straight again.
After this, everything will be quite nice as we'll be borderline overpowered with the combination of gear/buffs/talents/skill, leading to a few slight nerfs spread out over the course of several patches that bring us in line with expected DPS output, yet still keep us as #1 overall.
For those that notice, this is a very rough version of what happened in TBC. So yes, right now things "look" grim, but we all need to tough it out and just wait a while damnit; we'll get ours eventually and it'll be oh so sweet when we do.
Edit: I'm not trying to pick on Towelette or anyone else here, but I'd like us to focus on what we know and how best to use what we have rather than a repeated loop of alarmist postings. (Just like a few months ago when [Shard of Contempt] was released, every 5-15 posts someone asked "how good is it?" when it was answered each time and asked again a few posts later)
Hybrid classes got their first (!) round of polish and so did some of the pure DPS ones.
Rogues as of yet had their rough Talent/Ability table implemented, with no regard to class balance at this point. Blizzard already said that they will look at each class, and on the game as whole, before release and make the necessary changes.
We haven't had our time under the microscope yet, so it is completely pointless to draw up "sky is falling scenarios". Instead of that lets bake intelligent suggestions for the boys in blue, so we all contribute to a happy end for our class.
While many of us are concerned, I think I speak for many when I say that it is FAR too early to have this "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" attitude about the Rogue class. I'm of the feeling that the team for class balances and raids are going to be so swamped with these changes that we'll be glossed over yet again until release of WotLK. For the first month of WotLK, most encounters will be "rogue unfriendly" and people will only grudgingly bring a rogue until the first major patch that will right the many slights and set the Rogue class straight again.
After this, everything will be quite nice as we'll be borderline overpowered with the combination of gear/buffs/talents/skill, leading to a few slight nerfs spread out over the course of several patches that bring us in line with expected DPS output, yet still keep us as #1 overall.
For those that notice, this is a very rough version of what happened in TBC. So yes, right now things "look" grim, but we all need to tough it out and just wait a while damnit; we'll get ours eventually and it'll be oh so sweet when we do.
Edit: I'm not trying to pick on Towelette or anyone else here, but I'd like us to focus on what we know and how best to use what we have rather than a repeated loop of alarmist postings. (Just like a few months ago when [Shard of Contempt] was released, every 5-15 posts someone asked "how good is it?" when it was answered each time and asked again a few posts later)
I didn't say the sky was falling, I wasn't predicting doom and gloom, and I wasn't complaining based on issues with the rough draft that is our WotLK talent trees up to this point. It's also not part of a "loop of alarmist postings." It's actual new facts that are from a Blizz poster that were just recently made. How is that not relevant, or in any way comparable to asking about SoC?
I said that one of the latest remarks from Blizzard had me worried. Mainly, because it suggested that Blizzard wants hybrid DPS to rival Rogue DPS. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with our current talent trees, new abilities offered, etc. etc. The point is that even after we get our eventual changes, Blizz's overall design intentions are for Feral Druids to output comparable DPS to Rogues. The fact that this is their goal worries me; again, not based on anything else.
If WotLK follows TBC's Rogue development, as you're predicting, I'm playing my Hunter or Shaman. I'd rather not wait months for the class to not be gimped again (of course, the reasons we were gimped were mostly encounter based, and completely different from those that you are implying). Thankfully, you're probably wrong. I just don't know what's going to be done to make up for the smaller DPS gap.
The point is that even after we get our eventual changes, Blizz's overall design intentions are for Feral Druids to output comparable DPS to Rogues. The fact that this is their goal worries me; again, not based on anything else.
If WotLK follows TBC's Rogue development, as you're predicting, I'm playing my Hunter or Shaman. I'd rather not wait months for the class to not be gimped again. Thankfully, I think you're probably wrong though.
With most buffs going raid wide there really is no utility in a second feral druid or second fury warrior that is not also inherient to rogues. None of their buffs stack, the marginal utility of the ability to swap gear and OT (a role which DPS maximized fury warriors would require a respec to even fill) is exactly 0 in encounters that do not require offtanking, and while the battle res and inervates of a druid are useful they arguably only provide the same utility of +5% more DPS that a rogue might bring along with the rogues superior ability to shed healer load via CloS and possible HfB.
Meanwhile the raid costs of maintaining viable feral druids and fury warriors is higher than rogues, they require more sets of gear in order to maintain maximum effectiveness in all of their roles. They require more consumables in order to be in top condition for each role. They're harder to play because any given player must master more than one role within a raid to remain useful. All these factors will drive down the incentives to stack ferals or fury wars instead of rogues.
The main issue of Feral (Cat) DPS vs. that of a Rogue is their Aura and debuff. If you wish to discuss intentions, that's what Blizzard needs to consider.
It really depends on what Blizzard means by DPS. (Yes, we need definitions!) If they mean that, if you count all the damage caused by their crit aura, etc., then there is no reason that Cat Druids shouldn't do the same damage as Rogues. Their personal DPS would be lower, but there are compensations.
If they mean that Cat Druid's personal DPS should be on par, and equivalent buffs are not given to the Rogue to compensate... there could be cause for concern.
Since we don't (and won't) have the final forms, though, any analysis must perforce be preliminary.
With most buffs going raid wide there really is no utility in a second feral druid or second fury warrior that is not also inherient to rogues. None of their buffs stack, the marginal utility of the ability to swap gear and OT (a role which DPS maximized fury warriors would require a respec to even fill) is exactly 0 in encounters that do not require offtanking, and while the battle res and inervates of a druid are useful they arguably only provide the same utility of +5% more DPS that a rogue might bring along with the rogues superior ability to shed healer load via CloS and possible HfB.
Meanwhile the raid costs of maintaining viable feral druids and fury warriors is higher than rogues, they require more sets of gear in order to maintain maximum effectiveness in all of their roles. They require more consumables in order to be in top condition for each role. They're harder to play because any given player must master more than one role within a raid to remain useful. All these factors will drive down the incentives to stack ferals or fury wars instead of rogues.
Bliz has stated that they want fury warriors to be able to throw on a sword and board and OT on the fly, and that cat druids be able to swap to bear and OT. They also said that they plan on tuning some encounters to actually need this.
Vulajin, first off I read you're post on WoTLK forums and I cannot agree with you more, Blizz needs to fix the Assassination talents somewhat if you're having to spec more than 51 points into the tree it's back to Combat.
One quick question, for everyone else. Imp EA vs Sunders. Anyone remember where the discussion on this is? (if you could just point me to the right thread ill do the rest of the digging) We've tried to do a little testing ourselves, and it seems like its a decent dps improvement, while our MT maintains his tps. We don't do brut till weds, I figure that will be a alot better then a 2 minute Teron attempt.
Bliz has stated that they want fury warriors to be able to throw on a sword and board and OT on the fly, and that cat druids be able to swap to bear and OT. They also said that they plan on tuning some encounters to actually need this.
Druids bear and cat talents actually overlap in many places resulting in an fairly easy transition from OT to DPS and back between any given encounter although within encounters they will always be DPS limited on OT fights by the need to wear OT gear and vice versa.
Some encounters will certainly need OTs, some always have, but the idea that a DPS maximized fury warrior is going to be able to tank anything of significance merely by tossing on a one-hander and shield is laughable. Hybrid warrior builds that sacrifice DPS talents for tanking talents might be able to do this but not DPS maxed builds. The survivability gulf between a fury/prot hybrid and a true feral or true prot warrior or true prot paladin will be huge and a true feral is going to put out a lot more DPS than a fury/prot hybrid will if these blizzard statements are accurate enough to draw any conclusions from.
Before I get started: I think it's fine if we debate the various merits of hybrid classes versus pure classes, but please try to keep the tone constructive. We don't care if you're thinking about rerolling, and if you can't explain why you do or don't think it's a problem, perhaps you're better off not posting. This is not directed at anyone in particular, I'm just saying: this is one of those topics that can easily slip into whining. Don't let it go there.
That said, my take on the situation:
First off, lets look at the original statement. It's asserted that Druids should be "a lot closer" to rogues in terms of actual DPS. This, in the large, seems reasonable. How often do you see a Feral brought to a raid, just to DPS? The answer, in my experience, is almost never. They are brought as tanks, or as offtanks/part-time DPSers, but they cannot and do not fill primary DPS roles. Hence, it's fair to say that one of their roles is not balanced so as to be viable, and needs to be buffed.
If you look at WWSScoreboard (which is hardly the final authority on this sort of thing, but it makes the necessary point), one finds that the top DPS rogues are almost 1000 DPS ahead of the top DPS ferals; the feral also provides Leader of the Pack, which is, perhaps, 100 DPS to the other 4 people in their group, but that still leaves them a good 500 DPS behind a primary DPS class. So there's a lot of room for their personal DPS to improve before we even worry about whether or not their raid DPS contribution has caught up with us. I think it's totally reasonably if that gap narrows considerably.
Second, lets consider the implications if Blizzard actually went through with the stronger portion of the statement and let ferals do exactly as much personal DPS as rogues. Would this be the end of raiding rogues? Would we all be swapped out for those pesky ferals?
Well... no. You'd certainly always bring one feral for the DPS + raid buffs... but rogues contribute a lot more utility than the second and subsequent ferals. That's right, I said utility. It's often underestimated how important the rogue utility abilities are - not in the conventional "raid buff" sense, but in terms of reducing healing burden, controlling fights, and so on. We have Cloak of Shadows to get out of many magical effects, we have stuns to help control adds, poisons to increase casting time or reduce healing, better aggro management, and so forth. On the one hand, you can call these gimmicks that only apply to particular fights... but when you actually think things through, they apply to every fight in Sunwell and over half of Hyjal and BT. The fights where rogue-specific abilities *don't* come into play is much smaller than the fights where they do, so it can hardly be called a gimmick. Hence, our abilities give us a distinct advantage over the second and subsequent feral druids, who only do their DPS.
And now, just for the sake of argument, lets assume the worst-case scenario: Feral Druids get Pelt of Shadows, the ability to poison their claws, and a complete aggro dump. They now have all the utility of a rogue and do the damage of a rogue. Well, now, rogues are just totally toasted, right? There's absolutely no reason you'd ever bring a rogue over a feral druid, since they're identical in a DPS role and the feral can also tank, right?
Well... still no. At this point, of course, the argument gets sort of marginal, and you certainly would see rogue-free guilds (in the excessively unlikely scenario where druids were actually buffed to that extent)... but there are *still* clear benefits to bringing rogues over more ferals, even in this unlikely scenario. Why? Two reasons.
1) Availability. You're presumably already bringing a balance druid, a resto druid, and the first feral druid to your raids for their other contributions; is it going to be easier to find a first and second skilled rogue, or a fourth and fifth skilled druid to round out your raids? The rogues you're bringing for DPS will, on average, be better than the ferals you're bringing for DPS, for the simple reason that you're comparing the best available rogues to the best druids that aren't already subsumed by one of their other roles. A minor point, to be sure, but a relevant one.
2) Loot distribution. Someone has to pick up the rogue loot. Sure, some of it will be usable by other classes... but the point is, you're now looking for a more varied set of loot. Gearing up 4 members of the same class will always take longer than gearing up 2 members of 2 different classes, based purely on the fact that you're looking for more different items. You now only have to get 2 drops of the Staff of Feral Awesomeness and 2 of the Dagger of Supreme Stabbing rather than needing 4 staffs - and, statistically speaking, you will almost always get 2 of each before you get 4 staffs. Hence, by having more variety in your DPS composition, you also will tend to have better-geared DPS, and thus a higher overall damage output.
Now, lets be clear; if we were forced to rely on those last two reasons, it would be extremely frustrating for us, and I'm not by any stretch advocating that Blizzard should rely on it. And even the second point - where ferals do exactly as much damage as us but don't have the utility - would be annoying to those of us who rolled this class due to love of topping the meters. So I do think that the class *should* be balanced so as to be ahead of the hybrid DPS classes. But as we've seen, there's a *lot* of room for improvement to druids before we even need to *start* worrying about them claiming our raid spots. The sky is not falling. We'll be fine.
...or at least, I'm confident we will be after they get around to polishing us some.
So far, of course, we've been talking about a raid setting, particularly a 25 man raid setting. I'm actually more concerned about the 5-man and 10-man settings, since that is where rogues got the shaft (in a way) in early TBC. I remember the days of "bring your rogue for Aran and sit for the rest" and I recall being easily out-DPSed by most other classes in Karazhan due to not having full raid buffs. I don't want to see a repeat of that.
In the party or small raid scene, maximum DPS is usually not a priority. Group contribution is. Thus, a cat who can go bear and OT for some pulls, provides a battle rez, provides MotW, provides +5% crit aura, and provides roughly as much unbuffed damage as a rogue is, in my opinion, going to be the more desireable class. Rogues bring poisons, blind, vanish, evasion, and an argueably better stun, but cats have clones of our other moves (eg gouge, feint, sprint). Heck, even now if given the choice (while on my paladin) between taking a rogue or a feral to a heroic I'll nearly always prefer the feral (absent player skill considerations). And I'm a rogue.
Now, this is probably offset by the fact that there are simply more rogues out there. It's a fun class to level and a lot of people enjoy rogues. But numbers doesn't mean that the class will be balanced right... numbers just mean that a while ago a bunch of people decided to level rogues.
PvP is, of course, an entirely different game, but as it stands now feral druids have a huge advantage over rogues and in PvP. Apart from 1-v-1 (I can't remember the last time I defeated a feral solo), the DPS/survivability tradeoff they have in cat/bear makes them quite desireable. In small-scale PvE, which is in some ways similar to PvP, that advantage is fairly pronounced. Buffing cat DPS for PvE is going to make their burst outside of raids even more ridiculous than it already is, in my opinion.
So while I do think we have a lot left to see, I think there are some valid concerns (especially for non-high-end content) about druids essentially taking rogue spots in parties or 10-man raids.
I think that's a legitimate concern, but it's not clear to me that there's really a solution to it, either. When you look at the balance of the game as a whole, there's really no way to avoid having rogues be buff sponges.
Fundamentally, there are two areas of interest in terms of balance in the general sense; PvP, and PvE. The challenge of the rogue class is this: we have an ability - stealth - that is quite powerful in PvP (particularly World PvP, but it still applies in BGs and to some extent in arenas) but is just this side of totally useless in PvE. Oh, sure, it has some minor advantages like letting one start fights from more advantageous locations, but there has never really been a PvE encounter where stealth was more than a convenience.
So, consider the conundrum. If rogues, on their own merit, had top-flight damage-dealing abilities and so forth, when combined with stealth, we'd be juggernauts in PvP - hence, in a toe-to-toe fight, we need to be, if anything, a bit weaker than most of the other classes, to account for the fact that we are more able to pick our battles than some classes. However, when we get to the PvE side of the spectrum, the fact that we have little or no utility means that we need to be, if anything, a bit stronger than the other classes. So the obvious question is: how do you make a class weaker in PvP environments and stronger in PvE environments? And the answer is, of course, to make them scale really well with the buffs that are present for raiding but not in PvP.
The problem with this approach is that it doesn't lead to a uniform power curve. Right now the class is very strong in solo/small group situations (solo farming, 1v1 and 2v2 PvP), and in a reasonable place for large group (25 man raids), but the realm in the middle - 5 and 10 man raids, 3v3 and 5v5 arena - we are weak. And it's a problem. But the challenge is: how do you make rogues better in these mid-size scenarios without making them overpowered on one end of the spectrum or the other? I think Blizzard realizes that there is a problem here - they're not idiots - it's just that there's no real good way of fixing the problem, either.
So, consider the conundrum. If rogues, on their own merit, had top-flight damage-dealing abilities and so forth, when combined with stealth, we'd be juggernauts in PvP - hence, in a toe-to-toe fight, we need to be, if anything, a bit weaker than most of the other classes, to account for the fact that we are more able to pick our battles than some classes. However, when we get to the PvE side of the spectrum, the fact that we have little or no utility means that we need to be, if anything, a bit stronger than the other classes. So the obvious question is: how do you make a class weaker in PvP environments and stronger in PvE environments? And the answer is, of course, to make them scale really well with the buffs that are present for raiding but not in PvP.
Huh?! Doesn't this completely contradict your previous post?
Does class balance require that rogues be top single-target dps or doesn't it?
I certainly hope Blizzard has a more consistent position on this issue.
-Edit:
Further up thread someone mentioned that fan of knives as currently implemented is unworkable.
Could someone briefly describe what the problem is with this skill. On paper at least it seems like an excellent ability.
Huh?! Doesn't this completely contradict your previous post?
Does class balance require that rogues be top single-target dps or doesn't it?
I certainly hope Blizzard has a more consistent position on this issue.
-Edit:
Further up thread someone mentioned that fan of knives as currently implemented is unworkable.
Could someone briefly describe what the problem is with this skill. On paper at least it seems like an excellent ability.
If I'm reading Aldriana correctly, he means that in PvE we need to be powerful to make up for our lack of raid buffs, but in PvP we have the power of stealth, along with Expose Armor and Poisons, so therefore we need to be a bit less powerful than a lot of other classes (hence we are much "squishier" than, say, warriors or retadins).
The issue with Fan of Knives is first of all, it's on a long cooldown so you might be able to use it like, once or twice per AoE trash pack. This is compounded by the fact that it's based on weapon damage: since Mutilate (as of right now) is looking quite strong, we're all going to end up using a slow dagger in our MH and a fast dagger in our OH. There's great incentive to use as fast of an OH as possible (perhaps even a fast MH for poisons and focused attacks?), while FoK incentivizes use of a slow MH/OH.
"Stronger" in sort of an abstract sense. Notice I didn't say "higher-DPS" - I said "stronger" - which includes the sum total of our DPS and the aforementioned utility abilities. I do think that in an abstract sense for rogues to be considered balanced against the other classes (in that the vast majority of fights want you to bring either 2 or 3 rogues) we need to be a little better at our primary role than a hybrid is; however, "better" is a relatively broad term. The point is that our utility abilities in PvE mostly good in PvP as well; so the damage component needs to scale better than most other classes so we can be among top DPSers in raids while not being the unstoppable damage dealing, stunning, cloaking, stealthing machine in small-group PvP.
Also note that my previous post about rogue vs druid viability was mostly asserting that almost no matter how badly we get screwed we'll still get raid spots. I'm not advocating that giving druids all the advantages of rogues is a good thing, merely that even that wouldn't take our raid spots.
The problem with Fan of Knives is that the ability to AoE with 10% of the efficacy of a primary AoE class is just this side of totally useless. In practice, FoK would be about as useful as Volley is for hunters - which is to say, not. I'm not saying it's totally a bad idea in it's current incarnation, but as our capstone ability of the expansion, it's pretty underwhelming. I'd be fine with the current version as one ability among several we get - kind of like Deadly Throw in the 61-70 range (handy at times, but not broadly useful). But given that it's currently slated to be our one and only level 80 ability, it'd need to be buffed by about a factor of 5 to even *begin* to be relevant.
You'd certainly always bring one feral for the DPS + raid buffs... but rogues contribute a lot more utility than the second and subsequent ferals. That's right, I said utility. It's often underestimated how important the rogue utility abilities are - not in the conventional "raid buff" sense, but in terms of reducing healing burden, controlling fights, and so on. We have Cloak of Shadows to get out of many magical effects, we have stuns to help control adds, poisons to increase casting time or reduce healing, better aggro management, and so forth. On the one hand, you can call these gimmicks that only apply to particular fights... but when you actually think things through, they apply to every fight in Sunwell and over half of Hyjal and BT. The fights where rogue-specific abilities *don't* come into play is much smaller than the fights where they do, so it can hardly be called a gimmick. Hence, our abilities give us a distinct advantage over the second and subsequent feral druids, who only do their DPS.
seems to be making the remarkable claim that rogue bring utility comparable to or even greater than battle rez, inervate and more groups with LotP aura.
This:
However, when we get to the PvE side of the spectrum, the fact that we have little or no utility means that we need to be, if anything, a bit stronger than the other classes.
on the other hand seems to be echoing the conventional view that we bring much less utility than other classes.
Rather than become a nuiscance in this thread, I'll just say that I hope Blizzard's position is closer to the latter than the former. Having said that, I'll shut up now.
P.S.
Thanks for the info on FoKn. I didn't know it had a cooldown.
08/05/08, 10:30 AM
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