• Aldriana

Glancing blows are necessary to keep players fighting level-appropriate mobs while leveling, without needing an excessive inflation of stats. But yes, they could make a change similar to the crushing blow one to have them not kick in as severely on mobs that are +3 levels to you. I'd be a bit surprised if that happens, though, honestly; while I can see them maybe giving a reduction to one or two classes, I think doing it in general would require an awful lot of unnecessary balancing on their part.

 

Neckface

If I understand you right, then yes that's exactly what I'm proposing/asking about. I'm envisioning a deep combat talent that reduces the rogue's chance of getting a glancing blow by x%/point, and/or having the penalty of a glancing blow reduced by y%/point. It doesn't have to eliminate glancing blows: you could pretty much pick your target % of increased damage and then just do the math. This would not have a significant impact on leveling, and in any event by putting them deep in the combat tree they wouldn't be available till higher levels anyway.

Having the buff apply to party members would have been an interesting "rogue group buff", but given Blizzard's move toward buff replicability across classes that's unlikely.

 

koaschten

Fan of Knives is definitly fun stuff *cough*
It seems to suffer badly from armor mitigation and the low range though. interesting is, it procs trinkets and weapon enchants. I will see if i can get the "chaining" and bladeflurry questions answered on friday.

 

Waldar

My point was poorly explained, i'll try another way.

It seems that blizzard is making the game more accessible :
- convergence of stats like melee and magic hit / crit, +heal +spell merging into spellpower
- removal of crushing
- removal of the 1% resist magic

I think there is many ways to replace the "sacrosaint protection" while making the game a bit more simplier with the other avoidance / mitigation mechanics.

Just thinking around.

 

• Aldriana

First: crushing hasn't been removed. It's been pushed out so that it doesn't kick in on +3 mobs, but it still exists. And the reason it still exists is the same reason that Glancing Blows need to: it's the only mitigation factor that's level dependent - and some such factor needs to exist. Why? To keep people fighting level-appropriate stuff.

Let us posit, for the moment, that as a general rule you want characters fighting stuff that's roughly their same level. Ideally they'll be fighting stuff that's within, say, 3 levels of them; it's okay if they push that out to 5 or 6, but you don't really want characters fighting stuff 15 levels above them with any chance of winning; nor do you want characters that are so undergeared that they can't kill anything less than 5 levels below them. One can argue whether this makes sense or not, but let us posit for the moment that it does - as it's been a fairly explicit goal of Blizzard, it's sort of fundamental to this argument.

Now, there are two ways to do this: you can either have character power scale sufficiently fast that no level 30 character, no matter how twinked, can ever generate the numbers necessary to confront level 45s - and, on the other side, fast enough that even woefully undergeared, they can still take level 20s - or you can make combat mechanics a function of relative level.

The problem with the first is obvious. In order to get the necessary restrictions, abilities would need to scale incredibly, ludicrously quickly; character stats would be doubling every 10 levels, gear would need to be replaced at least that often, and so on. This would soon lead to absolutely ridiculous inflation of stats.

Alternately, you just build into the system a level-based advantage. No matter how good your stats are, if you fight a monster too many levels above you, the level-dependant factors kick in and make the fight disproportionately harder, to the extent that it's fundamentally infeasible to fight mobs 10 levels above you. The current mechanism for this is crushing and glancing blows. Other mechanisms could be added instead, but, fundamentally, the existing system works pretty well. And it allows stats to progress at a more reasonable rate - slower gear replacement is possible, character stat inflation is less, and so on.

Note that the other advantage to the glancing/crushing mechanic is that it can be turned off for PvP. It's not a bad thing if characters can defend themselves against people that are close enough in level to quest in the same zone. If we went with the rapid-scaling model, this would be impossible; with the glancing/crushing model, we just remove those penalties, and PvP can remain competitive at a level gap that would be impossible in PvE.

So, fundamentally: no, the role of glancing blows cannot be filled by any existing mechanic. They could replace it with some *other* mechanic, but, fundamentally: there's not a lot of reason to do so. The existing one does what it needs to do in reasonably elegant fashion. Again, they could push out the spread to allow it to be less of a factor in raids - but, again, I don't see why they would. Crushing blow mechanics moved because it was hard to balance druid and death knight tanks when warriors and paladins can become crush-immune; no analogous problem exists for Glancing Blows, so unless they decide that all meleers need an across-the-board 10% damage boost, I don't see that happening. Adjusted in a talent for 1 or 2 classes? Maybe. Adjusted in general? I seriously doubt it.

 

CoroHD

Didn't they just change tanking so that only mobs 4+ levels above you do crushing blows (up from 3+ levels) so that druid and pally tanks are more viable? Presumably they could do the same thing with glancing blows for melee dps.

EDIT: woops, didn't see aldrana's last post. I'm a noob.

 

tymoney321

Blizzard is planning on drastically modifying raid buffs. I feel this will affect rogues more than any other class. If rogue talents are pushed out in their current state, rogues would definitely be a gimped class to bring to raid. However, I'm hoping internal testing will show that and blizzard adjusts us accordingly. Its too early to worry, that said the following 'rogue related' buffs are being affected:

1. Faerie Fire and Curse of Recklessness no longer stacking
2. Improved Faerie Fire doesn't buff melee hit
3. Improved Hunters Mark doesn't buff melee AP
4. Expose armor/Sunder currently don't stack will not stack in WOTLK
5. Leader of The Pack and the new Rampage
6. Heroism/Bloodlust give a debuff which prevents you from receiving Heroism/Bloodlust for Five Minutes
7. Expose Weakness doesn't buffs raid and instead buff the hunter
8. Misery no longer provides 5% more poison damage
9. Ferocious Inspirition and Sanctity Aura do not stack
10. Icy Talons and Windfury will not stack
11. Mangle and Trauma will not stack
12. Blood Frenzy and a new to be announced buff (hopefully rogues get it) will not stack

Keep in mind this is beta and the talents are susceptible to change. The blue post with the full list of buff/debuff changes can be found here.

 

Vi|Bs

So our raid buff with WotLK is going to increase the physical vulnerability of our target, huh? (Find Weakness?)

 

Towelette

It would make sense, I think. Obviously we don't know yet, but if this is the route they're going to try, I'm interested in seeing whether it would be a change to Hemo or something entirely new altogether.

 

Vi|Bs

I think it's not all that digressive to presume that the named "nyi-talent spec" is going to be our "utility-spec" with wotlk, simply because rogues didn't have their review yet and, besides some tuning/balancing, most of the other classes have at least reached the ballpark of their final incarnations with wotlk.

 

PSGarak

I think that, after the buff/debuff announcement, pretty much no classes are within their ballpark anymore. What's really left is whether abilities are cool or not for classes that had them looked it (eg old vs new Living Bomb) but all numbers are going to have to have the hell crunched out of them.

What it means for rogues is this: unlike most other classes which will have one or more synergy functions with them at all times since it's part of their class, rogues don't, which means they suffer the highest penalty moving from a raid situation to solo. This gap gets cut down. Your DPS will be balanced for a raid situation (which is to say, within maybe 10% or so, not the 50% it probably is right now after these changes hit the servers), but when you leave that raid you'll be leaving less of those buffs behind. Which basically means a PvP buff. In the mean time, join everyone else in sitting back and waiting for the fallout of this change to fall into place.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Vi|Bs

If the changes are just half the pvp-buff that your post concludes (presuming nearly equal survivability options for either class as they have now) we're about to sit back and watch the forums burn.
I really hope that blizz is clear-sighted enough to prevent a situation like during the harp-times.

 

Waldar

Yeah i was somewhat stuck against +3 targets, leaving aside +10 or +15, and you're very right, we don't have to fight such mobs easily.

Thank you for the very complete answer you provided.

 

Harkkum

I am somewhat against placing talents that are ment to redeem the rogues' damage in comparison to other DPS classes deep into one given talent tree as this will, once again, force us to choose just that one talent tree. If it is in the interests of the rogue community to increase overall DPS ability of rogues such key talents ought to be placed either on top tiers or be trainable as skills. We already as it is have way too many talents that are nigh obligatory for every raiding rogue and adding yet another one would only hamper the possibly emerging diversity.

When it comes to the damage output of a rogue and glancing blows mechanisms as such, well, I take that the current situation where SWP geared hunters stand has been a massive mistake by Blizzard as it resembles all too much where rogues were before the haste nerf. We can't possibly expect to rock the charts just because we are rogues. The original weapon skill with lesser damage reduction from glancing blows likely wouldn't make us overpowered but a rogue-only ability to remove those entirely from the table most likely would. It would allow us to crit with all those glancing attacks that we are now landing which, I could imagine, would make quite a bit more than suggested 4% for our damage.

 

Capek

In the post linked above it is mentioned that Blessing of Might and talented Battle Shout have exactly the same AP benefit. Does this mean that they will no longer stack with each other? If so should I expect my DPS to actually go down (assuming the above changes were implemented without alteration) in a level 70 raid situation? I'm losing improved faerie fire, I'm losing Battle Shout, I can't swap in a 2nd, 3rd or 4th bloodlust (although the debuff is only 5 minutes so it's less of a concern), I won't benefit from Expose Weakness, Curse of Recklessness or Improved Hunters Mark.
I wholly expected to lose some ground relative to other raid members when these changes are implemented given that they may benefit from the warrior and shaman I will always hog in my party and, of course, the rest of the raid-wide spell hit buffs etc. but now I'm wondering if my actual personal DPS will be lower than it currently is.

EDIT - I missed out the fact that I stand to gain GoA alongside WF. So I guess the main concern is whether BoM and BS stack.

 

• sedrikk

BoM and BS will not stack since they fall in the same category now. Like you i expect rogues to take a huge hit in lvl 70 raids from the time 3.0.2 hits until we get to lvl 80 and our new potential is reached. Although we have not even seen that yet because we have not gotten our review yet it seems.

 

patcherke

I think there might be a simpler approach for this "glancing blow" discussion.
Why not making it alike the lines of miss percentage?

This was, if the mob is more then 2 levels ahead of you, your chance to miss will not be nicely linear anymore compared to the other levels.

Now, if you make the glancing blow mechanics action exponential, which means going up more and more for each level difference, I think this is perfectly scalable, starting from mobs more than 2 levels ahead.

Admitted, miss percentage is not exponential at this moment, but the chance to miss is quite a bit higher for mobs more than 2 levels ahead, and you see clearly the difference between mobs less then 3 levels ahead and mobs 3 or more levels ahead. (And hence the miss percentage mechanics can be compared to a “simplified” exponential function)

If you reduce the percentage of glancing blows for mobs that are 3 levels ahead (which includes bosses in raids), instead of removing it for that level, we would be quite a bit closer to what we want.

It is perfectly possible to scale an exponential function in such a way that it

1. reduces the percentage to 0 for levels less than 3 ahead.
2. gives a modest percentage (smaller then it is now) for mobs 3 levels ahead,
3. can go sky high for levels 4 or more ahead.

 

Krollin

I don't see Rogues taking the hit you are suggesting at all, at least not compared to any of the other classes.
Are we going to be able to DPS as we were before? Unlikely because of the changes to stacking (de)buffs.
Our performance is no longer going to vary wildly from Raid to Raid though, I am getting (mostly) the same buffs and level of buffing as everyone else. Gone are the frustrating days where you are lumped in with a BM Hunter group watching the Warrior/Retridin/Enhancement Shaman Rogues having fun.

Where we are very reliant on a good group composition to be able to DPS decently Patch 3.0 should, in theory, make us less dependent on who we are grouped with to be able to perform. We already know this of course.

We are now in the situation where other DPS classes are already buffing each other across the Raid through target debuffs and that this is what Blizzard seem to want to sort out. They are attempting to level the playing field and remove group comp dependency for everyone.

Now the stacking (de)buff list is a logical next step. Blizzard are stating that they want to reduce the amount of min/maxing necessary to put a raid together. Essentially what they want to achieve is ensure that, through redundancy, we will have all we need to achieve a standard of performance: no need for a specific spec to be in a raid to be able to do X etc.

These are all very laudable aims.
What worries me is the phrase "we will be testing every classes performance thoroughly before the patch release" though. Past experience has shown that Blizzard seem to test in a fixed environment and on a release based schedule and rarely take the effect of progression into account.

What they are proposing to do here should make their job easier because the combinations and permutations will be dramatically reduced ie. less to test. Only time will tell if they do a better job of it than before however.

To sum up: I see the the changes to synergies and (de)buff stacking as positive insofar as group comp dependency reduction is concerned. I do see that Raid performance as a whole may suffer as a result, at least at level 70, however there is little point in assuming it will until we see how Patch 3 pans out on the PTR.

 

• sedrikk

Casters mostly relied on boss debuffs, and not individual buffs. The only buffs they ever received was from shaman, boomkin and bm hunters. Most of the debuffs they received do not effect the same categories and will still stack as they do now. CoE, Imp FF, WoA Totem, Moonkin Aura, Imp Scorch will all still work for them. Plus being raid wide, more casters will get benefit from them. The only buff they lose in comparison will be Totem of Wrath/Imp Divine Spirit.

So comparatively, I think we will see a huge hit. It may not be a huge hit when comparing our old numbers to our new, but the casters wont have a decrease, and thus they will be ahead of us on damage until we get to 80. It is still just beta at this point. They can change any number of things so this is all just speculation at this point.

 

tetracycloide

One very significant factor in the 3.0.2 update is being overlooked. BoS is being removed. Threat will play a larger role in 70 raiding then it has before and rogues have one of the better active threat wipes at the moment. DPS potential might take a hit but spellcasters are going to be massively more threat limited then they were before.

My vanity is justified.

 

swelt

I don't think it's quite that rosy for all the casters. Locks in particular seem to suffer with shadow weaving and improved shadowbolt shifting to self-only?

Agree though that we look to be losing a lot. I thought that we'd gain from some of the raid wide buffs, for example getting the benefit of the feral/hunter group buffs bleeding over into the melee group... but then you see that ret aura and fero insp damage increases don't stack, and that rampage/feral aura don't stack. I can't see why any raiding warrior wouldn't spec Fury now, with blood frenzy down to just 2% and the new Fury talents looking rather awesome. This will be especially true if Rogues were to get the Blood Frenzy alternative buff (unless it's stuck somewhere in deep sub... not entirely unlikely upon reflection, blood frenzy becoming "that buff your pvp friend brings").

What's the bright side? The new mechanics mean we should always have windfury and strength of earth (giving both agi/str) and that we can poison both weapons. Not huge, given that good shaman were already twisting. Big for those raids that struggled to fit everyone in the windfury group though, as Krollin mentioned. We'll gain 5% crit that most didn't have before. Good for builds with crit synergy.

There was one rogue change that slipped into the announcement: "Waylay: Attack speed reduction changed to 20%." When I first noticed it, I took it as a clue to the location of the "(2nd Talent Spec TBA)" but then I realised it just brings Waylay in line with the other Melee Attack Speed Slow Debuffs.

 

• Bluefish

They rolled it into tank +threat% modifiers that, in theory, leave everyone at the same relative threat level. Last we heard, the idea from the design guys was to make tanking and keeping aggro easier. If the numbers don't facilitate that, they'll tweak the numbers.

 

Keegantir

Ya, they brought Waylay (a mostly useless talent before the nerf; a completely worthless talent after the nerf) in line with Imp Demo Shout.

So an ability that requires a crit (which should be about 70%), can be used at very most once a minute in a boss fight, and lasts for 8 seconds is on par with an ability that is applicable every 6 seconds (barring resists), lasts for 30 seconds and also does damage.

I didnt have Waylay in my PvE sub build before the nerf, I definitely wont have it in post nerf.

Anyone else notice that Bliz is pushing a patch out early (something that they said they wont do) in order to get 3.0 out at about the same time that WAR comes out? It's still not going to change my mind especially when Bliz hasnt even bothered to do the rogue review yet. I played the preview weekend of WAR and loved every minute of it. Witch Elves are so much fun.

 

Arindelest

The fact is we have a couple mandatory talents which show up in almost every build (basically Dual Wield Specialization and Relentless Strikes). But the ends of our trees are pretty lackluster. Deep Assassination, while better than Deep Combat, still has Cut to the Chase (trash) as well as a bunch of decent-but-not-really-worth-it talents. The only really compelling talent is Deadly Brew (as of yet). Deep Combat on the other hand is even worse. You actually have to take quite a few talents that don't even increase your DPS to get to 51! That seems pretty wretched to me -- in fact I count 7 talent points spent for ZERO DPS gained (assuming you consider one point in Stay of Execution a DPS boost). That aside, the Deep Combat talents are perhaps even worse than Deep Assassination's: Unfair Advantage is worse than Tier 1 Assassination; Prey on the Weak is decent for a 45-point talent; and we've got no idea about Murder Spree.

To sum up: The ends of the trees suck, and so any buff that goes there, Blood Frenzy or not, it's not going to be a mandatory talent, it'll just further help us.

And to Keegantir: We have zero idea what Blizzard's intentions really are. For as long as we've known them, they've been unwilling to release a product which they have deemed unready. TBC shipped in January (missing out on the lucrative holiday season) instead of late November because it was not ready in November. Could they have released it on November? Probably. But they were more concerned about releasing a finished product than anything else.

 

Keegantir

They have always said that they wont release something until it is ready, but now all of the sudden they come out and say they are going to release something, that is obviously very not ready, in a few weeks. Is it a coincidence that in a few weeks is the same as the release date of WAR?

We can't know Blizzards exact intentions, but those of us that have been dealing with Bliz for years can make deductions and one of those deductions is that 3.0 is coming out early to try and compete with WAR. I am not sure if it will work or not though as at least 25% of my guild, and every real life friend I have that plays WoW, has already pretty much made up their minds to go play WAR. I myself am going to keep raiding 2-3 days a week in WoW, while playing WAR the rest of the time, until Wrath, but then will probably quit to play WAR full time. I have seen nothing from Bliz to indicate that I will have a reason to keep playing WoW. Hell, my wife plays a very good enhancement shaman (she is always top 5 on the damage meter) and she sees no reason to keep playing as all of her buffs will be provided by the overpopulated resto shamans and DKs.