It stacks even better with mace spec.

Really disappointed with the RS change, worst change I can remember so far.
Honestly, they should either leave it where it was or just make it trainable, but taking the single best talent (at least before this nerf) and sticking it into another tree, basically forcing you to spread your points into all 3 talent trees, is just plain stupid.

Really makes me wonder about what they have in mind with rogues - if at all *cough*.


Also, the change to Murder now forces you to pick up either 2 points in Improved Evi or Remorless Attacks to be able to proceed to Lethality. Some new awkward way to make Eviscerate more appealing in comparison to Rupture?

// Edit
If you'd go down that route. 7/51/13 looks way better than taking Lethality.

War Tools :: Talent tree Rogues as per Blue

Hmm, for this mutilate build, without Master Poisoner my question is:
4% specials crit % from turn the tables vs 2% dagger crit% from Close quarter combat?
I suppose Focused attacks would prefer the CqC 2%, since it affects white crits as well.

I think mostly everyone agrees that Eviscerate is more fun than Rupture and making it a viable finisher isn't bad at all.

I really dislike the changes, specially the Relenltess, i though the idea was to make trees less dependant, now all combat builds are looking like combat daggers having to spend 5 points in subtely to what we usually only spent 1.

Murder was a decent filler, although not much use at end game, with move to a tier7 going down for lethality will force a rogue to take imp evis (or if you are daggers its ok with punc wounds), still uncertain to me if we will evis on pve.

Lethality should be either lower to 3 points or stay as 5points but move up a tier, to give a little more options to none dagger rogues to access it. Even to combat dagger rogues will get benefit out of needing to spec 7 points on subtely.

I like the utility buffs, but now blizard will have an excuse to nerf us below any dps class, just will have to see how it ends up.

The issue isn't caused by SF. I'm not talking about possible ways to trick a wrongly designed tree. The issue is that the tree chokes up as soon as you get into tier 8. Just to give you a statistical comparison: The maximum number of talents in tier 8 of different trees is 7 for all trees but assassination which is 10. Only exceptions are 2 hunter trees with 8 talent points, and those share the tier between dps and utility, not pure dps.

What you see in assassination is a design mistake and probably an oversight on the designer side. The trees are build based on a general guideline that obviously isn't followed here.

What we need to do, is to remind them of this and make them fix it. Such a design mistake doesn't give you "choices" as some of the talents are plain worse than the rest and for sure will never be used. The current design basically tells you: "here, you got X poison syngery talents, but you can only take X-2 of them at the same time".

Another very obvious design mistake in assassination is the rupture talent that feels completly out of position there. But I posted this earlier I think.

I don't really mind the filler talents at all if the DPS outcome in the end is ok. Filler talents like Camouflage or Improved Sprint are a nice idea and the concept to have to choose between utility and utility and DPS and DPS is a good idea, as utility is fun. If you had to choose between Shadowstep or Fleet Footed or Elusiveness but had to spent two points on them to reach a really good DPS talent is nice.

In the end - if the DPS is ok - more utility and fun talents are quite welcome in my opinion. So buffing up the lower tiers and the end tiers but giving fun talents as fillers mid tree is a good idea. Only the numbers have to fit in the end.

Edit:
I missed a change regarding Prey on the Weak.

You missed a change, PoTW affects all crits now.

I'd like to see Blood Splatter move down to where Murder was.

That is a nice suggestion Wogan. One that wouldn't be all that game breaking to implement.

However, I don't think it would help, especial since it would allow for some crazy cheese...
Serated Blades + Blood Splatter...

7/51/13?

Hmm, the more I think about this build, the more it strikes me as viable, with the S&D glyph + talent I can see Rupture being up for some 70% of the time, or something like that... Might actually push Rupture DPS contribution to 15% of our total dps.

I'd say Relentless Strikes, if it really is going to stay in the Subtlety tree, needs to be reduced to 3 points to achieve the same effect (7/14/20% chance per Combo Point). That would at least give Assassination rogues the chance to put a total of 8 points into Precision and Close Quarters Combat (with only 2/3 Improved SnD really needed).

Personally I also think that Vile and Improved Poisons should be rolled in together for 5 points. At the very least it frees up 3 points in the lower tiers, but if you also moved, say, Infectious Poisons down to that tier as well, then it would also help a bit with the higher tier bloat, while increasing Poison dps.

It still needs to last long enough to perform a full cycle - untalented SnD, even with the glyph, does not.

--edit--

Bah, I read that as CttC. Unless special dps so far outstrips white dps that SnD becomes unimportant, even Mutilate rogues will need SnD up 100% of the time.

Let's get this out of the way for once then.

Level 70:
Envenom: 740 + [35% AP]. Now with increased crit chance between 3-11% depending on talent choice. Also increases Instant poison damage done by 25% for 6 sec. Envenom poison buff Averages between 40%-45% up time. 35 energy.

Accessible Talent increases damage by 20%.

Rupture: 1000+ [30% AP]. Talent not easily accessible without losing more dps by missing other talents. 25 energy.

It doesn't need much calculating to figure out that envenom outperforms rupture by far under current setup. So what's the full cycle? By the looks of it, spaming envenom.

PS: it doesn't calculate the 3% hit or crit you gonna lose if you take imp. SnD. Basically: doing rupture as assassination build in pve is just madness.

Well, lets see, HfB last 30secs now. What does this mean?

You enter every fight with 15% extra damage for some 25+ sec( since i count 5sec as wasted time)
You must apply the first S&D manually( This needs verification, since CttC seems to only refresh S&D, not apply it)
After this point, you *NEED* to keep HfB on at all times, it must not drop, cause you waste 60 energy to reapply the full effect.

I suppose that by doing this rotation you have enough time to refresh HfB whenever needed.

HfB( precombat, 3rd application)--> Mutilate 1-2x--> S&D 3-5--> Mutilate 2x--> Envenom 5-5--> HfB-->Mutilate 2x--> Rupture

Still needs calculations if it is doable, I think the glyph of S&D would be must have for this.

EDIT: Valen that's incorrect.... Envenom increases the chance that you will apply poisons by 25% after a 5CP Envenom.

5 sec or 6 sec doesn't make much of a difference. It will be 40-45% up time. Although most of the time you will do 5 cp envenoms anyways because you need to get ruthlessness now to go down the tree.

Remember 25% is fix. The duration is increased by 1 sec per combo point.

Mace spec looks really interesting. The big questions here are if they are planning to keep armor reducing skills (and serrated blades) as static values, while adding the percent based talent and arp rating. And if they are keeping it as such, how will it stack? Mace spec will probably be very strong if it counts it from total armor value, but on the other hand it's probably weak if it takes it off the reduced value.

Is armor penetration still NYI in beta, or could someone perhaps test it out?

Sure, there are other problems. I'm not arguing that SF is the entire problem by itself - it's clearly not. My point is simply this:

1) Assuming the talent trees stay in something vaguely close to their current state (which they probably won't, but nevertheless), skipping SF is going to be standard practice for saving points in the tree.
2) The reason for this is that SF is extraordinarily weak for a 5-point talent at the 30-point level. To be frank: it just plain sucks on a point for point basis.
3) Any fix for the Assassination tree needs to get rid of some points somewhere. Yes, the problem is primarily (though not exclusively) that there's too much stuff at the top; even if these were moved down, there'd still be the problem that you have more talent points in the tree than you can spend there. Thus, even after the moves are performed, some talents need to be compressed into fewer points, moved to another tree, combined, etc.
4) Hence, one approach for so doing would be to make SF into a 1-point talent (which would then be a pretty reasonable 1-point talent), and then move some of the points from the overstuffed top of the tree down. For instance, if you moved CttC where SF is now, made SF a 1-point talent where Overkill is now, moved Turn the Tables down to the 30-point level, and added 2 more ranks to Hunger for Blood and put it where CttC is now - that would improve the situation vastly, would it not? I mean, it's still too many talent points, but at least the excess is more evenly spread throughout the tree.

Another obvious option in terms of shuffling things around would be to put Blood Spatter in mid-to-deep subtlety (around the 35 point level); too far in to dip, but a nifty bonus for an otherwise-sparse tree. A deep-sub rogue would then get both Rupture talents and have a nice Rupture-centric build.

--edited for clarity-- Why does taking Ruthlessness (which we already do now) change the effectiveness of Envenom in WLK compared to in TBC? We already gain a combo point 60% of the time as thins stand, and an extra second per Envenom of poison hits is hardly going to make the difference between high dps and low dps. --end of edit--

Regardless, you are of course correct that the increased poison proc chance will be up 40-45% of the time if you spam Envenoms, but that doesn't mean that we'll be spamming Envenom over using Rupture in a cycle. We haven't seen the full implementation of the higher ranks of Rupture yet (unless we're supposed to be getting extra ranks that do the same base damage and scale exactly the same) and even if we do end up not using Rupture, it's possible we'll be Eviscerating instead (remember the glyph that adds 10% crit chance to Eviscerate).

We'll haev to wait and see what dps looks like once these changes are fully implemented, but to completely dismiss the possibility of requiring extra SnD time due to not spamming Evisc/Envenom seems a little premature to me. I definitely like the idea, but I'll wait until we have some more accurate data further down the line before I jump to any conclusions.

Tri Spec Hemo seems to be the spec that gains the most from the recent changes.
The 3 points you can remove from Assassination can now be put into combat to fill out CP and get our version of Blood Frenzy. I get the feeling that 8/42/21 will be a strong contender. Switch around filler to your personal tastes.

Filler in Subtlety feels a little less painful even though everything has really only shifted around in the tree. Combat on the other hand... There are 11 Points spent here that don't affect DPS, and the 2 in Vitality have always felt marginal to me. Would it really hurt to bump this up to 3/6%. I would also like to see Hemo on at least Aggression and hopefully Surprise Attacks (which would be worth dropping one point in ruthlessness for). Hopefully the "more Oomph" they are adding to Lightning Reflexes is DPS related as that tier in combat is severely lacking.

I was briefly toying with a 8/13/50 spec in attempt to gain advantage of the juicyness popping up in deep sub. I'm not entirely sure it would be as viable as combat hemo, especially if you are being counted on to supply the 2% raid physical damage debuff, but I will be checking it out on the WotLK spreadsheet once we have the actual trees and its updated.

It is worth noticing that with a 1.5 speed offhand, Slice and Dice and a talented Windfury Totem, Combat potency generates an effective 2.88 additional energy per second. (Assumption Hit Capped)

1.5 / 1.3 = 1.1538 / 1.2 = 0.9615 * (20% * 15 Energy) = 0.9615 * 3 = 2.88.

Added to your natural energy regeneration over 60s you total to 773 Energy which allows 22.08 Hemorrhages.
Slaughter from the shadows allows you only 600/30 = 20 Hemorrhages. If we assume that either spec will only be using SnD and Rupture with the same cycle then Combat Hemo wins in regards to Energy. Hit and personal haste rating will obviously skew these results. But in the end, CP scales and Slaughter doesnt.

Also with the Glyph the bonus damage from Hemo will be 117, which is quite significante as it has a duration instead of charges now. For any fast hitting class this looks like a strong DPS increase that could balance out the weaker overall DPS, especially before the gear gets very good.

Read my entire post. the 6 sec buff is one of the reasons that envenom is better than rupture, not the only one. Even though the difference it makes is quite huge, considering the amount of possibilities that poisons give to deep assassination builds.

In TBC, envenom isn't so good because of different factors, included: 1) no access to dagger spec for mutilate. 2) way lower deadly poison re-apply rate. 3) Lower energy generation. Without those problems, envenom would always be a decent finisher. Now, not only those issues are resolved, but there are additional buffs making it even stronger. Considering that with the changes to combat tree, a mutilate spec doesn't need to get any filler in combat, you want to use your combat points in best possible way.

On top of that, rupture never been a really good finisher for raids. Only reason we used it was because the other finishers, that scaled with most of our stats, and not only AP, were designed so badly. Basically so bad, that we didn't want to use any energy on finishers. So we used the cheap one that was literally free.

Regarding spell ranks, we can safely assume that the scaling rate will remain the same for all.


PS: Another thing you need to remember is the added syngeries. While most guilds didn't have feral druids in their rogue group in TBC, or didn't have ret, in wotlk you will get a flat 8% increase in crit chance. Now why is ruthlessness better now compared to before? In practice, more consistent combo point generation of SF, indirectly increases the effectiveness of ruthlessness, allowing you to use 5 CP finishers easier for a greater result.

A Hemo Rogue with the glyph would get lots of positive attention from Hunters. Pets and shots both affected should lead to a rather considerable effect. Especially the pet of a BM with an attackspeed of around 0.82 when buffed with WF and has the selfbuff Frenzy going.
Even Survival and MM pets end up with an attackspeed of 1.28. So the benefit is really good.