Is it just me or is Unfair Advantage drastically overpowered for farming? You will be able to clear low level instances in record time with a passive retaliate. FoK to gain aggro, then just stand there and let them kill themselves on you.

Does anyone know if there is an internal timer on this?

Regarding Relentless Strikes' new position in Subtlety, I wrote the following post analyzing the various PvE builds that were likely to exist in Wrath, and the effects this change had on them:

WoW Forums -> [Feedback] Relentless Strikes in Subtlety

Short summary: although it seems like spending 5 points to get the effect of what was previously 1 is a big deal, it's really not. Most builds keep roughly the same DPS, and if Combat builds end up desiring Serrated Blades, then they also get some stealth talents that are nice for soloing/farming/whatever. Hemo builds gain a ton. Relentless Strikes would be fantastic as a three-pointer, I think, but its being a five-pointer is not explicitly unfair or devastating to the class.

Blizzard is fine with that at a macro level. Blue has said they want people to have more flexibility to raid with their "friends" or the best players available and not be forced to have say 2 warlocks in raid because you are crippled without the 2 curses.

Yeah they said that. It's just that it takes so much out of the game. Why have classess at all then really. Could just only have 4 groups nowadays: melee, tank, healer, utility. Everyone brings everything, just the name of abilities change.

Ofcourse at this point it's all still just "The sky is falling" crap, but at the moment it sadly seems that Blizzard is heading to that direction.

The density of filler isn't any higher in the new tree than it is in the current one. Right now, we have to take 3 points of straight filler just to get to T2, and 2 more to get to T4, hence 5 points to get up to BF. This is still true in the proposed expansion tree - it's just that the 5 points are currently 11 to 15 or 16 to 20. And if they, as they've suggested, replace Lightning Reflexes with something decent, there's suddenly no filler at all up till about the 30 point level. Which is not to say that there aren't still concerns, of course, but we're not exactly drowning in filler.

For that matter, it's not at all clear to me that having a little filler in each tree is in any way bad. I don't mind taking Improved Sprint, Fleet Footed, and the like at all. My objection is not so much the quantity of filler, but the quality and distribution of it. Right now there's very little filler in Assassination, a moderate amount in combat, and tons of it in Subtlety. It's also sort of clumped annoyingly - when there's a solid block of 5+ points of filler than you need to fill in, it creates a strong incentive to stop there and go to another tree.

The other problem is quality of filler. I think the ideal filler is stuff that, while it doesn't directly add to DPS, is nevertheless circumstantially useful. Does Imp Sprint directly increase my raid DPS? No. But is it a rather useful talent to have for PvE anyway? Yes. Thus, the points aren't really wasted - they're just utility points rather than DPS points. The problem is there that there's an awful lot of points that are basically strictly useless for PvE:

Remorseless Attacks
Improved Eviscerate (probably; it seems likely that either Rupture or Envenom will wind up as top DPS finisher)
Improved Expose Armor (the benefit is pretty minimal, and I suspect we won't be keeping EA up much anyway)
Improved Kidney Shot
Imp Gouge (nice for PvP, but as we're talking PvE here)
Deflection
Riposte
Unfair Advantage (great for farming, useless - in fact, actively bad - in raids)
Master of Disguise
Camouflage
Setup
Initiative
Master of Subtlety
Waylay

And there's a whole bunch more where the utility is marginal at best.

Hence, what I'd like to see is: every tree has around 5 points of filler to get to 51, which are spread throughout the tree, and for which you have options that increase your utility in raid settings if not your DPS directly. This is basically the current situation in Combat - there are 6 points to 41, the first 3 of which don't have a lot of good options, but the later 3 of which can be used to tailor your build to your personal preferences.

Because each class has a unique playstyle that gives people a different playing experience?

Contrary to what you might think, even being on this particular forum, not every single person who plays the game does so to top the damage meters. I still play my rogue and have long played my rogue regardless of my position on the damage meters, because it's fun and it's the playstyle I like. What about you?

Going back to this for a second, we also have to remember that these talent trees will go live in the 3.0 patch, and thus we'll have to live with them for a while with only 61 talent points. With that in mind, the current dominant spec (Combat Swords) seems to get a hefty nerfing due to the new RS location and cost.

It's interesting that now we're having to more actively weigh the value of talents. Do I want Serrated Blades badly enough to waste 5 talent points to get it? How valuable is Ruthlessness to me? Do I want to invest the points in Blood Poisoning, knowing that Arms warriors will probably go away? And if I want Lethality, am I really going to have to drop 2 points into Imp Evis? Eww.

This I agree with wholeheartedly, and I believe part of my concern (that I've localized) is in Tier3 Combat. It's awesome that the devs thought to broaden dagger specs (like Mutilate) by putting CQC there, but doing so dramatically limits the talents available to get to the next tier. Previously, people could drop points into Imp Sprint, and all was within acceptable limits. Now, however, non-dagger/fist users are somewhat boned on what to pick from. "Do I really want more parry, or Imp Gouge? I guess Endurance is OK, but..." and that sort of reasoning is awful to have to go through. As you said, it really makes me want to consider switching to another tree :P I'm really, really hoping the revamped LR fixes this hole, and makes it so T3 just isn't even important for non-dagger builds.

It's just my opinnion. I enjoy playing my rogue and I probably will enjoy playing my rogue in Wotlk too. It does, however, affect one when you've been playing your class the certain way and had a certain role in raids since MC to Sunwell, and then it gets changed in the next expansion without a good reason (in my opinion). Maybe Im just dont react to change well.

Enough ranting from me about this subject to. We'll see how things go and change.

It sounds amusing to me for pvp. Combine that talent with using evasion, and maybe blade flurry if the bonus strikes from it will be duplicated by it. Add in a few melee idiots that attack an evading rogue from the front and the results are HILARIOUS.

Your role is first and for most the same it's always been: massive DPS. I don't see how not being guaranteed the top spot over other equally skilled players changes that. If anything, I think more competition over the top DPS spot makes the game *more* interesting, as being at the top of the meters would mean more than that you chose the "right" class.

The new Imp Evis combined with PotW can produce some very impressive eviscerates. I was hitting 9.3k unbuffed eviscerate crits on the training dummies in Dalaran.

Assuming 3400 AP, 30% crit and 20% armor reduction by a mob, Evis with Imp Evis, Aggression, and PotW is 124 DPE and Rupture (without Serrated Blades) is 110 DPE, unless my math is off. Serrated Blades makes Rupture better again at 143 DPE, but it's pretty impressive that Eviscerate is pulling those sorts of numbers.

Spreadsheet here: http://wow.tachyonsix.com/evis.xlsx

But who knows, since they've hinted that they may let DOTs crit, maybe our Ruptures will benefit from PotW making it the unmitigated king again.

Fleet Footed Tier 2 would be really nice, since we otherwise suffer movement problems unless we're 41 sub.

There are actually several things you loose by bring 4 fury over an even mix. According to the law of large numbers you loose DPS because the best rogue you run into is, assuming DPS is balanced so every class is compedative, at least as good as the 4th best fury warrior you find. The law of large numbers also says that with random loot being random it will take longer to equip 4 raiders of the same class and spec than it will to equip 4 raiders of different class/spec combinations assuming there are significant differences in their gearing preferences, which is a safe assumption when comparing warriors to rogues.

Finally got done reading the past 5 or so pages. I came here because I checked out the talent trees for wotlk (which of course were changed a bit this weekend) and I was ridiculously excited about the ass tree changes. Assassination has always been my preferred tree, but I'm also obsessed enough with those shiny bars on recount to subject myself to whatever is proven maximum dps.

So for wrath, I really really hope full assassination wins. Firstly because the rotation is sure to be more interesting than SSx4, S&D, SSx5, Rupture, with cooldowns thrown in. Secondly because CttC and HfB look about 1000 times more fun and useful than PotW and Killing Spree.

It *looks* a bit like they're trying to make it so that you might actually want one of each tree in your raid. So far I don't think they're succeeding, but I admire the effort. Even if it wasn't the top rogue dps, I could see guilds making someone spec combat just for the Blood Poisoning, unless it doesn't stack with some other class's thing. I am glad they're at least making the effort, because having only one viable raid spec is really REALLY annoying.

On a completely different note: people seem to think that the Fan of Knives interrupt will be useless in pve. I disagree pretty heartily. Every little bit helps, and there's no sense in downplaying an aoe interrupt because it has a 30 second cooldown. Also remember that we will (probably) be able to change specs for free when out of combat, between 2. This means, if we don't use it for pvp which most except me probably will, we could have a trash spec and a boss spec. I think this would be quite... nice.

In what situation would you ever use a 50-energy, 30-second-cooldown interrupt over Kick or Deadly Throw? Three casters that cast a spell at the same time within 8 yards of each other on a 30-sec+ cooldown? Why wouldn't you just use a combination of 3 rogues/shamans/warriors/mages/marks hunters?

If you have to interrupt in PVE, just bring your arena gloves along and you have all the interrupting you'll ever need without spending talent points to achieve it.

I wonder if Tricks of the Trade will be chainable. For instance, with 2 rogues (Rogue-a and Rogue-b) Rogue-a uses TotT on Tank-a at the same time Rogue-B uses TotT on Rogue-a. Thus all of Rogue-b's threat is passed to Rogue-a, who has all his threat passed to tank-a (along with the 15% damage boost). Thus Tank-a gets the threat of both Rogue-a and Rogue-b, regardless of anti-stacking mechanisms and while giving n-1 rogues (where n is the total number of rogues) a 15% damage boost.

I suspect it will put a buff on both the rogue and the target, which prevents one from being involved in more than one at a time, to prevent weird loops. Never mind the simple issues of chaining - you don't really want to have it set up so two rogues have each other TotTed at the same time.

Also, I believe tanks are getting adjusted to get more of their aggro from damage and less from straight +thread modifiers, so it should still be a decent DPS buff. And, more to the point: I suspect we'll be using it in "damage buff" functionality at least as often as we're using it to help a tank stack threat.

Another thought is that it's still the first pass at the ability and likely to be changed. It seems that the ability is intended first and foremost as a misdirect....whether it's secondary function to boost a DPSer is intended or not is unclear. It doesn't seem that far-fetched that it was not Blizzard's intention for it to be used in that fashion, just as Blizzard doesn't intend for Vigilance to be used to buff other tanks (Blue: "Vigilance will soon transfer the 10% threat lost to the warrior. It will also have 3 charges to curb using it on targets that are being hit constantly. We’re still polishing this element to get it to feel right."). Just as that ability is now being changed to be less effective for tank-buffing, so I wouldn't be surprised to see TotT changed to be more exclusively useful as a misdirect in an upcoming build.

This was included in the post that revealed all the new Rogue Changes. Tricks of the Trade will be subject to some kind of anti-stacking debuff.

Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad. Seeing how there's so many elements that will be boosting tank TPS in the expansion, any fight that requires an OT, would benefit from the use of Vigilance.

Gruul, Bloodboil, and the upcoming return of fights like Gluth and Kel'Thuzad reinforce the importance of an Off Tank. Now, if you're the OT warrior, you can use vigilance on the Main Tank and get some of his threat, so you can close the gap.

I think other interesting questions arise about who is "generating" the threat. Does the threat come from the target, and thus is multiplied by say a Prot warrior's threat multiplier, or from the rogue (and thus is subject to the rogue's -30% threat?). Furthermore, how will this interact with invulnerability moves? Can I TotT a group of mobs onto an iceblocked mage with fan of knives...what about a shielded pally? More of a pvp consideration, but does it go through stealth/vanish and does it put the target into combat (rogue/rogue 2v2 TotT each other and as soon as one opens, the other can no longer be sapped)? We'll know more when it is implimented, but yes, I forsee lots of bugs. One better than a full threat reset on the target, in pvp it might take the target out of combat with you if you vanish...letting a healer drink for instance.

I wasn't saying the ability was necessarily bad, I was merely pointing out that Blizzard decidedly didn't want Vigilance to be a "buff another tank's dodge" ability, and thus was changed so that while not completely useless in that capacity, it's far diminished from what it used to be. By analogy, it doesn't seem particularly far-fetched that Blizzard intends TotT primarily as a misdirect and that if TotT is looking too good as a boost to other DPS it will be changed to be less attractive (though as with Vigilance still not totally useless) in that respect.