Honestly, this just makes it more likely that rogues will be chaining it on each other, because if it has a 30 sec exhaustion debuff on the recipient, I'm supposed to let it sit there while cooled down because another rogue used it on the tank? I don't think so.

Well, we know the likely answer to these via Misdirection.

a) The threat transferred to the target is subject to the target's threat multipliers. We don't know how it'll interact with the rogue's passive modifier, since hunters don't have one, but I suspect it will ignore it, and effectively consider that the tank is doing any damage that the rogue is doing for that duration. That is, a rogue crits for 1k, and the tank receives threat as though he had crit for 1k.

b) You can still add threat to iceblocked mages and shielded paladins, but mobs will ignore that target while the invul is active. Neither of those skills modifies the mob's threat table, it simply makes that player ineligible for target selection while the debuff is active.

I feel that they've done a lot to benefit rogues, however, I personally feel 3 points for Relentless Strikes (8 - 16 - 25) would be the better option for balance and flexability, specially for rogues attempting to use mutilate/assassination builds which is still very poison heavy (and they've done very little to adress that, compared to what they've done for bottom sub), and for combat daggers. Then make the new unfair advantage a 5 point talent (20-100%) and attack with offhand instead of mainhand (for combat potency) and also on full resists, and make blood poisoning a 3 point talent (1,2,3%).

My second thought is that they should really swap the new overkill ability with premed. It seems as if blizz has the 2 trees confused. Premed would add much more interesting tactics for mutilate because it gives us extra time to pool energy (something which we require during pvp for ea/find weaknesses/ kidney shot cycles), or in PVE to get SNE up early (premed, mutilate, cb, evisc?). Overkill is obviously a talent that would be best used with shadow dance. However both would require a nerf.

Tricks of the Trade, I'm not sure I read that correctly, it increases the damage that the target does by 15%? I hope that's a typo.

Just wanted to mention that I think killing spree has the possiblity to be a very good ability. For starters it will allow us to quickly close gaps, something rogues have been compaining about with all the fights requiring heavy movement, but I do hope that definition of "assaults" is more than just 2 hits per target.

Also, they said they were going to give lightning reflexes more "oomph" I expect this to be closely related to the new changes on unfair advantage.

Blue made a comment about still needing a mechanic to prevent 5 rogues chain TotT'ing. So I'm guessing a debuff on the target, like Weakened Soul. With a 15 second duration 2 rogues would be the most needed.

On the topic of threat in general, I wonder if the new mechanics will actually make Feint and thus Sleight of Hand something that we find useful? Sleight of Hand should scale somehow, though, perhaps with AP. Or let it crit?

One thing that hasn't yet been brought up about Close Quarters Combat is it has the potential for fist builds to use some of the really fast offhand daggers. Since in general they tend to let offhand daggers be slightly faster (1.4s, with a few rare 1.3s), compared to fists and swords (1.5s with a few rare 1.4s), the extra Combat Potency procs gained by a fast dagger offhand might help offset the inferiority of CQC compared to Sword Spec.

I really don't understand this (or the variants posted by a hundred other people). Yes, it's a nerf to RS. So? Other stuff's got buffed, and the numbers will doubtless be tuned further. The only reason RS was mandatory in TBC raiding is because it's grossly overpowered per point spent. Now it's a 5-point talent, it's much less powerful per point, and there will probably be better places to put those 5 points. To which the only possible reply is "so put them elsewhere then".

Yes, the new-look RS may well be comparatively weak in terms of DPS per talent point spent. Nobody's forcing you to take it. Take something else, and let the new RS become something that is desperately needed - a reasonable lowish-power DPS talent in the bottom end of Sub, so that you can have a PvE Sub build without the first 15 points being 100% filler.

As PvE mutilate in WotLK;
The new RS is still worth taking, as you can use Subtlety points to get Serrated Blades now (it was moved down to t3). All you really have to lose is some hit from precision as well as some points in close quarters combat.

Well, while that is a possibility, I don't think it is very likely, since removing the positional requirements, technically, does not improve Mutilate's DPS. If they do remove Mutilate from Opportunity, that would be because it needed balancing.

One thing that they might do, though, is simply making Opportunity passive and not "when striking from behind".

Obviously, this is all speculation and they may remove Mutilate from Opportunity in 10 minutes.

@Cromethus: I don't think we will ever take Camouflage for PvE, our opener is such a small part of our total DPS that it wouldn't ever be worth spending points to guarantee it, as it doesn't have an impact in your performance if you choose to not use it at all.

And yeah, I'd take 2 points out of Close Quarters Combat to get Relentless Strikes and Opportunity.

I can see this happening, though getting precision and 3/5 CQC seems to be more attractive atm because we have to spend less 'filler'. 3 points floating around in sub w/ no DPS talents to take... I *can* see rogues taking Camo for increased movement speed. After all, how often do you give up your opener (if u use it at all) just so you can get to your target faster. These 3 points might actually be worth a little bit. Not much, but something.

Ideally, I would like to see them trade the worthless Feint buff on Sleight of Hand and have it buff Tricks of the Trade instead. That way, combat and mutilate rogues would have something cool to spend points on as they head to Serrated Blades.

I was considering whether Blizz would make such a change to Opportunity, but I really don't think they would. A two-point, first tier talent adding a flat 20% damage to your bread and butter ability seems a bit out of control to me. Find Weakness provides a 10% increase for five points, deep in the Assassination tree. I know it's not exactly apples to apples, but it is fairly comparable. In order to keep Opportunity balanced, the positional requirement is necessary in my view. However, this is just my opinion, Blizz may not share it.

I haven't personally seen any classes level 80 abilities in action, but intuitively an Offhand + Opportunity Mutilate appears extremely powerful. I wouldn't be surprised to see Blizz to take some balancing actions.

That said, I know this is all currently written in sand and changes may be made before I finish this post.

Well, you have to see it this way: Opportunity has always been the way it is: a flat 20% bonus to Mutilate, before we could do it without positional requirements. The spec doesn't get stronger in any way because of it (except the less annoyance), so it shouldn't warrant a change just because of the positional requirement removal - but I definitely could see it changing to tune Mutilate damage.

I think this is even more reason to tweak TotT to be, in my mind, more rogue-like:
Tricks of the Trade: The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage you deal is increased by 15% during this time. 30 sec cooldown.
We're buffing ourselves, and thus boosting someone else's threat via transference. Not to mention this would substantially limit the "utility" the ability provides because we won't be able to chain this on high(er)-DPS allies. They'd only gain our threat, which is only useful to tanks.

Now, given, we'd probably still need a 15second weakened soul-type debuff or something to limit the amount of threat gen we could boost a tank with, but then again maybe the threat isn't the part that needed limiting in the first place. I'd suggest that the damage increase was what needed mitigation, and by limiting that to the rogue only we've sufficiently limited it.

Oh, you are absolutely right, I should have been more clear. I just view removal of Mut from Opportunity as something of a possibility due to the changes in the Combat tree, not simply because of the positional requirement. A non-positional ability doesn't fit in the current theme of Opp, but it appears that theme is changing. It's just a reason I could see Blizz using to justify such a decision. Honestly, I'm just being overly paranoid because I currently like these changes so much, I'm expecting shoes to start dropping at any time.

In a situation where you're also using a 50-energy, 30-second-cooldown, 8-yard range AOE. All I'm saying is it's not a bad tac-on to a useful trash dps ability.

I'm not sure the speculation on tricks rotations (or stacks, or whichever) is really useful until the choice they make for it becomes clear.

Rolling it on the tank seems like a spectacularly bad idea. Hopefully your tank isn't badly geared or skilled enough to need it, and it's a waste of a damage boost. Putting the first one on it could be good though.

My guild has two rogues that raid enough to matter, and honestly even with the raid-wide buffing I can't really see us adding much more than that. I could easily see us bouncing the buff off eachother every cooldown, but on the off chance that blizz decides to make that impossible there's always ye old hunter with FD we could toss it to. Heck, I could have a lot of fun with throwing this on our enh shammy guild leader and then laugh when he has to has to use his "aggro dump" aka ankh.

Been playing around with one of the War-Tools talent trees for a while. The Relentless change isn't as big a deal as my initial gut reaction made it seem. I still think it'd still work better as a 3pt talent, though; right now it looks to me like it's 5 points purely because Blizzard has some kind of guideline that tier 1 should be either 5/5 or 2/3/5. Would be nice if they could break that and maybe chop it down to three and add another 2pt talent to T1 sub (so that they retain the 10 points total on tier 1).

Bigger concerns for me right now are the sheer bloat of deep Assassination (19 points spread across tiers 8/9 alone; most classes have 13-14 or so points in those tiers combined), and the sparseness of the tree early on (for a non-mutilate/backstab build, if you want to get Lethality you get a choice between... imp evis or remorseless attacks. yay; luckily skipping Lethality seems entirely viable) and the amount of filler required to fill out Combat, particularly the roadblocks at 15, 32/34 (depending on whether you count Vitality as a worthwhile talent or not), and 43 points, where -pending whatever changes they come up with for Lightning Reflexes- you basically have a choice of crap or more crap (ok, imp sprint is quite nice, as filler goes, but the rest is entirely uninteresting).

Subtlety remains a clusterfuck, as ever. I still can't discern any overriding theme for the tree, beyond being a dumping ground for pvp talents.

Seems like combat dagger took the most benefit out of relentless strike/opportunity change. Being the spec with lowest combo point generation and finisher use, it took the least energy back from RS. Now however, it got access to both opportunity and lethality and also 25% extra critical damage, being a highest critical chance setup.

At the current stage, the build would probably look something like: War Tools with 3 points spare to either get 60% from RS or poison talents.

Now remains to be seen whether it's beneficial to use any other finisher along with SnD with a CD build, as backstab scales extremly well at the moment.

By the way and a bit offtopic:

The training dummies will most likely allow to test a lot of stuff much easier than before.

WoW Forums -> Thanks for the training dummies!

i would like to see a spellresist also in lightning reflexes.

I'd like to bring the mace spec on the table again - all I have seen was a short posting two pages ago or so, did I miss something?

The new -15% armor seems pretty strong, if it is applied first and the fixed ArPs later. I would assume this, since the effect would diminish the other way around. Can anyone confirm this?
Are there any calculations on this yet, especially compared with sword spec?

I would wonder whether Serrated Blades will be changed to be like new Mace Spec, or the other way around. 15%AC seems like a double-edged sword prone to bugs and misunderstanding. They're reinventing the ArP wheel unnecessarily, unless Armor Penetration Rating also turns into a %-based system.

I don't have a problem with leaving Opportunity and Mutilate as they are - after this latest change of course. In this case the change they've made buffs the solo/farming ability and PvP ability of Mutilate builds (as you are no longer completely gimped if the mob is facing you forcing you to Gouge etc. and run around the back) and ties with the Gouge change. For raiding you'll be attacking at the back almost always (except for odd fights and getting a couple extra shots while getting into postition).

And no change to Opportunity would still give a 'Daggers do more from the back' old school feel. I just don't see why Blizzard would feel the need to do make further changes.

On the topic of Fan of Knives and the interrupt, I see nothing but added utility when you ToTT a pack of mobs to your tank with good certainty that casters won't lag behind. And I can't be the only one who sees the additional potential to use ToTT in conjunction with popping Fan of Knives and Killing Spree on trash. This is spectacularly less useful in 25-man settings where most things get taken under control quickly, but how much would you have killed for something like this in Karazhan to make your presence that much more valuable?

Anyone else think that the new positioning and cost of RS makes it far less accessible compared to its old position for deep combat builds? I know this makes splashing deeper into sublety for Serrated Blades at the cost of Lethality more appealing, but I was really looking forward to having the extra 20% proc rate on poisons which the new position and cost straight deprives me of (not to mention the loss of Murder to this spec).

ArP rating is already % based effect on beta. With 15.384 rating giving 1% armor reduce at level 80. Don't know if its really working at this moment. But thats what my character sheet showed when I equipped some gloves with ArP rating on them.