I've just read the summery, and I think it's quite a fair review.
What Blizz seems to have done is giving each tree some DPS at the start of the tree, to reduce reluctance to invest into it.
On top of that, people like to forget that that single point into Relentless Strikes gave roughly the same DPS increase that 5 points into Dual Wield gave. DW was maybe slightly better, but comparing to any other talent, those two were awfully close. So effectively, the point-value of Relentless Strikes has been brought in-line with Dual Wield. It's still pretty much mandatory to any build, but much easier to grab as well now (5 pts vs 11, remember?)


Just grab a webpage where you can try out the talents, and place 20 points into each tree. I came up with the following theoretical build: War Tools :: Talent tree Rogue WotLK Beta 03/09/08
Now, the point is not whether that build is any good or not. What we're interested in is how strong the talents involved are:

Assassination: Malice is more or less mandatory for starters, Ruthlessness still is the best talent on the second tier, unless you're backstab/mutilate, then you'll want puncturing instead. Vigor is too good to ignore as well, especially for dagger builds, since it makes energy management so much easier. Other builds may skip it, but dagger builds will definitely want it. Now, all talents in the first 4 tiers add to your DPS. Some more then others, but they all do. Pick any filler you like, and your damage goes up, even if it's very minimal under certain circumstances (like Remorseless).

Combat: Dual Wield has always been a must have, and it it still is. On the next tier, you just have to grab Imp SnD, and after you maxed that out you'll want Precision. Combat Builds find another must-have in Imp SS, while Dagger and Fist users will find Close Quarters a must have. So, that's 13 (non Sinister Strike, non fist/dagger) upto 20 (Sinister Strike build using daggers or fist) talent points spent well. For those who don't use daggers or fists and who don't use Sinister Strike as well, this means 7 talent points into fillers. And let's be honest: the early non-DPS talents in the Combat tree all offer nice utility. I don't know, but anyone who finds himself having more than 5 filler points during these first 4 tiers in the Combat tree, should simply smack his/her head against a wall untill he/she figures out that it only requires a change of weapons to get through this part. A swordspec-hemo build will do more or less on par by equiping a fist in the MH with the sword in the OH. Combat-Sword and Combat-Mace rogues will need Imp SS anyway, so they won't have more than 5 filler points either.

Subtlety: Well, this used to be the stepchild of DPS, but Relentless Strikes will still be pretty mandatory to keep your cycles running fluently. The second tier is pretty much lacking for DPS, so you'll probably sink 2 points into Opportunity as well, leaving you 3 points now for non-DPS fillers if you want to go any deeper into the tree. In the third tier we find Serrated Blades, which may not be a must-have, but it is very good nonetheless. It's probably on par with Vigor, though Vigor is more situational, depending on what type of encounters you do (Vigor for short encounters (trash, grinding, farming, PvP) or Serrated Blades for long duration bosses/raiding). Setup and Initiative in the 4th tier aren't the best of talents either, but they're still interesting pickups. Overall, you'll experience about 6 filler talents through these first 4 tiers.

I find it very noticable how Assassination has no non-DPS fillers, Combat sometimes has non-DPS fillers and Sub always has. But each tree has it's own DPS talents in the first few tiers now, so nothing should stop people from looking any further into those trees either. The first 4 tiers of those trees seems slightly more ballanced now, with the most important parts in reach for anyone (Malice, Ruthlessness, DW, Relentless and Opportunity).

Yes, but if we're running a rupture/envenom cycle SnD uptime is going to to be really tight, unlike the high-slack cycles Mut is used to working with now. Rupture uptime is a much smaller concern than SnD uptime, which is a real problem for a 2 damage finisher Mut cycle, espcially if Imp SnD is out of the picture.

With yesterday's talent tree redesign announcement, Rogues speccing down the combat tree are now required to spend EIGHT talent points on talents that have ZERO DPS increase to get down to Prey on the Weak. Example:

War Tools :: Talent tree Rogues as per Blue

To get down the tree I have spent 2 points in Endurance, 2 points in Imp Spring, 2 points in Lightning Reflexes, and 2 points in Unfair Advantage.

I think the obvious conclusion here is that these changes need to be rethought, especially in light of the fact that the combat tree has been up to now our primary raiding tree. Unfair advantage as a Tier 9 talent is extremely underwhelming as this is a solo grinding/leveling talent that brings next to nothing to a raid and therefore should not be situated at the bottom of our DPS tree. Throwing specialization is useless and should be removed completely.

Hopefully the blue proposed buff to Lightning Reflexes is going to be at minimum some sore of DPS increasing talent.

For PvE - the Blood Elf racial is crap. It doesn't work on most bosses or even most trash in raids. Completely worthless. It does work in PvP as an extra interrupt.

By doing tricks of the trade on the tank, you increase threat cap for those people without good aggro management or your own threat cap on threat sensitive fights, like Bloodboil (where I use vanish at least once). I see your point about the damage bonus, but I know that hunters and warlocks (we usually have 3 hunters and 2 locks) would be thrilled to see the tank get a threat boost. Raising the threat cap for 5 people > damage for 1 person imo. Would also keep one of our insane healers and shadow priests alive more. Lately, I know I've pulled aggro a few times because I've gotten so used to never looking at the threat meters on any fights except the particularly threat sensitive ones. Our MT threat generation hasn't kept up with DPS threat generation - since pretty much every item point he gets is more pure avoidance and actually reduces his threat. This problem is even more evident with a pally tank, since less block + more avoidance very clearly = less threat. Teron Gorefiend stabbing me in the face for the loss.

It will always be a question of which use of the ability will cause the greatest overall increase to raid DPS. Maybe it's casting it on another DPS if we reset and don't have to worry about threat again for several tiers of gear. My guess is that it's a layer of rogue raid utility to make up for the fact that we're going to be below hunters, locks and possibly mages and warriors on the damage meter.

I still hold to the belief that the ability should be tweaked slightly so that the rogue always gets the damage boost, and is thereby giving even more (potent) threat to his target, which would then always be a tank.

Doing it this way limits the stackable nature of the utility (as only the threat gen benefits the raid), and it also serves the more "selfish" class nature of the rogue. If that still isn't enough, put a 15sec debuff on the tank not allowing any more trickery, and call it good.

The main thrust of your argument is that Rogues can't spec out of being a DPS'er, and yet (setting aside the objections to that line of reasoning) your primary beef is with our DPS relative to mages, warlocks, and hunters? Huh?

If you're seriously worried about that, use Trick of the Trade on them instead, and let their increased threat sort out the problem.
On a more serious note: Trick of the Trade rotating with other rogues could be an interesting activity. Especially if there's any fights where threat isn't an issue. If threat is an issue: just use it on the tank or the off-tank. I can easily think up circumstances where I'd want to dump a load of threat on someone. Some are maybe abnormal circumstances which you don't usually prepare yourself for, but I'm definitely sure that raids are going to love this ability.

Vitality is perfectly good filler, but it is slightly underwhelming for it's position in the tree. Consider: raid buffed, I have an average of about 900 agility. So each point in Vitality gives me about 9 agility, which, in EP terms, is worth something like 2.4 * 9 = 22 EP. Compare this to, for instance, Malice (22 x 1.9 = 42), Precision (15.7 * 2.8 = 44), and so forth, and you can see why people are a bit underwhelmed.

So, basically: is it a *bad* talent? No. Do you take it over non-damage filler? Definitely. But is it a bit underwhelming given it's late position in the tree? Yes.

Well, obviously, if the tank needs it, you put it on the tank. But consider: if you have two rogues dumping 20% of their threat on the tank, plus giving said tank a 15% damage bonus, your tank will quite literally be generating 50% more threat than they current do. And I don't believe for a second that anyone needs that much additional threat cushion to max out their DPS. So, yes, you throw a few TotT onto the tank, and keep an eye on the situation to see if he needs some extra boosts - but when he doesn't (and he shouldn't, most of the time), the rogues use it as a damage buff.

This is a possibility, of course, but it makes the ability somewhat less strategic. Right now, there's some strategy involved in using it - sometimes, you use it to help the tanks; other times, you use it for DPS. If it always increased your damage, you'd always just dump it on the tank, which is less interesting. Frankly, as much as I like doing more damage myself, I do have to say that I'd prefer the more strategic version, as it makes the class more challenging and interesting to play. One of my current annoyances about the rogue class is that you have to be truly retarded not to realize 95% of the damage potential of the class; hence, your average raid leader can't tell the difference between a good rogue and a bad one. I would like to see a little more differentiation based on skill, such that there's definite benefits to having good rogues as opposed to the first applicant to walk in off the street. And strategic abilities like the current TotT are one way to do that.

I'm with Zaniel on this one. The damage bonus should be to the Rogue, producing more threat for the tank. This prevents rogues from buffing other DPS (which I'm sure is not Blizz's intention). I'd much rather see that than a bunch of rogues abusing the ability and getting it nerfed to a purely "my threat is your threat" situation like Hunter MD.

As far as the ability itself, it's going to get nerfed. No way around it. Hunter MD is on a 2 minute cooldown. Assuming we are able to put up as much threat in the 6 sec time vs. the Hunter's 3 attacks, that makes TotT four times as powerful.

Thing is, I think TotT is going to be too powerful, or they're going to have to make fights unwinnable without it.

If I do 2k DPS, and that DPS is considered the tank's, then I'm going to crank out 12k damage in 6 seconds. Times the 1.45 tank modifier is 17,400 threat every 30 seconds - +580 TPS average for the tank, and that's at BC DPS levels. Depending on the exhaustion debuff on the tank, rogues would be capable of providing utterly insane threat boosts, completely trivializing the entire concept of threat.

It suddenly occured to me that TotT's threat-dump is most useful for offtanks and tank rotations, rather than maintanks getting an even astronomicaler (yeah, I said it) threat buffer. Warrior and Paladins have the most problems with threat when they're the second tank on a target, warriors because of rage and paladins because of their porcupine-style threat mechanics. Suddenly giving them the threat of an additional DPSer could really help boost that, and timing the 6-second window would be even more useful for forcing the transition to occur in a tighter window. I'm reasonably sure you can force a tank transition under any but the most retarded of circumstances by pooling energy and saving CB or Shadowdance (AR wouldn't stack well with energy pooling, it's GCD-limited except maybe for backstab).

I'm facinated with the TotT possibilites - there's so much that would be possible with this and I wish I had a beta key so I could test it out when it goes to beta. Alas...

Anyway, defenitly keep up the conversation on that. I just have a quick interjection, and am wondering about the feasability of using Shiv to mitigate a CttC/Envenom mutilate cycle.

Currently, the reason shiv is never used is because of its low DPE, especially with dagger normalization. But with Deadly Brew, this should get a slight upgrade as far as DPE goes, as you will be getting a guaranteed IP application. Currently on live, it has been shown that a fast dagger in the OH vs a slow dagger has little difference in overall dps in a mutilate build, but related to the cost of a shiv, the difference in energy between the two dagger speeds is 3-5 energy.

Currently, finishers are a low part of our damage because we must use most of our combo points to keep up SnD. With CttC, this may no longer be a concern - and the value of a combo point relative to energy will increase, to the point that mutilating with 4 combo points on the target already might not be desired. Rather than use a 4 point finisher, tossing a lower energy shiv (28-29 energy with the shiv glyph, considering good dps glyphs are far and few between) to get you to a 5 CP finisher might be a good idea. As well, this might ensure that you have a full 5 applications of DP on the target in a short, one mutilate cycle. I'd imagine cycles going like this:

No Ruth, Non-crit Mutilate = 2 CP, mutilate again, finisher (chance of still having 4 CP is around 5%?)
Ruth, Non-crit Mutilate = 3 CP, mutilate again, finisher
No Ruth, Crit Mutilate = 3 CP, mutilate again, finisher
Ruth, Crit Mutilate = 4 CP, shiv, finisher.

A ruthlessness proc, plus a crit mutilate, shiv glyph with 1.3 speed dagger, and a 10 energy finisher (due to RS) = 60+28+10 energy spent on the cycle = 98 energy per cycle. Thats energy efficiency to me. Is shiv's dpe too low, considering Deadly Brew and the Shiv Glyph for this to work?

There have been many comments made about how lower tier Assassination needs a few more talents that increase dps to make up for the loss of Relentless strikes and Murder. I think increasing Ruthlessness to a 5 point talent with a 100% proc chance is good way to accomplish this. It would be an easy way for non-dagger builds to get up to the third tier and would add flavor to Mulilate builds.

I would personally love to get rid of the RNG that Ruthlessness is right now. Ruthlessness and Seal Fate are always screwing up Mutilate cycles.

Why are fillers a bad thing ? They will tweak the numbers anyway. Some talents - like Prey on the weak - got seriously buffed and allow now to skip Lethality and open up new options for combat builds.

If we have the ability to do the damage we are supposed to do fillers will do no harm but add fun. If I can do 3000 DPS with a lot of fun talents or can do it in another tree with mostly DPS talents the fillers become very interesting. Survivability and Mobility are issues because there are very few Patchwerk fights.

These fillers give us interesting choices and remove the need to spent every last point perfectly. You can choose without harming the DPS. So I like the decision a lot. Having 8 more DPS talents but in the end the same DPS does no good. Why are things like Improved Deadly Throw bad ? Actually I would love to have more fillers if the DPS is strong enough in the end. If some X-X-51 build would do the same DPS as a X-51-X build I would love to have fun things like Shadow Step or Shadow Dance and raid with them.

An issue is however if you have a tree that is too crowded to allow the fun talents and forces you to take every piece of DPS and leave the potential fun out. Combat looks really fine now but Assasasination could need to reduce the amount of talents by perhabs working more poison talents together.

Hildegard, my probem with filler talents is that it's a talent that could (and probably should) have instead had a DPS focus, and thus would serve as a DPS increase for the class. Sure, if we could push the same DPS with filler as without, that would be ideal. That's not the way it works though. Rogues have grown to understand that the talents are all we've got -- we have to make the absolute most of them. So every point we put in a filler is one less DPS point, and that's frustrating to a class with the "DPS first" mentality.

Besides which, I look at our filler talents right now and they're not even exciting to me anyway. Hopefully the new and improved Lightning Reflexes will fix both problems.

Well, if I may play devil's advocate for a moment:

A raid-buffed rogue has about a 40% crit chance, hence about 55% with Mutilate. Thus, there is about an 80% chance that a particular Mutilate will proc SF. Thus, without Ruthlessness, the odds that you proc SF at least once in two Mutilates are about 96%. Hence, 2xMutilate will result in 5pt finishers 96% of the time; thus you gain a 5th combo point about 19% of the time per talent point.

Meanwhile, each point of Ruthlessness gives a 20% chance of making it to 5 CP. Thus, on a point-for-point basis, Ruthlessness is better than SF. If there were 5 ranks of it, it'd be strictly better to take all 5 points in it than it would be to skip it and take 5 points in SF.

Now, lets be clear: Ruthlessness is hardly a good talent. It's a convenience, to be sure, but I don't claim it's in the top 5 talents available to rogues. My point is that, bad as Ruthlessness is, SF is, in a lot of ways, even worse; hence, arguing "Ruthlessness is useless because you have SF" is kind of backwards.

I'm just wondering how Ruthlessness screws up your cycle. It's an extra failsafe to make your 5 CP's, If your cycle isn't finished yet, and you're at 4CP's because of Ruthlessness, then fine, ignore that 1 extra CP you got, and finish your cycle as normal. Or throw in an Evisc or whatever, and restart your cycles from scratch.
Problems arise when you start relying on that extra CP for your cycles. Which is the same problem that any other build has from it.

The thing is Hildegard, I think it's great to have combat pvp/ non-Brutallus/Patchwerk fights where rogues do more than their job. If you raid as a rogue and I'm sure you do, you know that people tend to min-max for each fight in a progression-based first time kill approach. That means that for those fights that are similar to Brutallus when we want to spec for more dps we can't as Combat because we have to take those fillers whatever they may be that are of no benefit to us.

So when we get to those fights we now have to do either less than capable dps with combat, or maximize with mutilate.

Mutilate will require different gearing than combat for optimal use. So switching between them for min/maxing will be difficult.

Mutilate will have the talents that do both a pvp buff and a raiding buff, like deadly brew and infectious poisons, and turn the tables.

Sure Unfair Advantage, Throwing Spec, and Nerves of Steel, might have thier raiding implications in the EP, it's mostly going to be situational and we know it. Blood Poisoning might be a wasted talent point in a raid where it will not stack, Blue Quote "Physical Vulnerability Debuff: Blood Frenzy, (2nd Talent Spec TBA)"

So if you have a blood frenzy warrior one of you might not use those 2 points there.
Lets also add in the scenario where your best ranged dps weapon might not be a throwing weapon, if you're still in min/max mode and don't need to interrupt. Can't use imp thrown. So you'd have a spec similar to:
War Tools :: Talent tree Rogues as per Blue
Where you are forced to get filler in 7 talents with lightning reflexes being used as a dps talent
Sure we can go with 2 weapon specs but why should be forced to?

As with Mutilate you have:
War Tools :: Talent tree Rogues as per Blue
an overkill of different dps routes to take whichever theorycrafted them to be the best. and you make no sacrifice to maximize potential or to spec for pvp with talents that give pve potential.

Unless, and this is big, Combat does similar to Mutilate with the pvp filler regardless of the dps talents they get. I doubt this will be the case, which is why there is an issue with the filler.

On a tangential note...I'm really stuck on this Honor Among Thieves thing. How is NOT exactly like Seal Fate, except proccing when ANYBODY IN YOUR GROUP crits on a special, all for only 3 points instead of 5? Doesn't that make each point of HaT worth 833% of an SF point? (The 1-second internal cooldown means that you won't quite get every single proc, of course, but it could still easily be 1 point every 2 seconds.)

Is it just me or is this talent OP? Or does the fact that it's in the weakest pve-dps tree make it less OP?

(Edited for clarity)

I appreciate your perspective, but I wonder if you missed the target I was shooting for a bit, Ald. My rant had more to do with not being able to choose a path away from Ruthlessness, but in the context of being required to have Seal Fate. Adding extra depth to Ruthlessness doesn't resolve that issue, even at the 100% level, because it still doesn't offset the number of points required to get into the upper tier talents. If Ruthlessness got boosted to 100%, I'd like to see additional low level talents that allow me to bypass one versus the other as I choose.

The real tragedy is not that both Ruthlessness and SF are each mediocre talents, but rather that Assassination rogues are presently required to take BOTH en route to the Mutilate talent.

Since more flexibility at a lower tier allows for more flexibility at the upper tiers it seemed (to me) nicer to see the changes available at the 10 point talent level, rather than the 25 point talent level.

Looking at the talents as they presently stand for WotLK, if you took away the 5 points from Seal Fate, where would you allocate your lower 30 points? How about your lower 35 points? Once you get to Find Weakness, I doubt anyone will have problems getting to the 41-point Mutilate.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of talents to use in the assassination tree. Given easy ways to bypass either Ruthlessness (if not 100%) or Seal Fate (if Ruthlessness were 100%), you'd be brain-dead to not choose one path or the other. I'd also presently skip Cold Blood for PvE purposes if it were an option. If Ruthlessness were made a 5-point talent and there were additional lower tier DPS talents available (like moving Blood Splatter) to allow me to bypass Seal Fate, I'd be just as happy to choose that route as I would choosing Seal Fate. But simply adding two points to Ruthlessness (to make it 100%) doesn't quite do that for the tree. It's close, but you'd still have to waste at least one extra point along the way.

Because of this, most of the builds that seem viable require SF to achieve flexibility in the upper tiers anyway. So the NEED for Ruthlessness in an Assassination build is diminished because Seal Fate becomes required anyway. Ruthlessness would still be required in order to even get access to the 15 point Assassination talents, making it duplicitous.

The last sentences of my previous post said it pretty clearly: Having Seal Fate as a generic requirement to most mutilate builds simply makes Ruthlessness LESS beneficial to assassination rogues when compared to the benefit given to combat or subtlety builds. Not sure where you got your quote about Ruthlessness being useless---it certainly wasn't in my post.

First 41 points in Assassination looks like a decent way to get to Mutilate without taking Seal Fate. I put the 2 points which would go into Ruthlessness (if it was changed to be a 5 point talent) into Remorseless Attacks in order to get further down into the tree.