Having the damage apply to the casting rogue would be nice; however, it would remove at least a small component of its underlying utility.
Except that all threat generated by the +15% rogue would be transferred to the tank, so it's mostly a wash (depending on if they get raw damage which they then multiply or just get raw threat, etc). In any case the tank would still be getting a pretty big threat boost, and I agree that the ability is at least going to be interesting (and VERY useful on the tank swap / knockback fights for bringing 2nd/3rd tanks back up in threat)
While I agree and also want more damage output at all times, I think you are missing the true utility of TotT. I see this being used in what I would call a "cold start" tanking situation. For example, on trash pulls, every warrior tank has issues generating enough immediate threat due to his rage starvation. I can see the threat transfer as a way to help him hold the mob against the focus fire dps coming in, but more importantly, by increasing his damage output, you also increase, in part, his rage generation and in turn his direct threat. Not just for the time TotT is active, but carrying through to the rest of the pull. (below)
This "cold start" threat and damage (ie rage) boost for warriors would also be great utility for aggro wipes on mobs that "leave" the MT and then come back. Helping to reestablish the MT and replenish any rage that had diminished. Or by, and this was mentioned before, helping to keep another tank 2nd on aggro for fights, and keeping the OT rage level up.
In terms of our current other tanking choices, both Palis and Druids would benefit as well. Perhaps they benefit not as greatly as a warrior in the situations above, but a benefit nonetheless. Using this ability mid fight when the tank has ample threat and rage generation would be wasteful.
Having the damage apply to the casting rogue would be nice; however, it would remove at least a small component of its underlying utility.
Providing rage is hardly the kind of utility we really need. The heart of TotT is providing threat, and currently the DPS boosting feels tacked on. Only two tanks would benefit (and marginally) from having their DPS increased directly, and those only because they work off rage mechanics. But every warrior and druid, until they completely outgear an instance, tends to have plenty of rage when tanking. Heroic Strike is a rage dump for a reason. So while providing raw DPS boosts to the tanks will be helpful to some, it creates such a small benefit, and not even for all tanks, that it's not worth mentioning. It would be better to just keep the DPS increase for ourselves (letting the devs balance our DPS around it being used every cooldown) and then having us transmit that improved threat to the tank. The ability would then be worth the same amount to every tank, favoring none. I see this as a good thing in light of blizz's new direction with interchangeability.
Providing rage is hardly the kind of utility we really need. The heart of TotT is providing threat, and currently the DPS boosting feels tacked on. Only two tanks would benefit (and marginally) from having their DPS increased directly, and those only because they work off rage mechanics. But every warrior and druid, until they completely outgear an instance, tends to have plenty of rage when tanking. Heroic Strike is a rage dump for a reason. So while providing raw DPS boosts to the tanks will be helpful to some, it creates such a small benefit, and not even for all tanks, that it's not worth mentioning. It would be better to just keep the DPS increase for ourselves (letting the devs balance our DPS around it being used every cooldown) and then having us transmit that improved threat to the tank. The ability would then be worth the same amount to every tank, favoring none. I see this as a good thing in light of blizz's new direction with interchangeability.
I have a feeling that the only reason that Blizzard is holding off on making such a change is because they're unsure of the ramifications of giving Rogues a controlled 15% DPS increase in PVP on a 30 second cooldown.
Mind you, this presents the element of having to eventually balance out the fact that our level 75 ability will be nearly useless for Rogue+Healer in 2v2 (or at least not nearly as useful as to a 2 DPS team), or Rogue+Double Healer in 3's, etc.
Then again, current signs indicate that Blizzard is holding off on making any serious attempt balance PVP until much later in the testing process.
I have a feeling that the only reason that Blizzard is holding off on making such a change is because they're unsure of the ramifications of giving Rogues a controlled 15% DPS increase in PVP on a 30 second cooldown.
Mind you, this presents the element of having to eventually balance out the fact that our level 75 ability will be nearly useless for Rogue+Healer in 2v2 (or at least not nearly as useful as to a 2 DPS team), or Rogue+Double Healer in 3's, etc.
Then again, current signs indicate that Blizzard is holding off on making any serious attempt balance PVP until much later in the testing process.
I have a feeling you're right. However, is the ability even implemented yet? They'd have to implement it before we can begin to test it before we can balance it :P
That said, I think the numbers will be reworked somehow. Having a 6 second duration seems fine, but having that duration on a 30 second cooldown does seem like a high percentage uptime. When considering also that the hunter Misdirect is on a 2 minute cooldown, TotT becomes both very potent and very powerful. I think the cooldown will be increased before it goes Live. 1 minute seems like a good number. Then it would also be a much lower DPS increase (to whomever we can use it on) than the original idea suggests, too.
While this would be an awesome change, I see the caster PvPers of the world melting down. It'd translate to unlimited (well, energy limited) Deadly Throws in the arenas. No more kiting, no more casting.
With a focus macro, it would create fun interrupts on Council, though (with Gladiator Gloves).
Not that they couldn't code it, but I'd be equally happy with them tweaking SF to have it make a CP buffer that stored extra combo points (above 5) and simply put them back into play when a finisher got used. Change targets? Lose the points.
So you scored a CritMut at 4 CP? Two CP's go into the hopper and are placed back into your pool after you used Rupture/Envenom/Eviscerate/whatever. Plus, you could still get benefit from Ruthlessness is you chose the talent. You possibly use a finisher right into 3CP's. It also fits well into how the Assassination tree is designed.
Your argument seems backwards. The way I am suggesting to implement it would add the CP before your attack. As in, any extra CP after the finisher comes from Ruthlessness and not this new SF. The way you are suggesting doing roll over of CPs would lend itself more towards endless deadly throws.
...Only two tanks would benefit (and marginally) from having their DPS increased directly, and those only because they work off rage mechanics. But every warrior and druid, until they completely outgear an instance, tends to have plenty of rage when tanking. ...
I think TotT will be incredibly useful for unconventional tanking situations- i.e., caster tanks, MC'ed tanks, transportation fights (c'thun/kalecgos style), etc.
Providing rage is hardly the kind of utility we really need. The heart of TotT is providing threat, and currently the DPS boosting feels tacked on. Only two tanks would benefit (and marginally) from having their DPS increased directly, and those only because they work off rage mechanics. But every warrior and druid, until they completely outgear an instance, tends to have plenty of rage when tanking. Heroic Strike is a rage dump for a reason. So while providing raw DPS boosts to the tanks will be helpful to some, it creates such a small benefit, and not even for all tanks, that it's not worth mentioning. It would be better to just keep the DPS increase for ourselves (letting the devs balance our DPS around it being used every cooldown) and then having us transmit that improved threat to the tank. The ability would then be worth the same amount to every tank, favoring none. I see this as a good thing in light of blizz's new direction with interchangeability.
One thing that seems to consistently not be mentioned in this discussion is the increase to tank DPS in WotLK. Tanks will be doing a lot closer DPS to "DPS classes," and additionally a lot more of their threat will be generated through their own damage. Even if they're only doing 50% of our damage, at 3000 DPS they're doing 1500 and 15% of that is not insiginificant especially if it's contributing a lot to their threat at the same time.
The point is though, that the threat in our hands vs. the tank's is still more threat (assuming that our threat put on them is suspect to the tank's threat modifier like it is with MD) as well as more damage for the raid.
Edit: To Halfdane. That's definitely a matter of preference. As it is right now, I would infinitely much rather go off soloing in my PvP spec. Mobility is one of the major reasons, getting caught in world PvP as PvE spec sucks is the other. But again, that's definitely personal, but I'll be going for ShS plus wherever the talents fall in combat/assassination.
Essentially if you want to level, 21 points in sub is a must.
imp sap for grouping
imp stealth because you will be sneaking around mobs 2-3 levels higher than you
elusiveness and prep for quicker oh shit buttons
For solo grinding, I disagree that imp stealth, elusiveness and prep are very important. If you're topping damage meters now, a single solo mob (even one a couple levels above you) will die very quickly. You will have more problems against multiple opponents or elite mobs. Talents like Blade Flurry, Repost, Ghostly Strike, and Unfair Advantage are much stronger in these sorts of situations. I think Camouflage is much stronger than Master of Deception, you will almost never be seen out of stealth by PvE mobs, but moving faster while stealthed would improve your kill rate considerably.
Arguably, you could go for Murder Spree, except that Prey on the Weak is terrible in solo grinding, since you start with much less health than your target. Something like 5/43/11 + 2 with all the talents I mentioned might work well.
Your argument seems backwards. The way I am suggesting to implement it would add the CP before your attack. As in, any extra CP after the finisher comes from Ruthlessness and not this new SF. The way you are suggesting doing roll over of CPs would lend itself more towards endless deadly throws.
If (as you desire) my CP's are always applied before a maneuver, it's the same as saying that I always have 1CP 'banked' plus one waiting for prior to any future maneuver. Thus Deadly Throw would ALWAYS be available at 1CP, even if I presently show zero CP's. Yes? With 1 CP, I can spam it endlessly.
If you are suggesting that Ruthlessness pre-procs the CP, then what percentage chance do you use for determining whether or not the Ruthlessness would even proc? Its chance to proc is determined by the number of CP's that you have when you hit a finisher. Which may change because Ruthlessness may pre-proc. Which may change the chances that it would proc. Which would change the chances that it would pre-proc. I think you can see how it becomes a circular logic loop unless you're at exactly 5 CP's.
If banking were allowed (instead of pre-CP'ing), you could potentially get two Deadly Throws in, though it would imply that you must have burned all 5 CP's on the first DT (else you wouldn't have any banked). The first would be using the existing 5 CP's. Potentially a second DT using banked CP's. But since DT cannot proc Ruthlessness nor create CP's, you'd never be able to do a third without actually applying fresh CP's to the target via another method.
I think I have it straight, but I invite you to expound.
I see your point. I guess in my head, which I didn't get out, was that what I suggest would require a combo point to even be on a target for your finisher to work. What the talent would do is if you are able to use a finisher under current rules (have a CP) then SF would add one. This as well would limit your deadly throws to 1 (you caught me, I was thinking DT could proc ruthlessness, thanks)
You wouldn't be allowed to attempt Deadly Throw (or any other finishing move) from zero combo points, even if you have a talent that gives you one. It can turn a 1-point finisher to a 2-point one, but not 0 to 1. Personally I'm in favor of banking a 6th talent point towards your next finisher, but the pre-application is not as broken as you make it seem.
*SnD is now 2 pts (25, 50%)
*No change to Lightning Reflexes yet.
*Prey on the Weak nerfed to 20% instead of 25%.
*Blood Splatter moved way up to Tier 2, making it super easy to get for combat, and get with Serrated Blades.
*Lethality now reads "Increase the critical damage bonus of all combo moves by 30%". Could this include Ambush? What's the definition of "Combo Move"
*Murder moved to tier 6, but buffed to 4% (2% per point spent)
*Find Weakness is "All offensive abilities up by 9%" for 3 points.
*Mutilate doesn't show Requires Daggers on this tree, though I'm sure it still does.
*The Hunger for Blood changes are in, but the buff nerfed to 3% stacking 3 times.
*Inititive buffed to 100% for 3 points (If this isn't new sorry, but I know current is 90%)
*Lethality now reads "Increase the critical damage bonus of all combo moves by 30%". Could this include Ambush? What's the definition of "Combo Move"
That's the same wording as Turn the Tables - i suspect it just means the regular in-combat combo-point-builders that Lethality always affected, and probably excludes openers. They probably just wanted a way to avoid listing them all, which was starting to get a little unwieldy.
Also worth noting: Assassination feedback thread on the beta rogue forums (might have been nice for them to actually give us a chance to test the new tree before asking us what we think of it, or even see it, given that a lot of what was posted on the first page was before the patch was even available... but US beta rogues, get to it; i'll be adding my thoughts over on the EU forums and hoping that they do actually read them).
I would guess that a "Combo Move" is any move that generates a combo point, but we'll have to test to be sure. It does look like they're making an effort to reduce the oversaturation of high-end Assassination, but it still has a ways to go - I still count 21 points of DPS talents above the 35 point level, which thus requires 56 points to get it all.
Other changes I notice:
* Deadened Nerves down to 3 points, 2/4/6%. Still just filler.
* Imp Expose Armor is now a cost reduction. Nifty, but the opportunity cost is still too high.
* Mace Spec wording says that it ignores "up to" 3/6/9/12/15% - what does this mean?
* Hemo has been added to Surprise Attacks
* Imp Ambush is now 2 points, 25/50%
Some interesting changes, but I think many of the problems we found with the preview version still exist; hopefully there is more tuning planned still.
There were some more small changes:
Assassination:
*Blood Spatter indeed moved to tier 2, and also buffed to 15/30% from 10/20% increase to Garrote and Rupture.
*Improved Expose Armor changed from increased duration to lower energy cost by 5/10.
*Deadened Nerves changed to 3 points, and all damage reduced instead of only physical by 2/4/6%.
Combat:
*Dual Wield spec is now required for Close Quarters Combat, Precision no longer required for Lightning Reflexes.
Subtlety:
*Setup now grants combo point by 33/66/100% when dodging. (Might be old change, but I don't remember it being on past news.)
That's all I could find in addition to Lokar's list.
Edit: meh, beaten by many others I see.
Last edited by Waywilder : 09/05/08 at 9:10 PM.
Reason: I'm slow
Um... wow. That's a significant damage buff for poisons. Consider: with raid buffs right now, I fairly regularly hit 3500 AP. Which means Deadly Poison would do 36 + 3500 * .12 = 456 damage; That's presumably 114 per tick, or 570 per tick for a 5 stack. Which is over double what it's doing now. Similarly, Instant Poison would do 44 + .15 * 3500 = 569 damage, roughly triple what it currently does.
So assuming one was fully specced into Assassination, you'd then improve that by 40% to roughly 265 DPS from Deadly Poison, or about 800 per proc; With a 50% proc rate and 2 attacks per second (not atypical for a Mutilate rogue), with a 45% proc rate on Instant Poison, we are thus looking at something like 800 * .45 * 2 = 720 DPS from IP, plus 265 more from the DP stack, making total poison damage right around 1000 DPS.
1000 DPS just from poison? Compared to the current... 120? Yeah, that's a pretty significant buff.
I'd love to focus a portion of this discussion on how we'll be spending our 61 points at 70 on the new talents when they are released to us before WotLK. We'll have to live and raid with them for months (imho) before we see the expansion, and will have that amount of time to refocus our attention on where we'd spend the points we'll get from 70-80. Also note we'll be getting glyphs pre-woltk.
With the latest changes I can spend a comfy 51 in assassination without really missing much (30% garrote/rupture? skip). I have a hard time with the remaining 10. It seems the obvious 10 would be DW and Precision. We skip SnD, but I really don't think we'll need it. The reason we run close on the SnD timer as Mutilate now is because of our FW energy queueing, which won't be necessary come 3.0 (I energy queue and typically have 5 - 8 seconds remaining on my SnD). We lose RS though and can't take Opportunity with this build, which stings. However we do get focused attacks which might make up for the loss of RS.
Overall I like the changes they made and look forward to figuring out how glyphs will fit into this to make each tree work optimally. Thoughts?
As the tree stands now, I'd guess it'd be DW Spec and Relentless Strikes, for a 51/5/5 build; that said, I think it's a bit early to worry about that, given that I fully expect the talent trees to change significantly between now and the launch of 3.0.
Also, I'd be surprised if 3.0 lasts significantly more than a month before the expansion, but, again, we'll have to wait and see.
How significant or useful is Hunger for Blood (at 70)? I see plenty of other useful stuff late in the assassination tree, and I'm not sure we have enough points at 70 to get enough of the good stuff in there and HfB. Then again, I guess it is just 1 point.
Edit: In fact, looking at the trees with level 70 in mind, I wonder whether cut to the chase (and assassination past mutilate) is worth giving up 5% hit (precision) and maybe 5% crit (dagger spec) for.
The builds I'm debating between are 41/15/5 (basically the current combat mut - imp snd + 5% crit (maybe take imp snd instead of some of the dagger spec)), 46/10/5, and 51/5/5
Trip Report: Deadly Brew is implemented and working.
In my fairly meh T4/5/badge gear mishmah (1815 AP), and a full assassination build, IP is hitting for between ~640ish and nearly 700, critting for around 1000. Deadly ticks for around 770 at 5 stacks.
I'd love to focus a portion of this discussion on how we'll be spending our 61 points at 70 on the new talents when they are released to us before WotLK. We'll have to live and raid with them for months (imho) before we see the expansion, and will have that amount of time to refocus our attention on where we'd spend the points we'll get from 70-80. Also note we'll be getting glyphs pre-woltk.
With the latest changes I can spend a comfy 51 in assassination without really missing much (30% garrote/rupture? skip). I have a hard time with the remaining 10. It seems the obvious 10 would be DW and Precision. We skip SnD, but I really don't think we'll need it. The reason we run close on the SnD timer as Mutilate now is because of our FW energy queueing, which won't be necessary come 3.0 (I energy queue and typically have 5 - 8 seconds remaining on my SnD). We lose RS though and can't take Opportunity with this build, which stings. However we do get focused attacks which might make up for the loss of RS.
Overall I like the changes they made and look forward to figuring out how glyphs will fit into this to make each tree work optimally. Thoughts?
If you talented Cut to the Chase, then yes, Precision will probably be more usefull to you. But if you don't: SnD is better point value than Precision is, so 2/2 SnD with only 3/5 Precision would be more desirable.
And to be even more honest, Precision is a little over-rated, especially for all builds that don't include Combat Potency.
Someone will probably want to jump up and scream about miss-miss-miss-miss cycles without precision, but such emotional people are in the first place forgetting that you're probably well over the hitcap for special attacks already as a PvE rogue, so we're not talking cycles. And if such a person actually is talking about normal white attacks, that 5% +hit is far from enough to magically turn miss-miss-miss-miss into hit-hit-hit-hit.
When comparing RS and Precision, I'd definitely go for RS. Again, it's way better point value. As a 1 pointer, the RS was close to 5 points into Dual Wield. As a 5 pointer, it still is close to 5 points in Dual Wield. The two are more similar than before, since their per-point value will be almost identical. Which is way above 1 point into Precision.
As for Opportunity.. I can't say how strong it is for a Mutilate build. Whether 1 point in Opportunity is as strong as 1 point into Dual Wield. But we have spreadsheets for that. They can give you a fair estimate about how the two compare now. You just have to adjust the estimate a little to take the changed Opportunity into account, since it has less ranks now, but each rank does get a bit stronger than the current ranks.
As the tree stands now, I'd guess it'd be DW Spec and Relentless Strikes, for a 51/5/5 build; that said, I think it's a bit early to worry about that, given that I fully expect the talent trees to change significantly between now and the launch of 3.0.
Also, I'd be surprised if 3.0 lasts significantly more than a month before the expansion, but, again, we'll have to wait and see.
I totally agree a fair number of changes are yet to come but we haven't let that stop us from picking optimal builds before My point was that focusing on what 61 points buy us seems like a more immediate concern, or at least as interesting as what we get for 71.
09/05/08, 2:29 PM
in 
It will make excellent filler for Combat & Hemo builds.
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