hannigaholic

Personally I'd rather see school immunities removed completely. Fights like Chromaggus (where the temporary school immunity is a deliberate facet of the encounter) notwithstanding, something like a 20-30% damage reduction instead of an immunity would suffice. It would punish those who are specced into that school but not so much that they're absolutely forced to respec to beat the encounter. Ideally there would be a few of these in each dungeon, each resistant to a different school rather than everything in one place being resistant to the same school (Molten Core, I'm looking at you).

 

• Aldriana

Regardless of what happens in terms of poison immune bosses, one has to imagine that we'll have to respec from time to time anyway, just to cover debuffs. If your usual combat rogue/arms warrior is missing one night, some other rogue will have to respec to cover that. And, personally, I'm not at all worried about the cost of respeccing. What does concern me a little bit is that the value of stats may be fairly different for the different specs, which means that in order to perform optimally in raids, we may need to maintain several sets of gear focusing on different stats. And, again, many classes have been doing this for a while anyway, so it's not like we're unique in this respect; but it is definitely a shift, and something we'll have to keep in mind when pondering itemization going forwards.

 

Tinwhisker

Yes, but Warlocks are used out of convenience in these situations. We've used a hunter to tank Leotherass, Capernian, Illidan. It's a gimmick and any ranged class can do it provided they have the resistance gear and a guild that's willing to let them try. Even then, it's a single player in each case. The fights don't require all raiders of a class to spec that way. And as Neto- said, there are very few fights that require those kinds of mass respecs for any class currently and unlikely to be that many more in WotLK.

That actually doesn't bother me, just as the warlock may have to respec to tank one night, the point of his swithcing is for a specific role. Assuming the debuff you're switching to provide is worth enough raid-wide to make up for losing some of your own DPS because of having non-optimal gear it shouldn't matter.

 

Ariashley

I've only had a chance to take a quick scan through the last 10 pages, but has anyone else noticed that assassination HAS to get nerfed before the Beta goes live (probably poisons)? I've taken a look at the Roguecraft Spreadsheet that was updated with info from the Beta and if I take my same gear (BT/Hyjal, Sunwell neck) and put it into the BC sheet to see max DPS and then into the LK sheet and just mess with the talent specs, I can see that speccing into poison talents in assassination and even though it doesn't consider my my swords something that can mutilate, I would go from a max of 1900 DPS to 3400 DPS just due to the poisons and if I switch to my ZA daggers (since I usually pass on BT and Hyjal ones), I would do 4500 DPS - at 70. Clearly, something is going to change. If I spec into combat (when murder spree isn't modeled), my DPS would go to about 2800. Most of that is due to acquiring new buffs in raids (since, personally, I won't lose much more than 2 drum rotations and will gain a bunch of buffs I can't get now) with some related to the new talents that are modeled.

We can talk about how great the new assassination tree is all we want, but it's probably not useful to freak out about how much better it is than the other trees since it's clear it can't stay that way.

Screen shots of recount info are showing that poisons are doing 60% of the damage against target dummies from the adjustment to scale with AP...

 

koaschten

No poisons are doing 60% of a rogues dps because it is proccing of 100% of the rogues hits. Combine this with dual instant poison and deadly brew and you know the reason.

 

• Neto-

You can download the LK spreadsheet, and while it may not be 100% accurate, it still shows poisons doing more than half of your damage.

[e]: The sheet doesn't have the bugged version of Improved Poisons; so it is, technically, calculating the "intended" damage - but poisons are still grossly overtuned.

 

Thx_138

I had an interesting thought regarding Opportunity. Since Mutilate is apparently being left on its list of affected abilities (regardless of the removal of its positional requirement) why not extend this? My idea was something along these lines.

Opportunity - Increases damage of all attacks made from behind the target by 5/10%

I am sure it would need some tuning, but it would add more options and a little more raid viability to the sub tree (since that seems to be the direction Blizz wants to go). I think it would also add more depth to Rogue strategy in PvP. Any thoughts or suggestions, maybe we can hash out something for our guys with Beta keys to take to the Beta Forums.

 

• Vulajin

A change like that would be tantamount to reinstating the positional requirement on Mutilate, and in fact adding one to Sinister Strike and Hemorrhage and auto attack as well. Every rogue would spec into that talent and every rogue would be at the whims of latency and boss AI in determining whether they received that bonus or got screwed.

 

• Neto-

This is actually not a terrible idea, considering that to reach Serrated Blades we need to pick up a few useless talents.

But in the end it might be just like old Mutilate, and I'm sure we don't want positional requirements annoyance back. The solution would be making Opportunity passive, but of course, then it would be too strong to be a tier 1 talent.

 

Roywyn

Instant poison scales with 15% of your AP.
Main hand hits with a 2.8s MH Glaive scale with 20% of your AP, a 1.8s MH dagger scales with 13% of your AP.
Off-hand hits with a 1.4s weapon and 75% OH damage (5/5 DW spec) scale with 7.5% of your AP.

Add talents and raid debuffs and poisons can hit vastly harder than your auto-swings.
That why they do so much damage even in sheets.

The 100% application issues is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Thx_138

Yeah my thought was to tune the damage so that it is a nice bonus if you are able to be behind 100% of the time (perhaps even eclipsing the damage of the current version on stationary fights). On mobile fights it would be something you want to strive for (just as we do now) but it wouldn't be game breaking if it wasnt possible to maintain that position through the entire fight. Really it would be a way to take the sting off so many filler talents for Rogues trying to reach serrated blades with a non dagger build.

 

• Vulajin

And maybe if proper positioning were something that we, as players, had full control over, then that would be a reasonable idea. However, latency and NPC AI would render that talent far less of a DPS boost than it could be, and we'd all simply get frustrated over having to constantly fight the RNG, except rather than "You must be behind the target" we simply get the invisible punishment of losing 10% DPS.

Regardless, I don't think this is a direction that Blizzard is at all interested in exploring, considering the removal of the positional requirement on Mutilate. But I may be wrong, in which case I'll be very, very disappointed.

 

Thx_138

Probably true, I can easily see myself getting frustrated with positioning during certain encounters. Assassination is looking great at the moment. However ever time I try to look at combat it seems very clumsy and overly burdened with filler...seems having to take so many defensive and PvP talents is going to cripple the tree. I could be wrong though, and if I'm not I'm sure it will be addressed in time.

Perhaps it could be modified to be more viable maybe add a temporary buff to the rogue. Such as when striking from behind with an attack that generates combo points you receive a 6 second buff to your damage regardless of positioning. This could be refreshed and would be more forgiving with latency and mobile fights.

 

Ariashley

Yes, this is what I was referring to. I was NOT referring to test results on the Beta (which are buggy). There will clearly be something done to decrease damage output from assassination and it seems most logical for that to take place by scaling back some of the changes made to poisons. Most of the talents are pretty kick ass in design, just needs some tweaking to bring it down some.

I would love to see assassination and combat on par with each other in damage and sub maybe being a little behind but with some kind of added utility (to make rogues sort of like hunters in that all three specs are possible for raiding in certain circumstances). I agree with Aldriana's statement that it will mean rogues probably will have a few different sets of gear with different stat distributions. The combat tree definitely still needs a little reorganization or a change to one of the lower level talents to make combat swords still be effective. I had seriously been thinking of leveling my resto shaman (or even my tankadin) as a main instead of my rogue in the expansion to do somthing a little different. If we really will have 2 viable raiding trees, it will probably change my mind.

 

Tinwhisker

Yes, poisons are tuned way too high. I don't think anyone would argue against that. Combat may also be filled with too many 'defensive' talents as well. That is debatable.

Either way it doesn't matter right now, Blizzard is just trying to put these abilities in and make them work. There are so many talents that are NYI or just don't work right now (or in the case of DK talents crashing the server). I think their main push is to make everything work. The AP multiplier on poisons was a first stab at it; they know the talent works now and now they're working on getting other talents to just work reliably.

We all know poisons are getting some kind of nerf before 3.x goes live and even if combat doesn't have its tree changed, I'm confident that base modifiers will put its damage output in line with mutilate. (If you need another example of talents gone wild... Have you seen what mirror image is doing right now? Crazy and way out of line.)

It's Blizzards MO to build the machine and then fiddle with the knobs. Fiddling with knobs now before the machine is built is pointless.

 

Ratak - US KT

It wouldn't be 'that' extreme at all as you'd still be able to do DPS from the front. With the (old/current) positioning requirement of Mutilate you do zero DPS from that ability if you are at the front. With the suggested talents you'd do 90%/95% (or 70%/75% if opportunity is maintained as currently). There is quite a big difference between 0% & 95% (or 75%).

Today all rogues attack from the back to avoid cleaves and parries (and getting a small DPS bonus as a result). Why would a talent that 'adds' some additional DPS change this? There already is a positioning requirement.

 

sp00n

Well, the current positioning requirement is more a chance to do less DPS, as you have another option added to the roll, which is parry. So you don't necessarily lose DPS when the boss turns and faces you (or someone in your direction).

What you are proposing would be a flat DPS decrease whenever the boss turns, which - as already mentioned - is something you cannot control and only adds more to the randomness, which I feel is always a bad thing in a game where you have to work together with so many other players, who already form a random factor on themselves.

Moreover you would have to balance encounters around this 10% increased damage, as it would be an absolute must-have for raiding rogues. Balancing an encounter around a positional requirement is just bad in my opinion.


// Edit
Also it would require some effort in changes to the code, as there would have to be added a check for white DPS as well. Yellow damage wouldn't be such a problem, as there are already codes available for this, but white damage is a total different mechanic (1 roll).

 

Greymist1

The notion of bypassing upgrades just because they would reduce hit is of course silly. But it has nothing to do with the reasons why I suspect that T5 was designed for mutilate.

Reason #1: Yes, it was itemized differently. Compared to T4, it flips the amount of hit and crit rating (T4 totals: 81 hit 25 crit, T5: 24 hit 81 crit). Crit rating isn't great for any spec due to its poor converstion rate to crit%. But if that's what your gear's got, crit does more for mutilate than combat. (And in the other direction, hit does more for combat than mutilate.) T5 also spends a lot of budget on agi, which works well for either spec but is more valuable to mutilate.

Reason #2: set bonuses. T4 and T6 each have very powerful 2-piece bonuses for combat builds. T5 2-piece was at least somewhat useful for mutilate (given that conventional wisdom back then had mutilate cycles using eviscerate frequently), but it was nearly useless for combat. And T5 4 piece should be better for mutilate than combat unless its proc rate is really low, since mutilate generates more finishers.

 

Akka

There is also Curator and Void Reaver.
Not a lot of bosses overall, though, that's true.
Sorry, but being able to burn a creature formed entirely of magical fire is just absurd. Being able to poison a pile of metal is just as much ridiculous (and yes, being able to make constructs and noncorporeal undead bleed is in the same boat).
Gameplay is good and all, but there is still the "RPG" in "MMORPG", and I like when things make sense, and total immunity in some cases is just mandatory.
It's always possible to find alternate ways to alleviate excessive punishment to some classes/spec relying too much on a single element : let's invent an "acidic poison" able to make sub-optimal damage, but damage still, to constructs ; the frostfire spell which allows to use one or the other school ; a glyph allowing your spell to do 75 % of the damage of the spell in another element if the foe is immune to the base element... You just have to use your imagination.

If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !

 

Ashere

In a game with people who have fire coming out of their fingertips, there's always an excuse available for about anything you see. Constructs may bleed, of course, they're bound to have pipes and tubes from which fluids like oil or plasma or whatever may leak. Similarly, some of their components might be of biological origin, which would actually be a hidden weakness to, for example, poisons.
An ethereal creature might not experience fire damage as fire at all, but as a form of pure energy instead. Even if energy directed at itself is of the same type as the energy the creature is composed of, it might be damaging. The creature isn't made up of a limitless amount of said energy, so there are bounderies to the amount of energy it can hold. More energy could basically mean an overload.

However, I don't think these forums, or to be more precise, this thread, are meant to discus these things, however interesting they might be lore-wise. As it is now, we're mostly interested in how Blizzard is ballancing the different trees, making them (more or less) equals, yet different in playstyle and mechanics. And of course, what we can get out of it raid-wise.

 

Loot

Guys, sorry for the shameless plug to the topic, but I just have a bad feeling. Just now read, for about 10th time blue post that all dps classes will do similar dps in wotlk. Quote: WoW Forums -> Feelings on Shamans after completing Naxx25.
Given that, is there any reason one should take rogue in raid instead of druid? Druid can give buffs, can innervate (less useful in wotlk), combatres (mad useful) and even without the few talent points to tank can hop in bear (now that gear is same) in the middle of the combat and be pretty descent OT/MT and save the day.

I just... fail to see where rogue spot goes in this scenario, and not speaking about the "you can bring your friends bla bla" but real raids where efficiency and min/maxing is needed.

 

Milano

Tricks of the Trade. Just hoping they won't nerf it entirely before release. I think rogues will be pulling off more DPS than hybrids still though.

 

Kumar

Patchwerk

DPS/WWS Report for Naxx, Patchwerk report here (This is not me but from another guild).

The Rogue doesn't seem to be specced into Imp. Poisons looking at the % contribution to his total damage from IP.

 

Ratak - US KT

Oh I agree I wouldn't be a fan of the change, but it wouldn't be as extreme a 'positioning requirement' as was suggested in the rebuttal. And the practical effect would be fairly little for Rogues as we can often queue energy and fight from the back anyway.

Anyway this is heading into semantics ... and the devs'll do what they need to do anyway which we'll all adjust too, so I'm not too bothered either way. And I love the work Vulajin has done on his DPS sheet!

 

Bonhart

Hello!
Long time reader, first time poster.

I am not a number cruncher, but I appreciate your work.

Decided to post cause after reading some posts it striked me that some of you may be missing some flavours of our class.

First, however the numbers currently may be a bit to high, poisons are the essence of our class, and as such they should play major role in our damage tables, regardless of spec. I find it a bit broken that white damage was for last two years, making us a hit rating whores. Where is a skill in it?

Second. I won't get popular by saying that, but I believe there is a some sort of philosophy behind names of our trees. IMHO Combat was not intended to be a raiding tree. How can you call slashing a mob with big sword from behind a Combat, while it is focused on a tank... I'd rather call it assassination... Combat for me is when I am facing my opponent. And then all of what you call "filler talents" make sense. Dodge, parry, riposte.

I know we don't want to be forced to one tree, I know some think their toons look better with swords than daggers. But guess what, we were raiding under "combat swords or GTFO" flag. It is time for changes. It will make game more fun in a long run by killing routine. Maybe next expansion Subtlety will rule.

Pardon my English. Keep up good work.