PvE DPS / WotLK Discussion - Page 84

Vissa · 08/25/08, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by patcherke

In the 'makes things easier' part, you also take 3+ mages to MH, to sheep the necromancers, and to provide AoE.
While it isn't 'necessary' (you can also take locks for the AoE) , it is higly recommended because it makes the trash killing there a lot easier. Why not provide something like that for rogues in the form of lockpicks?

We never do this. We usually have one or maybe two mages who are focusing on doing AOE damage. The 2 rogues and our dps warriors usually run up, get aggro on the necros, and drag 'em back into the AOE mess while interrupting their shadow bolts.

Theres lots of situations rogues can provide extra utility just by saying "Hey, I can handle this" when discussing how certain pulls are going to be handled.

While I certainly have no problems with Blizzard coming up with extra things for us to do to help out a raid, lockingpicking doesn't sound all that exciting. "Ok, now...go pick that lock" <button click> "Ok, lets go."

Feist-Mok · 08/25/08, 11:47 AM

The thing that makes Kick so powerful really, is that it has the highest lockout:cooldown ratio of any interrupt in the game, at 5 seconds/10 seconds meaning 2 rogues interrupting provides a perfect rotation - the only other interrupt with the same ratio is Shield Bash, but generally, tanks have other demands for their rage bar and their attention. Any comments regarding missrate and resist chances, are secondary to that.

Cooljo · 08/25/08, 12:44 PM

Originally Posted by Daler

Apologies for a small tangent, but to clarify, the likelihood of enhancement shaman reaching the spell hit cap in WotLK is looking pretty darn slim if it stays at 16%. And even at spell hit cap, we still have 1% resist rate. It's my understanding that Kick acts as other physical specials and can have miss eliminated from the attack table.

It will most likely remain a smaller disturbance of our combat cycle than Kick is for rogues, but when push comes to shove, rogues are more reliable for interrupting successfully and will likely continue to be so.

It's true, kick misses can be pushed down from the table. The removal of the GCD adds into the strength of kick. Earthshock keeps its GCD but the new 71+ ranks will have a 8-9% base miss chance (like all other new Ranks of all spells in WotLK) like a good enhancer friend of mine told me. This is easily capped I think.

Originally Posted by gwystyl

I thought they were removing the 1% spell resist minimum?

Never heared anything like that though...

And to add to the discussion: I think(hope) that Blizzard makes its promises come true and make it possible to invite good friends rather than the needed classes to a raid. This would make the "what brings the rogue to the table?"-discussion obsolete, because the rogue should bring enough as he is your friend... you get the point... I hope :|

• gwystyl · 08/25/08, 1:15 PM

Maybe I'm just losing my mind in the flood of hearsay / wotlk change announcements. I was hoping someone definitively knew if I was just flat-out wrong about Blizzard's intention to remove the 1% minimum spell resist. Seeing as how nobody has come forward and said "yes, that's right," I think it's best to conclude that "no, that's wrong." My apologies!

Regarding bringing friends, that has always been the spirit of casual play. There is absolutely nothing wrong with making sure casual play endures and that the game remains a *social* game. But as long as there are raid instances set as tier upon tier of difficulty, there will be people competing for the accolades of first world / region / server / faction.

The people who play in that venue also need to have their needs addressed and it is certain that every progression minded raid team will take the optimal choice.

Garren · 08/25/08, 1:19 PM

Originally Posted by Danzir

No disrespect (you are much more geared than me and obviously play your class well) but maybe you were brought along (the za runs) because they were short on talent and needed a space filled. Or perhaps you are friends with those going. I am by NO MEANS dogging you but to be part of a raid because we 'help out a bit' and we might be relegated to the 'phone answering' class.. alot of other classes clear trash mobs alot better. kinda sucks. ( i am just speculating on what others are saying about wotlk and our role) - so I want to move away from this thought process that we can be brought along cause we can kick or somesuch. I can't wait for the whispers after a raid "man, you kick real well. Glad we brought you along. Btw can you stop by the vendor and pick some things up for us..." :-)

I run with a ZA group that is typically pretty caster heavy, and my DPS generally shows it - but I still place on the meters, and frankly, a bear run is at least as much about the trash as the bosses, and short CDs like BF significantly close the gap. It's certainly true that my ZA spot was primarily earned by knowing how to play my class and a sort of expectation inertia where they think about my 25 man DPS, but if they replaced me with a caster, he would have to be the caster group pariah and his DPS would suffer too. My point being that even though my DPS is much less than it could be, group composition makes it so that other classes wouldn't actually be in a better postion.

I think everyone acknowledges that this expansion, mages were generally behind warlocks - and yet, even in guilds leading progression, mages were able to make it to progression fights. All this whining about whether or not we will be able to make it to raids is absolutely silly, because even in the situation that we are surpassed by other classes, we will still be earning raid spots.

A little off topic, but actually, the more I have thought about ZA, the more I really admire the great balance that went into it. I've done ZA with many different compositions, and been able to succeed. To my observation, player skill, knowledge of the instance, and gear play much more of a role in success than class composition.

Originally Posted by Vissa

We never do this. We usually have one or maybe two mages who are focusing on doing AOE damage. The 2 rogues and our dps warriors usually run up, get aggro on the necros, and drag 'em back into the AOE mess while interrupting their shadow bolts.

Theres lots of situations rogues can provide extra utility just by saying "Hey, I can handle this" when discussing how certain pulls are going to be handled.

While I certainly have no problems with Blizzard coming up with extra things for us to do to help out a raid, lockingpicking doesn't sound all that exciting. "Ok, now...go pick that lock" <button click> "Ok, lets go."

Yes, exactly. Handling necros and pulling them into AoE doesn't just make the pulls go faster, but it also allows melee to do something other than lament their inability to do AoE.

Rogues have a pretty significant toolkit, and there are more ways for us to contribute to a raid than just DPS. Certainly, I personally hope that our ability to provide buffs/utility is expanded in WotLK, but to say that we provide nothing other than DPS even now is overstating a little bit.

Stylle · 08/25/08, 1:34 PM

Originally Posted by Garren

I think everyone acknowledges that this expansion, mages were generally behind warlocks - and yet, even in guilds leading progression, mages were able to make it to progression fights. All this whining about whether or not we will be able to make it to raids is absolutely silly, because even in the situation that we are surpassed by other classes, we will still be earning raid spots.

Look, I understand that the whining on the regular forums is infantile and so trying to project an image that is the opposite of that is to be expected on a board like this. But statements like these are simply unhelpful. What is the point of mentioning that mages still got taken to progression raids in tBC? Blizzard has admitted multiple times that the situation with mages in tBC was unacceptable. That stacking 4 warlocks and bringing one mage to a boss fight was a sign of poor class balance. That they were working to remedy this and trying to ensure that the optimal raid didn't have such imbalances because one class was so much better than another at the same role.

Given all of that, what is the point of stating that if rogues are poorly balanced we won't be entirely excluded from raids? At worst Blizz hears this and assumes that we don't need improvements (highly unlikely of course). At best Blizz ignores statements like these. Unless you think it would actually be ok for us to be as poorly designed for raids as mages were in tBC, then what possible point is there to stating – for the umpteenth time – the obvious fact that there won't be literarily zero rogues in WotLK progression raids? Why do so many knowledgeable people keep bringing it up as though it were at all pertinent?

Tryss · 08/25/08, 2:29 PM

Originally Posted by Feist-Mok

Requiring a Rogue to Disarm/Lockpick, even if it's only to make things 'easier' runs directly counter to blizzards new philosophy of " You should be able to bring any group comp so long as you've got tank/healer/dps ratio's right" - they don't want any class to be mandatory for any fight. I'd wager the new Instructor Razuvious will be set up w/ a Mind Control orb to eliminate the need for priests, etc. etc.

There's also those seaforium charges Engineers can make and the skeleton keys Blacksmithing can make ... I'm aware they didn't make any new skeleton keys in TBC, but pre-BC the max-level key (Arcanite Skeleton Key) was equal to 300 LP, and the max-level charge in TBC (Elemental Seaforium Charge) is equal to 350 LP. They can easily introduce new recipes to match 400 LP in WotLK, and it shouldn't be unreasonable for Blizz to expect one of these three options to be in a raid. It doesn't even have to be a requirement, but something to make life easier like in Shattered Halls.

phixx · 08/25/08, 2:50 PM

really? do people care that much about being able to use lock picking in raids/dungeons? really?

who gives a shit...

im pretty sure raiding would mean contributing to a RAID and progressing through an instance to KILL bosses, and in our case contributing by putting out the highest dps possible while staying alive.

do people think that there will be some massive parade at the end of the game because you were able to open a chest/door that gave you a shortcut to a boss or in another case the option to kill a new boss? IMO lock picking is pretty much a passive ability and if you didn't skill it up while you were leveling then you were super lazy or didn't give a shit.

whats next on the list for the lock picking argument? you want half of the loot that come out of the locked boxes you pick in org? think of it like mage food/water/portal....it comes with the class, its not going to make or break a raid/dungeon, and its sure as hell not going to make people drool over bringing a rogue over someone who is engineering and can make a charge to blow up a lock. Nor will we lose a raid spot because of it.

lets read some more crying about something else MORE ridiculous than lock picking please.

**and yes this is my first post, but i have been reading EJ forums for quite some time, i think that this topic of our "WotLK pve dps thread" finally caused me to point out something so useless and petty.

• Aldriana · 08/25/08, 3:12 PM

Miscellaneous thoughts about topics in the last page.

First, on hybrid SF/Combat builds for swords/fists: I just don't see that these are going to be that good. As has been previously discussed in this thread, the damage contribution of SF is just not that large, and losing Combat Potency and other powerful combat talents to get it strikes me as unlikely to be productive. At the moment I think the only SF/Combat build that makes any sense whatsoever is 30/41, and that's more a reflection on the weakness of the high-level combat abilities than it is a sign of the viability of SF/Combat builds.

I'm also of the opinion that worrying about exact builds should wait until after we actually have the final talent trees, but maybe that's just me.

On the topic of our utility abilities and their places in raids: I'm not averse to the occasional suppression-room type encounter where we have to fill other than our usual role through use of our secondary abilities; however, I think any attempt to make them a significant portion of raiding (i.e., more than one or two gimmick fights per expansion) would turn out to be annoying. I also think it highly unlikely that any encounter will actually require a rogue class-specific ability, given the movement in the expansion towards making classes more interchangeable. Our security in raids will likely not come from being able to do something that no one else can, but the fact that no class can do anything that another class can't - we'll just be a high-DPS class with some miscellaneous utility just like everyone else. As we do have certain weaknesses I imagine our DPS will be a bit higher than most classes, but I think it's unlikely that we'll be asked to do anything truly rogue-specific - or at least, if we are, it'll only be in the occasional gimmick fight, I suspect.

In general: I do think we want to have more than the pity raid spots that Mages were getting in this expansion, and I don't think anyone is advocating otherwise. I also think that the way we're going to get them is not by increased use of our class abilities, but more or less the same way we always have - high DPS, useful utility in terms of snare/debuff removal, good threat management, and one of the better interrupts. And if that's not what we're seeing so far in the WotLK beta, I would argue that that's a clear symptom of the fact that the class hasn't been tuned in the beta yet.

Arindelest · 08/25/08, 3:17 PM

I think it's quite clear at this point that the utility we are going to be getting (yes, Blizzard has said we will be getting some) will not be some gimmick such as lockpicking or trap disarming, so I'm not sure why the debate is raging over whether lockpicking or the like is "viable" or "useful" utility. On that subject there was some fairly extensive discussion of the Suppression Room a while back in this thread, the conclusion being that while rogue gimmicks do exist and are somewhat interesting when used once in a while, it wouldn't be a lot of fun for that to be one of our "main goals."

As for Sap, Sap will become more viable in that it's now usable on a lot more mob types -- in addition, we get a new rank increasing the duration to 55 seconds. Although it'd be nice to have a refreshable Sap (as other have mentioned) the PvP ramifications of that change could be huge depending on how the change would be implemented. I'm not sure anyone thinks that a rogue should be able to CC anything within 10 yards for 10 seconds for a minimal energy cost.

• gwystyl · 08/25/08, 3:25 PM

Originally Posted by Arindelest

Although it'd be nice to have a refreshable Sap (as other have mentioned) the PvP ramifications of that change could be huge depending on how the change would be implemented. I'm not sure anyone thinks that a rogue should be able to CC anything within 10 yards for 10 seconds for a minimal energy cost.

They can make the mechanics for Sap different in PvE and PvP. I don't see how a PvE renewable Sap is imbalanced.

drumbum · 08/25/08, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by gwystyl

Maybe I'm just losing my mind in the flood of hearsay / wotlk change announcements. I was hoping someone definitively knew if I was just flat-out wrong about Blizzard's intention to remove the 1% minimum spell resist. Seeing as how nobody has come forward and said "yes, that's right," I think it's best to conclude that "no, that's wrong." My apologies!

According to this post, there is no 1% minimum spell resist in the WOTLK beta.

Harkkum · 08/25/08, 3:57 PM

I am not entirely sure if this is the correct thread for this, but as it is about DPS and WotLK I guess it fits in perfectly well. I read here the other day about the latest beta patch on WotLK servers which implemented rogue glyphs and to a somewhat of a surprise found out that most of the glyphs are rather worthless for DPS. For example there is not a single direct buff for the combo-awarding abilities that are widely used by raiding rogues.

Certainly, a longer duration for rupture and slice and dice are nice and dandy but I fail to see are they really on par with e.g. the mage's flat out 2% critical strike increase from molten armor, 5% DPS increase to frostbolt damage or 20% additional mana gained through mage armor. On top of the relatively weak DPS upgrade the glyphs provide some of them seem fairly odd: For what purpose does +5 yards to the range of ambush serve?

All in all, I'd like to hear opinions as of what kind of glyphs there should be in order to turn them from mere gimmick into something tangible on DPS front. I personally would rather see situational boosts (e.g. when there are five stacks of deadly poison...) on the combo-awarding abilities rather than longer duration for evasion which nowadays feels moreso a kiss of death than a lifesaver.

jonnnney · 08/25/08, 4:00 PM

Has there been any information on the damage mechanics of fan of knives, is it more like sinister strike or eviscerate? Specifically whether there is a general attack power modifier or it is 1.7 for daggers and 2.4 for non-daggers. I do not want to have to keep some fists, maces, or swords as backup for additional aoe damage with a dagger build.

Also is anyone else as concerned as me with the potential changes of armor penetration? I like how it is now where you scaling stat seems boring to me and odd considering all the armor debuffs have set values instead of percentages. Examples of armor penetration rating have occurred on some wotlk items but not others
Saronite Ambusher
Elanor's Edge

Also while I agree that focusing on requiring lock picking alone in raids is kinda silly. I would like to see some situations where a few stealth characters can change the tide of battle on a gauntlet type situation or allow for skipping certain groups of trash. I still remember whenever we did SSC someone in the raid would mention the naked dwarf running off to solo tidewalker for a few seconds so that the hallway was clear of murlocs. That ways rogues may not specifically be required to attend for the 10 mans as druids, mages, or even some warlock and hunter pets could assist.

On a side note total armor penetration is not shown in the armory which angers me.

• gwystyl · 08/25/08, 4:04 PM

I think the benefit of glyphs is going to be really tricky for the devs. They have their work cut out for them. You can create simple scaling glyphs that increase our crit damage or rate, haste, etc, but anything that tinkers with durations will lead to trouble. The +3s SnD glyph is nice in theory, I mean permanent 2/5 t4? But ends up tripping over itself when you look at the other seemingly enticing raid glyphs like +5s of rupture, which others have already pointed to with a ? above their heads.

The easy thing to do would be to look at tier set bonuses, IMO, and see if any of them can suitably qualify but then you get to the problem (?) of what to do with the actual sets. At first I looked at set bonuses we used to enjoy and thought that would be our answer (picking out the ones I found noteworthy):

T0 / T0.5
Chance on melee attack to restore 35 energy (!!!)

T1
Reduces cooldown of Vanish by 30s
Heals 500 health when Vanish is performed

ZG
Decreases energy cost of Evi/Rup by 5

Aq20 (BIG FAN of this set, especially considering the 5 piece new sets)
-10 energy cost of SnD (!!!)

T2
Increases chance to apply poisons by 5%
Gives the Rogue a chance to inflict 283 to 317 damage on the target and heal the Rogue for 50 health every 1 sec. for 6 sec. on a melee hit.

T2.5
15% increased Eviscerate damage

T3
Your Backstab, Sinister Strike, and Hemorrhage critical hits cause you to regain 5 energy.
Reduces the threat from your Backstab, Sinister Strike, Hemorrhage, and Eviscerate abilities.
Your Eviscerate has a chance per combo point to reveal a flaw in your opponent's armor, granting a 100% critical hit chance for your next Backstab, Sinister Strike, or Hemorrhage.

Assassination Blue
KS/CS proc +160 haste rating for 6s

Wastewalker Blue
+35 hit rating (!!!)
Chance on hit for +160 AP for 15s

T4
+3s SnD Duration
+15% (additive to Ruthlessness) chance on finisher to apply another CP

T5
Chance at free energy finisher

T6
Increase SnD haste by 5%
Increase BS, SS, Hemo, Mut damage by 6% (additive, wish this was multiplicative)

Any of those would make really great starting points for glyph ideas. But, that wouldn't leave Blizzard much to put on the sets. They could take some combination of these (Which is the route they were forced to go) allowing us to use glyphs to "keep" the previous bonuses we enjoyed, but that seems kind of dull.