I'll disagree with this somewhat. Yes, it would be OP if it affected energy regen at the same percentage that it affects swing speed. There isn't any reason to assume that would necessarily be the case. You could easily construct a model where 1% haste affected swing speed by 1% and energy regen by 0.5%, or 0.1%, or whatever tuning level you like. The real reason to suspect they won't make haster affect energy regen is that haste is acknowledged to be a weak stat for all melee classes, so any change to it is likely to buff it for all classes (with compensatory nerfs elsewhere if that puts other classes over the top).

That's true songster, but I don't think we should assume that Blizzard needs any given stat to perform in the same way for all classes. That is most certainly not the case for a number of stats as is; agility and strength comes to mind, parry for DK's, dodge for a combat rogue with the talent to make use of it and so on. Basically, I think they feel it adds "flavor" between the classes and I tend to agree with them.

That is; I believe that haste could very well have some sort of energy/rage/rune/whatever component that differs between classes while also affecting swing times.

Changing something that affects all classes similarly does nothing to resolve the issue rogues are having. Let's say tomorrow Blizzard changes a mechanic so that we're doing 7k dps. Rejoice! Only, that same mechanic change has pushed fury warriors to 8k dps.

Mission accomplished?

I think that tweaking with the energy system is what's making Blizzard take so long in terms of finding a solution. A tiny push in either direction will have a pretty dramatic increase both in terms of our pve dps and our burst in pvp. It's a very difficult thing to tune around if you think about it, and although I would love to see some of our effective haste translate into faster energy regen, it's pretty easy to see the harm in it.

GC had a post today which mildly touches on buffs and debuffs. The part I find relevant to rogues (originally talking about mage +10% spell crit debuff):

Honestly, the only thing that comes to mind is Sunder/Expose Armor. We can hope it'll come with an easier way to maintain Expose Armor, but my guess is -armor is getting nerfed.

I just noticed the very same post, and since he mentioned gamechanging, I can only think of Sunder/EA as well. However, if he means a unique melee debuff, he has to be talking about Hermorrhage. I'm just not sure what I'm missing about it being gamechanging, since with a proper spec, you'll hardly use it anymore, and even in TBC, the Hemorrhage debuff could hardly be called game-changing.

Might be GC's talking about warrior's deep wounds.

If they tweak EA/SA though there is a very realistic chance that they will adjust npc armor as well. In the end that would mean that the debuff simply becomes less of a loss if you do not have it but the overall situation when you do have it remains the same. There is very little reason to panic about that just yet (Unless you really like to EA clothies :o )

13% Spelldamage is even worse so there's that.
As for Melee I can only think of Buffs doing that for us other than Major Armor reduce, our debuffs are pretty weak.

If he tripped up on his use of the word 'debuff' he could be refering to the 10% AP or 20% haste buffs, or concievably 5% crit or static AP. For debuffs, major armor is the only real possibility, except maaaaybe mangle/trauma.

With the way that armor penetration works right now (% of armor left after debuffs), nerfing sunder armor should increase the value of ArP rating, since it would be reducing more absolute armor. Would a significant change to sunder (like halving it) be enough to make armor penetration not a trash stat? (For varying definitions of not a trash stat.)

I don't think there's any question that it's the major armor debuff. Consider that SA or EA removes nearly one-third of a boss's total armor, which works out to increasing all non-DOT physical damage by nearly 17% (when minor armor debuff is also present) or 16.1% (when it isn't) against raid bosses. It's much more powerful than the 10% spell crit buff.

As for how much armor penetration rating is hurt by armor subtraction debuffs, the answer is a lot. Let's say the only change to armor penetration that they made was to make percentage-based armor removal take place before subtraction-based armor removal. The result of this would be to increase the value of armor penetration rating by around 65%, and it gets better as you obtain more. However, this result is dependent on the major and minor armor debuffs being present. When neither is available, naturally there would be no damage difference between the two methods since there is no subtraction-based armor removal present.

Personally I think Blizzard should just change all armor subtraction debuffs into percentage debuffs. I think the main reason Blizzard didn't do this was because of the PVP implications, but based on my observations I think it would actually work out better for PVP at this stage.

This looked wrong to me, but (sort of) maths out. Wrath bosses (so far) all have 13083 armor, and the reduction is given by %= A/(A+15232.5). Put on major and minor debuffs, and assume you have 10% ArP (which would be relatively high). 7898 is armor after debuffs, ArP makes it 7108.

Current: 0% ARP = 34.1% reduction = 65.9% damage multiplier
10% ARP = 31.8% reduction = 68.2% damage multiplier
damage done increase = 68.2/65.9 = 3.5% per 10% arp

w/o armor debuffs: 0% arp = 46.1% reduction = 53.9% damage mult
10% arp = 43.5% reduction = 56.5% damage mult
damage done increase = 56.5/53.9 = 4.8% per 10% arp

So the stat becomes about 35% more valuable. Of course, damage overall goes down 15%, assuming they don't make any other changes. I've got a fair amount of ArP on my gear (around 8% i think, plus a trinket that procs for more), and this is kind of counter-intuitive to me because I've noticed I do very poorly on fights when warriors can't be bothered to put up sunders, and much better when they do, relative to other melee dps'ers.

Ghostcrawler click:

Wasn't it stated some time ago by blizzard that they were going to buff Lightning Reflexes?

Doesn't some kind of haste buff to this talent make too much sense thematically and logistically?

ATM the talent never sees points put into it.

Perhaps reducing it to a 3 pt talent and adding a %base haste increase?

GC said the Lightning reflexes buff was just a thought he shared with something they might change. When asked later about it he said it was something they considered at the the time but later dropped; the community just latched onto it though as a promise (like they often do) and then cried "liar" when nothing came of it.

Not to say it may not change later, but there's nothing said to be in the works; in fact they've been very quiet on rogue changes due to the "crafty" way we use PvE abilities in PvP.

Actually, they said they would buff Lightning Reflexes because there were no DPS talents at that tier in combat and that it was lacking even as a defensive talent at that tier. Then they moved Aggression down to the same tier and said that they felt that addressed the issue.

Given the DPS lag, I wouldn't say it's a bad idea to go back and buff it as the originally were going to do.

These notes are probably fake or just very preliminary: Believe it or Don't: Patch 3.1 notes leaked? - WoW Insider

Regarding Rogues:

• Adrenaline Rush is now available to all Rogues at Level 30.
• New Talent: Focused Combat, 25 Energy, 3 min cooldown – When activated, the rogue goes into a focused state of combat, increasing all damage done by 30%, changing targets will cancel this effect. Lasts 15 sec.
• Envenom: Damage for all ranks increased slightly.
• Expose Armor: Now reduces the enemy's armor by a percent value instead of a flat value.
• Improved Expose Armor: No longer reduces the energy cost of Expose Armor. Now increases the armor reduced by 2%/4%.
• Tricks of the Trade: Duration reduced to 5 seconds.
• Prey on the Weak: Critical strike damage now increased by 5%/10%/15%/20%/25%.
• Close Quarters Combat: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with all weapons.
• Kick: Damage dealt significantly increased.
• Throwing Specialization: Also increases damage dealt by Fan of Knives by 15%/30%.
• Surprise Attacks: Damage bonus increased to 15%.
• Savage Combat: Now increases attack power by 4%/8%.
• Fan of Knives: Now causes 75% weapon damage with all weapons.
• Killing Spree: All damage dealt while this ability is active is increased by 20%.

And in general:

• Potency Rating: Haste Rating, Armor Penetration Rating and Spell Penetration have been merged into a single stat. Each percent of Potency will decrease the enemy's spell resistances and armor; it will also increase the player's cast speed and melee attack speed.



Playing along if this were true, my initial thoughts is that there may be too many buffs into combat. The fan of knives nerf wouldn't be a surprise, trash aoe dps is pretty ridiculous and dual spec'ing for it in 3.1 will only further ahead. AR being trainable makes me think it'd have to be nerfed to balance for pvp bursting.

Sorry but i cant see anything of that happen, it would result in at least 15% more combat dps...

Very interesting, thx for posting. Would probably make swords king again.

I was kind of having fun with fan of knives on trash, but I hardly think it put me on top of the meters. I'd be on top of the meters for trash pulls done in 10 seconds or less, or for the first ten seconds, but after you facemash that thing 3 or 4 times, there's not much else you can do -- you have no energy left to start building up a cycle. If trash pulls are indeed more complicated in Ulduar, people probably wouldn't do this anyways.

Disappointed by the change to imp expose. Right now, it's worth talent points if I *know* that my fury warriors won't put it up, or I can't beg a hunter to train a pet for acid spit, and the glyph helped when I used it, because it at least makes it an energy positive finisher since you would get back +10 energy beyond the 25 from relentless strikes. It would be an even bigger dps loss to keep this up the whole fight, and it's a bit silly to think that you should be expected to for the good of the raid -- assassination rogues aren't hybrids and finishers are very expensive. I would expect a corresponding change to serrated blades (also faerie fire).

But yeah, huge buffs to combat. I much prefer mutilate/daggers, because I think it's a more complex/demanding playstyle, but I felt that way in BC, too, and raided fist/sword the whole way through that. Good thing I have swords in the bank.

Also, can we please get a new word besides potency? Combat potency, arcane potency, potency enchants... I feel like Bob Dole is going to start shooting WoW commercials. The stat merge sounds interesting here, but I think what's really happening is that they'll make different amounts of "potency" do different things for different classes, like, say, agility gives different %crit per agi for each class, and the impact will all depend on the numbers. Seems unduly ambitious to me, given they just needed to tweak things around the edges, but I'm sure the devs know best.

These notes look pretty elaborate, I'd be impressed if anyone could fake something like this, but I'm equally sure that they're not final.

MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies


Front page people. Those notes are fake. Moving on...

As a note: given that those patch notes are now widely believed to be fake, and the fact that there are a number of very obvious problems with them, further discussion thereof seems unproductive. If at some point some portion of them is proved to be true: so be it, we can discuss them. But until that time, discussion of them serves no purpose and may result infractions. You have been warned.

This is my first post here, but I have been following this forum for a long time, and this thread in particular since it went up. I have yet to see what I consider to be one of the most pressing problems facing rogues, which is the scaling of mutilate compared to combat.

Combat currently lags very slightly behind in an instance where murderable mobs are not the norm. Ulduar will probably be considerably more populated with humanoids, so this in itself is a problem. Worse, though, imo is this: It is more than possible (though not ideal) to reach poison hit cap w/o ever stepping foot in any raid instance. I can't raid w/ my rogue at the moment because my guild needs my tank. Nevertheless, he is shy only the Gun'drak epic pants from 315 hit. Since we all know that going past 315 hit is sub-optimal, that means 315 hit is the basic extent of combat potency for energy regen. Focused attacks, however, will continue to scale up to the crit cap created by that same hit rating (approximately 65%).

Combat currently has at least some benefits to recommend it: it's more functional in 5-mans where the short life of most mobs doesn't completely screw up your rotation, it provides slightly better aoe, it's easier to gear for, and blade storm + AR = burst when you really need it (e.g. during bloodlust). However, without signifigant changes to rogue talents and/or mechanics, as content progresses Mutilate will pull further and further ahead until it is no longer just the ideal spec. It will be the only spec.

Blizzard has stated (repeatedly) that our dps is low across the board, and that combat and subtlety are even further behind than assassination is. Although it hasn't been explicitly stated by Blue, I would wager that we shouldn't necessarily include the greater expected chance to have more murder-able bosses in Ulduar as a 'buff' to our class. My reasoning for this is that since they have explicitly stated about retribution paladins that they should not view all the undead bosses in Naxx as a potential nerf to their DPS when transitioning to Ulduar, we should likewise see ourselves in a similar light regarding Murder and the switch from undead to Humanoid/Giant bosses.