Bad idea. Murder is already too strong point-for-point on murderable mobs. I assume that's because it's situational, but that then means we can either be balanced with Murder or without, never both. To be honest, it would be better if Murder was removed entirely in its current form - talents that operate diffently on different mob types are just wrong from a balance point of view.
Not to mention such a solution to reduce glancing blows completely ignores Combat Rogues.
There's little worry about combat around so i'm going to share something i think i haven't read around here yet.
- Pluggin best slots on a 7/51/13 Combat Fist/dagger Build.
- Wound/Wound. Putting Deadly on the MH makes DPS drop by 0.03% (yeah, meaningless maybe...). On the OH drops 0.30%.
- DPS on the spreadsheet (Vulajin's one, updated.) shows 5056,55 DPS.
- 4s/5r cycle
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now we create a Calamity's Grasp with 1,40 speed, same DPS, same Stats and put it in the MH.
DPS increases by 0.01% 5057,20 (Ok, we can say it does not change)
If we create a 2,7 Calamity's Grasp DPS increases by 0.12%, (if we apply deadly Poison +0.22%)
But if we create a 1.3 Calamity's Grasp DPS increases by 0.33%
Does this mean combat is approaching Fast/Fast weapon choices, as Mutilate, if things stay the same?
This only applies to Fist/Dagger spec. On a Fist/Sword spec slow MH still comes up ahead by 50DPS due to OH sword specialization procs wich cause a MH extra attack.
Maybe i missed some important factor, if so, i'm sorry >.<
It would be interesting to see the difference at higher AP levels with the poison scaling.
The proposed solution was tied to Murder. Combat builds don't take murder. Which is among the numerous reasons that I doubt that solution will come to pass. Frankly, I think anything involving glancing blows is somewhat unlikely, but we'll have to wait and see what they come up with.
One of the things that I have disliked for the longest time is our scaling with bloodlust. Even in TBC it was only so-so compared to what you could do with the same buff as a caster. With just about every class already on par or surpassing our DPS, having them scale better with one of the most significant buffs in the game just seems...wrong.
So, since apparently we have a "Do It Yourself: Home Rogue Improvements" thread, I want to offer a simple solution to this. Make our energy regen rate be affected by haste. Caster's already have a have a formula that decreases their cast time according to the amount of haste they have, directly increasing almost all of their DPS.
Energy regeneration rates should be affected by haste. If we wanted simple comparisons to cast times, these would be the top end numbers.
60 energy for Mutilate at 10 energy per second = 6 sec "cast time" on Mutilate.
40 energy for SS at 12 (Vitality) energy per second = 3.33 sec "cast time" on SS.
Now, these are absolute maximums. FA and Combat Potency reduce these numbers significantly, but neither benefits as much from haste as our caster counterparts do.
60 energy for Mutilate at 13 energy per second = 4.62 sec "cast time" on Mutilate.
40 energy for SS at 15 energy per second = 2.66 sec "cast time" on SS. (additive*)
40 energy for SS at 15.6 energy per second = 2.56 sec "cast time" on SS. (multiplicative**)
These would be the new absolute maximums for the time it would take for our base energy regen to allow us to use one of our abilities. It would fall much more in line with all the other classes, and would allow haste to directly affect a good 75% of our damage instead of the 30-40% it does now.
So, since apparently we have a "Do It Yourself: Home Rogue Improvements" thread, I want to offer a simple solution to this. Make our energy regen rate be affected by haste. Caster's already have a have a formula that decreases their cast time according to the amount of haste they have, directly increasing almost all of their DPS.
Energy regeneration rates should be affected by haste.
This thread really isn't supposed to be about "offering suggestions". I'd steer clear of that if I were you. Haste scaling has already been mentioned as a potential problem, the solutions are really up to Blizzard. That's an excellent candidate for the suggestions forums though; I would encourage you or anyone else to post suggestions there; Blizzard does read that forums though their policy is not to reply to those topics for obvious reasons.
As to Heroism (or haste in general) and how it affects caster cast times without affecting our casts times I mentioned that here. As nice or as "fair" as it might seem to have our cast times affected by haste, I really don't see Blizzard doing this for us (and DK rune regen and mana regen outside the 5SR) for a couple of reasons.
The first of which is that, while I'm sure they could, they don't like changing the game mechanics for a single class outside of talent choices. I.e., all dual wield classes have the same 27% miss chance but you can spec to change that. If they did change it so that energy was affected by haste then the uproar from other classes for a similar buff (rightly or wrongly) would be phenomenal. That just leaves a talent choice to alter the way haste works with us and something like that would likely have to be put in the first two tiers because of it's implication for all raiding specs. Even this though would bring outcry from other classes (rightly or wrongly) for a similar mechanic.
I do myself believe that haste should have always affected regen mechanics but changing it now seems a bit reckless in light of how small a change we could actually need. If Blizzard has a change like this in mind for the long term though this may be reasonable but I imagine it would happen with simultaneous changes to other classes.
Actually, I don't think haste mechanics are due for a change. It's clear that they want there to be "good stats" and "bad stats", such that higher Tiers of gear can have more of the "good stats" relative to "bad stats", and thus will be upgrades over and above the simple ilvl differences. Right now, haste is a bad stat for melee: this is by design. The reason it's a bad stat for melee is that it only affects white damage and not yellow - but this is the same for all melee. I don't think they'll consider altering that basic fact. Certainly the change you suggest would have the effect of almost doubling the value of haste - no way is that on the cards.
As far as "offering solutions" goes, obviously the will of the mods is king, but I have no problem with it in moderation - it's hard to talk about problems without identifying potential solutions, and talk about desired solutions can illuminate problems. However, as I said in the OP, there is a difference between the kind of *general* solution we should be thinking about, and the "I want a puppy" kind of wishlisting.
So far the "general solutions" listed are:
1) Decrease the opportunity cost of maintaining Expose Armor
2) Decrease the "spin up" time for Mutilate cycles, e.g. by having CttC actually start S'n'D running rather than just maintaining it
3) Reduce the penalty of HfB and/or S'n'D drops. Need to be careful here as this is part of the "play better"
4) Alter poison proc mechanics (plus Focused Attacks and/or Combat Potency) to reduce the scaling of damage with weapon speed rather than base DPS / stats.
5) Add suitable glyphs for Mutilate spec to fill the floating third slot and moderate the slight silliness where IP/IP outscales IP/DP.
Aldriana does not agree (4) is a needed fix, since DPS can be tweaked elsewhere and the itemisation team could just make more fast daggers, or alternatively make all daggers slow and juice DPS even more elsewhere. I disagree on that: I think it's silly to effectively tell the itemisation team to make all daggers the same speed, whatever that speed is. Furthermore, it's the gearing on weapon speed that leads to some of the other scaling issues with IP/DP.
I don't think the talents need changing much at all, I think a change to poison procs would be sufficient, CP very much suits the flavour of combat with one fast and one slow weapon, although that does have the side effect of pretty much negating the existence of fast fist weapons - an even faster dagger will always be preferable. FA could maybe stand some sort of change to make it proc only from offhand (or only mainhand) crits, to favour a similar fast/slow setup, but that may make it feel too much like CP.
Aldriana does not agree (4) is a needed fix, since DPS can be tweaked elsewhere and the itemisation team could just make more fast daggers, or alternatively make all daggers slow and juice DPS even more elsewhere. I disagree on that: I think it's silly to effectively tell the itemisation team to make all daggers the same speed, whatever that speed is. Furthermore, it's the gearing on weapon speed that leads to some of the other scaling issues with IP/DP.
You have to remember that World of Warcraft is a big game, and nothing can be changed in a vacuum. As such, even the smallest modification to poison mechanics can have many different impacts. If you make all poisons and focused attacks normalize with your weapon speed, then we would have a preference for slower weapons, just because they will deal more damage:mutilate. Simply put, and I'm not saying that it would be impossible, but I don't think a change to poisons/Focused Attacks can, somehow, be done in a way that your weapon speed won't matter for Mutilate in PvE, without completely changing the Mutilate mechanics.
Besides, I'm fairly sure Aldriana's argument isn't that they should make all daggers the same speed, but rather, at least make more than one single dagger in an entire raiding tier of optimal speed. The problem isn't that a 1.4 dagger is the best option, the problem is that there aren't many fast daggers in the game. Before 3.0/Wrath, a slow dagger was optimal, and that was hardly an issue... granted, there wasn't such a big disparity between weapon speeds and damage output, but just the sheer number of more accessible slow daggers made it a not a big deal. It is basically down to this: change the class mechanics to accommodate for poison damage/focused attacks while still not making slow daggers better because of Mutilate damage, or give us more fast dagger options.
Anyways, adding a couple more points to the "general solutions" list:
6) Either Deadly Poison or Envenom need an improvement (if it is intended that we use them at all), as our poisons that scale with weapon speed / crit / hit instead of just Attack Power have already outscaled both.
7) Murder is a highly controversial talent, as if you count it when balancing us, we will be 4% behind on bosses that aren't affected, and if you do not count it, we will be unbalanced on bosses that are affected.
8) Due to having 35-40% of our damage coming from a magical source (Poisons), we need much more buffs than a "pure" physical damage class, or a "pure" magical damage class. And further, Rupture is, like poisons, unmitigated by armor, and thus, only around 55% of our damage benefits from Armor Penetration.
9) Haste scaling/Bloodlust scaling (lack of Execute-like talent or ability is a severe dent on low-duration fights).
Originally Posted by Aldriana
But while Vulajin is only a pale shadow of my brilliance, he still contributes a fair amount to the community so I'd feel guilty
You have to remember that World of Warcraft is a big game, and nothing can be changed in a vacuum. As such, even the smallest modification to poison mechanics can have many different impacts. If you make all poisons and focused attacks normalize with your weapon speed, then we would have a preference for slower weapons, just because they will deal more damage:mutilate. Simply put, and I'm not saying that it would be impossible, but I don't think a change to poisons/Focused Attacks can, somehow, be done in a way that your weapon speed won't matter for Mutilate in PvE, without completely changing the Mutilate mechanics.
That's part of the reason I said that in my opinion CP/FA don't need changing. CP works well to force a fast/slow weapon usage, and that helps make more types of weapon desirable. Something similar could be done to FA to favour a fast/slow combo, or you could just leave FA untouched while normalising poisons. In the latter case you'd have FA favouring fast daggers and Mutilate favouring slow ones, and the counterveiling pressures would approximately even out.
I'm not saying all weapons should be equivalent regardless of speed, I'm saying it needs to be "close enough" that ilvl and stat allocation become at least as important as weapon speed, if not more important. If you normalised poisons but left FA/CP untouched, it would a lot nearer to that "close enough", even if it's not dead on.
"close enough" that ilvl and stat allocation become at least as important as weapon speed
I agree. Right now speed is the dominant factor in offhanddaggerchoice to a degree that hurts itemization. It's like the good old days where you would be farming Barman shanker just because it was an outlier in the speed department.
Aldriana is obviously correct in saying that there has always been a best weapon (or item for that matter) for every spec. But I feel that making some aspects of weaponchoice too dominant (although not unprecedenced) is a bad thing in that it either narrows down the drops Blizzard feels like making to a very specific range or serves to introduce large gaps between relevant itemupgrades.
By and large this is not a huge problem, but I would clasify the situation as suboptimal.
Originally Posted by Neto-
8) Due to having 35-40% of our damage coming from a magical source (Poisons), we need much more buffs than a "pure" physical damage class, or a "pure" magical damage class. And further, Rupture is, like poisons, unmitigated by armor, and thus, only around 55% of our damage benefits from Armor Penetration.
Do you see this as a problem for rogues or for the stat ArP? For us I don't see this as beeing a big problem as there are no major Buffs disfavoring us because we hate ArPen.
I think the jury is out on the buff issue. Yes, we need more buffs to perform optimally, but on the other hand because each buff only affects part of our DPS, the effect of missing any given buff is lessened. I think the buff situation ties in more to the "thresholding" effect, such that missing the +hit, +spellhit and +crit buffs can make certain cycles unworkable unless you already meet the relevant thresholds through gear.
I would like to disagree with the fact that it costs too much to add, I think it is exactly where it should be. EA is the best armor debuff in the game, but adding it costs the adder some dps, it seems to be a fair tradeoff. In situations where there is a warrior tank, no one even thinks of EA and that is mostly due to its apply cost. Threat hasn't been an issue in most encounters for a long time, so warriors could manage to get past sundering for giving the space to a more powerful EA. I remember a post in this forum in TBC, where some of you did some math over it and even then EA was "almost" reasonable to add and tank could still maintain aggro.
On the other hand this buff becomes really powerful when there is no warrior and adding it will increase the adders dps also, so you can't say that we will loose DPS when we add it. Of course other rogues will do much more dps on that time, but the one adding it is never supposed to to the same, at the time he starts debuffing the boss he becomes a utility class and Blizzard's philosophy is that utility classes are a bit behind pure dps classes.
Another problem making it cost less would push warrior tanks behind others, because without sunders his utility isnt compareable to others anymore.
Im not even gonna start on the pvp, since EA is already quite powerful there and by making it easier to reapply would require a nerf to it from PvP aspects. Many (clothies) are already flaming about it's fixed value and want it to be also % based.
I would like to disagree with the fact that it costs too much to add, I think it is exactly where it should be. EA is the best armor debuff in the game, but adding it costs the adder some dps, it seems to be a fair tradeoff. In situations where there is a warrior tank, no one even thinks of EA and that is mostly due to its apply cost. Threat hasn't been an issue in most encounters for a long time, so warriors could manage to get past sundering for giving the space to a more powerful EA. I remember a post in this forum in TBC, where some of you did some math over it and even then EA was "almost" reasonable to add and tank could still maintain aggro.
On the other hand this buff becomes really powerful when there is no warrior and adding it will increase the adders dps also, so you can't say that we will loose DPS when we add it. Of course other rogues will do much more dps on that time, but the one adding it is never supposed to to the same, at the time he starts debuffing the boss he becomes a utility class and Blizzard's philosophy is that utility classes are a bit behind pure dps classes.
Another problem making it cost less would push warrior tanks behind others, because without sunders his utility isnt compareable to others anymore.
Im not even gonna start on the pvp, since EA is already quite powerful there and by making it easier to reapply would require a nerf to it from PvP aspects. Many (clothies) are already flaming about it's fixed value and want it to be also % based.
The issue with EA isn't it's DPS cost per-se, but rather the flat out difficulty of play required of it - especially for mutilate builds that rarely if ever manage to get 5 CPs.
I would like to disagree with the fact that it costs too much to add, I think it is exactly where it should be. EA is the best armor debuff in the game, but adding it costs the adder some dps, it seems to be a fair tradeoff. In situations where there is a warrior tank, no one even thinks of EA and that is mostly due to its apply cost. Threat hasn't been an issue in most encounters for a long time, so warriors could manage to get past sundering for giving the space to a more powerful EA. I remember a post in this forum in TBC, where some of you did some math over it and even then EA was "almost" reasonable to add and tank could still maintain aggro.
On the other hand this buff becomes really powerful when there is no warrior and adding it will increase the adders dps also, so you can't say that we will loose DPS when we add it. Of course other rogues will do much more dps on that time, but the one adding it is never supposed to to the same, at the time he starts debuffing the boss he becomes a utility class and Blizzard's philosophy is that utility classes are a bit behind pure dps classes.
Another problem making it cost less would push warrior tanks behind others, because without sunders his utility isnt compareable to others anymore.
Im not even gonna start on the pvp, since EA is already quite powerful there and by making it easier to reapply would require a nerf to it from PvP aspects. Many (clothies) are already flaming about it's fixed value and want it to be also % based.
You are quite mistaken. Sunder and Expose are idenitcal in power since 3.0.
You are quite mistaken. Sunder and Expose are idenitcal in power since 3.0.
You are right, sorry I was mislead by that, but still EA is meant to be second best source for the debuff, so the cost is still justified. But as for the ease of applying it would be really tricky to solve to make it not op in PvP and our talent point budget is quite limited already in the high end tiers, so fitting it into there would rise alot other issues.
Anyway my whole point was that the problem isn't as big as we have made it. In a situation where you might need EA, it is better than any chosen finisher in your arsenal and that is only considered your own dps, if you add all other melee in raid or grp then it really is a no brainer.
The problem is not so much that it's expensive to maintain, per se; it is a powerful buff, and there wouldn't be anything fundamentally wrong with having it take some effort and/or DPS to maintain - though doing so is somewhat in violation of Blizzard's current balance philosophy. But the real problem is the vastly differing cost across classes. A prot warrior keeps it up automatically, for free; a DPS warrior need only spend 15 rage every 30 seconds, which, while it does cost some damage, is a relatively small amount. But a rogue has to spend 5 combo points, which is 1 finisher for combat and, in practice, more than that as Mutilate (due to the need to Mutilate at 4 CP on a fairly regular basis). And 1.5 damage finishers per 30 seconds is simply a heck of a lot more damage loss than 15 rage per 30 seconds, which means that rogues are just a vastly inferior source of the debuff - particularly when you factor in that they can more easily get it applied early in the fight without gimping their cycles, which is particularly relevant on multitarget pulls.
So, basically: if you have a warrior in your raid, they will be doing sunders; if you don't, it's most likely optimal to drop a rogue and get a warrior to stack sunders, as raid DPS will more than likely go up by so doing. And that is in violation of Blizzard's view of class interchangeability, and works against the value of our class as a whole. It's not a huge issue that's going to render our class obsolete in raids - after all, warriors are pretty common - but it's definitely an issue. And as we're here to identify issues, it very much belongs on the list.
As for our split between melee DPS and elemental: we certainly do a lot more elemental than we used to, but we're hardly unique in that fact. Frost DK, Unholy DK, Elemental Shaman, and Ret Pallies all also do at least 40% or so of their damage from assorted elemental sources, so the fact that we do as well doesn't affect our place in the world relative to other melee that much.
Would it still be 2nd best next patch? With BM hunters nerfed, it might bring back Exotic Pets, so Worm pets can provide the same debuff as well.
You can have 1 major armor debuff and 1 minor armor debuff. Expose Armor and Sunder, both of equal power, sunder easier to 'maintain' the debuff, are major armor reduction debuffs. Curse of Recklessness, Faerie Fire, and Wasps sting are minor armor reduction debuffs, and equal in power.
Saying Expose Armor is the 'second best' armor reduction is semantics, you could also say its the worst armor reduction in its type, and be just as correct. I dont have an issue with the application, and it does have a glyph for duration as well as a talent for energy cost reduction. That doesnt negate the fact that it has an awkward refresh mechanism.
The point is that hunters with a Worm-class pet can apply Acid Spit, which is a Major armor reduction, same as Sunders and Expose. Depending on the DPS viability of worms as pets, this may well prove to be superior to making a rogue do it.
Hunters can also have a Worm use Acid wich does indeed inflict a sunder like stacking major armor debuff of equal power (source MMO-Raidcomp). Regarding the cost of this for the hunter I have no information.
Argh beaten to it.
Hmm... how to make this post useful...
How would one handle a rotation with FoK come the no CD change as mutilate? Is it viable to try to get FoKs under the envenombuff while refreshing SnD or are we reduced to FoK-spamalot playstyle?
I'm trying to get a picture of our AoE-capabilities with different specs and depending on the impact of poisons combat could be on the disadvantage once CDs are burned. (OK this is really just filler because my post was up anyway)
The proposed solution was tied to Murder. Combat builds don't take murder. Which is among the numerous reasons that I doubt that solution will come to pass. Frankly, I think anything involving glancing blows is somewhat unlikely, but we'll have to wait and see what they come up with.
Well with combat rogues not having nearly as much reliance on poisons as a % of their damage, nor having any of the poison boosting talents and not having murder (which will in all likelyhood be usable on most mobs in the next tier raid instances), they could tag glancing blow reduction on to the expertise talent.
If it was tagged onto expertise it would fit, both aestheticaly (increases your experitise rating by 10 and allows you to more precisely hit weak spots in armour) and in it's place in the tree, ungettable by heavy assassination builds, balancing the lack of boosted poisons and murder with more white damage for combat only.
Glancing blows are an internal and global game mechanism, and will never make it to talents. Such talent would be either completly useless, or completly overpowered in any non-raiding/leveling environment, even if they would do that. Also, IF blizzard would add such thing to talents, it would make "that" talent absolutely necessary for any raiding rogue.
Concept of glancing blows will really only be changed globally, which isn't very smart at the moment as it would buff warriors way more than rogues.
The changes, if any, will probably be done in white damage/deadly poison/longer SnD department, as it would have minimal effect on burst in pvp.
Anyways, I find the talk about glancing blows on talent level pretty pointless.
PS: Regarding Expose armor, It's also one of the only debuffs in the game that can neither be "rolled" nor applied at every given time, which makes it have lower uptime compared to similar effects. On something like Muru P1, a warrior doing sunder is much more dps than rogue doing expose, as the rogue would normally not make it on time before the mob actually dies or is already at 40%.
On an aside, I'm not entirely sure if the people here remember it, but the old weapon skill - both the weapon expertise talent and the item stat - reduced the glancing blow damage reduction. Not the actual amount of glancing blows. They didn't really put glancing blows directly related to talents somehow but there was a way to mitigate it's effects.
At the time it was pretty much beat the living crap out of any other stat per point for a damage upgrade. Basically, at some time in even deep Naxxramas you had people wearing a pair of molten core gloves for weapon skill (that's a tier 1 levelish item in a tier 3 instance). Which is why we no longer have weapon skill but expertise instead. Somewhere in BC they either reduced the glancing blow total percentage on boss mobs and/or the glancing blow damage reduction (I can't recall) as well to make up for that loss and for the fact that rogues (maybe some other physical classes as well) weren't doing too hot in early BC.
I doubt they'll be touching around with glancing again even if it isn't such a big factor anymore for at least, a large portion of the rogue class. Have no idea how that'd have reprecussions on other classes.
01/03/09, 6:00 PM
Now, imagine the wall is my Eviscerate button.
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