For single target dps, it doesnt matter wether you need to pop HfB after a bleed or whenever. Only the potential opening burst is reduced.

For everything else, it is quite less usable if you have to get a bleed going before you can use it. Fury warriors will be doing Whirlwind, get crits, have deep wounds going, but not on everything like before.

The answer to "Will Mutilate be on par with Combat?" wont be answered until we know the mechanics, but combat looks good right now. A 10% haste increase is a solid buff in itself. Buff to Ninjastorm, AR and 4% Savage combat makes it even more tempting.

2% physical dps buff wasnt all that, but with 4% .. Im the only steady rogue in my raid, and Master poisoner is blown out of the water by Totem of Wrath, and noone takes Arms warriors to raids.

Do percent based Haste buffs stack additively with each other and multiplicative with Haste from Hasterating?
If so the LR change would increase the revenue for HR by ~7% depending on what Speedbuffs you have.

This is highly unlikely.

We will need to add it and keep it running every once in a while, if it becomes a passive buff, the dps buff is insane because you will save alot of energy / rotation slack if you only need to watch SnD and Rupture.

If this is the case, Mutilate becomes just as easy to play, maybe even mroe easy than combat because you have no cooldowns, and do similar dps.

Haste percentage buffs are multiplicative with one another and multiplicative with the haste buff from your total haste rating.

Combat changes will be pretty neat if they rework ArP and haste mechanic for melee.
They were stating that they will rework it, right?

I don't think that is likely, if that was the case they wouldn't have bothered to include the bleeding requirement to "activate" HfB. Otherwise what would there be to stop rogues from opening with a bleed on trash pulls, HfB and then spamming FoK for damage bonus on all targets? I dont think thats what they intend with this change, the bleeding is most likely thre to limit our DPS boost to a single target (the one bleeding) which incidentally also fits with our class description.

I'm pretty sure the bleeding requirement was added so we don't run around with a +15% damage multiplier all the time instead of it being a deliberate limiter to one target.

Even more emphasis on buffs that occur through people hitting the mob being required for rogues to do competative dps is very disappointing. From a 10 man perspective when our warrior is off tanking I already do poor damage due to expose, the idea that when the ferals and warriors are tanking other Sarth targets for example I will be severely gimped isn't hugely attractive.

It's hard enough just getting all the buffs in 10 man, requiring people to hit the same target as well is just mean.

Rogues have a big problem in that the best geared 25 man raiders do a lot more damage than more casual people already due to Rogues scaling well with gear. Additionally punishing the 10 man and 5 man Rogues seems counter productive.

I'm curious as to what Blizzard's future plans are as far as mace itemization if haste/armor penetration are buffed sufficiently enough to compete with fist/dagger combat spec.

How about sword spec? Just left out in the cold at the moment it seems, unless its one of those unannounced changes they hinted at. Even with all these changes I hope Blizz is on the ball for weapon itemization come Ulduar, tired of side upgrades that require me to respec every time one drops.

I honestly didn't want them to change HfB, I like it as it is.

Some of the changes are nice and will please people that thought HfB's upkeep was annoying but the bleed requirement is terrible and we will suffer in 5 and 10 man groups.

Of course this is all said without any knowledge of other changes they plan to or have made that have yet to be made known to us and the fact that everything is subject to change.

It's going to sadden me to have to bank my Hailstorm. I hope there's some sort of consolidation for mixed weapon specs or it's just going to enforce the already ridiculous shortage of webbed death. I've killed Anub a hardy number of times already and we haven't seen a single one. Thankfully I'm first in line.

I do find it sort of annoying that they went the "add talent points" route instead of the "change talent points" route, but maybe that's just a side effect of being in the no-choice combat mindset for so long. Just not used to having options that are actually all dps talents I guess. Overall some nice changes, but forcing WD over Hailstorm is quite silly.

Thank you for stating what we already know, which is why I brought up the lack of info on changing sword spec in the first place.

And why are you making a TLDR version of one sentence...

I am curious as to why they did not move "Lightning relfexes" further down the tree? Currently that would consitute a very powerful talent pretty high up in the tree.

Also with the 10% haste increase for combat-spec the prefered poisons would double wound poison?

Guess this is very early information and the descpriptions are not very distinctly formulated..

One can only hope they will adress the poisons so that they become more distinct from eachother.

Just a friendly reminder, folks: these are not the full patch notes. These changes are not final. Hence, comments of the form "they didn't address issue X" are not really productive. The fact that they haven't changed sword spec doesn't mean they won't - presupposing, of course, that you believe it needs changes, which is somewhat debatable. They've specifically said that there are more changes coming. Hence, while it's fine to look at the changes and contemplate what new issues they may create, page upon page listing stuff they haven't yet addressed is not going to lead to a productive or long-lived thread. Nor is guesswork about how HFB will work - at least until we have more information. Nor do we need to hear whether or not you personally like the changes. Please try to keep the conversation constructive, as, so far, it hasn't been.

The basic idea of Hfb change seems to make sense. It would up pve mut dps without making pvp mut even more op. Is it possible that it might even passive? It clearly states that its not a self buff, and i don't see how else it would even work honestly. maybe a debuff?

The change to HfB doesn't change anything in PvP since Preperation always was the way to go. I honestly don't get it why it would be a bad idea to make it viable for PvP aswell, since you sacrifice utility and surviability for more DPS while dropping subtlety talents. The message is pretty clear, they don't want us to spec 51 points into Assassination for PvP.

So they're nerfing the PvP burst from a talent they already know isn't used for PvP. It's kinda contradictory.

I think this has been a common misnomer. It's more like Mutilate's cycles require a certain level of gear to become stable, and until you get to that point the DPS upgrades come very quickly. As your cycle stability increases, you see less benefit from gearing up.

As for Hunger For Blood, my initial thought is that it makes Mutilate harder but at the same time less punishing. The main problems are that you cannot start it up before a pull, and non-raids just became even more of a hassle.

I think they know that no one uses HfB for pvp. They simply knew they couldnt buff anything below mutilate in the tree because it would also buff pvp dps, i dont see any attempt to really lower our pvp damage. Seems to make perfect sense to me, im just curious about how it works.

I don't think so. The wording has been a little unclear on this, however the likeliest interpretation in my opinion is that HfB is still a self-buff in that you hit the button and you buff yourself. However you can no longer stack it before the pull, since you require your target to be bleeding in order to cast the buff on yourself. I can't see any reason to believe it would fall off if the target is not bleeding. GC was quite specific that it requires target=bleeding in order to cast it.

What effect does this have in a long fight? Comparatively little, and it's a cpmsiderable buff. You still refresh HfB every 30 seconds, however there will be no penalty for letting it drop other than the uptime loss. It costs the same to restart it as it would have to maintain it. To go with this, it's now 15% rather than 9%, so it's a straight up 6% damage increase.

The only time there might be a problem is is your Rupture drops immediately before you need to refresh HfB and there are no other bleeds on the target. i.e. there are no other rogues, no warriors, no feral druids and no hunter pets in your party. This is unlikely in a raid situation, to say the least! Even in the unlikely event that you lack all these other classes in the party, it isn't a problem. Let's say your HfB needs refreshing, and the target is not bleeding. What do you do? You hit Rupture, and then use HfB after the GCD, using the energy returned from Relentless Strikes plus the extra second of normal regen. Therefore, even in the worst case scenario, the only loss is one second of HfB uptime, with zero energy loss.

Where it may have a slight effect is in trash pulls, since you won't be able to stack it before the pull. This thus costs you 9% off the damage of your first FoK (or Mutilate if it's a small pull). FoK is borderline overpowered as it stands, so this is no big deal. If you use a feral or warrior tank as your main assist, you should be able to get HfB up within a couple of seconds anyway, from their own bleeds. And with HfB now being 15% rather than 9%, as long as you get it up within the first ~half of the pull, you still end up seeing a net benefit.

Conclusion: rogues have nothing whatsoever to complain about from the HfB change - it's a playability and damage buff, done in such a manner as to not make it desirable for PvP. Nice work.


As Aldriana says, this undoubtedly isn't all there is - I would expect to see more substantial changes to Subtlety, for a start. However, that's likely to take a bit more work, so I'm not surprised they have nothing to show us at this point. Ditto for the poison proc / weapon speed itemisation issues.

This is a fallacy that is assuming you have 5cp to guarantee Relentless Strikes to proc.

Let's put it another way. What is your Rupture uptime? I will guarantee you that even in 5-mans, it's nearly 100%. The chance that your HfB refresh happens to fall in the 1-2 second window of rupture downtime is just not worth worrying about, especially given the virtual certainty that someone else will have a bleed on the target in even a 10-man raid. If you're still worried, then just refresh HfB while your Rupture is ticking. Refresh it a second early, or two, or three, or even earlier. Since the strength of HfB has been buffed by over 50%, you can refresh it up to ten seconds early and still see a net bonus compared to the existing situation. If you're not able to do even that, I don't think EJ theorycrafting will help you >.<