Erm, that's not what GC said... Relaxing the restrictions on HfB (ie. no bleeding component) would make it overly attractive to pvp'ers who (for example) could open with ambush etc boosted by 18%. Combine with overkill and sub talents and we're back to square one, assassination spec allowing you to frontload a hell of a lot of damage in the short time after you emerge from stealth.

That's the whole point of the buffing of HfB as PvE assassination was weakened by the reduction of mutilate dmg on poisoned mobs. It's the only talent you could possibly buff further down the tree than the CP builder (mutilate) which is far enough out of reach for PvP'ers (separated by 5 points in CttC) to preclude them giving up a powerful PvP talent like prep.

While HfB @ 9% wasn't attractive to PvP'ers (deep investment, not likely to be refreshed after initial burst, lost opportunities in sub), 18% is a different matter if you can buff prior to opening. It's current form makes it pointless for a PvP'er who specs for vigor etc to achieve max burst within overkill.

Side note, of course lumping everything in to HfB indicates core problems with assassination, but I don't think we can expect them to completely rethink the tree + itemisation at this point, the task is just too big to do in the same ad hoc fashion that got them to this point. I expect like everything else it will be addressed in time.

It's worth noting, of course, that in 3.0.9 on live servers right now, HFB is 15% and can be pre-stacked, but so far as I know very few rogues PvP with it anyway. While it would presumably become somewhat more viable at 18%, the evidence we have indicates that Prep is simply too compelling to drop in favor of HFB, even with the increases to HFB damage.

The start of arena forces the HfB stacks off anyway, so not as much pre-stack unless you mean stacking HfB when the arena match starts and before you open. The bleed requirement and 15 energy, 1 min buff would make it seem more appealing, which throws me off. Openers with Garrote and HfB mean +18% for a minute, plenty of time.

I think it boils down to Prep and DD vs. HfB, and imho they close the gap with the current mechanic.

edit: sry, grammar.

Something I've been wondering since they have added it for other classes already. If they added a way for our periodic damage to crit (deadly and rupture and perhaps garrotte), just how much of a DPS increase would we see? I know this does depend on where those abilities would land in the trees. Its just something I'm curious as to. I figure they'll probably land somewhere in the Assassination tree but its soo overly bloated right now that its hard to figure out where.

As there won`t be any significant further changes to the Rogue class at least for combat maybe it would be nice to sum up all the new Knowledge a little bit.

-Regarding Poisons
The PPM change to wound poison for example leads me to the question if its still the way to go with Dual WP on both weapons or are there other posion combinations to choose especially considering the Envenom Glyphe.
So what do you guys prefer? WP / WP or WP / DP

- Regarding Weapons
The current Loot table for Ulduar shows the fastest Sword Offhand with Speed 1.6. Correct me if i am wrong but for me that means we still are best in slot with a Slow Fist like the Masticator and a fast one like Kinetic Ripper which is 1.5 Speed. alternatively we can go with Saronite Shiv in the offhand.
Do you agree with my conclusion here?

All in all i am a little bit disapointed with the changes to our class. It seems more or less like a preliminary solution cause Blizzard doesn`t want to go deeper with Patch 3.1.

I attempted to see if the new patch build fixed improved poisons.
10min of auto per test,on L80 dummy from behind,26exp ,i was never dodged or parried in any test

SR x2 ,IPx2 ,51/13/7, 372hit,8.26% haste, berserk/icebreaker enchants
721 melee swings ,172 procs 58miss
same test 0/0/0 unspec'd
723 melee swings ,169 procs 93miss

Murder x2,IPx2, 340 hit 8.81% haste, 51/13/7,berserk/mongoose enchants
875 melee swings 209 procs 70 miss
875 melee swings 178 procs 72 miss
888 melee swings 170 procs 77 miss

same test 0/0/0 unspec'd
878 melee swings 160 procs 117 miss
874 melee swings 143 procs 128 miss

The small sample sizes,and mongoose haste confused some of the results,but either way it dosent look close to 50% more procs.

They've got themselves in an absolute knot over the Preparation issue, and it looks to me as though a lot of it is due to one factor: offensive use of defensive cooldowns. People take Prep largely for the survivability. But what it also allows them to do is chain Evasion and keep nuking someone, or chain openers with Vanish. With Prep, you can become pretty much untouchable for a substantial period of time, and you can abuse your "run away" move to gib an opponent.

Given the fact that Prep gives you this island of untouchability, Prep builds cannot be allowed to have huge DPS. Thus all the Mutilate balancing has to go at a point in the tree where you can't get it and Prep at the same time - i.e. into HfB. The interaction with Vanish/Overkill is already troublesome enough.

One solution would be the same as they did for Ret paladins: turn our defensive cooldowns into just that - defensive cooldowns. That would require nerfing our damage while under the influence of Evasion, CloS or Vanish. Now, I'm not a PvPer, so I really don't know how hard a nerf would be appropriate, so the suggestions belows are purely based on the symmetry with the defensive aspect of the cooldown.



Evasion: Increases the rogue's dodge chance by 50% and reduces the chance ranged attacks hit the rogue by 25%. While evading, the rogue's chance to hit enemy targets is reduced by 50%. Lasts 15 sec.

Cloak of Shadows: Instantly removes all existing harmful spell effects and increases your chance to resist all spells by 90% for 5 sec. Does not remove effects that prevent you from using Cloak of Shadows. Reduces your chance to apply poisons by 90% for 5 secs.

Vanish: Allows the rogue to vanish from sight, entering an improved stealth mode for 10 sec. For the first three seconds of improved stealth, the rogue cannot deal damage of any form. Also breaks movement impairing effects.



Now I'm sure the specific numbers of the above will get jumped on - what I'd be more interested in discussing is the proposition that these three abilities should be returned / retuned to be purely defensive cooldowns. Vanish/Prep shouldn't be the tool that allows you to chain openers: that's what Shadowdance is for. Evasion/CloS/Prep shouldn't be a "rogue bubble" while maintaining full damage output.

Interestingly enough, the change to Vanish, while a nerf from the point of view of burst damage, would actually be a bugfix for the "true" functionality as an escape button. The main reason for Vanish breaking is latency-related, where "queued" damage somehow takes effect after the Vanish does, thereby breaking stealth. Applying the pacify effect would stop that happening.

Songster, I can see your point concerning the opener-chaining via Vanish/Prep./Vanish, but I fail to see the real point of your changes to Evasion and CloS.

Your changes, or some variation thereof, could also result in a loss of PVE dps as there are quite a few situations where I am pretty happy to help healers via helping myself. For example decursing yourself per CloS if you see that the healers are already having a tough time.

Perhaps a shared CD or debuff for Evasion and CloS could do the trick. This would solve the bubble-like problem and I see far less situations where this would result in PVE dps loss.

Evasion is much more significant than CloS, agreed. If you don't see that being able to put out full damage while being almost untouchable in melee for thirty seconds (with Prep) is a problem, I don't know what to say. As for CloS, the decurse effect is distinct from the subsequent 6 seconds of 90% magic resistance. In PvE, you would presumably click off the resistance buff in situations where you're only interested in the cleanse part.

Well, they could merge it with Overkill, which would make this not as utterly useless for PvE, which would be nice as its a mandatory talent for Mut. And critting on DoT would not increase burst in PvP, so I don't see any trouble with that.

On another point, something I'm wondering about rogues this patch, is the total lack of any news about Subtlety. I may be missing something, but it seems that HaT has not been really used in PvE since the bugfix, and that most PvP is done in Assa/Prep. So unless I'm completely off, deep Sub isn't used at all these days. Despite that, all the changes are concentrated in Combat and Assa.
Does this mean we'll see a lot of changes in the next stages of the patch for Sub, that I'm wrong and Sub is still often used, or that the dev have chosen to let it wait on the roadside at least until the next patch ?

I think you're missing the fact that HAT is used, not very widely, but that's probably mainly because the dislike towards the highly dps-variant, group-dependent "one-button-rogue" spec (as it is seen, not what it actually is). With right group and encounter, it's still higher dps than rogue can put out with any conventional way.

This blue seem to indicate that devs want status quo and 3 pve-capable specs, even if simcrafting HAT shows it above any other spec/class with poison and glyph changes. PTR Patchwerk testing has showed that the 8.5kdps mark isn't far off. Dualspeccing might in fact help acceptance of HAT, you can switch to it whenever you feel comfortable doing so.

I agree but it's really confusing that they pin that on Rogues and give Holy Paladins their new and improved Aura Mastery which gives that class (famous for defensive cooldowns used offensively) another way of doing so.

Realizing that you're simply tossing around ideas, I'd have to wonder, how would that impact PvE rogues? The tried-and-true rule of raiding as a rogue is to open on a boss, blow all your cooldowns, then Vanish at ~80% to reset your threat. Is 3 seconds of 0 DPS really necessary to fix Arenas?

And while we're on the subject, I've read several different posts (from various forums) suggesting that perhaps a wiser move would have been to simply swap Preparation and Premeditation in the Sub tree. It would make Prepilate an impossible spec, and not biff Mutilate's PvE damage output to the point where they're forced to tack 15-18% damage into one talent just to make it remain competitive.

Has a Blizzard rep ever addressed that question? I haven't seen it if so.

I think the issue with that is that Prep is too necessary (for survival reasons) in PvP. Moving it deeper would essentially mean that there is only one viable PvP spec - deep Sub. Right now, the devs feel there are two viable PvP specs, Prep/Mutilate and deep sub, and that this is the preferable situation

I posted something like this on the official WoW forums the other day. I agree with songster that moving Prep down will result in having only 1 PvP spec which is not what they want. Short of scrapping Prep altogether (yes I did go there...), I suggest moving it up instead, making it available to any PvP spec.

Before I get called crazy, this would of course require many other changes to the rest of the rogue's abilities.
- The Assassination tree would need its burst toned down, which would incidentally allow them to buff up the sustained DPS part of the tree, lowering the 18% HfB, removing the bleed requirement, or even going back to its current PvP use of removing a bleed from yourself.
- The Combat tree has very decent abilities for PvP already and is mighty fine in PvE. You would get rogues using Killing Spree in PvP for example.
- The Sub tree has always been attractive for PvP. It would probably need a buff in damage for both PvP and PvE, which incidentally would allow them to nerf HaT while still keeping competitive thanks to another damage buff.

Those are very general guidelines because I don't wish to start a talent wishlisting trend. This would create more viable PvP specs, and improve the PvP situation.

My conclusion on the official forums was that it was a lot of work and that I was hoping it was still considered for 3.1. And 2 days later, GC posts what you all just read, which seems eerily similar.

Has anyone been able to test if poisons have been fixed with the latest PTR update?

Personally I don't see the reason for Overkill to exist as a PvP talent. The only function this talent has is to boost the immediate damage out of stealth, and that kind of burst-to-death model is one they appear to be moving away from. I suggested a while back that Overkill could be turned round to function as a kind of execute - all abilities cost 10% less energy when the target is under 30% health, or something like that.

A valuable distinction here is the one between burst-on-demand abilities such as Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush, Killing Spree, Shadow Dance and (minimally) Cold Blood, and initial-burst abilities such as Vigor, Master of Subtlety, Overkill, Improved Ambush and (sort of) the initial 100 energy in your bar. Just looking at the roll call shows the problem: Combat has almost all the true on-demand burst, while both the other trees have several talents each that improve starting burst but are useless in sustained fights. If the direction of PvP is to move away from bursting people to death from stealth, then these latter talents need to be rethought significantly.

Obviously 3 seconds of 0 DPS isn't really acceptable but since the issue songster was trying to address was the use of vanish to chain openers his idea could be changed to prevent using one in the 3 second window, while still allowing you to say restart auto-attacking or really anything that doesn't require stealth. Okay, enough of the baseless speculation.

Now, as Aldriana pointed out earlier, it's puzzling that they're so worried about people taking HfB for PvP when they're not doing it currently on the live servers where it's already a 15% damage buff with no bleed requirement ... it's hard to imagine that extra 3% pushing people over the edge and picking it over premed. That said I think the most recent change on the PTR, namely halving the energy cost and doubling the duration, is consistent with GC's claims that the bleed requirement was implemented merely as a sort of "insurance policy" against PvP burst.

I think the intent with the most recent change is to make it so muti rogues can keep as much uptime on HfB as possible with the minimum of nuisance using their own bleeds (thereby keeping the spec as viable as possible for 5-mans and 10-mans). With the lower energy cost, the penalty you pay for refreshing it early is much lower: you'll just be watching your rupture and if you don't think you can get another rupture up before HfB drops then you just refresh the duration. Given that a re-design is off the table for the moment, I think it's a good solution.

Uh... have you both forgotten that on live servers HfB is still three stacks of 5%, meaning 3 GCDs and almost a full energy bar to get it up and running? The reason people don't go for it in PvP is because of the huge energy cost and the time taken to start it up.



As regards HfB in PvE, personally I don't find it to be anything like as cumbersome as people say, even before 3.1 hits.

Look at it this way - each rogue PvE build relies on a DPS cycle of one builder and three "finishers".

For combat, that's SS, S'n'D, Rupture and Eviscerate.
For HaT, it's (Hemo), S'n'D, Rupture and Eviscerate. Hemo de-emphasised through extra CPs.
For Mutilate, it's Mutilate, Rupture, Envenom/Cttc and HfB. S'n'D replaced because of CttC.

In terms of strict timers to watch, Mutilate is hardly any different to combat once you're geared enough to support it. The myth that Mutilate is a difficult spec derives from the early blue-geared days when you just didn't get through a cycle fast enough due to missed finishers, and S'n'D dropped. Once you have Expertise capped, this is a non issue. Mutilate watches two timers: Rupture and HfB. Combat watches two timers: S'n'D and Rupture. Same for HaT.

Arguing that you shouldn't have to maintain HfB is actually arguing for a more boring spec with less interactivity. Mutilate is boring enough as it is due to lack of cooldowns - taking yet another button out of the rotation is actually a step backward in terms of the interest factor in my opinion.

Or, 20 energy right before you open up because you were smart enough to pre-apply it.

True, but it can also be pre-stacked from stealth and kept up with relatively little effort, but I'll concede that it might be a an extra factor keeping people from taking it, and might explain why they felt that the bleed requirement was necessary.

And I agree with you about HfB as it stands now, but with the bleed requirement it gets a lot tougher for people who do 5-mans and despite what we might think some of the design decisions are geared towards them as well. My point being that the most recent change makes it much easier for a muti rogue to keep it up without relying on other people's bleeds.

As mentioned before, right now, on Live servers, as soon as an Arena game begins, HfB is wiped. You cannot pre-stack it. So yes it is too expensive to use in PvP with the 3-stack system.

In any case, we've already had that discussion here. To end this speculation, we need to look at rogues' parses from arena games. What we need is the amount of damage done when opening up before the other player can react. And the same after a Vanish, a Prep... etc. It's the burst that needs looked at. Once you have that data, add 15% (or even 18%) damage. If it appears that there is potential to kill your opponent during your opening moves just by adding 18% damage, even if only on 50% of the fights, then you just proved that a PvP HfB build could work, which proves Blizzard's theory. If not, then you'll have a case supported by data to present to Blizzad.