It seemed necessary to start such a thread for discussing incoming rogue changes. We can start with 3.2.

In the patchnotes posted in MMO-Champion, there was a change regarding Combat Potency to proc from all offhand melee attacks. It is nice to see Killing Spree gets its ability to regenerate energy back after the shiv related nerfs it suffered.

Edit: Typo

*Combat potency

2pc T9 is interesting, chance to reduce next abilitys energy cost by 40
4pc T9 not much new here, 5% increased crit chance on Hemorrhage, Sinister Strike, Backstab, and Mutilate

I like the 2pc bonus, gives us a sort of clearcasting state, which is something new and different for us (for the most part)

The Combat Potency buff makes sense, as Shiv spec is long-dead with the new poison PPM mechanics.

Coup de Grace - Spell - World of Warcraft
Tier5 Bonus

And unless i am totally mistaken a lot of rogues skipped t5 because of the minor upgrade it was and the lackluster boni it had back then before the gear buffs they did.

Suppose FoK offhand attacks will now proc Combat Potency.
I assume FoK attacks are seen as yellow attacks, and with yellow hitcap, we will hit all our FoK attacks.

Rogue GCD = 1 second.
Energy needed to spam FoK every second = 50 energy/sec.
Normal energy regen (with Vitality) = 12.5 energy/sec,
Needed = 37.5 energy/sec from Combat Potency.
Combat Potency proc = 15 energy.
Needed = 2.5 procs/sec.
Procrate = 20%.
Need 12.5 targets to hit with FoK.

Ergo: when you have 12 or more targets around you, you can spam FoK every GCD without ever running out of energy.
Gonna be fun !

The catch is, even after the aforementioned change Combat Potency only applies to melee attacks. I don't specifically know how FoK is categorized but I don't think they will buff FoK anymore.

The hunter bonus is also recycled (5% crit to Steady Shot); there may be others as well.

Honestly, I expect that T9 is only going to be a half-tier above T8 (same ilvl as current hard-mode gear) and the majority of raiders will find themselves in a mix of 2pc T9 and hard-mode gear. The fact that the 4pc bonus to almost every class comes in the flavor of 5% crit to some ability only reinforces this in my mind. If it is only a half-tier above, it makes some sense that the T9 4pc bonuses be throw-aways. I seriously doubt Blizzards expects many people to use the 4pc T9 with the large amount of hard-mode gear that is currently available and also coming up in 3.2.

Yes it did. Coup de Grace was *powerful.* Depending on the proc rate of this set bonus, it looks like Combat is going to have a lot of wasted energy.

Unlikely. Unless they boost the proc rate to the realm of "absurdly overpowered", rogues are in little danger of being GCD limited rather than energy limited - except possibly during AR, and even that will only be with an (un)lucky string of procs.

I think the 2pc looks intresting for assassination rogues. Chance to more muti/envenom cycles, and add 5% crit from 4pc and it might become better then it looks at first. Will be very intresting to follow the testing from ptr.

Between, I thought they'll use the 3.2 to change Combat Potency (and why not Focused Attacks) in a PPM mechanism to avoid Combat Rogue always rely on the fastest OH available (it was one reason to the poison switch to PPM in 3.1), it seems that it isn't the way they go...

PS: notice a lot of blue socket in the T9, with the JWC "nerf", we're back to "BC-mode" socketing

Plugging the gear shown on MMO-Champion into Aldriana's sheet and ignoring the t9 set boni for now shows we will socket ArP till the cap as combat and then a mix of ap/agi/haste depending on socket boni.

ArP EP just go through the roof with around 500+ ArP from gear.

Strength	1,1
Agility	1,99689332
Attack Power	1
Crit	1,616414283
Hit	1,353098594
Expertise	1,59708795
Haste	1,592855119
Armor Penetration	2,435069871

This is just some quick observation from hacking the new items into an existing sheet.

Like someone else said, Coup de Grace was a very strong set bonus; if I'm not mistaken, the reason a lot of rogues skipped T5 was that the two-piece bonus was weak and the set was heavily itemized for Crit when Hit was still king for all the swords rogues (so few raided Mutilate back then). Add the difficulty of getting a full set of it to the fact that Badges of Justice allowed them to pair 2pT4 with badge gear that was comparable to drops in T6 instances and many just didn't bother with getting full T5.

Anyway, I wonder if the 2pT9 set bonus is meant in any way to help combat daggers come back. With Backstab costing 60e, combat daggers pools energy naturally, and a proc like this could help to smooth out their cycle since you could dump 80e into two Backstabs. (Edit: [Glyph of Backstab] would allow your Rupture to stay up longer as well, so the engine would fuel itself to some degree.) The build probably needs more than this, but it's just an idea. = /

Yea Shinja noticed it to and im quite dissapointed with that.
As for someone metioning about FoK and the new proc of combat potency isent Fok a throw attack and not a melee attack ? I would think this is the case as it goes under Throwing spec.

And if i recall correct i skiped the T5 4set becasue it was such a low proc rate but i could be remebering wrong.

This and the stats buff to t5 came too late for those that were ready to do BT/Hyjal.

Unless this is wrong, which it certainly could be, the data mined so far shows some T9 gear as much as 32 item levels ahead of current T8. It appears most of the 25 man and badge rewards are sitting around item level 145, thus being a major upgrade to 226 tier and normal-mode loot. The 25 man hard mode loot (I assume) is at an amazing ilvl 258, see link.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/..._rogue_258.jpg

Whats a little more depressing is that HFB is not being changed. I would of expected this to be tampered with. If the scourge plays a key role in the bosses we'll most likely see less "Murder friendly" fights which will then keep Combat on top. I'm sure its a little early to say what fights will be better but I am concerned that the breaking point between the two specs being better over one another is based on one sole talent working or not. I think the assassination tree could use some work to make it more onpar with Combat in a better way than HFB and Murder's current implementation.

Assuming the the 258 set. Stats are going to look like:

Agil 639 + 28
Stam 687

AP 818
Hit 248
Exp 154
Crit 280
Arp 170

Which should put the combat rogues at about 28 expertise. As you will need at least 1 blue socket of the 4 to power your meta. The +8 agility socket will be filled with the blue and the red socket +4 agility will amount to the loss of only 16 Agility in not socketing correctly.


Edited: To rephrase the last sentence.

From the images that mmo-champ has up, the gear has not changed designs from T8, only color.
On the bright side, it is called "VanCleef's xx of yy"

They're placeholder graphics. There's also a tier set for both Horde and Alliance: the Horde set is "Garona's".

Its obviously speculation as its just names that are provided, but the achivements give some idea as to what will be Murderable. From the looks of it there will be a humanoid, followed by three beasts, an unknown (I'm thinking a Qiraji of some sort), two Val'kyr then the final boss, which could be anything from Scourge to the Black Knight.


* Call of the Crusade (10 player) - Defeat every boss in the Trial of the Crusader in 10-player mode: Gormok the Impaler, Acidmaw, Dreadscale, Icehowl, Lord Jaraxxus, Edyis Darkbane, Fjola Lightbane, Final Boss
* Upper Back Pain (10 player) - Defeat Icehowl with 2 Snobolds on the back of raid members in 10-player mode.
* Resilience Will Fix It (10 player) - Kill the enemy heroes within 60 seconds of each other in 10-player mode.
* Double Time (10 player) - Defeat the Twin Val'kyr within 2 minutes in 10-player mode.
* The Traitor King (10 player) - Kill 12,000 Swarm Scarabs with spikes in 10-player mode.

The gear models on mmo-champion are placeholders.

In terms of gear ilevels, it would seem that 10-man will provide 232 and 25 man will provide 245. 10 man hard mode could provide 245 ilevel loot, while 25 man hard mode vaults you to ilevel 258.

The 4p bonus should be a nice boost to Combat Rogues with the SS glyph.