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

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 !

Regarding the 2piece bonus and Coup de Grace analogy, did Relentless Strikes still return 25 energy if coup de grace procced?

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.

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

I too am disappointed in the lack of a proper change to combat potency. A ppm mechanic on it would sort the currently laughable system, where stuff like the offhand from mimiron hardmode loses out on a dagger from a 10man hardmode (one of the easiest ones at that) due to a 0.1 speed difference. Then again- in general, there's a lot to be desired in terms of item designs. Vezax 10 hardmode cloak vs hodir 25 hardmode cloak comes to mind immediately. A 226 item that kicks the shit out of ilvl 239 item.

On the tier set: the 2set bonus sounds very interesting- and might have a very high value, however, the 4set bonus seems a little weak- in a way that could be a good thing, since it allows for more custimization if you only have to build your set around a 2set bonus; so I hope there's some good non-tier pieces to be had, hopefully with ilvl above the tier set.

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. = /