There's no denying that the current version of FoK is very powerful in both PvE and PvP. In a recent post, GC said as much. He tempered a big part of that though saying that in PvP, FoK is a "one trick pony" and the devs were confident that the community could counter it as they have done with nearly every other single ability PvP spec. (But apparently we couldn't. ) He also went onto say that fights like Yogg+0 were (at least in part) designed on this sort of ability being available and may see nerfs because of the FoK nerf.

My real concern now is that the 3.2.2 Throwing Specialization talent is 2 points that has very limited use and the possible DPS increase it could actually provide in-game is dubious at best. In 3.2.2 it becomes very much an appendix, used to be quite useful before some evolution and really doesn't do anything anymore. I imagine at some point it will be removed as it wouldn't affect us much to lose it altogether at this point. Perhaps a more balanced and nifty talent could be on the way.

From calculations in the Pocket Guide (eg see the bottom of page 43) FoK can currently be worthwhile against only 2 targets. Applying the new changes in 3.2.2, the new break even point looks like 3.

I for one have been keeping my eyes on Combat Potency when going mental with FoK on huge trash packs. Although I do not have any solid combat log proof of this, I'd say that FoK does not currently (3.2.0) proc Combat Potency. On the huge flower packs before Freya, with Combat Potency not being on a PPM mechanic, you'd expect atleast 2-3 procs happening (with unlucky RNG even) every single time you press FoK. I have however managed to run out of energy and having to wait before I can push FoK again. That shouldn't be happening when you are AoE'ing 15 (can't remember the exact number) mobs with Deadly Poison (2pc T8 bonus), Combat Potency and Vitality active. You should be more than regaining the energy used on using your Fan of Knives.

Again, I haven't gotten around to studying this in my logs, but using FoK and just watching for Combat Potency proc's, you can easily tell that something is wrong, if FoK is indeed meant to proc Combat Potency. In it's current 3.2.0 state, having it proc Combat Potency would make it more than insanely overpowered. After 3.2.2, if they decide to stealth-change FoK so it does infact proc Combat Potency, that 30% damage "nerf" won't really change much when it comes to topping the damage meters in an AoE scenario.

I rounded up most of the stockades a few times and FoK'd them down while not targeting anything. I did not get a single combat potency proc. So it seems unlikely that FoK has a chance to proc it.

Reading through all the replies the only valid concern I see to the 3.2.2 changes is that Throwing Specialisation is now possibly, one talent point too much.

That would leave the devs with a spare talent point to put somewhere else in the combat tree and that may require a bit more work than just throwing an extra point in one of the existing talents. Although, I guess making Improved Gouge a 4 point talent, might be an easy and non game breaking solution? Maybe even throw it into Nerves of Steel.


Personally, I'd prefer a slight boost to Savage Combat or Vitality, but that's just me wish listing.

I don't see that there's any reason to believe that a) Throwing Spec will be reduced in cost, or b) that even if it is, they'll add another point elsewhere to compensate. They might, but previous talent consolidations have generally not been accompanied by 1-for-1 additions - either nothing else changes, or some unrelated changes happen, or its a total rebalance.

And even were that not the case, speculating on where they could add a talent point to the tree strays quickly into wishlisting, so I suggest that we drop that line of discussion.

I think all we can really say at this point is that Throwing Spec will certainly no longer be worthwhile for PvE - there will be no incentive to go for 2/2, and even 1/2 is of severely limited utility and, as such, the point will probably be better spent in, for instance, Endurance. As for the PvP implications... I'll leave that to the PvP forums to figure out.

Closer to 77, given the combat log bug. Gouge and KS aren't "Interrupts", so are you sure you're counting them? You're also making it so that you can't CC anything near you by doing that.

We were all using stuns gouge blind etc for the interupts, so i didnt count them against the totals of actual "interupts" as well, and CCing isnt an issue around fan of knives, unless someone is just spamming it wontonly and not caring at all, with those 308 interupts, i broke 1 sheep, and it was a neccesary evil.

We faced 3 healers as well (although it felt like 4) and as a point I didn't use FoK w/ interrupt and we did just fine. If your group is fast with dispells then interrupting CC isn't important and while the NPC "assist train" can gib someone pretty easily, any individual damage spell isn't that bad. At that point it's only about controlling the healers and bringing maximum damage to single targets. Three isn't a big number when they can be easily separated and picked off.

We had 2 deaths in the beginning to their assist train but after the first healer went down and everyone settled in to the new fight it was cake.

Please stop saying this unless you're going to link to a parse that shows 1232 interrupts. FoK interrupt combat log is bugged. It shows 4* the actual interrupts.

Even with the change to throwing specialization, rogues will be very useful against faction champs in the same ways that rogues are useful in arena matches. Just assign a rogue to a healer or caster dps (especially the warlock) that you don't plan on killing right away, and from whom it is critical that very few casts get off. Have that rogue focus on interrupting every cast with kick, then gouge, kidney and then even blind as a last resort. As others have said the 308 interrupts from the FoK rogue are due to a combat log bug with the FoK interrupt. Unlike Yogg Zero, FoK-interrupt is in no way essential to accomplishing the encounter.

As a slightly off-topic aside, did anyone notice if mind-numbing was slowing casts on Faction Champs? I assume the answer is yes since all other typically "anti-player" skills worked that I saw, but I was just curious.

Yes, all interupts and poisons have the full effect they would on a player target, mind numbing and wound were essential to the fight for the group i ran with.

I can also verify that Mind Numbing works perfectly on the faction champs. It's one of the few reasons why I still keep a stack in my bags at all times (that and Iron Council).

Copied from MMO-Champion, regarding rogue class:


They want to see rogues use more daggers, they're THE rogue weapon and we don't see enough of them. In Patch 3.2.2 they might add an assassination talent to make daggers more attractive.

One of the plans for cataclysm is to take a lot of the early subtlety tree and make it passive for the class. The unattractive stuff will be taken out to let you get the cool talents.



Maybe (even though not likely, as we're only class using the daggers with melee stats) we will see a legendary dagger (or pair) mid-Cataclysm.

If daggers are 'the' rogue weapon, then why do 1-hand DPS swords even exist? No other class can use them. That seems like a rather myopic statement for them to make.

Death Knight dual wielding is also something they itemise for, as well as hunters dual wielding. While neither may be optimal, blizzard caters to the possibility.

They've specifically stated that they have little interest in reviving Combat Daggers as a spec, though admittedly their reasoning is from another era - if I may quote:

Now, combat daggers in the modern era - with the massive increases to energy regen - wouldn't be quite so degenerate. But it does sound like it's nothing they're super-interested in promoting, either.

It seems to me more likely that they will promote daggers via increased Mutilate viability, and perhaps by converting deep sub to be a Backstab-based spec (using some variation of HAT to compensate for the low combo point generation). But, realistically, its too early to speculate on how they might go about doing so - just the changes we already know about (2 AP per agi, no AP stat on gear, no ArPen, increased energy regeneration via haste) are going to *radically* change the class, such that I think we're really going to have to see the details of what they come up with before we have any ability to comment on what specs are going to be good (or not).

It seems that there is a relatively massive oversight in giving 2 ap per agi, that is that it will become vastly superior to any other stat out there for its itemizations, unless of course they also intend to remove the crit bonus from it, or to increse its itemization cost, if the former, then we are likely to see a shift away from rogues having such high critical strike chance, something which I personally feel is somewhat of a staple of the class.

Has anyone heard how they plan on implementing this change,

I don't think its an oversight. I think Blizzard is fully aware of that implication, and one or more of the following is the case:

1) Blizzard doesn't care. Until the recent appearance of viable hard-cap ArPen gear setups, most strength classes have Str > All in term of itemization quality. Right now for both warriors and DKs Strength has an EP value well over 2 - and almost 3, in some cases - and most other stats are 1.5 or below. Hence: they've been okay with such stat valuations for other classes, there's no reason they're not okay with the fact that rogues will be stacking Agi > everything else.

2) Blizzard cares, and will fix it via stat weightings. Basically, rating stats are a lot less relatively interesting in WotLK than they were in TBC, largely because the rating conversion changed more quickly than our AP did, meaning that these stats dropped in relative value. They can fix this by doing the reverse: having rating stats decay less quickly than do other stats, resulting in higher relative values of rating stats.

3) Blizzard cares, and all the other changes they are making are going to result in improvements to the value of other stats. For instance, haste rating is going to increase in value due to improving energy regen - for instance, if you take the naive approach and assume that 1% haste gives 1% more regen, haste immediately jumps over 2 EP in value.

I think this 3rd point is really the key. In combination, all the changes they've announced - never mind all the changes they *haven't* announced - are going to result in mechanics very different than anything we're currently dealing with. We don't really have any ability to comment on the net effect of all the changes until we *have* all the changes. Any one by itself is going to be a major - perhaps imbalancing - change to our current mechanics. All of them together? We have no way of knowing. Once Blizzard has told us more of what they're planning - in terms of how gear will be itemized, what other new stats they may be adding, what other changes to itemization they're making, how they're changing the talent trees, etc - we can comment on the net effects. Until then, there's not much we can say.

Basically: these are major changes. Blizzard knows these are major changes. They're not doing them carelessly on a whim. They're going to put some serious thought into the net effect of everything they're changing. Which is not to say that they might not screw it up, but until they tell us more about what's in store we have no ability to assess that either way.

Here is a interesting screen shot of the rogue tree using the new system of giving passive bonuses.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ystems_017.jpg

As you can see depending on how you spend your points you different bonus. More points in in Sub = more energy regen and haste or combat more hit and Arp. This is going to make specing very interesting as you will try to optimize your stats as well as your talents.

The path of the titans seems to offer even more complexity to specing and optimizing damage. One of the glyphs I saw was basically adding in a cool down ability to boost damage. Once this stuff becomes more concrete we will definitely have to see what path will be optimal.

I was at blizzcon and the feeling I got from some of the comments made was there are going to be some serious changes to rogue. This is only speculation.

They did mention making a lot of the subtly utility base line for rogue so you could focus on damage down the tree compared to a trade off for utility.

To add to the post above mine: you see ArP highlighted in green in the picture, this is because the new item stat Mastery will boost that particular bonus. It will always be the third bonus for each tree and always the one in the tree where you have the most amount of points (well, at this time, it is. Always liable to change).

It's not really rogues who have serious changes incoming. It's every class.
1 - No more ranks on trained abilities. Once you know it, it scales with your level.
2 - No more passive talents (aka "increase damage by 5%") or improved <insert buff> talent. They want fun and useful talents.
3 - You get 3 stat bonuses per tree, as shown in your picture. First one is related to what you do: dpsing, healing or tanking (as a sidenote, I wonder how they'll boost "tanking"). Second will be a secondary stat such as crit, haste... etc. And the third one is something unique to your tree. They increase as you spend more and more points down their respective trees.

To me, it looks like all of this is done to highly simplify the balancing process between classes and bring Blizzard a lot closer to their objective of every spec viable for anything. The good news for us is: much easier to theorycraft and model.

We don't know what the new talents will be of course, but, looking at this picture, it looks like we'll be debating which passive bonuses give us the highest dps, Specific specs will become a lot less relevant. One could even argue that a combat tree that focuses on boosting hit is better for leveling as you struggle to get hit on your gear. Just an example, but you know what I mean.

I don't know how much the Paths will affect all this. Since any class/spec can follow any Path, the ancient glyphs will be generic enough and their choice should be easy enough to figure out.

I think Mastery will be the more important key here. There might be thresholds where, say, if you have more than xx % in Mastery, then one talent tree is better than another. The other one being better at lower level gear with less % Mastery on it. The fun part will also be to try and decide how many points to spend in each tree to balance your stats a little more evenly. Throw in Reforging, which can modify the stats on your gear and you have yourself a completely new way of optimizing your character.

All this is why I think we'll have to think more in terms of how much of a stat is useful, rather than stat x > stat y.

I'm curious how this will affect Weapon Specializations. It seems to me (and i know none of this is final) if Combat focuses on ArP then what would be the point of CQC and HnS?