So, as Blizzard seems to be making a fair number of balancing tweaks at the moment, it seems reasonable to believe there will be further blue posts that we care about. And having been on these forums for a while, I know that when such posts appear, people just *love* to copy/paste them into various threads here. Usually 3 or 4 different people in 3 or 4 different threads. And this is, of course, clearly inefficient and stupid.
So: from now on, we're going to put them all in one thread. Specifically: this thread. From here on out, if you copy blue posts into any other thread in the rogue forum, you're going to get an infraction unless you're providing significant additional analysis that's pertinent to the thread's topic. If you're just cut and pasting the blue post, put it in this thread. Also, make sure to verify that no one else has posted it before - it's all in one thread, so there's really no excuse for posting something that has already been posted. So if you do it, you're going to get an infraction (and yes, I realize that simultaneous posting type things can happen, and I will show a certain degree of leniency with them. But if you're more than 5 minutes behind or so, it's your own damn fault for doing a copy/paste without refreshing first).
Feel free to additionally discuss said changes here, but please try to be constructive about it - whining about nerfs, or asking for specific gear advice in light of the changes, or basically any other behavior that we wouldn't tolerate under normal circumstances... we still are not going to tollerate. This isn't an invitation to post whatever the heck you want with respect to blue posts - all forum rules still apply. This is simply to make all the blue posts we may wish to discuss easily findable for those wishing to discuss them, so we don't wind up cross-posting them into half the threads on the forum.
As many of you have suspected, we think rogue damage is too high. We will be making hotfixes to lower the maximum damage output of Assassination and Combat rogues. The Combat nerf will be slight. Both specs should still do just fine on damage meters (assuming skill, gear etc.) but shouldn't be beating out other specs to such a large degree.
The base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood has been reduced from 10% to 5%.
The bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons has been decreased. This applies to Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Wound Poison.
Additional note: further testing reveals that the coefficient reduction is 10% for all 3 poisons - WP is now .036, IP .09, and DP .108 (or .027 per tick per stack).
We have been trying to keep players up to date on the item changes especially with all the procs involved in the ICC items. I checked on this and we haven't made any changes at this point (at least nothing intentional) as we are still evaluating it.
Despite this, the proc behavior has pretty clearly changed, so it sounds like it may have gotten caught in some larger fix. Hopefully we'll get further feedback from Blizzard in the next couple of days as to whether said changes will be reverted or not.
Blue Post, 1/16/10 (yes a Saturday), regarding the change to procs/PPM. Looks like we need to re-test Berserking now too (and probably anything that relies on proc mechanics).
We changed the way PPM procs work to make sure many of the weapons and trinkets did their expected performance in Icecrown instead of proc'ing too much for some specs or classes or forcing players into unusual behavior to try and fish for the procs. This change also affected some older mechanics in the game too such as the Berserking enchant. For the most part the intent is that these systems all proc off of attacks and they are balanced with that assumption.
At this time we're happy with the damage that characters are now doing after these changes, though we'll continue to monitor and adjust damage overall and that includes the proc-based items.
[BUG] Tiny Abomination in a Jar 01/29/2010 10:48:43 AM PST
Thanks for the reports. We're working on a fix for this bug and we will be releasing it in a future patch.
Some of the weapons from the Lich King are not as good as we had hoped. To encourage you to want these new weapons, we have decided to change some of the old combat ratings over to better ones. We have obtained a preview of these changes, for your perusal, on behalf of the Beijing development team.
Heaven's Fall, Kryss of a Thousand Lies - Armor Penetration replaced with Haste Rating
Stormfury, Black Blade of the Betraye] - Armor Penetration replaced with Expertise
Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas - Haste Rating replaced with Armor Penetration
* Rupture: The damage-over-time component of this ability can now produce critical strikes.
* Talents
o Subtlety
+ Filthy Tricks: Now Reduces the cooldown by 5/10 seconds and energy cost by 5/10 of Tricks of the Trade, Distract and Shadowstep abilities, and reduces the cooldown of Preparation by 1.5/3 minutes.
+ Ghostly Strike: If the rogue has a dagger equipped, this ability now deals 180% weapon damage instead of 125%.
+ Hemorrhage: If the rogue has a dagger equipped, this ability now deals 160% weapon damage instead of 110%.
+ Slaughter from the Shadows: Now adds 1/2/3/4/5% damage to all attacks in addition to its current effects.
+ Waylay: The debuff from this talent can now be caused by Backstab in addition to Ambush.
* Slaughter from the Shadows: Now adds 1/2/3/4/5% damage to all attacks and reduces the energy cost of Backstab and Ambush by 4/8/12/16/20, up from 3/6/9/12/15.
* Waylay: The debuff from this talent can now be caused by Backstab in addition to Ambush and can be triggered by all hits from these abilities rather than just critical strikes, but the snare component is now 50%, down from 70%.
As many of you know from panels at last year’s BlizzCon and posts here on the forums since then, Cataclysm will bring about major changes to familiar character stats such as Intellect, Armor Penetration, Defense, and others, ultimately designed to make the effects of stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting. As these changes will have a significant impact on how stats work and relate to one another, today we wanted to offer you a closer look at exactly what’s in store and explain some of the rationale before Cataclysm arrives.
The most obvious question these changes raise is "Why are stats being changed, and why now?" As the game has matured, we've run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a "good stat" for a class and a "bad stat" can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat -- and these are just a few examples.
Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players. While the reasoning behind some of the following changes may be clear, we understand that you may have questions about some of the less obvious alterations, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have here on the forums.
What You’ll See on Gear
Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.
Spirit - Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.
Intellect - Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.
Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you "do stuff" more often.
Block Rating - Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.
Parry - Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.
Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It's directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.
Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.
Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.
Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating - These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details -- such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) -- are likely to change.
Being Removed from Items
Attack Power - This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.
Spell Power - Spell Power is another stat that you'll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.
Armor Penetration - This stat will no longer be present on items. Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.
Shield Block Value - This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.
Going Away Completely
MP5 - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.
Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.
Spell Ranks - Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.
Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.
What Else You Should Know
Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.
Reforging - While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.
Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We'll have more details on this in the future.
Changes to Existing Gear
As with previous expansions, we plan to roll out these changes and modify all existing gear shortly before Cataclysm launches, though it’s still too early to say exactly when. For the most part, the gear you have will still be good for you, though there will be exceptions, such as warriors using leather and mail armor.
If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:
* No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
* No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
* You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
* Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.
If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
* Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
* Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.
* No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.
If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina.
* All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
* No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.
If you are a healer, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina.
* All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
* Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.
If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:
* You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman.
* Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it.
* You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit.
* Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you.
* Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.
Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We're also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren't widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).
We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven't yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.
Rogue
Serrated Blades: This talent now allows the rogue to ignore up to 3/6/9% of the target's armor, rather than a fixed amount of armor ignored per level of the rogue.
Overall, we think rogues do too much passive damage -- autoattacks + poison. We want to shift more of that towards their specials, which will let both the finishers and the generators hit harder while keeping sustained damage about the same. It might mean less-skilled rogues do less damage by comparison, but that's not really a bad thing.
* Tricks of the Trade: Now works properly on targets below level 65. Also fixed a bug where the threat transfer would not happen sometimes.
* Feint: This ability can no longer proc poisons.
* Master Poisoner; Now correctly reduces the duration of a sting refreshed by Chimera Shot.
Rogue damage distribution and burst
That's the risk, but from a broader perspective you're identifying the problem: more damage on specials is more fun and generally requires more skill than lots of damage from auto attacking, but can lead to more burst. That doesn't mean that tons of damage from auto attacking is a desired goal though. Neither extreme is fun.
In Cataclysm, when health pools are much higher, then burst as a PvP strategy just isn't going to have the same strength it does now. In LK you can get someone close to death in a few globals, and in fact you need to, because if you don't the healer is going to have them back to full again. In Cataclysm, sustained damage even in PvP will be more meaningful, because you're trying to shift someone's health towards an endpoint instead of flipping them from 100% to 0%. It should feel more like a tug of war over health. In that environment, burst can still be good for when you need to actually get that killing blow, but it won't be the only strategy.
Rogue burst is also scary today because they can deliver it while a target is chain stunned. We've also said that's not a particularly fun place to be (for attacker or defender) and we need to shift rogue defenses away from short-duration immunities (which includes the stuns) and more towards being able to stand toe to toe with other classes a little better. (Source)
Q. With the emphasis moving to Battlegrounds, have you looked into rogue cooldown dependency issues?
A. We definitely want to give rogues a considerable boost in the passive damage reduction department, and then tone down some of their active cooldowns in the process. We still want the rogue to feel twitchy and exciting to play, but not to the extent that you can’t deal with another class toe-to-toe without any cooldowns up. Oh, and Cloak of Shadows now provides 100% resistance.
While this post is mostly pvp-centric, it's nice to know that CloS will provide full resistance. This should increase our pve survivability as well, and make it more predictable.
A thread discussing the usefulness (or rather the lack of it) of Riposte. The interesting bit underlined:
...
The problem with both Lightwell and Riposte in LK has to do with the pace of combat. A small self-heal isn't useful in an environment where the healers either keep you up easily or you die to spike damage regardless of the decisions you make. An attack speed debuff isn't super useful in a PvP environment where players die so quickly. But with the larger health pools in Cataclysm, both of those talents become more useful. Saving priest mana and GCDs by using Lightwell could help turn a failure into a victory. Slowing down incoming damage can help a rogue go toe-to-toe with another melee class.
Counterattack is probably going away. We haven't released new hunter trees yet. Shiv is changing a little bit to be more of an enrage dispel.
My assumption would be that it dawned on Blizzard that having a third (or fourth) weapon with Anesthetic and relying on a weapon swap macro to dispel enrages was clunky as hell. What will probably happen is that Anesthetic is going away and the enrage dispel mechanic it provided will be added to Shiv.
My question then is that will this new functionality replace Shiv's old one (the guaranteed poison proc)? If so, this is a pretty hefty change. With the change to dispel mechanics at the same time, though, changing Shiv might not make as big a deal.
My question then is that will this new functionality replace Shiv's old one (the guaranteed poison proc)? If so, this is a pretty hefty change. With the change to dispel mechanics at the same time, though, changing Shiv might not make as big a deal.
It could probably go either way. In PvE having a sure-fire poison proc (which cannot crit) and an enrage dispel coming from a single attack (which also cannot crit) is no big deal because it's trading the DPS of a normal attack for utility and potentially much less damage.
In PvP that might be a problem if only because similar spells like Tranq Shot do not do any damage. But Blizzard has often said that different classes are different and that spells/abilities do not have to be perfectly equal for them to be balanced. As it stands now, only melee classes have an enrage so a dispel from melee range is a greater risk than one from 30+ yards anyway.
That being the case, I could see a very short cooldown put on shiv especially if poison dispels are no longer fire and forget.
Anesthetic Poison might very well go away and Shiv just become the anesthetic equivalent. Little too early to tell on that one.
Malice is the kind of thing we'd like to replace, but we'd rather the trees work than just rip out every passive stat talent just because, so we'll only replace it if we come with something we're really excited about. Precision is fine -- being able to remove some hit dependency is useful to every dps spec and the kind of thing you could consider talenting out of if your gear put you over the cap.
That's something we have discussed (only fast daggers), but the valuation of weapon speed is heavily tied into combat mechanics and those might still change. For example, we've been considering that nasty ICD on Windfury weapon again....
For clarity, that discussion was not saying that daggers would only be fast (as the wording suggests) but that the only fast weapons would be daggers - if implemented.
Some pretty big news in the world of talents, especially for new players.
When we first announced our design goals for class talent trees back at BlizzCon 2009, one of our major stated focuses was to remove some of the boring and "mandatory" passive talents. We mentioned that we wanted talent choices to feel more flavorful and fun, yet more meaningful at the same time. Recently, we had our fansites release information on work-in-progress talent tree previews for druids, priests, shaman, and rogues. From those previews and via alpha test feedback, a primary response we heard was that these trees didn’t incorporate the original design goals discussed at BlizzCon. This response echoes something we have been feeling internally for some time, namely that the talent tree system has not aged well since we first increased the level cap beyond level 60. In an upcoming beta build, we will unveil bold overhauls of all 30 talent trees.
Talent Tree Vision
One of the basic tenets of Blizzard game design is that of “concentrated coolness.” We’d rather have a simpler design with a lot of depth, than a complicated but shallow design. The goal for Cataclysm remains to remove a lot of the passive (or lame) talents, but we don’t think that’s possible with the current tree size. To resolve this, we're reducing each tree to 31-point talents. With this reduction in tree size we need to make sure they're being purchased along a similar leveling curve, and therefore will also be reducing the number of total talent points and the speed at which they're awarded during the leveling process.
As a result, we can keep the unique talents in each tree, particularly those which provide new spells, abilities or mechanics. We’ll still have room for extra flavorful talents and room for player customization, but we can trim a great deal of fat from each tree. The idea isn’t to give players fewer choices, but to make those choices feel more meaningful. Your rotations won’t change and you won’t lose any cool talents. What will change are all of the filler talents you had to pick up to get to the next fun talent, as well as most talents that required 5 of your hard-earned points.
We are also taking a hard look at many of the mandatory PvP talents, such as spell pushback or mechanic duration reductions. While there will always be PvP vs. PvE builds, we’d like for the difference to be less extreme, so that players don’t feel like they necessarily need to spend their second talent specialization on a PvP build.
The Rise of Specialization
We want to focus the talent trees towards your chosen style of gameplay right away. That first point you spend in a tree should be very meaningful. If you choose Enhancement, we want you to feel like an Enhancement shaman right away, not thirty talent points later. When talent trees are unlocked at level 10, you will be asked to choose your specialization (e.g. whether you want to be an Arms, Fury or Protection warrior) before spending that first point. Making this choice comes with certain benefits, including whatever passive bonuses you need to be effective in that role, and a signature ability that used to be buried deeper in the talent trees. These abilities and bonuses are only available by specializing in a specific tree. Each tree awards its own unique active ability and passives when chosen. The passive bonuses range from flat percentage increases, like a 20% increase to Fire damage for Fire mages or spell range increases for casters, to more interesting passives such as the passive rage regeneration of the former Anger Management talent for Arms warriors, Dual-Wield Specialization for Fury warriors and Combat rogues, or the ability to dual-wield itself for Enhancement shaman.
The initial talent tree selection unlocks active abilities that are core to the chosen role. Our goal is to choose abilities that let the specializations come into their own much earlier than was possible when a specialization-defining talent had to be buried deep enough that other talent trees couldn’t access them. For example, having Lava Lash and Dual-Wield right away lets an Enhancement shaman feel like an Enhancement shaman. Other role-defining examples of abilities players can now get for free at level 10 include Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, Mutilate, Shadow Step, Thunderstorm, Earth Shield, Water Elemental, and Penance.
Getting Down to the Grit
Talent trees will have around 20 unique talents instead of today's (roughly) 30 talents, and aesthetically will look a bit more like the original World of Warcraft talent trees. The 31-point talents will generally be the same as the 51-point talents we already had planned for Cataclysm. A lot of the boring or extremely specialized talents have been removed, but we don't want to remove anything that’s going to affect spell/ability rotations. We want to keep overall damage, healing, and survivability roughly the same while providing a lot of the passive bonuses for free based on your specialization choice.
While leveling, you will get 1 talent point about every 2 levels (41 points total at level 85). Our goal is to alternate between gaining a new class spell or ability and gaining a talent point with each level. As another significant change, you will not be able to put points into a different talent tree until you have dedicated 31 talent points to your primary specialization. While leveling, this will be possible at 70. Picking a talent specialization should feel important. To that end, we want to make sure new players understand the significance of reaching the bottom of their specialization tree before gaining the option of spending points in the other trees. We intend to make sure dual-specialization and re-talenting function exactly as they do today so players do not feel locked into their specialization choice.
A True Mastery
The original passive Mastery bonuses players were to receive according to how they spent points in each tree are being replaced by the automatic passive bonuses earned when a tree specialization is chosen. These passives are flat percentages and we no longer intend for them to scale with the number of talent points spent. The Mastery bonus that was unique to each tree will now be derived from the Mastery stat, found on high-level items, and Mastery will be a passive skill learned from class trainers around level 75. In most cases, the Mastery stats will be the same as the tree-unique bonuses we announced earlier this year. These stats can be improved by stacking Mastery Rating found on high-level items.
To Recap
When players reach level 10, they are presented with basic information on the three specializations within their class and are asked to choose one. Then they spend their talent point. The other trees darken and are unavailable until 31 points are spent in the chosen tree. The character is awarded an active ability, and one or more passive bonuses unique to the tree they've chosen. As they gain levels, they'll alternate between receiving a talent point and gaining new skills. They'll have a 31-point tree to work down, with each talent being more integral and exciting than they have been in the past. Once they spend their 31'st point in the final talent (at level 70), the other trees open up and become available to allocate points into from then on. As characters move into the level 78+ areas in Cataclysm, they'll begin seeing items with a new stat, Mastery. Once they learn the Mastery skill from their class trainer they'll receive bonuses from the stat based on the tree they've specialized in.
We understand that these are significant changes and we still have details to solidify. We feel, however, that these changes better fulfill our original class design goals for Cataclysm, and we're confident that they will make for a better gameplay experience. Your constructive feedback is welcomed and appreciated.
While we won't know anything for sure until we see the actual redesigned trees, one thing that comes to mind straight away is that, most probably, assassination rogues won't be able to pick up Blade Flurry as we thought they would. The reason I think this will be the case is this post by GC, specifically:
You typically won't get active abilities from a second tree. The most you can get in a second tree is 10 points, and usually the active abilities are deeper than this.
Obviously, this will affect any builds that aimed to pick up active abilities from two or more trees, like muti/prep for pvp.
To specifically address that concern, GC had this to say:
It's a design flaw that rogues and locks are so dependent on Prep and Soul Link respectively. Those talents are currently holding the classes back. Now we can't balance around the assumption that you have those talents so your classes need to function without them. Maybe it means lowering base cooldowns....
01/08/10, 6:02 AM
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