But in an environment like WoW pve, where it all resolves around producing numbers to deplete something's number pool, virually everything can be theorycrafted and every encounter is a problemsolving issue. No matter how complex the set of variables is in a given boss fight, it is still a scripted scenario and as such can be mathematically predicted. Thus one could argue that there is no choice involved in the entire raiding game, there's only the matter of how close you are to the theoretical optimum of your expected role.

The other thing about Combat's filler which is amazing is that every single filler talent is accessible, since the spots in the tree without mandatory talents are fairly deep in the tree. You have a free and unconstrained choice between stronger Recoups, better baseline armor, longer CC, snare-breaks, snares-on-attack, or better interrupt/silence potential, where as a lot of classes have filler talents which can't be taken due to falling too deep in the tree. Improved Expose Armor and Cheat Death are examples of that, where it is simply impossible to finish them due to every remaining talent point being spoken for at that point. Of course, if Cut to the Chase was a two point talent for the same effect, Assassination would be able to spend four filler points (if we count Quickening as filler) in any four talents in any combination.

Relatedly, It seems there has been little discussion of offspec points. Combat looks in the best place, able to get Coup-de-Grace, Lethality, and Relentless Strikes, with a spare point for Ruthlessness. However, when you look at Subtlety and Assassination, they won't be able to fill out both Precision and a cross-tree 2nd tier talent (Opportunity for Assassination, either Ruthlessness or Puncturing Wounds for Sub). Likewise, Assassination has to grab filler in Sub if it wants Opportunity, and Subtlety has to skip a point in either CdG or Lethality, if it wants to put as many points as possible in either tier two Assassination or Precision. Alternately, Subtlety could go deeper into Combat for Aggression (with Improved Recuperate as very nice filler if we're maintaining it for energy). I guess it just seems pretty typical that Combat seems to have the easiest time getting it's offspec points, with Assassination in fairly good shape but about a point off, and Subtlety wanting to spend far more points than it's able to. Kind of a perfect allegory for how well-designed each tree is and how streamlined it's focus is.

I think it’s worth it to take a second and talk about what this really means. Many people have been using these terms differently, and Cooljo made a very interesting point that caught my attention.

It’s true that the mathematics of the game make it possible to predict the optimal rotation in any given situation. However “depth” isn’t really referring to our ability to spreadsheet optimal choices. In my mind it is more a distinction between how much of our rotation is predetermined before the boss is pulled and how much is a response to events during the encounter.

Hitting RvS to gain our first CP or our last CP is not really an issue of depth, because ultimately theory crafters will determine the optimal rotation, the information will be repeated on this website and others, and players will look it up and memorize it as a rule. Yes, the rotation is more complex because we hit more buttons, however the only skill involved is the ability to Google.

To me, mechanics can be said to add depth when they force you into making decisions in the moment. The SS glyph had this effect on the combat rotation because it changed the rotation from “build to 5 Cps and refresh SnD” to “wait until SnD is about to run out and refresh with however many Cps you have”. The latter rotation required part of my attention through the course of every fight and often at 5 cps I had to “decide” if there was enough time to eviscerate, or if I wanted to be “safe” and refresh SnD. While it wasn't an overly difficult rotation it did favor players with more skill. The former rotation required that I be able to count to five: a mechanic that allowed me to differentiate myself from a 2 year old.

I agree, Lumen, and that is one reason I believe the SS Glyph will stay in the game. If they make it so RvS actually does more damage than SS, it would make the choice interesting as to whether we'd do RvS for the bonus + extra damage or SS for the potential extra CP. Or something like that. There is the potential for depth. Especially since Restless Blades offers us the ability to make each Strike that we do important -- they go toward building up our % damage increase, until we get to 15% of course, and then we burn as much as we can until that buff falls off. Then we ramp up again.

There is the potential for depth. That's what I've been trying to get across. Perhaps I've just done a sub-par job enumerating the ways I see it evolving.


And comparing Combat to the other trees is just silly. Assassination has little that affects our cycle except that we must keep Rupture up at all times or our energy becomes less prevalent. At least Subtlety has HAT to make its CP generation slightly (and only slightly) less predictable. I think Combat is in the best place of the three specs, balancing issues aside. I can't wait to see how all three trees change further.

I don't see how making the hypothetical choice between a harder hitting ability (RvS) and more CPs (glyph of SS) is interesting or adds depth. It's precisely the type of decision that can be theorycrafted in advance, depending on the value of CP. I don't find Restless Blades to be particularly stimulating either, as its effect is quite static. It seems like it just changes the value of Evis and Rupture. Randomness and procs can do that, but too much of that leads to too great a variance. Perhaps more pooling support would improve the complexity or at least decision making - Bandit's Guile sounds like it can accomplish that but figuring out the ability from the tooltip alone is impossible.
In the end, whether it adds complexity or not, rogues desperately need more abilities in their rotation. The state of Muti rogues on live is just pathetic.

That's exactly why I feel like redesigning Master Poisoner back in TOC was a mess. Ofc chosing what to do with your CP's in Ulduar was something that was theorycrafted and modelized depending on the situation. But while in fight you just couldn't predict what to do before you had to do it, you had to make the right choice at the right moment.

I feel like Mutilate spec still widely suffers from that modification even regarding Cataclysm talent tree. Blizz tried to give the spec some kind of "complexity" by adding a new builder and a new finisher to the PvE muti gameplay but it only forces us to bind new attacks instead of adding depth to the spec. Because maintaining rupture up is something we've been doing for a long time and the new clipping mechanism will make it even more trivial, while Murderous Intent only makes us spam another button when our add-ons tell us it's time to do. Basically there won't be any kind of depth given through these changes.

What I feel like is that giving depth isn't what Blizzard is aiming to, it looks much more like the goal is to make a difference between average and bad players more than making one between awesome and average players. Virtually adding complexity by adding new mechanisms that can be theorycrafted and predicted reaches this goal. Average players will read theorycrafting topics and will then know what to do and when to do it, hence there might not be such a great difference between an average player and an awesome player. But bad players won't take time to make inquiries and adding new mechanisms and new attacks to the specs allows to make the gap greater as it lessens the chance to accidentally do the right thing at the right time without having wanted it.

I really don't think we could expect more than what we are given in terms of depth, it doesn't seem game designers want natural abilities (like the ability to quickly make decisions) to make a great difference, because this kind of parameters creates gaps that can't be bridged by some kind of players (some are able to quickly react and make choices, some never will).

I concur that having decisions to take on the spur of the fight would be nice.
Critical effects on SS and RvS could be interesting events to trigger buffs which would require the right button to be pressed on time. Do you think it could add depth to the rotation ? The key point of such a feature should be "Open your eyes to what happens, understand the situation, then take the right decision".

Here are examples of such procs to explain more what I have in mind
- "after a SS critical strike, your RvS effect is doubled if you use this hability within 4 seconds."
- "after a RvS critical strike, your next SS will generate an additionnal combo point, if you use this hability within 4 seconds."

I call BS on that.
The rotation of a Mut rogue on live is absurd. It has the lowest skillcap of every class / role in the game.
You can argue that having to press 1 2 3 4 is not a hard, but it is harder, by definition, than pressing 1 1 1 1.
Maybe the word rotation can be dropped, but in any case I wasn't aiming at a fixed rotation which is what you are raging about. Rogues need more abilities for the class to feel complete. It's odd that one of the pure class in the game has so few abilities at its disposal compared to hybrids when you'd expect the exact opposite. Comparing to rets is interesting. They have Inquisition to Mut's rupture, CS to Mutilate, and TV for Evnemon. But then they have 3-4 (depending on whether Conc is useable) fillers on various CDs, one proc based, that can also generate CPs and 2 semi-short CDs, both of which radically affect the rotation. That's before counting in HoW.
Now the thing is you can argue that ret rotation is not really hard and you can automate it all etc etc. But Mut even on beta has all these problems AND presses 3 buttons. No, switching from 1 CP builder to another is not interesting.

You're falling into a common fallacy - the notion that the number of buttons one has to press as a measure of complexity. It is, in fact, one that we've previously discussed (see, for instance, here). I might suggest you read the prior discussion on the topic before barging in and telling us we're all wrong.

So, for instance, Mutilate on live: yes, it only uses a few buttons. But that doesn't mean there aren't meaningful choices between those buttons. And having to make meaningful choices about what button to push and when to push it is the very definition of skill. And Mutilate does actually have a reasonable number of those decisions - mostly around optimizing envenom uptime. And the reintroduction of rupture to the cycle will actually make those decisions more interesting, and the change in combo point generator at 35% will require two separate decision trees, adding still a bit more complexity.

To be clear: I'm not arguing that Mutilate is the most complicated spec in the game - it might even be the simplest (though I *severely* doubt it). But that doesn't mean its devoid of complexity, or that it isn't gaining more. Characterizing it as just "you mash three buttons and that's it" misses the point completely. You could make an interesting and skill-based rotation with *one* button given rogue mechanics, and you could make a tedious, stupid, and skill-less rotation with 20.

For instance, consider the falling two examples:

Example A (loosely based on arcane mages): Lets assume you have two moves, A and B. You press them in some order. The more often you press B, the more mana efficient your cycle is; the less often you press it, the more damage it does. Your goal is clearly to end the fight with zero mana. In a patchwerk style burn, this might even be reasonably straightforward - you'd theorycraft out the optimal rotation, and be done. But on a more complex fight, where there's burn phases and trinket procs and heroism and whatever else to consider, figuring out how much mana to dump when turns out to be a major factor in determining your total damage output.
Example B: You have 5 abilities. Your optimal rotation is always A B C D E. The end.

You'll have a hard time convincing anyone that B is actually harder to do, even though it uses more buttons. As another example, consider combat cycles - high rupture vs low rupture. Same number of finishers that get used, but Low Rupture is harder to play. Why? Because you need to plan ahead a lot more and pay attention to what you're pressing when.

Ultimately: having to press more buttons is not a test of skill; it's a test of keybinds, or of how many fingers you have. More decisions is what makes a class require more skill, so adding buttons is only good insofar as it also changes the number of decisions you have to make. And as it turns out, rogues actually have a reasonable number of decisions to make as a function of how many buttons they press.

Now, a *legitimate* criticism would be that the difference between making those decisions correctly and not isn't nearly large enough. And hopefully the net effect of the changes we're receiving will be to make that difference larger. But that's not something that we can determine by counting buttons we have to press.

It isn't the number of buttons that a rogue has to press that makes their rotation difficult or easy. It's the timing. In order to perform optimally as a mutilate rogue, you can't just mutilate and/or envenom the moment you have enough energy. Energy pooling and managing the uptime on the envenom buff are part of what separates a good rogue from a bad one.

Hybrids are basically a combination of multiple roles into one. Perhaps not all at once, but they at least have the ability to use the abilities of a different role at a given time. Because of this, it makes sense that a class that has the potential to tank and heal in addition to DPS has more abilities to their disposal. I feel your little rant here is backwards.

"Interesting" is a subjective term. What might be interesting to one person is extremely boring to another. On that note, I agree -- to a point. It's not the most exciting thing simply to change CP generators sub 35%. I feel that Blizzard could do a little better with their design of the Murderous Intent talent. Perhaps, rather than adding a static energy recovery aspect to Backstab, they could make using Backstab reduce the energy cost of your next mutilate, or give mutilate extra damage, or a combination.

My point is that I don't believe simply adding more abilities will add depth to the class. It will add complexity, sure, but, in my opinion, needless complexity. Blizzard has been making changes to rets throughout beta, then reverting the changes or changing the changes to something else. This is because they found the changes they made were actually inflicting harm upon the retribution spec -- they made it too complex.

I wasn't planning to express my disagreement with this, but since the last page has been a debate about "skill"...

Above Aldriana defined "skill" as having something to do with deciding which button to push when, but I would respectfully suggest that how you move the mouse might also qualify as skill-related.

I've been leveling both my main and a worgen rogue as subtlety, and have found it to be a joy in both cases. Shadowstep->Ambush by itself wreaks havoc on non-elites, and between KS and Gouge it's really no problem to use Backstab. (If the few extra seconds it takes to kill a mob because of Gouge bothers you, remember that you saved those seconds Shadowstepping to the mob in the first place). Energetic Recovery combined with Momentum means zero downtime (if anything the pressure to NOT let yourself get a rest can result in an overly full bladder IRL.)

In instances it's hard to tell how effective I was because neither mods nor floating combat text are working, but even without numbers I can tell that I haven't yet mastered the Sub rotation; it's very different. % change to Serrated Blades was definitely a good change. I will agree with Zaniel that fast-dying trash is a problem. But, if it's dying fast anyway, is it really a problem?