Cataclysm Rogue Changes - Page 64

Ratek · 09/02/10, 7:52 AM

Originally Posted by Aldriana

If that's I think the question that has to be asked is: does it really make sense for Tricks to to give a damage boost to it's target? What would the reprecussions be if it were purely a threat management move?

Well, firstly it would be made equal to Misdirection, save for the range. Personally I would be much for this as Tricks does have this tendency to make people do this us/them thingy. Of course Tricks would need a boost in range to 30 yards (well even if the damage component wasn't removed) so that a Rogue could, if required, do a pull without major fuss (tank stands around a corner or something).
Tricks is a raid/group utility tool, at the same time combining it with a personal utility tool makes it a fair bit stiff. It would be like Prayer of Mending causing a 20% manacost reduction on it's first target. You would want to use it on a tank, but the bonus would be rather wasted there.

Lumen222 · 09/02/10, 9:04 AM

Originally Posted by Aldriana

I think the question that has to be asked is: does it really make sense for Tricks to to give a damage boost to it's target?

No.

It pains me to say that, since the talent is really amazing. One of the things I miss about progression raiding is the teamwork and synchronicity of Tricks rotations with my partner rogue. It added a layer of planning, timing and interaction with each other that was really fun.

But in the months since I retired from serious raiding, my experiences subbing with other raid groups and pugs has pretty much shattered any remaining faith I had in human altruism or logic. (Not that I had that much faith to begin with). Too many players are driven by the need to dominate the dps meter and ignore any inconvenient fact that doesn’t support this agenda. A phrase such as “best for the raid” is often thrown around because it sounds selfless, but in my experience it’s often only an argument of convenience, spoken by whoever is demanding the buff. It usually ignores issues such as the short range on ToT, and the not insignificant amount of threat that is transferred.

If tricks was a wider raid buff I think it would not cause anywhere near the stupidity it does. However it’s not. It’s becoming a means by which we single out one person in the raid for being “best” and buff them even more. Like handing out a single cookie to a group of children. The other children can turn into complete brats when they are left out. And sometimes the child with the cookie is a completely annoying asshat. Which shouldn’t matter. But it does.

Style question: Should Asshat be hyphenated?

Milano · 09/02/10, 9:48 AM

Tricks of the Trade pretty much was demoted to pull utility and raid dps only when they made transfered threat fade after 30 sec. I think a solution where unglyphed ToTT was free and gave no damage increase would be better. While glyphed (major) it could cost 15 energy and give the rogue the 15% damage increase for 6 sec. Similiar could be considered for Hunters.
Also I'd wish they gave us 2-set Tier 10 bonus baseline or via talent in for instance Subtlety. The selfish benefit gave another dimension to the skill.

Neckface · 09/02/10, 10:08 AM

In case anybody was wondering (because I was): I just tested on beta and the Hemo glyph does not currently stack with itself the way, say, Deep Wounds does. Which means there's no reason to Hemo more than once every 24 seconds, and thus Backstab remains the primary CP builder.

Two other notes:
1) The hemo dots can crit.
2) The math is currently totally broken. It was ticking for 4-5, with crits of 9, off of Hemos critting for 3-4k.

The test was on mobs, not target dummies, so not overly scientific yet. I'll try to do something more thorough.

Lumen222 · 09/02/10, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Milano

The selfish benefit gave another dimension to the skill.

I'm unashamed to admit that for me the words "another dimension" could be changed to "fun". It's human nature to enjoy something more if you also benefit from it. I'm tired of dancing around that fact.

Likewise I feel like trading Tricks with another rogue was infinitely more fun than tricksing another dps. Not just because of the selfish dps gain (though again, no shame in admitting that was part of it), but because we were both invested in the give and take. There was opportunity for strategy and teamwork. As opposed to "press this button now to make person you may or may not respect do more damage".

There has been a design trend at Blizzard to make altruistic talents have an additional selfish benefit, and I think that's a good thing. In a game as diverse as wow, there is something to be said for giving people a reason to do something other than "it's best for the raid". Many of us will suck it up and still DO it, because we are logical and know that the ultimate goal is to beat the encounter, not the meter. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's FUN, and it doesn't address the fact that the general design of the game needs to work well across a wide range of raid types, where you don't always have a strong raid leader to insist that people do the right thing.

Neckface · 09/02/10, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by Lumen222

There has been a design trend at Blizzard to make altruistic talents have an additional selfish benefit,

Exactly why I wish the hemo glyph had been baked into the talent; I've wanted hemo to apply a dot since...forever...but whenever I suggest it the PvPers scream bloody murder.

It does seem a little awkward that bleeds are such a huge component of PvE subtlety (8 talent points over 4 talents) but are avoided completely for PvP. But maybe PvP Sub needs to be rethought and blind/gouge/re-sap taken out of the single-target repertoire.

Soulvex · 09/02/10, 11:06 AM

All this talk about hemo has got me wondering what the current thoughts are on the Subtlety specs using non-daggers. Or are Sub specs going to be pseudo-cornered into using daggers as well with Combat being the only spec to use swords, axes, etc.?

Since hemo is not the primary CP builder, would one have to consider taking Imp SS and use that. Doesn't seem totally orthodox, but I was wondering if it had been explored at all.

Reeshet · 09/02/10, 11:20 AM

Originally Posted by Aldriana

I think the question that has to be asked is: does it really make sense for Tricks to to give a damage boost to it's target? What would the reprecussions be if it were purely a threat management move?

I agree that it's time to reassess the damage boost to target. But if that's done, then Tricks as purely a Threat management tool seems pretty boring. We already have Feint and Vanish to manage threat pretty decently.

My question would be, what would be the reprecussions if it had no threat impact at all?

There's no real reason why the threat management has to be actively initiated on the DPS side. Suppose they made Vigilance for example an active ability that gave the tank all of that target's threat for some X seconds?

Then Tricks would be considered purely as a DPS increasing ability and treated as such. Tricks could also be modified to be more like a "proc" based ability that skilled rogue could get massive benefit from, like next ability has chance to cost no energy when your tricks target crits.

Zujamar · 09/02/10, 11:52 AM

Originally Posted by Saweni

The only grief I still have is that Imp.EA isn't a filler right now, as you have to give one dps talent up to take 2/2. But moving it a step upper in the three would surely achieve what Blizzard was willing to do with "customizable specs".

While it is still a dps talent, I wouldn't be too bothered to drop Overkill in that situation: it's not a very big dps increase as far as talents go and you get rid of the inconvenience of having Vanish tied to two purposes that rarely overlap.

Lumen222 · 09/02/10, 12:06 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

Tricks could also be modified to be more like a "proc" based ability that skilled rogue could get massive benefit from, like next ability has chance to cost no energy when your tricks target crits.

This creates a tension for the rogue, who would naturally prefer to tricks the person with the most crits per second, as opposed to the person who does the most overall damage. It could also become complicated to determine on a raid to raid basis which of these options is better for overall raid dps. *Edit* Or would it be only a benefit for the rogue and no longer benefit the target except for threat? Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

However Tricks as a purely threat management tool is heartbreakingly boring, and a loss to the overall flavor and uniqueness of the talent. I'm completely conflicted regarding what the best course of action would be.

Adyssa · 09/02/10, 12:11 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

I agree that it's time to reassess the damage boost to target. But if that's done, then Tricks as purely a Threat management tool seems pretty boring. We already have Feint and Vanish to manage threat pretty decently.

I find your line of thought incredibly baffling. Feint and Vanish manage only the Rogue's threat. Tricks transfers threat. It's incredibly unique, as the only other class that can do it is a Hunter.

The threat transfer is the powerful part of the ability. The damage boost is the meaningless and mundane part. More damage is just more damage. Blizzard can give us more damage anywhere they want. They only gave two classes the ability to transfer threat in this way.

My question would be, what would be the reprecussions if it had no threat impact at all?

There's no real reason why the threat management has to be actively initiated on the DPS side. Suppose they made Vigilance for example an active ability that gave the tank all of that target's threat for some X seconds?

I believe there is a reason. If they give a tanking class an ability like this, then it becomes a very unequal playing field for any other tank unless they also get that ability.

Also, saying it is initiated from the "DPS side" is misleading, as it isn't just any DPS, it's Rogues or Hunters and it ends there.

Threat transfer isn't just "threat management". It can be a deeply engaging part of your strategy. For example, my 10m raid once found itself with only 1 ranged (a warlock) for Saurfang, but two Rogues. We had the Rogues tricks to the Warlock and attack the adds as they spawned. The lock would use demonic circle to teleport backwards after tricks was initiated. That is the type of thing that is satisfying to pull off as a raid group.

Using it as a damage boost is as simple as hitting it every cooldown.

Lightshadow · 09/02/10, 12:14 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

I agree that it's time to reassess the damage boost to target. But if that's done, then Tricks as purely a Threat management tool seems pretty boring. We already have Feint and Vanish to manage threat pretty decently.

My question would be, what would be the reprecussions if it had no threat impact at all?

There's no real reason why the threat management has to be actively initiated on the DPS side. Suppose they made Vigilance for example an active ability that gave the tank all of that target's threat for some X seconds?

Then Tricks would be considered purely as a DPS increasing ability and treated as such. Tricks could also be modified to be more like a "proc" based ability that skilled rogue could get massive benefit from, like next ability has chance to cost no energy when your tricks target crits.

Tricks was never really intended to fix the rogue's threat, it was intended to fix raid threat, and giving it to rogues was a nice boost to our raid utility at a time when we had very little. (I don't know about your guild, but mine sure had overzealous rogues ripping one of the twins 10s into the fight.) I think that intention is pretty clearly reflected in the most recent change. Moving it to the tank side would give up that utility, require baking a similar ability into every tank class (or else one would be "bad at threat"), and totally kill things like using tricks to send blood beasts to ranged dps. (In 25 hard it's less of a big deal, but if your 10 man raid only has 2 ranged dps it's a huge deal for the melee to be able to switch over and kill one of them.)

Edit: Wow, beaten to the punch in more or less every conceivable way. Feel free to kill this post if you'd like Ald.

Istaril · 09/02/10, 12:34 PM

The damage component of Tricks is what's forcing us to spam the button on cooldown (well, and with T10, the energy return). That's not tactical behaviour - the only situations where we would delay a tricks is when we need/should use it for aggro transfer (or potentially a few seconds before a lust). Tricks use as a threat transfer is far more tactical and gives us a unique mechanic to help with burst aggro - as Aldriana says, it makes more sense to dump the DPS boost and keep the threat. I'd prefer it gave no damage, honestly, because it would be one less button to hit on-cooldown.

That said, good use of tricks adds more DPS to the raid than a bad rogue's tricksing (targets on the fly, tricks bite targets), which is a good seperation according to "skill"... so I suspect blizzard will keep this.

thebitterfig · 09/02/10, 12:38 PM

@ Neckface, #949: Thanks for the testing. Given that the dot ticks can crit individually, it looks like it will be a normal-mechanics dot that just has borked damage, rather than a funky-behavior dot, which strikes me as a good thing. I know there isn't really a reason to refresh early, but that doesn't mean that it won't ever happen, and it just seems good design to have it's dot work the same as the general dot behavior.

@ Soulvex, #952: Sinister-Strike Subtlety won't work in the least as a spec. Sinister Strike will deal less damage at a higher energy cost than Backstab, and I highly doubt that the 20% chance for a bonus CP would make up for that. With the glyph design of Hemo vs Backstab, it's also clear that there won't be a viable Hemo-spam build.

SS-Sub seems about as likely as BS-Combat: possible, but probably not worth it due to Bandit's Guile (one RvS to each four BS probably won't lead to high enough uptime, but I haven't played with the mechanic and thus don't understand it in a tactile sense) and the higher opportunity cost in talents to spec into Puncturing Wounds (you have to give up decent off-tree talents) rather than Improved Sinister Strike (you'd need to buy more of combat's weak filler).

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While we're on the subject of what weapons people will wind up using, what do we know about Cataclysm weapons? It seems likely that fast axe/mace/swords will probably be extinct, as there isn't really any reason for them with the removal of combat's weapon specialization, and only combat rogues ever really used them (well, Hunter stat-sticks potentially). Considering that they are (or were, last I heard) also adding in strength-itemised 1h weapons, it just makes sense that we'll see the end of fast non-daggers, in order to free up space in loot tables (unless they wanted to allow weapon-only 100% strength-to-agility and vice-versa reforging, that is. All told, that wouldn't be a bad idea for cleaning up loot tables.). To that end, do we know much about dagger speeds?

Lumen222 · 09/02/10, 12:48 PM

Originally Posted by Istaril

That's not tactical behaviour - the only situations where we would delay a tricks is when we need/should use it for aggro transfer (or potentially a few seconds before a lust).

I disagree. Delaying Tricks for an important add, or to maximize damage during a burn phase is also tactical. It's a trade off between overall raid dps and having dps at a time when you need it the most, and as such is the type of thing you decide based on where your raid is having troubles. You manage it the same way you would any other dps cool down—in most cases you use it early and often, but there are plenty of exceptions to that rule.