Cataclysm Rogue Changes - Page 8

Erdluf · 04/22/10, 8:22 AM

Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

It's speculation but not unfounded. The preview stated that their goal was to shift rogue damage from passive sources to more active sources. The most reasonable way (and one of the easiest outside of lowering the haste on SnD) to lower passive damage would be to lessen poison damage either through application rate or some other factor.

In addition, two classes lose Abolish Poison (low mana cost, remove 5 poisons over 12 seconds) and have that replaced with Cure Poison (high mana cost, remove 1 poison). If they want to maintain something approaching the current "balance" (both poisons and abolish poison are worth using) I'd expect poison effects to be larger, but application to be less frequent (and/or stacks to be smaller).

sp00n · 04/22/10, 8:44 AM

One downside of a greater focus on finishers, be it through inherent damage or damage increasing buffs, would be a greater liability using Expose Armor as a finisher.
I know this shouldn't be needed in 25man (but it still happened to us), but it is a quite common scenario in 10man that there is no warrior present to sunder the targets.

Now when you emphasize the finishers, you obviously also suffer a greater (personal) DPS loss when you can't even use those newly designed finishers in the first place (or only with a reduced frequency).

This is something they'd have to keep in mind. Designing new mechanics that players cannot make proper use of in a not so unlikely scenario would certainly not help.

Zulkeir · 04/22/10, 10:26 AM

I think some of the biggest impact are the less noticeable things, such as other abilities whose function will be changed (or most likely be changed) by the expansion.

For example:
Haste is now the "do more stuff" stat, rather than just white attack faster, and it will correspondingly affect mana, energy regen, etc. A question I haven't seen yet is: How will this apply to SnD?

I see two options: 1) SnD remains just attack speed (Blizzard going back on their lowering passive damages) or, what I feel more likely 2) SnD being re-worked to be a finishing move that lets you use more CP builders faster, by increasing energy returns.

On another note, I play a Troll Rogue. Racial changes are still up in the air from everything I've seen, but If Berserking is returned to Haste rather than casting/attack speed (as in 3.2.0), how could this benefit rogues of that race?

I think there is a lot being overlooked in how some of the base stats and mechanics are being changed which could open up a lot of new opportunities.

Brotherbear · 04/22/10, 11:03 AM

Originally Posted by sp00n

One downside of a greater focus on finishers, be it through inherent damage or damage increasing buffs, would be a greater liability using Expose Armor as a finisher.
I know this shouldn't be needed in 25man (but it still happened to us), but it is a quite common scenario in 10man that there is no warrior present to sunder the targets.

Now when you emphasize the finishers, you obviously also suffer a greater (personal) DPS loss when you can't even use those newly designed finishers in the first place (or only with a reduced frequency).

This is something they'd have to keep in mind. Designing new mechanics that players cannot make proper use of in a not so unlikely scenario would certainly not help.

I suspect that you've just nicely illustrated why they are reducing Sunder Armor and Expose Armor to a 12% debuff in the expansion since it is a "required" debuff and they are trying to move away from that. At this point (with it being a 20% debuff) it's a dps increase even if you are the only physical dps and you have to keep it up. At 12% it will be more of a "how many dps benefit from it compared to my other options" mentality.

Sarlunas · 04/22/10, 1:23 PM

Originally Posted by Brotherbear

I suspect that you've just nicely illustrated why they are reducing Sunder Armor and Expose Armor to a 12% debuff in the expansion since it is a "required" debuff and they are trying to move away from that. At this point (with it being a 20% debuff) it's a dps increase even if you are the only physical dps and you have to keep it up. At 12% it will be more of a "how many dps benefit from it compared to my other options" mentality.

I don't see how this changes things much at all. Even at 12% it will still be a dps gain for almost any 10-man setup. If anything, the lower value makes it even more annoying to be forced to keep it up. The change seems more aimed at 10-man groups without a Warrior or Rogue.

I wouldn't be surprised to see new talents and/or glyphs that allow us to keep up EA without impacting our normal playstyle as much, perhaps in the vein of CttC. At just 12% the PvP implications would be small.

Tinwhisker · 04/22/10, 1:49 PM

Giving Combat a talent similar to CttC to refresh Expose Armor through Eviscerate (instead of Envenom) would be a God-send. While it lacks originality, it certainly adds much to quality of life.

Brotherbear · 04/22/10, 4:43 PM

Originally Posted by Sarlunas

I don't see how this changes things much at all. Even at 12% it will still be a dps gain for almost any 10-man setup. If anything, the lower value makes it even more annoying to be forced to keep it up. The change seems more aimed at 10-man groups without a Warrior or Rogue.

I wouldn't be surprised to see new talents and/or glyphs that allow us to keep up EA without impacting our normal playstyle as much, perhaps in the vein of CttC. At just 12% the PvP implications would be small.

Sigh, so after an hour or two of number crunching I have disproved my own supposition and I concede the point. In order for it to be a rDPS loss for me to run EA (at 12%) my poison damage from the Envenom buff has to work out to about 300dps and I need to be the only physical dps since tank dps is enough to over shoot the dps loss I take (for feral tanks in particular).

I've included my work for your amusement since I firmly believe in showing that I spent more than a few minutes working on this only to determine that I am completely incorrect.

Premises:
1) We ignore the bonus damage my poisons do during the envenom debuff
2) We ignore TotT trading that artificially boosts my Envenom dps
3) All dps numbers are calculated without the ICC zone buff
4) This only applies to Mutilate rogues since, for combat rogues, the loss of the Major Armor debuff is considerably worse.
According to Aldriana's spreadsheet, my theoretical dps (as mutilate) is 11,766.5. If I turn off the major armor debuff, it drops to 11,306.8 (for a dps loss of 459.7). Now if we mutiply that number by .6 (snice 12% is 60% of 20%) we get a new dps loss of 275.82.

So now the question is, what is the oppurtunity cost of my running EA during that time period?
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

That's my most recent Saurfang parse. Using it for baseline (and dividing all my dps numbers by 1.1 to eliminate the Zone buff) we see that I performed Envenom 25 times over 172 seconds. My average envenom was for 12,727 damage over that time period.

Now assuming I replace as many envenoms as I have to to keep EA up, we can estimate that I have to EA 7 times over the course of the fight (24-30 secs each at 4-5 cps). Seven envenoms would generate 89,089 damage which is 517.96 dps over the course of the fight.

Conclusion:
EA (20%) is a 58.26 dps loss over envenom in that fight
EA (12%) is a 242.14 dps loss compared to envenom.

Overall conclusion, even in that ICC10man group I was in with all caster dps and a feral tank (and Prot) it's still a rDPS gain to run EA at our current gear levels even with the new reduced EA incoming. Therefore I was wrong and the original poster is correct.

CoroHD · 04/22/10, 4:47 PM

Originally Posted by sp00n

One downside of a greater focus on finishers, be it through inherent damage or damage increasing buffs, would be a greater liability using Expose Armor as a finisher. I know this shouldn't be needed in 25man (but it still happened to us), but it is a quite common scenario in 10man that there is no warrior present to sunder the targets.

Now when you emphasize the finishers, you obviously also suffer a greater (personal) DPS loss when you can't even use those newly designed finishers in the first place (or only with a reduced frequency).

This is something they'd have to keep in mind. Designing new mechanics that players cannot make proper use of in a not so unlikely scenario would certainly not help.

The easiest way to solve this problem would be to make EA do some damage in addition to providing the debuff. Chack's Java app has maintaining EA to be a personal DPS buff over not having the major armor debuff at all for my rogue, but it is still about 3-4% dps loss compared to having someone else provide it. Chack's app also assumes perfect play, so the real life dps loss is probably closer to 7-9% less potential total damage, at which point my personal dps would be roughly in the same spot it had been without the debuff in the first place. If EA did damage equivalent to half or 3/4 or n% of an evis then the opportunity cost could be reduced such that it would always be a personal dps increase to provide the major armor debuff even if it is not optimal for the rogue reaching maximum personal dps.

grimmeld · 04/23/10, 3:14 AM

I think it's funny blizz states that they want our yellow damage going up in PvE, but they want to see less burst damage in PvP... rupture anyone?

gcbirzan · 04/23/10, 8:21 AM

Originally Posted by Brotherbear

Sigh, so after an hour or two of number crunching I have disproved my own supposition and I concede the point. In order for it to be a rDPS loss for me to run EA (at 12%) my poison damage from the Envenom buff has to work out to about 300dps and I need to be the only physical dps since tank dps is enough to over shoot the dps loss I take (for feral tanks in particular).

I cannot see your mutilate gear on your armoury, as you're in combat gear/spec, but I can assume you have at least some armour penetration on your gear. That armour penetration will disappear in Cataclysm, lowering the value of Sunder/Expose Armour due to the nature of armour scaling.

sp00n · 04/24/10, 6:04 AM

According to this post by Mavanas, ArPen doesn't change the efficiency of Sunder/Expose at all, and I'm inclined to believe him.

Videl · 04/27/10, 4:27 PM

If I remember right they're expanding the ability of hunter pets to provide buffs/debuffs as well, even if not specced BM, so you can probably count them in as a potential provider of sunder.

sp00n · 05/06/10, 5:01 AM

The first Alpha Talent Calculator is out on MMO: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/#,,11927

So far only the combat tree seems to have been (slightly) changed.
Restless Blades seems to be an interesting talent, I just wonder about the mechanic, i.e. is it a cooldown you can use or is it a passive ability, or even some sort of combination, where you have x seconds to perform as many finishers as possible.

Other than that, I haven't found that much interesting. But it's the first alpha build, so much more to come.

Blutelf · 05/06/10, 5:09 AM

Yes, right now only a few things have changed:

Assassination:

Master Poisoner's raid buff has been changed to provide 8% spell damage taken by the target instead of 3% crit against the target.

Combat:

Improved Gouge has been moved way down the tree and can now be found beside Nerves of Steel.

Improved Sinister Strike is now also +1% Sinister Strike damage per point in addition to the reduction in cost.

New talent: Improved Slice and Dice has been replaced with "Improved Recuperate (2 points) - Causes your Recuperate ability to restore an additional [1/2]% of your maximum health". Improved Slice and Dice is where Imp Kick used to be.

Close Quarters Combat has been replaced with Aggression, which has thus moved one tier up. It is not bound to Dual Wield spec like CQC was.

Improved Kick has moved down one tier and Improved Slice and Dice can now be found where Imp Kick used to be.

Mace Spec and Hack and Slash have been removed. There is a new 5/5 talent to the right of Blade Flurry, Reinforced Leather - "Increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items by [10/20/30/40/50]%".

Blade Twisting is now just the daze effect, the [5/10]% SS and BS damage increase have been removed.

New talent to the right of Savage Combat: Sturdy Recuperation (2 points) - "Reduces all damage taken by [4/4]% while your Recuperate ability is active". Should probably be either 2 or 4 per point.

New talent to the right of Prey on the Weak: Restless Blades (3 points) - "Your damaging finishing moves reduce the cooldown of your Blade Flurry, Killing Spree, and Sprint abilities by [0.5/1.0/1.5] seconds per combo point"

Subtlety:

Heightened Senses: Removed the stealth detection bonus.

EDIT: vvv It sounds like a passive, but a quite powerful one indeed.

saedo · 05/06/10, 5:23 AM

Originally Posted by sp00n

Restless Blades seems to be an interesting talent, I just wonder about the mechanic, i.e. is it a cooldown you can use or is it a passive ability, or even some sort of combination, where you have x seconds to perform as many finishers as possible..

The wording sounds passive, like one of those each time you use X, CD of Y is reduced by Z.