Saturday, August 30, 2008

August 30, 2008
8
Build 8885 is up, and there's some interesting rogue stuff this time. (At last ffs) The first few talent changes are in. Nothing to get too excited about yet though. Assassination Skills * Mutilate no longer requires you to be behind the target. * Expose Armor: All ranks have had their armor reduction increased. * Envenom now increases the chance to apply poisons by 25% to targets for 1 sec plus an additional 1 sec per combo point in addition to its current effect. Talents * Master Poisoner (Tier 6) text clarified: Reduces the chance your poisons will be resisted by 5% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 25%. * Fleet Footed (Tier 5) reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15/30%. (Previously 25/50%) * Improved Expose Armor (Tier 3) now increases the duration of Expose Armor instead of increasing the armor penetration. * Improved Eviscerate (Tier 1) increases the damage done by Eviscerate by 7/14/20%. (Previously 5/10/15%) Subtlety Skills * *New Skill* Tricks of the Trade (Level 75): The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time. Talents * Honor Among Thieves (Tier 9) changed to: When anyone in your group critically hits with a damage or healing spell or ability, you have a 33/66/100% chance to gain a combo point on your current target. This effect cannot occur more than once every second. * Waylay (Tier 8 ) now reduces targets melee and ranged attack speed by 20% (Previously 30%) New Glyphs 3 new rogue glyphs released : * Glyph of Pick Pocket -- Increases the range of your Pick Pocket skill by 5 yards. * Glyph of Vanish -- Increases your movement speed by 30% while the Vanish effect is active. * Glyph of Blurred Speed -- You gain the ability to walk on water while your Sprint ability is active. See this earlier post for the other known glyphs. More changes More rogue changes will be coming in the near future. Blizzard is still working on it, and you can agree the changes thus far are far from earth shaking. Dismantle (the replacement skill for what was previously riposte) is trainable at level 20. Leatherworking getting even more BoP enchants. 120 AP on bracers for instance. Or 90 Stamina. That's 60 stats, when the regular enchants which are available are only 38 AP (19 stats) Meaning 60-19 = 41 stats. That's "one" whole stat more than enchanting! Bastards! Not to mention the whole leatherworking leg armor which is 31 stats extra as well. And the drums which give a huge boost as well. o_O I was under the impression they didn't want half the raid rolling leatherworking, but this is pretty crazy. 72 Stats... No idea how they'll match up the other professions to match that. Buff / debuff stacking changes A whole lot of good and a lot of bad buff stacking changes are being added for WotLK. Keep in mind that most long term buffs will now affect the "entire" raid though. The few which affect us directly: * Armor Debuff (Major): Acid Spit (exotic Hunter pet), Expose Armor, Sunder Armor * Healing Debuff: Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Mortal Strike, Furious Attacks * Cast Speed Slow: Curse of Tongues, Slow, Mind-numbing Poison. * Physical Vulnerability Debuff: Blood Frenzy, (2nd Talent Spec TBA) About that physical vulnerability debuff, speculation suggests we'd get a similar effect that Arms warriors have in one of our trees. * Expose armor got increased in potency, and improved sunder armor changed to increase the duration length. * Wound poison no longer needs 5 stacks to get to it's optimal value. It's 50% from the first hit off. Further buff changes * Elemental shamans get the same aura as moonkin druids. * Fury warriors get the feral druid crit aura. * Rogues will probably get the arms warrior physical damage buff as mentioned earlier. * Hunters get sunder armor trough the use of their pets. (As do rogues) * Feral druids get a thunderclap attack speed lowering effect. * Paladins get the druid resto tree aura. And much more. The indirect nerfs however: Bloodlust/heroism have been changed to give a 2 min (or so) debuff on anyone who receives it, so it can no longer be chained on the raid with multiple shamans as easily. Much like the leatherworking tinnitus nerf. * Improved hunter's mark no longer affects melee. Wtf.. * Scorpid sting and insect swarm no longer stack. Means we indeed lose 2% evasion if we wanted to tank. * Windfury and icy talons(Deathknight ability) don't stack. * Blessing of might and battle shout no longer stack. * Leader of the pack doesn't stack with the new Rampage buff warriors get. * Improved faery fire no longer gives melee hit chance. Another nerf. * Ferocious Inspiration and Sanctified Retribution no longer stack. So all 'n all we've far from seen all the changes so far, yet blizzard keeps adding new surprising changes such as the Leatherworking change. The professions appear to be among the largest uncertainties still. There's also a FAQ for 3.0.2 up on the official forums you'll want to check out.

8 comments:

George said...

Honour among thieves is like a CP every second O.o

bbr said...

Every 1-1.5 seconds assuming you're in the group with other melee. Shouldn't be any shortage on CP.
Will make reliable rotations very difficult though.

We also finally get to kill those silly enhancement shamans who think they're good dps and increase their threat /cackle!

Anonymous said...

Mutilate is going to be absolutely insane. No positional stance on top of an already STACKED assassination tree. It's basically like a better combat, so long as you can get used to the 60 energy mechanic.

bbr said...

The rogue talents aren't done yet, but with dagger spec moving up in the tree, and some dps talents being changed to be higher in the combat tree mutilate may just come out on top.

Remains to be seen what other changes are added though, there's still the physical damage increase ability that's undeclared. Will it be in the combat tree, or added to hemo.

Anonymous said...

Honor among thieves is for spell and ability crits not for white damage crits.

George said...

Wanted to ask, the glyphs can you only use 1 or can you use a glyph on every skill that "glyphable" (if that's a word)

bbr said...

You get 3 sockets for major glyphs and 3 for lesser glyphs.

Glyphs are like permanent enchants. Single use only currently. After that you need to buy a new one if you wish to replace it.

George said...

Aaaah yes, read something about those sockets but forgot. thanks :P