Wednesday, September 03, 2008

September 03, 2008
10
More rogue changes have been announced. Some good (Precision buff) some not so good (Relentless Strikes nerf). Personally I'm not too happy with this yet, (combat is slowly being turned into shit by blizzard) there's still a lot of changes that need to be made to put rogues on par with the other class changes. Stay of execution got removed which is quite lame vs warriors as well. Though, at least we now know that the combat tree will have the 1-2% physical damage buff for the raid which was discussed earlier. If you wish to play around with these new talent tree changes you can use this tree over at war-tools. Some sample specs (non theorycrafted): mutilate, combat, combat hemo. The rogue talents feel very much unfinished, especially combat and the high level tiers of the other two trees. I'd even drop off some suggestion talents for blizzard, but I doubt they'd reach the test team in time for the patch. I haven't got much time so I'll quote the entire post for your reading pleasure ;) ---- Gamnin Wrote: ---- Hello again, Here’s a quick update on some additional changes we’ve made over the weekend. Most of these, but not all, will be in the next beta build. General - Cloak of Shadows cooldown changed to 1.5 min. - Disarm Trap range increased to 20 yds, cast time reduced to 1 sec, now requires stealth. - (NEW – Level 75) Tricks of the Trade: 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. 30 sec cooldown. (Surprise! :) Yes, this is the new group/raid utility ability. We haven’t put any stacking protection on it yet but we’ll need one type of solution or other to prevent the need for 5 rogue Trick rotations. Note also that you cannot use this ability on yourself.) Assassination - Vigor moved to Tier 3. - Relentless Strikes moved to Subtlety Tier 1, made 5 ranks for 4/8/12/16/20% chance. - Murder moved to Tier 6, now increases damage by 2/4%. - (NEW – Tier 7) Overkill: Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy. - Focused Attacks and Turn the Tables have swapped locations. - Master Poisoner moved to Tier 9, no longer increases chance to hit with poison attacks, now increases the critical hit chance of all attacks made against any target you have poisoned by 1/2/3% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 17/34/50%. (This does not stack with the Paladin talent Heart of the Crusader.) - Hunger for Blood duration increased to 30 seconds. Combat - Precision now also increases chance to hit with poison attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%. - Nerves of Steel will now reduce damage taken while stunned or feared by 15/30% rather than reducing duration. - Improved Sprint moved to Tier 4. - Blade Twisting now slows movement speed by 70%. - Mace Specialization now ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor. - Throwing Specialization now also has a chance to interrupt target when Fan of Knives is used. - Unfair Advantage: Whenever you dodge an attack you strike back for 50/100% of your main hand weapon’s damage. - Stay of Execution removed, replaced with Blood Poisoning. - (NEW – Tier 9) Blood Poisoning: All physical damage caused to enemies you have poisoned is increased by 1/2%. - Prey on the Weak now increases critical strike damage of all attacks. - Killing Spree is the new name for Murder Spree and should be working much better very soon. Subtlety - Shadowstep will no longer be usable while rooted. - Elusiveness moved to Tier 3, now reduces cooldown of Cloak of Shadows by 15/30 sec. - Premeditation cooldown reduced to 20 sec. - Preparation no longer refreshes the cooldown to Premeditation. - Master of Deception reduced to 3 ranks. - Opportunity reduces to 2 ranks for 10/20%. - Camouflage reduced to 3 ranks for 5/10/15% speed and 2/4/6 sec off the cooldown of Stealth. - Initiative moved to Tier 4, increased to 33/66/100% chance. - Improved Ambush moved to Tier 4, reduced to 2 ranks for 25/50%. - Serrated Blades moved to Tier 3. - Wrongfully Accused replaced with Filthy Tricks. - (NEW – Tier 9) Filthy Tricks: Reduces the cooldown of your Tricks of the Trade and Distract abilities by 5/10 sec. - Slaughter from the Shadows now also reduces the energy cost of your Hemorrhage ability by 1/2/3/4/5. - Shadow Dance redesigned, now allows the use of Sap, Garrote, Ambush, Cheap Shot, Premeditation, Pickpocket and Disarm Trap regardless of being stealthed. Those abilities all gain a cooldown of 2 sec. Lasts 10 sec.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

relentless strike ain't that much of a nerf if you're going for serrated blades, which should be better then ruthlessness anyways.

If you're going for rs + malice + ruth then you're spending 13 points instead of 11, I don't think thats a tragic nerf.

bbr said...

Subtlety is quite thin though, it's lacking about 10 talent points total.
Where combat is rather thin around the upper tiers, and assassination rather thick around the bottom tiers.

I'd have a hard time believing these were the final trees blizzard intends us to use. o_O

Anonymous said...

Yeah the trees still need some work. Lightning reflexes hasn't been upgraded yet also and I still think throwing spec sucks. I'd rather take stay of execution..

And assasination is still way to bloated.

bbr said...

Check that linky i posted in there. It's intentionally bloated, but it's got some interesting ideas.

Anonymous said...

I like the poison talents and assassins eye pretty much.
The upgrade for Adrush is also a great Idea, however pray on the weak with 50 % is really overpowered.
That would be 300 % damage on a crit.

Improved Hemorrhage would actually be a bit over the top, 40 charges are hard to get off the mob in 1.5 seconds (considering 30 energy hemos through SftS)

But I like some of your Ideas very much, allthough the trees are really to bloated. I could easily spent 60+ points on nearly every tree.

Anonymous said...

Oh and sorry 'bout my english, it's late and I'm not a native speaker =P

bbr said...

50% increased damage on crits, would be multiplicative, not additive. Or whichever really, crits in combat are very weak to begin with.

Check Spell power, it's 25/50% as well, but doesn't have any stupid pre requirements like the rogue equivalent of the spell. And it's achieved with only 2 talent points rather than our 5. That does make one think, no?
Spells do only have a 150% base multiplier though, so you're right it seems a tad over the top. However it should probably be reduced to 2/2 instead of 5/5 as it is now.


Hemo with 10 charges is gone in a raid situation in less than 0.5 seconds. The extra charges would make it raid viable both as a buff and an uptime bonus. Those 3 talent points seem fairly decent. The total charges could probably be reduced a little, but that's a minor balancing issue.

The tree bloating is mostly intentional, so i could fit a lot of ideas in there. Not so much for making the trees workable.

Check out heavy weaponry combat as well, it's basically mace+sword spec, just like daggers+fists got merged.

bbr said...

I do like the combat tree this way though, the talents fit perfectly down to the 51 point talent. All the pvp talents and utility talents can be skipped if you wish to do so, or taken if you prefer to play combat as pvp. The extra parry talents are rather redundant though, except perhaps fencing.

3/3 relentless strikes fits so much more perfectly into any builds than 5/5 would. (1/1 would still be preferred though)

Anonymous said...

Spellpower, Lethality and so on are Increasing the critical strike damage bonus, while Pray on the Weak is a simple "Increases critical strike damage by 25 %".
Critical Strike damage bonus for casts -> 50 %. 50% + 50%*0.5 for spellpower = 75 % -> Spellpowered crits = 175 % damage.
Lethality -> Melee bonus = 100% -> 100% + 100%*1.3 = 230 % critical damage with styles
Pray on the weak = 200% *1.25 = 250 % critical damage.

Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9336630053&sid=2000&pageNo=1
Post 7 from Vulajin,

"Since my previous post, it has been shown that Prey on the Weak affects all types of attacks, providing a full 25% boost to critical strike damage (as opposed to a Lethality-style "increased critical strike bonus damage"), yielding roughly a 10% DPS increase at minimum -- very much in line with what a 45-point talent should yield."

I agree on relentless strikes - 3 points or 1 point would make it way better, but I guess blizz won't change it back to a 1 pointer.
Heavy weaponry combat is pretty much genius and I really think they should do something like that as they merged fist&dagger spec anyways.

Oh and the lesser -Armor debuff while poisoned is quite cool too.

bbr said...

Added sudden exposure in assassination.
Toned down some things.