Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Death Cheated

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imagine cool picture here

Unlike Elistana's Rogue Sightings, which apparently is now wiped from the face of the blogosphere, I am not calling it quits. I am still alive and well. Having finished a mammoth project at work, I can now blog again without feeling like I'm neglecting my deadlines.

But what is new? Not much. If you've been following the other sites, you know that Hemorrhage is currently broken and on the PTR is has been nerfed from 125% to 110%, though the extra damage is going up 6 points for the 10 charges. While this poster may think this is a minor nerf, I'm not at all thrilled by the change. I read elsewhere that Blizzard made this change to give Rogues a utlity to help groups and raids more. If this is the case, I wish they would have allowed it to scale with AP or something. Blizzard should know by this point that fixed point values on end game abilities makes them less and less useful as gear improves. Just ask a Druid.

I don't believe that Rogues have changed to Hemorrhage because it is overpowered, as the blue reply came back, but rather that it is now simply a viable alternative to Sinister Strike. I have a 0/33/28 AR/Prep build. I did because I wanted to see how it worked and I think many other Rogues did the same. I hope Blizzard doesn't base their "overpower" evaluation on popularity of a build or Combat Swords has been overpowered for a long, long, long time. And although I do well with this build, I do much, much better with my Combat Swords build.

Yet, I also went with the AR/Prep build because of the success many give it for PvP. I've been playing a bit more PvP lately. Okay, a lot. Just last week I participated in five different teams, 2 2v2, 2 3v3 and 1 5v5. None of the teams are uber. You can check my armory. We are just merely getting by. However, I've been having a blast and this AR/Prep build helps a lot. Being able to Sap from 10 yards away is amazing. I find that I can Sap Warlocks with Felhunter pets before they can see me and Sap people on the edge of pillars in Blade's Edge Arena. And the smaller the team size, the better this gets. It's great in 5v5, but in 2v2, when you Sap the Paladin, he trinkets, you Blind him and then you kill his partner blowing your Adrenaline Rush. Mmmm. Tasty.

As I've noted elsewhere, although I love my swords dearly, I wish I would have bought the maces first. Watching other Rogues stun my partners or myself, is painful knowing that I could be doing the same, but just chose not to.

On the other side, I'm committing to posting at least once a week, hopefully twice. You might see more fluff pieces — er, like this one — but at least you'll see something.

Sound like a deal?

5 comments:

Doomilias said...

6 points? so damage is getting reduced by 15%, but the effect is going up by 6. hmm. what a suck. im having incredible amounts of fun with it now, and id be ok with the change if they increased the amount of charges along with the damage. if they want it to be a raid buff, it needs to last longer than 10 charges. 15 would suffice.

either way, i believe this change is coming on the front of arena, not pve. thats how blizz works. they make changes based on the results of pvp that have negative effects on pve.

TheBigBearButt said...

Welcome back, Valenna.

I missed you.

megan said...

Welcome back.

The biggest thing about AR/Prep isn't even about Hemo itself, it's about not having to be babysitted by a Paladin's BOF with 2-4 Root breakers (Sprint x2, CLOS, Trinket), and also more ways to take the heat off yourself with an extra Evasion and Vanish.

I'm still thinking AR/Prep will be the way to go for Arena, Hemo nerf or not.

Chris Connelley said...

@Doomilias: Yes, but I don't think that Hemorrhage negatively affected PvE. I never once saw an encounter were Hemorrhage saved the day, rather more questions about why my overall DPS went down.

@BBB: Thanks. ^_^ Glad to be back.

@Megan: Thank you. Here's the strange thing that has bugging me to no end. If it's not just because of Hemorrhage, why hasn't AR/Prep been more popular before? AR/Prep is considered to be the best PvP build right now and it's for every one of the reasons you listed. Did it just take this long for everyone to realize how incredible it would be for PvP?

megan said...

I think one of main reasons is when they stopped DT from being spammable, people realized that you didn't need 11 points in Assassination anymore.

Another thing is the change to Dirty Deeds which makes everything seem like Execute on a focused target, as well as the change of Weapon Skill -> Expertise made a few talents and weapon racials into even more damage.