Thursday, December 13, 2007

No More AR/Prep and More!

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New PTR notes include some interesting news:

  • Hemorrhage: This ability now correctly does additional damage when its debuff has already been applied.
  • Preparation now resets the cooldown of Shadowstep and no longer resets the cooldown of Adrenaline Rush.
  • Shadowstep now adds a 3 second, 70% movement speed increase.
  • Sinister Calling now also increases the percentage damage bonus of Hemorrhage and Backstab by 2/4/6/8/10%.

So, my 0/33/28 build is dead. Many things remain, but the ability to pop Adrenaline Rush twice on a target really was what not only made this build viable in PvP, but also allowed me to use it in PvE. Now, I foresee me definitely having to change my build multiple times a week.

Blizzard wants every 41 point talent in each tree to be useful enough that people will use them. I'm sorry, but Shadowstep and the rest of the Subtlety tree just still isn't there. With such a huge penalty from dual wielding, Rogues are pretty much forced to pick up Precision and the middle of the Combat tree to be effective in groups.

We've gained back some of our Hemorrhage damage if we pick up Sinister Calling and Shadowstep. With 110% from Hemorrhage and an extra 10% from Sinister Calling, we will be back up at 121% of normal weapon damage.

Shadowstep is getting nicer, but I'm curious how big a tooltip can get in World of Warcraft as they keep adding more and more things to it to try to entice us to take it.

I'm filled with rage and I'm not a Warrior, so it's pretty useless. I feel like Blizzard is showing that they really have no clue where they want our class to go or any type of foresight as to how their changes might affect their own game.

I'm eager to hear what other rogues think of the changes. So, please chime in and let me know what you think of this. Is it just minor, or is it as monumental as it feels?

6 comments:

megan said...

One of the things to keep in mind, is that when they nerf a cookie cutter spec like this in a very specific manner (note that they didn't nerf "Prep", they nerfed "AR from Prep"), it gives them room to buff other things.

What needs buffing? Daggers in TBC. A reason to go full Subtlety.

Doomilias said...

i read about this...but havent written about it yet...

i just dont even know what to think. you make the exact point that i have been thinking. rogues need precision. you cant do without it if you want to raid. on top of that, you absolutely must have 11 points in assasination in order to have the proper crit %, generate enough combo points and regenerate enough energy to keep your damage sustainable.

i really at the point where i just say screw all this noise, im going combat swords and not even acknowleding other 41 builds exist...

Doomilias said...

the more i think about these changes, the more it seems like blizz is REALLY trying to push the sub tree as a strong pvp tree.

giving damage bonus to backstab such as is found in the combat tree...speed bonus to shadowstep (srsly, no raiding rogue would ever really need this)

Cedric said...

Blizzard has clearly stated their goal: they want people to be interested in speccing full Subtlety. It's a worthy goal but it won't fly for raids and if they want to make this tree attractive to Arena players, they need to make up their mind and finally give us a good compromise between stealth, mobility and DPS.

And in my opinion, the current code on the PTR is not it...

More thoughts on my blog:

http://allthingsstealth.blogspot.com/

Chris Connelley said...

@Megan: Yeah, I don't think that every nerf is balanced by a buff though. However, it seems that they did address Daggers a bit more as I've noted in my latest post.

@Doomilias: Yeah, I've been changing my build from Combat Swords to the HARP build every week for a while now. I had stopped as I noticed that I was still doing more DPS with my HARP build than all the other melee in my guild, but I suspect I'm going to have to go back to switching back and forth.

@Cedric: Interesting post. Yeah, they are going to force us to choose and I'm not sure any other class has a strictly PvP build that doesn't perform well in PvE.

Jeepinthelife said...

I know I'm coming in late to this party, but I'm currently leveling a rogue and was specifically excited about experimenting with this build. Now, I don't know, it's like all the excitement of trying out something that few have done before (I'm in a big guild and no other rogues have tried this yet) is just gone. Like the carpet has been ripped out from under me and what's beneath are rotting floorboards.

I've got a 70 Resto Shammy and pretty much all the changes they've made there have been great, but then I'm using a pretty standard build too and there are clear advantages to going deep in the resto tree. On my rogue none of the full trees excite me, it's one of the few classes where you can be really effective without having to spend all your points in one tree. Not only effective but have fun with it too. Now I'm sure I'll be able to figure out some other build that will be enjoyable but still...