Patch 2.3.2: Back to Combat

Patch 2.3.2 is here and with it, I've decided to go back to a Combat build of 11/43/7. It's fairly standard.

What am I losing?

• Camouflage: 6% boost to movement when stealthed. 2 seconds off of Stealth cooldown. I found that I could actually reach my targets for a Sap and I could go Stealth after a Gouge or after most Fears.
• Sleight of Hand: 2% crit reduction on ranged and melee. Kinda like 40 points of resilience against physical damage. I'm not sure how much I'll really miss this as I'm quickly getting gear to replace it.
• Initiative: Chance to get another combo point when Garrote or Cheap Shot is used. I never really noticed this much, but I'm sure it contributed when I wanted to keep someone stunlocked, it was much easier to build up a 5-point Kidney Shot with this ability.
• Ghostly Strike: A fairly useless attack because of its high cooldown (20 seconds) and high cost (40 energy). I would use this during Evasion to kick my Dodge up another 15%. I'll miss that.
• Serrated Blades: Ignore 560 armor on targets. +30% Rupture damage. I'll miss this one as it will take most of my new arena gear to make up the Armor Penetration. The Rupture bonus was nice, but doesn't, in my opinion, come close to the damage given by a solid Combat build.
• Hemorrhage: An instant attack with 125% weapons damage. Of course, today it's only 110% weapon damage. The damage debuff is nice for a large raid. I won't miss this all much honestly. Hemorrhage was fun, but it was the AR/Prep I loved, not the Hemorrhage.
• Preparation: The ability to use Sprint, Vanish, Evasion and Adrenaline Rush a second time. But Adrenaline Rush has been removed. I will miss the second Sprint, Vanish and Evasion though. But with the other changes I can't see myself going this deep into Subtlety just get this one ability anymore.
• Dirty Deeds: Reduced energy cost on Cheap Shot and Garrote. +20% damage on targets with less than 35% health. I'll really miss the bonus to targets with low health. As I played with my build during 2.3, I definitely noticed a difference when I did and did not have this ability with a Subtlety build.
• Deadliness: 6% to Attack Power. With the 2% boost I'll receive from Vitality in the Combat tree. I'll only be losing 4% Attack Power. I can live without this one.
• Lightning Reflexes: +3% Dodge. I can't see holding on to this if I can use the points elsewhere to bump up my damage. Besides it only takes 10 Expertise to render this useless. Might as well rely on my healers to heal me rather than expect to possibly dodge an enemy's attack.
• Deflection: +5% Parry. See Lightning Reflexes. It was nice though because it bumped Parry up to 10% and combined with Riposte, it was very nice for PvP.
• Riposte: Disarm opponent after you parry an attack. Probably one of the abilities I'll miss the most because I really felt it made a difference against melee opponents in my level of the Arena.

That seems like an awful lot of abilities. So, what am I gaining from my new build?

• Improved Sinister Strike: Reduced energy cost on Sinister Strike. Yes, it's goodbye Hemorrhage, hello again Sinister Strike. With all the energy from a Combat build, Sinister Strike is just a GCD away at most moments.
• Improved Slice and Dice: +45% duration to Slice and Dice. I honestly missed this a lot. Slice and Dice is a 30% speed increase, which is a 15% damage increase if you get 50% white damage. One point of Slice and Dice gives 13 seconds which is the equivalent of 2.5 combo points without Improved Slice and Dice.
• Endurance: Reduces Evasion and Sprint cooldown by 1.5 minutes. Since I'm losing Preparation and sinking points in Combat, I'm going to try this as a poor substitute for Preparation. Though honestly, by reducing their cooldowns by 30%, it allows you to use them one less time than in about 11-12 minutes as you could before with Preparation. Preparation would simply allow you to choose the first two times rather than wait for the oooldowns.
• Sword Specialization: +1%, for 5% total, chance to get an extra swing. I only had 4% before. This is minor, but figured I'd mention it anyway.
• Aggression: +6% damage to Sinister Strike and Eviscerate. Combat is all about damage, so it was hard to pass this up.
• Vitality: +4% Stamina, +2 Agility. I'm going to use this as an excuse to shift my gems in my PvP set from +Stamina to +AP or +Resil.
• Combat Potency: 20% chance to regain 15 Energy from any off-hand attack. Energy equals damage. 'Nuff said.
• Surprise Attacks: +10% damage to Sinister Strike, Shiv and Gouge and finishing moves can no longer be dodged. Icing on the cake and well worth 1 talent point for more than the +6% to Sinister Strike Aggression provides.
• Malice: +5% Critical Strike. My critical strike is pretty low and I'm not really focusing on it as I believe Attack Power is more useful for Combat Rogues, but I needed to take something to get further into Assassination. ^_^.
• Murder: +2% Damage to humanoids, dragonkin, giants and beasts. More damage for PvP.
• Ruthlessness: 60% chance to regain a combo point after finishing move. Great replacement, in my opinion, for Initiative as it affects all of my finishing moves rather than openers.
• Relentless Strikes: 20% chance per combo point used on a finishing move to regain 25 energy. Combat loves Energy.

Overall, I'm both excited and slightly disappointed to go back to Combat. The biggest thing I'm keeping from my old build is Dirty Tricks, which I mocked before. The added range to Sap is vital in PvP where I'm often able to get a Sap off just outside the range of Consecrates and before Warlocks or other stealth scouts can react.

Now that 2.3.2 is out, are you thinking of changing your build?

Continue reading 'Patch 2.3.2: Back to Combat'

No More AR/Prep and More!

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?

Continue reading 'No More AR/Prep and More!'

Now with Less Parry! and Dodge!

On the official WoW Rogue Discussion forum, Palaelf asked,

Why no changes for combat rogues? Us combat rogue stuck it up with a boring spec to play with in Arenas how about something nice for us? All I see is changes to Sub and Mutilate trees and the only thing I see so far for Combat Rogues is a NERF with this new "Expertise" rating how will Arena rogues keep a proper hit rating? We already miss a ton in a full arena gear set. Now we are going to be missing our sinister strikes making us a shiv only class?

Drysc replied,

Nope. No changes. We're not required to make changes to every class or every tree just because other trees may see changes. Have you tested or even thought about the dps increase of actually being able to stop your target from dodge/parry with the expertise rating? I'm going to guess not.

So, how good or bad is Expertise going to be for Rogues? I guess that depends on a lot of factors.

Currently, it is widely acknowledged that +Weapon Skill is most useful when fighting against level 73 NPCs, aka boss mobs. Weapon Skill has a unique mechanic in that once a mob's Defense exceeds your Weapon Skill by 11 points or more, your Miss chance is increased by an extra 2.5%, rather than just an extra 0.5% to Miss. Thus, a level 73 mob has 365 Defense and players have a natural maximum Weapon Skill of 350. 5 points of Weapon Skill are enough to eliminate this 2.5% advantage. 5 points of Weapon skill is also enough to improve your to Miss chance against any mob by 0.5%. So, if you have 355 Weapon Skill versus a level 73 mob with 365 defense, you have given yourself a 3% bonus to hit versus the mob.

At level 70, 3.9 points of Weapon Skill Rating are required to increase your actual Weapon Skill by 1. However, in Patch 2.3, all Weapon Skill bonuses will be converted Expertise. Expertise Rating will convert at the same rate as Weapon Skill rating.

So, what exactly is Expertise then? A totally separate mechanic from Weapon Skill. In fact, after patch 2.3, there doesn't appear to be a way to increase your Weapon Skill except waiting for level 71 when Wrath of the Lich King is released. Every piece of gear, every talent, every racial abililty that affected Weapon Skill has been removed. Racial abilities have been converted to +Crit. Talents have converted to Expertise and gear from specific weapon skill rating to an expertise rating.

For each point of Expertise, you eliminate 0.25% of your target's Parry and 0.25% of your target's Dodge. Where does the eliminated Parry and Dodge go? Straight into the ordinary hit part of your attack table. I'm not going to go into an entire discussion of the attack table, but I do suggest you read up on it on WoWWiki if you are not familiar with what I am talking about.

So, while 5 points of Weapon Skill eliminates 3% of the Miss chance on Level 73 target, 5 points of Expertise will eliminates 1.25% of your target's Parry and Dodge for a total of 2.5% to hit. This may be very disappointing to some tanks. However, Expertise scales much more quickly than Weapon Skill. 6 points of Expertise gives a total of 3% to hit and the 7th points of Expertise gives a total of 3.5% to hit. You need 10 points of Weapon Skill to eliminate 3.5% Miss Chance on a Level 73 target. 10 points of Expertise is going to eliminate 2.5% Parry and 2.5% Dodge from your target. Would you rather than a 5% better chance to hit your target or a 3.5% chance.

You might have noticed I keep using Weapon Skill against a Level 73 target. That's because that's where you get the most benefit. On a level 60-72 target, each point of Weapon Skill above 350 merely gives you a 0.10% reduction to miss your target. So, if you have 355 Weapon Skill, you have a 0.5% better chance to hit your target. 365 Weapon Skill only gives you a 1.5% better chance to hit your target. Compare this with Weapon Expertise which gives you a 0.25% reduction to your target's Parry and Dodge, so 0.50% reduction per point. At 15 points of Expertise, you'll reduce your opponent's Parry and Dodge by 3.75% each, or 7.5% total, regardless of their level.

However, Rogues and other melee DPS fight from behind their targets if possible. We do it to avoid nasty Cleaves, but also because when you attack an NPC target from behind, they are denied their Parry. Thus for Rogues, half of the benefit for Expertise is negated by this mechanic. Against Level 73 targets, 10 more points of Weapon Skill from Weapon Expertise gave Rogues 3.5% to hit. After Patch 2.3, Weapon Expertise will grant 10 points of Expertise attack ing from behind will give Rogues a 2.5% chance to hit.

Lastly, players do not get a chance to dodge attacks from behind. So, in PvP, if you are focusing on attacking another player from behind, you will gain no benefit from Weapon Expertise as they cannot parry or dodge.

Overall, this may eventually help Rogues. We'll do more damage against trash mobs and we won't always be behind our PvP opponents. There have been some extensive testing posted on the Elitist Jerks boards, but I still think the verdict is out on whether Expertise will be better than Weapon Skill.

Continue reading 'Now with Less Parry! and Dodge!'

Blinding Powder's New Tooltip

LOL! At least Blizzard has a sense of humor still.

Continue reading 'Blinding Powder's New Tooltip'

Possible Changes in 2.3

Ok. I'm a bit slow on this. I was kinding hoping for some more so I wouldn't be incredibly redundant.

Stickied by Drysc in the Rogue Forums!

These are the announced changes we're planning in 2.3 for the Rogue class.

• Blind is now a physical attack and the reagent requirement removed [link]
• Fleet Footed changed to increase movement speed by 8/15% [link]
• Shadowstep usable at any time, not only while stealthed. Threat caused by next Ambush, Garrote or Backstab is reduced by 50% and cooldown increased to 40 seconds [link]
• Dirty Deeds specials cause 20% extra damage against targets that are below 35% health [link]
• Deadly Throw missile speed increased significantly and snare duration increased slightly [link]
• Ruthlessness only affects melee finish moves [link]
• All poisons now last for one hour [link]

Honestly, I think these are token changes. None of them are going to help Rogues in PvE or arena, except maybe the change to Deadly Throw.

Now, if you use Shadow Step, I'll give you the gold to respec. You certainly don't need threat reduction on your abilities.

Nice buff for Dirty Deeds, but I still think the Subtlety tree is broken until it can either give Rogues a new essential role in raids or allows them to come close to the DPS of the other two trees.

The changes to Blind are nice, but making it a physical ranged attack will remove its ability to affect hostile arena opponents with Blessing of Protection or Paladins with Divine Shield.

Poison change is good, but really, let's just get rid of the entire poison creation system. It's slow and it's really just an unnecessary step.

Yeah, no picture for this one. =P

Continue reading 'Possible Changes in 2.3'

Blizzard Nerfs Wisp Spirit

WowInsider reports today on new graveyards coming in Patch 2.2. What they fail to cover is the severe nerf to every Night Elf in the game!

Examine Wisp Spirit, the Night Elf racial ability that gives us the edge in PvE:

Wisp Spirit Racial Passive Transform into a wisp upon death, increasing speed by 50%.

"Wait a second, Valenna!" you say, "You're overreacting! You get to run to your corpse from a closer spot as well." Well yes, but if they make closer graveyards, Wisp Spirit becomes less useful versus the other races. If the graveyards are 50% closer to where we die, Wisp Spirit becomes 50% less effective.

WTT Wisp Spirit for just about anything else!

Continue reading 'Blizzard Nerfs Wisp Spirit'

Now all Rogues are Improved Saps!

You're a rogue, you're above level 60 working towards 70, and you've started to go to the instances in the Outland. When Burning Crusade came out, Improved Sap was moved closer to the lower talent ranks of Subtlety, making it much easier to get. Now, it only took seven points in Subtlety to get Improved Sap. With virtually every instance in Outlands full of humanoids, every rogue should have it for crowd control. Backstab rogues would get Opportunity with their first five Subtlety points and Combat Swords rogues would roll randomly because it really didn't matter where they spent their five wasted points. Now with the 2.1 patch, every rogue has the benefits of Improved Sap and the talent Improved Sap was replaced with Dirty Tricks. So, after the 2.1 patch, the majority of high level rogues have Dirty Tricks. But not every rogue wants Dirty Tricks.

Dirty Tricks

Increases the range of your Blind and Sap by 2/5 yards and reduces the energy cost of your Blind and Sap abilities by 25%/50%.

So, wait. Um. Well. Thanks, Blizzard, but could I just get a free respec since this ability is COMPLETELY different than the other one I purchased? Apparently, the answer is NO.

Why?

Well, first of all, precedence. We wouldn't want the druids to complain since they had their Innervate replaced by Swiftmend. Blizzard knows they already have enough to complain about. Of course, Swiftmend is uber and what druid WOULDN'T want Swiftmend if they already are 30 points into Restoration, they'd have to be an idiot NOT to get Swiftmend. Second, where would Blizzard draw the line on giving out free respecs?! How big does the change have to be before they issue a free respec for that class? I mean what if they change Flurry for Fury Warriors and nerf it from 10/15/20/25/30 to 5/10/15/20/25%? Should Warriors get a full respec for that? Obviously not! How would that be fair?! You bought the talent; it's not Blizzard's fault that you were too stupid to anticipate the change. Remember that EULA you signed, sucka?! And lastly, what about those incredibly costly ranks of talents that characters have to buy back? If rogues were given a free respec, wouldn't we have to retrain all our ranks of Hemmorage?! HAHAHA.. Trick question, NO rogues use Hemmorage. Well, honestly, let's have a little talk about these ranks of talents that have to be purchased, Blizzard. Can you name ANY talents with trained ranks that a player wouldn't have the maximum rank available? What is the point of that? To simply make anyone who trains that ability pay more?

So, let's address these real quick in regard to the change to Improved Sap.

1. Precedence. I don't care about precedence. And, frankly, I don't think Blizzard should be that hung up on it either. This is a change from a talent that was necessary to a talent that is completely superfluous. If it were changed from Improved Sap to, oh say, Improved Vanish then, sure!, I'd be more than happy to allow precedence to rear its ugly head.
2. Drawing the line. This wasn't a minor change. This was a fundamental change to the rogue class. The talent was swapped out for another one. Any line would probably include wording regarding when your talent no longer exists at all in its prior form, you should be eligible for some sort of return of talent points.
3. Burden of buying back talent ranks. This is a moot point here. Rogues have no real trained ranks except Hemmorage which as I've already joked about, NO rogue uses (unless they are PvP or some such crap in which case, they might have to pay a few gold.) In addition, I do not believe this retraining of these talent ranks would cost more than the average unspec, which I would guess is around 15 gold. With the majority of rogues being Combat or Backstab rogues, I think the majority of rogues WILL have respecced because of this. Thus, in a case where the majority of rogues would have benefited from a free respec and a minority might have been affected by having to buy retrainable ranks, I don't believe this point should matter either.

So, what do we do about it in the future? How about one of these options?

• Give a free respec to any class that has a talent that is deemed significantly different than the prior version. This for me would include Sword Specialization's change from affecting white damage to yellow damage, but wouldn't include changes to the mere numbers of a talent.
• Give an optional free respec that must be taken within 48 hours of relogging in to a character affected by a significant talent change. This would handle those that are happy with the change and don't wish to retrain any talent ranks.
• Refund the talent points in the talent if possible. Giving back the talents points spent so they could be spent elsewhere would be an okay, although still complain-worthy, option. This would of course NOT be possible if those talent points would invalidate some prerequisite.
• Refund all the talent points in an affected talent tree. Giving back all talents point spent would solve any prerequisite issues and in the case of Improved Sap, would refund all the points a Combat Swords rogue would have invested in the tree. A Combat Swords rogue would have spend 7 points in the Subtlety tree, the first 5 only in order to get Improved Sap.

What did do? I respecced immediately moving my two points from Improved Sap into the Assassination tree. Something about stabbing harder or something. I can't remember. Cost of respeccing? 15 gold. Cost of complaining on blogger? Priceless. =P

Continue reading 'Now all Rogues are Improved Saps!'

2.1.0 Patch & Tier 6 Armor

Well, let's start with the armor. I'm going to pretend I didn't see it. OMFG, who am I kidding? I've seen it. Apparently, they were running out of time and decided to alter the Nightstalker armor rather than come up with something cool. We also apparently have forever been assigned the colors red and black. I'm beginning to know how the druids feel with their brown and green. HA! Whatever. At least red and black are cool. Poor druids. T_T The patch includes the introduction of more Darkmoon Faire cards. I think this may be the rogue card:

Wrath (Furies)

Each time one of your direct damage attacks does not critically strike, you gain 17 critical strike rating and 17 spell critical strike rating for the next 10 sec. This effect is consumed when you deal a critical strike. (Stacks up to 20 times)

That's a maximum of 15.38% increase to critical. Wow. It may be trinket slot-worthy.

Rogues changes in the patch, categorized with comments

• LAME! Added a new double-attack animation for "Mutilate".
  I'm sure rogues everywhere were dying for this one.
• NERF! "Cloak of Shadows": The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate this ability removes hostile effects, rather than dispels them. "Cloak of Shadows" does not count as a dispel, and will not interact with dispel resistance or effects triggered by dispelling. This ability no longer removes the "Weakened Soul" debuff.
  Ever since I've read this I've wanted to try this out before it gets patched.
• BUFF! "Deadly Throw": This ability will now damage hunters and their pets when they are affected by "The Beast Within" or "Bestial Wrath". Those targets will still be immune to the movement impairing portion of "Deadly Throw".
  Hmm. Maybe I'd care more if I mapped this ability.
• BUFF! Fixed a data error that caused "Ghostly Strike" and "Riposte" to generate more threat than intended.
  Awesome! But I don't have either, so "meh".
• BUFF! Fixed a bug where the "Silence" effect on "Garrote" was getting resisted too often.
  The Man is always trying to put the Rogue down.
• NERF! "Insignia of the Alliance/Horde" and "Medallion of the Alliance/Horde" now remove "Fear", "Stun" and "Polymorph" effects and no longer remove "Charm" effects.
  Boo. This is one of the three reasons I equipped this trinket. Rather disappointing.
• BUFF! "Improved Sap" (Subtlety) renamed "Dirty Tricks": Increases the range of your "Sap" and "Blind" abilities by 2/4 yards and reduces the energy cost of your "Sap" and "Blind" abilities by 25/50%.
  Alright, apparently all the gold I've slipped GMs is finally paying off.
• BUFF! Increased the frequency and amount of "Blinding Powder" found in pickpocketed junk boxes.
  OMG!! OMG!!!! So lame.
• NERF! "Mutilate": This ability will now always consume the "Cold Blood" buff when it strikes an opponent.
  Hmm.. Another one of those "doesn't affect me why should I care" changes.
• NERF! Poisons: The difficulty of dispelling these is now based off the level of the player, not the level of the weapon the poison is applied to.
  Makes sense, but it doesn't make it cool to nerf.
• BUFF! Reduced the reagents required to create most poisons.
  Sweet!
• NERF! "Remorseless Attacks"(Assassination): "Hemorrhage" added to the buff tooltip. This ability will no longer trigger from killing totems.
  Yet they still allow warriors to generate rage from totems and critters. h8 warriors
• BUFF! Rogue poisons no longer have charges.
  You had me at "Rogue poisons no longer have charges."
• BUFF! "Sap" now automatically gains the full benefit of "Improved Sap".
  2 free talents points for damage. w00t!
• BUFF! "Shadowstep" (Subtlety): The cooldown has been reduced to 15 seconds.
  Someday, I'll have 123 Talents points to be able to take advantage of all of these buffs.
• NERF! "Stealth" will now be broken correctly by damage shield such as "Oil of Immolation".
  What IS the reasoning behind a rogue unstealthing when damaged? Total crap I tell ya.
• BUFF! "Surprise Attacks" (Combat): This talent now correctly prevents "Envenom" from being dodged.
  I wonder why no one cared before. Let me think. Oh yeah. Envenom is useless without Mutilate which is at the bottom of the Assassination tree and Surprise Attacks is at the bottom of the Combat tree. *sigh*

Well, there you have it. We got a few Buffs, but mostly, Nerfs. Obviously, Blizzard hates Rogues. Please lobby for more Rogue buffs.

Hmm.. Wait... There's more:

• Creatures will no longer "Cleave" targets that aren't in front of them.
• "Polymorph" spell duration has been changed from 20 seconds to 8 seconds.
• Creatures will no longer perform "Sweeping Strikes".

These changes were obviously placed in the game for feral druids. =/ So disappointing.

the end

Continue reading '2.1.0 Patch & Tier 6 Armor'