Sure, that’s the rationale, and I agree with that, but what they should have done was change the mechanic of Expose Armor. Instead of reducing your target’s AC, it should reduce your target’s Defense instead (and stack with Sunder). This would give rogues the raid utility they desire (reducing Defense means more crits and fewer glancing blows for all melee attackers) while also benefitting the rogue playstyle that (especially for dagger rogues) depends so much on getting crits.
But yeah, the review is horrible. Dagger rogues are going to be a dead breed in raiding guilds; why bother speccing Combat Daggers (16/25/10) – a build that’s great for raiding but totally worthess for EVERYTHING else in the game – when Combat Swords (20/31 or some variation) will out-dps you in raids?
The new feint talent is worthless. Nobody, not even dagger rogues who are already forced to “waste” 10 points in the Subtlety tree, will take it if it’s placed in tier-2 Subtlety. The Attack Power talent is way too deep in Subtlety and only gives a meagre 10% AP bonus. Contrast this to Hunter talent Lightning Reflexes, which is placed equally on the sixth tier of one of their trees, yet gives a 30% bonus to RAP.
The only addition that would help raiding rogues is the new Weapon Expertise talent, yet it excludes Fist Weapons by design and also implicitly excludes daggers since it’s too deep in Combat; dagger rogues have to spec, as a minimum base, 16/8/10 just to be effective, leaving only 17 talent points for customization and the impossibility of going any deeper than 25 in Combat – conveniently where Weapon Expertise is located.
Why is it your opinion that it’s energy that’s gimped (rather than rage scaling that’s over the top)?
I would tend to believe that the energy mechanism is fine, and the relative DPS disparity between warriors and rogues should be fixed by normalizing rage generation. (Particularly since this also fixes the relative disparity between warriors and warriors. Assuming that damage is somehow linear to rage generation, which should be safe since you’re complaining that the scaling is wrong and energy is clearly a linear scaling mechanism, a warrior with high DPS gear basically gets the effectiveness of the gear squared as gear improves: a) There’s the innate DPS increase and b) there’s the coupled rage generation increase. This seems like a clear case of “The problem is in the warrior side of the equation, not the rogue side.”)
Energy is gimped because it only ticks up every two seconds. Rage ticks up on demand – anything that adds to rage adds to it immediately.
For a rogue, since your energy only ticks up every two seconds (at 20 energy per 2 seconds, I believe), it means that you waste a huge amount of energy per action. Ticking up at 10/s would be way more efficient and make a huge difference to the rogue class’s ability to be efficient with energy usage.
I didn’t say energy was gimped, end of story. I said it was gimped relative to rage - there’s a bit of a difference there. ;)
I agree, and you are right, the general concensus is that rage is the problem.
It would, however, be nice to have gear that could boost rogues’ energy regeneration rate. As it stands, all we have is a 31 point talent, thistle tea, and a relatively pain in the ass to get trinket from ZG.
It seems like adding some +energy regen gear would be a simple and straightforward way to ramp up Rogue itemization then. But would this lead to complaints about them becoming overpowered in pvp again? (Who am I kidding… of course it would.)
One of the balancing problems with rogues is that invisibility gives them a big advantage in PvP that disappears when rogues fight mobs. I’m not sure how you make rogues more effective against high-end mobs without making them overpowering in 1v1 PvP.
I’m not sure how you make rogues more effective against high-end mobs without making them overpowering in 1v1 PvP.
You give them a talent that adds +weapon skill, which would be a virtually meaningless talent in PvP but would make a huge difference against high-level boss mobs…
…which is exactly what Blizzard did, but it’s only +5 skill for two talent points max (should be +10 skill for five points), it doesn’t affect Fist Weapons, and it’s too deep in the Combat tree to be accessible to dagger rogues (who are pigeon-holed to a minimum 16/8/10 tri-spec base talent allocation in order to be effective, making 25 points the maximum they can put in the Combat tree).
We have been continuing to work on the review since the ‘First Glimpse’ post, the talent calculator unveiling, and we have been building upon those initial changes. After our own discussions and testing, as well as reviewing the player feedback we have received, we are planning to make the below additional changes to the rogue talents for patch 1.12.
Please keep in mind that these changes, as well as the review as a whole, are not final, and are still subject to change. We are moving closer to the launch of the Public Test Realms for 1.12 and we will be continuing to evaluate the changes throughout the testing process.
The ‘First Glimpse’ post and talent calculator can be viewed from the links below.
Murder has been changed to increase damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin by 1%/2%.
Remorseless Attacks has been reduced to 2 ranks, with the new effectiveness being 20% and 40%.
Endurance has been changed to reduce the cooldown of your Sprint and Evasion abilities by 45 sec/1.5 min. It no longer increases the duration of Evasion.
Weapon Expertise will now increases your skill with Fist, Dagger, and Sword weapons. It will no longer affect Maces, and this change is being followed up by
Mace Specialization will now also add 1-5 weapon skill with Maces, in addition to the stun effect the talent already provides.
Adrenaline Rush now has a reduced cooldown of 5 min.
Elusiveness has been reduced to a 2 point talent and now reduces the cooldown of Vanish and Blind by 45 sec/1.5 min. It no longer reduces the cooldown for Evasion.
Opportunity is being moved to a tier 1 talent, swapping places with Camouflage.
Ghostly Strike has been reverted back to the previous 125% weapon damage, but retains its new Energy cost of 40.
Setup will now also provide combo points if you fully resist an attackers spell.
Improved Rupture, Improved Cheap Shot, and Improved Garrote have been removed.
New talent ‘Serrated Blades’ is a tier 4 talent in the Subtlety tree, causes your attacks to ignore X of your targets Armor, and increases the damage dealt by your Rupture ability. The amount of Armor reduced increases with your level. At level 60, the ranks will reduce target Armor by 100/200/300 respectively.
New talent ‘Dirty Deeds’ replaces the Improved Cheap Shot talent, reducing the Energy cost of both the Cheap Shot and Garrote abilities by 10/20.
Garrote, Eviscerate, and Rupture now all scale with Attack Power. The previously announced Eviscerate book will still be made available in an undisclosed location. While we had always planned to scale these abilites at a point in the future, we felt that the rank upgrade for Eviscerate and damage increase for Garotte would provide a well needed boost in the current game and carry these abilities until the scaling mechanic was implemented. Our ultimate goal to scale the abilities in a future update was decided to be moved ahead, and the current plan is to implement scaling for these abilities in 1.12, instead of in a later update.
Again, please keep in mind that any of the above changes are subject to revision, reversal, or removal. We’ll be continuing to evaluate these changes, and the review as a whole. Neither the talent calculator, nor these forum posts should be considered final word on the review.
Why is this not overpowering in PvP? Is it just because the duration of boss fights is much longer compared to a PvP encounter that the extra crit chance doesn’t really matter that much?
I’m so happy with the new changes in the “Second Glimpse”. It really looks like Blizzard was paying attention to all the (totally justified) complaining after the first glimpse.
The only thing that’s really lacking now is changing Expose Armor so it can be used in a raid (or any group where a warrior is using Sunder Armor). If they fix that, I’ll be very, very happy.
Not gonna happen. Neither is scorpid sting, or your stuns. Raid balancing is hard enough as it is… 5 sunders is an easy baseline for them to balance around.
Not gonna happen. Neither is scorpid sting, or your stuns. Raid balancing is hard enough as it is… 5 sunders is an easy baseline for them to balance around.
I know, which is why in an earlier post in this thread I suggested that the mechanic of Expose Armor should be changed so that it reduces your target’s Defense rating instead of their AC. A reduction in defense would see fewer glancing blows and more crits for all melee attackers, and would be considered a very valuable form of raid utility for rogues, who currently bring nothing distinctive and irreplacable to a raid group (unlike every other class in the game), aside from novelty encounters like the Supression Room and Sartura.
Incidentally, does pickpocket amount to a substantial boost in cash farming capability for rogues? I only leveled one to 43 but I got the sense that all those junkboxes and whatnot made a nontrivial contribution to my dollars/hour. Assuming I was killing humanoids, of course.
That would still screw up raid balance. It’s an idea for the expansion though, since level 70 is surely going to trivialize all existing raid content anyway.
That would still screw up raid balance. It’s an idea for the expansion though, since level 70 is surely going to trivialize all existing raid content anyway.
It would do for physical dps what Curse of Shadow and Curse of the Elements do for spell damage. Having Expose Armor reduce your opponents defense by 3/6/9/12/15 (depending on the number of combo points) for 30 seconds wouldn’t be an over-powering buff, nor would it trialize existing raid content, but it would give rogues a single form of raid utility that can’t be recreated by any other class.
