Warlords Rogue Changes FAQ

This FAQ is intended to answer questions about warlords for rogues who are already familiar with the class in 5.4 and 6.0.  If you are looking for additional information check the full Ravenholdt guides (Assassination, Combat, Subtlety) or ask on the forums.

What spec should I level as?
I’d advice against sub for obvious reasons but otherwise it doesn’t really matter.  If you’ve been gearing from Siege of Orgrimmar at any point during the previous 14 months(!) you probably have enough gear to make leveling through at least 94 quite easy.  If you have one of the Garrosh heirlooms I’d pick your leveling spec based on that, combat if you have the axe, assassination if you have the dagger.

What Spec is best at level 100?
All three specs are very close, within ~5% on single target dps and on sustained cleave.  Combat has a number of advantages on higher target and burst AoE due to the simplicity and low ramp up time of Blade Flurry and the the ability to use its major dps cooldowns on AoE as well as single target.  SimulationCraft results show subtlety slightly ahead on sustained single target but it is unclear how of this is due to a better optimized SimulationCraft profile.  In general the standard recommendation of spec your weapons applies.  The damage deltas between specs are small enough that you should be able to play the spec you are more comfortable with without being a major liability to your guild.

What level 100 talent should I use?
Assassination: Shadow Reflection
Shadow Reflection synergizes well with vendetta for assassination due to the matching cooldowns.  Vendetta and shadow reflection should be macroed together making sure that Shadow Reflection is cast first so the clone casts its own copy of vendetta.
Combat: Venom Rush
Venom Rush benefits combat’s energy dependence and synergizes very well with blade flurry helping by mitigating the energy penalty.
Subtlety: Shadow Reflection
Shadow Reflection and Death from Above are comparable for subtlety however shadow reflection is substantially easier to use as it can simply be macroed together with shadow dance rather.  Death from above by contrast requires careful energy and combo point pooling and takes away control of your character making it harder to use in a raid setting.

How good are the new glyphs?
Assassination: Glyph of Disappearanceis ~1% dps increase and probably worth using when at all possible.  Glyph of Energy is a <0.1% dps increase, you are probably better off using a utility glyph instead.
Combat: Glyph of Energy is a ~2% increase for combat and makes the rotation more forgiving on energy capping.  Glyph of Disappearance is an ~1.5% dps increase and probably worth using on most encounters.
Subtlety: Glyph of Energy is a ~2.5% dps increase allowing for better energy pooling for shadow dance and find weakness window.  Subtlety cannot use Glyph of Disappearance.

Are there any talents or glyphs I should change from 6.0.2?
Probably not.  With the removal of shadow blades marked for death is now a small (~1%) dps increase for all three specs on single target, whether this small dps increase is worth a more difficult rotation is a matter of personal preference. 

How does my single target rotation change at 100?
Assassination: Remember that slice and dice button you’d hit once per fight? Now you don’t even have to do that thanks to Improved Slice and Dice. Empowered Envenom makes proper envenom pooling and timing more important than it was during MoP.
Combat: Rupture is no more and revealing strike no longer advances bandit’s guile but there are no major rotational changes for combat.
Subtlety: Sinister Calling causes backstab and ambush multistrikes to advance your bleeds, since you can now accumulate multistrike on gear this will make ruptures substantially shorter and require more attentive monitoring.

How does my AoE rotation change at 100?
Assassination: For sustained AoE rupture all the things is still the name of the game.  For burst AoE you now want to use Crimson Tempest before spamming fan of knives thanks to the Enhanced Crimson Tempest perk.
Combat: No major changes, just toggle on the new and improved Blade Flurry
Subtlety: Thanks to the Empowered Fan of Knives perk fan of knives should now be used when it will hit more than 1 target.  On low target cleave multi-rupture on higher targets use crimson tempest if the adds will live for the full duration.

What stats should I be aiming for?
Standard caveats about static stat weights apply, for accuracy always use a tool that can compute dynamic stat weights but the following should be reasonably accurate.
Assassination: Best: Mastery and Crit, Worst: Haste
Combat: Best: Haste, Worst: Crit
Subtlety:Best: Multistrike and Mastery, Worst: Haste

What is the optimal garrison build?
There are many people far more qualified to talk about garrisons.
The Godmother: http://garrisonsguide.blogspot.co.uk/
Ask Mr. Robot: http://blog.askmrrobot.com/2014/11/garrison-guide-everything-you-need-to-know-in-one-place/
WoWHead: http://www.wowhead.com/guide=2456/guide-to-garrisons-in-warlords-of-draenor

What crafted gear should I be focusing on?
This depends heavily on your guild’s strategy for progression and gearing.  A weapon is a popular choice however since it requires an upgrade to be better than a heroic dungeon weapon it isn’t necessarily the best choice.  If you guild expects to clear normal and heroic within the first week and/or you have reasonably low weapon competition a crafted weapon is probably not the best choice.
The new darkmoon faire trinket Skull of Waris another commonly discussed option.  There are only two trinkets in highmaul and one drops off the last boss in the instance making the darkmoon faire trinket a potentially strong choice.  Note however that trinkets have been reduced in potency across the board and are no longer guaranteed to be the best non-weapon item you can get.
The large leatherworking pieces, helm, chest and legs provide the most stats for your crafting materials

What is BiS?
I don’t know and I don’t care.

Death from Above Tuning

Another cross post from the official forums.

Some thoughts on rogue level 100 talents and Death from Above in particular.

One important caveat for the rest of the results in this post.  SimulationCraft implements the auto attack loss from Death from Above as an 800ms swing timer pushback.  However testing in game suggests that the auto attack pushback caused by Death from Above is closer to 1.1-1.4 seconds.

Pathal’s Results:  http://pastebin.com/3hCTcPAb

My Results:  http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/cqpYxDrNF3BXmQAT#type=damage-done&source=1&view=events

For this test I tracked the swing timer with a weak aura and attempted to use DfA as close to the end of the swing timer as possible to show the maximum possible loss from DfA and then determined the auto attack loss as the time difference between melee swings minus the 2.47 second swing timer.

With this potentially modeling inaccuracy in mind which may overstate the value of DfA some results.

Combat:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/782cnmxis4tut96/combat_dfa_new.html?dl=0

This shows 4 combat configurations based on the T17M profile.  T17M uses Shadow Reflection by default, DfA_no_AR is a modified version of the DfA profile that does not use DfA during adrenaline rush due to energy capping issues.

This shows pretty clearly that DfA is a non-trivial dps loss for combat compared to no talent(~3.5%) due to a combination of factors, most importantly the high energy cost of DfA compared to evis (25 energy vs. 10 energy after relentless strikes is taken into account) results in a reduction of AR uptime (20.69% vs. 22.5%), deep insight uptime (28.28% vs. 33.68%) and killing spree uses (9.5 vs. 10.3).  It is not clear how important the auto attack loss since the changed AR uptime confounds energy regen however intuitively is will be most detrimental to combat with its high passive damage compared to the other specs and energy regen that relies on auto attacks.

Assassination:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfe56xuwaawh452/assassination_dfa.html?dl=0

Assassination has DfA as a minor dps increase over no talent but still not competitive with shadow reflection in the default profile.  The underlying issue with DfA for assassination is similar to the issue for combat, both specs get substantial portion of the value of their finishers from side effects rather than direct damage.  Combat loses cooldown and BG cycling speed and assassination loses envenom uptime (75.31% vs. 81.04%) due to the energy cost of DfA compared to a regular envenom.  Auto attack loss does not seem to be a substantial issue for assassination with ~0.3 auto attacks lost per hand per DfA.

Subtlety:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/qjr96kcmo872tsp/sub_dfa.html?dl=0

Unlike combat and assassination subtlety has no major side effects on eviscerate.  This makes subtlety the best possible spec for DfA and the data bears this out.  While DfA is a useful dps increase for subtlety it is outdone by shadow reflection (the default sub profile uses venom rush).  Even if DfA showed a slight dps increase for subtlety it would be a hard sell since DfA is by far the hardest of the three talents to use requiring cp and energy pooling and raising all the loss of control and landing in a bad spot issues combat rogues have been complaining about with killing spree for 3 expansions now.  Compare this to SR which is effectively a passive talent that is macroed into primary cooldowns.

Reducing the energy cost of DfA to 35 energy like a standard envenom/eviscerate would help DfA be much more competitive for assassination and combat since it would reduce the envenom uptime loss and reduced cycling speed respectively.  It would also probably push DfA above SR for subtlety, matching damage with degree of difficulty.

Another possibility would be buffing the AoE pulse portion of DfA to be a useful form of AoE damage.  Currently it hits for very little damage and would help give the talent a niche on the tier.  One problem with the rogue 100 tier in general is both SR and DfA are primarily single target dps talents without any other major niche, this means that the weaker talent between the two will get left by the wayside.  Increasing the AoE pulse damage of DfA would give DfA a niche beyond single target which may keep it useful even if the single target damage is lower than that of SR.

In a similar vein Pathal suggested in #ravenholdt that the AoE pulse could proc poisons, this would grant a larger benefit to combat and assassination than subtlety and would increase the effective damage of the AoE pulse without having to buff its damage.

Combat Mastery: Tuning and Weapon Speed

Another cross post from the official forums.

There are some issues with combat mastery tuning that are causing a number of problematic tuning issues with the spec.

First SimC results:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhxwuppixnal30u/combat_weapon_final.html?dl=0

This shows three different combat weapon configurations, MH dagger, OH sword, double swords and MH sword, OH dagger.  All use the ilvl 660 pvp set with mastery enchants except slow_fast_haste_stack which uses haste enchants.  Fast_slow_RvS_maintain uses RvS only for debuff maintenance, all others use RvS as primary cp builder during deep insight.

As additional confirmation that this is not an artifact of SimC Vigilate tested Slow/Slow and Fast/Slow with 660 pvp gear and 680 tier gear.  This shows Fast/Slow ~5.6% ahead of Slow/Slow which is consistent with the SimC results.

Slow/Slow
Fast/Slow

There are a few problems with this:

1. Fast/Slow is a very counterintuitive, I don’t believe that fast/slow has ever been the optimal weapon configuration for combat, and dagger main hands haven’t been a thing since combat daggers was killed in early wrath.  Beyond the historical rationale it just doesn’t make a ton of sense for the weapon that is hitting with spamable abilities like SS and RvS to be weaker than the one that is just there for auto attacks and mastery procs and has a 50% damage penalty attached.
2. Even in the Slow/Slow setup the OH_dps is more valuable than MH_dps, this is problematic for the same reasons as above, the OH weapon being more valuable doesn’t make much sense.
3. Combat passive damage (defined as auto attack, poison and MG damage) is very high.  In the fast/slow case it is 71.4% and even in the slow/fast case which should move more damage into active sources still has 63.4% passive damage.  I don’t think we have ever been told the target passive damage percentage however using the other two specs for comparison sub has 38.5% and mut has 34.6% in the ilvl 660 pvp gear.
4. Despite SS being higher DPE and CPPE than RvS, RvS still appears optimal to use during deep insight (T17 2pc may change this).  Personally I don’t mind that however given that changes were made to prevent this a few build’s ago this is likely a problem.

The root of all of these issues is combat’s mastery is overtuned.  At 225% OH weapon damage an MG proc out damages a sinister strike (100% MH weapon damage) given equal weapons.  While this isn’t strictly tuning related having our main CP builder deal the same damage as a MH auto attack and RvS deal less damage than a MH auto attack seems very problematic.

Shadowboy did a useful analysis of this issue with slow/slow vs. slow/fast (before fast/slow was discovered to be comparable dps) and proposed a revised tuning that moves damage from MG into SS and RvS that appears to solve all of the issues above.  He proposes nerf MG to 140% weapon damage, buff SS to 160% weapon damage and buff RvS to 120% weapon damage.

Full post on his proposal with SimC results demonstrating its effect:

http://venomousthoughts.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/combat-off-hand-in-warlords-and-the-problem-with-main-gauche/

 

Late Beta Feedback Part 1

Another cross post from the official forum beta feedback thread.

Comments on three issues that don’t require new mechanics to solve.

1) The new Sinister Calling mechanic is much better than the old one because it eliminates the wonky snapshot and stack behavior or hemo however there are a few problems with the mechanic. The mechanic may break down at high gear levels, at around 60% MS, something that seems readily achievable with weapon enchants by the middle to end of the second tier the effective duration of rupture will be ~12-13 seconds. Given sub’s high cp gen the rotation should be reasonably sustainable but I’m not sure the managing a very short duration dot will be particularly enjoyable. The mechanic also makes it impossible at almost all gear levels to avoid refreshing rupture during FW, a generally important optimization for sub. At 12-13 seconds I believe rupture would be shortest duration active maintenance dot in the game.

Complicating the duration issues is SV, such a large portion of subtlety’s damage is tied up in maintaining an active bleed on the target that making those bleeds advance faster makes the rotation feel unforgiving and MS procs punitive despite being a net damage increase. It isn’t clear to me why SV as a mechanic needs to exist, rupture maintenance is already an important part of sub dps, elevating it with SV seems redundant.

With the change to SC its not clear why hemo snapshotting and dot rolling was removed since the mechanic wasn’t particularly problematic on its own. It seemed like a good solution to narrow the gap between positional uptime and lack of positional uptime. The mechanic was hugely problematic in the context of the old SC extra tick mechanic but with that mechanic changed it didn’t cause any problems.

Finally I mentioned in the AoE issues in an earlier post on sub AoE but the problem remains, even with the new version of SC. The MS interaction is sub’s big new mechanic and presumably the reason MS is sub’s fancy attuned stat however its value is diminished on AoE or in solo play. While stat weight variance between different situations is expected the lack of MS interaction on solo play and AoE seems problematic. This may also pose problems for subtlety on fights that do not allow high positional uptime, something that may be a problem even with the new, larger, backstab arc (this could be its own item but I’ve mostly given up on it).

2) I’m a huge fan of the new Bandit’s Guile mechanic, I think it has the potential to add a lot of dynamism to the combat rotation but the direction indicated by these two tweets (https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/502167046247809024 and https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/502222409139630080) seems worrying. If SS is strictly superior to RvS in every way, as suggested by the last tweet, then delaying BG doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not only are you reducing the uptime of the now 50% deep insight buff but you are also losing out damage and combo points versus normally advancing the rotation. This seems to remove the possibility of optimizations related to synchronizing cooldowns with BG. Shadowboy’s computations (http://venomousthoughts.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/bandits-guile-mechanic-in-warlords-of-draenor/) suggest on sustained single target a 5 second BG delay per cycle in moderate insight works out as dps neutral at best. This seems to relegate the new BG delaying mechanic to skipping enforced downtime, which seems like a waste of a potentially cool mechanic.

Even in the case of enforced downtime its not clear if BG delaying makes sense given the short duration of BG. I mentioned this in one of the first posts of the earlier thread, BG’s 15 second duration doesn’t make a ton of sense given BG’s rotational role as a pseudo-resource much like a monks TeB. Since RvS does not refresh BG using RvS to delay deep insight across even a short period of enforced downtime risks BG dropping completely. At the very least RvS should refresh the duration of the BG buff to make delaying less risky however even better would be increasing the baseline duration of non-deep insight BG. Combat already suffers more than other rogue specs on enforced downtime fights like Lei Shen due to BG falling off and the increased strength of deep insight (50% up from 30%) makes enforced downtime even more problematic. Given the substantial resource investment required to get into deep insight (600 energy, ~30-45 seconds) it seems odd that the buff should fall off so easily.

3) The combo point UI remains inadequate. We’ve talked a lot about the lack of change to combo point UI in this thread but it hasn’t been changed yet so lets talk about it again. The current combo point UI does a terrible job communicating the actual behavior of combo points, its no wonder many rogues believe combo points aren’t really on the rogue and are just being automatically redirected, that is what the UI communicates. Yes we can fix it with addons (kinda, more on that in a moment) but we shouldn’t have to use addons for the fundamental resource system of our class.

The funny part is addons can’t actually solve the issue because the GetComboPoints() function still returns 0 when we do not have an attackable target selected. Its still technically trackable by addons but it requires fully implementing the out of combat combo point decay logic which shouldn’t be necessary. We’ve heard the justification of “consistency” before but I don’t buy it, the functionality is no longer consistent so why should the UI have to be?

Finally on the topic of combo points there seem to be a lot of mechanics that just ignore anticipation. The assassination pvp 4pc bonus sets your combo points to 5 rather than generating 5 combo points. The sub FoK perk only generates extra combo points per target hit but not extra anticipation stacks. With combo points now on the rogue anticipation should work like the Monk talent Ascension and simply grant extra combo point bubbles on the UI. Combo points in the current system feel like a mess, caught half implemented and not totally functional. Three months ago this wasn’t a problem because beta is beta, things are expected to be half implemented and only partially functional but as we’re now in the polishing stage its very worrying.

Fixing Subtlety AoE

Another cross post from the official forums.

Talked with Vigilate in #ravenholdt about this earlier so its no surprise we agree but seeing sub AoE in action tonight on a fight like Beastlord where there are almost always 5+ targets made me rethink what I said previously about the sub AoE rotation.  The sub AoE rotation doesn’t feel bad but looking at the damage meters (obviously acknowledging that the tuning pass hasn’t happened yet), it feels really weak.

The key problem is none of our AoE abilities hit hard enough.  FoK and CT do not do enough damage, quick dummy numbers as sub put FoK at around 800 damage with CT at around 1.8K (mastery stacking gear set up for assassination),  To put these numbers in perspective, FoK is dealing less damage than an OH white swing while CT is comparable to an OH white swing.  Things aren’t as problematic for assassination due to the power of poisons but with subtlety, which has to rely solely on FoK and CT shows very clearly how weak they are.

In addition to raw number tuning the subtlety AoE and ST target rotations have basically nothing to do with each other.  You keep up SnD and rupture because of massive cp overflow but otherwise you are just spamming FoK->CT->FoK->CT ad infinitum.  All of the mechanics that define subtlety on single target, vanish, shadow dance, find weakness, fit into the AoE rotation about as easily as an elephant in a phone booth.  A simple solution to this would be a new AoE opener which applies FW to all targets it hits or even simpler FoK applies FW to all targets if cast from stealth or during shadow dance.  This doesn’t have the complexity of a single target FW but it allows sub’s AoE rotation to integrate more smoothly with its primary mechanics.

In addition to the FW issue sub suffers from the “s word”, stat scaling on AoE is messy.  Given the low number of FoKs per CT while AoEing subtlety has substantial energy overflow degrading the value of haste.  More problematically, the new sub MS mechanic is entirely non-functional on AoE when backstab is replaced wholesale by FoK.  I understand that stat weights will change in different situations but to have the mechanic that makes MS interesting as subtlety’s attuned stat be entirely non-functional on AoE seems wrong.  A simple fix would be to allow FoK MSs to proc additional bleed ticks just like backstab. Since FoK and backstab have the same energy cost this is unlikely to cause odd side effects in the single target rotation.  Combine this with the previous idea of AoE FW and potentially a damage buff to FoK and CT and subtlety could have a solid AoE burst niche, in line with its single target burst niche.

Beta Rogue Rotation APM

Another cross post from the official feedback forum.

A few days ago I posted my thoughts on rotations for each spec on beta, a couple days Vigilate posted his thoughts on combat on Sentry Totem which mostly lined up with my own.  One thing sorely lacking from both our analysis was numerical backing.  Today in #ravenholdt someone asked what the actions per minute for combat would be in WoD compared to MoP so I decided to compute this for all three specs.

A couple notes about these APM computations.  These are simple steady state models, they do not take into account time varying stats or temporary buffs unless otherwise noted.  Vanish is not taken into account which would increase the APM of each spec somewhat.  The stat amounts for each spec are based on the ilvl 660 premade gear which I believe is equivalent to WoD Normal/MoP Flex level gear, additionally to see if “haste will fix it” computations are done for two other haste points.  The upper haste point of 1500 haste rating is something I believe will be reachable during the first tier since the premade gear set is somewhat light on haste and not enchanted which can add an additional 540 haste.  The MoP models use WoD stats but otherwise uses the MoP launch mechanics, so for example 40 energy sinister strike and no ruthlessness for combat.

Mastery for combat and crit for assassination are held constant between the haste points.  All models assume Lemon Zest as the level 100 talent, the combat model adds 3 target LZ with blade flurry.  3 target LZ is not considered for other specs because AoE rotations are not set in stone yet and number of targets adds more complexity than it adds in clarity.

Some top line numbers (full results linked below)

Assassination_APM_WoD_No_Execute: 31.77
Assassination_APM_MoP_No_Execute: 37.44

Assassination_APM_WoD_Execute: 39.75
Assassination_APM_MoP_Execute: 34.32

Combat APM_WoD: 27.69
Combat APM_MoP: 28.85

Combat_APM_WoD_3rd_Haste_Point: 30.9 
Combat_APM_MoP_3rd_Haste_Point: 30.7
Combat APM_WoD_AR: 50.23
Combat_APM_MoP_AP+SB: 58.17

Subtlety_APM_WoD: 38.11
Subtlety_APM_MoP: 37.02

These numbers confirm a number of the observations made about rogue dps specs.

1. Assassination is much faster.  A number of people have commented that assassination on beta feels much smoother than it does on live and these numbers bear that out.  Assassination gains more than 4 APM over MoP which helps make the spec feel much smoother at low ilvls.
2. Combat is slower.  While both assassination and subtlety both gained APM going from MoP to WoD due to true haste buff and lemon zest, combat loses 1 APM due to increased SS energy cost.  Despite this combat’s energy regen appears to scale faster with haste than it did in MoP, note that despite starting 1 APM slower in WoD at the 3^rd haste point combat is as fast as its MoP equivalent and if you were to extend that more, for example to T18 levels of haste, it would more than pass the MoP APM.  This could cause issues for combat down the line, while the enhanced AR perk will probably keep combat from ever GCD capping during AR as Vigilate has pointed out previously very few people actually enjoyed the 0.5 second GCD during ToT.
3. The gap between AR and not AR is lower than MoP but still problematic.  The loss of shadow blades slows combat down by about 14% during adrenaline rush, however the APM gap is still quite substantial.  The drastic difference in speed between the two states exacerbates the sluggish feeling of the spec without adrenaline rush up.  Additionally, while I do not attempt to quantify restless blades interaction here the slowdown during adrenaline rush leads to a longer effective adrenaline rush cooldown which makes the spec feel slower still.

There are probably other pieces of additional information to be gleaned from the full spreadsheet so it is provided below.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HPVnbxQFi4e5d9UtfvBmuZOITHEkVZVbUSFl81LaQg8

A number of people have expressed an interest in how these are computed. The spreadsheet isn’t particularly well documented but it should be understandable. At a high level these computations are based on the resource budget modeling technique discussed previously in the context of ShadowCraft.  If you have questions about the spreadsheet leave them in the comments or come join the conversation in #ravenholdt.

Beta Rogue Rotation Feedback

Cross posted from official forum feedback thread because I doubt many people are following the beta feedback threads too carefully.

Testing done with a level 100 premade.  Level 100 talent was Lemon Zest.

Single Target:

Assassination– Overall feels pretty good, energy regeneration in level 100 premade gear (ilvl 660) seemed about right especially with lemon zest proving an addition 0.6 energy per second.  There are two problems with the spec, vendetta and complexity.  Vendetta remains a really boring button to press with absolutely zero rotational interaction.  Especially compared to the cooldowns of the other two specs vendetta feels very lacking.  I completely forgot about the vendetta crit perk till I was writing this just now as I didn’t notice it during testing.  The spec also feels like its missing a mechanic.  The new emphasis on envenom is good but it isn’t enough to make the spec challenging and interesting.  The combination of the new pandemic mechanic plus the rate that spec plays at means that you’d be hard pressed to generate combo points fast enough to clip envenom.

Combat– Combat feels very slow, not just compared to current live speed but compared to the other two specs.  While combat does have faster energy regeneration than the other two specs the much higher energy cost per combo point makes the spec feel very slow.  The energy cost of sinister strike probably should be returned to 40 energy and then rebalance adrenaline rush so the spec doesn’t feel too spammy.  I’m also somewhat worried about the UI requirements of the new bandit’s guile system, I’m a huge fan of the design but this mechanic is going to require addons to play correctly.  You can track the progress in your head reasonably well but it requires a fair amount of concentration, especially if you are also trying to mentally track bandit’s guile progress (As a reminder this really needs better UI support).

Subtlety– Subtlety hasn’t changed much from live where it’s a lot of fun and so it still plays very well on beta.  The pace seems good and find weakness optimization is still a fun mechanic, albeit a frustrating one with the default UI.  The problem is that is really all the spec has going for it right now, the resource generation is high enough (even without full HAT saturation) to keep SnD and rupture up trivially without having to refresh during dance which was one of the major sources of complexity in the spec.  If the design intent is for subtlety is for the spec to be intentionally more difficulty it certainly isn’t living up to that now.  The durations of SnD and rupture need to be reduced substantially, at least 20% to 30% to make subtlety rogues have resource constraints that need to be actively managed.

AoE (Two AoE cases examined, priority target with incidental cleave on two targets and sustained three target AoE):

Note: Crimson Tempest is currently proccing Relentless Strikes per target which probably isn’t intended, I’ve tried to consider the impact of that additional energy to evaluate these rotations without this behavior.  I’ll also note that even if this isn’t intended it does make the current rotations better.

Assassination– Lemon Zest speeds up the rotation very nicely when you have multiple targets to cleave.  I’d like to see the default UI provide a bit more information about Lemon Zest, specifically how long your shortest deadly poison has left but that may be enough of specialized piece of information for addons to handle.  For sustained AoE rupture multidotting and weaving in crimson tempests is a lot of fun, on three targets it feels like you have infinite energy and crimson tempest as AoE poison damage increase synergizes nicely.  Even discounting the possible CT, RS bug (weaving envenoms rather than CT) the energy regen feels quite high. I don’t know if this is the intended or optimal damage AoE rotation for assassination but it is a great rotation so I hope it is.

Combat– The combat single target rotation is slow and AoE is even slower.  The blade flurry energy penalty makes the spec feel even worse.  Blade flurry provides passive maintenance for lemon zest which helps counter the blade flurry energy penalty but still slows the rotation substantially.  For sustained AoE CT basically effectively replaces eviscerate with a time to die breakeven point depending on the number of targets.  CT does not however feel like an exciting button to press, at least not without the possibly unintended RS interaction.  The same issues that plague the single target rotation plague combat here, the rotation feels incredibly slow and when compared to the way the other two specs speed up on AoE it feels even worse.

Subtlety– Combo points per target on FoK feels exactly as overpowered as we all expected but given subtlety’s current AoE weaknesses on live I’m not sure that is a huge problem.  The combo point overflow exacerbates the lack of resource limitations and multiple target lemon zest maintenance is a bit more frustrating for subtlety compared to the other two specs but it isn’t a deal breaker.  On sustained AoE CT as a rolling dot can result in some pretty beefy dots on a lot of targets but doesn’t provide a lot of AoE burst which seems like a good tradeoff.  The one complaint I have with sub AoE is the general lack of interaction between its major single target mechanic, shadow dance, and AoE, it makes the two rotations feel somewhat disconnected.

To recap:
Assassination Single Target: Good pace and flow, vendetta is boring and spec doesn’t have enough skill rewarding mechanics.
Combat Single Target: Way too slow, BG needs better UI support and may still be too hard to manage without addons.
Subtlety Single Target: Good pace, dance is still a good mechanic, not enough resource limitations to challenge players.
Assassination AoE: Good pace and flow, rotation is really fun.  Awesome design, please don’t change.
Combat AoE: SLOWWW, not particularly interesting but basically function.
Subtlety AoE: Good pace, very high combo point generation is fun, may need more interaction with single target.

Welcome to #ravenholdt

After months of looking jealously at Death Knights and their awesome IRC community #acherus we rogues have decided to stop lazing around and blatantly rip them off. #ravenholdt is the new rogue IRC community on quakenet. The goal of #ravenholdt is to create a place for the rogue community to chat, sometimes about class theory, sometimes about raiding, sometimes about nothing in particular. If you are some kind of old school gamer who has been hanging out in IRCs for years you can skip the rest of this post, if not some IRC basics.

What is IRC?
Wikipedia helpfully defines IRC as “a system that facilitates transfer of messages in the form of text.” That really is about all there is to it, IRC is an old technology for transferring messages over a network. Owing to its age IRC is pretty barebones but unless you want to do fancy stuff it is also pretty easy to use. IRC servers are organized into channels, separate groups of users who can communicate directly with each other. Channel names always start with a hash sign (#).

How do I join?
To join an IRC channel you need an IRC client, there are a wide variety of IRC clients out there for just about every platform. Since I’m just trying to cover basics I’m just going to talk about the quakenet web client.
http://webchat.quakenet.org/
From this accessing IRC is very simple, put in a name and #ravenholdt and you are set.

I’ve joined the channel, now what?
Chat, there isn’t that much to it. A couple useful commands:
/msg user message- sends a private message to another user.
/nick name- changes your current nickname

What is this “Log in to Q” button for?
You can register your user name with quakenet by following these directions.
https://www.quakenet.org/help/q/how-to-register-an-account-with-q
Registering an account allows you to keep user settings between logins but it isn’t necessary to join or chat in #ravenholdt.

What does the “@” by some peoples names mean?
The @ symbol means that a person is a “channel operator,” basically a moderator for the channel. We don’t plan to need a lot of moderation but we’ve got some mods just in case.

There is a lot more to IRC than I’ve covered above but that should be enough to get started. Welcome to #ravenholdt.

Annotated Warlords Alpha Patch Notes

Having now digested the massive info dump Blizzard has given us some thoughts. This is going to be very long and if you’ve already used up your reading quota for the day reading Blizzards 33 pages of patch notes I won’t blame you for not going any further.

Official blog
There are a lot of interesting things that aren’t rogue related, I’m not going to get into those for the moment, this post is long enough as is.

Ability Pruning

• Disarm Trap has been removed.
• Rupture is no longer available to Combat Rogues.
• Shadow Blades has been removed.

The most interesting thing about this section is how few rogue rogue abilities are being pruned. While we find out about a few more later on (expose armor and mind numbing poison to name a couple) this reflects what a lot of rogues have been saying since the ability squish was announced, rogues don’t suffer from a ton of ability bloat and don’t need a ton of things removed. The removal of rupture for combat rogues is a good change and long time coming. Rupture has over time moved in and out of the combat rotation many times but it has never seemed essential to the spec. Given the added optimization complexity from the bandit’s guile change (discussed later) I don’t have a problem with its removal. The removal of shadow blades is a bit sad however the ability was a pure macro-in for two specs and removal follows from Blizzards other design goals so I’m not too upset by the removal.

Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns Paralytic Poison has been removed and replaced by Internal Bleeding.

• Internal Bleeding: Causes successful Kidney Shots to also apply a periodic Bleed effect for 12 seconds, with damage increasing per combo point used.

Paralytic poison was an obvious potential causality of the crowd control reductions, however this replacement seems like a waste. It’s a solid soloing and potentially 2s talent depending on damage but the problem is prey on the weak scales with group size.  For large group combat with multiple dps prey on the weak is likely to be strictly superior. I’m not sure what could compete with prey on the weak in a PvE setting but if the goal is a better T75 for raiding this talent isn’t it.

Buffs and Debuffs Weakened Armor and Physical Vulnerability were effectively redundant, both filling the role of increasing Physical damage taken by the target. So, we removed Weakened Armor and widened the availability of Physical Vulnerability a bit. The following abilities have been removed.

• Rogue: Expose Armor

… The Cast Speed Slow was a debuff type that mattered almost exclusively to PvP, and made combat much less fun for casters in addition to encouraging the use of instant-cast spells. We decided that it was best to remove casting speed debuffs. The following abilities have been removed.

• Rogue: Mind-numbing Poison

… As part of a push to combine the different types of Haste in the game as much as possible, we merged Spell Haste and Attack Speed into just Haste, which benefits everyone. … The following abilities now also increase magic damage taken by the target by 5% for 15 seconds.

• Monk (Windwalker): Rising Sun Kick
• Priest (Shadow): Mind Blast

Expose armor mechanics have seemed outdated for a while now, simply removing and further streamlining buffs is solid choice. Mind numbing never did much in PvE so removing it isn’t a huge thing to worry about. That said the whole concept of non-lethal poisons seems odd at this point with only crippling and leeching in that category.  This isn’t a showstopper but it does seem odd. The haste buff simplification changes needed to happen, the intricacies of what kind of haste helped what was excessively complex with minimal upside. With 20 mans being the only progression raid size raid debuffs aren’t likely to be a huge issue but extending the spell damage buff beyond rogues and warlocks is a nice quality of life change for other groups.

Facing Requirements Strict facing requirements can be frustrating to deal with, especially in hectic Raid combat or PvP environments. In order to ease this frustration, we decided to remove or significantly loosen the facing requirements of all attacks that required the player to be behind their target.

• Druid: Shred no longer requires the Druid to be behind the target.
• Rogue: Ambush no longer requires the Rogue to be behind the target.
• Rogue (Subtlety): Backstab can now be used on either side of the target, in addition to behind the target.

This is one of the big letdowns of these notes. Ambush being usable at all angles is a great change and will certainly make subtlety much less handicapped on position limiting fights but I’m immensely confused about what backstab isn’t getting the same treatment. I’m happy for our druid brothers that shred no longer has a positional requirement but in light of that change the lack of full positional independence for subtlety rogues seems like pure stubbornness. The change to ambush combined with the change to hemorrhage (discussed later) should reduce the damage gap between positional and non-positional subtlety in which case this seems like flavor impeding gameplay which feels wrong. Reducing the damage gap will probably help mitigate the issues with positional requirements but depending on encounter design it could easily become a problem.

In our efforts to reduce cooldown stacking across the game, we chose to remove the damage increase from Tricks of the Trade. …

• Tricks of the Trade now has no energy cost and no longer increases damage caused by the target by 15%.

We already knew about this but it’s nice to see it in here. As I’ve discussed previously the damage bonus on tricks felt problematic. I’m a bit skeptical that tricks is going to have much utility at all given the melee range limitation compared to hunter misdirection and tank threat being what it is (most threat drop abilities have been removed in as a seeming acknowledgement of this). If Blizzard had deemed rogue button bloat a larger issue I’d be concerned about tricks remaining but since rogues didn’t lose much in ability pruning I don’t see an issue with situational utility.

We decided to loosen the weapon requirements on Assassination. It’s important to note that we still intend for daggers to be the optimal choice for Assassination Rogues, but this change will help Rogues who want to try out Assassination but don’t have two daggers. …

• Assassin’s Resolve no longer requires daggers to function.
• Dispatch can now be used with fist weapons or one-handed swords, dealing 331% weapon damage (instead of 480%) when used with those weapons instead of a dagger.
• Mutilate can now be used with fist weapons or one-handed swords, dealing 137% weapon damage (instead of 200%) when used with those weapons instead of a dagger.
• Sinister Strike now deals 188% weapon damage when used with a dagger (instead of 130%).

Further clarified by Celestalon on twitter:

Intended to be ‘okay’ to use in case you are over a tier behind on the optimal weapons, but not optimal.

This seems like a step in the right direction, weapon dependence can be immensely frustrating however I’m somewhat sorry that Blizzard didn’t go further. This is a good change for players at lower levels of progression but heroic mythic raiders will still likely be stuck with playing to your weapons.

Bandit’s Guile is an interesting mechanic that is important to Combat gameplay, but wasn’t working out quite as well as we think that it could. In particular, there’s basically no way to adjust when you’re going to be in Deep Insight, other than stopping your rotation (and thus wasting energy, combo points, temporary effects, cooldown time, etc.). …

• Revealing Strike now deals 20% more damage, but no longer advances Bandit’s Guile.

Those of you who read my previous wishlisting for warlords post will recognize this idea because it is exactly “Somewhat Less Sinister Strike.” I’m not taking credit for the idea, it seems like a reasonably obvious extension of the bandit’s guile concept that Blizzard probably came up with before I posted but I’m happy to see it in. This will hopefully finally help bandit’s guile help fulfill the promise of being something rogues can optimize with not just around.

Among some other changes to Rogue AoE damage, we wanted to make sure that Fan of Knives benefitted from Seal Fate.

• Seal Fate now also grants a combo point for area attacks that critically strike the Rogue’s primary target.

Small change for assassination, given the increased emphasis on AoE as part of single target rotation for many classes and specs will certainly make fan of knives weaving fit better into the rotation.

Honor Among Thieves is an extremely powerful ability, but has the downside that it adds significant disparity between character power while soloing and while in a group. We made this change to bring up the soloing Subtlety Rogue, without having a significant impact on their performance while in a group.

• Honor Among Thieves can now also be triggered by critical hits from the Rogue’s melee Auto Attacks.

The notes pretty much sum things up. This will also be a small buff to rogues in small scale arena. Good quality of life change.

A couple of Rogue abilities do periodic damage, but don’t have an intended alternative if that periodic is already on the target. We made these abilities roll remaining damage from their previous effect into the new effect, so that it’s still ideal to use them again in these cases.

• Crimson Tempest’s periodic damage now has rolling periodic behavior, meaning that remaining damage from the previous application is added into the newly-applied periodic-damage effect.
• Hemorrhage’s periodic damage now has rolling periodic behavior, meaning that remaining damage from the previous application is added into the newly-applied periodic-damage effect.

First a brief explanation of how this works because this is a new mechanic for rogues. The goal of a rolling periodic dot is the ratio of direct and dot damage is fixed regardless of the refresh interval, you lose no damage from refreshing the dot early. As an example if you have a dot that does 100 damage per tick with 10 ticks in the current behavior refreshing that dot with 2 ticks remaining would be a loss of 200 damage. Under rolling periodic behavior if you clipped the last two ticks they would be rolled into the new dot so your new dot tick would do 120 damage per tick (100+[200/10]), The crimson tempest change combined with some of the new crimson tempest related perks will help make crimson tempest a much better ability. Crimson tempest has suffered from lack of purpose all expansion and this will help immensely. Hemorrhage on the other hand seems like an ability designed to solve other mechanical problems. Since we haven’t seen anything about sanguinary veins it’s probably safe to assume that it is remaining as a mechanic. This means hemorrhage basically exists to be used when you can’t backstab and to apply a bleed on target swapping. Neither of these mechanics really need to exist beyond keeping hemorrhage relevant.

Subterfuge has proved too powerful, and frustrating to play against in PvP, so we decided to reduce its defensive capabilities, while preserving its offensive power. We changed the Subterfuge period to allow the use of stealth abilities without actually stealthing you, similar to Shadow Dance.

• Subterfuge now allows you to use abilities that require stealth for 3 sec after leaving Stealth, instead of actually staying stealthed for 3 sec.

This is mostly a PvP change but that this is the direction Blizzard is going with the talent seems to suggest that Blizzard doesn’t have a problem with vanish behaving as a dps cooldown, a mechanic that adds very little to combat or assassination.

Perks
For perks, I’m going to skip the simple damage increasers unless they indicate a major change. Assassination:

• Improved Slice and Dice – Slice and Dice is now always passively active.

This perk was announced at Blizzcon so we all knew it was coming. Interestingly it appears Blizzard is trying to cut down on the generic maintenance buffs. Inquisition is being removed and feral druids can talent into a passive savage roar. I’m not saying slice and dice is a bad mechanic, I think it does have a place for combat and subtlety but for assassination it’s already effectively passive.

• Enhanced Vendetta – After activating Vendetta, your next Mutilate, Dispatch, Envenom, or Ambush has 100% increased chance to be a critical strike.

With the removal of shadow blades assassination clearly needs a more interesting vendetta but this isn’t it. This seems like a concession to the people who miss cold blood and just like cold blood this is a minor effect at best. I hope this perk becomes something to make vendetta more interesting because this passive absolutely doesn’t cut it.

• Enhanced Poisons – Fan of Knives will always apply your poisons to the targets hit.
• Enhanced Crimson Tempest – Crimson Tempest also increases the damage targets take from your poisons by 30% for 1 sec plus 1 sec per combo point.

This suggests that Blizzard would like to move assassination away from the rupture multi-dotting style we’ve been using all expansion. Rupture multi-dotting was likely an unintended strategy and it wasn’t particularly well supported but it was an interesting mechanic that I’m sad to see go. The other interesting aspect of this change is it seems intended to increase AoE damage to make assassination more competitive with combat in AoE situations.

• Empowered Envenom – While Envenom is active, you deal 20% more damage with Mutilate and Dispatch.
• Enhanced Envenom – Envenom grants an additional 15% to your chance to apply poisons.

The battle cry of the make assassination more difficult movement all expansion has been “make envenom more meaningful” and it seems Blizzard agrees. These changes are obvious ways to do that and should add to the assassination skill cap in interesting ways.  I am somewhat worried these changes don’t go far enough establishing for rewarding skill for assassination, especially compared to the complex optimization problem of combat. Combat:

• Empowered Bandit’s Guile – Bandit’s Guile grants an additional 20% damage increase while in Deep Insight.

When combined with the other bandit’s guile change this should substantially increase the combat skill cap and make lining up deep insight with cooldowns a primary goal. Potentially a very interesting perk.

• Instant Poison – Replaces your Deadly Poison with Instant Poison. Instant Poison – Coats your weapons with a Lethal Poison that lasts for 1 hour. Each strike has a 30% chance of instantly poisoning the enemy for XXXX Nature damage.

This perk isn’t that interesting except for that it represents, a return to wrath style no-dot combat. During wrath one of combat’s niches was effectively zero target swapping time and this returns that niche to combat.

• Enhanced Adrenaline Rush – While Adrenaline Rush is active, the global cooldown on Sinister Strike, Revealing Strike, Eviscerate, Slice and Dice, and Rupture is reduced by an additional 0.3 sec.

BLIZZARD WAT U DOIN?
BLIZZARD STAHP!
This is probably the most confusing rogue passive. Celestalon confirmed on twitter that this is in addition to the current 0.2 second GCD reduction which makes this perk a return to the combat T15 4pc failed experiment.  This perk seems to occupy the odd space of either being useless or really problematic.  Rogues were able to saturate the 0.5 second GCD with T15 4pc due to the very power set bonus cost reduction, something that seems unlikely to happen again.  Combat T15 4pc was a problem, it made the spec borderline unplayable for players with even moderately low latency and even some players who enjoy the fast pace of combat felt it was overly spammy. Regardless of the exact mechanics this change indicates that Blizzard doesn’t consider the vast shifts in energy regeneration between adrenaline rush and a normal rotation to be a problem despite the problems it has caused for combat this expansion.

• Enhanced Fan of Knives – Reduces the Energy cost of Fan of Knives by 10.
• Empowered Crimson Tempest – Crimson Tempest no longer deals any periodic damage, and instead deals 240% increased initial damage.

Combat arguably has the weakest AoE perks of the three rogue specs which seems appropriate given blade flurry. I worry somewhat that either blade flurry or fan of knives/crimson tempest will be left behind in combat AoE rotations. but if Blizzard can define a niche for both it could be interesting design.   Without fan of knives advancing bandit’s guile these perks could create an awkward AoE rotation or lead to fan of knives being left behind. Subtlety:

• Enhanced Vanish – Reduces the cooldown on Vanish by 30 sec.

This change suggests that Blizzard likes vanish as a dps cooldown for subtlety. For subtlety this does seem appropriate although it does create an odd utility situation if isn’t a dps cooldown for the other specs.

• Enhanced Shadow Dance- Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 2 sec.

Combined with the change above I worry that this may result in a baseline find weakness uptime that seems very high. With 13 seconds of stealth per 90 seconds and 20 seconds of stealth per minute a rogue will be approaching 50% find weakness uptime over a 90 second window before cooldown reduction is factored in. Given this high starting uptime it seems plausible that subtlety could hit a problematic readiness soft cap at high gear levels.

• Empowered Fan of Knives – Fan of Knives now generates a combo point for each target that it hits.

So many combo points. Celetalon has already confirmed on twitter that this is very much an experiment and if the combo point generation is too high. It is an interesting idea in concept and when combined with the crimson tempest change it potentially makes subtlety very powerful in a sustained AoE setting. Given the backloaded nature of crimson tempest for subtlety this isn’t particularly strong in a burst AoE setting. On the other hand this allows some potentially very powerful cheesing from subtlety on multi-target encounters. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, multi-dotting casters have been doing this forever but it does open up some interesting encounter cheesing opportunities. One potential problem with this change is the raw number of combo points may make anticipation even more powerful than it already is.

• Enhanced Premeditation – Premeditation is no longer an active ability. Instead your Garrote and Ambush always generate 2 additional combo points when used from Stealth. This affect does not apply while Shadow Dance is active.

I’ve seen a couple people express annoyance about the removal of premeditation as an active ability but I don’t have a real problem with it. Macroing premeditation in with openers wasn’t a significant dps loss with anticipation so this seems to follow from Blizzard’s remove macroed abilities philosophy.

Level 100 Talents

• Venom Zest – Increases your maximum energy by 15. Increases your energy regeneration rate by 5% for every enemy you have poisoned, up to 3.

Lemon Zest is arguably a pretty boring talent but at the same time it seems like a solid talent. It creates a useful sustained AoE dps niche and synergizes well with the assassination and subtlety AoE toolkits. It is a bit less clear for combat, Celestalon suggested on twitter that blade flurry may be changed to apply poisons which would make Lemon Zest synergize well with the combat AoE rotation as well, if not the lower combat poison proc rate and lack of single target incentive to use fan of knives could make this a frustrating mechanic.

• Shadow Reflection – Summon a shadow of yourself on the target that will watch you and memorize your offensive ability usage for the next 8 sec. After this time, it will mimic the memorized abilities on its target over the next 8 sec. 20 yd range, Instant, 2 min cooldown.

There are a number of people who think this is an awesome talent, I remain skeptical. I see a couple problems, first it’s a burst cooldown with a long burst window, 16 seconds for full benefit. On fights like heroic siegecrafter it could be very powerful but overall I’m skeptical that a 16 second burst window is desirable on many burst centric fights. Second while many people talk up the control aspects the 8 second delay may make this very hard to use appropriately, not just dependent on player skill but also raid coordination. Finally I see this a potentially imbalanced talent between specs, whereas Lemon Zest potentially has a place in all three specs kits Shadow Reflection doesn’t appear to fit well with assassination. A more complete assessment will probably have to wait for beta, the interaction between buffs, debuffs and the reflection is something that will have to be heavily tested and could greatly impact the value of the talent.

• Death from Above – Finishing move that consumes combo points on the target to empower your weapons with shadow energy and perform a devastating two-part attack. You whirl around, dealing up to XXXX damage to all enemies within 8 yds, then leap into the air and slice into your target on the way back down, dealing up to an additional 500% weapon damage (up to 724% if a dagger is equipped). Damage based on combo points consumed. 50 Energy, 15 yd range, Instant, 20 sec cooldown, Requires One-Handed Melee Weapon.

This talent just feels out of place, a high damage, high energy cost finisher with a cooldown goes against a whole bunch of rogue design trends. This isn’t to say it’s a bad ability but it doesn’t fit that well. A problem I see with this talent is if it is a single target dps increase to use death from above then it increases rogue reliance on anticipation since pooling combo points and energy just as it is coming off cd will be important. Blizzard has addressed one of my previous concerns that this talent will overshadow crimson tempest so I’m not as skeptical as I have been.

One More Thing

Oh, hah, that’s a big oversight, my bad. Yes, Combo Points are ‘on the Rogue’ now. Could revert based on feedback, but trying.

This apparently didn’t make it into the notes (in a later tweet Celestalon confirmed redirect is also gone) and to many this is a big deal. As I’ve said previously I don’t see the combo points on target as a huge deal given the 5.4 glyph of redirect but this change has a special importance to many rogues.

Whats Missing? There a number of things we didn’t find out about tonight.

1. The raid cooldown arms race. The changes as listed remove raid cooldowns from tank specs but say nothing about removing them from dps. This is a huge open question that has a major influence on class balance. It isn’t directly rogue related but it is probably the biggest open question after tonight.  Celestalon noted on twitter there are changes on this that didn’t make this set of notes.
2. Talents and glyphs. Some of the class changes talked about substantial talent changes, mages in particular however no rogue talent changes were announced. While the rogue talent grid is much improved since the start of MoP it still has a few glaring issues that I hope to see addressed. The spec specific talents Blizzard used extensively with other pure dps would a wonderful way to further define rogue specs.

So Where do We Stand? I wrote my final rogue wishlist I did it with the express purpose to evaluate changes against a defined standard, so lets do that. Somewhat arbitrarily I’m giving 2 points for a good solution, 1 point for a passable solution and zero points for no solution. Class Mechanics:

1. Fix Tricks-1. The change is a step in the right direction but tricks as a pure misdirect it has limited utility.
2. Vanish as a dps cooldown-0. No official word either way yet but subterfuge indicates Blizzard doesn’t see this as a problem.
3. Expose armor is outdated-2. Removal of redundant debuffs is a fine solution
4. Combo points on the rogue-2. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

Talents and Glyphs:

1. Anticaitption is too desirable-0. If anything several changes were a step in the wrong direction.
2. Raiding options for T30 and T75-0. Nothing on talents yet.
3. Dead talents-0. Nothing on talents yet.
4. DPS increasing glyphs-0. Nothing on glyphs yet.

Assassination:

1. Add complexity-2. There are probably more creative solutions then what Blizzard did but these changes should do the job very well.
2. More interesting vendetta-0. Adding coldblood to vendetta doesn’t count.

Combat:

1. Combat cooldown stacking and energy regeneration-0. I’d like to give negative points here because 0.5 second GCD adrenaline rush is a step in the wrong direction.
2. More interesting bandit’s guile-2. I’d like to give 3 points here because the revealing strike solution is a great solution.

Subtlety:

1. Positional Requirements-1. I’m loathe to give any points here but the changes are clearly a step in the right direction even if backstab retaining some positional requirements seems unnecessary.
2. Stronger and more interesting AoE-2. Blizzard has done a good job with AoE rotation perks in general, not just for subtlety.

Overall that adds up to 12 points out of a possible 28 on my entirely arbitrary point system. Some of these are for lack of information so I expect things to get better as we get more information in the coming weeks. Overall I feel these changes are a strong start, there are a couple problematic points, 0.5 second GCD adrenaline rush, subtlety positional requirements and boring vendetta in particular and a couple more potentially worrying issues but that’s what beta is for. Better spec distinction, new skill differentiators and some nice quality of life changes, onward to beta.

Rogue Warlords Wishlist

At the end of every expansion cycle there is invariably some discussion about which class did best in this most recent set of changes. The big problem with these discussions is everyone wants to play the aggrieved party and discount what they got and emphasize what they didn’t. This isn’t to say that most patch cycles are even for everyone, most patches have winners and losers but examining things after the fact often leaves important information out.

The goal of this post is to define a set of rogue changes in general terms that I would like to see in Warlords. I don’t expect to get everything on the list below, that would be incredibly optimistic nor am I entirely sure what would constitute a good beta for rogues but I think this is useful exercise. Additionally having potential areas for improvement spelled out in advance should be useful to refer back to as beta progresses. These lists are in a rough order of importance and in general from a progression raider perspective.  Unlike my other wishlisting posts this post doesn’t propose much in the way of solutions simply areas that I would to see addressed.

Class Mechanics:

1. Fix Tricks. I’ve talked about the problem with tricks at length previously, to briefly summarize, tricks is a purely mechanical button press that doesn’t add complexity to the class and provides limited at best utility.
2. Vanish should not be a dps cooldown. For combat and assassination vanish is a relatively uninteresting dps cooldown, a free ability every 2 minutes doesn’t add a lot of complexity on when to use nor is it particularly powerful. For subtlety vanish nicely fits into the find weakness toolkit and does add some interesting complexity. If vanish is going to remain a relatively dps cooldown for subtlety however subtlety rogues may need a spec specific threat drop.
3. Expose Armor’s current implementation for rogues (and to a lesser extent warriors) feels outdated. The changes to the armor debuff allowing everyone to share in the buff upkeep were a step in the right direction but the cost difference between rogues and dps warriors vs druids is substantial and seems out of place compared to most other debuffs. At the very least the current functionality of the expose armor glyph should be baselined and perhaps a passive upkeep glyph like the warrior glyph of colossus smash should be added in its place.
4. Combo points on the rogue. Unlike many other rogues I don’t see this as a high priority change, the 5.4 glyph of redirect solves most of the problems that combo points on the rogue would solve however I certainly wouldn’t be against this change.

Talents and Glyphs:

1. Anticipation is too desirable. Haileaus made a very nice post about anticipation yesterday which is nicely describes the issue. I don’t agree with his proposed solutions but his description of the problem is very good. Briefly the problem is, anticipation is in practice pretty comparable to marked for death in raw dps yet it is rarely taken. Anticipation, in addition to being a dps increase is powerful quality of life talent and adds a number of interesting mechanics to rogue PvE.
2. Add a PvE option to T30 and T75. It’s pretty clear at this point that Blizzard doesn’t have a problem with talents that are situational however rogue T30 and T75 go beyond that. If a raiding rogue didn’t talent T30 or T75 at all there would be few fights this expansion where the absence was noticeable. T30 or T75 don’t need to offer a strong choice for every fight but an option that is more noticeable than the current options would be nice.
3. Fix the dead talents. Each talent tier has a dead talent which doesn’t see a lot of use in either PvE or PvP. Some of these talents are a good idea but need changes to be more competitive, others should probably just be replaced.
   1. Nightstalker- Solid leveling talent, simply removing the dps benefit of T15 and make the tier entirely utility focused would make nightstalker more desirable.
   2. Deadly Throw- Minimal use in any aspect of the game, probably needs to be replaced.
   3. Leeching Poison- Solid leveling talent and situational PvE talent, increasing the power of the talent and removing some of its limitations (allow it to proc off all damage) would make it more competitive.
   4. Cloak and Dagger- Can’t really compete with the other options on the tier and unclear how to fix. Might make a good T15 talent since it is stealth related and would be useful for leveling, an improved sprint talent of some sort would make a strong replacement.
   5. Dirty Tricks- Simply not competitive with the other options on the tier and unclear how to make it more competitive, CC energy costs are low enough to rarely be limiting.
   6. Shuriken Toss- Doesn’t offer much for serious play and since a level 90 talent of limited use for leveling. Unclear if a limited ranged toolkit is important enough to have 2 of 21 talents devoted to it.
4. DPS increasing glyphs. For subtlety needing to glyph to have reasonable target swapping capabilities seems unnecessarily punitive. For assassination the vendetta glyph is a boring dps increase that doesn’t add much to the class.

Assassination:

1. Add rotational complexity. Assassination has one of the easiest rotations in the game, and unlike a number of other rotations that provide areas for optimization, assassination provides distressingly few.
2. Make vendetta more interesting. Vendetta is a boring cooldown that doesn’t add much to the assassination kit other than simply being a cooldown. A more interesting cooldown that changes the rotation in some way like adrenaline rush for combat or shadow dance for subtlety would be an improvement. Additionally having vendetta tied to a single target for the full 20-30 second duration seems outdated in today’s raid environment.

Combat:

1. Restless Blades and Adrenaline Rush+Shadow Blades. The combination of these 3 abilities creates a number of problems for combat as a spec, feast or famine energy regen and limited optimization potential in particular. A change to reduce the power of one or both of these mechanics is very important to avoid some of the issues we ran into with combat this expansion.
2. Bandit’s Guile is a boring mechanic. Bandit’s Guile is a frustrating mechanic, completely uncontrollable and with a non-trivial impact on combat dps. As combat you don’t really interact with bandit’s guile in any way, you are happy if it lines up with what you are trying to do and not so happy if it doesn’t but the mechanic adds very little decision making to the spec. A change to increase the interactivity of the mechanic would make combat a more interesting spec.

Subtlety:

1. Remove positional requirements. Positional requirements are a liability without any sort of counterbalancing bonus in today’s raiding environment and should be removed. Blizzard has already announced that positional requirements will be going away but leaving it off the list because they announced it well in advance of the big info dump would be fair.
2. Stronger and more interesting AoE rotation. Obviously all specs should not have the same strengths and weaknesses, subtlety doesn’t need an AoE toolkit as strong as combat’s however its current AoE is far too weak. This issue could be solved by simply buffing fan of knives and crimson tempest but this wouldn’t solve the other problem with subtlety AoE. The subtlety AoE rotation seems oddly disconnected from the single target rotation, whereas both combat and assassination can use their single target toolkit to support AoE and vice versa subtlety’s rotation doesn’t have a lot in common.

That about covers it, there are minor mechanical tweaks here and there that fall into the category of “would be nice” but they aren’t particularly big changes and may be fixed by other mechanical changes. Also no talking about button bloat because other than saying “please don’t cut X” or “please cut Y” there isn’t a lot to say until we have more information.  Depending on how much information we get in the first wave of info dumps I may continue the more solutions focused Wishlisting Posts. If we do get a large amount of information in this first info dump then I plan to jump right in and start talking about the WoD changes.