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Q u o t e:


So does that mean post 3.0 that we're fine? How about at lvl 80?

And you forgot Shadowstep Pre 3.0. =P IMO the ShS nerf was the biggest blow to the Sub tree.

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took all the fun out of it.
the sub tree has zero value.
no bang for buck as it where.

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Q u o t e:


took all the fun out of it.
the sub tree has zero value.
no bang for buck as it where.

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I agree completely.

If ShS weren't nerfed, i think many rogues would consider staying Sub in Wotlk. But as of now, it appears that 90% of rogues are going to go Muti/Prep - and even myself as ShS don't see the advantage of staying ShS in Wotlk.

If I have to blow Cloak to get out of root/entangle/slow then wtf do I need ShS for? I can just walk over to them or kite -> hide -> stealth.

You're right. Sub tree doesn't have much value right now.

This probally wont ever get responded to. But here's to trying right =/

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Q u o t e:
think it is a little lackluster in PvP and are talking about ways to juice it without overhauling the tree.

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-In reference to HfB
-It’s a lack luster ability period. There’s a difference between having more buttons to click and clicking buttons just for the sake of clicking buttons. This ability is not fun. At all. In PvE or PvP.

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Q u o t e:
neat ability overall IMO. The multiple Ambushes alone can add up. As far as the UI goes, we are trying to implement either a true stealth bar or some kind of pseudo steal bar to make it easier to use.

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-In reference to Shadow Dance
-The problem is when you get feared, rooted, etc… the ability just got completely wasted in team fights. Nearly every class has something on the duration talents that “makes them unable to be stopped”. I don’t see why we have to burn a cloak to cover 5 of the 10 seconds from fear and still risk being stunned by either melee or an unresistable HoJ.

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Q u o t e:
Mutilate is in a little bit of a place in PvP where you rely more on your team, but in return you get really high damage. So you don't have as many CC breaks, but you do tend to kill things faster as a trade-off. One change that will help is increasing the proc rate of Crippling Poison to 50%.

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In reference to having to use CloS and Vanish to break snares.

Let’s just take a look at if we’re trying to kill a frost mage for example as mutilate.

They have…

Frost Nova. Pet Nova. Deep Freeze. Shattered Ice Barrier, Glyphed Iceblock (Refreshes Nova), Iceblock in general, 15% Impact. 15% Frostbite which includes a 15% chance for the Rogue to freeze themselves (2 autoattack 2 mutilates in about 1 second) and then everything all over again. Coldsnap.

This is one mage.

You say we need to depend on our team. That’s not mutually exclusive. Now add in you’ve got a warrior charging you, another rogue on you, a druid cyclone / rooting you, fear bombs going off left and right, etc…

What are our tools as mutilate?

1 Vanish on a 3m CD, 1 CloS on a 1.5m CD, and 1 Sprint on a 3m CD that doesn’t break snare. Oh and a trinket on a 2m CD.

But wait… all of this comes at the cost of an escape and a magic resist making us INCREDIBLY vulnerable to attack.

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Q u o t e:


I think you’re reading too much in to what I said. Assassination is giving up some of its “tricks” in order to do more damage. You become a little closer to a shaman or warrior.

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Isn't that what combats supposed to be?

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Q u o t e:
Players have also learned that waving around “fun factor” is a useful ploy to get my attention so I have been trying not to respond to it as much. That isn’t to say fun isn’t critically important. It is. But it’s also like tossing a grenade to win an argument – make this change or I won’t have fun. I’m not accusing you of being manipulative in this manner, but it is something of which we have to be mindful.

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This lays at the heart of my playing subtlety. I love the utility that Subtlety provided, and specifically the increased ability to control a fights outcome through proper manipulation of player states.

Ex: Preparation allows me to use sprint twice to catch runners, 2 vanishes + cos allowed me to pull a similar effect to Shadow Dance or to escape a situation that I no longer felt I was able to handle. The double evasion, ghostly strike and (once upon a time) Cheat Death made it possible for me to survive a situation where other rogues would die. Shadowstep in particular emphasized the control aspect of fights, in that you could keep up with your opponent.

For the most part subtlety allowed me to pick up extra utility abilities, and I made the concious choice to take those over improved damage. Utility 'is' fun to me.

The game (on my rogue specifically) in pvp and occasionally pve has become alot less fun since the patch due to the change to shadowstep denying any mobility while rooted, the (apparent to me at least) lack of target dropping when vanish is applied, and (also apparent to me) newfound ability of caster classes to simply punch through CoS.

If latency is to blame, than the abilities of subtlety need to be re-balanced around that reality, because they are too easily broken by such. (and generally speaking, I get around 30-80ms latency)

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Q u o t e:


This lays at the heart of my playing subtlety. I love the utility that Subtlety provided, and specifically the increased ability to control a fights outcome through proper manipulation of player states.

Shadowstep in particular emphasized the control aspect of fights, in that you could keep up with your opponent.

For the most part subtlety allowed me to pick up extra utility abilities, and I made the concious choice to take those over improved damage. Utility 'is' fun to me.

The game (on my rogue specifically) in pvp and occasionally pve has become alot less fun since the patch due to the change to shadowstep denying any mobility while rooted, the (apparent to me at least) lack of target dropping when vanish is applied, and (also apparent to me) newfound ability of caster classes to simply punch through CoS.

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Werd. I feel the same way. Sure I've adjusted, but I still don't understand the justification of the nerf to ShS if the devs implemented changes/abilities to the other classes based on the pre 3.0 rogue.

Good luck trying to catch a druid or even a well played mage and a well played boomkin with ShS in its current state without blowing trink/clos/vanish.

I understand that as Muti, there's that burst potential, as Sub, its always been about control/utility/sustained DPS.

With ShS nerfed, and Hemo on its way out, Sub has lost a good part of its control and sustaind dps. I guess there's always "utility" but other than prep that can be picked up by a Muti/prep spec in Wotlk, there isn't much else in the Sub tree anymore.

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Q u o t e:
As you can see, some rogues are saying they’re doomed and some are saying they’re fine

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I think it's safe to say that part of this is that players that rely largly on aspects of rogues that are currently buggy (CoS) or that are not as effective (subtlety tree) have a much grimmer look of the class than those who are less reliant on them (combat PvE rogue for example). Others are panicked about loosing raid spots, dropping the whole pure vs hybrid debate it's still the case that more players playing DPS hybrids means more competition for the same number of spots. I think once vanish and stealth levels are back to normal and stable, and once CoS once again resists spells by 90%, that most of the doomsday views of rogues will be calmed.

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Q u o t e:
Is playing as a rogue really that bad? Honestly I wouldn't think there would be much to complain about given the success of the class through most of this game.

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about the being targeted while vanished...

it's when a player focus's you before vanish and your still nearby... makes me cry.

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Q u o t e:


I think it's safe to say that part of this is that players that rely largly on aspects of rogues that are currently buggy (CoS) or that are not as effective (subtlety tree) have a much grimmer look of the class than those who are less reliant on them (combat PvE rogue for example). Others are panicked about loosing raid spots, dropping the whole pure vs hybrid debate it's still the case that more players playing DPS hybrids means more competition for the same number of spots. I think once vanish and stealth levels are back to normal and stable, and once CoS once again resists spells by 90%, that most of the doomsday views of rogues will be calmed.

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Its not so much that all of us playing Sub are thinking the class itself is dead, but more that everytime a change occurs, Rogues are forced to change their entire playstyle to stay competitive.

My foolish understanding before 3.0 was that with the lvl cap at 80, Rogues would have to seriously consider going either Muti/Prep or ShS (+10 extra points elsewhere).

I thought it would be a fair trade off: Muti/Prep will give you that burst potential, while reducing mobility, whereas ShS at lvl 80 would give you mobility and sustained DPS.

Then came 3.0 and the nerf to ShS and the news that Hemo is meant to be a debuff and not an attack.

Thus as Datchery and I have been saying, with ShS substantially nerfed and with Hemo on the way out, there's little reason to stay Sub in wotlk.

The competitive PvP spec will be Muti/Prep. The change to ShS has made it far less useful and with Hemo on the way out the energy costs of using another ability is just too much to sustain a good lvl of DPS.

Pre 3.0 I imagined that in a WOTLK Arena setting, a team would be clueless about what type of rogue they'd be facing: either Muti/prep or ShS. After a rogue opens and you see their weapons, then you could decide and adjust accordingly to the type of rogue you're fighting. Muti/Prep would be competitive, ShS would be competitive. It would add a new dynamic to Rogue PvP because there would be two very viable specs.

Now I just don't see ShS being all that competitive in PvP. Rogues are again forced to go a cookie cutter build, just like with Ar/Prep, mace stuns, ShS and now Muti/Prep in Wotlk. I guess its too much to ask for two viable specs for competitive PvP.

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Q u o t e:
Absolutely, but (per above) viability comes first. Also, fun is highly subjective and players are typically going to disagree about whether particular mechanics are fun or not. I’d say most Prot warriors are pretty happy with their tree now (though not all), but man it was challenging getting to that point. There were a lot of Prot warriors cursing the class designers across the Internet.

Players have also learned that waving around “fun factor” is a useful ploy to get my attention so I have been trying not to respond to it as much. That isn’t to say fun isn’t critically important. It is. But it’s also like tossing a grenade to win an argument – make this change or I won’t have fun. I’m not accusing you of being manipulative in this manner, but it is something of which we have to be mindful.

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So is it safe to say that you are aware of the H4B complaints and this is why you are not answering?

Honestly, it's not a threat or manipulation... there's just nothing fun about constantly refreshing a 30 second 3-stacked buff... and it just makes you mad when something happens and it falls off.

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Q u o t e:
- Shadowstep's viability was nerfed with 3.0, but for what reason? We were never given a reason or justification for the removal of using this ability while rooted. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that our 41 point talent is vastly inferior to a Warrior's Intercept which is trainable or a Feral Druid's Charge, which is only a 21 point ability.

- Sprint is an old, outdated ability that has no place in modern WoW. Ask Rogues when they use this ability effectively and you'll get some ridiculous answers. If you're not Combat, you need to wait while you're not snared to use it, and if you are Combat, you need to pray that someone else isn't going to apply a snare to you because they effectively negated our 3 minute cooldown, putting us right back at square one when it comes to catching out target. To make matters worse, you change the MAJOR glyph of it to increase the speed but reduce the duration. Nobody needs that long of a sprint, outside of Warsong Gulch games.

3) On Beta and on Live, many Rogues feel that Stealth is very weak compared to what it was before 3.0, as well as enemies targeting us while Vanished. Is there a bug with stealth again?

5) I understand that the development team didn't want tanks to rely on avoidance as they have in the past but the recent change to the Agility : Dodge ratio has left rogues with very little dodge and at 80 we're only seeing about 15%. Seeing as how this is our primary defense against melee, isn't that a bit weak? Add to that fact that Hunters, a ranged class that wears mail armor, will get more dodge with their new melee Aspect, that just doesn't seem right. Can this be changed for rogues or other compensations for physical damage avoidance/reduction?

6) Hemorrhage is not an ability that is not supposed to replace Sinister Strike but it's not useful as it is currently and the Subtlety tree as a whole could use some work. Why does Devastate replace Sunder Armor for Warriors?

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i don't **@%ing understand why rogues complain at all, every single thing you had, every single buff you got, came with the assumption that you didn't have shadowstep, then boom, you got shadowstep and cheat death, that completely pushed you over the top, when you already have the best snare in the game (not to mention the easiest one to apply), vanish, sprint, prep to do all that again, stuns, then on top of all that you get shadowstep, such bull@#*%, that made you unstoppable

and so what if you lost a bit of dodge, you got evasion, ghostly strike, you wanna be invincible without even doing anything? at least druids have to shift, or cast root or cyclone, at least pally has to bubble, at least mages have to ice block, at least warriors have to go d stance and put on a shield and dramatically reduce their dps

i think stealth was stealth nerfed, but it's good, you shouldn't be able to walk through people and still not get seen, it's enough that you can't be seen from 10 yards away, spend some talent points if you want it to be op

Wanna fix many rogue issues without changing talents/abilities much?

Rogue Crouches
6 total crouches (4 possible to be used at any time). Changing Crouches requires you to be stealthed and reduces your energy to 0.

3 basic crouches
Thief Crouch - Your stealth, stealth movement speed and stealth detection are improved. Your pickpocket ability provides more gold and a higher chance for lockboxes. When a target that yields experience or honor dies while you have combo points remaining on it, any money gained and any reputation, experience and honor rewarded is increased by 2% per combo point, to a target maximum of 10%.
(This 10% benefit would effect the whole group/raid, but does not stack past 10%, regardless of rogues/combo points present. This aspect just gives us a little love for not always being able to use all our combo points.)


Skirmish Crouch - Your Hunger for Blood no longer refunds energy, but can remove movement impairing effects in addition to bleed effects. Your Killing Spree, Shadowstep and Shadowdance remove movement impairing effects upon activation.
(This now allows pvp rogues to take any of the three trees to 51. It offsets what could be over nerfing of CloS and ShdS, but isn’t overly unbalancing. Especially since many rogues will prefer the sneakiness of Thief crouch or the fluidity of Martial crouch.)

Martial Crouch - Your combo points count towards all of your possible targets and no longer clear when switching targets. Built up combo points fade if you are out of combat for more than 5 seconds. Further, increase your Fan of Knives range 50% and its damage by 30%.
(This is many rogues desire, but it ultimately may not be as awesome a benefit as many think it would be. However, it will help us with AoE/mob jumping fights a lot.)

3 spec based crouches
Assassination Crouch - Your Kidney Shot and Rupture abilities have a chance to refresh your Expose Armor duration. You must have a minimum of 41 talent points in this tree to use this crouch.
(Now EA is a useful utility. This isn’t an overly strong ability, but assassination doesn’t need it. This would have little effect in pvp.)

Combat Crouch - Close Quarters Combat, Mace Specialization and Sword Specialization now apply to any melee weapon you can use. You must have a minimum of 41 talent points in this tree to use this crouch.
(This should strengthen combat in pve (to mutilate-murderable dps) and pvp (slightly), but freedom of weapon choice is nice. It does means spending talent points for all three specialization.)

Subtlety Crouch - Your backstab receives 40% of your ambush benefits from Initiative, Improved Ambush and Waylay. Your backstab also applies your hemorrhage debuff, if you have the talent. You must have a minimum of 41 talent points in this tree to use this crouch.
(Yes, sub is another dagger tree. However, with these buffs to backstab, sub should be on par with the other two trees in raid. In pvp, backstabs inherent restrictions aren’t that big a deal, so this may be a bit much. Perhaps a way for pve situations to see a 40% but in pvp it drops to 35 or 30?)

^

Uhm no. That's not a fix, that's a complete overhaul, which will result in even more bugs and imbalance to the game.

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Q u o t e:
Wanna fix many rogue issues without changing talents/abilities much?

Rogue Crouches
6 total crouches (4 possible to be used at any time). Changing Crouches requires you to be stealthed and reduces your energy to 0.

3 basic crouches
Thief Crouch - Your stealth, stealth movement speed and stealth detection are improved. Your pickpocket ability provides more gold and a higher chance for lockboxes. When a target that yields experience or honor dies while you have combo points remaining on it, any money gained and any reputation, experience and honor rewarded is increased by 2% per combo point, to a target maximum of 10%.
(This 10% benefit would effect the whole group/raid, but does not stack past 10%, regardless of rogues/combo points present. This aspect just gives us a little love for not always being able to use all our combo points.)


Skirmish Crouch - Your Hunger for Blood no longer refunds energy, but can remove movement impairing effects in addition to bleed effects. Your Killing Spree, Shadowstep and Shadowdance remove movement impairing effects upon activation.
(This now allows pvp rogues to take any of the three trees to 51. It offsets what could be over nerfing of CloS and ShdS, but isn’t overly unbalancing. Especially since many rogues will prefer the sneakiness of Thief crouch or the fluidity of Martial crouch.)

Martial Crouch - Your combo points count towards all of your possible targets and no longer clear when switching targets. Built up combo points fade if you are out of combat for more than 5 seconds. Further, increase your Fan of Knives range 50% and its damage by 30%.
(This is many rogues desire, but it ultimately may not be as awesome a benefit as many think it would be. However, it will help us with AoE/mob jumping fights a lot.)

3 spec based crouches
Assassination Crouch - Your Kidney Shot and Rupture abilities have a chance to refresh your Expose Armor duration. You must have a minimum of 41 talent points in this tree to use this crouch.
(Now EA is a useful utility. This isn’t an overly strong ability, but assassination doesn’t need it. This would have little effect in pvp.)

Combat Crouch - Close Quarters Combat, Mace Specialization and Sword Specialization now apply to any melee weapon you can use. You must have a minimum of 41 talent points in this tree to use this crouch.
(This should strengthen combat in pve (to mutilate-murderable dps) and pvp (slightly), but freedom of weapon choice is nice. It does means spending talent points for all three specialization.)

Subtlety Crouch - Your backstab receives 40% of your ambush benefits from Initiative, Improved Ambush and Waylay. Your backstab also applies your hemorrhage debuff, if you have the talent. You must have a minimum of 41 talent points in this tree to use this crouch.
(Yes, sub is another dagger tree. However, with these buffs to backstab, sub should be on par with the other two trees in raid. In pvp, backstabs inherent restrictions aren’t that big a deal, so this may be a bit much. Perhaps a way for pve situations to see a 40% but in pvp it drops to 35 or 30?)

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What the...

No.

Those are sweeping class changes and sort of lame brained stances. No way.

Honestly, I think HfB should just remove all root/snare/bleed effects. Case closed.

It used to remove all magical effects. Including warlock debuffs. And cost no energy. And buff damage.

Then it got nerfed.

And nerfed.

nerfed.

again.

Then nerfed.

And now its in its current state.

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Q u o t e:
i don't **@%ing understand why rogues complain at all, every single thing you had, every single buff you got, came with the assumption that you didn't have shadowstep, then boom, you got shadowstep and cheat death, that completely pushed you over the top, when you already have the best snare in the game (not to mention the easiest one to apply), vanish, sprint, prep to do all that again, stuns, then on top of all that you get shadowstep, such bull@#*%, that made you unstoppable

and so what if you lost a bit of dodge, you got evasion, ghostly strike, you wanna be invincible without even doing anything? at least druids have to shift, or cast root or cyclone, at least pally has to bubble, at least mages have to ice block, at least warriors have to go d stance and put on a shield and dramatically reduce their dps

i think stealth was stealth nerfed, but it's good, you shouldn't be able to walk through people and still not get seen, it's enough that you can't be seen from 10 yards away, spend some talent points if you want it to be op

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Well spoken in live forums style.

Hemo is being applied as a passive buff because the developers discovered, with input from the community, it was not working as intended.

If you spent half as much time complaining about another class as playing your own, you would find these issues cancel each other out.

/cookies for Alliance on Spirestone