07-12-2006, 06:55 AM
Back on topic, this is an absolutely sad review, showing no thought or care or experience regarding rogues. It hugely buffs the PvP rogue (newsflash Blizz: rogues were fine in PvP) and does absolutely nothing for raiding rogues (putting the screws to the already-rare dagger rogues). At this point, I can only offer hope: the first stage mage review was pretty useless and muddled, too, and it shaped up to be a hefty buff.
Short thoughts:
1) Blizzard needs to figure out what it wants each tree to do, because it's still a mess. Talent placement looks, frankly, like it was assigned at random. Good raiding talents are sprinkled across the trees - Ruthless Strikes/Relentlessness at the top of assassination, Weapon Expertise and Deadliness as 25 point talents in their respective trees. PvP talents located at the 31 point slot in two different trees. There's no thematic unity in any of them.
2) Still too many junk talents. Not a fan of Premeditation myself, but I could pick any of a number of others: Setup, Endurance, Improved Garrote. Many of the talents that weren't changed are still not any good. Premed is one I like to pick because even though its use is almost exclusively PvP, few PvP rogues will bother with it, especially because it blocks out an even better PvP talent, Cold Blood.
3) Still too many narrow talents. Fully a third of the talents in the Subtlety tree deal solely with opening moves. Blizzard needs to remember that you can only use one opening move in a fight: not only that, but opening moves as a function of damage only matter in PvP. After most raid encounters, what move you opened with is going to make less than a tenth of one percent difference in your overall damage output. The persistence of poison talents in Assassination is also perplexing, since Elemental Sharpening stones are for the most part superior damage enhancers for Alliance. Horde rogues don't even use poisons since they get Windfury, which blows the doors off any poison ever made.
They need to rip out about half the talents and do a major reshuffle of what's left. They won't do that, but hopefully they'll be pressured into doing more than they have so far.
Short thoughts:
1) Blizzard needs to figure out what it wants each tree to do, because it's still a mess. Talent placement looks, frankly, like it was assigned at random. Good raiding talents are sprinkled across the trees - Ruthless Strikes/Relentlessness at the top of assassination, Weapon Expertise and Deadliness as 25 point talents in their respective trees. PvP talents located at the 31 point slot in two different trees. There's no thematic unity in any of them.
2) Still too many junk talents. Not a fan of Premeditation myself, but I could pick any of a number of others: Setup, Endurance, Improved Garrote. Many of the talents that weren't changed are still not any good. Premed is one I like to pick because even though its use is almost exclusively PvP, few PvP rogues will bother with it, especially because it blocks out an even better PvP talent, Cold Blood.
3) Still too many narrow talents. Fully a third of the talents in the Subtlety tree deal solely with opening moves. Blizzard needs to remember that you can only use one opening move in a fight: not only that, but opening moves as a function of damage only matter in PvP. After most raid encounters, what move you opened with is going to make less than a tenth of one percent difference in your overall damage output. The persistence of poison talents in Assassination is also perplexing, since Elemental Sharpening stones are for the most part superior damage enhancers for Alliance. Horde rogues don't even use poisons since they get Windfury, which blows the doors off any poison ever made.
They need to rip out about half the talents and do a major reshuffle of what's left. They won't do that, but hopefully they'll be pressured into doing more than they have so far.