Rogue 1.12 Preview

[Quark]

It's finally starting to look like an actual review! Splitting quote into parts for analysis:

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We have been continuing to work on the review since the 'First Glimpse' post, the talent calculator unveiling, and we have been building upon those initial changes. After our own discussions and testing, as well as reviewing the player feedback we have received, we are planning to make the below additional changes to the rogue talents for patch 1.12.

Please keep in mind that these changes, as well as the review as a whole, are not final, and are still subject to change. We are moving closer to the launch of the Public Test Realms for 1.12 and we will be continuing to evaluate the changes throughout the testing process.

The 'First Glimpse' post and talent calculator can be viewed from the links below.

[url=http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-rogue&t=1271292&p=1]http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...e&t=1271292&p=1[/url]

[url=http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/rogues2/talents.html]http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...s2/talents.html[/url]

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# Murder has been changed to increase damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin by 1%/2%.

Wow ... Murder will have a use endgame. Will have to play with, but I'm still not sure if I'd touch it.

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# Remorseless Attacks has been reduced to 2 ranks, with the new effectiveness being 20% and 40%.

Never used it anyway, I think Blizzard took our "talent compression" cry and gave it to a random talent.

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# Endurance has been changed to reduce the cooldown of your Sprint and Evasion abilities by 45 sec/1.5 min. It no longer increases the duration of Evasion.

I'd take this over the old endurance, but again doubt I could actually fit it in.

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# Weapon Expertise will now increases your skill with Fist, Dagger, and Sword weapons. It will no longer affect Maces, and this change is being followed up by

Same spot? Well, at least now Fist isn't neglected

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# Mace Specialization will now also add 1-5 weapon skill with Maces, in addition to the stun effect the talent already provides.

This is a Good Thing™. Mace gets the same +skill benefit as other builds for 2 less talent points. A compromise for all the places where Mace Spec doesn't actually help.

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# Adrenaline Rush now has a reduced cooldown of 5 min.

Another Good Thing™ -> Relentless Strikes gave almost twice the energy as Adrenaline Rush in a 6 minute window before, now it won't be quite as skewed.

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# Elusiveness has been reduced to a 2 point talent and now reduces the cooldown of Vanish and Blind by 45 sec/1.5 min. It no longer reduces the cooldown for Evasion.

Less effect, less talent points ... would have to see it in a tree.

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# Opportunity is being moved to a tier 1 talent, swapping places with Camouflage.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm still forced to tri-spec, but now it's 16/8/5 instead of 16/8/10.

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# Ghostly Strike has been reverted back to the previous 125% weapon damage, but retains its new Energy cost of 40.

Not bad, as 20 second cooldown doesn't make the 125% abusable.

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# Setup will now also provide combo points if you fully resist an attackers spell.

Not a bad change, combined with Heightened Senses. Actual Synergy!

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# Improved Rupture, Improved Cheap Shot, and Improved Garrote have been removed.

No one will cry about Garrote, Cheap Shot is incorporated elsewhere (see below), and Rupture simply depends on our new finishers.

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# New talent 'Serrated Blades' is a tier 4 talent in the Subtlety tree, causes your attacks to ignore X of your targets Armor, and increases the damage dealt by your Rupture ability. The amount of Armor reduced increases with your level. At level 60, the ranks will reduce target Armor by 100/200/300 respectively.

This will be significant against low armor targets (where each armor point is worth more), not so significant against high armor targets. Raid situations this may help a decent amount, if you're already using Sunder/Faerie Fire/CoR. I still doubt Subtlety builds will scale well though.

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# New talent 'Dirty Deeds' replaces the Improved Cheap Shot talent, reducing the Energy cost of both the Cheap Shot and Garrote abilities by 10/20.

Not bad.

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# Garrote, Eviscerate, and Rupture now all scale with Attack Power. The previously announced Eviscerate book will still be made available in an undisclosed location. While we had always planned to scale these abilites at a point in the future, we felt that the rank upgrade for Eviscerate and damage increase for Garotte would provide a well needed boost in the current game and carry these abilities until the scaling mechanic was implemented. Our ultimate goal to scale the abilities in a future update was decided to be moved ahead, and the current plan is to implement scaling for these abilities in 1.12, instead of in a later update.

I'm sorry, but I'm calling this a lie. They caved under pressure. Really want to see the new finishers/garrote, now ...

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Again, please keep in mind that any of the above changes are subject to revision, reversal, or removal. We'll be continuing to evaluate these changes, and the review as a whole. Neither the talent calculator, nor these forum posts should be considered final word on the review.

Thanks for reading.

In summary: now I can take a "wait to PTR, see the results, then criticize" stance. There are still some changes I may or may not want, depending on how all this together ends up. Lethality either being cheaper (3 instead of 5 for 30%) or affecting Ambush would be #1. Wound Poison scaling would be #2.

Edit: once again, quote fails me. back to code with you!