Rogue 1.12 Preview

[Lissa]

This is making me think go Swords more now with Aileena...after getting a Krol blade the other night...quite a toss up between going dagger with a Shadow Blade waiting for 48 or going Sword with a Krol waiting at 51...

[Warlock]

Wow thanks for the insult that if you don't do the brand new stuff right now you are lazy or crappy at that game. I for one really appreciate you tacking on this completely unnecessary and insulting comment.
End game content changes as they add new stuff, and you know what? It doesn't actually leave the game. Yes it sometimes gets nerfed, scholomance is no longer what it used to be for example, but it is still there and it was still un nerfed when we first started to deal with it. Same with Molten Core, BWL, and AQ40. Sure they made the bosses in AQ40 that were broken winnable encounters now. So what if we weren't wiping to them first or 3rd or 5th even.

Honestly seeing the problems that can happen for some people when you beat the current end game content and then have nothing to do but farm it I'd rather play at a slower pace.

But again, thank you for saying we are lazy or bad players, it really makes me feel good.

I'm pretty sure Mongo didn't intend it as an insult.

That said, endgame for me is still Dire Maul. I did it in March. Last year.

It doesn't matter how good Naxx is if I'm allergic to it and to it's prerequisite instances.

[Kevin]

I'm pretty sure Mongo didn't intend it as an insult.

That said, endgame for me is still Dire Maul. I did it in March. Last year.

It doesn't matter how good Naxx is if I'm allergic to it and to it's prerequisite instances.

Oh he probably didn't. He probably really just wants to hear us talking about the more interesting encounters in the game too. I've been a bit over sensative lately and I'm sure I took it the wrong way.

Just feel like I've been slipping backwards a bit on my progess health wise, makes me touchy.

[Warlock]

Oh he probably didn't. He probably really just wants to hear us talking about the more interesting encounters in the game too. I've been a bit over sensative lately and I'm sure I took it the wrong way.

Just feel like I've been slipping backwards a bit on my progess health wise, makes me touchy.

Only a small percentage of even raid players are up to Naxx, so it's not surprising that this board isn't full of articles about it. More people will probably run it once the expansion comes out - 70's in socketed blue 70's gear are probably going to have enough power to handle the instance, so many players will get to it as their first raid instance rather than after MC-ZG-BWL-AQ^2 burnout.

My own post was too negative as well. For instance I'm impressed with the new AV - a few near MC quality rewards for a sensibly long grind that's actually fun to do. My warrior will hit exalted tomorrow after about 40 hours in the instance and buy four items. That's about ten hours per epic; other classes don't do as well, but even twenty hours per upgrade is near enough to the rewards per hour from raiding that it doesn't feel like punishment for not raiding. Hopefully the PVP review will bring the other battlegrounds and the honour system up to the same standard.

Best wishes for your health too.

[Mirajj]

Only a small percentage of even raid players are up to Naxx, so it's not surprising that this board isn't full of articles about it.

Yep, I'm pretty happy running where we are (hopefully now that folks feel their NR is sufficient, we can make legit attempts at Huhuran) though there are days I wish we'd get it together and move faster. But at least we are moving.

[oldmandennis]

For instance I'm impressed with the new AV - a few near MC quality rewards for a sensibly long grind that's actually fun to do. My warrior will hit exalted tomorrow after about 40 hours in the instance and buy four items. That's about ten hours per epic; other classes don't do as well, but even twenty hours per upgrade is near enough to the rewards per hour from raiding that it doesn't feel like punishment for not raiding. Hopefully the PVP review will bring the other battlegrounds and the honour system up to the same standard.

Here is a disconnect. It seems to me that nonraiders think of toons that are just getting geared by guilds that have raid instances on farm mode, and think that 10 hr/epic is really a somewhat decent pace. It roughly fits the gear curve that they experienced from 1-60. They don't realize that if they had gear handed to them at this rate, rather quickly they would run out of slots, and completly out of content. They don't realize how steeply the curve has to jump up to try and keep people from running out of stuff to do. I'm on about 17 raided for epics, after more then a year of pretty solid raiding. 10 hr/epic is a joke, as is the new AV.

Keep in mind, if they nerfed AB and WSG the way they nerfed AV, you would be out of PvP rewards in a month, and nerfing AV has already dropped any semblance of requiring skill from the honor system. Either the entire server will be HWL soon, or the system just rewards people who fish near FW. 200k honor for 200 HK last week.

And that's not even getting into if general races are "actually fun to do".

[Skandranon]

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.

[Kevin]

Horde rogues don't even use poisons since they get Windfury, which blows the doors off any poison ever made.

Small nit, windfury is only main hand so poisons and stones still see use on the offhand. But yeah. :)

[oldmandennis]

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.

I don't play rogues enough (well, at all) to comment on the trees as released, but it seems like they TRY not to have "one raid tree, one PvP tree, one <blank> tree".

That said they often fail. And thematic unity, while giving something for all play styles (raid, pvp, small group) in all trees is what would be ideal. Priests have it, shaman don't. Druids almost do, just some of the underlying mechanics are a bit off, not the talents. Hunter's are probably a scaling pet damage talent away from doing it. Dunno about the rest.

[Skandranon]

That said they often fail. And thematic unity, while giving something for all play styles (raid, pvp, small group) in all trees is what would be ideal. Priests have it, shaman don't. Druids almost do, just some of the underlying mechanics are a bit off, not the talents. Hunter's are probably a scaling pet damage talent away from doing it. Dunno about the rest.

Well, I didn't mean unity in the sense of one raid, one solo, and one PvP tree. I meant unity in the sense of having a "flavour" or theme. For example, the warrior trees are well-focused: they have a tanking/stunning tree, a dual-wielding tree, and a two-hander tree. Things line up within the trees: fury has Cruelty for crits and Flurry to benefit from more of them, Dual Wield Spec to improve dual wielding and Bloodthirst, an attack that's utterly independent of your weapon, to reinforce it. Mage trees are great: a utility tree, a high damage/high mana fire tree, and a lower damage/mana-efficient/snare-and-root tree. In nearly all these cases, talents useful for different aspects of the game are in each tree, but each tree still feels coherent.

I think you're mostly right in saying that druids, priests, and hunters are either there or very close. I would add warrior, mage, paladin, and even the poorly designed warlock trees as ones with definitive flavours to each path. I can't speak for shaman, but it does at least seem that there's a healer tree, a caster tree, and a melee tree, even if they're not entirely effective at what they do.

In comparison, I can't tell what classifies anything as Assassination, Combat, or Subtlety in the rogue trees. I don't get a theme from any tree, except for maybe Subtlety and opening moves (which is like devoting a third of the talents to conjuring water - opening moves are just not that big a part of playing a rogue). There are disconnects all over the place: Lightning Reflexes and Setup in different trees, Improved Backstab and Seal Fate in different trees, Deadliness stranded out of the way of any other talent that really synergizes with it, and so on and so forth. Part of the issue with the required dagger tri-spec in the current Rogue is that since most talents don't synergize with other talents in the same tree, dagger rogues have to go all over the place to find talents that work together. I know I'd be rather annoyed if I got Improved Frost Nova and Frostbite in one mage tree and had to dive thirty points into another tree to grab Shatter. More than anything, I think Blizzard just needs to give the Rogue trees some focus.

[Derek]

Arcane shot does benefit from +spell damage, but at 33% of your total +spell damage, you don't see much gain unless you have a lot (and what hunter gets +spell damage? :wacko:)

That's why I said "effectively":). Same with rogue poisons, as I understand it--they'll benefit from anything that increases nature damage, but no rogue will have much of that, so it's usually irrelevant (exceptions maybe being nature-vulnerable wyrmguards in BWL and rogues who hang out with Stormstrike shamans).

Curse of Doom does actually get affected by +spell damage. I have seen CoD actually hit for upwards of 5k damage when a Imp Shadow Bolt is on the target and the Warlock has a lot of +damage gear. So it does scale, it's just harder to see cause it's 3.2k damage outright after a minute (if you only have +200 damage or less, you'll miss the bonus on it).

Good to know. I could've sworn I'd heard that it didn't benefit from +damage; effects like Improved Shadow Bolt, Curse of Shadows, and Shadow Weaving are a bit different, though, and I don't think it's really fair to say they count as scaling in the same sense--it'd be like saying Eviscerate scales with Sunder Armor.

Aimed shot is the best choice for a Hunter for outright damage. It's cooldown is about half that of Multi-shot and while it takes 3 seconds to fire, crits are much higher that Multi-shot and more frequent. Aimed shot is a mana hog though which is its downside. Overall though, a crit Aimed shot is going to range between 2k and 3k depending on weapon used while a crit Multi-shot is going to range between 800 and 1.5k depending on weapon used. Also, the mana costs between the two skills is around 400 to 500 mana per Aimed shot and 270 to 280 mana for multi. So you really don't gain a whole lot sticking with Multi vs. Aimed. You don't go dry as soon, but your DPM is lower with Multi than with Aimed.

Well, I did specify Arcane vs. Multi for a non-Marksmanship hunter, who won't have Aimed Shot. I agree entirely that Aimed is the best scaling damage special attack a hunter has against a single target. (Come to think of it, though, Serpent and Viper stings don't really scale either, nor does Volley. Add them to the list.) In shorter fights, of course, the hunter can use both Aimed and Multi (and Scattershot) since they have separate cooldowns, unlike Aimed and Arcane.

[Lissa]

Well, I didn't mean unity in the sense of one raid, one solo, and one PvP tree. I meant unity in the sense of having a "flavour" or theme. For example, the warrior trees are well-focused: they have a tanking/stunning tree, a dual-wielding tree, and a two-hander tree. Things line up within the trees: fury has Cruelty for crits and Flurry to benefit from more of them, Dual Wield Spec to improve dual wielding and Bloodthirst, an attack that's utterly independent of your weapon, to reinforce it. Mage trees are great: a utility tree, a high damage/high mana fire tree, and a lower damage/mana-efficient/snare-and-root tree. In nearly all these cases, talents useful for different aspects of the game are in each tree, but each tree still feels coherent.

I think you're mostly right in saying that druids, priests, and hunters are either there or very close. I would add warrior, mage, paladin, and even the poorly designed warlock trees as ones with definitive flavours to each path. I can't speak for shaman, but it does at least seem that there's a healer tree, a caster tree, and a melee tree, even if they're not entirely effective at what they do.

I think Blizzard will need to go back and revisit some of the classes though. For Warriors, Arms and Fury are very well layed out, but Protection still has some glaring holes that need to be remedied.

Warlock needs to have Blizzard revist the Affliction tree (either redoing some talents or making some talents automatic, like Improved Corruption needs to be done to Corruption like was done with AE for mages before and after 1.11) and they need to add in a talent somewhere to decrease threat for Warlocks since that is now the biggest obstacle to Warlock DPS in raids. (You have to spend 30 points in a raid unfriendly tree in order to get 20% threat reduction which in turn lowers your effective potential DPS, really this should be in Affliction as Affliction is the subtle tree of the three.)

Blizzard really does need to go back and relook at Protection for the Paladins. Holy is done for all practical purposes and doesn't really need tweaking, Retribution could use a little tweaking, but it pretty well layed out, but Protection is a horrible, horrible mess without Blizzard having any concrete idea on what the Protection tree should be about.

Mage seems to be love/hate. You either have Mages absolutely loving the changes made to the Mage talents or loathing them greatly. There doesn't seem to be a real middle ground between Mage players on the talents.

When it comes to Hunters, Beastmaster hunters are kinda left out in the cold for raiding. For the most part, most Hunter raid builds are either Marksman/Survival or Survival Marksman with a smattering of Marksman/pull a few tier 1 and tier 2 talents from both Beastmaster and Survival. Beastmaster needs some work for the Raid aspect, but overall Marksman and Survival are well suited for raiding and PvP to some extent.

Druid would require minor tweaks to a couple talents, but they're done for all practical purposes. I think Priests are in the same boat, couple talents could use tweaks, but they're done.

Shaman I'm not going to comment on since I haven't played a Shaman beyond level 24 and that was during beta before Shaman talents were out.

[Quark]

I think Blizzard will need to go back and revisit some of the classes though. For Warriors, Arms and Fury are very well layed out, but Protection still has some glaring holes that need to be remedied.

No more "class reviews", please. Just tweak a class here and there. Prot could use something, yes.

...and they need to add in a talent somewhere to decrease threat for Warlocks since that is now the biggest obstacle to Warlock DPS in raids...

Won't disagree, but it appears Blizzard is realizing they stressed aggro too hard in BWL. Most of what I've seen/heard post-BWL involves aggro being wiped/reduced on everyone, thus being a Ragnaros-like state for all instead of just melee.

Blizzard really does need to go back and relook at Protection for the Paladins.

Agreed. It's a tree that's supposed to mainly benefit tanking, yet they don't want Paladins to effectively tank (endgame). That's a conundrum.

Mage seems to be love/hate. You either have Mages absolutely loving the changes made to the Mage talents or loathing them greatly. There doesn't seem to be a real middle ground between Mage players on the talents.

Once past the initial, semi-complete, review ... I think it was great. Only problems are small things in Arcane and the aggro talents should be multiplicative, not additive

When it comes to Hunters, Beastmaster hunters are kinda left out in the cold for raiding.

I'm okay with some trees not being up to spec for raiding, as long as they have their uses somewhere.

Druid would require minor tweaks to a couple talents, but they're done for all practical purposes. I think Priests are in the same boat, couple talents could use tweaks, but they're done.

Anyone could use a tweak here or there.

[Lissa]

No more "class reviews", please. Just tweak a class here and there. Prot could use something, yes.

Not a full on review, but definite look at trees for bad talents or talents that need tweaking.

Won't disagree, but it appears Blizzard is realizing they stressed aggro too hard in BWL. Most of what I've seen/heard post-BWL involves aggro being wiped/reduced on everyone, thus being a Ragnaros-like state for all instead of just melee.

It would help though in non-raid situations as well (like running 5 man instances). All of the DPS classes have some form of aggro reducer (Hunters have FD, Rogues Feint and Vanish, Mages the various talents across most the trees) that are either class skills or easy to get talents. Master Demonologist requires you to have an Imp out to get a threat reduction (any other demon means no threat reduction) and it requires you to go 30 points into Demonology which has some utilities, but is mostly soloing/PvP (not really group or Raid friendly).

Even if they are making Aggro less of a problem in raids after BWL, it still an issue in 5 man situations.

Agreed. It's a tree that's supposed to mainly benefit tanking, yet they don't want Paladins to effectively tank (endgame). That's a conundrum.

I think Blizzard just has to get over it and just allow for the possibility for Paladins to tank. They're already limited by the amount of mana they have for purposes of holding aggro (mana only goes down and is difficult to renew during the fight, while rage is renewable and continues to increase during the fight)

Once past the initial, semi-complete, review ... I think it was great. Only problems are small things in Arcane and the aggro talents should be multiplicative, not additive

That's why I said it was a love/hate thing involving the review. I've heard an equal number of Mages love it as I've heard hate it. I haven't heard a Mage yet take a middle ground view on the review.

I'm okay with some trees not being up to spec for raiding, as long as they have their uses somewhere.

True, but it would be additional DPS for the raid and it would be from a source that would effectively be aggro free (with growl turned off, there's no way a pet is going to pull aggro over an active tank).

Anyone could use a tweak here or there.

Yep, but some need more than a tweak, they need to have one tree relooked at.

[Artega]

Many of Protection's problems have been fixed already, though there are a few things I do believe it needs:

• A Hitpoint-increasing talent: Vitality was in-game during at PTR patch, but was removed due to some kind of bug. Once they get it fixed and implemented, I think it'll be an adequate addition.
  <>
  
• Magical Defense: Personally I'd like to see a two-point talent that allows a Warrior to use 50%/100% of his Block value towards blocking direct-damage spells (Mind Blast, Shadowbolt, Frostbolt, etc) and the direct-damage portion of DD-DoT spells (Immolate, Flame Shock, Fireball, etc.) Personally, I think it's a better solution than a flat +Resistance talent, which could rapidly become unbalanced in terms of PvP (try fighting Fire mages while wearing Dark Iron, or Priests and Warlocks while wearing Darkrune and you'll see what I mean.)
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• There are some useless talents: Improved Disarm's benefits do not even come close to making up for three talent points, especially since most bosses and any Warrior, Rogue, Paladin, and even Shaman with a brain will be using a Weapon Chain or something that grants immunity to Disarm. Iron Will in its current form isn't really worth five talent points; unless they add some more attractive features to it (such as Fear and Polymorph resistance in addition to the existing Stun resistance), I can't see myself taking it over Toughness, even if it would give me a slight edge over Rogues and Paladins (who are typically non-threats to begin with.)<>
  [st]
  The recent Shield Slam changes (which allow the damage to scale with gear level, and the reduced Rage cost makes it more feasible for use in PvP, where your Rage generation won't be as great as in PvE) and changes to Improved Bloodrage (which now increases the instant Rage generated by 2/5) are steps in the right direction.

[Professor Frink]

Keep in mind, if they nerfed AB and WSG the way they nerfed AV, you would be out of PvP rewards in a month, and nerfing AV has already dropped any semblance of requiring skill from the honor system. Either the entire server will be HWL soon, or the system just rewards people who fish near FW. 200k honor for 200 HK last week.

At the high end, where playing a whole lot is pretty much manditory, this doesn't really matter. Regardless of how many honor-points are getting tossed about, only the top 0.2% every week get progress toward HWL/GM and only the top 3.7% get progress towards Commander/Lt. General. Effective kill grinding is still gonna put you way ahead of someone who plays a handful more AV rounds a week.

-- frink

[oldmandennis]

When it comes to Hunters, Beastmaster hunters are kinda left out in the cold for raiding.

I'm okay with some trees not being up to spec for raiding, as long as they have their uses somewhere.

I'm not. Every tree should have enough raid utility and bring something different to the table, so that specing into it doesn't feel like you are holding up progress. A scaling BM talent probably does most of it - requires 20 points, increases pets AP by 10-20-30-40-50 of your own or some such.

Not true Frink - the best AV teams kill very few players, and get out of there in 15 min or so. Now keeping a team togeather is 1/2 the stratagy I think.

[Kevin]

I'm okay with some trees not being up to spec for raiding, as long as they have their uses somewhere.

I'm not. Every tree should have enough raid utility and bring something different to the table, so that specing into it doesn't feel like you are holding up progress. A scaling BM talent probably does most of it - requires 20 points, increases pets AP by 10-20-30-40-50 of your own or some such.

Not true Frink - the best AV teams kill very few players, and get out of there in 15 min or so. Now keeping a team togeather is 1/2 the stratagy I think.

On the scaling hunter talent I've thought a bit about it. You need to scale damage and survivalbility to be viable. Even then the pet has to be good enough to merit healing by the healers or by the hunter but not get so strong that when you solo that beast master becomes even better than it already is. One of the ideas I've thought it to make it an active skill, not a passive boost something more like the old spirit bond which I still think was more useful than the new version. Or something that simply penalizes the hunter some if you make it passive.

If you do say a 5 point talent that grants the pet 5% of the hunters armor/HP/resists/AP/crit (maybe not all of those but if the pet isn't getting more HP/armor/resist then it won't be viable at all in some encounters) that shoots the hunters DPS up, maybe back to even with the other specs maybe too far ahead you can tweak that. However I think that just took the strongest solo build and made it even more crazy. Of course you can attach a penalty to it. By saying each point is 5% more for the pet but 2% less for the hunter (maybe just AP, probably don't want it dropping the def stats but maybe you do).

You could also simply make it an active skill as mentioned or put a couple of new active skills in there. For 60 seconds the pet gains X% of the hunters AP and another one that for X time the pet gains X% of the hunters defense. That starts to limit power via mana pool/regen and makes the play more interactive as well.

Dunno but I would like to see a scaling pet damage talent that maybe scales survivability some or maybe two talents that do that or just change the current armor talent to be a bonus off the hunters armor value leaving it where it is in the tree. Heck the more I think about it you could likely make most of the current pet talents simply tie into the hunters stats. Though you might have to move some of them to different tiers. This would likely weaken a beastmaster while leveling, which is fine since they are very powerful, but would up the viablity of pets end game and potentially make a 20 point beastmaster build more viable as well. Though this would mean that the survival tree would likely need more than just the 4 damage scaling talents, but maybe not.

You could do something like that for the warlock as well to help the pets end game.

[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!

[Lissa]

Yeah, I did a quick run up on the calculator and got the following:

Imp Backstab, Lethality, Opportunity, Weapon Expertise, Dual Wield, Dagger Spec and still had 3 points left to play with. (Website is acting flaky as usual for Blizzard so can't go to calculator directly).