Rogue 1.12 Preview

[Quark]

Talent Calculator is up. Excluding stuff that hasn't changed at all from the first preview, my thoughts:

Assassination:
Imp Expose Armor now adds 6/12% to armor reduction. Since it still doesn't stack with Sunder - "meh"
Imp KS is 3/6/9% extra damage - "meh"

Combat:
Weapon Expertise is 3/5 Weapon Skill. Cheaper than I expected (1 for 2.5 instead of 1 for 2), but less total than I had hoped for (6 instead of 10). Looks like I'll still be wearing Aged Core Leather Gloves forever, only now I get to sacrifice Lethality points to get this skill, yay! Edit: Also, no Fist weapons here. Looks like Blizzard decided making Fists useful (read: 1 or 2 real fist weapons post-BWL) wasn't worth it after all.

Subtlety:
Sleight of Hand (previously unlisted): Better Feint (Alliance shouldn't feint) and reduces incoming criticals. I can only see this fitting into a sword/mace Subtlety build (read: Hemo!)

Deadliness is Tier6, just what I expected. I wonder if Hemo builds will have a remote chance of keeping up in raids now. Being only 10% bonus to AP maxed, I'm guessing not. I'd say try out a 21 Combat / 30 Sub build just to see the end result, but quite frankly a Rogue without Relentless Strikes is dead weight when it comes to DPS.

Overall? Seal Fate's only boost came from a new eviscerate (which still doesn't scale) while Combat Daggers gets to sacrifice Lethality to get to Weapon Expertise. Combat Swords can choose from a variety of talents (Riposte, Aggression, Improved Eviscerate, and Lethality again which isn't nearly as good for Swords) to get Weapon Expertise at a much cheaper opportunity cost.

Congratulations, Blizzard. You made the easiest playstyle also the best. Those who sacrifice the most for DPS will now be inferior in that respect too. It's so stupid to think all they needed to do was make Lethality 3 for 30% instead of 5 for 30% and this whole problem would have been avoided (even if it still doesn't solve the dagger tri-spec dilemma, it would at least relieve it).

[Quark]

Okay, this is just wrong. Their change to Murder, so that it affects finishers too? Included a nerf from 3/5% to 2/4%. Of course, it's still as useless for any 60 rogue with even half-way decent gear.

[oldmandennis]

Could the scaling thing be overwrought?

Is the new eviscerate potent enough to have a place in the rotation of a maximally geared rogue, now that we can theorycraft the endgear preexpansion?

Just asking.

[Quark]

Could the scaling thing be overwrought?

Is the new eviscerate potent enough to have a place in the rotation of a maximally geared rogue, now that we can theorycraft the endgear preexpansion?

Just asking.

We haven't recieved numbers on it yet. Of course, the last rogue book upgrade was a whole 15 damage on Backstab (no, it doesn't get the % bonus). The first problem is it takes undergeared/farmer rogues and makes them stronger (they didn't need it!). The second problem is simple combo point management, take out Slice and Dice from Combat Daggers for my gear, and you lose a potential 81 DPS. Do you really think Eviscerate can match that? Combat Swords and Rupture can now use Eviscerate over Rupture without thought, but just taking a guess I'm thinking that'll be a minimal increase in DPS at best. Eviscerate/Rupture are only fillers for the SnD cycle. And those fillers will only get worse as time goes on. The design philosophy behind Eviscerate and Rupture are the reason many rogues come to the conclusion that extra combo points are essentially wasted. Once you can keep up Slice and Dice 100% of the time, there is no reason to make your combo point generation better. That's a flaw.

Excluding catform (mainly just a copy of Rogue), the only other damage-centric skill I can think of that cannot be increased through gear is Execute (does +damage help Hammer of Wrath?). But it's a % life based restriction that is spammable. More rage generation = better Execute potential. Nothing that scales ever makes Eviscerate/Rupture better.

[Kevin]

My rogue knowledge is still very limited but I'm going to throw out a few comments anyway and ask a few more questions.

Talent Calculator is up. Excluding stuff that hasn't changed at all from the first preview, my thoughts:

Assassination:
Imp Expose Armor now adds 6/12% to armor reduction. Since it still doesn't stack with Sunder - "meh"
Imp KS is 3/6/9% extra damage - "meh"

Imp KS is damage from all sources though, assuming more things can be hit by KS in raids that means 9% damage for the raid. Not much for the rogue, but maybe a little better than a meh. I agree with the opportunity cost issues it looks to still have though. But might it still be something that having one in raid would be good for? I hear that stuff in AQ and Naxx can be stunned. If you go into ZG or AQ20 with end game blues that extra damage seems it could come in pretty handy on the trash (once you get over geared for those instances it doesn't matter of course but if you've never been in ZG or AQ20 with a raid that is in all end game blues without any purples the trash is a lot harder than it is even if you only have one person in the raid with MC gear).

Also gotta wonder what the base expose armor will do since they change the mechanic. It could still be a help if it will end up being more than sunder, if and only if, you can still apply sunders with talent on and the stronger of the two is what works. One of the issues with expose armor had been that if it was applied first the warrior couldn't sunder (a more poweful effect, this was a problem with the old improved sunder talent as well). I'm wondering if the change to the expose armor mechanic will let both debuffs sit up there even if they aren't helping each other reduce the armor. But even with that it could still be mostly meh. But if the mechanic worked that way and it ends up say knocking off 50% armor the mob only needs to have more than 4500 armor for getting this talent to help the raid damage more than sunder will.

Subtlety:
Sleight of Hand (previously unlisted): Better Feint (Alliance shouldn't feint) and reduces incoming criticals. I can only see this fitting into a sword/mace Subtlety build (read: Hemo!)

Deadliness is Tier6, just what I expected. I wonder if Hemo builds will have a remote chance of keeping up in raids now. Being only 10% bonus to AP maxed, I'm guessing not. I'd say try out a 21 Combat / 30 Sub build just to see the end result, but quite frankly a Rogue without Relentless Strikes is dead weight when it comes to DPS.

Hmm is a rupture that does 1215.5 (30% improvement) damage over 22 seconds worth it? If you do a deep Subtlety + Assassinatin would you be alright? But could working rupture into the cycle along with hemo work? It almost seems like if you go that deep in assassination you want to go down subtlety not combat and go with swords or maces for a weapon not daggers. Something like a 19/2/30 where you get imp slice and dice, lethality, relentless strikes. The 2 points in improved sinister strike still seem to be pretty much required for any rogue build. Is giving up the backstab damage and dagger spec and the +hit and off hand damage going to hurt that much? Agian I don't know the class well enough so I might be missing the obvious.


I can't even comment remotely intelligently on the rest. I don't know the class in end game well enough.

[vor_lord]

Something like a 19/2/30 where you get imp slice and dice, lethality, relentless strikes. The 2 points in improved sinister strike still seem to be pretty much required for any rogue build.

Unless I'm messed up, historically the only rogue builds that didn't spend those points in ISS were hemo builds, which 19/2/30 would get. Hemo becomes the replacement for SS. It costs a bit less energy, and is not subject to weapon speed normalization so it is possible to have it even do more damage than SS with the right weapon.

[Kevin]

Unless I'm messed up, historically the only rogue builds that didn't spend those points in ISS were hemo builds, which 19/2/30 would get. Hemo becomes the replacement for SS. It costs a bit less energy, and is not subject to weapon speed normalization so it is possible to have it even do more damage than SS with the right weapon.

See I don't know rogues well enough.

My thought was that you wouldn't want to spam hemo all the time though, that it would mix in with SS. Maybe that makes no sense from an energy management side though.

[Quark]

My thought was that you wouldn't want to spam hemo all the time though, that it would mix in with SS. Maybe that makes no sense from an energy management side though.

Nope. Simply get a slow enough weapon, stack your AP, and Hemo forever as a complete replacement of SS. Properly setup, Hemo > SS, both in damage and energy management That was never what made Hemo weak (well, since weapon normalization anyway). What made it weak is that you missed out on an incredible amount of scaling % damage talents to get Hemo. Now you get one scaling % damage talent.

[Quark]

Imp KS is damage from all sources though, assuming more things can be hit by KS in raids that means 9% damage for the raid. Not much for the rogue, but maybe a little better than a meh. I agree with the opportunity cost issues it looks to still have though. But might it still be something that having one in raid would be good for? I hear that stuff in AQ and Naxx can be stunned. If you go into ZG or AQ20 with end game blues that extra damage seems it could come in pretty handy on the trash (once you get over geared for those instances it doesn't matter of course but if you've never been in ZG or AQ20 with a raid that is in all end game blues without any purples the trash is a lot harder than it is even if you only have one person in the raid with MC gear).

More damage needed on trash has never really been an issue, though, has it? It's almost always more healing, less incoming damage, or simply playing the mob fight better. DPS can help you end a fight soon, but DPS concerns only really arise on bosses. Sure, it's nice when they're stunnable, but to date the only boss fight I can see this talent being significant in is Sartura. It's a PvP talent.

Also gotta wonder what the base expose armor will do since they change the mechanic. It could still be a help if it will end up being more than sunder, if and only if, you can still apply sunders with talent on and the stronger of the two is what works. One of the issues with expose armor had been that if it was applied first the warrior couldn't sunder (a more poweful effect, this was a problem with the old improved sunder talent as well). I'm wondering if the change to the expose armor mechanic will let both debuffs sit up there even if they aren't helping each other reduce the armor.

I highly doubt it, given the way Drysc backed down from his "raid friendly" Expose Armor.

But even with that it could still be mostly meh. But if the mechanic worked that way and it ends up say knocking off 50% armor the mob only needs to have more than 4500 armor for getting this talent to help the raid damage more than sunder will.

One good point I've seen about the Expose Armor change -> it severly hurts versus shadow priests. Shadow Priests get amazing damage reduction, but since a chunk of it is not from armor, the old Expose Armor is very good for weakening the damage reduction. The new expose armor will more effective versus warriors/paladins, mostly, and less effective versus everyone else.

Hmm is a rupture that does 1215.5 (30% improvement) damage over 22 seconds worth it? If you do a deep Subtlety + Assassinatin would you be alright?

Improved Rupture isn't bad, but again you're not getting damage talents to get to it. Getting Improved Rupture means you already sacrificed damage elsewhere.

But could working rupture into the cycle along with hemo work? It almost seems like if you go that deep in assassination you want to go down subtlety not combat and go with swords or maces for a weapon not daggers. Something like a 19/2/30 where you get imp slice and dice, lethality, relentless strikes. The 2 points in improved sinister strike still seem to be pretty much required for any rogue build.

Quick Hemo build I came up with. It's very PvP-centric, though. As noted elsewhere, no SS. But grab Improved Gouge for bandage+restealth. Maybe not awesome, but not awful. Premed becomes "worth it" because Deadliness is good enough to actually get there, now.

Is giving up the backstab damage and dagger spec and the +hit and off hand damage going to hurt that much? Agian I don't know the class well enough so I might be missing the obvious.

Assuming going Ass/Sub instead of Combat? Cheating off the sheet ... at ~575 dps, losing ImpBackstab costs me about 40 dps (~7.1%), ImpOffhand about 49 dps (~8.7%), ImpDagger (4/5) about 18 dps (~3.1%), Precision 17 dps (~3%). Lose them all, plus Blade Flurry, and I'm looking at 450 dps (lost about 22%). Nothing in Ass/Sub can make up that 22%.

[Derek]

Excluding catform (mainly just a copy of Rogue), the only other damage-centric skill I can think of that cannot be increased through gear is Execute (does +damage help Hammer of Wrath?). But it's a % life based restriction that is spammable. More rage generation = better Execute potential. Nothing that scales ever makes Eviscerate/Rupture better.

Hammer of Wrath benefits from spell damage and melee crit, yes.

Off the top of my head, other damage abilities which don't scale with weapon damage, attack power, or spell power are:

Thorns
Retribution Aura
Blessing of Sanctuary
All hunter and warlock pet abilities.
Rend
Deadly and Instant poisons (effectively)
Garrote, Rupture
Rip, Ferocious Bite
Arcane Shot (effectively)
Mongoose Bite
Curse of Doom

I'm probably missing a few (and some of these are obviously more significant than others), but Eviscerate isn't entirely on its own. Rogues are complicated by the opportunity cost issues they get from having a fixed energy regeneration rate, though, which doesn't apply to the other classes (other than druids, of course) in most cases. I suspect Blizzard is worried about balance issues they'd introduce by making Eviscerate scale with weapon or attack power. They're obviously concerned about the number of "one shot kill" cases that are already in the PvP game, for example.

Arcane shot might be an interesting comparison case. Are highly geared non-Marksmanship hunters better off saving their mana in long fights for multi-shot than working Arcane Shot into their firing order? It's never been entirely clear to me if multi-shot is an extra attack or if it consumes a regular attack, though, so the question may not be relevant, or might apply more to multi than arcane.

[Kevin]

Cool thanks for the info Quark. As mentioned I don't know that class or the talents that well. I don't have a lot to comment on as you did an excellent job addressing my questions.

Since the discussion is interesting to me I'll continue on the the improved kidney shot. Again I'm not trying to agrue that it's uber, I'm just trying to find out if it has any place. As to the extra damage from kidney on trash. For a small window of gearing and learning it does. I'm not sure you ever got to experience ZG or AQ20 in a group that had no items at all from MC or better, it can be hard to imagine how much harder the fights are. I think that in what I figure is appropriate gearing for the instances that ZG and AQ20 are both actually harder than MC or BWL. Though MC before any of the ZG or AQ20 gear was in the game and before some of the new crafts and some of the changes to other end game blues may have been more difficult. MC now that ZG and AQ20 gear is in the game and that groups that are new to MC generally have some if not a lot of this gear is nearly as easy as MC when you have a good chunk of MC gear because of course the best stuff for ZG and AQ20 is as good as or better than some of the stuff from MC. But anyway, yes I do think that for a small window of gearing and learning that a rogue that can get you 9% more damage on trash mob while it is under the influence of kidney shot could have a place. That being said it's a small window and I agree with your assessment of the issue. It's mostly a learn to do it better or change the raid composition. And then as soon as you get the better gear that is in that instance the trash becomes simpler and simpler.

I'd love to hear from some of the people who are in Naxx now and have done all of AQ40 if 9% more damage from the raid on chain KS'd mob would good. I hear about the gargoyles in Naxx and how much of a burn they are. Can they be stunned? If so would putting a KS on them that gives your raid 9% more damage be utility from the class you would look for?

It really does feel like much more of a PvP talent, no real argument there, but I'm just looking for more on the topic.

It looks like the review is help PvP and throw maybe a tiny scrap to the PvE raid crowd. I'm just wondering if this might be one of those teeny tiny scraps and it if is a big enough scrap that it woudl be better than what still needs to be sacrificed to get it since it seems pretty clear that you get this talent you still lose DPS as a rogue, but are there any encounters were upping the raid DPS by 9% for a few seconds will still make it worth it.


Really that's why I was hoping expose armor might have been more than just a PvP change to help vs warriors and paladins and a few odd PvE situations (nice to do expose armor with druid tanks on some of the bosses, some odd solo situations). Hoping that the class did get a few more changes to give a different type of raid utility/benefit than just more DPS so I was grasping.


Good to know, sad that they didn't make more PvE builds more viable. Very much in agreement on the issues of scaling vs non scaling damage and the fact that since both are in the game in a few different forms it gets hard to balance. I have to assume that all non scaling talents will have to be continued to be balanced by adding new ranks of them as gear scaling overwhelms the balance. Not the solution I was hoping for.

[Quark]

I'd love to hear from some of the people who are in Naxx now and have done all of AQ40 if 9% more damage from the raid on chain KS'd mob would good. I hear about the gargoyles in Naxx and how much of a burn they are. Can they be stunned? If so would putting a KS on them that gives your raid 9% more damage be utility from the class you would look for?

The only thing I've heard re: stunnable mobs in Naxx is that Elitist Jerks actually doesn't stun them. It messes with the healer timing too much, they said.

[MongoJerry]

The only thing I've heard re: stunnable mobs in Naxx is that Elitist Jerks actually doesn't stun them. It messes with the healer timing too much, they said.

Huh? What? I don't believe the gargoyles are stunnable. At least, we don't stun them. You have to burn them down in a short amount of time, so you want to throw all your dps at them at once once they hit 30%.

Other mobs are stunnable, however. For example, it's important to stun Anub'Rekhan's adds. Rogues probably play a more important role here if you play Horde rather than if you play Alliance, because I assume that a Hammer of Justice rotation would be even more effective, since the paladins don't have to build up the combo points to get off a good length stun.

[Lissa]

Hammer of Wrath benefits from spell damage and melee crit, yes.

Off the top of my head, other damage abilities which don't scale with weapon damage, attack power, or spell power are:

Thorns
Retribution Aura
Blessing of Sanctuary
All hunter and warlock pet abilities.
Rend
Deadly and Instant poisons (effectively)
Garrote, Rupture
Rip, Ferocious Bite
Arcane Shot (effectively)
Mongoose Bite
Curse of Doom

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:)

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).

I'm probably missing a few (and some of these are obviously more significant than others), but Eviscerate isn't entirely on its own. Rogues are complicated by the opportunity cost issues they get from having a fixed energy regeneration rate, though, which doesn't apply to the other classes (other than druids, of course) in most cases. I suspect Blizzard is worried about balance issues they'd introduce by making Eviscerate scale with weapon or attack power. They're obviously concerned about the number of "one shot kill" cases that are already in the PvP game, for example.

Arcane shot might be an interesting comparison case. Are highly geared non-Marksmanship hunters better off saving their mana in long fights for multi-shot than working Arcane Shot into their firing order? It's never been entirely clear to me if multi-shot is an extra attack or if it consumes a regular attack, though, so the question may not be relevant, or might apply more to multi than arcane.

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.

[Lissa]

More damage needed on trash has never really been an issue, though, has it? It's almost always more healing, less incoming damage, or simply playing the mob fight better. DPS can help you end a fight soon, but DPS concerns only really arise on bosses. Sure, it's nice when they're stunnable, but to date the only boss fight I can see this talent being significant in is Sartura. It's a PvP talent.

Not sure I would quite agree with that Quark given what is being heard out of Naxx. The more damage you have the better as certain bosses and certain trash have to be taken down in a certain amount of time or the raid is screwed (Gargoyles heal to full if you can't drop their last 30% in 6 seconds and the second Spider boss you have to drop in 2:29 seconds after dealing with a couple adds, equivalent to burning down Rag in 1:30). More damage in those cases makes KS very raid friendly IMO.

Edit: another AQ40 boss where this would be helpful, Huhu for that last 30% to burn her as quick as possilbe.

[Quark]

The damage vulnerability will not be applied if the mob is stun immune, i.e. it's worthless on stun immune bosses.

[Quark]

So once he saw the talent preview, Wodin (EJ Rogue) decided compare daggers versus swords, before and after. Here's the results:

We begin, as I am fond of doing, with some history:

The review will mainly be centered on talent improvements, making some talents more appealing and general improvements without removing or disrupting current and viable builds if at all possible.

The review, any review, is intended to bring a class to a certain level of balance, hopefully ending up with a balanced set of classes.

I'm taking you at your word. The purpose of this post is to point out that the rogue review as it currently stands has disrupted the delicate balance of incentives for a raiding player, and that as it currently stands it has failed in creating the level playing field that was its stated goal.

Here are two rogues - we'll be using them as the basis of comparison for this post. They have identical armor, and their weapons are as closely approximated in terms of total DPS and stats as possible.

Dagger Rogue: http://ctprofiles.net/2298985
Sword Rogue: http://ctprofiles.net/2299353

Some breakdowns for those who don't want to dig through the profiles:

The dagger rogue has 30% crit(including dagger specialization 3/5) and 16% hit(thanks pugio), with 1152 attack power. The sword rogue has 27% crit and 15% hit with 1151 attack power.

Dagger Rogue Damage Per Energy pre-patch: 21.0
Sword Rogue Damage Per Energy pre-patch(no evis): 15.4
Sword Rogue DPE w/Evis: 17.5

So, being a combat dagger rogue buys you a small but significant DPE boost - your special attacks scale slightly better. Over the course of 60 seconds, a sword rogue uses Sinister Strike 15 times, Eviscerate once, and Slice and Dice twice. The dagger rogue uses backstab 10 times, and slice and dice twice.

Dagger Rogue Special Damage(60s window): 12600
Sword Rogue Special Damage(60s window): 10478

The DPE efficiency of Eviscerate closes the gap between the two builds: Combat Daggers has a 5.6DPE lead on special attacks, but the evis closes the Actual DPE differential to 3.5.

With regards to melee damage, we model sword specialization as a 4% net increase in total melee damage - this is due to the fact that extra attacks are implemented as "your next melee attack occurs instantly" and thus the damage bonus is not as large.

Dagger rogue melee DPS: 175.9
Sword rogue melee DPS: 175.3

Dagger damage(60s): 10554
Sword damage(60s): 10518

However, these numbers don't take into account one critical factor: glancing blows. Of the melee attacks that take place, 40% will glance, dealing 70% of their damage. So let's factor that in.

Dagger damage with glancing(60s): 9287
Sword damage with glancing(60s): 9255

Dagger total: 21887
Sword total: 19733

So daggers are slightly better with identical gear. It's a small advantage, yes, but that margin was enough that people specced daggers and put up with all the hassle. Now, along comes 1.12. We see the sword rogue spec change: he can drop 2 points in Improved Eviscerate and pick up Weapon Expertise, or drop two points in Lethality and pick up Weapon Expertise.


If you drop 2 points in Lethality, the following changes occur:

Sword Rogue Special DPE: 15.0
Sword Rogue Special Damage(60s window): 10237
Sword Rogue melee with glancing(60s): 9888

Sword Rogue(+WeapExp -Lethality): 20125
Dagger Rogue(1.11): 21887

Here, the gap shrinks by 3%.

If you drop 2 points in Improved Eviscerate instead, the following changes occur:

Sword Rogue Special Damage(60s window): 10370
Sword Rogue Melee with Glancing(60s): 9888

Sword rogue(+WeapExp -ImpEvis): 20258
Dagger rogue(1.11): 20387

Here the gap shrinks another percentage point, meaning all that extra work is buying you 4% more performance than a combat swords build.


What happens if we try to get Weapon Expertise as a combat daggers build? Well, we gain 1% crit and +5 weapon skill, and lose 2 points in Lethality.

1.12 Daggers DPE(+WeapExp -Lethality): 20.1
1.12 Dagger Special Damage(60s): 12060
1.12 Dagger melee(with glance): 9924
1.12 Dagger total: 21984

Comparing "new daggers" to "new swords" we see that the gap separating them in 1.11 has shrunk quite a bit in 1.12. Further, the dagger build is even more limited than it was before, because a greater portion of its damage is reliant on melee attacks. Any situation where you are not attacking a monster 100% of the time, you're actually losing damage.

It only gets worse - if the new rank of Eviscerate provides the same 36% increase in damage that we got going from rank 7 to rank 8, combat swords will generate the following numbers:

Sword Rogue Special Damage(1/3 Imp Evis): 10777
Sword Rogue Special Damage(3/5 Lethality): 10683

That closes the gap between Combat Swords and Combat Daggers quite a bit further, down to 4%. With such a small margin separating swords and daggers, the relative tradeoffs for combat daggers are no longer worth it. Why be restricted by positioning and heavily spiked damage - both a problem on zerg encounters like Noth or Gothik? Why suffer with fewer combo points, less mitigation, and the inability to disarm opponents?

It just won't be worth it anymore. Combat dagger rogues thought optimizing for raiding would be rewarded by Blizzard, but we didn't know how good we had it now.

[MongoJerry]

Good news! Vanish appears to be working as intended as seen here:



I had to share. :lol:

[MongoJerry]

Not sure I would quite agree with that Quark given what is being heard out of Naxx. The more damage you have the better as certain bosses and certain trash have to be taken down in a certain amount of time or the raid is screwed (Gargoyles heal to full if you can't drop their last 30% in 6 seconds and the second Spider boss you have to drop in 2:29 seconds after dealing with a couple adds, equivalent to burning down Rag in 1:30). More damage in those cases makes KS very raid friendly IMO.

Edit: another AQ40 boss where this would be helpful, Huhu for that last 30% to burn her as quick as possilbe.

Yeah, definitely. The days when you could walk in with one tank and 39 healers and beat a boss eventually go out the window from Huhuran on. Most bosses now enrage at a certain point, so if you don't burn the boss down fast enough, the fight is over. For example, the Twin Emps will enrage at 15 minutes, and if three or four dps'ers die and don't get quickly battle rezed, there's a good chance your raid won't make it. In addition, many encounters now have "trash mob" add spawns throughout the encounter. If you don't deal with them quickly, things spiral out of control. The classic case is C'Thun's second phase where little eye stalks, claws, and giant eye stalks spawn. The goal of the phase it trying to get all those killed before the next set spawns. If you don't, you'll lose a couple people, which reduces your dps, which means even more eyes and claws are left up when the next bunch pop, and the encounter quickly spirals out of control. We've had many encounters now both at the end of AQ40 and in Naxx where we went in with lots of healing and found that reducing our healing crew and adding dps helped stabilize encounters greatly.

Lurkers, get your butts in gear and start getting to some of the end content! The new stuff is so much fun!

[Kevin]

Lurkers, get your butts in gear and start getting to some of the end content! The new stuff is so much fun!

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.