Rogue feedback/explanation

#1 - May 7, 2012, 2 p.m.

So, the title of this thread may be slightly misleading. Although I fully intend to provide my thoughts and feedback….my main desire here is to get an explanation from blue as to WHY these changes are occurring to rogues.

I know this is very early beta and things change a lot, but I find recent rogue changes really….baffling.

I don’t want nor desire to flame blue or start a riot or anything, I just merely want:

1) Some explanation as to why these changes have happened and what prompted them. It is a lot easier to provide better feedback if we get the reasoning behind the changes. Usually even if I don’t like the changes being made I can at least see the logic behind WHY the devs made that change and what issue prompted that change and what they are trying to address….I can't do that this time for some reason.

2) Some vision of what the devs want for each spec in terms of skill sets and purpose.

Again this is NOT a rage thread (although getting a few enraged posters is likely unavoidable) I am simply seeking a reason as to why this awkward changes have happened recently.

NOTE: Although I frequent the LFR on live my main pleasure in WoW is pvp, thus a lot of my feedback is through that lens although I do try to keep PvE in mind.

The major changes (or lack thereof) I am speaking about are:

1) Sang Vein change to exclude hemo: Currently this SUB ONLY buff excluded hemo….which is SUB's REPLACEMENT for SS. I find it very odd that a spec specific buff would exclude the only spec specific bleed it has.

In addition this change makes PvP as sub really frustrating. Rupture's damage is pitiful (yes I know the damage pass is the last thing they do…but rupture's damage was bad all through Cata not just in MoP). Thus you are forcing us to juggle a weak DoT, SnD, and Recup (if taking damage for an extended length of time) all while our foe is moving and CC/Attacking us. That is a lot to ask for considering they are all finishers. Not to mention Rupture is a dot which breaks gouge/blind….pushing sub more into specing Dirty Tricks at the expense of Brew or Para.

In PvE, well I assume the CT change was cause of target swapping cases. But that only works if your targets are all grouped up. In any other case you further happen sub's target swap ability.

2) Hemo DoT buffed: Now don’t get me wrong, I welcome any damage buff….but buffing a DoT (on a skill you recently excluded from SV no less)? This just strikes me as wired since we are NOT a dot class and sub is not a DoT spec…well…yet. I would have thought that if you wanted to up our damage you would have buffed the direct damage portion of one of our attacks or something akin to that. It seems like you are trying to push Sub into being a DoT spec what with the SV change and the Hemo buff. Again not flaming here…just very confused.

3) Venomous Wounds not procing on both Garrote and Rupt when both are up: Currently unless I am just not seeing the buff…..Assassination is without Overkill (this may be a bug). Thus I don’t really get the point in forcing this buff to only proc off 1 bleed. Having it proc off both would give assassination a nice little damage boost for a short while after coming out of stealth to help get "set up" (Getting SnD up, EA's if needed, etc.) and I don’t think it would be OP.

Some other less recent changes I would like to address are:

4) Prep/Step: Ok I am just going to say this is still a hot button issue to most people. I don’t want this thread to be SOLEY on this topic but I just want to give it a mention since I still think it should be changed and was wondering if blue's thoughts on this subject have not changed.

5) Para/Leeching poison mutually exclusive: Much like the Lock Soul Link/Gimmore of Sac, Para/Leeching poison cannot be used at the same time…thus taking both is pointless. If you take leeching then you WONT take para and vice versa. If you find that the next encounter will favor leeching over para….you will simple swap out those talents and pick Brew or Tricks and take leeching. Thus this leads to rogues having 1 less talent choice if they pick one of these two talents.

I would suggest that these either be put on the same tier (modified of course so that it would make sense for them to be, perhaps a poison focused tier?), or one be changed into a passive talent but related to poisons (i.e. leeching changed to "Striking a target afflicted by one of your poisons has a X% chance of restoring Y% of your health" or something). I just don’t think taking one talent should knock off one of the three choices in another tier automatically. Sure some talents may have more synergy than others…but non should be basically mutually exclusive to others in another tier.

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Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#32 - May 10, 2012, 2:01 a.m.

As I stated this thread is NOT meant to rant on about things I find wrong. I am merely asking for an explanation as to WHY some of these changes have happened. Usually when they make this types of changes I can get a sense as to what caused it/the reasoning behind them even if I think they are wrong.

Totally fair and reasonable. I'll handle some of these. Please be understanding that I am one guy and I have a day job. :) It's not realistic for me spend equal amounts of time on every class thread every day. We read all of these posts though, because reading is much faster than responding.

1) Sang Vein change to exclude hemo: Currently this SUB ONLY buff excluded hemo….which is SUB's REPLACEMENT for SS. I find it very odd that a spec specific buff would exclude the only spec specific bleed it has.

Honor Among Thieves generates a lot of combo points, so we think having multiple finishers is appropriate, so we want Rupture to be used in the rotation. Sang Vein being used only on Hemo, while convenient, meant Rupture could be skipped over easily. We understand that this has PvP ramifications and we're prepared to buff if necessary, which in this case I think is likely. Note that it is much harder for us to predict PvP damage compared to PvE damage, so it requires a lot more testing and player feedback. (Also note that most classes do have a significant gap between PvE and PvP damage, and that's fine.) We agree that Rupture would feel better as a button to push if it rewarded you with better damage. That's something we're looking at.

2) Hemo DoT buffed: Now don’t get me wrong, I welcome any damage buff….but buffing a DoT (on a skill you recently excluded from SV no less)?

We buffed all of Hemo, not just the DoT. This is partial compensation for the above change, but as I said above, probably not enough compensation for PvP yet.

Hemo is like Mangle -- it's the button you're supposed to use in PvE when you can't get behind the target. It's a dps loss, but not a huge one. It's a minor DPS increase in PvE to use both Backstab and Hemo at the same time, but we'd prefer that to be a niche strategy.

Venomous Wounds not procing on both Garrote and Rupt when both are up.

This was all part of a suite of changes to discourage the use of Vanish (and Prep) as DPS cooldowns. We generally want utility / survival cooldowns to get used for that. It sort of sucks when you are asked to give up your survivability button in order to max DPS. (Yes Shadow Focus still gives a slight DPS increase for using Vanish, but we can live with that.)

Para/Leeching poison mutually exclusive.

It will probably be unlikely for very optimized players to take both poisons. We think they are appropriate in each of their talent tiers though and you have other choices to take in both cases. This seems like it’s on the level of someone who chooses an AE talent for a single target fight.

Versatility: This talent..well has some issues I think.

We don’t want cps on the rogue. That’s not the design. The rogue builds up attacks against a target. We understand though that sometimes the build up can be overly restrictive, which is why we have cooldowns like Redirect, and we understand some players love rogues but just can’t stand the cp target switching limitation. Versatility is for them.

The level 90 tier for rogues is supposed to feel like it breaks the rules (you know, within reason). Shuriken gives a ranged attack to a melee class. Versatility overcomes the rule that cps are on the target. Anticipation overcomes the rule that there are 5 cps.

HaT not proccing unless in combat: First it was not proccing in stealth, then you change it to not proccing out of combat at all. Again I ask…why? What was the purpose here?

First, we don't like players to have to live with burden of building up something before a fight starts. It may be a DPS increase, but it's not a fun one. More specifically though, we didn't want Anticipation and HaT to build up 10 cps before the fight even begins. Obviously, I hope, that just couldn't fly.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#39 - May 10, 2012, 2:24 a.m.

And what of Find Weakness? And Find Weakness's synergy with Preparation? Those alone, at least for Subtlety, introduces the concept of a mandatory talent.

It's fair to say that Prep is going to be more of a dps increase for Sub than the other two specs. Still, there are also fights (in PvE) where the other two talents are just as useful. We're still considering ways to solve that issue though without nerfing the cool aspects of Prep.

To speak nothing of the Shadow Walk glyph in PvP, which will be another forced requirement, since all Rogues will be working under the competitive expectation of squaring off like that.

We understand the concern, but we're not convinced -- yet -- that it will be a problem. Shadow Walk is up such a brief period of time, and you're giving up a whole glyph slot for that brief theoretical "double stealth" encounter against another rogue.