#329 - Dec. 18, 2007, 10:06 a.m.
I realize that my previous post in this thread is somewhat vague, so to make things a little more clear, I will repeat what has been posted by my good colleague Eyonix on the US forums:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3272966990&postId=33537786022&sid=1#2
To clarify we don't simply make changes to an ability because it becomes popular. The changes done to hemorrhage (lowering its damage) is being done because we never intended for hemo rogues to do more damage, rather, our goal was to make the subtlety tree a viable alternative to combat and assassination. What resulted however, was not an increased number of subtlety rogues, but an increased number of rogues going just far enough down the subtlety tree to get hemorrhage.
We intend to tweak subtlety some more in upcoming patches, but ultimately won’t be able to flesh it out until Wrath of the Lich King.
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Hemorrhage was intended to give heavy subtlety rogues some added damage, and to give the overall tree some additional appeal. Instead, many rogues just went down to the new hemo and ignored the rest. Our goal now is to make further improvements to the tree as a whole, so it has enough appeal and viability to compete with combat and assassination. Major changes will likely not come before the expansion, but we are looking in to more immediate tweaks as well.
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When a class doesn’t feel it’s gaining anything when they spec deeper in a tree (to a 41 pt talent, for example), that is an issue. We tried to accomplish this for warriors with moving death wish to arms, by adding focused will to discipline, etc. The results can sometimes be mixed. There are definitely many more discipline priests now than a few patches ago, but not as many 41-pt talent arms warriors as there were before.
We want there to be more subtlety rogues, and we’re working to improve the tree. One way was to give the tree more damage, through hemorrhage. Unfortunately, that didn’t really improve the tree because everyone just stopped with the AR/Prep spec. What resulted was an increased power of the rogue class as a whole (not just the subtlety spec), which was unintended.