#1 - Nov. 11, 2006, 4:56 a.m.
Q u o t e:
So, Kalgan, while you're here, relentlessly nerfing our hard earned weapons we haven't earned yet, why don't you talk to us about some of the upcoming changes with the rogue classes?
What's going on with +weaponskill and glancing blows? What about these crazy new armor values?
How about we talk about talents? Was Shadowstep nerfed for balance reasons, or for client performance reasons? Can we expect any new things in combat?
I'm really excited about our new itemization scheme, +AP and +agi on the same items, but what about updating our tier 2 and/or tier 3 retroactively, like you're doing for hunters. I know our stats didn't fundamentally change, but legacy hunter armor is now so much better than legacy rogue armor that its not funny.
- +weapon skill was changed for a few reasons. First, it was "too good" point-for-point. However, we also made some slight improvements to +weapon skill to offset the nerf in order to maintain its use as the "best" stat you can get against a target 3 levels or higher than you, but not by as wide of a margin. In addition, we didn't want +weapon skill to affect glancing blows because glancing blows (along with crushing blows) are our sacrosanct protection against players fighting mobs they're simply not supposed to be fighting.
- Shadowstep range was reduced for client performance reasons, not for balance reasons. In my opinion, it still needs some functionality improvements, so you can probably expect it to get a buff one way or another relatively soon.
- No significant change was made to rogues that caused them to lose a large amount of AP or dps relative to their existing dps, so no change is needed to compensate. Hunters, on the other hand, would have walked into the expansion feeling very "nerfed" if we hadn't made the retroactive itemization change.
