Preparation & Cold Snap - Discussion

[ro9ue]

For the record. I have every class at 85, 11 85s in total. (2 DKs)

I actually play most of them equally, except my warlock which collects a lot of dust. One thing I'm starting to realize is that in PVP my sub rogue and frost mage really tear shit up - and it's widely known these classes are powerful. I do fairly well on my feral druid and frost DK as well but one thing I notice is that in longer fights, especially 1 dps 1 healer vs 1 dps 1 healer, the mage and rogue do much, much better.

Reading the thread about the Sub vs Frost Mage duels got me thinking... I think it's because of Prep and Cold Snap. On my DK and feral, once I exhaust my CDs, that's it. If I mistakenly use one at an inopportune time, too bad it's over. With my rogue and mage, I have a second chance at A LOT of my CDs, so after the burst phase of a lot of matches, I still have access to my toolkit if I so choose to.

I find this a bit unfair. I started pvp on my rogue back in vanilla, and I thought prep was necessary because every CD was 5min, including sprint. Nowadays though, I think it's just too much.

Does anyone else feel the same? I feel like once frenzied regen on my feral is down or I lose risen ghoul/death pact on my DK, I'm kind of a sitting duck. However, on my frost mage and rogue, I feel a bit safer because I know I get a 2nd shot at all those abilities.

For the sake of the discussion I'm adding the tool tip info for the abilities in question:

Preparation (unglyphed) : Resets Sprint, Vanish, Shadowstep
Preparation (glyphed) : Kick, Dismantle, Smoke Bomb, Sprint, Vanish, Shadowstep

Cold Snap : Resets ALL frost spells you recently cast.

Readiness: Resets ALL hunter abilities. (Rapid fire, traps, deterrence, etc)

[Crushima]

Yes I agree they should remove these two cooldown reset abilities, they are very overpowered in the grand scheme of things.

[Fhi]

Hunter Readiness too. ^^

[ro9ue]

Hunter Readiness too. ^^

I actually forgot about that, but I don't think my hunter feels as OP as my mage and rogue in PVP right now so I wouldn't exactly want to lump them in.

I do however feel a cool down reset button is just bad game design. If you need a reset on your cool downs, they are probably just too long to begin with.

[worsthitmanNa]

I feel that way when i play combat. I have 1 vanish and sprints on a 1 minutes cooldown, I am like are you serious cause it should be around 30-45 seconds, I don't understand why fire mages have blink and blazing speed(no internal cooldown to break roots 5-10% chance to proc) but, i have to wait 1 minute to break roots because that's op. Btw for the people saying prep is op in the current state of the game. Why aren't their gladiator combat or assasain rogues. I wouldn't mine if they took crippling posion form 70%-50% slow. That makes sense but i have a 25 second cooldown on shadowstep and no heroic leap even death grip has a quicker cooldown then shadowstep. I can use it twice in a row(with prep) but a warrior can charge every 15 seconds and leap every 40-50(i can't remember it off the top of my head). So how is that fair. I mean with 50%, I can still kite melee so, I can't really be upset lol. Readiness is just as bad Tbh two rapid fires and a reset on detterence and disengage. The also get freezing trap back and scatter. I am just happy that someone finally realizes. That if rogues get nerfed people will just bitch about mages so take them down with us plz : D.

[Jaydenkor]

I think that whole hunter thing (My main) has alot to do with the types of abilities it resets.

For a mage its a reset of a haste CD (mage best stat.. in essence, as well as uninteruptable during it IIRC).. as well as the shields/novas/iceblock/Freeze+stun thing

For a hunter.. its a haste CD, our WORST stat by far., as well as a reset of traps/disengage/detterence/freedom --

I think the big difference there is the amount of people effected by it... while yes, frost nova and Frost Trap are.. comparable.. the rest aren't.

For rogues, I think I find the shadowstep (as a hunter) CD reset, being the most annoying one. Id bet the cloak of shadows effects casters more heavily when reset/used multiple times.
- Im unaware if shadowdance is reset by this... If so, Im not 100% sure how to compare that to icyveins/hunter Rapid fire.. but from what Ive seen its massive if/when used correctly.

---------- Post added 2012-03-16 at 10:34 PM ----------

Death grip is 25sec CD as well (maybe 20 if glyphed? .. I believe its base is 30 where the spec or glyph reduces it by 5 anyway

[Charvie]

I feel that way when i play combat. I have 1 vanish and sprints on a 1 minutes cooldown, I am like are you serious cause it should be around 30-45 seconds, I don't understand why fire mages have blink and blazing speed(no internal cooldown to break roots 5-10% chance to proc) but, i have to wait 1 minute to break roots because that's op. Btw for the people saying prep is op in the current state of the game. Why aren't their gladiator combat or assasain rogues. I wouldn't mine if they took crippling posion form 70%-50% slow. That makes sense but i have a 25 second cooldown on shadowstep and no heroic leap even death grip has a quicker cooldown then shadowstep. I can use it twice in a row(with prep) but a warrior can charge every 15 seconds and leap every 40-50(i can't remember it off the top of my head). So how is that fair. I mean with 50%, I can still kite melee so, I can't really be upset lol. Readiness is just as bad Tbh two rapid fires and a reset on detterence and disengage. The also get freezing trap back and scatter. I am just happy that someone finally realizes. That if rogues get nerfed people will just bitch about mages so take them down with us plz : D.

Because Warriors are SOOO much more OP than rogues

[worsthitmanNa]

I am not trying to say warriors are op but taking smokebomb off prep that's fine but to only allow me to shadowstep one every 25 seconds. I wouldn't mine 50% crippling posion and smokebomb off prep if i got to keep it. I never said warriors were op..... so yeah. Just saying that warrior and deathknights gap closer are on shorter cooldowns then mine.

[Yvaelle]

Removing Cold Snap and Preparation would go a long way to fixing these classes, but frost probably needs to lose one of its bursty proc bits - maybe one less stack of FoF for example - and Find Weakness needs to be nerfed to match Colossus Smash (50%) down from the 70% it's at currently - then these would be much better.

High Mage CC would be permissible if they didn't also have the best and most reliable burst in the game and had to play more defensive because they only had the one ice block - not snap/block again until they had to turtle up a bit.

Similarly rogues opening pressure would be much less risky if they couldn't prep and do it all again, and if find weakness didn't make vanishes so dangerous. To the point where I'd even guess they could get more cooldown reductions, 90 second smoke bombs and disconnect the shared cooldown on Cloak of Shadows and Combat Readiness - I would think should work.

Mages just need big nerfs, rogues need more of a rebalancing - a good bit less initial power, but more longevity.

[Malgru]

In all honesty? It isn't Prep and Cold Snap that make them insane. What makes them insane is their amount of damage and CC. You can't Cold Snap deep freeze twice in a row. Why? DR. But you can Poly out of a DR. Then you can CS. (If you get hard CSed twice in a row, you're healing wrong). A rogue can Kidney (on a TWENTY second CD) for 6 seconds, garrote for 3s, 4.5s glyphed, Blind for 8 seconds, cheap shot for 4 seconds. shadowstep kick, smoke bomb, and pump out 2-3 20k+ crits in 6 seconds.

But you can't do this twice right away, because of DR. This is why hunters aren't considered absolutely insane, unless you're playing in RBGs. Because they have freezing trap, scatter trap, silencing shot, and entrapment for a snare. Monkey blind isn't on Readiness, however, you can spend 3-4 seconds getting another monkey out, which really isn't all that viable because by the time you get another out, the opportunity is gone. Plus freezing trap is pretty unreliable, seeing someone can take the CC, and it doesn't remove DoTs, which blind does.

What I think Blizzard needs to change on rogues is the fact that they can pump out damage while taking less damage. They don't have to sacrifice damage for survivability, while nearly every other class does. Ferals have to go to bear. Frost DK's lose RP that they could be spending on Frost Strikes, plus two globals. Unholy DKs sacrifice most of their damage. IBF is pretty useful though, along with AMS. Hunters sacrifice everything to go into Deterrence. Yes, they have Freedom and disengage, but with all the damn charges and snares, Disengage gets completely negated. Entrapment is a tad unreliable - it only procs off Ice Trap and Snake Trap. Ice trap shares a CD with nearly our only CC besides Silencing Shot and monkey stun, and snake trap puts on a DoT that prevents you from trapping. And it does 11 damage per tick, generally 2-3 times per second. So maybe 100 damage over the entire duration, which is completely terrible. Traps can be charged over, cloaked over, AMSed over, etc, and not be set off. Theres a rare bug where traps get resisted even though youre spell pen capped. Mages have to ice block until they can get healed up, which can be MDed/Shattered and they can't do anything. They can Blink, which is completely stupid that it removes stuns, I'll admit. Plus they have an insane amount of absorption on their Ice Barrier. Rets have to use Bubble, reducing their damage by 50%. Wings can be dispelled extremely easily. Repentance is fairly useful; its basically the same effect as Blind. 8 seconds, breaks on damage. But it doesn't remove DoTs (afaik), so I'll give them that. Shadowpriests have to waste 6 seconds of damage in order to either survive or regain mana they've spent offhealing. They go oom so quickly, its insane. Rogues. They can cloak, they can combat readiness, they can self heal a percentage of their health over a fairly long time while wasting one global and a few CPs. They can vanish and reopen in less than 2 seconds. They can Prep and vanish again. I don't know much about DPS shamans, so i'll skip them. Warlocks have a 20% damage reduction passively through Soul Link. If you aren't Demo, you die so quickly unless you have a high amount of Resil. Warriors have to switch to a one hander to wall, and they must stay like that for the duration, along with Shield Block.

TLDR; it isn't Prep and Cold Snap. Its damage, amount of ways to CC, and rogues don't have to sacrifice damage to survive.

[Lulbalance]

Rogues SHOULDN'T have to sacrifice dmg to cc..thats sorta the MO for rogues. Recoup needs a massive nerf tho..they're too beefy atm.

anyways - you get your wish in MoP, it's going to be costly for these classes to keep the resets..well for 2/3, hunter i havent looked at that tree.

[Yvaelle]

Rogues do sacrifice damage for CC though - Kidney shot means they didn't Envenom/Eviscerate - Vanishing to Cheap Shot means they blew a cooldown meant for defense just so they could go back on offense and that they didn't Ambush or Garrote, using smoke bomb offensively means they don't have it for defense, using cloak to block peels means they don't have it when they get burst.

No. The problem isn't rogues not trading damage for survivability - the problem is that using all these cooldowns in the first minute means nothing to them - they don't trade cooldowns - because they know they are going to Prep and have them all back again instantly for the second minute - and only after you go through them all twice do they need to consider playing defensive. The same is the issue for mages - they don't trade cooldowns - so they don't need to think about the balance of using these cooldowns offensively or defensively - they just spam 2-3 minute cooldowns all fight because they get them back as fast as they can use them.

If you remove their ability to spam cooldowns, so they have to think, and have penalties to their defense for being too offensive - then they can either a) spam cooldowns for the first minute, and then suck in the second minute, or b) not spam cooldowns in the first minute, and play intelligently. Both of them DO need some minor damage adjustments (FW nerfed to 50%, FoF nerfed to only 1 stack per proc - and possibly another nerf in mages case), but the real issue is that the two classes with the most cooldowns in the game, have their effective number of cooldowns Doubled by Cold Snap / Preparation.