Blade Flurry should not be nerfed that much.

[Deleted]

It seems that some aspects of the buffs/nerfs are misunderstood.

According to World of Logs, other cleave specs are within 5% of us on any cleave fights, on average.

Mathematically, BF has been contributing 30% to 40% of our damage, so a 75% BF nerf means that on a cleave fight, we'd be doing 70% to 77% of the damage we're currently doing, should this nerf go live. So I'm fine with bringing us in line with the others, but this is overdoing it by a large margin.

Hell, given that the energy regen cost is still there, it would be questionable to use this ability at all.

Now about the AP increase from vitality, from 25% to 30% - it does not mean a dps increase of 5%. Because:

1. Obviously, we already have 125%, and need to refer it to that. 5/125 is 4% AP.

2. Our abilities do not scale perfectly linear with AP, and our DPS depends on ALL of our stats, not just AP.

Do not confuse Vitality with pure damage boosters like Assassin's Resolve or Sanguinary Vein.

I would expect a single target dps increase of 2% to 2.5% at best, which is not quite substantial, but welcome nonetheless and would close the gap with Mut.

I believe the overall goal is to make combat viable on any fight, not just cleave-friendly encounters, and it's something I definitely support. That being said, a 75% nerf to BF is way too much, and could potentially make combat weaker than Mut, who still has the pseudo-cleave via multi-target venomous wounds.

[eijin]

\
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/The_Stone.../7/30/default/

Look at where e.g. BM hunters are. Classes without cleave suck on such fights, it's no surprise they are getting ignored for those absurd numbers.

All it leads to is class stacking.

And rets are @ 133k, combat rogues at 198k. It's abozt 50% more dps on average. So two rogues replace three Retris.

Well, of course for those who those absurd numbers, it's cool, it's fun!

For those who don't, who get replaced by combat rogues - no, it's no fun at all. Our 25m raid had 2 retri palas, both quit in the last weeks - because their dps sucks. It's no fun to be the last place in recount - always. Without any chance of getting high dps except for the first half minute of the fights, while burst is active.

oh, thats noticed and quite obvious. Cleave classes/specs are a lot better at cleaving. a lot better. However my response to your post was 2 fold.
1) as they currently have it in the notes, blade flurry makes you to LESS damage. like, you can either do 100% damage to one target, or something of ~80% damage to one target and ~15% to a second target. I can agree cleaves should be nerfed (and not just ours, this would include sweeping strikes and multi DoTing) but nerfing to the point where the button should be taken off the bar of any rogue who cares about their DPS is kinda overkill.
2) it was never double damage anyway. it nerfs your energy regen and only copies ~75% of your damage resulting in only a 60% increase at best, not 100%.

[Deleted]

Remove the energy pen and its fine.

BF was the only reason to play combat, now what.

[Demeia]

Remove the energy pen and its fine.

BF was the only reason to play combat, now what.

You bring more DKs, warriors, and the ranged cleavers? Because one thing raids need is a reason to bring more ranged. Rawr!

I personally feel that Blizzard should be looking for reasons to get pure dps to switch specs for fights. That should be a balance goal. Obviously, they would then need to think about the reforging aspect (reforge, good; needing wildly different reforging in the same class, not so good). What is the point of our second spec if it doesn't help us in some way? Being able to swap for cleave fights was an important advantage for us.

Overall, I think they will probably gain rogues due to PvP changes; I suspect they will only see the raiding rogue pop continue to diminish because of this.

[SilkDath]

needing wildly different reforging in the same class, not so good.

Another reason why I am not upset at this nerf,reforging and even regemming just to cleave is bad class stat budgeting.

However there will need to be reduction in the number of cleave-happy encounters in TK raid in 5.2. Or perhaps give this neutered version of blade flurry to all specs, which will just homogenise the specs further, but that is clearly blizzards plan at this point.

I do not want to lose my spot on fights like Dogs and Garalon just because blizzard don't know how to balance cleaves, we will have to be significantly single target buffed for this to be viable, and I dont mean 5% AP trololol.... good one Blizz.

I am happy I do not have to play combat anymore, but I don't want to lose my spot on 2 target fights.

Rock, meet hard place.

[Deleted]

It seems that some aspects of the buffs/nerfs are misunderstood.

According to World of Logs, other cleave specs are within 5% of us on any cleave fights, on average.

That's totally wrong. And you cannot compare the first plase to the second place and ignore the poor rest.

A two target cleave is simply overpowered. There are too many situations, where two target cleaves are too powerful.

The real problem is that most cleaves only really work on 3 or 4 additional targets. Except Combat...

To put the damage of 4 target fights in a 2 target fights just can't work. The only solution can be too make BF hit up to 5 targets.

And where's thenatural right of combat to be always better than assa?


And not that we understand us wrong: something will have to happen. As i told, 30% or 40% works as a two target cleave really well, it just won't work on three or four or more target fights.

---------- Post added 2012-12-24 at 10:22 AM ----------

I would expect a single target dps increase of 2% to 2.5% at best, which is not quite substantial, but welcome nonetheless and would close the gap with Mut.

4% more attackpower is a lot more than 2% dps increase. Simcraft shows it to be a 3% dps increase.

---------- Post added 2012-12-24 at 10:26 AM ----------

Another reason why I am not upset at this nerf,reforging and even regemming just to cleave is bad class stat budgeting.

However there will need to be reduction in the number of cleave-happy encounters in TK raid in 5.2. Or perhaps give this neutered version of blade flurry to all specs, which will just homogenise the specs further, but that is clearly blizzards plan at this point.

I do not want to lose my spot on fights like Dogs and Garalon just because blizzard don't know how to balance cleaves, we will have to be significantly single target buffed for this to be viable, and I dont mean 5% AP trololol.... good one Blizz.

I am happy I do not have to play combat anymore, but I don't want to lose my spot on 2 target fights.

Rock, meet hard place.

We won't lose our spot. Even without blade fury, we would out dps most speccs, since only very few speccs have a cleave at all.

Cponsidering only melee, currently ferals have no cleave, enhancers have no cleave, rets have no cleave, minks have no cleave. Unholy has a weak cleave (more like weal multidotting), only frost and warriors have a real cleave.

[Exroyal]

Pure damage dealing class topping deeps? Better nerf their only ability into oblivion. Maybe BF really deserved a nerf, but not this one. A 75% damage nerf basically makes the ability useless as the cleave damage won't make up for the energy regen lost.

I'm currently going combat, but guess i'll have to get myself some daggers now as Combat won't be useful at all after 5.2.

---------- Post added 2012-12-24 at 12:16 PM ----------

4% more attackpower is a lot more than 2% dps increase. Simcraft shows it to be a 3% dps increase.

I don't consider 1% more then what he said a lot.

[Deleted]

Hi everybody, i am french people so sorry for my english. I just want to say that i totally agree with the fact that this nerf is totally ridiculous. Blade flurry is ONE of the features of the combat spec. I do not want a 75% or 65 or 40 or 15 or even 5% nerf. Ok it is hard to match the performance of all classes and all spec but this diversity is the strength of wow. Blibli will kill this game by normalizing classes and spec.

I am a mage (sorry XD) and i tell u, i need you like u are right now with your strengths and your weakness to complete HM version. I do not want a copy of warrior (with the poison as only difference).

Good luck !

[shadowboy]

2. Our abilities do not scale perfectly linear with AP, and our DPS depends on ALL of our stats, not just AP.

Actually, our abilities DO scale perfectly linear with AP.

What linear AP scaling means is that if your AP increases by 10,000, the damage you gain is twice the damage gain from a 5,000 AP increase.

Example: Sinister strike's damage is defined as: 1.45*(WD + 2.5*ap/14) + 322. If you double your AP, you double the bonus damage. If you triple your AP, you triple the bonus damage. That is by definition linear scaling.

That said, that does not mean a 4% increase in AP is a 4% dps increase though. The reason is that those abilities have a nonzero y-intercept (that is, abilities and weapons have base damage different from zero).

To take an extreme example, say you have a weapon with base damage of 30,000 and your AP is 10. Your sinister strike damage would be 43,824. If your AP went up by 2 times as much, to 20 AP, that damage would go up to 43,827. If you went up another 10 to 30 AP, you would be at, you guessed it, 43,830. 10->20 = gain of 3 damage, 20->30 = gain of 3 damage. While first to last was a 200% increase in AP, the damage didn't go up by 200% simply because the base damage didn't change.

Cponsidering only melee, currently ferals have no cleave, enhancers have no cleave, rets have no cleave, minks have no cleave. Unholy has a weak cleave (more like weal multidotting), only frost and warriors have a real cleave.

Define cleave. I would define a cleave spec as a spec that can do additional damage to secondary targets without (significantly) changing their rotation. Generally cleaves are targets that are too few to be effective for an aoe rotation.

Examples of aoe rotations: rogues go from SS/RvS/Evis to FoK/CT. Rets go from CS/TV to HotR/DS. A cleave spec would be a spec that can use the single target rotation on multiple targets. I would also define a cleave as a multi-target spell that only hits a limited number of additional targets (blade flurry only hits 1, heart strike hits 2, cleave hits 1, etc)

By those definitions frost dks and ret paladins are a gray area. Frost dks continue their single target rotation BUT howling blast is not a cleave--it's an AoE spell which puts a dot on the target. Frost dks are an aoe/multi-dot spec, not a cleave spec. Ret has seal of righteousness which is similar (it hits all targets but allows the paladin to use their single target rotation on multiple targets).

Enhancers multi-dot passively as part of their single target rotation since lava lash spreads flame shock automatically. This flame shock spread is based on a limited number of targets and does not change the shaman's rotation (at all, in fact). So I would define it as a cleave (weak as it is), but also multi-dotting.

The only pure melee cleave specs based on the definition I gave above are warriors and combat rogues.

[Neazy]

At 25% damage they need to take away the energy reduction. If they do that, the nerf isn't that bad, especially if combat gets decent single target damage in this patch.

In all likelihood they'll keep the energy reduction (otherwise rogues would just play with perma-cleave and never turn it off), in which case BF needs to be buffed back up to 50%.

[Verain]

Actually, our abilities DO scale perfectly linear with AP.

Not really. If I double your AP, your sinister will not hit twice as hard. It has a small amount of base damage, but MUCH more importantly, your weapon dps is a big part of that attack, and that isn't changing at all when you double AP. Your eviscerate has a much bigger amount of base damage, but no weapon dependence. The base wouldn't change.


It's still a fair approximation to assume the doubling. It's close enough for first order estimation for sure.

[Feindy]

At 25% damage they need to take away the energy reduction. If they do that, the nerf isn't that bad, especially if combat gets decent single target damage in this patch.

They wont take away the energy reduction, why would you even turn it off then? They could make it passive aswell then.

[Improtaight]

At 25% damage they need to take away the energy reduction. If they do that, the nerf isn't that bad, especially if combat gets decent single target damage in this patch.

In all likelihood they'll keep the energy reduction (otherwise rogues would just play with perma-cleave and never turn it off), in which case BF needs to be buffed back up to 50%.

mate, if they take down the energy reduction what stops you from running with BF all the time? it'll be like a passive ability... no way in hell that'll happen.
25% is just really too low, I haven't done the math but i'm not sure its even worth putting it on if we pull more dps on single target, especially with the 5% increased AP.

[Deleted]

oh, thats noticed and quite obvious. Cleave classes/specs are a lot better at cleaving. a lot better. However my response to your post was 2 fold.
1) as they currently have it in the notes, blade flurry makes you to LESS damage. like, you can either do 100% damage to one target, or something of ~80% damage to one target and ~15% to a second target. I can agree cleaves should be nerfed (and not just ours, this would include sweeping strikes and multi DoTing) but nerfing to the point where the button should be taken off the bar of any rogue who cares about their DPS is kinda overkill.
2) it was never double damage anyway. it nerfs your energy regen and only copies ~75% of your damage resulting in only a 60% increase at best, not 100%.

I already wrote 10 times:

The numbers are up tp discussion. As you say, 25% is probably too less. We will ahve to see what their plan is.

For me the only way to make it work is to make it multi target, say 5 targets. That would also fix AOE DPS issue. A 2 target cleave is either overpowered or too weak since too many fights are two targets. Removing Energy pen, then 25% would be indeed very much.

---------- Post added 2012-12-25 at 01:45 PM ----------

I don't consider 1% more then what he said a lot.

If someone says 2% and it's 3%, then it is 50% higher than he told.

---------- Post added 2012-12-25 at 03:09 PM ----------

mate, if they take down the energy reduction what stops you from running with BF all the time? it'll be like a passive ability... no way in hell that'll happen.
25% is just really too low, I haven't done the math but i'm not sure its even worth putting it on if we pull more dps on single target, especially with the 5% increased AP.

Okay, no penalty sucks. You're right.

But BF is anyways very lame right now. Perhaps they could remove energy pen, but rework it as a combo point ability (aside of the damage numbers/number of targets issue). At least something gamechanging, not pressing a button for extremely slow play. I would more likely take 15% less damage than 20% less energy regen because it slows down our gameplay, but you're overpowered (without really seeing it).

Now is the time to put something innovative ingame.

Numbers are currently anyways not interesting since ptr will still be 3 months from going live, possibly more.

---------- Post added 2012-12-25 at 03:24 PM ----------

Define cleave. I would define a cleave spec as a spec that can do additional damage to secondary targets without (significantly) changing their rotation. Generally cleaves are targets that are too few to be effective for an aoe rotation.

Examples of aoe rotations: rogues go from SS/RvS/Evis to FoK/CT. Rets go from CS/TV to HotR/DS. A cleave spec would be a spec that can use the single target rotation on multiple targets. I would also define a cleave as a multi-target spell that only hits a limited number of additional targets (blade flurry only hits 1, heart strike hits 2, cleave hits 1, etc)

By those definitions frost dks and ret paladins are a gray area. Frost dks continue their single target rotation BUT howling blast is not a cleave--it's an AoE spell which puts a dot on the target. Frost dks are an aoe/multi-dot spec, not a cleave spec. Ret has seal of righteousness which is similar (it hits all targets but allows the paladin to use their single target rotation on multiple targets).

Enhancers multi-dot passively as part of their single target rotation since lava lash spreads flame shock automatically. This flame shock spread is based on a limited number of targets and does not change the shaman's rotation (at all, in fact). So I would define it as a cleave (weak as it is), but also multi-dotting.

The only pure melee cleave specs based on the definition I gave above are warriors and combat rogues.

Doesn'T matter how you call it. Enhancement surely has no cleave, at best some very weak mutlidotting along with most other melees.

Here's the perfect 2 targets cleave fight (or say nearly perfect, there's a lot of target switching):
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/The_Stone...11100000000000

As you can see, the big outliners are of course combat rogues, but followed by both dk speccs.

The really sad thing is:

Of course combat rogues are overpowered and they should be closer to the rest. But why the will does nearly every ranged class (except elemental) have more cleave/multidotting than nearly all melees? They already work worlds better if the mobs are seperated by a few meters, but they mostly do work better even if they are stacked.

It would be about time to buff nearly all melee cleaves or give them some at all(e.g. enhancer). Monks seem to get a pretty powerful version, why not also to enhancers, assa rogues, ferals, i even account for hunters? For me, stacked cleave should be dominated by melees and multidotting by ranged. And there are anyways more multidotting than cleave fights.

[Neazy]

They wont take away the energy reduction, why would you even turn it off then? They could make it passive aswell then.

mate, if they take down the energy reduction what stops you from running with BF all the time? it'll be like a passive ability... no way in hell that'll happen.
25% is just really too low, I haven't done the math but i'm not sure its even worth putting it on if we pull more dps on single target, especially with the 5% increased AP.

That's exactly what I said in the 2nd part of my post.

In all likelihood they'll keep the energy reduction (otherwise rogues would just play with perma-cleave and never turn it off), in which case BF needs to be buffed back up to 50%.

[shadowboy]

Not really. If I double your AP, your sinister will not hit twice as hard. It has a small amount of base damage, but MUCH more importantly, your weapon dps is a big part of that attack, and that isn't changing at all when you double AP. Your eviscerate has a much bigger amount of base damage, but no weapon dependence. The base wouldn't change.

Did you even read my post? Do you understand what "linear" means? This statement suggests neither.

If you plot SS damage vs AP, linear scaling means it would be a straight line. As it so happens, if you plot SS damage per AP, it would be a straight line. It scales linearly. Every single rogue ability scales linearly with AP. Don't believe me? Take a level 1 gray weapon from a starter zone. Remove trinkets and other gear with agi procs. Hit a dummy with a bunch of sinister strikes without advancing bandit's guile (better yet, remove your talent specialization so you don't have BG). Gradually remove agility and note the average noncrit damage and AP. plot average noncrit damage versus AP. Note the shape of the curve. It will be a straight line.

Linear does NOT mean an increase in AP by 5% is an increase in damage by 5%. Linear scaling means that if you increase AP by 10%, you gain twice as much damage as you would with an increase in AP by 5%. Every rogue ability behaves exactly like that. There are no quadratic, cubic, exponential, or logarithmic scaling rogue abilities. There isn't a single ability damage formula that has a log(ap) or ap*ap term. If you define f(ap,wd) as a function defining damage (ap = attack power, wd = weapon damage), then df/dap will be a constant. That constant will be the coefficient of the AP damage modifier term. In the case of sinister strike, it's 0.259. In the case of eviscerate it is 0.800. In the case of rupture it's 0.310. In the case of your off-hand autoattacks with a dagger it's 0.105, etc, etc.

In fact, the only things in game that demonstrate any nonlinear trends are damage mitigation by armor (and by extension, armor ignore effects) and some tank abilities--as well as diminishing returns on dodge/parry--and those exist to allow time-to-live to function linearly with that particular stat.

[Deleted]

BF is way too OP period.

[Feindy]

BF is way too OP period.

we all know this, but 75% nerf is way too much

Infracted

[loki504]

i keep lauging my ass off when people go zerg rage on a preview patchnotes. just wait till the ptr is atleast up before you go zerg rage. there is plenty of time to zerg rage when the ptr is up. enjoy the holidays.

[Deleted]

we all know this, but 75% nerf is way too much

And as we all know, it's still even before PTR went live, followed by a lot of changes in the coming weeks.

There's no reason to panic. It looks like they recognized that BF was way to OP in it's current form, but we will have to wait which ideas they have for rogue AOE/Cleave. I'd expect us to be a lot closer to Assa rogues with strengths and weaknesses.