1. #1

    Would these changes make combat interesting?

    I feel that I had the most fun playing combat when we stacked armor pen back in wrath. I would like to make combat the armor pen class it once was. Here is what I would do.

    1. Remove rupture from the combat rogues abilities

    2. Sinister Strike – now gives a 50% chance for an extra combo point.

    3. Expose armor baked into revealing strike.

    4. Revealing Strike – Strike the target for 100% weapon damage granting the exposed armor debuff. The next finishing move ignores 20% of the targets armor for each combo point spent.

    a. Weakened armor – weakens the armor of the target by 4% (doubled for the rogue) for the next 30sec stacks up to 3 times.
    b. Glyph of Revealing strike – Revealing strike applies 3 stacks of weakened armor.

    5. Finishing moves have a 10% chance per combo point spent to proc Piercing Strike.

    6. Piercing Strike – Attack with the offhand weapon for 110% weapon damage ignores armor. The next 2 sinister strikes also ignore armor.

  2. #2
    Herald of the Titans Kael's Avatar
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    They'd be a buff, which I'm not certain is really needed, but I also don't see them changing... anything, except that you'd be shifting a bit from builders to finishers (SS chance for 2nd CP up to 50%). You might see some higher eviscerate crits, assuming normal attacks or SS were nerfed to compensate for the armor pen and additional free attack from piercing strike, but all of these are passive.

    My issue with combat, and most specs that play in a similar fashion, is that the only difficulty is from the speed of your ability to respond, rather than any important decisions. It's really easy to know whether you should hit RvS or SS at a certain point, you just need to decide really really quickly.

    Actually on re-reading, removing rupture would make them... simpler. I can't imagine why you'd want to.

  3. #3
    mugajak are you even a rogue?

  4. #4
    Banned Rorke's Avatar
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    No nothing would. The only thing that would make Combat somewhat interesting if it was similar to the Bladedancer play style from Rift.

  5. #5
    I'm certainly going to be shouting long and hard for expose armor to be baked into all 3 rogue specs. I'm fairly certain I could whisper for that change and get it. If they are looking to remove buttons expose armor is almost as obvious as disarm traps.

    I'd remove rupture but, yes, you must replace it with something else. No reason why combat needs a bleed. It will likely be the only spec with S&D next expansion; they seem to be unhappy it's shared and combat seems the logical place for it.

    I don't think they are super-happy with armor-removing abilities given the difficulties they had with armor piercing. Possibly that is the way they will go. What combat needs, of course, is a freakin' proc.

    Rogues in general need AoE. I bet they'll make Crimson Tempest the combat AoE with blade fury, sort of the way it is now, but possibly with CT buffed.

    Personally, I think they should make blade fury a cleave: literally a cleave ability that you press when it's available or when it procs.

    Truthfully, I think rogues should just be a multi-dot, cleave class; don't know why they don't focus the pures on that attribute which would tend to boost our damage without necessarily making us that OPed on single target fights.

  6. #6
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    1. Remove rupture from the combat rogues abilities

    Yes please. I don't like rupture. For assassination and sub it serves a purpose but for combat it's only there to add like 1-2% more dps.

    And I've been thinking for ages that they should give combat some armor penetration. It's like the only spec in the game that does almost purely physical damage that is affected by armor that doesn't have any armor penetration skills. That would also buff combat in pvp. But I would like to see armor penetration affecting white swings too.

  7. #7
    Elemental Lord Tekkommo's Avatar
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    Not played my Rogue for some time now, but I do agree that Combat needs some major work, it is my least favourite spec by a long shot.

  8. #8
    Rupture is a core rogue ability. It should always be a small damage increase over an eviscerate if it goes full duration. I have no idea why people want it nerfed for combat. I strongly disagree with that change.

    Sinister strike giving a combo point 50% of the time seems odd. It's supposed to be a 1 CP move, with a chance at double CP. It feels important if you get two in a row. Getting it at 50% seems.... well, it's not a bad idea, but it isn't what I think the spec needs.

    Expose should be baked into REVEALING strike. A full three stack. IMO the buff combat needs is to have revealing off the global entirely, maybe with a 3 second cooldown on its own. That way if you are in a high energy situation you can weave those in for staying under the energy cap- less efficient than if you could spend it on a sinister, but not much. THAT is a combat buff I can believe in!


    The rest of the ideas are various ways around armor. Those aren't bad ideas, but it seems like the rotation would be heavily modified by that.

  9. #9
    The reason for having SS be 50% chance (and imo I agree that it should be 50%) is that combat's achilles heel is slow combo point generation.

    I'd like to see the offhand component of ambidexterity nerfed to 50% or less to make room for more finisher damage. Revealing strike should increase finisher damage by 45% or 50%.

    The damage of the builders (SS/RvS) and Main Gauche are where they need to be, I think.

  10. #10

  11. #11
    Vanilla combat rogue's ability set: sinister strike slice and dice eviscerate adrenaline rush rupture, blade flurry
    Mop rogue's ability set: sinister strike slice and dice eviscerate adrenaline rush rupture, blade flurry, Kspree, revealing strike

    Wondering why combat isn't interesting? It's outdated as hell, that's why

    Try to list another class/spec who has the same numbers of abilities as it had in vanilla...

  12. #12
    I don't like this idea of turning Combat into the spec that penetrates armor. The other two specs already do that, either by emphasizing poison damage or through Find Weakness.

    I like the idea of removing Rupture. It seems like having it in a rotation is complication for complication's sake. As I understand, though, Rupture was and might still be quite useful for taking care of other rogues in PvP.

    Turning the Expose Armor debuff into such a powerhouse for combat rogue would basically be reintroducing Hunger for Blood to the game. IIRC, the list of people who liked Hunger for Blood was quite short. But it's on something that a rogue will do anyway, so... What's the point? They're going to do it anyway.

    I don't think that SS bonus combo points should be a flat increase; I think it should be tied to critical strike chance. This makes crit chance more valuable for combat; don't mind me my numbers aren't quite up to snuff, but when I played, crit wasn't exactly the bee's knees for Combat.

    I don't know if it was intentional, but this version of RvS reads as though it's consumed by the next finisher. I preferred that as a mechanic rather than it simply being an uptime thing, so you get points there.

    I kinda like the idea of Piercing Strike, but I think tying it to combo points consumed with a percentage like that is a bit of a bad idea. If you're going to do that, make it 20% per combo point. It also doesn't actively affect how you play- it just increases the damage you do. Have it reduce the energy cost of the affected SSes by 20.
    Last edited by LilSaihah; 2013-05-12 at 06:23 AM.
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  13. #13
    Hunger for blood (the last version before cata) is back into the game, it's called sanguinary vein, and...yes it sucks balls

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Memnok View Post
    I feel that I had the most fun playing combat when we stacked armor pen back in wrath. I would like to make combat the armor pen class it once was. Here is what I would do.
    The reason they took armor pen out is because it was kind of a waste of space. Why would you want armor-pen mechanics back?
    (and don't bring up the Find Weakness change. The Find Weakness change for Subtlety in 5.3 is to bring Shadow Dance in line with Shadow Blades as a powerful CD again)

    Quote Originally Posted by Memnok View Post
    1. Remove rupture from the combat rogues abilities

    2. Sinister Strike – now gives a 50% chance for an extra combo point.

    3. Expose armor baked into revealing strike.

    4. Revealing Strike – Strike the target for 100% weapon damage granting the exposed armor debuff. The next finishing move ignores 20% of the targets armor for each combo point spent.

    a. Weakened armor – weakens the armor of the target by 4% (doubled for the rogue) for the next 30sec stacks up to 3 times.
    b. Glyph of Revealing strike – Revealing strike applies 3 stacks of weakened armor.

    5. Finishing moves have a 10% chance per combo point spent to proc Piercing Strike.

    6. Piercing Strike – Attack with the offhand weapon for 110% weapon damage ignores armor. The next 2 sinister strikes also ignore armor.
    My response:

    1. Sure, but only if it gets replaced with something. Not sure what it would be for Combat, but something...

    2. Why would you take that off of Revealing Strike? (and not 50%, that's a little too powerful)

    3. Yes, bake Expose Armor into SOMETHING for each of the three specs.

    4. ...so it'd do the same thing as it already does, but call the finisher bonus something different? Weird.

    5. And yes, keep the Expose Armor glyph as-is.

    6. Interesting, but the really interesting move would be to make it stackable (nothing big, maybe up to 3). That'd make the rotation into a somewhat-slow combo system. The BEST solution in-conjunction with this would be to make Combat into a 3CP spec and make it focused on combos. Now THAT would be something that'd make me enjoy Combat.
    Carp - Illidan-US
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  15. #15
    The problem with piercing strike is that it is not weapon-type neutral. It will force combat rogues into a slow offhand. I think the spec should be weapon-type-neutral in the offhand. That's easily fixed by giving piercing strike the hemo/ambush treatment (different weapon damage modifier for daggers).

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by shadowboy View Post
    The problem with piercing strike is that it is not weapon-type neutral. It will force combat rogues into a slow offhand. I think the spec should be weapon-type-neutral in the offhand. That's easily fixed by giving piercing strike the hemo/ambush treatment (different weapon damage modifier for daggers).
    I wouldn't be surprised if it happened this way, but since this is about a class/spec redesign, let me pose a question:
    What other DPS class/spec in the game has to use weapons of two distinctly different types?

    None.
    Combat is the only spec in the game with the option/requirement of using two different weapon-speed (2.6/1.8) weapons in the main hand and off hand.
    This does make Combat more customizable, but I don't see it lasting another expansion if Blizzard is going to redesign the class. The spec needs to have some kind of identity, and using a 2.6/1.8 combination doesn't have as much identity as dual-2.6 or dual-1.8.
    Carp - Illidan-US
    I wish I wish I was a fish.
    My rogue

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Carp The Fish View Post
    I wouldn't be surprised if it happened this way, but since this is about a class/spec redesign, let me pose a question:
    What other DPS class/spec in the game has to use weapons of two distinctly different types?

    None.
    Combat is the only spec in the game with the option/requirement of using two different weapon-speed (2.6/1.8) weapons in the main hand and off hand.
    This does make Combat more customizable, but I don't see it lasting another expansion if Blizzard is going to redesign the class. The spec needs to have some kind of identity, and using a 2.6/1.8 combination doesn't have as much identity as dual-2.6 or dual-1.8.
    It doesn't have any less identity with 2.6/1.8 than it does with double 2.6, either. Spec identity is not about weapon choice--it's about playstyle and "theme" and the weapon type doesn't matter at all for that. The only reason combat uses a 2.6 in the main hand is due to mechanics (sinister strike being a normalized attack and all). Combat rogues are supposed to be one-handed weapon masters, and daggers are one-handed weapons.

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