Venom Zest

[Deleted]

With a talent like this they can easily make BF to spread poisons and reduce its damage (in the end you're going to get more energy regen anyway).

And what if you dont take that talent? Still get your blade flurry nerfed? For me this sounds like something that could be a passive for assassination insead of a talent.

[Deleted]

Personally, I love Restless Blades. Makes Combat a very fun spec to play at the high end. However, I have seen it argued that the downside to Restless Blades is that it causes you to do less damage outside of CDs.

The problem with Restless Blades is that it is an inactive, uncontrollable damage boost which causes more problems for the spec (damage AND balancing wise) than it is worth. Not only does it punish the spec for downtime, it turns items like AOC and stats like CDR into an absurd mess. A flat % CDR for the spec would be a lot more appropriate all around and allow better balancing towards mechanics and items.

Regarding Venom Zest, am I the only one who gets the feeling that it isn't going be a decent talent with the possible exception of Mass AOE, where Death from above would surely be better? It sounds good on the first read, but 5% increased energy regen up to 15% is pretty much nothing. 15% of an expected 15-20e/s(?) at expac start, so ~2e/s bonus just sounds bad. This is assuming the current mechanics don't change, which is a bad thing to assume but hey.

Edit: ^ This ^ is without knowing the confirmed CD of Death from Above

[fierydemise]

Regarding Venom Zest, am I the only one who gets the feeling that it isn't going be a decent talent with the possible exception of Mass AOE, where Death from above would surely be better? It sounds good on the first read, but 5% increased energy regen up to 15% is pretty much nothing. 15% of an expected 15-20e/s(?) at expac start, so ~2e/s bonus just sounds bad. This is assuming the current mechanics don't change, which is a bad thing to assume but hey.

I said in the other thread that it looks like the design intent is Lemon Zest for sustained AoE/Cleave and DfA for burst AoE. Low target constant cleave is a reasonably common mechanic so it shouldn't be too situational. Also don't underestimate 2 energy per second, that is equivalent to 20% haste which pre-item squish is 8500 haste rating.

[Coldkil]

And what if you dont take that talent? Still get your blade flurry nerfed? For me this sounds like something that could be a passive for assassination insead of a talent.

It's something that i see many rogues taking as default especially at expansion start - if energy regen will work the same as now, we will have low amount of haste making the energy regen a good QoL improvement.

Not counting the synergies/niches, when we get more energy regen via haste, we can more easily switch to the other talents. As said in the other thread:
- lemon zest = sustained aoe
- death from above = burst aoe
- shadow clone = single target burst

It all depends on the situation. Talking specifically about LZ, BF damage will switch a little on the poison proc side, if you take it your sustained aoe will be better. If you don't need sustained AoE for a fight, probably other choices will be better.

EDIT: the change of BF is due to the fact that you will gain damage from more poison procs, so the phisycal damage needs to be reduced to compensate the gain. LZ will only make it better since it counters the energy regen penalty of BF.

[Raic]

Sounds like a destructive body wash that a serial killer would use.

On a more serious note, looks like this talent could be interesting in cleave scenarios (with emphasis on a single target). Getting poisons up on less significant enemies in order to boost energy regen for single target damage on the priority target. While not intended for this expansion, I could already see opportunities for use in SoO...

- H Immerseus (AoE blobs with focus on Immerseus)
- Fallen Protectors
- Norushen
- Galakras mini-bosses/shamans/whatever
- Klaxxi
- Garrosh phase 1

It's way too early to tell, but maybe they plan on focusing this tier to change based on encounter. Shadow Reflection - single target/burst, Venom Zest - cleave, Death from Above - AoE heavy.

I'm still a little bit confused on Death from Above, would we essentially have two AoE finishers? One with a cooldown and one that's lackluster?

[Deleted]

The thought of it for Combat and Sub seems clunky though. Having to get up poisons on two other targets without the benefits of Envenom or Improved Poisons seems very rough. Basicly just sounds like whoever gets the DP procs from their' FoK's / autos quickest is going to save energy and pump out significantly more single target damage... and RNG like that doesn't sound fun at all. If the proc chance of DP was 100%, then it would be much much cleaner.

Like someone said earlier, BF also cleaving DP could fix that issue for combat (while also buffing it insanely), but for sub...?

Don't forget to consider that this could be the 'single target sustain talent' of choice in comparison to the rest: do you really want to be target hopping as Sub and Combat and relying on DP to proc for it to even be worthwhile?

I admire the originality and the intention, but there's some problems that need to be addressed with this talent to actually feel right in my opinion. Anything could happen, of course, but i'm not convinced just yet...

[shadowboy]

I find Venom zest to be kind of boring, personally. I don't think it's interesting. It doesn't change gameplay. You still FoK to poison other targets, you can just FoK more often now. The increased energy cap really doesn't do much except increase opening burst a little bit. I find shadow reflection to be the only interesting level 100 talent. DfA just makes me think "meh" too.

[Feali]

Nah, the glyph only increases the proc rate of non-lethal poisons while Blade Flurry is active. It doesn't make Blade Flurry itself trigger it to other targets, unfortunately.

Ah, ok. Never used it anyway.

[Verain]

With a talent like this they can easily make BF to spread poisons and reduce its damage

Screw that. I'll just fan the poisons on.

why, it is one of he best abilities in the game, unless you hate to do DPS or something...

I hate having to constantly gnaw on something in order to get my cooldowns to come back.

I've written up big rants against restless blades, which is, IMO, the very worst thing about combat. Here's the summary:
1- Without restless blades our cooldowns could be more powerful. This would help combat in pvp and make us burstier in pve.
2- Without restless blades our rotational moves could be more powerful. This would help in pvp, and also help in most non-boss situations.
3- Our cooldown set requires several seconds of uninterrupted tunnel time on a boss. This means our cooldowns cooling down are determined in large part by successful application of said cooldowns, a rather huge restriction that no one else shares, and a restriction that makes us "princesses"- fragile dps who become worthless if not given the "sweet tunnel" job instead of mechanics. This creates social problems or dps problems or both.
4- Restless blades doesn't work with many finishers. This punishes us amazingly for recuperate or kidney shot, two moves that should always have been on restless blades.
5- The devs constantly nerf and rebalance combat around our absurdly frequent cooldown usage. Without restless blades, we would not have this problem, and likely have not spent almost every tier as deadspec. This is an amazing tier for me, because I can finally be combat again.
6- Cooldowns spinning at a lower rate than we are balanced around is frustrating because it takes away a classic strength of combat- in the past, if the boss went invincible to monologue, your cooldown dependent spec continued to cool down. This made combat very good at these fights, because we would spend proportionately more of the fight under cooldown. With restless blades we lose this in two ways- first our cooldowns become less powerful compared to before, and secondly we actually get them back at half speed or less when a boss is off blabbing.
7- Restless Blades conflicts with whatever interesting play we might have gained from bandit's guile. If your AR and SB are off cooldown and you are at green 2 with 5 combo points and 80 energy, your play is press the cooldowns and eviscerate, then rotate normally. By pressing it right away, you will save 10 seconds of cooldown from TIME, and then 40ish seconds from the eviscerates you press while getting to red. If Restless blades wasn't a thing, you might consider holding off for those 10 seconds to get to red first- an option you absolutely don't have on live. Bandit's Guile's interesting stuff becomes lost.

Its worth noting that both of these could be solved somewhat by nerfing AR/SB rather than removing RB or some combination of nerfs to both.

If the end effect of restless blades is a complete neutering of our fun cooldown, then I'll be adding an 8 for sure. I truly believe RB has been the worst thing added to rogues in the history of the class.


Zest sounds good. Will scale a bit different with haste by spec, but I don't care- I just like that we'll have three goddamned damage talents. It's also great in a multitarget situation. I like that fan will give us extra damage, that's perfect. The level 100 tier at the moment is the best talent tier we have, unless they break the balance so very, very hard. We have a constant source with aoe potential, a slightly bursty aoe finisher on a cooldown which is something I've wanted since forever, and a damage cooldown. Welcome to actually having pve choices, rogues!

[Kael]

One interesting sidenote about citrus vengeance is that, given the values in ToT, we'd finally reach a point where hitting a second target in a precise manner IS a damage increase on the main target for assassination, with no qualifications about the second target besides "be alive". If CPs are also on the rogue, this would be relatively easy (maintain Rup, DP). If Lemon Zest goes live as intended, and CP movement remains simple, expect to multi-target assassination whenever possible.

[catablitz]

Just when I was hoping to have multirupture removed, I read that new venom zest. Fail!
So, the scenario is 1 mostly pvp talent, 1 aoe talent and 1 bad single/proper enough cleave talent. Question is what is the purpose of aoe potential baked in a supposed to be single target talent (mind you old master the basics one) while there is already a dedicated aoe talent.
Seriously, going from master the basics to venom zest makes no sense to me, unless the plan is to throw ideas all over the place and check our reactions.

[Deleted]

It does look kind of disappointing. Master the Basics seemed like a really fun idea, although a bit on the OP side without some kind of ICD or alike. That being said I would have prefered to see a tweaked version of Master the Basics instead of this one.

Oh well, time will tell. The talents will likely be changed yet again in some way.

[Artorius]

It does look kind of disappointing. Master the Basics seemed like a really fun idea, although a bit on the OP side without some kind of ICD or alike. That being said I would have prefered to see a tweaked version of Master the Basics instead of this one though.

Oh well, time will tell. The talents will likely be changed yet again in some way.

Your previous signature was so cute =(

@topic - They could have changed Master of the Basics to give energy or something... CP was indeed way too OP considering todays crit levels.

[Squirl]

Just when I was hoping to have multirupture removed, I read that new venom zest. Fail!
So, the scenario is 1 mostly pvp talent, 1 aoe talent and 1 bad single/proper enough cleave talent. Question is what is the purpose of aoe potential baked in a supposed to be single target talent (mind you old master the basics one) while there is already a dedicated aoe talent.
Seriously, going from master the basics to venom zest makes no sense to me, unless the plan is to throw ideas all over the place and check our reactions.

Why were you hoping to have multi-rupt removed? It's one of the few optimizations as Mut that clearly rewards skillful play.

[Grayjoy]

Honestly, I hated master the basics. Glad to see it gone.

[catablitz]

Why were you hoping to have multi-rupt removed? It's one of the few optimizations as Mut that clearly rewards skillful play.

Because I don't like bleeds and dots in general, I find it awkward that you achieve max potential on your target while just rolling an additional bleed to another, there are a lot of more ways to award skillful play, it diverts from ST philosophy of spec, at low levels it is more boring than combat and I don't like the feeling when I play my UI.

[Deleted]

There's a huge difference between multi-rupturing and spreading DP though...

Rupture takes 3 gcd's + 2 reset swing timers, whereas DP (+rupture) would take the same + X amount of time (+energy wasted) for DP to proc, and I've had cases where it doesn't for 5-6 seconds. It's going to be infuriating if you're losing a 1 or 2 seconds of optimal damage on a kill target <twice, every 12 seconds, for an encounter that could last <10minutes. And please don't say you can FoK, because its even worse at spreading on a limited # of targets along with massive energy and CP loss (On mass aoe, sure though).

Even if the above results in a gain, it's somewhat promoting (minor but still) sub-optimal micromanagement for what would be a 'one-talent playstyle'. Maybe I'm crazy, but it just sounds and would feel wrong.

[pkm]

I can't stop reading it as Lemon Zest and then chuckle to myself about my deadly rogue covering his blades in deadly lemons.

Rubbing lemon juice in a wound stings pretty bad lol they are deadly!

[ymirsson]

Lemon Zest , now with even more funk and blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyhu2ysqKGk

[Demeia]

I can't stop reading it as Lemon Zest and then chuckle to myself about my deadly rogue covering his blades in deadly lemons.

I wonder if Blizzard anticipated Rhyme would rename the talent to something so infectious even before they released the skill...