Main Gauche?

[Lugo Moll]

I very much doubt fast/slow will be viable. A fast MH will make SS hit for less and you will miss out on a lot of combat potency procs from auto-attacks.

[Sylreick]

I've been playing mutilate so much that I completely forgot that combat potency proccs only from OH, and that you cannot switch weapons around so easily. But it is odd that combat potency will favour slow/fast and gauche will favour when they clearly stated they would be dumbing down the game.

I also checked on wowhead, and out of the somewhat 15-20 cataclysm non-dagger melee weapons available all of them are 2.6 speed except for Axe of the Grounded Flame which is 2.5. Personally I would be really happy if they would homogenize the weapon speeds (at least it would make enhancement shamans very happy).

Oh boy it would. But, screw the enhancement waiting game, I'm jumping ship to my rogueybear in cata.

It would make sense to make one handers all be slow. Less confusing to people that don't understand the differences.

[Sesshou]

I very much doubt fast/slow will be viable. A fast MH will make SS hit for less and you will miss out on a lot of combat potency procs from auto-attacks.

A fast MH will hit for slightly less overall yes, but the attacks are normalized (this is assuming you aren't using a dagger weapon for the fast MH). So if the only issue was slightly lower special damage, then it might work, however as you said theres the lost CP procs so I agree.

[Prandur]

I very much doubt fast/slow will ever be optimal, but I don't doubt at all that fast/fast might be at higher levels of mastery. As long as they implement fast non-dagger weapons, that is.

[Sesshou]

Speaking of fast weapons, anyone see fast daggers yet? Or is "fast" now 1.8... because that would blow.

[Prandur]

There are some 1.4s on cata.wowhead.

[dek]

Question:
Do specials proc it? If so, MH speed will be not as important.

Comment:
All the 1h being slow would not mean much since you can still wield a dagger in whichever hand is preferable for a fast weapon without messing up a weapon spec.

That being said I think it will still be slow / fast. I imagine this mastery will just augment our energy regen but not enough to give up harder hitting specials. I could be wrong though, I'm mostly talking out of my ass (I haven't tested anything).

[Sesshou]

Question:
Do specials proc it? If so, MH speed will be not as important.

Comment:
All the 1h being slow would not mean much since you can still wield a dagger in whichever hand is preferable for a fast weapon without messing up a weapon spec.

That being said I think it will still be slow / fast. I imagine this mastery will just augment our energy regen but not enough to give up harder hitting specials. I could be wrong though, I'm mostly talking out of my ass (I haven't tested anything).

No you can not wield a dagger in whichever hand. You can never ever use a dagger for sinister strike or revealing strike (viably at least).

Edit: And since SS and RS are the only viable combat combo point builders, you can never viably MH a dagger for combat.

[Avengerx]

No you can not wield a dagger in whichever hand. You can never ever use a dagger for sinister strike or revealing strike (viably at least).

Unless Blizz introduces daggers with 2.6 ish weapon speed.

[Sesshou]

Unless Blizz introduces daggers with 2.6 ish weapon speed.

Its not the weapon speed on daggers that make it not viable. Though granted, the damage range of the weapon does matter, so a 2.6 would certainly be better for SS than a 1.8. Problem is the attacks are normalized.

[TWBrien]

They should just go ahead and rename it "The Stranger".

Only if we have to sit on it for a half hour to get it good and numb..er...."ready" first.

[splad]

once apon a time, sword spec from a fast off hand procced a main hand attack, and combat potency was a percentage based proc for the off hand weapon, so all rogues wanted a fast off hand.

once apon the same time, fan of knives and killing spree hit with both weapons and poison procs were normalized, so all rogues wanted a slow off hand weapon.

this caused confusion and weapon switching macros, the devs did not like this.

then some smart developer said "hey! lets kill 2 birds with 1 stone and just make sword spec work better with a slow offhand by reversing how it proccs!" the idea was great, everyone would want a slow main hand for sinister striking, and a slow off hand for killing spree and for procs of the "new" sword spec.

the rogue community then took all of their equations and reversed them saying "now i need a fast main hand! all is lost, reroll druid!!"

[Lugo Moll]

Here are the possible setups I can imagine and their pros and cons:

1. Slow/fast, instant/deadly.
Pros: Hard hitting Sinister strikes. High poison proc rate on instant attacks. Lots of combat potency procs.
Cons: Few main gauche procs. Weak main gauche procs.

2. Fast/slow, deadly/instant.
Pros: Hard hitting main gauce. Lots of main gauce procs (which can proc combat potency).
Cons: Weak sinister strikes. Low poison proc rate on instant attacks. Few combat potency procs.

3. Slow/slow instant/deadly.
Pros: Hard hitting sinister strikes. High poison proc rate on instant attacks. Hard hitting Main gauche procs.
Cons: Few main gauche procs. Few combat potency procs. Few deadly poison procs.

4. Fast/fast, instant/deadly.
Pros: Lots of combat potency procs. Lots of main gauche procs.
Cons: Weak sinister strikes. Low poison procrates on instant attacks. Weak main gauche procs.

Personally, I think Blizzard wants us to keep using #1. Wether they succeed in balancing it right is a different story, though.

[woxingma]

I've been playing mutilate so much that I completely forgot that combat potency proccs only from OH, and that you cannot switch weapons around so easily. But it is odd that combat potency will favour slow/fast and gauche will favour when they clearly stated they would be dumbing down the game.

I also checked on wowhead, and out of the somewhat 15-20 cataclysm non-dagger melee weapons available all of them are 2.6 speed except for Axe of the Grounded Flame which is 2.5. Personally I would be really happy if they would homogenize the weapon speeds (at least it would make enhancement shamans very happy).

They never said they'd be dumbing down the game. Blizzard said they were trying to simplify stats by reducing the number you had to juggle. Everyone ELSE claimed that by reducing the number of stats that they'd be dumbing down the game.

[norfin]

Most likey, the increase in procs from using a fast mainhand will be offset by the decrease from using the slow offhand. slow offhands have never been good due to how important offhand speed is for combat for combat potency and I don't see how it'll change tbh.

Also I don't see the problem with the fast offhands being daggers when they are no longer any weapon specialisations.

[splad]

i really think that main gouche was blizzard's way of doing 2 things at once:
1. make more of our damage come from special attacks
2. make 2 slow weapons viable so that killing spree makes more sense

i present as evidance 3 facts:
1. blizzard is good at math. (come on, they know how to do their own theory crafting)
2. blizzard said the above 2 changes was their intention in the rogue preview
3. this theory is supported by itimization and energy regen increasing effects added to the game in cataclysm as well as the fact that fast 1 hand weapons don't seem to drop in beta(need source for this fact)

i think the idea is a very cool one: with very high mastery rating, every single thing you do starts to hit with both weapons, because even finishing moves like rupture count as main hand swings in the current game logic. now initially this seems like it turns sinister strike into storm strike, but it's even better then that because our white attacks ALSO hit with both weapons half the time and combat rogues will be the only class spec with +%75 offhand weapon damage mod on it.

i am pretty sure you are going to want 2 slow weapons in cataclysm for combat. if for nothing else, think of the burst damage from hitting someone and getting 2 procs at once (sinister strike + white main hand attack) that's potentially 2 main hand attacks and 3 offhand attacks = 5 attacks with slow weapons at full damage coefficient + any poison proccs: yikes!

[Deleted]

Does anyone know how much mastery we will get? If each point of mastery increases the proc chance by 1.25% it would take 72 mastery points to reach 100%. But how hard is it to get 72 mastery points?

and besides, why is combat the only tree where mastery doesn't stack infinitely? -_-

[Taalyn]

The Mastery will reduce the penalty on using a 2.3 speed MH instead of 2.5 and that's pretty much it.

[Deleted]

i really think that main gouche was blizzard's way of doing 2 things at once:
1. make more of our damage come from special attacks
2. make 2 slow weapons viable so that killing spree makes more sense

i present as evidance 3 facts:
1. blizzard is good at math. (come on, they know how to do their own theory crafting)
2. blizzard said the above 2 changes was their intention in the rogue preview
3. this theory is supported by itimization and energy regen increasing effects added to the game in cataclysm as well as the fact that fast 1 hand weapons don't seem to drop in beta(need source for this fact)

i think the idea is a very cool one: with very high mastery rating, every single thing you do starts to hit with both weapons, because even finishing moves like rupture count as main hand swings in the current game logic. now initially this seems like it turns sinister strike into storm strike, but it's even better then that because our white attacks ALSO hit with both weapons half the time and combat rogues will be the only class spec with +%75 offhand weapon damage mod on it.

i am pretty sure you are going to want 2 slow weapons in cataclysm for combat. if for nothing else, think of the burst damage from hitting someone and getting 2 procs at once (sinister strike + white main hand attack) that's potentially 2 main hand attacks and 3 offhand attacks = 5 attacks with slow weapons at full damage coefficient + any poison proccs: yikes!

I am not sure of that : it would have been much much easier to just normalize Combat Potency and Deadly Poisons procs. With just both these changes, slow/slow becomes much better than any other combinations. They did not...

And as for their math "mastery", I am sorry but they showed multiple times they did not know what they were doing with rogues : our DPS in Naxx, multiple bugs on HAT, the Fok stupidly overpowered buff in Ulduar then an even more stupid nerf when just removing the glyph was enough, the way they handled weapon swaping for poison procs and the hot nerf they did just after that.

[Annoying]

First:
Read This.
It provides fantastic insight.

Second:

it would have been much much easier to just normalize Combat Potency and Deadly Poisons procs.

I don't think they want us using slow offhands, they just want the speed of both weapons to matter much much less. MG in it's current iteration essentially nullifies the difference between MH weapon speeds, and nullifies the difference between OH weapon speeds -- but only to a certain extent. If you get much slower than 1.6 on the offhand, your combat potency suffers enough that MG and KS's slow offhand benefit won't keep up with how much energy you're losing. If your mainhand gets faster than 2.4, you'll lose enough special damage that MG procing more won't keep up with the damage lost. It's a rather elegant solution, at least in it's current iteration. How it scales with more mastery rating is TBD, but we'll find out once someone takes the sit-down time to effectively figure out what we're up against.