Since I'm overall super excited about this patch, I want to point this out as an aside:
We will essentially not have a cleave with this nerf. I assume this nerf will be reduced before live. I actually doubt it will even be worth pressing the button in this case.
If Blade Flurry is considered such an issue, why did it just come up now, with no warning, and with such a huge nerf? We only have one spec able to flurry as it is, and now you won't want to bring a rogue for a fight that requires it, instead of us being the best choice. World first guilds already ignore us on several fights as it is, taking away the one thing we are best at (and making us go from #1 to not even on the chart) is shocking.
---------- Post added 2012-12-22 at 05:23 AM ----------
1)- Is it possible they meant "25% less damage"? As in, striking for 75%? That would take us from clearly ahead of arms warriors to a bit ahead of them, and I don't see any nerfs to cleave. It seems shocking to take us from #1 to not on the list unless they were attempting to reduce other adjacent melee attackers, and they are not.
2)- "Begging for SimCraft" should likely be a bannable offense. Since it isn't- can someone who can configure SimCraft actually check, with the live version, whether this will be worthwhile at all? I mean, to press the button in the case of two targets at 100% uptime. I know how to run a sim... but I don't know how to say "run a sim with 20% less energy regeneration". If you can make that mod and run that sim, then you'll just be able to take the melee, sinister, revealing, mastery, and eviscerate attacks, divide by 4, and add to the existing to predict if it's even worth cleaving in a full uptime scenario. Given that in an actual raid you spend some time not actually getting your flurry strikes to hit (for instance, boss adjusts to tank, or enemy runs through), and because we don't have buttons that we can time like hybrid melee, I imagine we'd need a bit of leeway- but if the nerf goes live like this, will it even be worth pressing versus two target dummies?