Originally Posted by
Yvaelle
Originally Posted by Verain
Rogues actually did change a lot. Before you would run sub, and the following things were true:
Ambush crit +45% of the time.
Backstab crit +30% of the time.
Backstab crits refund energy.
Blind two minute cooldown, now three.
Vanish two minute cooldown, now three.
Cloak 90 second cooldown, now teo minutes.
Used to be able to prep into second smokebomb, and second shadowstep to get a kill. Prep no longer resets bomb, and step and prep are exclusive.
While second bomb was OP as shit, removing it is a massive uncompensated nerf.
A prep rogue can no longer step redirect kidney, or step gouge. These were pro rogue things that I made use of.
A prep rogue can no longer step kick or step charge, pro rogue things I did not do.
Backstab no longer has 20% extra critical damage.
Backstab and hemo damage rolled into eviscerate. While this change is cool, remember that rogues in pvp use finishers on kidney shot, recuperate slice and dice, and rupture.
Sub rogues have to rupture. Previously our hemo granted a damage bonus, now it is a weak finisher not otherwise worth casting, but it is still madatory or we lose like a fifth of our damage. This also shits all over target swaps, where we essentially have about -60 energy compared to before: it is the worst pvp change possible. GC said at the time that he was aware there were pvp issues, and that the change was happening for pve, and that buffs eould happen. There have been literally 0 rogue buffs since that point in beta, only nerfs.
A sub rogue used to kidney, evis, and recup. Now add rupture and slice, as our energy regen was moved to slice from recup, and the above mentioned rupture change, and then remember that evis went up in damage while builders went down and notice the huge discrepancy when you remember that we now have less finishers and less combo points AND weak builders.
Rogues no longer gain 20% healing recieved (cats can still).
Rogues no longer take 6% less damage during recup, in addition to recup costing so much more relatively.
Recup nerfed even with the glyph
Shiv redesign has benefits, but lowers rogue control significantly.
---<<< CRIPPLE DOWN TO 50% FROM 70% >>---
These are rogue nerfs. They all hurt a lot. Your assessment about other classes gaining wild buffs is true, but the rogue changes have been devastating in pvp.
The cripple change is shocking. The 70% snare was our reason for having poor mobility- now it gets taken away PLUS a huge mobility nerf?
Now obviously as a lifetime rogue main, he's a bit biased - but that's actually a pretty big list of nerfs that as he points out, when taken in aggregate, explain a lot more of why rogues suddenly went from overpowered last season to terrible this season than the loss of legendaries and vial explain.
The rogue legendary proc last season wasn't very effective in pvp - it took over a minute of up-time to build up 30+ stacks at which point it became possible for the legendary to proc (but it may not proc until up to 2 minutes / 50 stacks if you weren't lucky), once procced you spam some eviscerates - but spamming eviscerate was what Subtlety did anyways. The proc was weakest for the only really competitive rogue spec last season (Subtlety). CC'ing the rogue for like (10 or 15 seconds, but in either case a proper CC train always did it) would reset their stacks, so against any RLS or RMP or the like (warlocks, mages) where a CC chain is always a succession of fears to fears to fears (or polys to polys to polys), you never saw the legendary even proc: without the proc the weapons themselves had stats equivalent to heroic deathwing weapons (of which, heroic gurthalak was the strongest weapon of the expansion by far).
The real problem was that rogues were just too strong by the end of the season (they scale well every expansion but start out weak as a consequence, as some people already mentioned), and Vial - even after the significant nerf - was still way too good (so were Cunning and Fetish). Combined with strong seasons for mages, affliction locks and disc priests - rogues were in high demand for RMP's and RLS's (and as a result, last season consisted of RMPs and RLS's overwhelmingly).