Rogue level 90 Talent preview

[Pikapika]

It's not that rogues aren't flashy, it's that our talent choices are miserable and the lines between our specs are getting pretty blurred in a bad way.

[Deleted]

Thinking back to a little game called Maplestory, their version of rogues were able to: Create a double ganger who'd mimic the rogues moves

Ah yes, that's what I've always wanted Shadow Dance to look like. Actually the WoW trading card game's image on the Shadow Dance card looks exactly like what I wanted it to look like in-game.



That, that looks freakin' awesome. But oh well.

[Deleted]

Rouge's (yes I'm spelling it like that), will have a thing that will make people wish they was playing a rogue, Glyph of Pick Pocket. Yes, it may just be "a gimmick", but I can guess that people will level them just for that. Look at the amount of people that had the iron drawf thing in Wrath.

Anyway, I'm sure that the whole mantra for Rogues is in, quick kill, out. Having something that screams "Rogue here" seems wrong.

[Verain]

Sigh. Ok, if you are gonna say rogue animations are fine, then just open your brain for a second.

We'll look at killing spree.The animation here is simply:

The rogue appears behind the target. Then again a couple more times.

THAT IS IT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKOmX4oDAUE

Now, this is by the same company, with a class with some similarities, and a move with a very similar description AND EFFECT. In this move, the monk essentially assaults from tiny light portals with his fists, pretty much locked in attack pose. Notice how awesome that move looks, whereas with killing spree it looks like the rogue gained a special sound effect for lagging.

Another thing to note is that the rogue has the exact same attack effects as every other melee class. This was more excusable in a pre-monk environment- the monk has special animations for tons of stuff. Meanwhile, the other melee classes actually have something to go along with their attacks in many cases, because said attacks are spells. This animation philosophy SHOULD LOGICALLY actually have a different effect for some of the rogue attacks, but instead, no. That's not a case of flash, that's a case of, I assume, they don't bother. Kidney shot could, for instance, feature a special attack on the vitals, right?

[Deleted]

Ah yes, that's what I've always wanted Shadow Dance to look like. Actually the WoW trading card game's image on the Shadow Dance card looks exactly like what I wanted it to look like in-game.



That, that looks freakin' awesome. But oh well.

Indeed, and it's just so much more interesting than "You have the attacks you normally don't have." Needless to say, looks much better as well.

[noralya]

Indeed, lvl90 talents make me sad Even more when you see what priests get for example.

[redderz1]

Rogue lvl 90 talents are nothing short of Insulting.

"oh btw rogues, were gonna nerf half your abilities, make you chose between stuff thats baseline now, nerf all your cooldowns and gimp your damage into a clunky rotation....oh and as a little extra treat...were gonna make you choose between 3 lvl 90 talents that other classes get as baseline"

"and if you dont mind.....please ignore all the amazing new spells given to other classes"

[Coldkil]

I like how most of he people here are spewing things about talents they haven't had the possibility to test.

About animations: well the only thing that needed animation was shuriken toss and what we got? A SHURIKEN TOSS. Oh my god the sky is falling. If i wanted to play as a christmas tree i would have rolled a paladin.

About mechanics: yeah, mechanics are being very stale for a while. But you know what's the reason - everything about rogues is tied to energy and combo points. A complete rework of the class would probably break up everything and we would need to be fixed/tweaked again and again and again. The less changes we have, that menas the more balanced/fine we are. Even Blizzard said it, it's not that good to bring chaos in something that already works fine.

About lvl90 talents: in PvP they all seem odd tbh, i would take versatility any time. In PvE, it all depends on the fights - heavy switching favors versatility, many flying phases favor ST. Anticipation is all-around good, since we can manage to do perfect cycles.

[Mafic]

I like how most of he people here are spewing things about talents they haven't had the possibility to test.

In fairness the animations of the 90 talents are available for all to see.

Shadow dance in MoP?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtosS...ature=youtu.be

[Deleted]

I like how most of he people here are spewing things about talents they haven't had the possibility to test.

About animations: well the only thing that needed animation was shuriken toss and what we got? A SHURIKEN TOSS. Oh my god the sky is falling. If i wanted to play as a christmas tree i would have rolled a paladin.

About mechanics: yeah, mechanics are being very stale for a while. But you know what's the reason - everything about rogues is tied to energy and combo points. A complete rework of the class would probably break up everything and we would need to be fixed/tweaked again and again and again. The less changes we have, that menas the more balanced/fine we are. Even Blizzard said it, it's not that good to bring chaos in something that already works fine.

About lvl90 talents: in PvP they all seem odd tbh, i would take versatility any time. In PvE, it all depends on the fights - heavy switching favors versatility, many flying phases favor ST. Anticipation is all-around good, since we can manage to do perfect cycles.

Our tree is insultingly stale. I'll go through the complete thing if I have to...

Tier 1: Nigh useless in PVE; Slight usefulness in PVP. This tier is just boring and frankly, somewhat bad. No one will take Nightstalker because it's just useless. We're talking a 5% speed increase, if I'm not mistaken. Seeing as we now have the passive 15% movement speed increase that doesn't stack with other effects. This means we have 2 viable skills to choose from in Tier 1. The other two, as mentioned, have very minor to no effect in PVE and some slight QoL usage in PVP.
Overall verdict: We only have 2 skills with some usefulness. Disappointing.

Tier 2: This is bullshit. We got to choose between 2 skills that are already baseline and 1 of them should not even be there! Deadly Throw has no place in this tier and its presence creates one of the major issues I have with our tree; The illusion of choice. Taking Deadly Throw means that a talent choice down the line is already predetermined to be picked. Deadly Throw without Shuriken Toss is worthless and vice versa. And the other 2 talents, once again, don't give us much bang for the buck. Combat Readiness shares cooldown with Cloak, making it less desirable and Nerve Strike... Is just kinda meh.
Overall verdict: Illusion of choice introduced, forces choices down the line. 2 skills are already baseline, showing a lack of creativeness. Usefulness of the skills are somewhere on the level of Tier 1; nigh useless.

Tier 3: Some interesting skills are introduced. Overall a rather great tier. However, the illusion of choice continues. Picking the poison here gimps your choices down the line.
Overall verdict: Great tier, good choices, interesting skills... However, choices are being limited once again.

Tier 4: The infamous Prep vs Step tier... This one is, again, just oozing with the lack of creativity. We have 2 baseline skills on the same tier, seemingly just for the sake of being on the same tier... And it's a boring tier as well. Shadow Step has too long a cooldown to be of any real use in PVE or PVP, both PVE and PVP are still going to favor Prep(seeing as it does increase dps for Sub), and the movement speed one has too high an energy cost to be viable.
Overall verdict: Clearly just a tier to spite rogues and force us to make "a difficult choice". Because they couldn't think of any other way of doing that than to take our current skills and force us to choose between them... Just a boring and uncreative tier.

Tier 5: This tier is gimped by tier 3. We only have 2 real choices here. (Or 2 choices in tier 3) And between those 2, 1 of them should be a glyph or baseline. I really don't understand why Dirty Tricks hasn't been made baseline yet. Gouge is useless without it. Especially now that Sub is required to keep a bleed on its target. But it's just too weak a talent compared to Deadly Brew, which is an awesome talent. Another tier ruined by the illusion of choice and lack of creativity regarding the talents.
Overall verdict: One good talent, one talent is out of commission, one talent is too weak to be one.

Tier 6: The "rule breakers".

Shuriken Toss: Here's the problem with Shuriken Toss. It doesn't actually break any rules without Deadly Throw. These 2 skills are separated, yet both are needed to serve their purpose; to dps from a distance. Taking one without the other is a fruitless endeavor and it frankly doesn't feel strong enough to be a level 90 talent. First of all, it should be combined with Deadly Throw to create a real "rule breaking" talent. And second, it should be moved from the final tier to some other tier. Maybe Tier 5 instead of Dirty Tricks. As it stands it doesn't deserve a spot on the final tier.

Versatility: I'll let this one pass. If they truly want to stick to their archaic idea of "building combo points and unleashing the finisher" then this makes a rather fine talent. It's still not powerful enough to be a final tier talent though, it's a simple utility talent. Preparation and Versatility should most definitely share a tier. Why they're separated is simply because the devs are forcing "hard choices" down on us too hard. These 2 skills would make sense to throw on the same tier. Throwing Prep into the "movement"-tier is just retarded. It has no place in there.

Anticipation: This is far from powerful enough to make a final tier talent. Nor is it that useful. Saving 10 combo points then using 2 finishers is no different than saving 5 combo points twice and using 2 finishers separately. Realistically, this talent will save you the one left over combo point from your Revealing Strike proc, and vice versa. That's simply pathetic.... This is Ruthlessness(!!!) It's been perverted and distorted and is no longer simply passive. The only spec that might make use of it is Sub in PVE, if we have downtime on the boss we might be able to build combo points via Honor Among Thieves. That's the only possible use it has, and its limited to one spec...! Amazingly bad talent, especially with our current Combo Point generation rate.

Overall verdict: 1 illusion of choice and weak talent, 1 actually useful but misplaced talent, 1 talent that shouldn't exist.


Overall verdict of the tree:
Every choice we can make in our tree is either predetermined, a "hard choice" for the sake of being a hard choice, rehashes/revamps of current abilities on Live, or band-aids on already establishes issues with our class that Blizz simply refuses to change due to design choice.

How or why do you exactly defend our tree?!

[Mafic]

I am actually on the beta and I can give some insight as to how these talents work in practice.

Tier 1: Nightstalker is straightforward speed increase. Shadow Focus really is good given how slow Rogue energy regen is in beta. Subterfuge is like a mini shadow dance where you can cheap shot + ambush/ garrote + ambush/garrote + cheap shot.

Verdict? Tier 1 is surprisingly a strong tier, and in fact more interesting than the final tier in my opinion. If they boost up Nighstalker I would be thoroughly happy with this set of talents.

Tier 2: Combat Readiness is no longer tied to CloS so that is a plus and then Deadly Throw. In my opinion I think most Rogues will take Nerve Strike. It is that good as a leveling talent, for PVP, and possibly other PVE endeavors. This tier needs work for sure.

Tier 3: Elusiveness and Leeching Poison essentially are superior options over Combat Readiness. Tried it out on beta and Elusiveness is far more versatile at reducing incoming damage from many sources without stacks being built up. Leeching Poison is underrated right now. Second best tier in the Rogue tree.

Tier 4: Prep, S-Step, BoS are all interesting options but are very dependent on what other choices you take. Not a weak tier, but not that strong either.

Tier 5: Deadly Brew, Dirty Tricks and Paralytic are interesting but it is pretty much a two horse race. Dirty Tricks isn't a must have since the Glyph of Blind exists, so Deadly Brew it is! Leeching Poison benefits the most with Deadly Brew (Shuriken Toss, FoK, etc).

Final tier: Beat to death lol.

Conclusions?

The final rogue tier is very weak, while the other tiers are moderately strong or average. But tier 1 really makes an impact and changes how Rogues play mechanically. Unfortunately Combat Rogues don't have much of a reason to open from stealth, but Shadow Focus makes things interesting even for Combat. Why? Combat's regen is just as bad as the other two specs, so this tier will surprise people.

Is it odd that the first tier brings more flavor than the final tier a.k.a the rulebreakers? Yeah.

Subterfuge and Shadow focus in my opinion are better rule breakers. :P

[Verain]

Anticipation: This is far from powerful enough to make a final tier talent.

Since your post seems like it is talking about pve and pvp, I will disagree here. This is a significant boost in pve. Even in pvp, it allows us to kidney into damage in a superior way than on live.

PvE, every single spec will gain from this. Combat less than sub less than assassination, which gains the powerful ability to run 5 point finishers. Assassination on live does 4+ envenom. Here's why that is the best of three bad solutions:

3+ envenom: In this world, you never lose a single combo point. To run this, simply press envenom when you have three or more combo points. If you have two combo points, press mutilate, and you'll gain 2-3 combo points, landing at four or five. If you are at one combo point, press mutilate, ending at three or four. In both of those cases, you just press envenom next. This sucks because three point envenoms are weak.

4+ envenom: This ends up being the most damage on live. If you have 1-2 combo points you press mutilate, landing at three to five, and you finish if you have four or more. If you have 3 combo points you press mutilate, landing at five and likely wasting one (you actually earned six if either of the strikes finish). This sucks because four point envenoms are weaker than five, but this is still the best damage available on live.

5 envenom: This costs you way too many combo points. The way this works is, you mutilate up to five, then envenom. While you get the best possible envenom, the lost combo points from pressing mutilate at 3 and critting (up to 1), the guaranteed loss of one combo point and maybe a second from pressing mutilate at 4 (and critting in some casess), add up to this being bad.

Now in mop, you'll just run 5 envenom. That's FAR superior to live. Granted, assassination will likely be balanced around this, and be useless without it, but we'll see.

Every choice we can make in our tree is either predetermined, a "hard choice" for the sake of being a hard choice, rehashes/revamps of current abilities on Live, or band-aids on already establishes issues with our class that Blizz simply refuses to change due to design choice.

Regretfully, I am in agreement with your overall feeling.

[Wow]

Since your post seems like it is talking about pve and pvp, I will disagree here. This is a significant boost in pve. Even in pvp, it allows us to kidney into damage in a superior way than on live.

We don't have the cp generation for that to happen and be useful in pvp on beta.

[bewbew]

The problem with rogue talents, in general, is that they make no bloody sense.

While other classes have very focused talent trees where each tier corresponds to a category ("This tier is for mobility, this tier is survivability, this tier is for major offensive cooldowns"), rogue tree is just a huge mess. Preparation is not a mobility-only talent - it boosts escaping, but it also boosts capability to stay offensive (by 2 cloaks) and to turtle up (with 2 sprints and 2 cloaks) even without escaping (which is the mobility part).

The defensive tier only provides one significant survivability cooldown (Cheat Death). Leeching poison is by no means a defensive cooldown, it's passive healing, and Feint is a more sustained way to reduce damage.

And then you have the Deadly Throw, Nerve Strike, Combat Readines tier. What is this tier about? You have a ranged interrupt and a slow, a debuff after cheap and kidney, and a major defensive cooldown in the same line. What the hell do these have in common? Nothing. What is the point of this talent tier? I don't get it.

Deadly Brew, Paralytic Poison and Dirty Tricks line also makes no sense. 2 are poison talents, but one is a Blind and Gouge talent. Also, poison talents that are in different tiers directly impact one another, as you can't use them at the same time regardless of being able to pick em up.

Poisons should be a single tier, with Paralytic, Leeching and Deadly Brew, as a focused Tier on that (Poisons).

The last tier could be named a "Combo point" tier, but it's a mess at that, and it's very underwhelming for being the very last tier.

[Verain]

Poisons should be a single tier, with Paralytic, Leeching and Deadly Brew, as a focused Tier on that (Poisons).

I think you could have a tier with three poisons just fine.
The problem is that if you put all paralytic, leeching, and deadly brew on the same tier, what you are really doing is saying this:
-> Pick me for paralytic and no snare
-> Pick me for leeching and no snare
-> Pick me for mind numbing and a snare

The real issue is that baseline we only have two "utility poisons". One is a mediocre snare, the other is a casting snare. Every rogue you fight will have one of these setups for utility poisons currently:

Crippling Poison only (this will be pretty common)
Crippling with Mind Numbing (this will also be pretty common)
Crippling with Leeching (depending on how the heal works out, we might see some of this, but I have my doubts)
Paralytic Poison only (special comps only, and expect them to run the eviscerate snare glyph)

That's not a large amount of utility, you know?

The last tier could be named a "Combo point" tier, but it's a mess at that, and it's very underwhelming for being the very last tier.

Calling it the "combo point" tier explains a LOT about it, actually.

I actually think that the final tier is ok. Part of it depends on if the devs do all their rogue testing with rogues having anticipation in pve (that would take the tier out of pve, and I suspect they might do this), but in pvp at least these are real choices. Plus, shuriken throw looks great.

[Coldkil]

How or why do you exactly defend our tree?!

Because our talent trees nowadays are just a compilation of passive bonuses and some CDs which are pretty much all mandatory. We don't need new talents, we already have everything we need.

We need new abilities to use, like Crimson Tempest or Shadow Blades.

Why not putting them as talents instead of these "boring" ones? Because it will all be back to "get the ones that do 1.874% damage".

This way you can freely choose between them. The illusion of choice you are painting is actually based on assumptions and on how we play the class now.

Edit: apart the frequent forum visitors ( many of them have a very deep insight on the class), the only one coming with good posts (both in positive and negative ways, imho are wow and Verain, even if they are a little bit too much towards the PvP side.

I like the discussions with these two.

[Deleted]

Because our talent trees nowadays are just a compilation of passive bonuses and some CDs which are pretty much all mandatory. We don't need new talents, we already have everything we need.

We need new abilities to use, like Crimson Tempest or Shadow Blades.

Why not putting them as talents instead of these "boring" ones? Because it will all be back to "get the ones that do 1.874% damage".

This way you can freely choose between them. The illusion of choice you are painting is actually based on assumptions and on how we play the class now.

Edit: apart the frequent forum visitors ( many of them have a very deep insight on the class), the only one coming with good posts (both in positive and negative ways, imho are wow and Verain, even if they are a little bit too much towards the PvP side.

I like the discussions with these two.

And contrary to them, I'm leaning more to the PVE side of things, but I assume that's rather apparent by the content of my posts. That said...

I have no idea what you mean with:
"Because our talent trees nowadays are just a compilation of passive bonuses and some CDs which are pretty much all mandatory."

That seems completely irrelevant to me. No one is speaking of the Cata-tree. The change from the "mandatory 20% damage"-tree to the "choose what you like"-tree is a change I welcome with open arms. What the entirety of my previous post encompassed was the content of our new tree. The idea for the tree is solid; The execution is not. (For reasons I mentioned in my previous post) The tree is very strangely designed, as pointed out by bewbew above, and the talents themselves are rather underwhelming in almost every tier.

And the "Illusion of choice"-argument is inarguable. It's a fact. You have no reason to pick 2 non-lethal poisons for talents. You have no reason to pick Shuriken Toss without Deadly Throw. These are "mandatory" picks, should you pick one of the relevant talents. You either exclude one talent because of a previous choice or you guarantee one.

Make no mistake; I don't want a "Increases damage by 20%" talent either.
I simply want interesting abilities that can change some numbers or allow for something extraordinary to happen. I don't want Quality of Life talents on the last damn tier. You have 5 tiers prior to the last tier you can dedicate to QoL abilities.

Deadly clam:
You enter a battle trance, causing your next 3 heroic strike or cleave to cost no rage and cause 50% extra damage. Last 15 seconds.
Bloodbath:
You carve your opponent with your weapons. For the next 12 seconds, your special attacks cause the target to bleed for an additional 30% damage over 6 seconds
Storm bolt:
Hurls your weapon at an enemy causing 50% weapon damage and stunning the target for 3 seconds. Deals an additional 300% weapon damage to targets that are permanently immume to stuns.

Look at those warrior talents!!!
Those are amazing level 90 talents. Imagine every Sinister Strike leaving a bleed effect. Or the next 3 eviscerates doing 50% more damage and costing no combo points. A ranged stun/massive damaging single target spell. That's brilliance... Now give us some of that creativity and I'll shut up.

[conjohnson6]

I definitely agree on rogues needing new abilities. Some of our talents was just a rehash.

[Verain]

And contrary to them, I'm leaning more to the PVE side of things, but I assume that's rather apparent by the content of my posts.

I like pve and pvp both a great deal, but I will say that the talent tree is designed almost entirely with pvp in mind.

From a straight pve perspective:

Tier 1: One of these talents does damage once per fight. You take that talent in pve- you have no choice in pve.
Tier 2: None of these talents would have any use anywhere in dragon soul, and in firelands the only place would be that dumb bird fight. The "utility" offered here is narrow: combat readiness is terrible in a raid, deadly throw + interrupt could be useful on bosses where you can gimp your damage because your guild is too poor to afford a shaman or a second kicker, and nerve strike would help if a stunnable opponent does a burst of damage that somehow isn't best fixed by burning it down or just chaining a longer set of controls into it. This is a pvp tier- take what you want, you won't use it.
Tier 3: This survival tier is the only legit tier for pve. Each of these three options offers something in pve. Elusiveness is probably the loser in most cases, but you'll definitely have a use for cheat death at some point, and leeching poison as well.
Tier 4: This tier offers a small amount of choice. If you are sub and the fight has no movement, prep will get you an additional find weakness phase. Ghostcrawler managed to post that they were gonna blow this up if they could, by the way. You basically get to choose prep for a bit of survival, or shadowstep. Burst of speed might be useful if a boss constantly snares and kites, but just stack shadow priests on that fight :/
Tier 5: None of these work in pve. If some do work on a fight, you could consider them, for sure.
Tier 6: It will be a rare fight that will favor versatility over anticpation, and that will be a fight where rogues are terrible anyway.


So your choices in pve:

1) Leeching, cheat death, or elusiveness?
2)- Prep or shadowstep?

So I think any talent tree discussion mostly has to deal with environment with a richer and more "interactable" environment than a raid- if you like to sneak to the enemy flag in strand of the ancients and tag it the moment the door drops, nightstalker and shadowstep are going to do that, and a rogue without those two won't be nearly as good at that. Most of the trees offer things that just don't help a raid win.

Deadly clam:

I think we can all agree that Deadly Clam would definitely be the best possible talent :P


In seriousness, once the numbers guys are out, the best possible scenario is that warriors "have to" do one the following:

1)- Stormbolt if the boss needs burst, if not you take Bloodbath, which you use on cooldown.
2)- Stormbolt if the boss needs burst, and if not you take Deadly Calm, which you use on cooldown.
3)- Stormbolt if the boss needs burst, and then if you are arms you take Bloodbath and stack it with whirlwind over the aoe part, and if there is no aoe part or only a cleave part, then you take deadly calm.
4)...
...
15)...

One of these methods of describing which talent to take will be correct, pending finalization, gear, and numbers. A warrior who takes storm bolt on fight X either made the wrong or right choice. I would argue that this is not the best design either, and keeping our choices out of pve has advantages as well...

That being said, I like it when different abilities are better at different things. For instance, the hunter tier with murder of crows will likely change up what is ideal depending on the fight, just as the warrior tier probably will. I like changing specs and gear to correctly solve an encounter, but some people don't like that.

[Deleted]

One of these methods of describing which talent to take will be correct, pending finalization, gear, and numbers. A warrior who takes storm bolt on fight X either made the wrong or right choice. I would argue that this is not the best design either, and keeping our choices out of pve has advantages as well...

That being said, I like it when different abilities are better at different things. For instance, the hunter tier with murder of crows will likely change up what is ideal depending on the fight, just as the warrior tier probably will. I like changing specs and gear to correctly solve an encounter, but some people don't like that.

But wasn't that the entire purpose of the talent-system change? To not just pick the best number increase, but to choose between abilities which you deemed more appropriate for the oncoming fight? You got a fight that needs burst, you go with your burst build, a fight that needs sustain you go with the sustain build, etc...

Instead, what we're presented is a very one-sided talent tree that offers some versatility and QoL changes to PVP and offers next to nothing PVE-wise.

I'd like to give you my thoughts on what the PVE tree would look like. You missed out on some possibilities:

Tier 1: This is a given. Shadow Focus is the only one viable.
Tier 2: You overlooked the Atramedes fight. Assuming we'll have some more fights in a similar manner both Deadly Throw + Shuriken Toss would become rather impressive talents.
Tier 3: Leeching for some sustained healing (e.g. Ultraxion). Cheat Death for fights with heavy burst like Warmaster. Elusiveness would've been FANTASTIC if we actually had it for Baleroc...
Tier 4: Sub will probably take Prep for the extra stealth damage boost. Other than that, there's nothing of any particular value. The speed boost could potentially be used on Hagaara HC.
Tier 5: Deadly Brew, hands down.
Tier 6: Shuriken Toss has only had one fight in 3 tiers which it could've beeen viable for, which is pretty sad... Versatility will pretty much be the mandatory skill to have, with the exception of Tank n' Spank fights like Ultraxion, in which it doesn't have any value at all. Toss will only be used for gimmicky fights like Atramedes, in which we'll still perform rather poorly due to the low damage output of the Toss itself.

So all in all: We get to choose between some survivability, movement skill of our choice, and depending on the fight, the choice between Versatility or Anticipation. That's rather limited... :/