Rogue level 90 Talent preview

[Deleted]

Well, in that case it just seems like a retarded "fix" for a somewhat serious problem. They're not addressing the actual issue, but just working around it.
The obvious fix is obvious - Remove the positional requirement. It's not actually needed and is entirely pointless. Not to mention unfair. The DK community would cry out in anguish if Obliterate would require you to be behind a target. Why should rogues and ferals be hindered by it if no one else is?

This strengthens my previous suggestion:
- Combine Backstab and Hemo into a CP generator that doesn't have a positional req. Does Backstabs damage and brings the 1 min. bleed-debuff from Hemo.
- Change SV. If Rupture is present on the target, SV will convert 30% of the damage from your abilities into a bleed on the target.

The numbers aren't set in stone, of course... But you get the general gist of the idea. Sounds a lot better to me than the current version.

I both agree and disagree with you.

Back when I mained a Feral me and the Feral community (which back then was quite small) always cried and hoped for Shred to remove it's positional requirement. It's completely unfair Ferals are gimped on any boss like Ultraxion with no alternative besides tanking. You would either have a crappy DPSer or a tank who doesn't want to tank, neither are very attractive for a raid leader and creates weird situations in raids. Thankfully in Cataclysm they addressed this issue by improving the damage from Mangle instead.

Removing the positional requirement on Backstab would feel very wrong from a lore perspective. You can stab people in the back from their front? Does this mean your Rogue will walk up to your opponent, give them a friendly hug, and then stab a dagger in their back? It just feels wrong.
From a gameplay perspective removing the positional requirement would be a big quality of life change. It would not make Rogues feel like they need to go one of the three specs for fights like Ultraxion. But at the same time, we have a choice whether we want to play a spec that requires the use of Backstab or not. It would also remove quite a bit of skill from the PvPers out there if we could just Backstab whenever we wanted to. I have very mixed feelings about that, lore aside it would be amazing but at the same time will dumb down the class even more.

I don't know. If they come up with another boss like Ultraxion I will most likely cry myself to sleep at night if they don't change it. But since Dispatch* doesn't have a positional requirement and Backstab will become a Subtlety-only ability I don't think I really mind.

*if anyone is unaware of it, Dispatch is Assassination's replacer for Backstab in MoP.

[Verain]

It's completely unfair Ferals are gimped on any boss like Ultraxion with no alternative besides tanking.

It's still more fair for one of your specs to have only one option on a boss than one of our specs to have zero option on a boss. Hell, you even have a ranged spec!

Or as a reminder: Feral = Spec, Druid = Class.

Thankfully in Cataclysm they addressed this issue by improving the damage from Mangle instead.

I definitely think that the positional guys need serious rewards for being so limiting. The current model is mostly acceptable, but on an assless boss like Ultrax, sub performs fractionally as well at it "should". However, given how strong sub is single target, I'm ok with this tradeoff.

---------- Post added 2012-06-13 at 08:26 PM ----------

The only time Anticipation really does anything for me is while shadowblades is up and thats 12sec per 3mins. For assassination its hard to say if it will even be worth it going to 5 from 4 because of how long it takes to get another mutilate off lowering envenom uptime.

It should be worth doing five point finishers man, one way or another. Remember that going to five combo points will overflow- lets say on live you go to 4, you envenom, then you mutilate to 3 and then mutilate to 5 (aka, we aren't losing combo points), then envenom, then mutilate and are at, say, 2. With anticipation and those same rolls, you go to 4, you mutilate to 5+2, you envenom, you mutilate and are at 5, you envenom, you mutilate and are at 2, you mutilate and are at 4. Both situations here have two envenoms, and in the second case you only have one combo point left over. Yes, you'll have less total envenoms over the whole fight, but each one will be very powerful.
It COULD work out to not to that but... I doubt it?

The minor glyphs are somewhat meh.

I disagree here. I think we have pretty great minor glyphs. I mean, we have:

Less Falling Damage
Swirly Ball
Ninja-water-run
Faster Poisons
Become a giant dude
Killing Spree isn't "murder suicide" anymore

Those are great. Distract, and Pick Pocket aren't terrible either. I mean, which classes have way cooler minors? Normally minor glyphs have been one area where rogues sorta lead the pack.

more like a fad just like the "glowing orb" thingy

You won't think it's a fad in two years.

You can't kill the swirly
The swirly will live on
BC devs tried to kill the swirly
But they failed, as they were smitten to the ground

They won't do that. If they did, it'd become an obvious DPS increase, thus making it a mandatory glyph for any Combat rogue.

Would it? I mean, are we still flooded during AR?
I agree with almost all of the rest of the post this one comes from.

The SS glyph is a really bad piece of work, by the way. It should say something like:

When you are at or above 85 energy, your Sinister Strike costs X% more and does Y% more damage.

There, all fixed. Now it's still not worth blindly glyphing it, but it actually fixes the energy regeneration issue, and adds depth to combat pvp. Additionally, if you DO glyph it, you can play near the bottom of the energy bar and not be totally and completely gimped.

Faster poison application - Quality of Life change

This is a pvp buff, because you will sometimes want to change a poison, and poisons are kind of invest-y normally. Remember weapon swap won't fix stuff anymore, right? I would say this is better than "quality of life".

[Deleted]

It's still more fair for one of your specs to have only one option on a boss than one of our specs to have zero option on a boss. Hell, you even have a ranged spec!

Or as a reminder: Feral = Spec, Druid = Class.

In a bit of a rush so I stopped reading after the responses to my post. I'll give your full post a read in a few minutes but I just quickly wanted to respond to this.

Yes you are correct. However that ranged spec requires completely different gear. It doesn't make any sense to gear up the Feral in your raid with intellect gear instead of say, your Resto Druid or other intellect mainspec users just to make this Feral not suck on one boss in the tier. Of course when everyone has their gear and it would otherwise get disenchanted you might as well give it to the Feral, but in terms of progression in the first few weeks that would be a complete waste.

I suppose it's more or less my opinion, but my opinion is that it's unfair for Ferals to be gimped on certain fights because of Shred's positional requirement. Moreso than Rogues with Backstab since we have other options that requires nothing but a respec/reforge instead of a completely different playstyle and gearset.

But amen.
You play a Druid or a Rogue. Not a 'Feral Druid' or 'Balance Druid'. I completely agree that if you play a certain class, you need to be up to date with all your specs.

[Deleted]

I both agree and disagree with you.

Back when I mained a Feral me and the Feral community (which back then was quite small) always cried and hoped for Shred to remove it's positional requirement. It's completely unfair Ferals are gimped on any boss like Ultraxion with no alternative besides tanking. You would either have a crappy DPSer or a tank who doesn't want to tank, neither are very attractive for a raid leader and creates weird situations in raids. Thankfully in Cataclysm they addressed this issue by improving the damage from Mangle instead.

Removing the positional requirement on Backstab would feel very wrong from a lore perspective. You can stab people in the back from their front? Does this mean your Rogue will walk up to your opponent, give them a friendly hug, and then stab a dagger in their back? It just feels wrong.
From a gameplay perspective removing the positional requirement would be a big quality of life change. It would not make Rogues feel like they need to go one of the three specs for fights like Ultraxion. But at the same time, we have a choice whether we want to play a spec that requires the use of Backstab or not. It would also remove quite a bit of skill from the PvPers out there if we could just Backstab whenever we wanted to. I have very mixed feelings about that, lore aside it would be amazing but at the same time will dumb down the class even more.

I don't know. If they come up with another boss like Ultraxion I will most likely cry myself to sleep at night if they don't change it. But since Dispatch* doesn't have a positional requirement and Backstab will become a Subtlety-only ability I don't think I really mind.

*if anyone is unaware of it, Dispatch is Assassination's replacer for Backstab in MoP.

My bad for not clearing that up. When I said my imaginary new spell was to be a combination of Backstab and Hemo, I didn't mean for it to just be BACKSTAB + Hemo traits. It's a new skill that isn't called Backstab, and therefore isn't held back by definitions. Let's just call it it the Friendly Stab, seeing as it's much more user friendly than the current Backstab.

As a side note; Backstabbing is quite self-explanatory... But since when can people only be shredded from the back? Doesn't quite make sense. Have characters developed claw-resistant chest hair or something?

And I don't quite accept the "takes less skill"- argument. If rogues would have to juggle 14 buffs, an additional 5 debuffs, 2 weapon buffs, and their 6 burst cooldowns... SURE, they'd take quite a lot of skill to master. But would it be fair, compared to the other classes? Would it be fun? Would it work, gameplay wise? Most likely not. The fact that rogues had to learn this "skill" while no one else had to just affirms that it should be changed. Bring rogues down to everyone else's level. Not sure about you, but I'd accept that change in a heartbeat.

The current model doesn't make much sense either, if we speak about it figuratively. I mean, simply put: The concept is just retarded!
The simple fact that an enemy so much as looks at the rogue robs him of all his offensive capabilities...! That's ridiculous.

[Wow]

It should be worth doing five point finishers man, one way or another. Remember that going to five combo points will overflow- lets say on live you go to 4, you envenom, then you mutilate to 3 and then mutilate to 5 (aka, we aren't losing combo points), then envenom, then mutilate and are at, say, 2. With anticipation and those same rolls, you go to 4, you mutilate to 5+2, you envenom, you mutilate and are at 5, you envenom, you mutilate and are at 2, you mutilate and are at 4. Both situations here have two envenoms, and in the second case you only have one combo point left over. Yes, you'll have less total envenoms over the whole fight, but each one will be very powerful.
It COULD work out to not to that but... I doubt it?

You can take the time to keep posting here but not to get to 90? Try it out, Theres nothing powerful about envenom 4 or 5 cp at 90. The less envenom is of your overall dmg the less any of this matters.

[Verain]

You can take the time to keep posting here but not to get to 90? Try it out, Theres nothing powerful about envenom 4 or 5 cp at 90. The less envenom is of your overall dmg the less any of this matters.

Sorry, do I have to hit 90 on beta to have a valid opinion? And I'll point out hammering out a couple posts isn't anything close to taking the day off and levelling up in beta, only to find that, oh yea, Blizzard isn't don't with numbers yet.

5 point envenoms have always been substantially more powerful than 4 point envenoms, more than enough to make up for slight buff uptime. The only reason you don't mutilate to 5 on live right now is because the lost combo points would be terrible. Barring VERY powerful changes to the rogue class, a mutilate rogue with anticipation will run 5 point envenoms.

[Deleted]

Envenom's damage goes up with the same amount per combo point. In other words, a 5 combo point Envenom does the exact same damage as five 1 combo point Envenoms. So the statement that a 5 combo point Envenom does substantially more damage than a 4 combo point Envenom is not exactly true.

You could even make the argument that five 1 combo point Envenoms will help you do more damage in the end because that gives you a 10 second uptime on the Envenom buff, instead of one 5 combo point Envenom which gives you 6 seconds of uptime. But that would be illogical because you will lose procs from Mutilates and several other factors. In the end we can only wait and see how the numbers are being tweaked.

Not ignoring you Incineration, I'll respond again in the morning. Just a bit too tired to type out a decent post to respond to you >_<

[Deleted]

Not ignoring you Incineration, I'll respond again in the morning. Just a bit too tired to type out a decent post to respond to you >_<

...no hard feelings... At all... I'm watching you...

[Deleted]

Rogues are fine according to GC. So they must be fine, right?

[Wow]

Best class in the game no issues at all best gc post ever.............

What a fucking failure bs post that addressed nothing.

[Coldkil]

Best class in the game no issues at all best gc post ever.............

What a fucking failure bs post that addressed nothing.

I wouldn't have worded my opinion like that, but you got the idea.

[Verain]

Envenom's damage goes up with the same amount per combo point. In other words, a 5 combo point Envenom does the exact same damage as five 1 combo point Envenoms.

A 5 CP envenom costs 10 energy. 5 1 CP envenoms cost 150 energy. Comparing those two doesn't even make sense.

So yes, a 5 CP envenom deals substantially more damage than a 4 point one, and if you have anticipation barring some major change, you will only run 5 CP envenoms ever, no matter how little energy regen you have. In fact, the LESS regen you have, the more you want that anticipation when you are single targetting.

---------- Post added 2012-06-14 at 08:54 AM ----------

I also think GC will get more slack than he deserves for his "best designed class" line. I mean, I can see it now, and the criticism, while it will be missing the point, won't be entirely off the mark:

"We're designed so well that no one wants us for raids."
"We're designed so well that we almost match one half a druid tree."

Etc.

I think GC is dropping the ball on pures, rogues most of all, when it comes to having specialized and cool specs. I do think that we ARE the best designed class in the way HE means it though- but that's obviously not what gets assess in the seats, so to speak.

Like, ok, adding bandit's guile? That was a pretty huge change. But it ended up being a massive ball and chain more than a cool way to optimize cooldowns, and I think the haste scaling mostly did that, but the design was bad. Plus, the move was half assed- this was a resource, and the only thing we got to run it was a goddamned colored ZG bijou buff. Hell, even the one addon that works with the move is kind of ghetto. The UI doesn't even show you how many effing stacks you have!

Do I like Bandit's Guile? Honestly, sort of. I feel strong when I time stuff with it, when that matters. But normally, that's just the first wave of cooldowns, and then the last you can wait for red on- in the middle, you normally want to use them as they come off cooldown. It also hurts us a lot in pvp, should we run that as combat. I think a bit more development on bandit's guile- maybe we should live in green by default, and if you stay out of combat you eventually get to green insight. Or maybe if we had a move that scooted us forward one whole bandit's guile, useable under some circumstances, or a move to lengthen red, or something.

[Deleted]

A 5 CP envenom costs 10 energy. 5 1 CP envenoms cost 150 energy. Comparing those two doesn't even make sense.

So yes, a 5 CP envenom deals substantially more damage than a 4 point one, and if you have anticipation barring some major change, you will only run 5 CP envenoms ever, no matter how little energy regen you have. In fact, the LESS regen you have, the more you want that anticipation when you are single targetting.

You only read half my post. The actual damage is 100% the same, but I followed that up right away that due to several factors (energy cost for example) it would be illogical to use five 1 combo point Envenoms. 'Substantially' is just way too big of a word at this point considering you are also 'substantially' lowering your Envenom uptime. Again at the end of the day theory crafting has no use at this point. When the numbers are fully tweaked, only then we can see how much Anticipation really adds to Assassination's rotation. It's still looking like the strongest talent at the moment but that's mainly because the other two talents don't add much.

As a side note; Backstabbing is quite self-explanatory... But since when can people only be shredded from the back? Doesn't quite make sense. Have characters developed claw-resistant chest hair or something?

And I don't quite accept the "takes less skill"- argument. If rogues would have to juggle 14 buffs, an additional 5 debuffs, 2 weapon buffs, and their 6 burst cooldowns... SURE, they'd take quite a lot of skill to master. But would it be fair, compared to the other classes? Would it be fun? Would it work, gameplay wise? Most likely not. The fact that rogues had to learn this "skill" while no one else had to just affirms that it should be changed. Bring rogues down to everyone else's level. Not sure about you, but I'd accept that change in a heartbeat.

The current model doesn't make much sense either, if we speak about it figuratively. I mean, simply put: The concept is just retarded!
The simple fact that an enemy so much as looks at the rogue robs him of all his offensive capabilities...! That's ridiculous.

Exactly, and Mangle is only really being used once every 15-60 seconds (was changed over Wrath's time) to apply the extra bleed damage taken debuff. Up to this day I still don't understand the whole design choice behind Shred.

The skill part was mainly meant for the PvPers. I should have really specifically mentioned that I suppose, if everyone can just Backstab with the high crit chance Rogues would become a lot more easy to play in PvP and their damage output would go up a tad bit. I can only see Blizzard's next step being some overal damage nerfs to Rogues. Then again, in MoP the extra crit chance is being removed so I wouldn't exactly care if they remove the positional requirement in MoP.

I think we just both have a different opinion on this subject.

[Verain]

Again at the end of the day theory crafting has no use at this point.

When the other options are "throw" and "move your combo points around", then YES IT DOES.

I can predict FIRMLY that assassination will experience a dps increase on any single target fight. No, I can't tell you exactly how much, but generally the fact that envenom buff uptime scales with 1+combo points won't matter, that we can pretty much guess at with some high amount of confidence, and running 5 envenom will be more damage than 4+ envenom. Hell even 4+ envenom wastes combo points when you crit muti at 3.

We don't need the numbers fully tweaked to see how much Anticipation really adds. All we need to know is that it adds more than the other options, so unless the fight involves a lot of target swap, you'll want Anticipation for sure as Assassination (and likely as all the specs, but A will gain the most because it is the most brazen about disposing of combo points and running 4 point finishers).

The skill part was mainly meant for the PvPers. I should have really specifically mentioned that I suppose, if everyone can just Backstab with the high crit chance Rogues would become a lot more easy to play in PvP and their damage output would go up a tad bit. I can only see Blizzard's next step being some overal damage nerfs to Rogues. Then again, in MoP the extra crit chance is being removed so I wouldn't exactly care if they remove the positional requirement in MoP.

You can definitely justify positional attacks in pvp. For instance, a spec can be tweaked a bit higher in pvp in ways that aren't damage, if the damage that they do is conditional. However, I don't think that scales well into MOP. I mean, look at the kits you get when you pick them:

C:
-Your CP generator is very weak compared to other rogue specs, so you require more uptime to be minimally effective.
+You have an extra snare break and damage device in killing spree, that the other specs lack
-You have no rotational way of escaping armor.
+You can build to a longer stun with revealing strike.
+You only need to manage slice and dice in a sustained encounter: rupture can be ignored.
-You require ramp up with bandit's guile, much harder than in pve, and will often lose a massive chunk of red to CCs or small cooldowns that more than counter it.
+Bandit's Guile's state is not visible to the enemy.
+Adrenaline Rush is powerful
-Adrenaline Rush is normally mostly mitigated by CC- unlike most damage cooldowns, AR actually increases resources over a long period, so a well timed CC mostly eliminates the entire moves

A:
+Your finisher ignores armor. It also scales well with mastery, which may or may not be a good stat for you (it is on live)
+Maintaining slice and dice is pretty easy.
-You still need to rupture opponents to get your energy
+Your CP generator is actually good
+You can proc a different CP generator, and unlike on live, you can use your efficient one on a low health opponent without risking throwing away 30 energy to a heal.
-Vendetta can't be swapped to another target.

S:
+You have Find Weakness for burst phases.
+Shadowdance allows the use of controls as well as damage, and has a small cooldown.
-You need to rupture opponents or face a massive damage loss.
-You need to keep slice and dice up or not get your energy.
-Your CP generation is balanced around you being in a raid, so you will be starved in pvp, where you gain the requirement to also run rupture and kidney, but don't lose existing requirements (unlike on live, where slice is more optional and rupture is ignorable)
-Your real combo builder is positional


So, where's the compensation for having positional attacks? Right now I would say sub has plenty of compensation (prep, shadowdance, cheat death), but these are all gone in the expac.

[Deleted]

Exactly, and Mangle is only really being used once every 15-60 seconds (was changed over Wrath's time) to apply the extra bleed damage taken debuff. Up to this day I still don't understand the whole design choice behind Shred.

The skill part was mainly meant for the PvPers. I should have really specifically mentioned that I suppose, if everyone can just Backstab with the high crit chance Rogues would become a lot more easy to play in PvP and their damage output would go up a tad bit. I can only see Blizzard's next step being some overal damage nerfs to Rogues. Then again, in MoP the extra crit chance is being removed so I wouldn't exactly care if they remove the positional requirement in MoP.

I think we just both have a different opinion on this subject.

And Hemo is used for the same purpose. It really seems out of place and unnecessary. It adds nothing of value to the gameplay, causes some confusion and potentially ruins rotations unintentionally by making them too complex for the sake of some added dps, ala what Warlocks were struggling with. (Regarding the Hemo-Backstab spec, I think it was, which had you glyph for the Hemo dot thus giving you yet another debuff to track alongside the other 3 [4 if you count Find Weakness])
And, as mentioned of course, adds the easily avoidable issue of fighting ass-less bosses, as Verain put it. It really pains me to see such a small issue escalating to such heights due to bad design responses from the Devs. Ultraxion shouldn't have been a problem. And yet, it was. (what's even worse, they didn't even carry over that debuff that allowed positional attacks to hit from any angle... But that's another discussion entirely...)

I'd say "rogue damage goes up" isn't entirely true. The damage would remain unchanged, however, the frequency of being hit by the full brunt of the force would certainly go up and be more easily achievable. But as you rightfully point out, many of our passive damage buffs seem to have been removed, thus making said argument somewhat invalid. I can't share my own experience seeing as I haven't played the beta, but from what I've read, our PVP damage (specifically) is in a horrible state, making the positional req. an incredibly unnecessary thing to have.
Not only do we hardly do any damage, we're also limited to only being able to do no damage from the back.....!? Does this make sense to anyone o.O

I think the positional req. is a remainder of the past, which stays with us for nostalgic reasons mainly, like that of the "building up combo points on a target and unleashing the finisher". Which is a shame in my opinion, since it restricts gameplay.

[Verain]

(what's even worse, they didn't even carry over that debuff that allowed positional attacks to hit from any angle... But that's another discussion entirely...)

One which I'd like Blizz to actually have with us at some point.


See, I have my guess. If that boss was backstabbable, then sub would, I think, be top dps on it. Given how well sub was testing on the rest of this tier, my guess is that they took it out because they wanted a boss to remind the players that "must stab a butt" is actually a disadvantage- you have to admit, no other boss really requires much effort to backstab this tier- you just have the normal thing where you go to backstab just as the boss turns and instead you don't spend your energy right. But that's just a guess- it could be something else. Certainly, this would be a top dps rogue fight, unquestioned, if this guy was, uh, assful.


[quoteour PVP damage (specifically) is in a horrible state, making the positional req. an incredibly unnecessary thing to have. [/quote]

1)- They did buff that some. The rogues at 90 say it's not enough.
2)- They could just fix the damage on the moves, instead of assigning passive bonuses, such as crit.

Personally, I don't care whether our pvp damage comes from high to guaranteed crit moves as it normally has, or moves with a normal, agility + crit rating boosted set of guys. Here's the advantages of both, as I see it:

Classic model:
+You reliably trigger things that trigger on crit. This includes HAT, but HAT should IMO be rebalanced given the new design of stuff. Why should sub specifically be unable to run their rotation, with two huge chunks of damage based on slice and rupture, while still having to use all the pvp tricks, such as recup, kidney? I'll be making a post on the main forums about this next week- we definitely need this to be addressed before live, or sub will ship in shambles.
+Your damage is consistent, and tends to scale a bit better than the devs tweak stuff at. The second part is just error, but the first part can be powerful- if you can get an uninterrupted shadow dance, you have a very good idea of how much damage you will do.
-Your damage is consistent, such that your opponents don't have to guess much what you are capable of. If you are able to reliable take someone from 80 -> 30, then they will assume you won't be able to finish off a 65% target (and be correct). This lets your opponents respond intelligently- plenty of times I lose a partner to "everything the plate guys did crit, lol", and he would have blown defensives if he had known he was going to get crushed so hard.

Non-crit model:
+crit rating is worthwhile. If I introduced a stat, "amplification", that increased your damage by 1.00 at 0 rating, and then at X rating it increased it by 1.01, then depending on X this would be a pretty good stat or a bad one- but either way, going from normal rating to 25% extra would take you 25X. That would increase your damage by 25%. Now pretend instead that you already had 25% amplification from talents or passives or whatever. To get an extra 25% total damage would take an amplification of 1.5625- or, since you already have 25X, you'd need 56.25X-25X=31.25. That has just devalued the stat a great deal, compared to when you started at 0. With a large amount of base crit, your crit rating is less valuable. Since you also get crit from agility, this acts to reduce it further. With a lower crit, you can focus on being "critty" as a choice- at least that is the theory- if you like the idea of critting more often. Right now, that's a pretty narrow decision- pvp rogues will go for some crit, but only because sub makes it so good (including energy refunds).
+Burst damage can happen suddenly- when you have a lower crit rate, chain crits, or several crits during a dance, suddenly matter much more. Enemies are shocked by the damage you deal, much as a crit-lucky death knight or ret paladin can be ludicrous. If we are balanced around a lower crit rate, then unlikely multi-crit events will change the game.
-Less crits. Balance aside, a streak of no crits isn't very racy, and that will happen a lot.

I think the positional req. is a remainder of the past, which stays with us for nostalgic reasons mainly, like that of the "building up combo points on a target and unleashing the finisher". Which is a shame in my opinion, since it restricts gameplay.

Well, I do remember when people would say stuff like "If you could five-point eviscerate any historical figure..." (the post excluded Hitler, because everyone would pick him otherwise). But the point was, that was powerful. Getting to five combo points was actually harder there too. You were essentially guaranteed only one five point finisher in a pvp match, because health pools were so low compared to damage, but getting it was satisfying. As time passed, we saw a bunch of stuff become passive- extra combo points, free energy, energy scaling with a new stat- such that nowadays our finishers are pretty lackluster. I would be fine with the model if it felt satisfying. As a brief example, it feels stupid to think "gosh, I wish I was a cat, and this finisher mattered".

[Deleted]

One which I'd like Blizz to actually have with us at some point.

See, I have my guess. If that boss was backstabbable, then sub would, I think, be top dps on it. Given how well sub was testing on the rest of this tier, my guess is that they took it out because they wanted a boss to remind the players that "must stab a butt" is actually a disadvantage- you have to admit, no other boss really requires much effort to backstab this tier- you just have the normal thing where you go to backstab just as the boss turns and instead you don't spend your energy right. But that's just a guess- it could be something else. Certainly, this would be a top dps rogue fight, unquestioned, if this guy was, uh, assful.

I'd love for a response as well. Seems fishy. So... Instead of having 2 specs outperform other specs by a somewhat large margin, they'd rather have 2 specs that under perform every other spec by a large margin? That's a dick move considering "choices" regarding play styles seem to be so important to them now. Looking at the top WOL players, the best Subs/Ferals are dancing somewhere around 50k dps, while every other class/spec is doing next to 60k. That's a whooping 10k difference. How can they just let that slide?

Regarding the damage models, those don't actually interesting me as of yet. There are lots of variations when it comes to number-tweaking, but they're all secondary on my priority list. I'd rather have the mechanics that are going to produce those numbers to be interesting, fun, intuitive, and accessible, without necessarily being a walk in the park. Having a spec juggle several buffs and debuffs, while having the ability to produce some large numbers if they do a good job of keeping up those buffs is a great idea. Punishing that spec with the HEAVY loss of 25% of its damage if just one debuff is missing is Overkill... (lolharharh) Having so much passive damage automates the specs too much, making our characters rely more on the game than of the actual player. It's essentially the game playing the game, and not the player playing the game, which kinda saps both the skill and the fun from the class. (Regarding PVE at least.) Then there's the talent tree, the lvl 90 talents, positional req., and so on.........

And of course the combo points...

As time passed, we saw a bunch of stuff become passive- extra combo points, free energy, energy scaling with a new stat- such that nowadays our finishers are pretty lackluster.

And that's exactly why they should deviate from the old "building up, blablabla"-design to a new one. Times change, mechanics change, yet this one design choice doesn't. "One of these things doesn't belong here..."

Back to my previous point; There are so many mechanics that I feel need changing/revamping that speaking of "tweaking numbers" seems out of place at the moment.