What energy change do Rogues want most ?

[Neversage]

I'm in the "increase finisher damage, decrease white damage to balance" camp. In my mind, Rogues are about timing the right hit; being and opportunist and waiting for the right moment and striking hard.

[theturn]

To anyone here: have you of you tried to raid as Subtlety?

Cycle and dps apart, the energy regen of Sub feels so smooth it's a pleasure to play. You never feel at risk of capping like Combat while you don't have the downtime of Assassination. It's an incredibly good experience.

The question is because i want more feedback on sub, it's a spec largely ignored just because no one bothers to try it. Imho i's a sweet point from start to adapt the other 2 specs.

Having not played it since DS I would guess thats a result of HaT. More combo points means more finishers which are basically free. So energy isn't as important.

[OneSent]

Re design the energy to be unaffected by haste,so we dont feel like shit in the beggining of the expansions, and at the end just spamming as hard as we can to not cap ourselves.

This. It really is the root of all of our energy problems, which never used to be problems until they allowed haste to affect it.

Pre-4.0, energy regen was pretty solid from the beginning of an expansion until the end. It didn't feel slow and never once did I struggle with capping issues; even during Adrenaline Rush. But then the pre-Cata patch hit and I was spamming that Sinister Strike button to death and to no avail.

They need to go back to the drawing board and normalize our base energy regen. Something that feels the same regardless of whether you are a fresh lvl 1 or a BiS-geared character in the last tier of the expansion. Talents such as Combat Potency, Energetic Recovery and Venomous Wounds are fine. They give us a little something extra but they don't present problems with gear scaling.

[Ssith]

why do we have invisible energy regeneration mechanics?

each rogue spec has something that invisibly increases energy regen. why isn't it just tacked on to base regeneration? that makes no sense to me.

it's a reward for using "x" ability? USING "X" ABILITY SHOULD BE IT"S OWN REWARD! fuck, combat's isn't even that, it's 100% passive.

[Livets]

I think our current state with energy is working just fine, and it's early into the expansion so we will only get better as this progresses. At the end of Cataclysm I had too much energy to work with, it was just fine. The only thing I would have changed, in regards to our energy, is that Kick costs 0 because we are the only class who has our DPS affected in a large way by interrupting. Energy is our only resourced compared to a Monk or DK, who also suffers greatly from interrupting. Warriors have only one resource as well, but their interrupt doesn't cost anything.

[Deleted]

At the end of Cataclysm I had too much energy to work with, it was just fine...

In other words, it wasn't "just fine".

---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 09:24 AM ----------

Sorry for the late post, in regards to the people who implied I should continue with my previous ramblings...

The aforementioned idea doesn't need to affect all specs, as Coldkill implied. The endeavor was to create specific energy regeneration/resource management mechanics for either all or a single spec, thus differentiating the resource system sufficiently so we don't have 3 specs with "I have this much energyregen/sec, plus X proc" - thereby creating more variety between the specs.

I would like to direct your attention towards DK's and Runes/Runic Power for a second. R/RP is a very similar resource-system to Energy/CP's. There's a primary and a secondary resource. The core of their resource system is similar across all specs; you have Runes/Combo Points and you have Runic Power/Energy. However, to add unto this they can also choose (keyword, CHOOSE) between 3 additional mechanics that further amplify their resource generation/management. These mechanics add a unique functionality to their resource system; Feedback loop. While we only generate our secondary resource by spending our primary resource, DK's spend their primary resource to generate their secondary resource, which they use to regenerate their primary resource, which they use to generate their secondary resource, ad nauseam.
These mechanics are...

- Runic Empowerment, a mechanic that randomly grants you a free Rune. This mechanic allows for "Rune-gambling" - giving you the potential to unleash extreme amounts of burst if RNG is on your side, changing the gameplay entirely into a much more chaotic and fast-paced experience.
- Runic Corruption, a mechanic that simply increases the regeneration speed of runes, thus making for a slightly faster and smoother rotation with less burst potential.
- Blood Tap, a mechanic that allows you to forcibly reactive Runes on-demand, giving you partial control over your Runes so you can have Runes available at the EXACT time you want to have them.

Now, as you can see, DK's have a good deal of variety regarding how they regenerate resources, beyond simply waiting.... They've got a mechanic that allows them to gamble for increased burst damage, one for superior sustained damage, and one mechanic that allows for controlled damage. All of the mechanics are balanced around giving you the same Runes/min, but each has its own niches.

Enter rogues...
As rogues we only have two ways of restoring Energy; via mechanics that periodically grant us a certain amounts of Energy/min. I.e. increased sustained Energy gain. And simply by waiting. Neither of which are interesting nor interactive ways of resource management. In fact, managing resource is currently a one-button chore in all 3 specs - Keep up a buff as Combat, keep up a buff as Subtlety, keep up a debuff as Assassination.

I'd like that changed that by drawing some inspiration from our dear DK's.
- Controlled energy management
- Random energy generation
- Sustained energy generation

My previous proposition introduced a way for us to actively manage our own energy, by forcing us to go through cycles of creating energy, and cycles of spending energy, much like how Combat is currently forced to enter states of low damage and states of high damage, but much more interactive.

While I haven't thought of specific ways to handle the other options yet, I'm trying to think of a "Energy-on-Crit" type mechanic for that random energy element.

As for sustained energy generation, I'm thinking of something very Envenom like, but with a faster rotation. For instance - Eviscerate now buffs the rogue in addition to dealing damage; this buff increases energy generation by X% for X amount of seconds. The buff is supposed to have high uptime, in the 80%'ish zone(only to fall off when fight mechanics force it to), and increase the fluidity and speed of the rotation to a level somewhere between a Sub rogue with Energetic Recovery and an Adrenaline Rushing Combat rogue - Not too slow but not too fast either. Managing to keep the buff up will be the interactive part of the resource management. Furthermore, this buff will not be a passive damage increase, like Envenom is for Assassination, it will instead speed up the rotation, thereby directly increasing active damage generation.






TLDR: DK's are the shizzle.
I'd prefer some feedback before I continue writing my novel. Can't know whether people would actually like changes of that magnitude or whether they only want slight alterations to their already existing(boring) resource system

EDIT: Cleared dat grammar.

[Deleted]

While these ideas do look cool, Incineration, and mind you I love reading such things, I'd prefer if they'd normalize our energy regeneration again. It's OK though that Combat has an extra energy boost somehow, but make it as predictable as Energetic Recovery, and surely not as frantic as it was during Dragon Soul.

I feel like a normalized energy regeneration would set us apart from other models (a bit like how a Destruction Warlock works now). It shouldn't be the only change, but it'd be a good one and it'd lower the disparity between a fresh-90, undergeared rogue and rogue in full-BiS. Haste shouldn't double dip (i.e. increased energy regen from Haste, increased white swings with Haste thus more Combat Potency procs thus more energy...).

The advantage of such a model would be to allow for the dev to come up with new cooldowns or tier set bonuses: think Thistle Tea.

Edit: What I despise about the current system: it's a major pain in the ass when we've just hit 90 because of energy starvation, and it's a major pain in the wrist at the end of the expansion, if not sooner, because we've got far too much energy on our hands.

[Deleted]

I'm inclined to agree, normalizing energy generation would indeed fix our current problems, but I'm not one for band-aiding that much. I'd prefer improving the current system instead of simply making it tolerable. I'd say our resources are far too insignificant in our current models and they should become much more relevant in our rotations than they currently are.

The thing that gets closest to being "energy management" is pooling energy for an Envenom. Which is incredibly dull, both for the player and design-wise...

EDIT: I can't agree enough with that final part though. The immense amounts of anal lube I had to go through while leveling... The dick'ing energy regeneration took in the ass, while haste scaled back, was immense! Needless to say, playing for those first few weeks while gearing up was hellish.

[Chult]

How about changing energy generation from being a passive mechanic to an active mechanic? Instead of waiting around for energy to return by itself, we enter cycles in which we perform abilities that deal high damage, but consume energy, upon which we enter a regeneration phase, in which we use abilities with lower damage, which regenerate energy instead.

This would remove wait-time entirely, and make the whole process much more interactive and less boring.

Sounds nearly identical to the much maligned Hunter model.

People are just impatient. We always start every xpac with low energy regen due to how our stats scale, and have strong energy regen by the end. If they upped Energy regen, it would simply cap us by mid expansion, which would be silly.

Also of note, Sub nor Mut have ever had excellent Energy regen. I don't see why people are surprised at this. They make up for the lack of spamable attacks in other ways, such as Envenom and Find Weakness, etc. They also won't just bump up energy, allowing you to spam attacks as they currently are. They'll drop the damage of said attacks because you can hit them twice as often. Is that really what you guys want? More button presses for the same effect?

The Energy/CP model is fine. They just need to move damage from passive sources to active ones.

[Ryme]

To anyone here: have you of you tried to raid as Subtlety?

Cycle and dps apart, the energy regen of Sub feels so smooth it's a pleasure to play. You never feel at risk of capping like Combat while you don't have the downtime of Assassination. It's an incredibly good experience.

The question is because i want more feedback on sub, it's a spec largely ignored just because no one bothers to try it. Imho i's a sweet point from start to adapt the other 2 specs.

Yes, it's around 5-6% behind Assassination at the 490-500 item level. Feels very nice to play, still suffers from positional requirements, still very much viable with shuriken toss as a CP builder, but at higher gear levels you have to be good at weaving in backstabs to stop yourself from capping.

[Deleted]

Yes, it's around 5-6% behind Assassination at the 490-500 item level. Feels very nice to play, still suffers from positional requirements, still very much viable with shuriken toss as a CP builder, but at higher gear levels you have to be good at weaving in backstabs to stop yourself from capping.

Would you feel like creating a new thread on your experience with Sub this tier? I'd love to know more as I still prefer this spec over the other two, but don't have the gear nor the time to do any conclusive experiment.

I'm not looking into numbers or how it relates performance-wise to the two others, just how it plays mechanically. Does it feel boring (Recuperate gone as a mandatory finisher), stressful (too many CPs, Rupture isn't refreshed by Eviscerate), etc. Would love insights like these, if you care.

[Ryme]

Sure, I've mentioned in another thread that I am working (very slowly) on a near comprehensive guide to pve sub, no promises it'll get finished of course, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we're going to see the same trend as we did in Cataclysm with sub becoming very respectable toward the end of the second tier.

As to my personal thoughts, happy to share, but I doubt it warrants it's own thread, I'll give a brief overview here:

The opening is a bit odd, I love having subterfuge as your T1 talent, simply because it lets you pull all kinds of crazy things, an aoe stealth for the first 3 seconds of combat is one, mounting up and hearthing stealthed is another However, it still feels a bit hit and hope on the opening whilst you spam your heart out trying to get that extra ambush in before you fade out from stealth.

CD usage is wonderful, you really appreciate that 1 minute timer on dance, feels so good when you pool up and unload hell on your target each minute - it's also the only CD of ours that has a visually distinctive effect, though it's changed from what it was, it's still nice to have flavour on anything for once. However, I still don't like vanish being used as a dps CD.

CP generation is slick and marvellous, HaT with good timers is a dream, it lets you pool up, it's predictable, it's fun when you get it all right.

Energy generation is very nice too, energetic recovery increases your regen rate at a constant rate and if you're playing right, relentless strikes should be somewhat constant too. All of this lets you plan better and lets you know when you're doing things right, or you fucked up. This is in contrast to assassinations venemous wounds mechanic which has the chance to leave you starved because oh well RNG.

Here's the best bit, it feels like you're doing the damage. The passive nature of other specs is lost here, backstab hits hard, eviscerate (in a mastery focused build) hits very hard. Your dps chart will not look something like this:
1 - Deadly Poison
2 - Melee
3 - Random proc
4 - Buttons you press

Most of your actual damage comes from you, rupture is there simply to make you hit harder and the bleed from hemo, whilst necessary, does not account for a huge amount. It feels satisfying.

Shuriken Toss is viable here, it causes an insanely fast paced rotation that's full of opportunity to cap if you're not careful and ready to backstab, it's a hell of a lot of fun. This also gives you the chance to hit things at range, quite hard too. At range, my ST crits hit for around 60k! This will only improve in 5.2.

The cons, sadly there are some:

Positional requirement. It still exists, it doesn't need to anymore, but it does. You will have to be able to be behind the boss at every moment if you're going a standard anticipation build and at least some of the time in a ST build.

It's "hard". It's not really a hard spec to play, but it certainly demands more of your attention than other specs. You maintain 3(4) things now, SnD, rupture and hemorrhage whilst trying to maximise Find Weakness uptime, it's not as demanding as cataclysm, but close due to energy generation being lower.

Right now, it's not as good. It's behind assassination, fairly significantly. So, that hard work you're doing, it's all to generate less dps. However, it's getting fairly significantly buffed in 5.2, it's also infamous for scaling, so give it time, it will come around.

[Deleted]

Well, thanks! I was planning on switching over to Subtlety once 5.2 lands anyway, but it just feels great to read you having a blast playing the spec! I miss the constant, predictable energy regeneration (especially because RNG is a bitch to Assassination, as you've said) and the real involvement need ed to play the spec. I hadn't as much fun playing my rogue since DS's Subtlety (close second: ICC's ArPen Combat), and the tier-15 bonuses seem to favor Sub over the rest. Happy me

[Coldkil]

@Ryme: i found with my theorycraft that haste VS mastery results nearly in a draw (basically the more haste you have the better mastery becomes and viceversa).

have you tried to run with different reforges?


Back on topic: i brought up the sub example because right now with this amount of haste energy regen is damn good - enough to not feel starved but not so much you don't need to pay attention to it.

I agree totally with haste scaling removed; we don't need more energy while gear goes up, we need to deal bigger numbers. more energy = more damage, but not in a fun way.

[Ryme]

@Ryme: i found with my theorycraft that haste VS mastery results nearly in a draw (basically the more haste you have the better mastery becomes and viceversa).

have you tried to run with different reforges?

Not yet, I too have haste and mastery pretty close and similar scaling behaviour, but right now I'm just running it with assassination reforges since I don't need combat any more for progression (also never ever seen an raid epic slow weapon drop so it's still got blues) and don't fancy the old reforge for each fight.

From my own analysis, I have the value of haste ahead of mastery if you're going backstab single target. If you're going ST or if you feel you might be hitting more than one target often enough, mastery will pull ahead.

I'm just messing around now, but I'll certainly try some more haste focused builds on our off nights.

[Synexlol]

I find it amazing that the only option regarding energy regeneration in this poll is by and far the worst option.

Let's first consider the purpose of a resource system. Be it Mana, Energy, or simply cooldowns on abilities, the main purpose of a resource system is to control how we deal damage. They all exist to stop you from spamming your highest damage, most inefficient spell.

Now let's consider for a moment that the entire purpose of energy is not only to control how we deal damage, but to let us control when we deal damage also. It does this by alleviating the issue of GCD capping. This puts Rogues in the unique position where we can spend a certain amount of time not actively doing damage while still maximizing the damage that we can do, and that is what makes Energy the perfect system.

To that end, it is imperative that the energy system maintains the trait which makes it such a good resource: control of when we deal damage. As we saw with Combat throughout Cataclysm, too much energy throws the entire balance of playing a Rogue off. Not only can we not control how we deal damage since we are essentially GCD capped and forced to use our highest damage/GCD, least efficient ability, but we cannot control when we deal damage either since we cannot meet the potential damage that the system is based on. This is, once again, because we are GCD capped. Increasing energy regeneration directly reduces control of our damage. If we assume that Blizzard will always keep classes balanced to a certain degree, increasing flat energy regeneration is the worst possible option; be it through Haste or a flat buff, it serves no purpose in the grand scheme of resource systems.

This leads me to the conclusion that an active form of energy regeneration is ideal. Rewarding energy spent with energy gained, a la Relentless Strikes,the old Backstab glyph, or to a lesser extent, that old Vanish talent in the Assassination tree whose name I can't remember. This would also mean untying Haste's effect on energy regeneration. This gives Rogues even more control over how and when we deal damage; dealing active damage in the mean-time allows you to sustain more damage, while pooling energy allows you to deal more damage in a short time.

[jishdefish]

I'd like thistle tea back in the form of a cooldown, but they gave that to monks... >.<

[Deleted]

I really don't think messing with the energy system too much is good.

Its part of our class that we just "know" that energy regenerates as it does. We can work with that.
The proposed ideas make it look like a rage or focus.

It would be far better to improve the combo point system. New builders+spenders. More selfbuffs or debuffs that grant combo points etc. There's much uncovered flavor here.

Energy is just energy. Its stamina. While combo points symbolize the flow of the combat.

[Deleted]

just.. give 400 max energy, 15 max combopoints, and 16 (20 with the talent) chi to everyone. Also lower energy based classes global cooldown by half. should fix all problems.

[Tsuna]

I just want more gear so haste makes my energy regen look like it did in cata. It'll get there eventually. But damn does it suck every new expac to be too tired to stab something...

---------- Post added 2013-01-19 at 12:18 AM ----------

I'd like thistle tea back in the form of a cooldown, but they gave that to monks... >.<

Ahh yeah and this, also go die in a fire monks.