Are players grossly exaggerating Combat Rogues on the PTR?

[achromatickang]

On live servers I bought some Tyrannical Swords since they only cost honor now, and I've tried dueling other players while in Combat Spec where Killing Spree is essentially single target, and I haven't been too impressed with the damage output, particularly against plate classes where I seem to deal almost no damage outside of Killing Spree. Against most classes it's hard to even get 3 stacks of insight up, and I imagine this is going to be a major problem even in the Arenas with Rogue mobility being as limited as it is. Many classes can pop ice wall, shield wall, dispersion, deterrence etc. much more often than a Rogue can press Killing Spree, which makes the ability seem like it's even more worthless as you have nothing to do for the next 3 minutes.

What are your thoughts on this? Are the people who seem to be really impressed with Killing Spree just people who are unfamiliar with the Rogue class in general?

[Deleted]

Killing spree in duel would act the same as it does on live anyway (unless you are a pet class, i guess), what's the big deal?

[Muzz]

On live servers I bought some Tyrannical Swords since they only cost honor now, and I've tried dueling other players while in Combat Spec where Killing Spree is essentially single target, and I haven't been too impressed with the damage output, particularly against plate classes where I seem to deal almost no damage outside of Killing Spree. Against most classes it's hard to even get 3 stacks of insight up, and I imagine this is going to be a major problem even in the Arenas with Rogue mobility being as limited as it is. Many classes can pop ice wall, shield wall, dispersion, deterrence etc. much more often than a Rogue can press Killing Spree, which makes the ability seem like it's even more worthless as you have nothing to do for the next 3 minutes.

What are your thoughts on this? Are the people who seem to be really impressed with Killing Spree just people who are unfamiliar with the Rogue class in general?

It isn't an exaggeration at all, I've played with KS quite a bit on my rogue. To get the high damage you're looking for you need to use on use trinkets and hope that dancing steel procs from both weapons before you use it. It also doesn't help to use a vermin's bite potion.

[Verain]

I'm pretty sure the issue is a PvE 4 pc or something?

That 4 pc is apparently doubling the damage spree does.


On live, spree is VERY powerful, and if you are willing to prepot or have great trinkets (or both) you can do really strong damage right now, on live. The single target spree is calling the rogue hate crew out, and they are making videos where a series of trinketless 300k health noobs get owned, but I think even this has to do with the 4 pc pve.


I am very much opposed to any pve set bonus ever affecting spree (maybe a shorter cooldown could be ok), because spree is a derp button. It's a derp button that I love, but it's still a derp button. I don't want to be MORE reliant on spree, which absolutely has to be timed properly on most bosses, in order to get my damage in. Neither do I want a move that is a single button press made too good in pvp, because it is reasonably hard to counter for good damage, so making it reasonably hard to counter for insane damage is poor design.

[Deleted]

I am very much opposed to any pve set bonus ever affecting spree (maybe a shorter cooldown could be ok), because spree is a derp button. It's a derp button that I love, but it's still a derp button. I don't want to be MORE reliant on spree, which absolutely has to be timed properly on most bosses, in order to get my damage in. Neither do I want a move that is a single button press made too good in pvp, because it is reasonably hard to counter for good damage, so making it reasonably hard to counter for insane damage is poor design.

And why exactly do you love it? Killing spree has always been a dumb cooldown in pve,and not because it's dumb by itself, it's dumb cause you can't actually use it safely on most bosses:

Jin'rokh - would be dumb to use it outside of pool, but you lose a lot of uptime if you don't
Horridon - if you use it to kill adds with bf up, you risk dying when you end up on a pool or on a totem
Council - same as horridon
Tortos - randomly decides to teleport you on a random derping turtle that's passing by
Megara - you have to wait to use it when she does the spit shit, losing uptime on it and possibly ar or use cloak and then spree, but why should i have to use a defensive cd to be able to use an offensive one? that's dumb design in my book
Ji-kun - if you use it while he downdraft to get uptime on the boss, you are most likely dead at the end of it
Durumu - that's one of the worst and dumb ones, you can't use it at all while moving in the maze and you must decide if you want to wait to use even ar if it come off cooldown while on it (no), or wait but lose uptime on both of them
Primordius - Fluids lol, good luck actually hitting primordius with it
Dark Animus - so much shit going around and on the floor that you have to pray not to die everytime you use it
Iron Qon - not much i guess outside of risking getting debuff cause you end up on one of his fire/air/lighting lines or whatever
Twins - i don't really remember if it targets the adds here, but if it does lol, you aren't even supposed to really kill them, not much else i guess
Lei shen - not much
Ra den - not much i guess, haven't done it yet though

So yeah, you have a damage cooldown that you can't actually use in a fair amount of situations and is directly linked to your other major cooldown, making you lose a lot of dps if you wait on it for too much.
Tell me even one other class/spec that risks dying everytime he/she uses one of his/her offensive cooldown, even warriors no longer take increasing damage when they use reck and that was mostly meaningless anyway

In pvp it's only cool in random bgs to "oneshot" a retarded caster that can't use his/her blink/disengage/immunities/cd reductions etc

[Verain]

And why exactly do you love it? Killing spree has always been a dumb cooldown in pve,and not because it's dumb by itself, it's dumb cause you can't actually use it safely on most bosses:

Because it's awesome?

Jin'rokh - would be dumb to use it outside of pool, but you lose a lot of uptime if you don't

So? A lot of Jin'rokh is figuring out how to correctly use your cooldowns. For instance, if you are going to not have a third vendetta, you should hold your second one so it will line up with blades on third pool, instead of using it on second. Every class has to pool cooldowns to do this guy right.

Your other points are basically "I have to wait to use the move because it will kill me" and "the move hops around doing retarded shit most of the fight". The second is being fixed, and the first would be fine if combat rogues were tuned appropriately- aka, a combat rogue using it on cooldown should be doing more than intended damage, it should be assumed you have some delay in it.

So yeah, you have a damage cooldown that you can't actually use in a fair amount of situations and is directly linked to your other major cooldown, making you lose a lot of dps if you wait on it for too much.

I think that's more of a fundamental issue with restless blades, to be honest.

Tell me even one other class/spec

All the more reason to love the move even harder, and ask for it to be balanced appropriately.


Also, in pvp and soling, it is super awesome and cool. It has always been a bit risky in raids. The move is great because it takes you out of roots, makes you immune to CC, and does strong damage over a few seconds, while you teleport around. It's very solid.

[Myzou]

Yes, people are way exaggerating.

Why? Because it did not get a damage increase. The only thing it did was make it so you will always target the same person.

This can already happen on live if you limit how close you are to more than 1 person.

[Deleted]

Your other points are basically "I have to wait to use the move because it will kill me" and "the move hops around doing retarded shit most of the fight". The second is being fixed, and the first would be fine if combat rogues were tuned appropriately- aka, a combat rogue using it on cooldown should be doing more than intended damage, it should be assumed you have some delay in it.

What you are basically saying is : Killing spree is awesome,but it's not,Killing Spree could be awesome,but it's not.
I agree that it could be,and is sometimes,a really cool move; but right now it's mostly a pain in the ass that you can't even use (and lose a lot of dps for it) most of the time, how is that awesome?

[Kael]

@ PvE discussion of killing spree: drop it, please. This is completely unrelated to the use of KS in PvP on the PTR.

Yes, people are way exaggerating.

Why? Because it did not get a damage increase. The only thing it did was make it so you will always target the same person.

See the 4p PvE bonus for T16. It is a massive damage boost to killing spree, which is more exciting for PvP than for PvE.

[Wow]

The thing is arena has been down most all of the ptr and is still down this means that any of the complaining about ksp on the ptr is duels or bg's. The pve set will likely be changed because of pvp. But nerfing killing spree more than that would leave the spec dead just like live. Its what the spec is about cd's and everything else it does is crap, many would call that a bad design and I'd agree but without a full redesign you can't really just nerf killing spree vs players.

Also needs to be pointed out that without t16 and under normal pvp conditions ksp still does a lot of dmg but its not a 100% to 0 and the higher armor the target has the weaker it becomes. Basically its good on mages and rogues and monks and druids (with no skin up) but everyone else its not that crazy for its cd.

[Verain]

I am very concerned that this PvE set bonus will get the set nerfed in PvP. When I looked at the bonus, I saw it as a 30% increase in damage- not very strong, and not ludicrous in PvP. But apparently the buff stacks apply to the CURRENT hit (so the first hit benefits from one stack instead of 0) and the stacks multiply by each other instead of add to each other, and the net effect looks like it's double the damage from live.

But I don't want this move nerfed from live. You could make a montage of you running around as combat on live and pressing it versus undergears and them dying, but it wouldn't matter much. The set of "ZOMG" videos make sure to highlight both the ability of the move to work single target (which is a change we have wanted since LK beta, the modal behavior with blade flurry), and the fact that it's doing too much damage because of the PvE bonus.

On live, right now, I can and do spree fresh 90s, and they sure as hell don't survive. But I could dance them and they wouldn't survive, or I could be any other class and blow a cooldown and they'd die, if that class had the gear my main does. Most of the shots in that video are:

1)- Benefiting from the higher item level in PvP. As you might expect, ramping up damage done without ramping up resilience (as gear no longer has resilience) has broken scaling across the board- the attempt to address this is the double pvp trinket set bonus, which the video was filmed before.

2)- Attacking people who don't have trinkets, or are out of defenses, or both.

3)- Unclear about the incoming damage sources.

4)- Often on targets with surprisingly small health pools.



My problem and concern is that the pve set bonus will go live, spree will be nerfed, and at the end of the day we'll have a weak move with no use on a spec no one will play that is only barely adequate in certain situations involving a tier bonus that you can't bring to arena because it's not broken (PvE set bonuses will only show up in arena when they are overpowered), and we'll be expected to like it because our newly nerfed move can be used single target (which it already can when you gank or whatever, and good rogues already kinda know how the target choosing part works).


Simply put, no pve set bonus should be about killing spree. It's an off-cycle move, and is hard to use properly in pve anyway (such that the set bonus will have a hard time being adjusted properly to be both good in pve and not overpowered in pvp).


We need to press for an alternate set bonus. The sub version of that, with the nearly full FW time, is also bad damned news IMO.

[discoepfeand]

Here's a recent video montage, decide for yourself it it's a gross exaggeration of what happens when you put the PvE set bonus with KS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=5E2FT-IURo4

But, it shouldn't matter much: https://twitter.com/holinka/status/350982266014535683

@ThorSilverhand We will do something about killing spree on the PTR

[Wow]

Here's a recent video montage, decide for yourself it it's a gross exaggeration of what happens when you put the PvE set bonus with KS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=5E2FT-IURo4

But, it shouldn't matter much: https://twitter.com/holinka/status/350982266014535683

That video sigh, Thats not just t16 + ks. Thats an orc using double dps trinkets, flask, double dancing steel, using shadowblades, many of them had berserking buff, using deadly poison, etc. Basically this person did everything possible to make it look a lot stronger than it is not a realistic pvp situation. Yes its strong with t16 but this video is showing much more than just t16 boosting ksp.

[Sesshou]

I hope that didn't get them to nerf normal KS in order to allow them to use that set bonus... They really just need to scrap that bonus anyway because it is too crappy to replace t15 in pve. Normal KS (meaing no t16 4pc) isn't OP in the least... and I'm pretty sure I murdered just as fast with KS back in wotlk with my arp as you can now with the 4pc and they allowed it (probably because overall, combat was sub par in arena even with that which is going to also be the case here).

[Verain]

That was from before everyone in pvp started taking 10% less damage, right?

right

Video filmed with flask of 1000 agility, an item unusable in rated?

check

Camera angle doesn't look out, no one trinkets or uses a defensive?

correct

First opponent, a druid who neither trinkets nor barkskins. The video begs us to revert "combat buffs" in the tag, and highlights both the buff that allows it to single target, and the broken fucking set bonus. The rogue solos the 450k health druid (I think that's vendor pvp gear without enchants and stuff? unsure?). Why should we revert the single target buff? The druid is alone. Note that ALL damage was too high- if this was filmed now, the rogue would deal 10% less damage in that window.

Second opponent is a monk who neither trinkets nor nimbles. Again, he's alone, so nothing relating to "reverting combat buffs"- there's only one buff to combat, and that's the goddamned single target part. Again, this is about the broken set bonus. Without the set bonus, and with the trinket bonus, these sprees would deal 45% of the damage they do in the video. I can't even tell if the monk has his damned gear on or not, the res is low.

Third is a mage who blinks, because he doesn't know what spree is. He does not block. I can't read his health either. As normal, there is no combat log made available, and I'm not sure if there's an offscreen assist- I'd assume not.

Fourth is a monk with a hunter assist. As before, he doesn't trinket or brew. Fifth is a lock, with his health hidden. The big numbers we see flying are presumably enough to do him in, of course, and his pet can't tank the spree like on live.

It's good that the pet doesn't save him. That's DUMB!





The problem is the double damage spree. If these players were amazing or knew what they were up against (that the spree damage ramped up to silly, doing way more damage at the end than the start), some MIGHT have survived.


If this video was trying to nerf the broken thing- the tier set bonuses- I'd praise it. Instead, it's trying to get our one fucking buff that we've needed since Lich King beta reverted because it shares a patch with a goddamned "double your pvp burst damage" set bonus on a pve set.


We gotta fight this perception about the actual issue. I'll also point out- again- that ALL burst on that PTR version had issues (and honestly) may still. Note again that a side effect of removing resil off of gear is that damage will increase in pvp each patch- there's no "relatively it stays the same" any longer, and there are many players complaining of burst even now.



So first, fix the stupid set bonus. But if this gets actual spree nerfed from live, or our single target buff taken away, all the hatred.

That video sigh, Thats not just t16 + ks. Thats an orc using double dps trinkets, flask, double dancing steel, using shadowblades, many of them had berserking buff, using deadly poison, etc. Basically this person did everything possible to make it look a lot stronger than it is not a realistic pvp situation. Yes its strong with t16 but this video is showing much more than just t16 boosting ksp.

Yes, that part is an issue, but I will say it's realistic to assume an orc will macro blood fury, blades, and spree together (the first two aren't on the global). The double dancing steel could realistically be swapped in with a macro as well (not all rogues can do this, but on live arenas you'll normally fight rogues with weapon chains if you have a disarm, and with double dancing steel if not- the honor-for-weapons deal ensures that). The flask is definitely unrealistic for rated content.

I'm convinced the T16 giant bonus is the real issue.

[Rorke]

I don't care what anyone says, Combat is terrible in pvp. I'm tired of people all of a sudden coming out of the wood work just to play it because of Killing Spree and Adrenaline Rush/Blades. Combat is literally USELESS outside of those cool downs and Spree is easily countered due to its shitty 10 yard radius. Not to mention it has such low energy regeneration in pvp because its a high end pve haste spec. You don't have enough energy to even keep recuperate up without losing kshot/eviscerate. It's a joke.

[Verain]

Well, the devs will nerf anything that one shots someone, even if the rest of the spec is retarded. So we have to make sure the right damned thing gets nerfed- overall burst, and the T16 bonus.

[Wow]

Yes, that part is an issue, but I will say it's realistic to assume an orc will macro blood fury, blades, and spree together (the first two aren't on the global).

The point there was the double dps trinkets on an orc, anyway the other big thing here is bg's vs arena. Bg's no one knows this is coming but arena the team knows they are there and plan for it. But they listen to qq more than they listen to rogues so who knows what will happen if they fix this the right way.

I don't care what anyone says, Combat is terrible in pvp. I'm tired of people all of a sudden coming out of the wood work just to play it because of Killing Spree and Adrenaline Rush/Blades. Combat is literally USELESS outside of those cool downs and Spree is easily countered due to its shitty 10 yard radius. Not to mention it has such low energy regeneration in pvp because its a high end pve haste spec. You don't have enough energy to even keep recuperate up without losing kshot/eviscerate. It's a joke.

I agree with this, combat was a ok pvp spec (as ok as sub with rogues being trash overall) back mid way through mop beta. SS was close to 200% weapon dmg and ksp did less dmg. Then they nerfed ss about 6 builds in a row and buffed ksp turning the spec into what we have today. Its a all or nothing spec for pvp and thats not really fun for most rogues or the rogue's target.

[FAILoZOFF]

k lol keep defending it XD
I enjoy combat on live, sure it doesn't do 100-0% but 100%-50/30% is not a bad thing either. ;]

[shadowboy]

What needs to happen to combat is a nerf to ambidexterity. It's just too much of an offhand damage increase.

Nerfing the offhand damage component of ambidexterity is an implicit nerf to killing spree (through the offhand hits) and allows that damage to be shifted elsewhere, say, sinister strike.