Originally Posted by
Verain
Holinka is very smart man. I think that the pvp team has an odd set of priorities, and they also have an odd set of restrictions (ex: they can't say, "arcane mage damage is too low in pvp (and it is), therefore we will simply up the damage by 20%). This puts them in an odd corner, and they have a bunch of talents that are awful that they have to mess with. Most of the talents don't have much room to slide by a lot- if a 4 second stun is too good, then what about a 3 second stun? Wait, now DR makes it worthless! Etc.
Overall, under Holinka (and I'm positive it isn't just him), the PvP team has been in triage mode trying to repair something that is fundamentally broke. They even cry about patches being too hard to put out, and that the minor slider idea isn't even working. We've seen changes like, ilvl normalization, resilience baseline, battfat, and other sweeping large changes to make the section of pvp that is supposed to be competitive exactly that, in an expansion with far too many item levels and scaling (2x output was unheard of in the past, now 3x to 4x is the rule).
So when I see a change like this I get cross. First, it's an overnerf: 75% of someone's normal damage doesn't punish them for bladestorming, and doesn't allow you to bait enemies like the current one (he's low, I'll just go HAM and OH NO NERVE STRIKE), and is generally pretty lame and forgettable. Without a compensatory buff- say, to duration- we are in a situation where the move has just been literally gutted to half of its former strength.
Second, since this move was OBVIOUSLY good, many rogues use it. This means that the total power of rogues is going down, during a time where I can't really believe that could possibly be intended.