I'd be cautious about that line of thought. Sub is based on nothing but timers (FW, Rup, Hemo, SnD, Cooldown timers) and is considered one of the most complex specs in the game.
I don't find SnD compelling, but for reasons entirely unrelated to the ease of keeping it up - I'd rather it increase the damage of active abilities (make each button count for more), rather than actively (harr harr) increasing passive (auto, poison proc from auto) damage. Of all things, I find envenom more engaging. I think "baking it in" to each spec is truly a terrible idea, since the major complaint is that it makes too much of our damage passive, while the main counter-argument is that pressing SnD makes the bonus autos active damage. If that "active" damage can't even keep up the front of being active, then we will have specs that are truly majority passive. This would make for a terrible precedent.
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Maybe they should simply rework SnD into different effect for the three specs and remove the haste buff which is in itself too passive.
I will concede that SnD is pretty passive for Assassination. However, while SnD looks like pure passive damage on the surface for Combat and Sub, it really isn't. While the passive auto attacks make up a large portion of the finisher, SnD also increases energy regen for Combat and Sub via Combat Potency and Energetic Recovery. Granted, SnD doesn't increase base energy regen.
Now, the major complaint that many rogue have with SnD is that it's too passive. One solution to this would be to turn the Attack Speed buff into a Haste buff and lower the % from 40% to 25%. This would keep maintaining SnD important while shifting damage from passive sources to active.
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Preparation - Needs to go. Add a passive "When you use an ability while it's on cooldown, its cooldown is instantly reset. This effect cannot occur more than once every five minutes per ability"
Gouge - Part of CC pruning
Sap - Part of CC pruning.
Cheap Shot - Part of CC pruning
Blind - Bumped up to a proper CC usable in and out of combat with a reasonable cooldown (a la Repentence)
Kidney Shot - Combo cost removed.
Redirect - Gone, combo points on Rogue (I think that's true)
Crimson Tempest - Proooobably needs to go. It's pretty shit.
Expose Armor - Bake into another ability.
Shadow Blades - Gone : ( (confirmed)
Steve Irwin died the same way he lived. With animals in his heart.
Gouge / Blind - What about removing gouge and buffing blind? Put blind on like a 40 second cooldown 8 second duration similar to sap. Gouge use
d to be useful for backstabbing, but apparently that's going to be going as well, or at least the positioning requirement removed.
Sap - Is necessary. Or make blind cool down reset/no cooldown upon entering stealth.
Cheapshot - Is necessary.
Kidneyshot - While agree with removing the combo point cost, it won't happen because they want to remove "free" stuns. Maybe make kidneyshot deal damage, dot's isn't good idea however.
Redirect - Make Passive/Delete.
Crimson Tempest - Bake into rupture and makes mini rupture aoe dots.
Expose armour - I'd rather they just removed this mechanic from the game. Bake it into something like fan of knives is appropriate though.
Shadowblades - Sort of happy it's gone, but id rather they removed vendetta and made shadowblades assassinations only or some kind of poison/nature ability that affects finishers rather than combo point generators.
- Crimson Tempest should stay and become the Divine Storm for rogues, an AoE finisher you feel good about using in situations of 4+ mobs.
- Shadow Blades should become spec specific or a talent alongside a passive option.
- Redirect looks like it could be out the window with cps on the rogue
- Tricks of the Trade, much as feel this has the potential to be a good ability, I think it could probably be pruned. If it's too stay, it would be nice to see it work like the Druid's Symbiosis, granting the target and you an ability based on class and spec.
- Shiv is an ability that screams out for more love, but requires extra fun poisons to be added to the game which I don't believe it going to happen so it can go.
- Shadow Walk can go, rogues should simply be by default the best stealth class.
- Preparation can go, charges or reduced cooldown is a better solution.
- Expose Armor can be baked in to another ability, hyper dull button.
- Premeditation should stay, but is probably going to be chopped, great in pvp, annoying to maximise in pve.
- BoS should probably just reduce the cooldown of sprint to 10 seconds now, having both sprint and BoS feels odd since BoS is so readily available at such a minor dps cost.
- Revealing Strike should be removed on the basis that it's a god awful and boring ability, but doing so really leaves combat with barely any rotation at all.
I am the lucid dream
Uulwi ifis halahs gag erh'ongg w'ssh
There is too much baking in this thread. We're rogues, not deliverers of fine bread and cake.
And BoS should be added into the waterwalk glyph.
Rhyme said, "Redirect looks like it could be out the window with cps on the rogue."
Have the devs said anything more about this (and I missed it)?
My current thinking is that they'll let us move the first 5 but not the 5 from anticipation automatically... So, unless redirect does something else...
That would be awesome for PvE. Can't guess it's value in PvP.
They could make Feint allow us to walk on water. BOS is too op in bgs.
Slice and Dice is boring because bad rogues refresh it poorly while any rogue who is at least okay refreshes it well. It's not as if it's hard. The "skill cap" of the ability isn't really high enough for good players to shine, so all it does is make bad players even worse.
Diplomacy is just war by other means.
Envenom refreshes Slice n Dice to its 5CP duration. This mechanic is exclusive to Assassination.
At Blizzcon, they previewed a completely passive "rank" of SnD for Assassination as an example of the way abilities might change from level 90 to 100. You might have heard about that too.
Whatever happens I want to shed a few abilities especially as we get a new bind with the tier 100 talents (assuming Shadow Reflection or Death from Above are better than Venom Zest).
They should work assassinations into the "fast auto attack\poison" spec, which is viable with non-daggers.
Subulety should get subterfuge (it's being removed) during combat somehow. Maybe as a proc, or a finishing move to replace slice and dice or kidneyshot.
Combat? What to do with it? Lots of high hitting, slow combo point generating stuff sounds good, but does that clash too much with mutilate? Maybe have sinister spammable and high hitting (like hemo) and focus on self buffs. Maybe replace rupture with some kind of self buffing "dot the enemy".
Rupture should be merged with crimson tempest at least, that frees up a button and makes it better than eviscerate.