[Last updated March 30.] Patch 5.2 is upon us! Run for the hills and Vanish!
The new patch (U.S. launch date: March 5) brings some pretty big changes for rogues, especially considering how leery Blizzard usually is about making major adjustments to a class in the middle of an expansion. However, these changes are unlikely to fundamentally change most rogues’ gameplay; they’re mostly meant to make us a little stronger in competitive PvP and give the specs a little more versatility in general.
Here are the roguey headlines:
- Huge level-90 talent changes (Versatility gone, a new talent, Marked for Death, replaces it; Shuriken Toss trades utility for damage).
- Ginormous level-60 talent changes (Preparation now a level-68 baseline ability for all rogues, and a new talent, Cloak and Dagger, replaces it in the level-60 tier; Burst of Speed arguably buffed).
- Combat’s two-target cleave gets a massive nerf, but its multi-target AoE becomes more powerful.
- Modest DPS buffs for all three specs. (Well, OK, they’re probably more than “modest” for Assassination.)
- Moderate level-30 talent changes (Deadly Throw and Nerve Strike buffed).
- A gaggle of PvP-related ability and set-bonus changes (mostly buffs).
- Weapon transmogrification rules will be relaxed; we’ll be able to cross-xmog our one-handed axes, maces and swords. (Not fists.)
Below, I’ll summarize the rogue-relevant bits from the official PTR patch notes and other official Blizzard communications. I’ll also provide a little context where I can.
(Also, if you’d like an FAQ-style summary of how patch 5.2 will — or won’t — affect PvE rogue gameplay, take a gander at this great WoW forum thread by Fierydemise.)
Level-90 Talents
- Versatility will be removed completely. It’ll be replaced with a new level-90 talent option called Marked for Death.
- MfD instantly puts 5 combo points on your current target. It has a 30-yard range and a 60-second cooldown that resets if your target dies.
- In a way, this new talent option is like a turbocharged Premeditation, or like Assassination’s old Cold Blood cooldown (guaranteed 100% crit chance on your next ability) that was removed with the launch of Mists.
- Here’s a PTR video of Marked for Death in action from wavefunctionp (Aeriwen).
- Shuriken Toss will have its damage buffed and its utility nerfed.
- First, on the damage buff:
- Remember that in Patch 5.1, it was buffed to deal double damage if you were more than 10 yards from your target. On top of that, in 5.2, using Shuriken Toss from >10 yards will also cause your autoattacks to hit the target while you’re at range for the next 10 seconds (as long as you’re not more than 30 yards away). Here’s a PTR video of the Shuriken Toss autoattack in action from wavefunctionp (Aeriwen).
- The ST autoattacks will work off the *yellow* (“special”) hit table, which means they are much more likely to hit your target than your regular melee autoattacks, which work off the “white” hit table. To offset the greater hit chance, these autoattacks will only hit for 75% of your normal autoattack damage. (The 75% number is a reduction from 80% earlier in the PTR, which Ghostcrawler said was too high because it didn’t account for increased poison procs due to the greater hit chance.)
- As soon as you move back within melee range of your target, ST autoattacks will automatically switch back to melee autoattacks, even if the 10-second timer isn’t up yet. (This is a change the developers introduced a couple of weeks into the PTR, when some players started to theorize that it might be a DPS gain to run out, activate ST autoattacks, then run back into melee range and continue their regular rotation with uber-autoattacks.)
- Next, on the utility nerf:
- Shuriken Toss will no longer be able to proc non-lethal poisons (such as Crippling and Paralytic). It’ll still proc Deadly and Wound.
- That goes for both the combo point-generating part of the ability and the new autoattacks. Neither will have a chance to proc your non-lethal poison.
- I’ve got a bit more on this in a separate post (which includes excerpts from a bunch of official Blizzard CM forum posts).
- First, on the damage buff:
- Anticipation appears unchanged.
Level-75 Talents
- All appear unchanged so far.
Level-60 Talents
- Preparation will no longer be a level-60 talent; it will instead be an ability all rogues learn at level 68. The spell itself appears completely unchanged: It still resets the cooldown on Dismantle, Evasion, Sprint and Vanish. (But no longer Cloak of Shadows — more on that in the “Spec Changes” section below.) All of those abilities appear to have the same exact cooldown lengths they had before. In PvP, this is looking like a pretty significant buff. In PvE it’s also potentially a small buff, but it may make the use of Prep + Vanish on cooldown (in conjunction with the level-15 talent Shadow Focus) feel required for a raiding rogue.
- Replacing Preparation in the level-60 talent tier will be a new ability called Cloak and Dagger. If you choose this, you’ll be able to use Ambush, Cheap Shot and Garrote from up to 30 yards away — and when you do, you’ll teleport to behind your target. It’s a lot like a macroed Shadowstep, basically. Here’s a video from wavefunctionp testing out the ability on the PTR.
- Fun fact: The initial version of the PTR had a completely different ability in this slot called Hit and Run, which allowed you to temporarily teleport to a targeted location within a 30-yard range for 10 seconds, leaving a shadow of yourself behind; you returned to your shadow when 10 seconds are up or you cancel the effect. Here are several PTR videos by wavefunctionp (Aeriwen) showing various aspects of Hit and Run in action. As noted by Ghostcrawler, Hit and Run was never meant to see the light of day because it felt too “clunky” in early playtesting, though he noted he was surprised to see how many players liked it on the PTR.)
- Burst of Speed will be buffed in two ways, but no longer breaks roots. It now costs only 30 energy (down from 50, which was already down from 60 at the beginning of the expansion) and it will no longer break stealth when used. It also increases movement speed by 70% *and* breaks “movement-slowing” effects, where on live right now it increases movement speed by 70% *or* breaks “movement-impairing” effects (note the language change there; this means that the ability will no longer break roots). (Note: Datamining and PTR testing also suggests that the four-second immunity to movement-impairing effects it used to grant when it broke an existing effect may have been removed, but this is not currently in the official patch notes.)
- Just to reiterate: Every rogue gets Preparation, and will have the choice of whether to pair it with Shadowstep, the newly buffed Burst of Speed or the new Cloak and Dagger.
Level-45 Talents
- All appear unchanged so far.
Level-30 Talents
- Deadly Throw is getting a buff. It will need only 3+ combo points (instead of a full five) in order to interrupt a spellcast and prevent spells from within that school from being cast. The spell-school lockout will last for 4 to 6 seconds (depending on whether you use it with 3/4/5 combo points).
- Nerve Strike is getting a buff. In addition to reducing your target’s damage after a Cheap Shot or Kidney Shot wears off, it will also reduce the amount of healing your target provides by 10%. Note the word “provides” there — this is meant to reduce heals that your target casts, not heals that are cast on your target. (Until a PTR build on Jan. 16, the healing reduction was 25%; clearly, the designers felt that was too much.)
Level-15 Talents
- Shadow Focus appears to be getting a slight nerf. Instead of making your abilities energy-free while stealthed, it reduces the energy cost by 75%. This feels to me like it might be cleaning up (or avoiding) some sort of exploit, but I’m not sure. It should have little effect overall.
Spec Changes
- All Specs:
- As noted above, Preparation will become a baseline ability for all specs, and will be learned at level 68.
- Smoke Bomb will be buffed. It will now reduce damage taken by all allies within the cloud by 20%.
- Cloak of Shadows will be de-Prepped. Its cooldown will be cut in half (from 2 minutes to 1 minute), and it will be taken off the list of abilities that are reset when we use Preparation.
- Blind will be nerfed. Its cooldown will be increased from 90 seconds to 2 minutes. (This brings it back up to its Cataclysm-era cooldown length, but is still a lot lower than the 3 minutes it was when Mists launched.)
- Assassination Changes:
- The damage-increasing portion of Assassin’s Resolve will be buffed from 20% to 25%; the portion that increases our maximum energy stays the same. This change appears to technically be a hotfix, though it was announced by Ghostcrawler just before the patch went live. (He actually announced it as 30%, but they nicked it back to 25%.)
- Envenom damage will be buffed 20%.
- Dispatch damage will be buffed 15%. (This change, as well as the Envenom change, were late additions to the Patch 5.2 PTR.)
- Combat Changes:
- Blade Flurry will be nerfed against two targets, but buffed against 4-5 targets. Instead of “copying” 100% of the damage from your attacks onto a nearby target, it will copy only 40% of the damage from those attacks — but it will copy that damage onto *up to four* nearby targets. (The old energy regeneration penalty of 20% is still in place.) This is Blizzard’s attempt to make Combat feel less like a “required” spec on two-target fights, while also making it feel much more useful on fights against 3 to 5 targets.
- Blade Flurry went through several changes in the Patch 5.2 PTR. In the initial PTR build in late December, it was only set to copy 25% of attack damage onto one additional target. In the second PTR build, it was still 25%, but the number of targets was increased to a maximum of 4. In the third build, the 25%-of-damage-copied percentage was increased to 40%.
- Finally, in a hotfix on March 29, the range on Blade Flurry was also increased from 5 yards to 8 yards.
- Vitality is getting a buff. It will boost attack power by 30%, up from 25%. (The energy-regen-boosting part of the ability is unchanged.) This should offset a little bit of the Blade Flurry nerf above, but more importantly, it’ll bump up Combat’s single-target damage. This may make it competitive with Assassination for the next raid tier.
- Blade Flurry will be nerfed against two targets, but buffed against 4-5 targets. Instead of “copying” 100% of the damage from your attacks onto a nearby target, it will copy only 40% of the damage from those attacks — but it will copy that damage onto *up to four* nearby targets. (The old energy regeneration penalty of 20% is still in place.) This is Blizzard’s attempt to make Combat feel less like a “required” spec on two-target fights, while also making it feel much more useful on fights against 3 to 5 targets.
- Subtlety Changes:
- Sanguinary Vein is getting a buff. While active, it’ll increase damage on your target by 20% instead of 16%. This actually reverts a hotfix they made back in September after Mists launched, and continues the trend of Blizzdevs using Sang. Vein as their weapon of choice when trying to turn the dial up or down on Sub’s damage potential.
Other Stuff
- PvE set bonuses for our new Tier 15 raid gear will be:
- Two-piece bonus: “Increases the duration of your finishing moves as if you had used an additional combo point, up to a maximum of 6 combo points.” (Ghostcrawler has confirmed that this impacts Envenom, Kidney Shot, Recuperate, Rupture and Slice and Dice, but not Crimson Tempest. I assume it affects Deadly Throw, but haven’t seen confirmation yet.)
- Four-piece bonus: “Shadow Blades also reduces the cost of all your abilities by 40%.” (Note: Ghostcrawler said on Feb. 13 that the 4p bonus would also reduce the global cooldown on rogue abilities from 1 second to 0.7 seconds. I think this GCD reduction is likely to change before it goes live, however.)
- Note: None of these are in the official patch notes, but they’ve been discussed openly so much by Ghostcrawler that I feel comfortable listing them as “official.” The quoted bonus text is taken from Wowhead’s PTR datamining.
- The PvP set bonuses are being changed:
- What was the four-piece bonus (Deadly Brew) will become the two-piece bonus.
- The new four-piece bonus will increase maximum energy by 30. (The max-energy increase, called Vigor, had been part of the two-piece bonus, and was 10 energy.)
- Earlier in the Patch 5.2 PTR, the max energy increase was 50, but Blizzard likely saw this was too powerful.
- The bonus on PvP gloves will be changed. It will now increase the power of Recuperate by 1% per tick, instead of reducing the energy cost of Kick by 10.
- Kick, meanwhile, will no longer cost energy — although it will have its cooldown increased from 10 to 15 seconds. (None of this is in the official patch notes, but most of it was confirmed by Blizzard before the patch went live.)
- Weapon transmogrification rules will be relaxed. For us, that means we’ll be able to cross-xmog axes, maces and swords (meaning that, for instance, you can make an axe look like a sword). Fist weapons are still their own beast — they have a different animation style than other one-handed weapons, so it’s much harder to open up cross-xmogging for them. (In an interview, Ghostcrawler said that he hopes to also be able to remove main-hand/off-hand restrictions for daggers and other weapons; this does appear to be at least partly working on the PTR, but we haven’t seen any confirmation in official patch notes.)
- For those of you who hate druids and want to take away their rogue-like toys, you’ll be happy to hear that although Displacer Beast will still teleport them and increase their movement speed, it will no longer place them in stealth.
Noteworthy Patch 5.2 Rogue Discussion Threads/Analysis
- Elitist Jerks
- Encrypted Text (WoW Insider):
- Rogue Basics in Patch 5.2
- It’s Time to Eat Cake (on Preparation going baseline)
- The Rise of the Ranged Rogue (on Shuriken Toss changes)
- Smoke Bomb’s New Trick
- Santa Ghostcrawler Kills Blade Flurry
- WoW rogue forum:
- all patch-related rogue changes
- Blade Flurry nerf specifically: thread one, thread two
- MMO-Champion rogue forum:
- Arena Junkies (this actually isn’t much more than a troll/abuse thread, but it’s the most active rogue-specific one on the AJ site; this General Discussion thread isn’t much better)
Quick and Dirty List of Updates to the Official Patch Notes
- 12/21/2012: “Preview” notes released
- 1/16/2013: Notes updated. Changes:
- “Auto-attack damage from Shuriken Toss has been lowered to 75% (was 80%), and the new shuriken auto-attack override is canceled when the Rogue enters melee range of the target.”
- “Smoke Bomb now reduces damage taken by allies in the area of effect by 20% in addition to current effects.”
- “Nerve Strike now reduces the effectiveness of healing provided by the target by 10% (was 25%).”
- 4-piece PvP set bonus, Vigor, increases maximum energy by 30, down from 50.
- “Blade Flurry has been changed. It now strikes up to 4 additional nearby targets for 40% of normal damage.”
- 1/30/2013: Notes updated. One change:
- Bullet point on Shuriken Toss autoattacks now reads: “Shuriken Toss now causes the Rogue to throw ranged shurikens coated in Lethal Poison and auto-attack at 75% damage (was 80%) for up to 10 seconds if the enemy is farther than 10 yards away.” (Originally read: “Shuriken Toss now causes the Rogue to throw ranged shurikens coated in Lethal Poison instead of auto-attacking for up to 10 seconds if the enemy is farther than 10 yards away.” Was corrected to improve clarity and show that the reduced-damage autoattack portion is not being removed.)
- 2/5/2013: Notes updated. Two changes — well, OK, three, but two are intertwined:
- The cooldown on Blind was increased from 90 seconds to 2 minutes.
- The cooldown on Cloak of Shadows was cut from 2 minutes to 1 minute, and it was taken off the list of abilities that are reset when we use Preparation.
- 2/13/2013: Notes updated. No rogue-specific changes.
- 2/19/2013: Notes updated. No rogue-specific changes, but Ghostcrawler did post in the official forums about a couple of Mut buffs.
- 2/25/2013: Notes updated.
- The Envenom and Dispatch buffs that Ghostcrawler previewed in the WoW forums are now official.
- The “area damage cap” for all classes has been doubled. This means that we will now deal full AoE damage to up to 20 targets (instead of 10) before our total amount of damage dealt hits an invisible wall (such that, if our AoE hits 25 targets, it’ll only deal 20 targets’ worth of damage, but that damage amount will be divided among all 25 targets, meaning less damage per target). Practically speaking this’ll have almost no benefit, but it does mean that in very select situations — like huge trash pulls in LFR raids — we’ll potentially be able to deal a lot more damage than we had before 5.2.
It was either make Blade Flurry baseline or nerf it to shit, clearly they took option #2.
some interesting changes. shame about blade flurry.
I can see why it has been done. why leave it this long though? Just changing blade flurry back to how it was pre MoP would have made more sense.
It’s an… interesting move. :) And we need to be mindful that 1) it’s possible not all of Combat’s changes have been taken into account here, and 2) they may have gone overboard with the nerf initially but plan to dial it back if PTR data suggest they went too far.
On the surface, though, I kind of agree with Madsushi — this feels like one of the least satisfying ways they could have brought Combat’s cleave back down to earth.
this is coming from a warlock, with grimoire of sacrifce affliction being so good at single target they nerf it on this patch, remember blizz always go with the nerfs rather than the buffs, like making blade flurry baseline or buffing destro and demo single, not going to happen :P
I’m not sure I understand your point. (I also don’t know a thing about warlocks, other than that they wear pointy hats.) If an ability is overpowered, how is buffing it a solution?
Don’t get me wrong — I think the argument for making Blade Flurry baseline is alluring — but whatever point you’re trying to make is getting lost in your desire to make an irrational and untrue statement about how Blizzard prefers to nerf abilities rather than buff them. If that were true, by now every ability we used would deal 0 damage.
Kinda liking the shuriken toss change and marked for death. Not so sure on cloak and dagger, seems a bit gimmicky i think i’d rather have shadowstep but i’ll give it a try.
Actually i think the change to shadowfocus might make me try subterfuge out a bit. Not sure which of the lvl 30 talents i’d take.
While were on the subject of stealth… we were not but i just decided to be ;)
Why has Vanish been removed as a stance?
Before macro’s I used were based on stances.
Stance:0 Normal
Stance:1 Stealth
Stance:2 Vanish
Stance:3 Shadow Dance
These are off the top of my head, so one or two might be incorrect, but none of the macro’s using stance:2 work anymore as your still in “vanish” state not “stealth” state and this leads to problems in coding the macro’s correctly.
Imagine a vanishing and pressing your macro’d button for [stance:1/2/3] ambush [stance:0] backstab.. just for example. You now get a backstab instead of an ambush…. as it doesn’t recognise the state.
Can’t see any reason why its been removed… just a random thought anyway…
It’s maybe a bit late, but [stance:2] is working on the ptr.
Oh right good to know. Maybe it’ll make it back to live…