(Updates are at the bottom of the post.)
Amidst a sea of buffs, talent redesigns and sweet-looking PvP-oriented changes impacting rogues, the Patch 5.2 preview notes feature a big ol’ honkin’ iceberg: a 75% nerf to the damage Blade Flurry deals to its second target. As Combat rogues everywhere rent their garments in fury, Ghostcrawler took to Twitter to address one representative member of the frenzied masses:
@cameronwallen Yes. Combat had just become "swap on cleave fights only." A cleave advantage is fine, but it was too far off.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 22, 2012@JosephDelage1 They may need a better AE mechanic for larger groups.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 22, 2012This by no means constitutes a promise that we’ll see a buff to Fan of Knives, Crimson Tempest or some other element of Combat’s gameplay that might increase its ability to deal AoE damage. But it at least means the class design team is aware of the potential that Combat is about to go from feeling required on two-target fights to feeling downright shunned on any fight in which there’s more than one target within melee range.
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UPDATE 12/29-31: Ghostcrawler, apparently fresh back from his vacation, responded to a slew of tweets this weekend, including these:
@dextarrogue It's okay to have cleave specs (for all those classes) as long as the difference between the cleave and non isn't massive.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 29, 2012@loopnotdefined We think "abysmal" is hyperbole, but we are trying to buff Combat single target to make up for the cleave nerf.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 30, 2012@EvilAipac How much DPS do you think 5% AP is and how below do you think Combat is on single-target fights?
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 31, 2012Obviously, “massive” is a subjective term. Judging by the early patch 5.2 preview notes, it would appear that the design team’s current rule of thumb is that the difference shouldn’t be more than a 10% DPS increase or so. (Aldriana recently theorized that, as the patch 5.2 notes currently stand, the DPS boost from Blade Flurry in ideal situations would be 8%, but I’m not sure whether he took into account the 5% attack power increase Combat is slated to get through a Vitality buff.)
That most recent tweet gets at a good question, and one you and I are not in a good position to answer (unless you are a member of the Blizzard team working on WoW, anyway). I don’t feel that Simcraft or WoL/Raidbots are sufficient at this point (if they ever were) for determining exactly what the “real-world” DPS difference is between equally geared, equally skilled, equally buffed Assassination and Combat rogues who are each executing optimal rotations. Blizz likely knows that better than any of us do.
It’s also entirely possible that — and I’m just tossing this out there — Combat and Subtlety are both already *very* close in single-target DPS performance. And these buffs, small as they are, are meant more to create the perception of greater viability among us players so that we will feel more willing to experiment with specs other than Assassination in the upcoming raid tier.
Ya just have to stab everything faster. That’s all. Right? Right.
5% AP shouldn’t make much of an impact on the % increase we get from turning on BF when there’s another mob nearby.
Might also be worth mentioning that at times when there’s a mob nearby for only part of a fight, if predictable enough, the rogue could set up CDs so they are up more often during cleaves and thus get more than 8% increase. Wouldn’t happen often though since combat generally wants to use CDs asap.
The 8% damage increase does not include the 5% AP buff because that doesn’t matter to what is being measured. BF is an 8% damage buff over single target whatever that single target is.
As for the question of combat vs. assassination damage, with the 5% AP buff combat should be quite competitive on a patchwork fight but as GC is fond of saying patchwork doesn’t really exist anymore. Fights with an important execute phase burn will still favor assassination as will fights with a significant AoE component. The problem for combat is that those two fight profiles are quite common. In this tier approximately half the fights fit into that category and if we look at general design trends over the past few tiers we see that execute burns are one of the most common raid mechanics.
Its worth remembering what happened with combat and assassination during ICC, assassination was in fact better single target dps by a couple percent however combat with its low ramp up and burst cds was the more commonly used spec. Fight specific utility especially is more often then not the relevant factor in determining the spec of choice not raw dps.