I’ll include a mini-glossary below these tweets; there are a ton of abbreviations.
@Ghostcrawler Re:rogues.ST on PRT is currently procing HaT for sub from the autoatks, & cpotency for combat. Intended?
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Ambassador LUE (@AmbassadorLUE) January 09, 2013@AmbassadorLUE All of that (including the procs) is intended.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 09, 2013
Actually, forget about the mini-glossary, let me just de-twittify the language (how cool would it be if Google Translate had something like THAT?):
Ambassador LUE: “Regarding rogues: Shuriken Toss autoattacks on the Patch 5.2 PTR are currently proccing Honor Among Thieves (for Subtlety) and Combat Potency (for Combat). Is this intended? Also, Shuriken Toss autoattacks seem to be using the yellow (special) hit table as opposed to the white (melee autoattack) hit table; they’re showing up as yellow damage.”
Ghostcrawler: “Yep, you bet your sweet ass.”
I haven’t been keeping up on the discussions around Shuriken Toss on the PTR, but this is… pretty remarkable. And confusing — because, if I’m thinking about this right, it suggests that autoattacking from range with ST will deal *considerably* more damage than autoattacking with your actual stabby weapons.
To back up a moment: “Yellow” damage is damage dealt by our special abilities, such as combo point builders (Mutilate, Sinister Strike, Backstab) and finishing moves (Envenom, Eviscerate, Rupture). We strive to reach the “yellow” hit cap (3% against level-90 targets; 7.5% against raid bosses) so that these hugely important abilities will have as high as possible a chance to hit the target.
“White” damage is damage dealt by our melee autoattacks. The “white” hit cap is drastically higher than the yellow cap (22% against level-90 targets; 26.5% against raid bosses), and it’s not considered important (or even mathematically possible) to reach it for either PvP or PvE. As a result, our autoattacks miss our targets pretty often.
The twitversation above suggests that will continue to be the case when we’re within melee range. However, when we’re more than 10 yards away from our target and using our super-duper-new-and-improved Shuriken Toss (now with autoattack goodness!), our ranged autoattacks will behave similarly to a hunter’s autoattacks — we only need to be at the yellow cap to ensure they all hit.
Between that and the already-doubled damage Shuriken Toss deals at >10 yards, this talent may well turn us into a solidly viable kiting class — though it’s still unlikely, in and of itself, to seriously compete with actually stabbing our enemies, since the only damaging finisher we can use from range is Deadly Throw, and the only CC ability we can use from range is Blind. If I’m recalling correctly, at least.
This is all likely to make the “what talent to take at 90″ conversation a whole heck of a lot more interesting in both PvE and PvP, though.
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UPDATE 1/9/13: GC is clarifying some aspects of the ability; feels more appropriate to add it to this post than create a new one, so:
@Aulper7 They are supposed to be physical. It might have been Shadow in a very early build.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 09, 2013
Also wanna toss in the links to a some of the more constructive, currently active WoW forum threads on Shuriken Toss:
What jumps out at me is first that ST is gonna be jiztasticly powerful and cool, and that it will be a dps increase to use at least every 10 secs for PvE. Also I don’t believe missed autoattacks proc poisons, so ST will probably be a whole heck of a lot better for Assassination in PvE than it currently is.
Are you suggesting it’d be viable for a rogue to actually run out to 11 yards every few seconds during a raid fight? ARE YOU HAILEAUS? Wouldn’t we lose a ton of melee hits and stronger CP builders just from all the back and forth?
Having more autoattacks proc poisons also increases the importance of Envenom, which would make the faster ST a more viable ability to generate CP with even more than ever 10 secs. Could definitely see it being suggested to use ST to fill in a 5th CP at the very least regardless of duration. Then again Anticipation will still prolly be the best Patchwerk talent.
The autoattack component of ST only kicks in at >10 yards, though; if you use it in melee range you get neither the double damage nor the yellowed autoattacks. So you’d have to actually run out (or backpedal) to 11, ST, then run/port back behind the target, then run out again… what, 7 seconds later? 8? Unless I’m not thinking about this right, it’d be a serious pain in the ass to juggle. And do we know whether the autoattacks continue to be yellow once you’re back within melee range? (Edit: PTR testing reported by others suggests that they do, for the full 10-second duration of the ST autoattack “buff.”)
I said this on the official forums too but I didn’t realize autoattacks only triggered when you were at range. But yeah maybe if you used a massive speed increase/teleport then it could be worth it. Def HnR if it was implemented would do the trick.
Still feels like a mighty pain in the ass to me. I worry you’re underestimating just how much optimal uptime we’d lose in the constant “commutes” back and forth, as well as how difficult this would be to do properly even if it does turn out to be a DPS advantage.
It feels really weird to be basically arguing against this, incidentally, when I just got done being lectured by Aldriana on why it’s silly to even be considering the use of ST in raids currently. :)