MMO-Champion and Wowhead have datamined what appears to be the second Patch 5.2 PTR build (though as of this post, no new build was yet in place on the PTR server and which looks like it hit the PTR server within a few hours afterward). I’ve incorporated the new rogue changes into my big ol’ collection of datamined info, but here’s a layman’s summary of the apparent changes from the previous build. Please note, again, that datamining is notoriously unreliable and may not match up with official patch notes or the designers’ ultimate plans.
- The nerfed Blade Flurry will still copy 25% of damage, down from 100% on the live servers. However, that damage will now be copied onto *up to four* nearby targets, up from one. The energy regen penalty remains in place.
- Cloak and Dagger appears to have finally replaced Hit and Run in the level-60 talent tier. (This is the spot that replaces Preparation, which is going baseline.) Here’s a video from wavefunctionp of him testing out the ability on the PTR.
- The Burst of Speed tooltip has been updated to reflect what’s in the official patch preview notes: It costs 30 energy, down from 50 on the live servers, and it now breaks “movement-slowing” effects rather than “movement-impairing” effects (meaning it’ll still break snares/slows, but not roots).
- The Sanguinary Vein buff that’s already in the official patch preview notes now appears in the PTR tooltip.
- Our Tier 15 (new raid gear) set bonuses appear to be:
- Two piece: Increases the duration of your finishing moves as if you had used an additional combo point, up to a maximum of 6 combo points.
- Four piece: Shadow Blades also reduces the cost of all your abilities by 40%.
Be sure to check out my full datamined 5.2 rogue changes post and my official 5.2 patch notes post for more complete info on all upcoming changes.
Looks good. So BF will copy as much as 125% damage. That’s a good change, and a nice way to make combat more viable for multitarget while still keeping its double target damage close to (but above) the other specs. That said since most fights w/ more than one target are with two we’ll still probably get a lot of QQ, but for things like Empress where there are adds that start out stacked up, this is a welcome change.
Set bonuses are always interesting to analyze, so let’s do it! (I use the singular let’s in this case.)
The 2-pc bonus will benefit sub and combat more than assassination since for them the duration of SnD is relevant, so the bonus helps one more target. I suppose Sub will get more benefit from combat also since Combat rogues often don’t use Rupture for a variety of reasons.
The 4-pc bonus is…interesting. I wonder if Shadow Blades set bonuses – awwww the puppy is dreaming! Or he’s sick…let’s hope the former! – will be replacing Tricks of the Trade set bonuses as the go to rogue bonus.
This one will benefit whatever spec gets most of its damage from energy. Without looking at any numbers, I’d think Assassination will again get the least benefit from this bonus as its damage is mostly white and poison hits. ShB already (I think, can someone confirm?) makes Envenom uptime almost 100%, so I’m thinking the 40% energy reduction won’t do that much to help white and poison attacks. This is compared to combat and sub which both get a lot of their damage from white/poison hits.
I’m not sure which one gets more – Combat has better white hits and less poison damage, it also has AR which – oh hmm, with this change SB and AR won’t be able to be macrod together since that would create horrible energy capping. So anyway Combat has more white damage, less poison damage, and KS. The white and poison damage might cancel eachother out, while the KS lacks that something. On the other hand we have Subtlety, which also has less damage than combat as white, but more from poisons. The thing about sub is that so much of its damage comes during FW phases and it is generally thought that during FW one should not use SB since the autoattack part of SB is less effective due to it negating FW’s effect on autoattacks. I’m curious whether or not it would be worth it for sub to start blowing SB during Vanish, where we use the highest costing abilities and going into the phase where we use the highest damaging abilities.
Either way for set bonuses I’m thinking Assassination will see less benefit than Sub and Combat, which will be pretty similarly boosted. I just wonder if anyone will change because of this….
Forgot that 2pc will increase duration of Envenom. That will be a significant buff to Assassination putting the bonus more in line with the other specs.
Fair point, but as our haste levels improve, our risk of clipping will increase — particularly during Shadow Blades, and *particularly* particularly during ShB with the 4-piece bonus, as you already pointed out. That’ll negate some of the benefit.
The BF change is better then before but I don’t think it really solves the fundamental issue that assassination has tools combat does not and while combat is now better at both 2 and 3 target scenarios that may not be enough. I’ll try to put some more presentable numbers together but suffice it to say combat really isn’t that much better then assassination in those 2 and 3 target scenarios. On a fight like empress you might be inclined to go combat if your guild was struggling with the p2 dps check (certainly non-trivial on heroic) however you give up p3 burn dps. If combat was substantially better in 2 and 3 target scenarios this would be a potentially interesting trade off, however when the difference is quite small the p3 dps loss looks much less justifiable.
As for set bonuses people seem to be forgetting about envenom, assuming it applies an extra second on the envenom buff for assassination would be quite substantial.
For 4pc its hard to say, I think you are underestimating the value of the bonus for assassination, yes assassination does hit reasonably full envenom uptime under SB with lust but part of that is related to the long duration of SB from current 4 pc. With a shorter SB both cp and energy pooling becomes more viable. Even if it does, all specs will be overflowing with cps under SB+Lust given this change, sub probably handles it best depending on whether or not the set bonus leads to combat decoupling AR+SB.
In the non-lust cases however assassination does quite well because it is the most efficient spec when it comes to converting energy into damage so a cost reduction theoretically results in the largest dps increase.
There is a lot more theorycrafting that needs to happen on these to be sure but at a glance my hunch is assassination does very well with 2 set, sub next best, sub does very well with 4 set, assassination next best with the wildcard being whether this forces combat to decouple AR+SB.
One small thing on the copied BF damage: Does this not basically mean that, on a five-target fight, BF would end up doing exactly the same amount of overall DPS as it currently does on a two-target fight? Or does Killing Spree mess with that a little?
Pretty much yeah. KS and potential range issues will change things slightly but for the damage should be basically the same.
ye olde cleave towne, usa!