Blizz Community Manager Daxxarri took to the WoW PvP Arenas forum, of all the wacky places in the virtual universe, to let players know that come Patch 5.2, Shuriken Toss won’t proc non-lethal poisons — either with its combo point-generating component or its associated ranged autoattacks.
This appears to be an effort to do at least two things:
- Recast Shuriken Toss as a more purely offensive ability — one that’s intended to keep up pressure from range while being kited in PvP (not to kite or cc others), or to deal fairly decent DPS while being forced to fight at range in PvE (but not to help us kite or cc mobs).
- Prevent rogues from taking advantage of ST autoattacks being on the yellow hit table, which would make poisons like Paralytic Poison stack *very* quickly. (The designers already adjusted for the greater chance of *lethal* poisons proccing by slapping a 25% reduction on the amount of damage dealt by ST autoattacks compared to melee autoattacks.)
Daxx’s comments span several posts in the thread; I’ll paste the most relevant bits below.
Shuriken Toss shouldn’t be proccing non-lethal poisons. It is intended to be an ability that allows Rogues to continue to apply some pressure even after being peeled, though. That’s part of the reason it was re-designed this way.
We’ll continue to keep an eye on balance, but (post-fix) we feel it’s a good option compared with other Rogue level 90 talents
Then, in response to a concern that the new ST “diminishes the effects” of rogue crowd control:
Roots and snares, yes. There are plenty of other effects that stop a threat cold, though.
In a subsequent post, he further clarified:
The active ability and its auto-attack component will behave the same way.
And later on, in response to a question about whether the autoattack portion of the change was “really set in stone”:
Nothing is set in stone, per se, but Shuriken Toss hasn’t proven to be very popular in its current live incarnation.
The next day, Daxx added this clarification (in a post that was subsequently deleted by accident):
The removal of non-lethal poisons from Shuriken Toss is an intentional nerf. Indications suggest that with all the other changes coming in 5.2, that Rogues are still going to be in a pretty good place.
Nonetheless, at the moment we think that applying Paralytic and Crippling from range is probably a little too good.
As well as this, in response to a player who posted that Shuriken Toss “is the easiest way to set up a 5 point KS and Shadow Dance with full energy”:
In 5.2, Marked for Death will be the easiest way to do that.
“Nothing is set in stone, per se, but Shuriken Toss hasn’t proven to be very popular in its current live incarnation.”
I blame Anticipation. In many regards that talent is just too good. It makes CP management trivial. Let’s be honest, there’s plenty of players who will choose easier resource management over anything else. The moment 1st saw the talent on the Beta patch notes I thought it was a bad idea. It’s just too good. It takes away some of the challenge from the player, instead of providing us with something exciting. It lends to oversimplified rotations with a class that never was extremely hard to learn in PvE.
By the next expansion they’ll replace Throw completely with a baseline Shuriken Toss. It’s just time for that. I’d suspect Deadly Throw will also come back as baseline. They’ll actually have to spend resources on developing the class this time, since they’ve been avoiding that for 2 expansions already.
I got kited to death on my Feral (of all things) in 2s the other night, by a Rogue with Crippling Poison and Shuriken Toss. First time I’ve ever had it happen to me, but I just could not keep up with him.
Seems a shame to lose it, but I can see why they would think it’s OP.
“Roots and snares, yes. There are plenty of other effects that stop a threat cold, though.”
What are these ‘plenty of other effects’? If you can’t get to your target you’re pretty much screwed. If you can’t slow them from range, they will just kite you instead. And if you don’t take Deadly Throw as well (loosing out on the other talents then), you won’t be able to apply a snare from range at all.
This all points to the fact that maybe they just need to make both Shuriken Toss and Deadly Throw baseline abilities. Which means them having to do more work on Rogues. If only they’d have had a several months long Beta cycle to test out things like this…
Yeah, even less control for Rogues. ST is absolutely great atm! I would trade the range slow against the new auto attacks. :(
Not to have a range slow will really suck in rBG.