(Post updated Feb. 4 with some additional back-and-forth from GC.)
For the second time in about a month, Ghostcrawler has tweeted about what appears to be the primary reason the class design team is leery about removing Preparation from the game:
@WoYupiiyupp I've commented on that before. The game might be better without Prep, but too many rogues would consider it a crippling nerf.
—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) February 02, 2013@DontB1ink I'm telling you they would. This is experience talking. Even if presented with numbers, they'd say it was more fun to have the CD
—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) February 04, 2013
Early last month, GC said something similar in response to a request that Prep be axed:
@GideonHawkins We've discussed that a lot. Our concern is you'd see rogues years from now still asking / demanding Prep back.
—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 31, 2012
Taken together, these tweets seem to suggest that fear of widespread player displeasure is the main motivation for keeping Prep in our spellbook. I suspect there’s more to it than this, though. After all, is WoW’s evolution not liberally peppered with examples of class design decisions that were made for the long-term good of the game even though they were unpopular at the time? (I’m actually asking; I can’t remember specific examples off the top of my head. What, you think I’m some kind of encyclopedia?)
I’ve long felt that Prep was an interesting ability. In my mind, it adds an extra strategic element to rogue play that requires a player to make complex, on-the-spot decisions about when the “right” time is to reset key cooldowns. In that sense — ideally, at least — it’s a skill separator. It’s one of those buttons whose proper use helps mark the difference (in PvP, anyway) between a good rogue and a great rogue.
The question is: How often, in reality, does Prep truly make that kind of difference? Do the cooldowns it resets, and the PvP strategies it can impact, really help set great rogue players apart from the rest of the pack? Do they often make the difference between a win and a loss? Or is Prep just an uninteresting, frustrating, unhelpful hassle to juggle, whereas more consistent cooldown lengths (and fewer buttons to worry about) might actually end up allowing for better (and more balanced) strategic gameplay?
HeckifIknow. I just do dailies. But I think that when GC says he doesn’t want to kill Prep because players will go nuts, he’s not merely saying that it’s a popularity issue. My personal, completely unsubstantiated feeling is that he’s only saying this because the designers are genuinely unsure whether Prep’s pros outweigh its cons — and thus whether the rogue class, and the game in general, *would* be better if it were rebalanced around Prep not existing.
People often ask for things that aren’t good for them. That’s really not a good reason to give them those things.
There’s 2 ways to make it work if they decide to finally bite the bullet and remove Prep:
1) Balance durations and CDs of abilities on their own merit
2) Introduce charges to some abilities (similar to Monk’s Roll) to allow for chaining, but have each charge on a separate CD.
Put those 2 mechanics in place and Rogues should be doing rather well.