There were very few “big reveals” in terms of class changes at this BlizzCon — not just for rogues, but for our lesser brethren as well. My suspicion is that they simply haven’t worked through/finalized the mechanic adjustments they want to make for all classes, and didn’t want to generate extra angst by revealing only part of the story for some classes. (This would also at least partly explain why there was no class design panel, and why class-specific questions were forbidden at the “almost everything” Q&A yesterday.)
Nonetheless, we got a few new nuggets in Day the Second, including some clarifications on yesterday’s revelations.
I mentioned earlier that a chunk of the official FAQ for the expansion announcement referred to the elimination of hit and expertise, and the addition of some new interesting stats. Yesterday’s discussion panel on game systems painted in more (but not all) of the picture. Here’s the short version of the rogue-relevant stuff:
- Hit, expertise, dodge and parry will all disappear from our gear (what used to be caps will become baseline). Ghostcrawler also acknowledged in a tweet that some racials will need work, since several races, for instance, had a racial bonus directly tied to expertise.
- Reforging will be eliminated, gemming and enchanting will be available on fewer pieces of gear (but will be more powerful), and both socket bonuses and meta gems go bye-bye. In other words, most of the things that I suspect people use ShadowCraft (and Ask Mr. Robot) for at the moment will go away, and it’s possible that rogues will start saving multiple gear sets again (as they did before reforging existed), depending on how different stat weights end up being between specs.
- Rare gear drops (akin to Thunderforged gear drops in raids) will include new “tertiary” stats on them, many of which look an awful lot like the funky mechanics we saw in our Patch 5.4 trinkets — multistrike, cooldown reduction, etc. (Also on their list of possible stats: movement speed and removal of durability loss.) The designers are clearly still debating how (and whether) this will all work, so it’s possible it will end up a lot different than the preview at BlizzCon suggested.
- Positional requirements appear to be gone. This is a much bigger deal than its place in this list suggests, but it wasn’t actually mentioned in any of the discussion panels, so my cynical side refuses to allow me to believe they really plan to make it happen. But according to Xyronic at MMO-Champion — and as attested by players who got to try out Warlords on the demo floor at BlizzCon — Backstab, and similar abilities that once required you to be behind the target, can now be used directly in the faces of your enemies.
I’ll have a little more on all of this later in the week on WoW Insider, including any new info that becomes available and the beginnings of some poorly thought-out analysis regarding what it all means.
So what you’re effectively saying is that Backstab becomes… Stabbing? ^^
Patch 6.0: Backstab now renamed to simply “Stab”. Gets a damage bonus when done from behind. People still cry that they get reduced DPS from the front (as opposed to none at all).
Is just me or does any one else think combat rogues will be screwed by the lack of reforging? Don’t want anything but haste and they seem to never put on more than 50% of the gear
The elimination of reforging (and the rare-ification of gems and enchants, *and* the elimination of hit and expertise) is almost certainly gonna change the way gear gets itemized to begin with. We also haven’t the slightest idea yet how stat weights are gonna shake out in 6.0, or how specs themselves may be changing to favor certain secondary stats more or less.
If they eliminated reforging and the rest RIGHT NOW, then yes, there’d be issues. But they won’t be removing them in a bubble. They’ll adjust across the board for their removal.
Stat weights may change, but I’ve never seen combat rogues go for anything but haste, only the degree that they go after may change