Patch 5.3 Datamining: Rogue DPS Tuning Begins

MMO-Champion and Wowhead have picked up a new Patch 5.3 PTR build, which includes two rogue changes:

• The Subtlety-only Find Weakness PvP nerf/PvE buff that Brian Holinka tweeted about earlier today is in place, though it’s not yet in the official patch notes. (Instead of 70% armor reduction, it’s now 50% reduction against players and 100% reduction against PvE targets.)
• Unexpectedly, Combat rogues appear to be getting a fresh DPS bump (and possibly a PvP boost?) in the form of a buff to the duration of Revealing Strike. Everything else about RvS stays the same, but when you use it the buff will last for 24 seconds instead of 18 (a 33% increase). This change hasn’t been confirmed (or even mentioned) by anyone at Blizzard yet, so we may not be seeing the full story yet.

While we won’t fully see the PvP implications of these changes until the new season begins, the PvE implications can be calculated to within an inch of their lives, as the Rogue Code dictates must be so. A couple of players have tinkered with our best simulation tools to see what sort of impact these changes will have on our DPS.

For Subtlety, Dansu posted on the WoW rogue forum that, in SimCraft, the Find Weakness PvE buff amounts to a little more than a 5% DPS increase for the spec — which, in theory at least, puts it basically on the same level as Assassination at very high gear levels (i.e., heroic raid gear with both set bonuses). Fierydemise, one of the brains behind our beloved ShadowCraft rogue-optimizing tool, came to a similar conclusion after modeling the change in that engine.

For Combat, as Fierydemise also noted in the post I just linked, we’re looking at a super-tiny DPS impact if it’s truly going to be implemented solely as it was datamined. The change basically would mean that, in the course of a six-minute raid fight in which you’re on the boss the whole time, you’ll be using RvS instead of Sinister Strike five fewer times than you otherwise would. That’s… barely any effect. RvS deals slightly less damage than SS and has no chance to proc an extra combo point when used, so being able to use SS a few more times is cool, but certainly not a major spec-balance fix — provided you’re already very good at juggling Slice and Dice, Rupture and RvS. If you’re not, then this change potentially becomes a much bigger deal, because it makes that juggling act a little bit easier.

Part of me wonders if, assuming this RvS change really is entirely what was datamined, it isn’t intended mainly to be some sort of PvP buff. Considering Combat is widely panned for competitive PvP at the moment and I haven’t tried it in ages, I have no concept of what impact this change would have in that area. Maybe make kiting have less of an impact?

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4/25 WoW Developer Chat: Rogue-ish Questions That Were Kinda, Sorta Answered

In an impressive display of team question-answering efficiency, a full set of Blizzard’s senior WoW developers addressed dozens of q’s across a wide range of issues in tonight’s Live Developer Q&A. Although a good number of questions and their answers might be pertinent for rogue players (particularly the numerous questions on PvP crowd control and instant heals), there were only a few in particular that I felt had particularly focused rogue relevance.

I doubt any of these responses will make many rogue players especially happy. Particularly not if you’re a PvE player; Ghostcrawler seemed to avoid answering (or moderators avoided giving him) just about any class-specific questions. Brian Holinka (whose WoW forum avatar is apparently named Desvin — did we know this before?), by contrast, answered a number of class-specific questions — but they were obviously all specifically about PvP issues.

The rogue-relevant responses Holinka gave are vague but arguably realistic; most of them basically amount to an admission that devs are aware of the issue that was raised, but that there isn’t really much they feel they can ultimately do at the moment to truly make that particular problem better that they haven’t already done — nor do they have a vision to share about how they might try to change it in the future.

I’ll copy the q’s and a’s below for posterity, though. Because posterity is superfun. (For the full chat transcript, take a look at the original source, at Wowhead’s topically sorted listing or MMO-Champion’s slightly differently topically sorted listing. As I noted, there were several questions about crowd control and cast times that I chose not to include here.)

 

Q (Skilledguy): Combat Rogue is clearly not a good spec for PvP atm at all, sustained dmg is barely noticable, there is no possible ‘no cd burst’ possibility by design, Killing Spree is jumping on pets/minions, hardly usable in 3v3. Are you gonna bother trying to fix this spec for PvP or just focus on Subtlety?

A (Brian Holinka): It’s challenging to make all 3 specs of a pure DPS equally viable in both PvP and PvE. In most cases, we want to ensure that at least one of those specs is competitive and improve the others when possible. It is a lot harder to change class than change spec, but we appreciate that players do enjoy some specs more than others.

 

Q (<Anonymous>): I understand that making all 34 specs viable for pvp would be a mess from the design and even from player PoV. But some cases were the specs differences are minimal (fury and combat/assa come to mind) seems like it’s just lack of interest on your part… Can we expect some philosophy change on that matter?

A (Brian Holinka): If we can do something to make a spec more competitive we do, but class balance is heavily intertwined. Buffs to one spec often act as nerfs to another spec and vice versa.

 

Q (Sean Maples): Why do you balance (or try to!) around Arena, yet reward more for RBGS? Melee cant get into RBGs! Its unfair that casters get a gear advantage in arena for being Overpowered in RBGs.

A (Brian Holinka): The synergy between spells like death grip, solar beam and ursol’s vortex has created an environment where melee are at a big disadvantage. We have been working on reducing the effectiveness of that combination without destroying those specs in other areas of the game.

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On Twitter: Blizzard Doesn’t Hate Combat Rogue PvP; It’s Just Really Hard to Balance

One of the really cool effects of Brian Holinka hitting the Twittersphere (and, well, being hired in the first place) is that we suddenly have more active back-and-forth between WoW gamers and designers than we’ve ever had on PvP matters.

This recent exchange with a couple of tweeting rogues provides a little insight from the design side about why Combat PvP viability is such a challenge. (I’ll provide some analysis below the thread.)

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Hotfix: LFR/Coin Weapon Drops for Assassination Rogues Become Mut-Friendly (and Anti-Combat)

Today’s new batch of official Patch 5.2 hotfixes includes this quality-of-life change for raiding rogues:

Assassination Rogues should no longer be receiving non-dagger agility weapons from bonus rolls and Raid Finder.

The good news: If you looooove raiding as Assassination and would never even consider Combat in a million bajillion years because you hate it with the passion of a thousand burning telenovelas, now you will never even have to *look* at another stinking one-handed axe, fist weapon, mace or sword.

More importantly (and less snarkily), you won’t find yourself winning a loot roll only to be given something you have no use for. This can be particularly annoying when a boss has a chance to drop, say, both a piece of leather armor and a one-handed +Agility weapon, and you win a drop — but then the system decides to give you the weapon instead of the armor, and then you fling it into the air in anger, and it eventually lands on the head of your healer in the middle of the next raid fight, and you wipe. Which would all be very unfortunate.

The bad news: If you like Combat but you happen to be doing a particular fight in Assassination spec, this appears to guarantee that you will never get a main-hand weapon drop from that boss (unless you’re doing a regular/heroic-mode fight and the weapon drops for the entire group). That’s not so cool. I’m surprised that this hotfix doesn’t appear to take that likelihood into account.

[UPDATED 4/2 AND 4/4:] The best news: Although this appears to be a happy change for Mut-only rogues and a not-so-happy change for Combat-plus-Mut rogues in 5.2, when Patch 5.3 drops, it looks like *everyone* will be happy, since for each raid fight we’ll have the opportunity to select which *spec* is the one we want to receive loot for, regardless of the one we’re using to kill the boss:

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Patch 5.2 Datamining Update: A Special Gift for Combat? — Updated 2/27 (The Answer Is No)

(Update 2/26: The datamined Vitality extra-buff will be reverted to the original buff before it goes live. Check out the addition at the bottom of this post.)

MMO-Champion and Wowhead caught wind of a new PTR build that features a whole mess of datamined (read: *not official* unless confirmed by Blizzard) damage and healing balance tweaks, including three rogue-related buffs — one of which is a big surprise.

• The surprise: Vitality — the Combat-only passive ability that boosts energy regen and attack power — appears to have been buffed again. Early in the Patch 5.2 PTR, the attack power bonus was increased from 25% to 30%. According to the datamine, it’s now up to 35%, which would be an additional nice DPS boost for the spec.
• Non-surprise #1: Envenom damage (Assassination) appears to have been increased by 20%, just as Ghostcrawler said it would be.
• Non-surprise #2: Dispatch damage (Assassination) appears to have been increased by a smidge over 15%, also as Ghostcrawler said.

I’ll update this post once someone official either confirms or anti-confirms the doubling of the Vitality buff. A major update to the official 5.2 patch notes is in process tonight.

————–

UPDATE 2/25: The latest update to the official patch notes (which posted today) still has Vitality’s AP boost as rising to 30%, not 25%. Blizz CM Rygarius, the brain ‘n’ fingers behind the patch notes, sez:

@sveltekumquat @MMOChampion @Wowhead Last I was informed, that change was reverted. May change again if I get a new email about it.

—
  (@Rygarius) February 25, 2013

————–

UPDATIER 2/26: Ghostcrawler just posted this in the official forums:

Undid the buff to Vitality for Combat. It’s back to 30% AP.

And that’s the end of that chapter. (Updatiest 2/27: A datamine of the PTR build on 2/27 showed that the change was indeed reverted.)

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Blue Post: Raiding Combat Rogues, Get Ready for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Who knew that Ghostcrawler held such a deep affection for the world’s wrist-brace manufacturers? As a Valentine’s Day gift to them, he announced last night that Combat rogues in Patch 5.2 would have a chance to spam their buttons like they’ve never spammed them before:

We are going to do something unusual and allow the [new PvE Tier 15 four-piece] set bonus to also reduce the global cooldown on rogue abilities to 0.7 sec during Shadow Blades.

This means that, if you have the four-piece, and you pop glyphed Adrenaline Rush and Shadow Blades at the same time, your global cooldown for most abilities will actually be HALF A FREAKING SECOND. I KNOW.

(GC did not say whether this change *only* impacted the Combat spec; his words were general enough that I think it’s likely it affects all three specs. Only Combat will see a massive benefit from it, though.)

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Blue Post: New 5.2 Change Clarifications, From Shuriken Toss to Smoke Bomb

Earlier today, Ghostcrawler added a second ginormous data-dump of answered questions into the new Patch 5.2 discussion thread he created yesterday. Here’s the new roguey stuff; I’ll intersperse my comments between each item.

 

During Shuriken Toss, your auto attacks are replaced with throwing Shurikens, which do 80% weapon damage, but are on the ‘yellow combat table’, meaning they don’t glance, and don’t suffer the dual wield miss penalty. The 80% number was chosen because that approximately offsets those other benefits.

This is a clarification of some of the specifics that players have come across while testing out the new Shuriken Toss autoattack system on the PTR. These autoattacks, which kick in for 10 seconds if you use ST from a range of more than 10 yards, behave pretty similarly to a hunter’s autoattacks. To offset the fact that ST autoattacks will have a drastically higher chance to hit the target (and thus apply poisons) than our regular melee autoattacks, they nerfed the damage. That way we won’t feel enticed to do some seriously wacky stuff with our combat rotations (like constantly moving into/out of range so we can keep refreshing out ST autoattacks).

 

In our above description of Blade Flurry, ‘normal’ means the same as it previously did; that is to say, the damage that the ability would have done had it hit the secondary target.

This clarifies GC’s comment yesterday that, in the next PTR build, Blade Flurry would be further de-nerfed to deal “40% of normal damage to up to 4 additional targets.” This clarification certifies that BF won’t work any differently from how it used to — i.e., it won’t start copying poison damage or Elemental Force procs or any of that stuff.

 

The 2pc does encourage using Rupture as Combat.

The two-piece Tier 15 raid set bonus elongates finishing moves that have durations based on the number of CPs we used. As I mentioned in this EJ post (and others have likely noted as well, but who pays attention to THEM?), this feels likely to result in Rupture becoming more desirable for Combat rogues. GC appears to have confirmed that’s the intent.

 

Burst of Speed saying “movement-reducing” means that it no longer breaks roots, but does break snares.

The tooltip for BoS on live uses the phrase “movement-impairing” instead. Between the text change, the phrasing of the official patch preview notes, and the results of player testing on the PTR, we were already pretty sure we knew what “movement-reducing” meant. Now we know for sure.

 

We are experimenting with allowing Smoke Bomb to reduce the damage done to allies by 20%. We agree that rogues are lacking in the group utility department and we’d like to see less use of Smoke Bomb strictly as an offensive ability in PvP.

Cool. :) (What do you want from me? PvP is like that scary old aunt with a huge ugly mole on her face whose house I’m afraid to visit.)

 

We are going to reduce the PvP set bonus from +50 energy to +30 energy.

This is a more solid affirmation of something Ghostcrawler tweeted about yesterday regarding the new four-piece PvP set bonus. Keep in mind that the starting point here is +10 energy (that’s what we have now), so this is still a huge deal. A number of rogue players have been pretty frank about how they felt +50 was likely too much, so this buff-reduction is unlikely to bother folks who aren’t wearing aluminum foil on their heads.

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On Twitter: Round 2 With Ghostcrawler on Combat’s 5.2 Cleave Nerf

A pretty insane number of major changes are on the slate for rogues in Patch 5.2, and virtually all of them are positive adjustments: A much-maligned talent eliminated, interesting new talents added, Preparation baselined, earth-nudging PvP improvements… Oh, and there is one noteworthy negative thing: Blade Flurry’s cleave damaged is being reduced 75%.

Which of those changes do you think has generated the most chatter?

Ghostcrawler put his head down and ran back into the scrum yesterday, answering a flurry (HA!) of tweets about the upcoming Combat changes. There are a couple of interesting new tidbits in here, including a confirmation that they’re considering a reduction to Blade Flurry’s energy regen penalty.

 

@GuerrillaDawg We buffed Combat single target to make them more competitive with Assassination.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 06, 2013

@addikit On Blade Flurry? Yes, perhaps.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 07, 2013

@evangel666777 Also, to reiterate, it's fine for Combat to be better at cleaving. We just want to tone it down so you can be e.g. Ass / Sub.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 07, 2013

@Tophersz Rogues are doing well on almost every fight. The problem we're trying to solve is promoting diversity not giving out more DPS.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 07, 2013

@Aulper7 Yeah, that's what we're saying. Ideally "I might do a little more damage as Combat on this fight," not "I must have a Combat spec."

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 07, 2013

@Tophersz Why don't you tell me the DPS delta that defines legit vs. mediocre for you?

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 07, 2013

 

I don’t expect anything in this exchange is going to be enough to pacify people who feel the Blade Flurry nerf is a terrible, class-hurting move. (Well, maybe the energy-regen comment will help a bit.) But hopefully, if you’re one of those folks, you’ll still take some of GC’s points above to heart, at least a little bit.

I realize that, if you look at this change in a vacuum, it can look like a major strength of the class — Combat’s cleave — is being decimated, and very little is being added to compensate *the class* for its removal. Thus the concern I’ve seen from a few players that one end result of this change could be that more versatile classes, or classes with a wider array of fight-specific benefits (such as cleaves) that are *not* being nerfed in 5.2, may become more likely to get the nod in progression raids.

This could certainly happen. Perception is often more important than reality, and if raid leaders begin to widely perceive that rogues are weak overall, their raid representation could well suffer as a result of this blow to Combat’s cleave. But it’s important to keep in mind that rogues are *very* strong end-game DPS performers right now even when you remove our cleave from the equation. 5.2 is not likely to change that.

So while I understand the long faces — nerfs are poopy and we hate them and they make us sad — how realistic is it, really, that raid leaders will dump rogues en masse because a niche strength is no longer that strong? And, as GC asked in that final question in the thread, where should we draw that highly subjective line between “good” and “bad” DPS on a cleave fight?

Somehow I get the feeling this conversation is far from over. :)

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On Twitter: Is the Planned Subtlety Buff in 5.2 Enough? — Updated 1/9

(Posted updated on Jan. 9 with an additional Ghostcrawler tweet.)

Maybe yea, maybe nay. But this recent Twitter exchange with Ghostcrawler shows that the design team 1) has thought through the issue and is proposing the adjustment they feel will do the trick, and 2) doesn’t feel Subtlety is that far behind in the first place, particularly not on single-target fights.

 

@evangel666777 What % do you think Combat is behind Assassination? (You can't just compare Raidbots or WoL because of sampling bias.)

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 07, 2013

@eldersgapingmaw Yes, my bad. He said Sanguinary Vein buff. I heard Vitality buff. Both were intended to close the gap.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 07, 2013

@evangel666777 Hard to say. If you look at a fight like Feng, Sub isn't far behind even though the sample size is much smaller.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 07, 2013

@gridbread Is Sub behind? WoW Insider discussed it recently. (And when did "Sin" become a thing? I get why people don't like to type "Ass.")

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 09, 2013

 

This isn’t the first time in the recent past that Ghostcrawler has taken to Twitter to defend Subtlety’s viability: Check out this exchange from a couple of weeks ago.

(Note added 1/9: The additional tweet from Ghostcrawler I added to the bottom of the pile refers to this Encrypted Text column by Chase Christian, which posted to WoW Insider on Jan. 8.)

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On Twitter: Ghostcrawler Discusses Blade Flurry Nerf, Hints at AoE Boost — Updated 12/31

(Updates are at the bottom of the post.)

Amidst a sea of buffs, talent redesigns and sweet-looking PvP-oriented changes impacting rogues, the Patch 5.2 preview notes feature a big ol’ honkin’ iceberg: a 75% nerf to the damage Blade Flurry deals to its second target. As Combat rogues everywhere rent their garments in fury, Ghostcrawler took to Twitter to address one representative member of the frenzied masses:

@cameronwallen Yes. Combat had just become "swap on cleave fights only." A cleave advantage is fine, but it was too far off.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 22, 2012

@JosephDelage1 They may need a better AE mechanic for larger groups.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 22, 2012

This by no means constitutes a promise that we’ll see a buff to Fan of Knives, Crimson Tempest or some other element of Combat’s gameplay that might increase its ability to deal AoE damage. But it at least means the class design team is aware of the potential that Combat is about to go from feeling required on two-target fights to feeling downright shunned on any fight in which there’s more than one target within melee range.

———-

UPDATE 12/29-31: Ghostcrawler, apparently fresh back from his vacation, responded to a slew of tweets this weekend, including these:

@dextarrogue It's okay to have cleave specs (for all those classes) as long as the difference between the cleave and non isn't massive.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 29, 2012

@loopnotdefined We think "abysmal" is hyperbole, but we are trying to buff Combat single target to make up for the cleave nerf.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 30, 2012

@EvilAipac How much DPS do you think 5% AP is and how below do you think Combat is on single-target fights?

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 31, 2012

Obviously, “massive” is a subjective term. Judging by the early patch 5.2 preview notes, it would appear that the design team’s current rule of thumb is that the difference shouldn’t be more than a 10% DPS increase or so. (Aldriana recently theorized that, as the patch 5.2 notes currently stand, the DPS boost from Blade Flurry in ideal situations would be 8%, but I’m not sure whether he took into account the 5% attack power increase Combat is slated to get through a Vitality buff.)

That most recent tweet gets at a good question, and one you and I are not in a good position to answer (unless you are a member of the Blizzard team working on WoW, anyway). I don’t feel that Simcraft or WoL/Raidbots are sufficient at this point (if they ever were) for determining exactly what the “real-world” DPS difference is between equally geared, equally skilled, equally buffed Assassination and Combat rogues who are each executing optimal rotations. Blizz likely knows that better than any of us do.

It’s also entirely possible that — and I’m just tossing this out there — Combat and Subtlety are both already *very* close in single-target DPS performance. And these buffs, small as they are, are meant more to create the perception of greater viability among us players so that we will feel more willing to experiment with specs other than Assassination in the upcoming raid tier.

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