Oddly, the *least* interesting news of the week for rogues was the release of the first update to the official Warlords of Draenor alpha patch notes on April 18. There were no rogue-specific changes in the notes that we hadn’t already known about. This is kind of odd, since we’ve seen datamining *and* Blizzfolk tweets that suggest some pretty noteworthy tweaks have already been made.
Here are the new odds and ends we *have* learned over the past several days, along with a smidge of analysis from y’all’s truly. (I’ll create a single home for the up-to-datest info when I have the chance; right now I’m posting updates sequentially, so some of the stuff in my huge, initial alpha notes post is no longer true.)
Combat AoE: The Changes Are Changing
The initial alpha notes and datamined info included a few bits that all but screamed, “We want Fan of Knives and Crimson Tempest to be part of the Combat spec’s arsenal.” Er, no, sorry, I meant: That all but screamed, “WE WANT FAN OF KNIVES AND CRIMSON TEMPEST TO BE PART OF THE COMBAT SPEC’S ARSENAL!”
The initial batch of leveling perks — which we’ll earn randomly on our way from levels 91 to 99, with each spec getting a different set of perks — included benefits for Combat that made FoK cost less energy and turned CT into a powerful instant-damage finisher instead of a smack-and-bleed.
As was pointed out, though, the FoK energy reduction (from 35 to 25) felt unlikely to be enough on its own to make a difference. The designers apparently agreed — but rather than find a way to make FoK more desirable, they appear to have scrapped the whole idea and buffed Blade Flurry instead.
As of the latest Warlords alpha datamining from Wowhead and MMO-Champion on April 16:
- Fan of Knives is no longer even in the spellbook for a Combat rogue — it’s labelled as Assassination and Subtlety only.
- The Combat-only leveling perk that had reduced FoK’s energy cost now does something completely different: It removes the target cap from Blade Flurry entirely.
- In addition, technical game designer Chadd “Celestalon” Nervig (whose last name I always feel the urge to spell “Nervigg”) tweeted that Blade Flurry would be able to spread both lethal and non-lethal poisons in Warlords.
Now, yes, this sounds exciting and powerful, it does appear to be an all-around buff to BF, and it’ll also make Combat burst damage look very pretty in some very specific situations. But in regards to the target cap specifically, keep in mind that Blade Flurry currently has a range of just 8 yards (just like FoK), and in the present game we don’t often see that many enemies bunched up together. Certainly not in PvP, and although it happens more often in PvE, it’s usually not in critically important situations (unless we’re trying to, say, solo an achievement).
Meanwhile, it leaves behind an unresolved issue with Crimson Tempest. As things currently stand, Crimson Tempest for Combat uses combo points to generate a large amount of instant physical damage (but doesn’t apply a bleed) to all nearby enemies. If that description sounds familiar to you, it’s because using Eviscerate with Blade Flurry on will do exactly the same thing: use combo points to generate a large amount of instant physical damage to all nearby enemies.
We know that BF will spread poisons, so regardless of whether CT does the same in Warlords, there’s an obvious question right now regarding how they plan to make choosing between these two AoE finishers more interesting than consulting a guide that tells you which one hits harder.
Other Developments
- The much-maligned Subtlety-only “Enhanced Premeditation” perk has been scrapped (for now, at least), though it is still showing up in datamining. But the designers still plan to find a way to make Premed into a passive ability without actually making it worse. (As a reminder, the initial plan was to make Ambush and Garrote automatically generate two extra combo points when used from stealth — but *not* when Shadow Dance is active.)
As I mentioned earlier, the new version of the official alpha patch notes don’t include anything we didn’t already know about rogues. The following changes had been previously announced:
- A note was added to mention that combo points would essentially stack on the rogue — the exact phrasing is “shared across all targets,” which suggests the underlying tech isn’t as simple as “CPs on the rogue,” but barring any bugs or quirks, the effect we experience should be the same.
- Also now in the notes is the Smoke Bomb nerf: It’ll reduce incoming damage within the area of effect by 10%, down from 20%, to bring it in line with other DPS classes’ defensive raid cooldowns. Celestalon also engaged in some back-and-forth on Twitter to justify the nerf and state that rogues, as well as other DPSers, had many other ways to contribute to raid utility.
Designers Conversate
- In Twitterland, Celestalon confirmed that a gnome Assassination rogue with Glyph of Energy active and Venom Zest talented would have 163 maximum energy instead of 100.
- Subtlety, why you still so hard to play well compared to the other specs? Because Blizzard wants it that way.
- Will its heavy reliance on a newly buffed Deep Insight make Combat almost useless in PvP, especially considering it was already looking dicey thanks to the removal of its damage-over-time spells? Celestalon says they’ll keep an eye on it.
- Why are efforts being made to reduce Windwalker monk spamminess, yet Combat rogues will still have a half-second global cooldown during Adrenaline Rush? Celestalon suggests uberspam is OK for “temporary effects.” (Personally, I wonder just how “temporary” AdRush will be in Warlords given how Restless Blades and the new cooldown-reduction stat greatly increase the frequency with which we can use it.)
- Should the amount of energy regen rogues get from haste be changed? Celestalon says no.
- The Redirect spell still appears on the Warlords alpha even though it’ll be unnecessary. Lead class designer Kris Zierhut confirmed in an interview with Wowhead at PAX East that it’s definitely going away. (As a person who apparently mains a Feral druid, he also bonded with Wowhead’s content chief Perculia — who mains a rogue — over the impending change to essentially have CPs stack on the player.)
Uncapped blade flurry -might- have given me a giggle fit. Now if only we could wield kusarigama to increase the range.
The gnome racial gives extra energy. So gnome racial + venom zest + glyph of energy + Mut = 163 energy.
Well. That’s a pretty embarrassing mistake on my part. :) in retrospect I’m not really sure how I got it stuck in my head that they were talking about run speed. Corrected; thank you for the comment!
Regarding the Smoke Bomb discussion, I believe you misinterpreted what Celestalon said regarding rogue raid utility. I believe he meant that in general, that’s just one small ability any class could bring to the raid. There are many different raid utility spells and that’s just one of them. I don’t believe he meant that rogues had other options.
Reread the thread, and yep, I concur, thank you. Looks like he’s referring to the DPS role in general. Corrected; cheers!
Combo points being “on the rogue” vs “shared across all targets” I think is more about the UI than the underlying tech. Basically, the game just doesn’t have a way to tell you how many combo points you have when you aren’t targeting anything because the combo points UI is attached to your target frame.
If that’s the case, it should be fairly easy to fix. They have plenty of exampls of how to do that.
That’s pretty lazy. They have plenty of time to move the combo points from the target frame to your personal frame. This is a new expansion, not a patch.
Turns out you’re exactly right, Peter. :) Not sure this is worth a separate post — I’ll probably slide it into the next wrapup — but Blizzfolk confirmed earlier today that CPs will definitely stack on the rogue itself, and they’ll persist on the rogue until we’ve been out of combat for 30 seconds. It’s just that the UI won’t be able to display those CPs unless we have a target selected. (We’ll still have them, we just won’t be able to “see” them; hopefully add-ons will be able to help with that issue.)
Wow, that is so half arsed.
Those changes to Combat AE, those are really bumming me out. Toggling a switch and keeping up with a simple ST rotation was never hard, but with the changes to BG, multi-target situations with Combat are gonna be really boring. And rather brainless. Combat is looking to be all about ability spamming ad nauseam, and that to me is just extremely boring. If that’s really what they are going for, then the only thing the spec has going for it is that slow weapons are optimal for it. Other than that, there’s absolutely nothing interesting about the spec.
I really hope they reconsider these changes. If they wanna remove abilities from Combat, then it would be wiser to remove BF, and allow for using different abilities in AE situations.
I don’t disagree about the uninterestingness of Blade Flurry’s DPS rotation (it can often feel like the regular Combat rotation with the emergency brake on), but I’m not sure there’s a way to make FoK and BF worth weaving into the mix unless you specifically attach DoTs or some other ticking debuff to them. And I’m not sure you can do *that* without shifting Combat AoE from too bland to too complex. But maybe that’s just me being knee-jerk cynical.
[…] for combat, however, comes with finisher usage. As everyone’s favorite skinny-fruity rogue observed over at the Red Hatted Rogue Reporter, what difference is there between casting Crimson Tempest […]
So why death from above got a cd? I can’t understand it