Patch 5.4.8 PTR: No, Burst of Speed Isn’t Being Nerfed

When the datamining robots of doom at Wowhead and MMO-Champion caught an extremely odd tooltip change for Burst of Speed last night, they did what any good Internet robots do: spit the data out into the ether.

Only, thing is, about robots: Sometimes they data they spit is wrong.

What Wowhead and MMO-C saw was an alteration to Burst of Speed that appeared to change it from a 70% speed buff that lasts four seconds to a 1% speed buff that lasts a tenth of a second.

Let’s reread that together: a 1% speed buff that lasts a tenth of a second.

I know there’s a bunch of us who are utterly convinced that Blizzard is trying to actively destroy a class that the company itself designed and that hundreds of thousands of people play regularly. But, c’mon. It doesn’t take more than a tenth of a second of rational thought to realize: This datamining probably isn’t accurate.

Nonetheless, it didn’t take long for folks to freak out. Thankfully, it also didn’t take long for WoW’s designers to clarify the situation.

@2Stoned2Drive @holinka It's just a tooltip bug. It wasn't nerfed.

— Celestalon (@Celestalon) May 15, 2014

In fact, not only is what’s happening here not a nerf to BoS — it’ll make BoS *better* by resolving an inadvertent problem the designers introduced several weeks back.

Overlooked in the hubbub over the tooltip text change was an adjustment in the spell effects to the way BoS provides immunity to snares. Specifically, quoth PvP czar Brian “Holinka” Holinka:

https://twitter.com/holinka/status/466925208402530304 https://twitter.com/holinka/status/466925494328242176 https://twitter.com/holinka/status/466937362396618755

So, say it with me, dear peoples: Datamining is not official. Datamining can be wrong, or it can reflect something the designers put in the game accidentally. In fact, pretty often, what datamining sees actually *is* wrong. It’s OK to wait a little while for confirmation before freaking out, throwing cats around the room and eating glass in fury.

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Scattered… Shivs: Early WoD Alpha Rogue Clarifications

With all due respect to the dearly departed WoW Insider hunter column. ;)

Following the initial dump of the Warlords of Draenor alpha novel last week, WoW technical game designer and celery-gnawing glitter maniac Chadd “Celestalon” Nervig took to the twitwaves, as he is oft wont to do. And the interviewed-by-Olivia-Grace-waves, as he is not oft wont to do. And the live-interview-on-major-WoW-fansite-shows-waves, as he has never before been wont to do.

Across all of these various and sundry forms of interaction, Nervig answered a ridiculously large number of questions from players seeking clarifications and further info on the changes we have in store for us in Warlords.

Meanwhile, Warlords datamining began as the first alpha client hit public test servers, bringing with it brand-new waves of speculation and misinformation — as well as some intriguing glimpses of what may yet to come to pass for we wily ones.

So. To supplement my post last week summarizing (nearly) all of the rogue info in the first alpha novel — a masterfully organized, but depressingly ugly and text-heavy, tour de force of bullet points and explanations — I will now unceremoniously dump a scattershot list of (nearly) all the rogue-relevant odds and ends we learned over the past several days.

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Burst of Speed “Stacking” Nerf Likely Intended — at Least Partly

On March 11, this hotfix was posted:

Worgen

• Darkflight’s movement speed increase no longer stacks with Burning Rush or Burst of Speed.

Almost immediately, rogues started noticing. And it wasn’t just the worgen-only Darkflight-BoS combo — which had reportedly allowed worgen rogues to briefly experience run speeds of up to 425% — that had apparently been affected. Burst of Speed no longer appears to stack with any other movement-speed enhancing spell, including the engineering perk Nitro Boosts.

This, in and of itself, appeared to cause only a small amount of grumbling. Worgen players have long been able to stack Darkflight with Burst of Speed, giving them a huge advantage in select situations — for instance, as a flag carrier in Warsong Gulch. Establishing better balance, even at this late stage in the expansion, is hard to argue against, particularly when the change is ultimately such a small one.

Regardless, though not explicitly laid out within the hotfix, the change appears to be “pretty much” intended:

@Seerax Side-effect of the hotfix that made Burning Rush and Darkflight no longer stack, but it's pretty much intended.

— Ion Hazzikostas (@WatcherDev) March 14, 2014

What may be less intended is a side effect: While Burst of Speed is active, rogues appear to be locked out from using any other movement-enhancing spell, including Sprint. This prevents a rogue from, say, hitting Sprint just as BoS is about to wear off to maintain their 70% speed buff without interruption. Instead, BoS must actually drop off, briefly slowing the rogue, before Sprint can be activated.

Whether this is part of the intended changes or not — and whether it’ll be tweaked or not — remains to be seen. But it looks like at least the design team is keenly aware of the complaints.

https://twitter.com/holinka/status/444248028493262848

https://twitter.com/holinka/status/444310956814790657

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Patch 5.4 Datamining: Eviscerate Tooltip Slightly Deviates From Official Notes

Last night, a new Patch 5.4 PTR build passed under the ever-watchful eyes of MMO-Champion‘s and Wowhead‘s data scrubbers. There were several rogue-related changes that, for the most part, matched up nicely with the official notes that Blizzard had updated a day earlier.

Here’s what matches up:

• Backstab buff

• Hemorrhage buff

• Buffs to the entire level-60 mobility talent tier (Burst of Speed, Cloak and Dagger, Shadowstep)

• Cheat Death buff

Here’s what doesn’t quite match up:

• Eviscerate. The official notes say it’s getting a 10% nerf. The latest datamined tooltips suggest that its damage formula is being rejiggered so it relies more on our attack power and less on weapon damage. I’m inclined to trust the newly updated official notes more than the datamining, but suffice to say the jury’s still out on what exactly is happening with Eviscerate — and what compensation, if any, Combat would get if the nerf stays. Recent tweets from PvP commander Brian Holinka (one, two) drive home the point that this is still a pretty fluid situation.

• Glyph of Cheap Shot. MMO-Champ has picked up a tooltip change stating that the glyph increases the duration of Cheap Shot by half a second instead of a full second. Wowhead isn’t reporting this at all. Keep in mind that Blizzard’s official notes for Patch 5.3 already include a nerf to the glyph from one second to half a second, so this is almost certainly just a tooltip correction, not a new nerf.

• More possible new glyphs, maybe kinda. The last datamine spotted a gaggle of “not yet implemented” glyphs, including four interesting ones for rogues. A couple of those glyphs (but none of the rogue ones) have since found their way into the official patch notes, but most have not (and aren’t even available on the actual PTR), leading Wowhead’s content chief to wonder if they’re maybe not even part of this expansion. Regardless, yesterday’s datamining turned up another crop of  “new” glyphs, one of which is almost certainly for rogues and the other of which may or may not be.
  • Glyph of Improved Distraction: “Distract now summons a decoy at the target location.”
  • Glyph of the Headhunter: “Abilities that throw weapons will now throw axes regardless of your currently equipped weapon.”

All we can do is speculate about datamining that doesn’t match up with official patch notes. Personally, I prefer not to bother wasting time on this kind of speculation and would rather spend my time on other fun things until we see something official.

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Patch 5.4 Notes Updated: New Buffs for Rogue Mobility, Subtlety’s Combo Builders

After  a few quiet weeks on the Patch 5.4 PTR front, a new update to Blizzard’s official PTR notes brings with it a whole mess of rogue adjustments. Here are your headlines:

• Subtlety’s combo point builders are getting buffed by around 15%. Backstab goes from 275% weapon damage up to 315%, while Hemorrhage goes from 140% weapon damage up to 160% with a slow weapon equipped and from 203% to 232% with a dagger.

• Eviscerate is getting nerfed by 10%. A few things on this change:
  • This partly offsets the BS/Hemo buffs noted above, and provides a small nerf to Combat, as Fierydemise’s early calculations suggest. I’d be pretty surprised if this isn’t offset by buffs to Combat PvE in other areas as the PTR progresses.
  • This also reduces the burst power of Combat rogues in PvP who may want to use Marked for Death to score two quick Eviscerates. That may seem moot right now, but Combat may well make a resurgence in PvP next patch thanks to the ability to target-focus Killing Spree.
  • The net result of this nerf and the BS/Hemo buffs should be that Sub rogues become less bursty in PvP. Meanwhile, they should also have more uptime on their targets, because…

• Our entire level-60 mobility talent tier is getting buffed.
  • Burst of Speed’s energy cost will be cut in half, from 30 energy to 15. (Remember that the cost was 60 at the start of the expansion.)
  • Cloak and Dagger’s range will increase from 30 to 40 yards. (The stealth restriction looks like it’s staying put.)
  • Shadowstep’s cooldown will drop from 24 seconds to 20.

• Cheat Death is getting buffed. When it activates, it’ll reduce damage by 85% instead of 80%.

• Non-dagger weapons should stop dropping for Assassination rogues in LFR and heroic scenarios, fixing up the frustrating bug I posted about last week.

Nothing official yet on the possibly-maybe-new rogue glyphs that were datamined last week. We also have yet to see any concrete word from Blizzfolk on their hopes and plans for our PvE Tier 16 set bonuses, which are still going through adjustments (as I also noted in last week’s datamining post). We’re still likely in the early stages of the Patch 5.4 PTR, though, so expect many more adjustments — as well as more complete explanations of class changes — in the weeks (and perhaps months) to come.

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Patch 5.2 Datamining Update: Blade Flurry Affects 4 Targets; Say Hello to ‘Cloak and Dagger’

MMO-Champion and Wowhead have datamined what appears to be the second Patch 5.2 PTR build (though as of this post, no new build was yet in place on the PTR server and which looks like it hit the PTR server within a few hours afterward). I’ve incorporated the new rogue changes into my big ol’ collection of datamined info, but here’s a layman’s summary of the apparent changes from the previous build. Please note, again, that datamining is notoriously unreliable and may not match up with official patch notes or the designers’ ultimate plans.

• The nerfed Blade Flurry will still copy 25% of damage, down from 100% on the live servers. However, that damage will now be copied onto *up to four* nearby targets, up from one. The energy regen penalty remains in place.
• Cloak and Dagger appears to have finally replaced Hit and Run in the level-60 talent tier. (This is the spot that replaces Preparation, which is going baseline.) Here’s a  video from wavefunctionp of him testing out the ability on the PTR.
• The Burst of Speed tooltip has been updated to reflect what’s in the official patch preview notes: It costs 30 energy, down from 50 on the live servers, and it now breaks “movement-slowing” effects rather than “movement-impairing” effects (meaning it’ll still break snares/slows, but not roots).
• The Sanguinary Vein buff that’s already in the official patch preview notes now appears in the PTR tooltip.
• Our Tier 15 (new raid gear) set bonuses appear to be:
  • Two piece: Increases the duration of your finishing moves as if you had used an additional combo point, up to a maximum of 6 combo points.
  • Four piece: Shadow Blades also reduces the cost of all your abilities by 40%.

Be sure to check out my full datamined 5.2 rogue changes post and my official 5.2 patch notes post for more complete info on all upcoming changes.

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