Encrypted Text: Rogue tier 16 set bonuses reviewed

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me or tweet me with questions or suggestions of what you'd like to see covered here.

Set bonuses are the perfect time for Blizzard to experiment with fun class effects. They're in use by a limited set of players, they can be tuned specifically for a particular tier, and the bonuses are ephemeral. Class changes are much harder to implement quietly and they're even more difficult to roll back if undesirable. Tier set bonuses are a cultured petri dish for new ideas to grow, or to be sterilized. Our new tier 16 set bonuses are just such an experiment.

The two-piece bonus saves us energy on our combo point generators, and has some very interesting interactions with each talent spec's mechanics. The four-piece bonus also changes based on our spec. Killing Spree's damage ramps up significantly, which will pair nicely with its new Blade Flurry interaction. Vendetta's mastery-stacking bonus will add some teeth to assassination's burn cycle. The Backstab/Ambush combo pack, however, is easily the star of the show, and the start of an important conversation.

The two-piece is just extra energy

Your average assassination rogue picks up an extra combo point from Seal Fate on every other Mutilate. With an average of a 30% crit rate, the chance of back-to-back missed Mutilate crits is 50%. A typical encounter might see an assassination rogue unload 50 Mutilates or so, give or take a few. The two-piece bonus gives us 20 energy per Seal of Fate proc (ignore the tooltip), with essentially no wasted energy. Multiply that 20 energy by our 25 Seal Fate procs, and we'll be seeing approximately 500 extra energy during a 5-minute encounter. That's enough for several extra Mutilates and Envenoms, which is definitely nothing to sneeze at. The value of crit will rise significantly for assassination rogues.

Combat rogues have a 20% chance per Sinister Strike to generate an extra combo point, which would activate the two-piece bonus. Your average combat rogue will use approximately 150 Sinister Strikes in a 5-minute encounter, which will result in 30 procs from the two-piece bonus. That's worth 300 energy (at 10 energy per proc), which is a lot less than assassination is seeing. The other catch is that most of combat's damage doesn't come via energy, and as such, the DPE for combat is lower than assassination. Overall, the set bonus is very lackluster for combat, but not as bad as our tier 15 two-piece bonus was.

Subtlety rogues can get a Honor Among Thieves proc every 2 seconds, which should be pretty reliable in a raid. Over a 5-minute fight, that will yield 150 procs, which are worth 3 energy each, or 450 energy total. Subtlety is another energy-focused spec, and should see good results with all of that extra energy. We'll see what the final mechanics turn out to be, as there may be ways to game the stacking effect of the proc to maximize our Shadow Dance damage.

Ambush is back on the menu

I'll talk about assassination's new mastery-stacking Vendetta and all of combat's Killing Spree improvements another day. Today is all about the "buy 4 Backstabs, get a free Ambush" set bonus that answers the fundamental question that every subtlety rogue asks themselves: why can't I use my openers all the time? Subtlety has always been a spec that revolved around Stealth and openers, neither of which work well in a raid environment. Shadow Dance is a band-aid that's plastered over the gaping chasm between what openers are designed to do and the inherent limitations of Stealth as a spec-defining mechanic.

Every feature of the subtlety spec pushes rogues towards Ambush. Master of Subtlety, Find Weakness, and even our tier 1 talents all revolve around dropping some massive Ambushes on our target. Without Ambush, subtlety is a poor combat-clone that should be removed from the game (and probably replaced with a tanking spec, all things considered). The truth is that Ambush has always been the core damage dealer of a subtlety rogue, and putting a "more Ambushes" set bonus onto our tier 16 gear is exactly what the doctor ordered.

The subtlety four-piece bonus allows sub rogues to keep Find Weakness up over 80% of the time, and that's not including all of the extra damage and combo points from Ambush itself. Do you remember ArP rogues from Wrath? Do you remember how crazy-good they were? It's almost impossible to overstate how good this four-piece bonus is, at least the PTR incarnation. Currently, the four-piece set bonus for subtlety is better than all of the other subtlety two-piece and four-piece set bonuses in Mists of Pandaria -- combined.

What's more exciting than the set bonus is the implication of the mechanic itself. Blizzard is experimenting with ways to get more Ambushes in the hands of subtlety rogues. I've talked with a lot of you about subtlety's identity crisis and how crucial openers are to the spec's PvE health. If there's a way to shake up subtlety's dependence on Shadow Dance and to spice up its rotation, we might start seeing more subtlety rogues showing up to raids and applying to our guilds. One of the best things we can do is to give subtlety a shot in the Siege of Orgrimmar, to give Blizzard good data to work with.

I don't care what the final mechanic ends up being, as long as subtlety ends up using Ambush more often, and not just while wearing the tier 16 set. Four Backstabs turn into an Ambush? Ambush replaces Eviscerate for subtlety? Sub has a new finisher (with a short CD) that grants Shadow Dance for 1-5 seconds, based on combo points? Ambush turns into Blindside, via a 20% proc with each Backstab? Do whatever it takes, just let subtlety use its defining ability outside of cooldowns. Sneak in every Wednesday for our patch 5.2 guide, a deep-dive into the world of assassination and combat rogue AoE rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue. Tags: 2pc, 4pc, ambush, assassination-rogue-encrypted-text, backstab, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, featured, four-piece, guide-to-rogues, killing-spree, patch-5.4, ptr, rogue-assassination-encrypted-text, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-set-bonus, rogue-subtlety-encrypted-text, rogue-talents, rogue-tier-bonus, set-bonus, sub-rogue, subtlety-rogue, subtlety-rogue-encrypted-text, tier-16, tier-16-set-bonus, tier-bonus, tier-set, two-piece, vendetta, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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Encrypted Text: Combat and the GCD

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

The three rogue specs share many common mechanics. They all follow the same formula: generate combo points, use finishers, activate your cooldowns when they come up. The real differences between the specs only show up once you start playing them. Assassination is well-known for being more relaxed and favors pooling energy over spamming attacks. Subtlety rogues have a knack for massive burst damage via their complex cooldown, Shadow Dance.

Combat is arguably the simplest of the three specs, and is often characterized by its fast-paced gameplay and high actions-per-minute rate. Adrenaline Rush, which has been combat's signature cooldown for years, is designed to let you push buttons even faster. Assassination's Vendetta lets you hit harder, subtlety's Shadow Dance lets you use openers, and Adrenaline Rush doubles the numbers of buttons you can push. Unfortunately for combat, the concept of "push more buttons" can't scale forever.

The 1-second GCD

The GCD, or global cooldown, has multiple purposes. By invoking a minimum amount of time between abilities, Blizzard can reduce the amount of burst damage that classes can do. It ensures that the server has time to process each ability and action, so that spells don't occur out of order. Imagine if a mage could unload his entire mana pool into a barrage of hundreds of Ice Lances at once. It wouldn't be very fair for anyone else. A rogue dropping multiple Ambushes at the same time would be similarly overpowered.

Rogues have always had a short GCD. Even in vanilla WoW, we had a 1-second GCD that let us make split-second decisions and unload multiple attacks in short time windows. The default GCD is 1.5 seconds for most other classes, which made playing a rogue feel slightly faster and slightly more fluid. I was personally drawn to the rogue due to the quicker gameplay and the ability to react quickly to my enemies.

When 1-second isn't enough

A rogue's base energy regeneration rate is 10 energy per second. With a 1-second GCD, we could use a move that costs 10 energy every GCD. We don't have any DPS abilities that cost 10 energy, so we're obviously not using every GCD available to us all the time. Haste rating on our gear, buffs in our groups, and Bloodlust during burn phases can all increase our energy regeneration. There are also several spec abilities that grant bonus energy or increase our energy regeneration rate. All of those pale in comparison to Adrenaline Rush.

Adrenaline Rush doubles our energy regeneration while active. If we were pushing buttons every 4 seconds before, we're pushing them every 2 seconds during Adrenaline Rush. As we obtain more and more haste, we're able to use more and more abilities. Luckily for us, we've never quite reached the threshold of being able to use an ability every 2 seconds, so we've never been truly GCD-blocked during Adrenaline Rush outside of Bloodlust situations.

Shadow Blades and the 4-piece tier 15 bonus

The new 4-piece bonus on our tier 15 set cuts the energy cost of our abilities by 40% while Shadow Blades is active. If we have the set bonus, we can use 40% more abilities per second, or cuts the time between our abilities by 40%. Suddenly, we've moved from using an ability every 3 seconds to using an ability every 1.8 seconds. Shadow Blades also penetrates our target's armor and grants us double combo points, which means we want to pair it with Adrenaline Rush to achieve the maximum effect. The problem is that AR's energy-doubling effect would have us gaining enough energy to use an ability every 0.9 seconds, which is shorter than the GCD. What now?

Blizzard decided to allow the set bonus to drop our GCD by a few fractions of a second. There is already a Glyph of Adrenaline Rush that does the same thing, and yes, they stack. The goal was to lower the GCD enough to allow rogues to use their abilities as fast as the energy came in. Now, during SB+AR windows, our abilities have less than a second delay before the next one is ready to use. We're finding ourselves pushing Sinister Strike and Eviscerate as fast as we possibly can.

Latency doesn't like short GCDs

One of the biggest problem with enforcing a short GCD is latency. If you're playing with an average ping time of 100ms, it could be 0.25s before your Sinister Strike press leaves your computer, is processed by Blizzard's server, and then confirmed back to you. You won't know how many combo points your SS generated until you have less than half a second before your next move needs to be determined and then pressed. Who has reaction times that good?

If you're playing in a situation with high latency, like on wireless, your ping times could easily exceed 200ms. Now you're left blindly spamming Sinister Strike and hoping that you push Eviscerate at the right times. Blizzard's servers also had issues handling the low GCD times, as they're forced to process our incoming abilities faster and faster. Ghostcrawler confirmed that while lowering the GCD time might have fixed the energy capping problem in this tier, it also isn't a perfect solution.

What's next for combat?

When combat's whole niche is "push more buttons" it can be hard to figure out where to go from here. You can only push so many buttons so fast, and combat with the 4-piece bonus definitely pushed that envelope. In order for combat to continue to scale in the future, I think the 1-second GCD needs to be respected and other ways to boost combat's damage should be evaluated. The issue is that assassination and subtlety rogues are both nowhere near being GCD-limited, due to the high energy cost of their abilities and their lack of Adrenaline Rush.

How do you solve energy capping, then? I'm not sure. There's a lot at play with Adrenaline Rush, and most of the solutions feel very messy. Extending our max energy pool during Adrenaline Rush doesn't solve the problem, making our abilities cost twice as much but deal double damage is redundant, and inventing a new high-energy cost ability to use during AR is just making it Shadow Dance. The goal of Adrenaline Rush is to provide the rogue with a lot of fun, active damage. Teasing around the 1-second GCD is what we want to see happen. So how do you ensure that your energy regeneration never teeters into the sub-second-per-ability range? We'll have to wait and see. Sneak in every Wednesday for our patch 5.2 guide, a deep-dive into the world of assassination and combat rogue AoE rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue. Tags: adrenaline-rush, ar-sb, combat-energy, combat-rogue, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, energy-cap, featured, gcd, global-cooldown, guide-to-rogues, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-gcd, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-talents, sb, set-bonus, shadow-blades, tier-15, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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Encrypted Text: We'll always be the bad guys

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

I remember the first time I ran into a warlock in vanilla WoW. We were both around level 40, and I met him in an Uldaman run. I didn't even know the class existed until he responded to my advertisement in trade chat. During the dungeon, he was constantly Fearing mobs into other groups, accidentally tab-targeting and tossing DoTs on patrols, and letting his pet steal aggro from the tank. My first impression of warlocks was a negative one, and it took a long time for that prejudice to subside.

Most players' first experience with a rogue will be on the receiving end of our daggers. Whether it's in a battleground or in the open world of a PvP server, rogues are killing thousands of players per hour. If a rogue gets the opener on an unsuspecting player, it's not a pretty sight. The target will be ambushed from nowhere, stunned, slowed, interrupted, poisoned, and bled to death. Being killed by a rogue isn't a fun experience. You're hit with the shock of surprise, denied control of your character, and incredibly restricted. It's easy to see how a player's first experience with a rogue could leave a bad taste in their mouth.

Stealth is a one-edged sword

If a rogue is able to approach a target undetected and land the opener, their chances of victory are greatly increased. Surprise allows rogues to uneven the odds quickly, and our openers have been clearly demonstrated to be our most powerful individual abilities. Stealth is always beneficial for rogues, and so it has become a crucial part of our PvP strategy. Opening salvos are precisely micromanaged to ensure we're dealing maximum damage immediately.

I would love to see PvP statistics from when rogues get the opener versus when they're caught out of Stealth. If I had to guess, I would say our chances of winning a fight double when we're able to get the opener. Stealth is great for rogues.

It's not a good surprise (for them)

Stealth is not great for our targets. Remember, the majority of content in WoW is focused around scripted combat against simple and predictable enemies. Players can see mobs coming from a mile away, and can even see 90% (or more) of enemy players at a distance as well. WoW, as a game, doesn't teach players to be afraid of the dark -- that's learned from rogues.

The first time that a player is hit with a Cheap Shot to Kidney Shot combo, they have no idea what's going on. They've lost control of their character, their fight/flight reaction is kicking in, and they're not properly equipped to handle what's happening. After a bit of flailing, their corpse is on the ground and the rogue has already disappeared.

Is there a counter to being opened on by a rogue? Absolutely. Players from every class are able to go toe-to-toe with rogues when played properly, regardless of the opener. Focused PvP players have been attacked by rogues hundreds of time, and they know not to panic. They keep their cool and already have a plan of action for after Garrote or Cheap Shot wears off.

Rogues are a strong class, but we're nowhere near the stunlock masters of vanilla. Giving every player a base level of resilience for free has only hurt our opener's effectiveness, since it tips the scales slightly less in our favor now.

We're designed to neutralize

Our damage is nothing to sneeze at, but rogues have traditionally filled a control-based role in PvP. We're designed with plenty of moves to neutralize both physical classes and casters. We have Crippling Poison and Dismantle to prevent warriors from crushing our friends, and Mind-numbing Poison and Gouge let us keep casters locked down. We've got stuns and slows, LoS breakers and CC, mobility and flexibility.

Players don't like it when control is taken away from them. Blizzard has often commented on the current state of CC in PvP, and how effective and rampant it's become. Rogues are the CC masters, which makes us public enemy number one. While I love pulling off crazy CC combos with Sap and Blind and Gouge, it's not fun for the players on the receiving end. Players have an easier time dealing with massive incoming damage than being locked out of their character.

We're rubber, they're glue

It's pretty hard to pummel a rogue. We've got a wide arsenal of defensive cooldowns at our disposal, like Cloak of Shadows, Evasion, Feint, Cheat Death, and Vanish. Even when our opponents get an opening to unload a salvo, we can typically deflect or mitigate much of the incoming damage. If you want to kill a rogue, you have to fight your way through all of our cooldowns, twice! During those few seconds when our enemies can act, we're negating their attacks with ease.

If WoW was entirely PvE-based, I think rogues would be more respected and welcomed. Healers love that we take less damage than any other class, tanks and DPS count on Tricks of the Trade, and we've got useful abilities and utility that contribute to our groups' success. We're very rarely a liability, and our damage is traditionally top-shelf.

All of the negative energy towards rogues comes from PvP. Fighting a rogue is frustrating, difficult, and often futile. We're labeled as dishonorable, cheaters, and sociopaths. It's not our fault that the class is based around surprise, control, and cooldowns. We're just working with what we're given. If we walk into an encounter out of Stealth and just faceroll into our opponents, we get crushed. But every time we push Kidney Shot or Vanish, we're building up just a little bit more ill will with our opponents. Sneak in every Wednesday for our patch 5.2 guide, a deep-dive into the world of assassination and combat rogue AoE rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue. Tags: assassination-rogue-encrypted-text, blind, cloak-of-shadows, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, featured, gouge, guide-to-rogues, rogue-animosity, rogue-assassination-encrypted-text, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-pvp, rogue-subtlety-encrypted-text, rogue-talents, rogues-bad-guys, rogues-hated, subtlety-rogue-encrypted-text, tricks-of-the-trade, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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Encrypted Text: Rogues and RPPM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

If you have any questions about what gear you should use or about your specific DPS stat weights, you should use Shadowcraft to get the answers. WoW is a game with dozens of different mechanics and complex intersections. There's no way to guess or intuit what's right for your rogue. Every rogue has different access to gear, and you're always limited by what actually drops. You shouldn't focus on trying to theorycraft in a gear vacuum, because the gear you currently have is important in planning the proper upgrade paths.

That said, there's no reason you shouldn't understand some of the underlying mechanics that determine what gear and stats are good for you. The newest mechanic in WoW is the Real Proc-Per-Minute (RPPM) system, which affects several proc-based effects like our weapon enchants, trinkets, and the legendary meta gem. RPPM is a very different system for procs than we've seen in the past.

Attack frequency and boring ICDs

RPPM was introduced to fix the issue of fast-attacking classes getting more procs than slow-attacking classes. A dagger-wielding rogue with Slice and Dice will clearly stab a target far more often than a 2.6-speed axe-toting shaman. If your proc system is based off a flat percentage (like our Deadly Poison), then the fast attacker will get more procs than the slow attacker. The difference can make it tough to balance items like trinkets for different classes.

The previous solution was to give trinkets a very high proc chance, but tether them to a long internal cooldown (ICD) to prevent them from being activated too often. Because the limiting factor is now the trinket's ICD and not attack speed, both rogues and shamans will see roughly the same trinket uptime. The issue is that the ICD system is pretty boring, with procs (which are supposed to be unexpected) happening pretty much on-time, with little variance.

RRPM reintroduces (some) randomness

The key difference between an RPPM proc and a flat percentage proc is that RPPM procs automatically adjust for attack frequency. If a weapon enchant, like Windsong, is given an RPPM value of 2, it will proc about twice per minute for everyone. It doesn't matter whether you're swinging quick daggers or slow axes, you'll still see about the same number of procs. Because there's no fixed ICD, you can't tell exactly when the procs will land. You can get back-to-back procs or they could be a minute apart.

The RPPM system has a factor that adjusts the proc chance based on the time since the last attack landed, so assassination rogues and their quick daggers see the same number of procs as a combat rogue with their slow maces. RPPM also allows you to "save up" up to 10 seconds of proc chance, so minor time spent off of a boss doesn't negatively impact your uptime.

There are four RPPM trinkets in Throne of Thunder that are of interest to us:

Note that these RPPM values are for the base trinkets, the LFR versions will have slightly lower RPPM values, while the thunderforged, heroic, and upgraded versions will have slightly higher RPPM values.

Haste affects RPPM

RPPM proc chances aren't based on your weapon speed, they're dynamically calculated during combat based on the time since the last attack landed. Abilities like Slice and Dice don't change your proc chance, since the increased number of attacks landing during SnD is accounted for in the dynamic formula. Unleashing a flurry of attacks with Killing Spree doesn't guarantee that you'll see a proc.

The only thing that affects the RPPM proc chance positively is pure haste. Haste rating on your gear, the 5% haste buff that's common in raids, and Bloodlust are the main three ways to obtain pure haste. If you have 20% haste on your gear and 5% from the raid buff, you'll see 25% more RPPM procs. A 2 RPPM proc like Windsong would then produce 2.5 RPPM procs. It's important to realize that the increased proc chance comes not from the increased number of attacks, but rather from the haste itself factoring into the RPPM formula. Haste grants you extra attacks, and separately boosts your RPPM procs.

Haste vs mastery

Mastery has been assassination's go-to stat for most of Mists of Pandaria. In equal amounts, it typically beat crit, expertise, and haste. We've been stacking mastery via our gems and enchants, and reforging to it where possible. However, we are seeing more rogues start to prioritize haste over mastery, and that can be confusing to rogues that are used to mastery being the top stat.

Because haste positively affects the proc chance of RPPM procs, rogues with a lot of RPPM effects will see a lot of improvement when they add haste. If you're sporting the Capacitive Primal Diamond in your helm with the trinket pair of Renataki's Soul Charm and Talisman of Bloodlust with Dancing Steel on both of your weapons, haste will improve the proc chances of all of those effects. Now, instead of just increasing your number of attacks, haste is improving these RPPM procs.

When does haste outpace mastery? When does mastery outpace haste? Shadowcraft has the answer you're looking for. Shadowcraft does a pretty good job of modeling the various RPPM effects and items, although the Rune of Re-Origination might be wonky (but is generally bad). The decision between stacking haste or mastery is deeply dependent on your specific gear. There's no reason to generalize (no RPPM trinkets = go mastery!) because Shadowcraft is going to give you the most accurate answer, and it's quick and easy to use.

The bad luck factor

Because RPPM trinkets have a relatively low proc chance, it's entirely possible to not get any procs for a long period of time. Some trinkets have RPPM values as low as 0.55, which means they're only designed to proc once every two minutes anyway. It would be easy to see that trinket not generating any procs at all during a short 2-3 minute Jin'rokh encounter. Sometimes random can be fun, and sometimes random can be not fun. Randomly not getting any trinket procs in a full boss encounter is in the "not fun" category.

In order to help account for that, RPPM trinkets that haven't had a proc in 1.5x their average proc time will begin to accrue an additional chance to proc. Blizzard's example was a trinket with a 1.33 RPPM value, which corresponds to about 45 seconds between each proc. If you went 72 seconds without a proc (1.6x the 45-second average), you would see a 1.3x boost to your proc chance.

For a trinket like Bad Juju, with its value of 0.55 RPPM, it has an average proc interval of 109 seconds. You'd have to wait 163 seconds (2:43) before the increased chance to proc would activate. Considering that many Jin'rokh kills are shorter than that, it's still very possible that you won't see any procs at all.

The bad luck factor also builds up when we're out of combat, which means that if your raid takes a few minutes setting up for a boss, all of that time is accruing towards a big chance to proc at the start of a fight. However, for low-RPPM trinkets like Bad Juju, you would have to wait a long time (10 minutes) before you could be guaranteed a proc at the start of a fight. Even if you waited 5 minutes, you couldn't count on a proc in the first 10 seconds. In my testing, the bad luck factor only accrues when you have the trinket equipped, so swapping to your RPPM trinkets right before a boss isn't helpful.

It's important to remember that there's no "good luck factor" in play with RPPM. While two of our Throne of Thunder trinkets (Renataki's and RoRo) have ICDs, there's nothing else to prevent you from getting procs in quick succession. If your Talisman of Bloodlust procs on the trash before the boss, that doesn't negatively affect your chances of getting procs on the boss itself. There's no "you got a proc recently" debuff that will cause you to get fewer procs. Unless you're specifically sitting idle with an RPPM trinket equipped to build up your bad luck factor, there's no negative consequence to getting an RPPM proc. You could get another proc on the very next attack! Sneak in every Wednesday for our patch 5.2 guide, a deep-dive into the world of assassination and combat rogue AoE rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue. Tags: assassination-rogue-encrypted-text, best-rogue-trinket, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, featured, guide-to-rogues, mastery, proc, proc-chance, real-ppm, rogue-assassination-encrypted-text, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-guide, rogue-haste, rogue-info, rogue-meta-chem, rogue-stats, rogue-subtlety-encrypted-text, rogue-talents, rogue-trinkets, rppm, rppm-trinkets, shadowcraft, subtlety-rogue-encrypted-text, tot-trinkets, trinket-proc-chance, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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Encrypted Text: Mastering Tricks of the Trade macros

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Tricks of the Trade is a strange ability for rogues. Why would we sacrifice our own damage (by spending energy) to boost the damage of someone else? Aldriana and Pathal have both spoken out against TotT's misguided benevolence and its boring mechanics. Rather than being a situationally-useful ability that we pull out when the time is right, TotT has become a set-and-forget chore that we just auto-cast on the second-highest DPS in raid.

Lore issues aside, Tricks of the Trade is a pretty good ability. Used properly, it can greatly accelerate the rate that tanks pick up aggro, which makes dungeons and raids just a bit easier. While it's a DPS loss for the rogue casting TotT, it's a net gain for the raid's DPS, and that's a sacrifice that we'll have to make. It's also incredibly potent in PvP; granting an ally a 15% damage boost is a pretty big deal.

Macros and addons

One of the biggest issues with Tricks of the Trade is that rogue UIs aren't typically designed with the casting of beneficial buffs in mind. I know plenty of rogues that play with their raid frames turned off, and Clique definitely isn't one of the standard rogue addons. In order to use TotT effectively, we have to be able to cast it quickly and without changing our target. A combination of macros and addons are the best way to go about doing that.

The simplest macros

If you're looking for the most versatile TotT macro, the standard mouseover is a good place to start:

/cast [@mouseover] Tricks of the Trade

Just roll your mouse over someone's raid frame and hit the button. You probably want to keep this macro around for special situations (all of your normal TotT macro targets are dead). If you use Tricks of the Trade without any macros, it will either cast it on your current target (not good since it means you're not attacking the boss) or it will bring up a cursor where you can click on someone (not good since it requires another push).

Another simple dungeon macro is the targettarget version:

/cast [@targettarget] Tricks of the Trade

This will cast TotT on your target's current target, which should be the tank if you're targeting the boss. I don't really like this macro as you never know when the boss will target someone with a random ability or when someone else will steal aggro.

Basic raiding/area macros

If you're playing with a fixed group of people, you should have a set of addons specifically for giving them TotT quickly. In a raid situation, you'll want to have macros for both tanks and one or two DPS players. In an arena group, you'll want to at least cover your partner in 2v2 or both teammates in 3v3. I suggest picking two or three similar buttons for this. I use V, shift-V, and ctrl-V for my 3 main TotT macros. Here are a few of my different macros for raiding:

/cast [@Tseten] Tricks of the Trade
/cast [@Hoofenstein] Tricks of the Trade
/cast [@Scottqt] Tricks of the Trade

/cast [@Perfect] Tricks of the Trade
/cast [@Bakkalakka] Tricks of the Trade

The reason that you want macros for both tanks is that you'll often be tasked with assisting a particular tank at gaining aggro quickly. A great example is Horridon, where tanks often take turns tanking the smaller mobs that leak through the door. You need to alternate your TotTs between tanks, and having a separate macro for each tank will make it easy to direct traffic. During the last burn phase, you'll want to be pouring your TotTs to a DPS class instead.

An average dungeon macro

When I'm just running 5-man dungeons for a few hours in random groups, I don't want to go in and edit the name in one of my macros for every random tank that comes my way. It's even more trouble if the tank has funny characters in her name. Instead of doing a specific target macro, I use my focus target to handle it. The focus target is like a second target that you can have, which is persistent. So you "focus" the tank in the group, and you can then cast spells on your focus without switching your main target. First, use a simple focus macro while you have the new tank targeted:

/clearfocus
/focus

You only have to do that once at the start of the run. If you're really crafty, you can add "mouseover" to the end of the "/focus" command to focus whoever your mouse is currently over. Once you set your focus, you can use this macro to cast TotT on that focused target for the rest of the run:

/cast [@focus] Tricks of the Trade

I don't bother with putting TotT on the other DPS classes in dungeons, as the tank is usually dealing quite a bit of damage and it helps with aggro issues. If you're focusing on defeating a difficult challenge mode dungeon, that's a different story.

TargetRole helps out

I have also used an addon called TargetRole to simplify my dungeon and LFR macros. You create a macro like one of these:

/cast [@TANK] Tricks of the Trade
/cast [@TANK2] Tricks of the Trade

Once you have made the macros, you register them with the TargetRole addon, which will keep them up to date. It will automatically put in the information for the tank (or tanks, in LFR) and update it as players join and leave. Now your macros always work and you don't have to remember to use your focus macro every time.

Handling all of these buttons

Obviously you don't want to be dealing with a mouseover macro, 10 or more static macros, a focus macro, and a handful of TargetRole macros all at the same time. Imagine how many hotkeys that would eat up! I personally use Dominos to save several different TotT bars, and I use a hotkey to roll through the bars for each situation.

My arena TotT bar has my static arena partners, my raiding TotT bar has my normal tanks, and my LFR TotT bar has the generic TargetRole macros. You could also use the low-tech solution by just keeping a bar of spare macros and dragging the ones you need into your hotkeyed slots when necessary.

Don't forget to have a few macros set up for when you want to suicide into a pack of mobs while some unsuspecting victim is AFK:

/cast [@David] Tricks of the Trade

Sneak in every Wednesday for our patch 5.2 guide, a deep-dive into the world of assassination and combat rogue AoE rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue. Tags: assassination-rogue-encrypted-text, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, david, featured, guide-to-rogues, rogue-addons, rogue-assassination-encrypted-text, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-macros, rogue-subtlety-encrypted-text, rogue-talents, subtlety-rogue-encrypted-text, targetrole, tott, tott-macro, tricks-of-the-trade, tricks-of-the-trade-macro, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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Encrypted Text: The rise of the ranged rogue

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

The original Shuriken Toss never made sense. Why would rogues, a purely melee class, want a single ranged attack? We don't have the supporting toolbox to make the transition into a ranged DPS spec. Melee uptime is our top priority. Because of our reliance on our melee attacks, mobility is our most requested feature. Why would a class want Shuriken Toss when they can have Shadowstep?

Patch 5.2 is turning a one-off ranged ability into everything a rogue needs to attack targets from range. If you use Shuriken Toss on a target that is farther than 10 yards away, your auto-attacks gain a 30-yard range for 10 seconds. The auto-attacks turn into tiny shuriken that you throw at your target. These shuriken have several special properties, but the extended range is obviously the most important aspect of the ability. With Shuriken Toss, ranged auto-attacks, and Deadly Throw, rogues suddenly have a ranged repertoire.

The details of shuriken auto-attacks

There have been a lot of rumors flying around about Shuriken Toss, so let's set the record straight. The shuriken don't deal shadow damage. The attacks deal regular physical damage, although reduced to 75% of our normal auto-attack damage. The upside is that the attacks are considered to be yellow attacks, so they use the yellow hit table instead of the auto-attack hit table, meaning that they'll never miss if you're at the yellow hit cap. The result is that you'll hit more often with shuriken than you do with your regular attacks, resulting in more poison damage and more auto-attack damage. The shuriken can be dodged, parried (deflected), and blocked.

You can throw Shuriken Toss at any target that is more than 10 yards away from you to gain the Shuriken Toss buff, and it persists through target swaps. However, you stop throwing shuriken when entering melee range (to discourage using it in a regular rotation). If you're less than 10 yards away when you use Shuriken Toss, you don't get the buff at all. Unfortunately, since Shuriken Toss is a combo point generator, you need to be careful not to burn any combo points on your previous target when using it.

The most important aspect of the shuriken is that they can still proc both of our active poisons, which allows us to deal roughly our normal auto-attack and poison damage from range. The shuriken are synced up with your weapons' attack speeds, so you'll throw slower but harder-hitting shuriken with slow weapons. Each hand throws its own shuriken and the damage is calculated separately, including passives like Ambidexterity. Procs, like trinkets, Combat Potency, and Main Gauche all still work with thrown shuriken. If you keep spamming Shuriken Toss from 10 yards away, the buff will keep refreshing itself.
You can't be a full-time ranged rogue

I am going to shatter your dreams: you can't play a completely ranged rogue. Assassination rogue damage relies on Venomous Wounds and Envenom far too much. Combat rogues need to use Sinister Strike and Eviscerate to activate Bandit's Guile and Restless Blades, respectively. And we all know how weak subtlety rogues are without Rupture ticking away on their target. Shuriken Toss itself won't rival your main combo point generator, and each spec's mechanics require their specific finishers.
It's about options

My excitement over the new Shuriken Toss isn't about what it can replace, but what it can supplement. Shuriken Toss will boost our mobility indirectly, by allowing us to lower the mobility of our opponents via ranged Crippling Poison application. Shuriken Toss gives us the ability to apply offensive pressure even when we're being snared or rooted or knocked back, which reduces the overall effectiveness of those types of attacks against us. The PvP effectiveness of ranged poison application and reasonably good ranged DPS capabilities cannot be overstated. We are going to be capable of far more ranged DPS than any of the other melee classes.

Shuriken Toss is also going to be a compelling choice for raiders, on occasion. While Shuriken Toss will never make sense on a Patchwerk-style burn, there are plenty of encounters where we're running around outside of melee range. In tier 14, encounters like Feng, Gara'jal, Elegon, the Will of the Emperor, Tsulong, and the Sha of Fear are all places where we're regularly facing targets at range. I can name a dozen fights in previous tiers where I would've killed for this ability. Could you imagine how much easier Firefighter would've been if you could attack from 30 yards away? While Shadowstep and Sprint allow us to close gaps quickly, Shuriken Toss allows us to stay put. It's a subtle but important difference.
Anticipation is still pretty good

All rogue specs have somewhat erratic combo point generation, thanks to their various mechanics. Anticipation, which helps rogues smooth out those irregular combo points, is a net DPS boost in pretty much every possible situation. While Versatility is obviously useful once every great while, Anticipation is producing a real DPS gain on every single encounter. For the raiding rogue, Shuriken Toss will be a hard sell outside of specific encounters that favor a ranged approach. I do think we'll see rogues picking it up, even if just for fun, in dungeons and while questing.

In PvP environments, Shuriken Toss is already popular amongst rogues. Versatility, which seems like it would be valuable in PvP, never really took off. With the developers hinting that Versatility will see some love soon, but not yet, it's likely that PvP rogues will make the most use of Shuriken Toss. That's great news for our dwindling representation in high-end arena. I am eagerly awaiting the first frost mage that tries to root me.
Sneak in every Wednesday for our Mogu'shan Vaults guide, a deep-dive into the world of rogue rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue.
Tags: anticipation, assassination-rogue-encrypted-text, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, featured, guide-to-rogues, ranged-attack, ranged-rogue, rogue-assassination-encrypted-text, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-mobility, rogue-ranged, rogue-subtlety-encrypted-text, rogue-talents, rogue-throw, shuriken, shuriken-throw, shuriken-toss, st, subtlety-rogue-encrypted-text, throw, versatility, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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Encrypted Text: Subtlety doesn't need a buff

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

You would have to be pretty dumb to play a subtlety rogue right now, right? If you check out World of Logs or DPS Bot, it's one of the game's worst specs. Subtlety is ranking down there with frost mages, as usual. Blizzard is buffing Sanguinary Vein by 4% in patch 5.2, which results in a slightly smaller overall buff for subtlety. Toss in a couple of extra Vanishes from baseline Preparation, and you're looking at a reasonable DPS boost for sub rogues. But how can a few percentage points of damage make up for the 50% gap that subtlety is showing on the meters?

Subtlety is not doing just 50% of assassination or combat's DPS. In fact, top subtlety rogues are parsing right up there with the best assassination and combat rogues in the game. Subtlety's problem is self-fulfilling: the rogues with the most skill and the best gear aren't playing sub because it looks bad. Subtlety looks bad because there are so few parses from rogues with the appropriate skill and gear. Most subtlety parses are from poorly played rogues in PvP gear that are just soaking up valor points and leather gear.

The numbers don't lie

Complex math problems, like DPS balance and spec performance, can be difficult to solve. Complex math problems without all of the right numbers are impossible. With millions of raiders playing on hundreds of servers, I can't imagine that more than 10% of all raid parses are uploaded to World of Logs. We can easily find top subtlety parses comparing favorably with top combat and assassination parses, so it's clearly not a mechanics issue that's holding subtlety back. The class is mechanically capable of keeping up with both of its rival specs.

The issue is that there are so few talented and geared subtlety rogues playing in major guilds and a plethora of PvP rogues with more resilience than hit rating trying to score some PvE loot. In one of the DPS Bot ranking charts, there were several parses with subtlety rogues doing literally zero damage. If the world's top rogues all switched to subtlety today, we'd be seeing a very different picture. Subtlety's problems lie in the fact that its PvE representatives are few and far between, and that it doesn't have any mechanical gimmicks that force rogues to keep a sub build around.

Subtlety's flavor is gone

Subtlety's flavor was parted out and sold at auction in Mists. The spec's defining characteristics, like Shadowstep, Preparation, and Cheat Death, were all made freely available to all rogues. Combat, even after the upcoming Blade Flurry nerf, is still the king of cleave. Assassination rogues can deal massive AoE damage via Deadly Poison and their natural tendency to stack mastery rating. Subtlety rogues have zero cleave and awful AoE capabilities. If you can only have two specs at a time, why would you roll into a raid with subtlety at all?

Every rogue is picking up combat and assassination for PvE. You play assassination most of the time, simply because it's performing well and it's does great against trash. You play combat any time the fight calls for it, which is a handful of encounters per tier. Blizzard is already nerfing Blade Flurry and talking about buffing combat's AoE to make it more competitive with assassination. Why is subtlety getting left out here? Combat is always going to have flavor and a reason for existing if Blade Flurry is still exclusive.

Repairing subtlety's image

There are zero reasons to play a subtlety rogue in PvE today. The spec has no defining characteristics, no flavor, no increased survivability, no increased mobility, and no utility. Every single piece of flavor has been extracted and transformed into talents. You get three moves for picking subtlety at the talent tree screen: Hemorrhage, Backstab, and occasionally Ambush. Congratulations, you're now the least effective rogue in your raid.

If the 50% damage bonus from Sanguinary Vein affected Crimson Tempest, are we even having this conversation? Subtlety's burst AoE capabilities would instantly spike to the top of the pile. Let assassination's slow poison method still keep the sustained AoE crowd, but give me a reason to keep subtlety around. If subtlety rogues deal equal single-target damage but don't have a defining characteristic, their population (and thus performance) numbers are going to continue to be at the bottom of the barrel.

Subtlety's stolen identity

A 4% buff to Sanguinary Vein is not Blizzard's grand attempt to fix subtlety. I have a hard time believing someone said "I think 4% ought to do it" and then put it in the patch notes. The buff is designed to get rogues trying subtlety again. The buff is designed to give current subtlety rogues some reassurance that they're not completely crazy for using the spec less travelled. The buff is designed to let us know that subtlety isn't completely dead.

I am not going to pick up subtlety unless it meets one of two criteria: significant single-target dominance (and I'm talking a 10% or more DPS advantage) or strategic raid utility (cleave, AoE, or otherwise). Assassination has ruled AoE for years. Combat has been the cleave king for WoW's entire lifetime. Subtlety used to be the survivability spec. You played sub when you needed to stay alive or soak nasty ability. Subtlety's PvE identity is gone, and I don't think a 4% buff is going to bring it back.
Sneak in every Wednesday for our Mogu'shan Vaults guide, a deep-dive into the world of rogue rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue.
Tags: 4-percent, assassination-rogue-encrypted-text, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, crimson-tempest, ct, executioner, featured, guide-to-rogues, patch-5.2, patch-52, rogue-assassination-encrypted-text, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-guide, rogue-identity, rogue-info, rogue-subtlety-encrypted-text, rogue-talents, sanguinary-vein, sub, sub-buff, sub-rogue, subtle, subtlety, subtlety-buff, subtlety-rogue, subtlety-rogue-encrypted-text, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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Encrypted Text: It's time to eat cake

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Preparation has always been our most controversial ability. From the early episodes of The World of Roguecraft, to the chart-topping AR/Prep days of BC, to our recent Prep vs Step conundrum, Preparation has always been the focal point of rogue cooldown discussion. Many rogues have advocated removing Preparation altogether and adjusting our cooldowns to be potent without it. Several other classes don't see the ability as a fair technique, lending itself to our image as a cooldown-reliant class.

Blizzard clearly has other thoughts on the matter, as the ability will become baseline and available to all rogues at level 68 in the upcoming 5.2 patch. If I was making a list of rogue talents that might become baseline abilities, Preparation would've been all the way at the bottom. Many vocal rogues have been asking for Shadowstep to be added to every rogue's repertoire to resolve the Prep vs Step debate, but I don't think anyone saw the reverse happening. The decision to baseline Preparation is a clear buff for rogues everywhere.

It's not the Prep you remember

Depending on the last time you used Preparation, you might not know that it's been changed several times over the past few years. There's no more Glyph of Preparation to add extra abilities to its list, so it resets the same five abilities every time. Offensive cooldowns like Adrenaline Rush and Shadow Blades aren't reset by Prep, but our major defensive cooldowns all are.

Due to talents like Shadow Focus, the extra Vanish from Prep can be a DPS boost. Using Prep to reset Cloak of Shadows is likely to be the second-most common option. Resetting Dismantle, Evasion, and Sprint will probably only be utilized in PvP combat. Smoke Bomb is the only core defensive cooldown that isn't reset by Preparation, which is fine due to its limited but strategic usefulness. None of our talents, like Combat Readiness or Shadowstep, are reset by Preparation either.

More cooldowns are always better

Having a second Vanish available will be valuable for rogues in both PvE and PvP environments. The ability to refresh all of our other defensive CDs is simply icing on the cake that gives us more versatility and durability. Even defensive cooldowns like Evasion and Dismantle can be used offensively to survive attacks while continuing to apply pressure. Preparation wasn't being picked up very often, and so most rogues are going to feel this massive buff immediately. We'll also be able to make use of Prep's extra cooldowns when leveling, as Evasion and Dismantle can allow us to attack mobs more frequently.

Why weren't rogues picking Preparation over Shadowstep before? The fact is that in most environments, mobility trumps utility. You have to be within melee range of your target to be valuable, and Shadowstep was the best way to ensure that we were able to stay valuable. Giving every rogue Preparation for free is a calculated move designed to increase our defensive survivability without altering our offensive capabilities. It wasn't really fair for a defensive cooldown talent to be on the same tier as Shadowstep anyway.

Level 60 tier is buffed to compensate

Blizzard must've realized that rogues were almost always choosing Shadowstep in the level 60 tier. Preparation was given to us as a freebie, but the tier itself has been shaken up. Shadowstep is still a very solid option, but Burst of Speed was reworked and had its cost lowered to 30 to make it more attractive. Due to the cheaper energy cost and the guaranteed movement speed boost, it's definitely a contender. The big negative is that it no longer provides any benefit for us when we're rooted, but hopefully a few extra Vanishes and Cloaks will make up the deficit.

The new talent that replaces Preparation is called Cloak and Dagger, which allows our offensive openers to work from 30 yards away and teleports us to the target when we use one. With an initial opener and two Vanishes, that would result in up to three teleports per fight. Shadow Dance could obviously change this, and I could see subtlety rogues picking this up to ensure their target can't escape the barrage of Ambushes. I think Shadowstep is the better overall mobility choice here, since it can be used far more often and it's both a defensive and offensive teleport. Cloak and Dagger would make a great leveling talent, though, since you're often chewing through targets more often than Shadowstep is available.

We needed a PvP buff

While rogues continue to perform well in raid environments, our representation in PvP is lower than ever before. Preparation becoming a baseline ability will definitely increase our potency in PvP immediately. Because it's an old mechanic, most rogues already know how Prep operates and they know how to work it into their gameplay. Subtlety rogues were running around with both Prep and Step for years, and so this is simply a return to the old ways. Sneak in every Wednesday for our Mogu'shan Vaults guide, a deep-dive into the world of rogue rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue.
Tags: assassination-rogue-encrypted-text, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, cooldowns, dismantle, evasion, featured, guide-to-rogues, prep, prep-vs-step, preparation, rogue-assassination-encrypted-text, rogue-cds, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-cooldowns, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-pvp, rogue-subtlety-encrypted-text, rogue-talents, subtlety-rogue-encrypted-text, vanish, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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Encrypted Text: Santa Ghostcrawler kills Blade Flurry

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Apparently rogues haven't been getting the message. Year after year, as punishment for our evil deeds and shady dealings, we've only received coal in our Winter Veil stockings. We were not deterred, as we simply pickpocketed good presents from everyone else. A frustrated Greatfather Winter, tired of our shenanigans, finally turned to his manager. Santa Ghostcrawler, with the rumored Naughty List tight in his grasp, set about enacting a Winter Veil surprise that rogues would not be able to ignore. A 75% nerf to Blade Flurry in patch 5.2 did the trick.

Melodrama aside, Blade Flurry was broken. While I would've preferred to see the ability spread to all three rogue specs and balanced appropriately (back to a cooldown?), Blizzard went in a different direction. Blade Flurry remains firmly a combat-only ability, but the edge it held over assassination and subtlety has waned significantly. Combat is no longer shackled to purely two-target gimmick fights, and assassination and subtlety rogues no longer need to respec and reforge multiple times per night to flex for Blade Flurry. The net effect is incredibly positive for rogues as whole, and we should be embracing this change.

Combat can actually be viable again

In the old days, rogues had to spec combat for all two-target fights. We've seen it for almost as long as Blade Flurry has existed. The ability to nearly double our damage simply could not be overlooked. Unfortunately, this discrepancy allowed combat rogues to fall behind on single-target and multi-target encounters. Who cared if combat did competitive single-target damage if it was the mandatory spec multiple times per tier?

The first tier of Mists of Pandaria drives this point home. Combat was the spec of choice for encounters like the Stone Guard and Garalon, but wasn't competitive on simple single-target fights. By removing combat's dependency on Blade Flurry, it can be balanced against the other specs fairly. The upcoming buffs to Vitality and Sanguinary Vein prove that Blizzard is aiming to achieve parity for all rogue specs.

Combat won't be crippled

@josephdelage1 They may need a better AE mechanic for larger groups.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 22, 2012

Ghostcrawler confirmed on Twitter that combat's ability to effectively AoE targets might need a tweak to ensure that the spec doesn't fall behind after Blade Flurry's nerf. The fact is that the majority of raid encounters don't favor Blade Flurry. On single-target fights like Feng and Blade Lord Ta'yak, Blade Flurry is never even activated. Even though there are more than a dozen encounters encounters in the first tier of MoP raiding, only one of them even requires significant AoE damage.

Single-target damage is the golden standard by which all classes are judged. While the DoT classes always win the multi-target spread out gimmick encounters, single-target fights always make up the majority of a tier's bosses. Nerfing Blade Flurry allows combat rogues' single-target damage to be balanced competitively without worrying about making them even more overpowered on two-target fights. Combat rogues are going to be better equipped on more encounters per tier than they ever have been before.

Fewer mid-raid respecs

I know I'm not the only rogue that had to visit a capital city in the middle of a raid night to respec and reforge into combat for a two-target fight. I felt like I was doing my raid a disservice by not abusing Blade Flurry against the Stone Guard and Garalon. Combat's stat priorities clash with assassination's, which had me reworking my gear multiple times per night. It wasn't a fun mechanic, and I didn't enjoy being forced into a different spec for a single ability.

While it still remains to be seen how effective Blade Flurry is in the upcoming patch, my bet is that assassination and subtlety rogues will be better served simply sticking with their existing spec. I'm not saying that rogues looking to absolutely maximize their damage won't still be juggling specs on a per-encounter basis, because that will still be happening. My hope is that the damage difference will be so small that the majority of rogues will be able to happily ignore it.

Better encounter balance

I remember how powerful Blade Flurry was when facing the Twin Val'kyr in Trial of the Crusader. It was the perfect environment: two stacked targets with a shared health pool and a massive damage buff. Nobody else even came close to matching my damage. How could you beat combat on its ideal encounter?

By trimming combat's overwhelming lead on two-target fights, it allows Blizzard to be more creative with encounter design. Balance doesn't happen in a vacuum, and now we might see more interesting encounters without the developers worrying about how badly rogues can break them. It wasn't as if we were actually being respected for winning on two-target fights anyway. Everyone else just chalks it up to an overpowered ability instead of our amazing skill.

Time to take our medicine

Blade Flurry has been broken for a long time, and quite honestly I'm surprised it went unscathed for this long. Rogue class balance is going to be better with Blade Flurry brought back down to Azeroth. It was fun being overpowered a few times a tier, but I'd rather see our three specs more evenly balanced. Blade Flurry's nerf is one we're going to have to stomach. It's in our best interests.

Rogues don't need to be the best cleaving class because of a one-button ability. We don't need to be the best AoE class. We just need to be reasonably balanced with the other classes, and we can let our effort and skill do the rest.
Sneak in every Wednesday for our Mogu'shan Vaults guide, a deep-dive into the world of rogue rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue.
Tags: 75-percent-nerf, assassination-rogue-encrypted-text, blade-flurry, blade-flurry-change, blade-flurry-is-broken, blade-flurry-nerf, combat-cleave, combat-rogue-encrypted-text, combat-rogue-nerf, featured, guide-to-rogues, mists-of-pandaria-patch, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-ptr, rogue-assassination-encrypted-text, rogue-cleave, rogue-combat-encrypted-text, rogue-guide, rogue-info, rogue-subtlety-encrypted-text, rogue-talents, subtlety-rogue-encrypted-text, two-target, wow-rogue, wow-rogue-info, wow-rogues

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