wow Rogue Class Changes and Explanations on the War Within Alpha: May 9th

[Staff 1,488]

Blizzard have shared this week's Rogue changes, as well as plans for future adjustments to Fatebound and Trickster Hero trees.

(Source)

Greetings Rogues,

This week’s Alpha build includes many changes to Class and Spec talent trees, including a handful of positional swaps, tuning changes, and a few new and redesigned talents.

Feedback about these changes is welcome, so please post here with any notable experiences or opinions from your play in the Alpha test.

More change will be coming over the next few weeks, focused primarily on hero talents. Deathstalker is still lurking in the shadows and will be revealed when it’s ready (sometime in the next few weeks).

For Fatebound, more completed talents will be rolling in over time, and we have also been following gameplay and written feedback which will be cause for iterations to existing talents.

For Trickster, we’ve been following all of your feedback, and it has generated significant internal discussion. While the core pieces will remain in place (Unseen Blade, the Fazed debuff, and a grand finish in Coup de Grace), we expect to revisit the gameplay that fuels this engine, and most notably move away from Feint being a primary applicator of Unseen Blade. Unexpected randomly-timed procs of Unseen Blade have also proven to cause trouble and are being similarly reconsidered, in addition to minor updates for other talents.

Thank you to those who have played the Alpha and spent the time to share experiences and opinions so far. Keep it coming!

And here are this week's changes:

(Source)

• ROGUE
  • New Talent: Shadowheart – Leech increased by 3% while Stealthed.
  • Acrobatic Strikes has been redesigned – Auto-attacks increase auto-attack damage and movement speed by 1% for 3 seconds, stacking up to 10%.
    • Developer’s note: Acrobatic Strikes no longer increases the range of melee attacks. We are revisiting increased melee range talents across the game, and most are being removed. Default melee range has increased since these talents were originally created, allowing specs with increased range to attack from well outside where it appears they should be able to.
  • Cut to the Chase moved from Assassination talent tree to baseline all specs, triggering from Envenom/Dispatch/Eviscerate.
  • Vanish’s guaranteed stealth duration now 1.5 seconds in PvP combat (base 3 seconds).
  • Tight Spender now reduces Energy cost of finishing moves by 6% (was 10%).
  • Subterfuge is now a 2-point talent, effect duration 3/6 seconds.
  • Some talents have moved locations.
  • Without a Trace moved from Subtlety to Class tree in capstone location, replacing Shadow Dance.
  • Nightstalker has been removed.
  • Assassination
    • New Talent: Rapid Injection – Envenom deals 10% increased damage while Envenom’s effect is active.
    • Serrated Bone Spike has been redesigned – (Passive) Prepare a Serrated Bone Spike every 30 seconds, stacking up to 3. Rupture spends a stack to embed a bone spike in its target:
      • Deals Physical damage and Bleed damage every 3 seconds until the target dies or leaves combat. Refunds a stack when the target dies.
      • Generates 1 combo point plus 1 additional per active bone spike.
    • Serrated Bone Spike initial damage reduced by 24% and damage over time damage reduced by 9%.
    • Improved Garrote effect duration increased to 6 seconds (was 3 seconds).
    • Indiscriminate Carnage effect duration reduced to 6 seconds (was 10 seconds).
    • Kingsbane damage bonus per poison application now has a stated cap at 1000% from 50 stacks (was 1980% at 99 stacks).
    • Kingsbane base damage over time increased by 6%.
      • Developer’s note: Kingsbane was originally intended to be uncapped, but abilities and talents introduced in the Dragonflight expansion allowed players to reach its previously-unreachable hidden cap. Increasing or removing the cap in the current environment would reinforce poor gameplay outcomes and continue to constrain talent options, so a lower cap is being introduced with the intention of having Kingsbane remain a valuable component of any build that includes it, but not by being required as every build’s all-important main character.
    • Sepsis has been removed.
  • Outlaw
    • Ace Up Your Sleeve now grants 4 combo points when triggered (was 5).
    • Mastery: Main Gauche damage increased by 24%.
    • Adrenaline Rush has been updated:
      • No longer increases global cooldown recovery rate by 25% while active.
      • Now increases global cooldown recovery rate equal to your Haste while active, up to 25%.
      • Now increases Energy regeneration by 50% (was 60%).
    • Count the Odds effect now has base chance 10% (was 8%) and duration 8 seconds (was 5 seconds), but no longer doubled while Stealthed.
    • Underhanded Upper Hand no longer affects Slice and Dice duration and no longer grants 3 seconds of Subterfuge duration (Stealth ability use).
    • Crackshot’s Dispatch effectiveness reduced to 50% (was 75%).
    • Thief’s Versatility now increases Versatility by 3% (was 4%).
    • Some talents have moved locations.
    • Sepsis has been removed.
  • Subtlety
    • Premeditation has been redesigned – After entering Stealth, your next combo point generating ability generates full combo points.
    • Invigorating Shadowdust now reduces cooldowns by 10/20 seconds (was 15/30 seconds).
    • Shadow Dance moved from the Class talent tree to Subtlety talent tree.
    • Shadow Focus now reduces costs by 5%.
    • Some talents have moved locations.

[FeelsandNeeds 3]

Looks like Blizzard detected fun in Outlaw rogue 😉

Acrobatics strike change is atrocious. Not only we are hard capped at 8 targets but now our AOE will have a smaller range. It's been fun doing keys while it lasted I guess. 

[PmcR 0]

On 5/11/2024 at 6:59 AM, FeelsandNeeds said:

Looks like Blizzard detected fun in Outlaw rogue 😉

Acrobatics strike change is atrocious. Not only we are hard capped at 8 targets but now our AOE will have a smaller range. It's been fun doing keys while it lasted I guess. 

Lol fun? The only good thing about outlaw was it's damage. No body praise the gameplay loop, it's quite the opposite. it's only been popular when it's damage was broken

[FeelsandNeeds 3]

On 5/19/2024 at 2:35 PM, PmcR said:

Lol fun? The only good thing about outlaw was it's damage. No body praise the gameplay loop, it's quite the opposite. it's only been popular when it's damage was broken

Well, disregarding your sour "no body" statement based on *filtered* data about Outlaw, I was strictly referring to Acrobatic Strikes talent which is a "fun" talent that allows us to stay a little farther away and still do dmg. And also, very importantly in this case, allowing our AOE to have better reach since it's based off of single target attacks. 

[groax 0]

assa will be dead without dance.. thanks blizzard! assa will be the biggest trash in the game