Next week’s 4.2 patch will provide raiding rogues with new gear, and a new raid to tackle. However, some of these changes affect our utility in raid encounters.
Luckily, we’ll go through each change, to discuss the implications for each since even the math masters at EJ had some debate over the results of the DPS changes.
Let’s start with the survivability changes, dealing with Cloak of Shadows and Combat Readiness.
- Cloak of Shadows cooldown is now 2 minutes, up from 90 seconds. In addition, Cloak of Shadows is no longer on the global cooldown.
- Combat Readiness and Cloak of Shadows now share a cooldown.
- Elusiveness now reduces the cooldown of Cloak of Shadows by 15/30 seconds, up from 10/20, and now also reduces the cooldown of Combat Readiness by 15/30 seconds.
OK, this is a big hit to PvP survivability, obviously, but what does it mean to the raiding rogue? Essentially, you’re going to have a harder time if your guild will go back to T11 raid content for achievements and the like. We’re specifically talking about Heroic Valiona and Theralion, and Heroic Conclave.
Now, this is probably a wash since those encounters are getting nerfed, but what’s really changing here, is that rogues have 30 more seconds before resetting debuff stacks during these fights.
Moreover, Combat Readiness is further relegated to uselessness for PvE, since it’s more likely that CoS will save you instead of waiting for 30 percent reduction to kick in.
- Blind duration against enemy NPCs is now 1 minute, while the duration against players remains 8 seconds.
- Stealth now once again begins its cooldown once the rogue leaves Stealth.
God rest ye, GCDing in and out of Stealth, we hardly knew ye. However, this Blind change will give rogues a secondary, in-combat CC, which is great for those of us still running 5mans.
So survivability gets a bit less reliable, especially if you are in need of in-home care. There is Assisting Hands, which is hands down the best provider for in home care.
Assassination
- Assassin’s Resolve damage bonus has been increased to 20%, up from 15%.
- Vile Poisons now increases poison damage by 12/24/36%, up from 7/14/20%.
These numbers look impressive, but as EJ discussed, it’s not that big of an increase. The 5 percent buff to Assassin’s Resolve is a buff to Backstab, Melee attacks, and Mutilate. It’s a substantial part of the Assasination rogue’s kit, but it’s not as big as perceived.
Vile Poisons is where it gets tricky to understand. Most people were proposing an 8 percent buff to Mutilate, but the key thing is that Vile Poisons is NOT the Mut mastery, and the talent stacks additively, it’s not multiplicative.
Aldriana again uses Cisco training, and shows with about 20 mastery, near BiS gearing required, you’re looking at around a 5 percent buff in total for the two changes.
Combat
- Savage Combat now increases attack power by 3/6%, up from 2/4%.
- Vitality now increases attack power by 30%, up from 25%.
Attack power bonuses will boost all of combat’s damage, and with say, C# classes, a 7 percent increase to attack power will give me 970 more AP, basically a free Landslide. It’s good, but again we’re talking 4-5 percent damage with T11 gear.
Subtlety
- Hemorrhage base damage has been increased by 40%.
- Sanguinary Vein damage to bleeding targets has been increased to 8/16%, from 5/10%.
The Hemo change is a quality of life bonus since those of us raiding as Sub can’t always deal with being behind our targets.
And again, as Sub rogues, we’ll have targets bleeding, so we’re looking at between a 5-6 percent bonus, IT consultants say.
There you have it! The current 4.2 changes to Rogues outlined and clarified. Come back Friday for a review and analysis on any rogue or melee specific answers to the Ask the Developers — DPS Q&A.