Project Lore

[caption id="attachment_3267" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Don't let those bars fool you! I only use like three or four of those buttons!"] [/caption] The Rogue is, by magnitudes, my favorite class. I've played one as my main (Amatera) for over 4 years now and enjoyed every second of it. Out of all my alts, not one has yet convinced me to give up on the master of melee combat. Or at least what should be, considering the lack of other roles for a Rogue to fill. No doubt that the class has seen its ups and downs. I was pretty excited by the new abilities and talents introduced with Wrath, but, like many others of my ilk, came away disappointed with a pretty significant (and unexpected) drop in playability caused by the new mechanics. Raid DPS went down the tubes and, on my server, level-capped Rogues were a scarce lot. Heck, I was (and still am) the only non-alt Rogue in my guild. And I'm surprised that I stuck through it, considering that towards the tail end of Burning Crusade I was regularly in the top 3 for damage and was now struggling to break 10. Things have taken a turn for the better since 3.1. I've reclaimed my position in the charts thanks to the modification of Hunger for Blood and a slight respec back into Improved Poisons. But it did something else that makes me wonder whether or not playing a Rogue is too easy -- it made my core rotation reductively simple again. Now, it takes skill and a keen reaction time to play any class well, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm tailing a boss spamming Mutilate and Envenom whilst our healers have their hands full playing whack-a-mole with raid frames. There is a certain sublimity, a zen-like state if you will, about punching only two or three keys and outputting the insane amount of damage that a Rogue can, but I think people get excited about simplicity until they start to feel the guilt of not putting in the same amount of effort as others. Or, at least I do. Maybe not all those chumps riding coattails for gear. Before 3.1, my rotation was a lot more complicated than it is now (or was when I was playing Combat in BC), but my damage clearly suffered. Having to maintain three stacks of Hunger for Blood and Slice and Dice was a pain, between expensive Mutilates and the occasional Rupture where I could fit it. The thing about Energy is that, even though you may never run out, your cap is always fixed. So when your pool of the good stuff is being sucked dry by a few expensive skills, it destroys your DPS. With a duration of only 30 seconds, Hunger for Blood was the main culprit: easy to let drop, and far too expensive to get running again. Considering I needed the skill's buff to even compete on the damage meters, leaving it out was not an option. Thus, it seems, that the smaller a Rogue's rotation ultimately is, the more efficiently they can utilize their Energy, and the changes made to the class reflect that. Hunger for Blood now lasts a full minute and need only be triggered by a Bleed effect. In a raid situation, those are going to be a dime a dozen, so unless you're off tussling with some off-tanked mob, you rarely have to worry about it (and it frees you from having to queue up Rupture, as well). Slice and Dice? Well, that's refreshed by Envenom, which an Assassination-specced Rogue should be dishing out relentlessly anyway. Like a Showtime Rotisserie, all you need to do is "set it and forget it!" Sure, I've found a few ways to improve my utility, even if only by a tad. I'll throw an Expose Armor up on a mob if there are no Sunders to be had, I'll use Feint to ignore some of the crazy Area of Effect damage most of the new Ulduar bosses dish out. Heck, Cloak of Shadows is as useful as ever, especially for those pesky light and gravity bombs XT-002 is fond of afflicting players with. These skills aren't ever in my regular rotation, but I'd be more than willing to take a slight hit to my DPS if it meant giving the class more raid-enhancing utility skills. Then again, that might go against the selfish, dirty-dealing, throat-slitting, gold-stealing spirit of a Rogue! Considering these dynamics, must we be crucified for sins we did not commit? My "Damage-Dealer's Burden" aside, is there some way to stop the general populace from slinging bawdy insults our way and sermonizing about how over-powered our class is? I don't know. Blizzard has stated that they, too, are unhappy with the ease with which a Rogue can obliterate their opponents (especially in PvP). The changes made to Hunger for Blood, after all, were a bit of a hot fix. It's a fundamentally broken skill, once detrimental to the Rogue itself and  now detrimental to everyone else (at least in their eyes). Makes you wonder why it was even incorporated as a new talent in the first place if it was going to cause so much trouble. For now, we wait impatiently for an answer. We have been told that it is not the right time for a total rehaul of the class and Blue posts concerning Rogues have dwindled since the raid damage output issue was finally "addressed." But there must be other Rogues out there reading this. Let me know what's on your mind! Does "easier-to-play" equal "overpowered?" Do you feel some deep sense of personal guilt when your healers and tanks are yelling at each other as your raid falls apart in front of you, wondering if there was anything you could've done to help? Or do you go stealth and wait in a corner until the smoke has cleared? Rogue or not, what are your feelings on the ethics of rotation complexity? Do you feel as if the game is at its best when it gives you a lot of skills to manage at once, or is a simple hotbar better and more fun? Does it make certain classes more "fair" to play than others?

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Everyone's favorite class designer hit the official forums during maintenance day to inform us that class changes for Patch 3.1 would be announced soon.  For those who don't already know it, Patch v3.1 will be Wrath's first content patch, with the main feature being the addition of an all-new raid known as Ulduar.  Popular speculation has Yogg-Saron - the second known "Old God" - or parts of him as the final boss.  Piggy-backing on the big content patch are numerous other tweaks, such as the classes changes discussed below. Making good on Ghostcrawler's promise, Eyonix threw up Part 1 of the upcoming changes.  However, only Rogues (yahoo), Priests and Shamans currently have a short-list of changes, every other class is "coming soon."  I am no Shaman, nor am I an expert Priest, but it seems pretty obvious that both classes have been buffed overall in the listed changes.  As for what my lovable little gnome thinks about his upcoming changes?  Awesome. PvP, that is the big change for Priests.  The notes specifically state that Shadow PvPers will see increased survivability thanks to a buff to Shadow Form which reduces magic damage along with physical damage.  Although no specific modifications were detailed, Eyonix notes that the developers are looking into making Holy have "additional PvP utility."  All the Discipline Priests shouldn't feel left out though, they get an entirely new ability, Power Word: Barrier, which is essentially a PW:S for their group.  Blizzard even through in some love for the whole class, adding Divine Spirit as a core ability. Shamans of the Elemental and Enhancement varieties also scored some additional, although undefined, PvP utility.  Following that, Dalaran's lag should be slightly lower come v3.1 thanks to the streamlining of Totems.  Mana Spring / Healing Stream Totems and Disease Cleansing / Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined. They are now two totems rather than four separate lag-inducing pillars of doom.  The nature-friendly class has received one modification that might be viewed as a nerf, Chain Lightning will jump to four targets, but do less damage.  The less damage could mean for the fourth jump or that the overall DPS output by CL will be lowered The number one change I was looking forward to for Rogues was how Blizzard planned to tackle the annoyance of keeping Hunger for Blood active.  For the none rogues out there, the spell had to be spammed three times, wasting two extra global cooldowns and 60 energy, to max it out.  Then it had to be refreshed every 30 seconds to keep it up.  While refreshing didn't break stealth - you could refresh while creeping to the next mob - it was incredibly annoying to worry about an ability with such a short duration that was so desperately needed.  The new HfB is a self-buff that can only be used when a bleed effect (anyone's bleed) is active.  While the need for a bleed is indeed a nerf, the 6% damage increase - from 9% with three stacks to 15% with no need for stacking - should help soothe that irritated skin. Like the other classes, rogues have also seen a selection of buffs beyond the HfB change.  Added haste, lower cooldowns and additional damage to various talents and abilities should make every rogue happy.  However, we do not know the exact amount these favorable changes will impact us, due to the numbers on a few of tweaks not being unveiled. The rest of the classes will be revealed in the upcoming parts of Eyonix's post.  Please hold off on the complaints until you see your own buffs.  Remember, these notes are not comprehensive and therefore do not list all the changes.  On the flip side, they can also be thrown out the window at a moment's notice. All of the changes do seem to be buffs, so perhaps Blizzard is saving all the nerfs for one giant post to get all the QQ out at once...Sly devils. In other news, numerous bugs have been found in WoW recently, but the developers are already hard at work on hotfixes. Update: Eyonix has posted more class changes.  Warriors, Warlocks and Druids should check out the post covering Part 2 of the changes.

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