Patch 1.12: Rogue Talent Preview

Though the rogue talent review is still a work in progress, CM Drysc has posted a peak at the changes to come. The following information is all subject to change based on testing and player feedback - so if there's something here that troubles you, I'd encourage you to post your concerns on the rogue forums before breaking into a full-scale panic. And now, for your reading pleasure, the rogue changes!
- The following talents have been removed: Improved Deadly Poison, Improved Distract, Throwing Weapon Specialization, Improved Vanish, and Rapid Concealment.
- Improved Instant Poison is now "Improved Poisons" and increases your chance to apply ALL poisons by 2/4/6/8/10%.
- Rapid Concealment has been merged with Camouflage, by combining these talents you not only get a great talent to start off the tree, but obviously it frees up a number of points to be spent elsewhere.
- Murder will now also apply to all finishing moves. The benefit this will provide to output and attack combinations is fairly straightforward.
- Vile Poisons now gives your poisons a chance to resist dispel effects, in addition to increasing poison damage.
- Improved Kidney Shot has been changed, and will instead increase the damage taken by the target while they are affected by Kidney Shot. This talent no longer reduces the cooldown of Kidney Shot.
- Improved Sprint has been changed, and will instead have a 50/100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects when you activate your Sprint ability. This talent no longer reduces the cooldown of Sprint.
- Improved Evasion renamed to Endurance, and will add a Sprint cooldown reduction.
- New talent Weapon Expertise in the Combat tree, increases your weapon skill with all melee weapons. The recovery of damage with an increased weapon skill should be a good boost to overall output.
- Initiative is being reduced to a 3 point talent, but resulting in the same 75% end chance to add an additional combo point.
- Elusiveness is being reduced to a 3 point talent, but resulting in the same 75 sec cooldown reduction to Evasion, Blind, and Vanish.
- Ghostly Strike now has a reduced Energy cost, the reduction of Energy was enough to make it necessary to also reduce the damage output slightly.
- Improved Garrotes damage reduction will be removed. This is being changed as part of an overall improvement for Garrote.
- Setup is being moved higher up in the tree, becoming a 16 point talent with no prerequisites, helping move the talent in reach of specific builds.
- New talent Heightened Senses in the subtlety tree, increases your Stealth detection, and reduces the chance for you to be hit by spells and ranged attacks.
- Hemorrhage will be moved up in the tree to become a 21 point talent. This should help to place the ability in a more reachable position, and allow for a little more versatility with specific talent builds.
- New talent Deadliness in the Subtlety tree, increases your Attack Power by a percentage.
- Premeditation will have its Energy requirement removed, changed to an instant cast, and range increased. Its cooldown will remain the same. Premeditation will now be pre-reqd by Preparation.
- Vanish will now remove effects that allow the caster to remain aware of the rogues presence, such as Mind Vision and Hunters Mark.
- Garrote, Rupture, and Eviscerate are being increased in damage. More details to come.
- Expose Armor will now reduce armor by a percentage.
[Fan art by Astrid Hansen]






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Nex Jul 3rd 2006 2:50AM
Oooooh! Improved Evis damage!
When do we find out how much?
pearl Jul 3rd 2006 4:17AM
AHAHAHAHAH
ROGUES ARE AWESOME NOW
syco Jul 3rd 2006 5:54AM
I hate rogues.
Every single time I walk into WSG I repeat the same lament. I usually goes like this:
I walk into an empty room.
I am stunned and half my hitpoints are gone, and a rogue is beating on me.
I unstun just in time to die.
I hate them so much.
Anne Jul 3rd 2006 8:33AM
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but isn't part of "Hunter's Mark" that the target can always be seen by the hunter, stealthed or invisible?
d.w. Jul 3rd 2006 10:16AM
Yes, Anne, this is a nerf to Hunter's Mark. Add this to 1.10's Flare nerf and the trend is obvious.
josh Jul 3rd 2006 10:21AM
I used to be a caster and I hated rogues. Now I have 3 of them and casters hate me. >=]
Ghostle Jul 3rd 2006 10:41AM
Hunter's crying cause hunter's mark is going to be removed by vanish. Ok, vanish is on a 5 minute cooldown and requires a regeant. A regular stealth won't remove it. As it is right now, rogues are dead once a hunter's mark hits us, we can't stealth, we cant even vanish unless you want to waste a 5 minute cooldown.
Everyone, including hunters complain that a rogue can stun lock you with a 100-0 health difference. Heres the truth, to stun lock properly there is one perticular build, and it takes real skill to pull it off, specially if stuns miss which they often do, as well as wasting cooldowns.
Yet hunters, and some casters as well, don't see a problem killing rogues from their max range with rogues unable to do anything to even try and get close, cause if we use one of our cool downs, we either have a dot, have a giant arrow above our head, or if we sprint, we are slowed or stopped giving them a chance to again get to max distance and finish us off 100-0.
Before you complain about rogues, roll one, get to 60, and see what its like on the other side. Many of these changes are welcomed in the rogue community as it will help us greatly in pvp and pve.
Dahlaine Jul 3rd 2006 11:00AM
After trolling the boards today I have found the Drysc has, in so many words, also confirmed that the change to Expose Armor will make it stack with sunder and therefor become the raid buff that we rogues have always asked for. Add to this the Weapon Expertise skill and the posibilities of Heightened Senses for adding to survivability and raid leaders will not be hesitating to include the 5 rogues that should be an important part of every 40 man. Dagger spec didn't seem to see any changes yet though. =(
cava Jul 3rd 2006 1:29PM
I dont see how this isn't a dagger rogues change. Well maybe not for your build but it is for mine. Finally I can get outa that nova,piercing howl, hunter conc. shot and chase them down to close the gap. The largest flaw for all specs was "GAP" issues. Caused by slow effects and other nasty snares...all we had was vanish which breaks only snares...not slow.
Even for me the Dagger rogue I am very stoked for Deadliness and a cleaned up talent tree. I put points in crap I didnt want just to get cold blooded and improved ambush...finally I can respec that crap off and get something better.
But overall:
1. Impr sprint
2. Deadliness
3. Heitened senses
Awsome im happy with that...it fixes the flaws I see.
Unless you play rogue....you have no clue the issues we have at 60. Every other class has there talents improved. Its our damn turn deal with it.
Ima Caster Jul 3rd 2006 1:44PM
Why in the bloody hell would they make rogues better. All I can say is, "NERF ROGUES!!!"
Tigraine Jul 3rd 2006 7:09PM
Welcome changes indeed.
Although I miss a bit of that 40-Man buff I was expecting. Till now I can't think of any encounter heighted Senses will come in handy other's than PvP. Mobs in Dire Maul are Invisible, not Stealthed (So the Warlock can see them, not the Rogue), and that improvement to Expose Armor won't give you any excuse to take 5 rogues, one will do with a hemorrage and imp. Expose Armor build.
But honestly, on that "Nerf Rogues" thing.
I used to play Priest a long time ago, till I switched over to my beloved Rogue.
As for me the experience was really great. Never had so much fun leveling any class till then. Sitting in front of Ironforge trying to max out Stunlock skills on lvl 60 chars with lvl 40 .. I really loved it.
Playing a Rogue doesn't come from your skills, you only have about 5 you will really use frequently. It's all about movement, timing and practice.
A really attractive class, till I reached lvl 60 and entered a BG for the first time.
You get into WSG, leave your Base and before you have even spottet that Hunter you already have a big fat mark on your head telling 5 out of 10 ppl of the Horde "C'mon and take me down" (For those who didn't know, Hunters Mark makes a stealthed Rogue visible to the whole Party, not only to the Hunter).
So basically, you had that mark more or less often, and simply went somewhere to die in Honor. Really lovely if Hunters stark making Mark-Macros for all Rogues, isn't ot great?
And what about Dots?
A Rogue without extraordinary T2 Equip as mine was when he just hit 60 is just soo damn fragile. Anything can kill you, and you have almost no way to escape it, one DoT and you are for 30 seconds a Free-Kill, without any ways to fill that "gap" between you and all the ranged classes you simply stand around and hope to survive the 4 DoTs the Warlock had tossed on you (got I loved dying on the last DoT tick after having managed to escape battle).
Oh.. and last but not least..:
Ever seen a Human Warlock with an Felhunter out gain Perception while you are sneaking somewhere around? That felhunter itself is really tricky even with 5pts in MoD .. but with perception he will see you the second you see him..
Now, I switched fractions and leveled my Warlock to 60, and guess what. I love beating the life out of rogues :) Know your enemy is one of the best weapons you have in WoW, the rogue is so damn fragile, if you have encountered weaknesses first-han you surely know how to battle one. (For Warlocks trying to Charm Rogues with their succ: You succubus has 30 yards of range to her Charm spell, why don't use it? If you know a Rogue is somewhere around park the Succ 20 yards away from you and no rogue will ever be able to use Blind on her to hack you down; Set the fact that you didn't hit the Seduce button the second you saw the rogue, a Sap is only used to make you reveal your succ)
And for 40-man instances:
We used to always have 5-6 Rogues in our Setup, relying heavily to melee DPS. And I really don't know how you can do without 5 good Rogues doing the DPS for you. Honestly, the Rogue is the best damage dealer, because he is the only damage dealer that can ONLY dish out HUGE amounts of damage. And besides the hunter the Rogues is the only one with real aggro-control. So I don't know where that "Rogues are unattractive for a raid" thing came from, I for myself have never encountered a successful raid without rogues.
crsh Jul 4th 2006 8:39AM
Honestly, I'm pretty happy the Subtlety tree gets so much love for all the PvP rogues out there who have a hard time beating other classes; those are needed and welcomed enhancements, kudos to Blizz.
However, since I only raid with my rogue, I see little change to my lack of group utility; Expose Armor needs to last more than the current 30 seconds to be really useful, but I didn't see any change to its duration. Furthermore, rogues need to bring some more group goodness, even if it's passive: a threat reduction group aura, Slice&Dice buff for the group, anything.
So it's only a preview and I definitely shouldn't get all in a huff, I think it's good start but it shouldn't end there; there's plenty of room for realistic improvement without making rogues as overpowered as they once were (those days are long gone).
d.w. Jul 4th 2006 12:07PM
Wasn't so much whining about the Hunter's Mark change as confirming to Anne that, yes, it is a (small) nerf, though not an unbalancing one. Making simple stealth always break HM would have been an unbalancing nerf...
Flea Jul 6th 2006 12:18PM
Im very excited. I love my rogue. Big crits and fast kills are only looking better after 1.12. Thanks Blizzard
Flea Jul 6th 2006 12:18PM
Im very excited. I love my rogue. Big crits and fast kills are only looking better after 1.12. Thanks Blizzard
Lilwan Jul 6th 2006 1:48PM
All I have to say... its about damn time! Rogues have had no love for ages. Its finally the rogue's turn for much needed improvement. If you haven't played one, you wouldn't know.
cheers.
Michael G Jul 6th 2006 6:59PM
I would love a stelthed ranged attack, like snipershot or if you want to get technical use a bow or thrown weapon. Have a 30 sec timer and a percent to stay stelthed so that you can't do it forever.
Kip Jul 7th 2006 3:15PM
All I have to say to all the hunters that where "MAIL" armor is NO MORE KITING.....if that is the only way you can beat a rogue then get ready for a beating!!
Fel Jul 7th 2006 4:32PM
*10. Why in the bloody hell would they make rogues better. All I can say is, "NERF ROGUES!!!"
Posted at 1:44PM on Jul 3rd 2006 by Ima Caster*
You-Have-NO-Freaking-Idea how hard it is for us once you get past level 30, and for that matter, when we hit 60.
We are one of the most underpowered classes, we have by far the most flaws, none of our skills work as smooth as they should and I for one have waited for over a year and a half for them to do anything about it!
If anything we are the ones fearing the carster for crying out loud!!
--
I'm glad that they have changed the talents around, rogues (apart from warriors who've IMO, gotten their talents randomly slapped anywhere) Don't have a great deal to work with, and as a result have dropped greatly, both damage-wise (as most other damage-dealing classes have been drastically improved) and in overall effectiveness.
To me, this build;
1: Actually gives us a shot at survival with the new 'vanish', prior to this patch, if a lock cursed us or hunter marked us, we'd may as well go for a bio break, the dresult would yield no difference as to whether we were afk or not.
2: Vanish itself it a last resort for survival, from what I see, Iae and flares will still reveal us. Sprint willget us far enough to bandage and/or possibly restealth.
3:Heightened senses, If we can actually SEE the warlock's succubi minion/s now, then Thank Fuck! We have a chance!
-
1: We still can't apply the same dodge %Percentage to ranged attacks, there really is no excuse for that, there are monks in the game which are just rogues, (proper monks dodge and block arrows lol.) Noone can say you can't dodge a bullet, because these are really crappy guns that practically fire rocks.
2: I will be disappointed if heightened senses, stacks with perception, that will take things beyond complete unfairness. If you don't have MoD you're gonna get screwed over by other rogues now ^^
cava Jul 10th 2006 4:17PM
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/rogues2/talents.html?3000000000000000233500120000000000550050003330210050
I just saw the new template think im going with this build^^
Hahah cant wait to run through concusion shot or frost bolts now!!! hahahah no more kiting me you damn hunters!