Patch 1.12: Rogue Talent Calculator Live
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jul 10th 2006 at 7:00PM
A new talent calculator showcasing the rogue changes went online today. With it, of course, comes plenty of speculation about possible new talent combinations and viable builds. I don't think the combat build I've been putting together with my own rogue has changed much, there are more viable options in the assassination and subtlety trees to pair with it. Decisions, decisions....
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nightshader Jul 10th 2006 9:54PM
I saw the new talent cal today when starting the game from the wowLauncher. I was pretty surprise wowinsider hasnt talked about it yet. Anyway, I took the liberty and switch my current build to the future one.
http://tinyurl.com/jgnal
The subtlety and assassination has changed quite a bit. Most of them in the favor of my current build but I still think they still have some pretty silly ones. Anyway, it's good to see Blizzard trying something new.
Mr. Tibbs Jul 10th 2006 10:33PM
Looking at the new talents available, I have to say that choices are harder now in terms of creating builds!
The Assassination tree has always been about improving abilities and damage, and it remains so. Of interest to me is the Vile Poisons talent, which when maxed out, causes poisons to deal 15% more damage AND have a 40% chance to resist dispels. In PVP, I think that's pretty big considering our only snare, crippling poison, will now be harder to get rid of.
The Combat tree is geared mostly towards being in the face of the enemy with two good 1-handers and mashing the Sinister Strike key. That Improved Backstab remains in Combat annoys me because it means that do-it-from-behind rogues need to have 8 points dedicated to a tree they shouldn't really be in to improve a key move for them. Of interest is the Improved Sprint which can break movement impairments (wing clip, hamstring, chilled effects etc). It's better than the previous sprint talent, but given Sprint's cooldown and that it doesn't break root effects, I don't really consider it a life-saver.
The Subtlety tree, in my opinion, has been given the biggest facelift. Right from the get-go, Camouflage now combines a reduced cooldown for Stealth (normally 10 seconds) with 15% more move speed in Stealth. These don't seem like much, but Stealthed movespeed is indeed a god-send when sneaking around. So is being able to two-shot a bad-guy and be able to restealth quickly rather than run around waiting for that stealth to cool down. Damage mitigation talents such as Heightened Senses and Sleight of Hand are welcome additions, tho I wish we could dodge a ranged attacks such as arrows normally.
A talent that I'm curious about is Improved Garrote. Now, it looks really lame in that it would just add two ticks to its duration, but I do recall Drysc (rogue CM) posting that Garrote would be reviewed. Now, suppose Garrote caused a DoT as well a casting time debuff (e.g. your throat's been cut so you're having trouble chanting), then an 6 seconds added to the duration would, if you ask me, be a very nice upgrade!
I'm interested to see where that goes. Otherwise, this looks like a typical talent review for our class.
I do feel, however, that a major issue for rogues has not yet been addressed: survivability. Everyone knows that a rogue's primary defense is dodge. Yet dodge is really only effective against other rogues; to casters and hunters it doesn't even matter and to warriors, dodge is actually our enemy! Blizzard *knows* this - look at the new PVP set for rogues - it gives you attack power, crit and a little more armor than before, but not agility - why? Because Agility gives you those things AND dodge. I want to rely on Dodge. It just needs to be more effective at mitigating the damage we take.
Dahlaine Jul 11th 2006 9:00AM
This entire review has been geared towards PvP. While some of the added talents are nice, they neglected to "clean" up either the assassination or combat trees in order to make any of them accessable. All rogues I had talked to expected at the very LEAST lethality in the assass tree would be switched from 5 points to 3 with the same effect, but this did not happen. During the mage review, there was alot of discussion about negating what people felt where "required" points being spent such as on arcane explosion. Well, if you are a player worth anything, you are putting in the 16 points into assassination for full lethality and relentless strikes and this has not changed.
As a combat dagger rogue, I am going to have to make the hard choice of what damage talent I have to remove points from in order to get the decent weapon mastery talent. Pretty much the only damage build that has improved is Combat swords as it doesn't require as many points to max out sinister strike and eviscerate.
If your pvp focused, congratulations. If your going to try and build some wacky Seal Fate/subtletly build, good luck matching the damage of the combat rogues because there really is almost nothing else you are good for until a few minor stunlock gimmicks in AQ40/Naxx.
Ghostle Jul 11th 2006 1:20PM
Nice buffs for the subtlety tree as expected, and almost no change to the other two (just some minor tweaking to the damage output for raiders). Seems, ok, not great, maybe not exactly what was expected, but better than say the paladin preview.
Also, I would imagine that this is a first release, the mage and shamans got a few changes after their innitial trees for 1.11 were released, so hopefully some things will change (like hopefully lethality being reduced to 3 points rather than 5).
Also, here is a new modified version of hemo I like using
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=ihecox0oZZVxE0hcR0o
and the new version as I see it for myself
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=yhecoxzZZE0e0hcdd
Mind you, some people will tell you you need that extra time for gouge, but you dont really if you can kill someone fast, and most times, you are only doing 1 on 1 pvping out in the world, not in batlegrounds.