Will Cloak of Shadows be overpowered?
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Jan 14th 2007 at 12:20PM
It's always hard to decide if it's time for your own class to be hit with the nerf bat. No one wants to become weaker, and even the most grossly overpowered bugs or changes can be defended to the death as "vital to the class." And that's why it's time to talk about Cloak of Shadows.
This former 41-point rogue talent is going to be trainable for all rogues at 66. It's a zero-energy instant cast effect that removes all harmful spell effects and increases your chance to resist spells by 90 percent for five seconds. It's also on a one minute cooldown.
As you can imagine, this has mages, priests, and especially warlocks somewhat steamed. This basically lets rogues clear off any damaging dots and resist most spells for five seconds, which is more than enough time to vanish, cheap shot, and then you're pretty much doomed if they're a dagger rogue. If they're a sword rogue, they can probably take your health down quite a bit while you're sitting there wanding them for five seconds anyway.
So far, most of the rogue response to complaints consists of "It has a cooldown!" "LOL Deathcoil!" and "It's just an escape ability!" As a rogue myself, I know that this is probably not going to be used as an escape ability by anyone but ... me, who hates fighting other players. If a rogue starts a fight with you -- and most of the time it WILL be the rogue who picks a fight because of stealth -- they're not going to use five seconds of essential invulnerability to run away. They're going to use it to stunlock or stab you.
Cloak of Shadows does seem to be somewhat overpowered. Although rogues needed something to combat casters (especially the annoying mages -- who's level 1 Arcane Explosioning now?), a instant, no-cost dot remover and 5 second invulnerability with a ONE MINUTE cooldown is a bit much, even in this rogue's eyes. But how can we even it out? An energy cost? A longer cooldown? Some people have suggested buffing it to 10 seconds and then having it share a cooldown with Evasion, which sounds nice to me.
Do you think Cloak of Shadows will need to be fixed, and if so, how would you fix it?
Filed under: Rogue, Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Gog Jan 14th 2007 12:40PM
I would think that a longer cd and an energy cost would do the trick. I have never played a rogue to anything past level 10, but I do have a 60 mage as well as many high level casters and I hate rogues with a passion.
That being said, I respect that rogues suffer from low HP much like caster classes and they are a melee class with low armor, so I don't mind that they have an escape effect. A one minute cd and no energy cost is a bit much though. Bump it up to a minute and a half at least.
The 90% resist is pretty f'n nuts, but you backstabbers will need it if you ever meet me in a BG ;)
chris Jan 15th 2007 8:17AM
How's this effected by unstable affliction?
soapinmouth Jan 14th 2007 1:05PM
If this was really that op, than why when it was open to everyone lvl 50 up did half the people choose a different build in a different tree? Also have any of you played TBC up to level 70, im guessing probably not, cuz at lvl 70 its a rogues only chance. And obviously blizard knew it was overpowered to have it before 60, because they moved it to lvl 66!!
soapinmouth Jan 14th 2007 1:18PM
ok if this is really op look at this article your site wrote http://www.wowinsider.com/2006/11/05/bc-beta-changes-for-rogues/
where i got this quote
"The 41-point talent for rogues in the subtlety tree, Cloak of Shadows, never really impressed me"
Miyaku Jan 14th 2007 1:20PM
Keep in mind while you're debating this that in the exp people will have much larger hp pools. While dps is also increasing it isn't increasing anywhere near the same rate as STA. This means that it'll be a lot harder for rogues to kill people simply with burst dps. As such the 5 seconds of spell resists isn't as large of a factor as it was when 2.0.1 was live. (note: preparation no longer resets the cooldown of CoS btw)
Also, I don't see many considering this being overpowered in PvE, and in PvP most people will soon have a large amount of resilliance on their gear which adds to the length of fights by reducing crits and crit damage. Without a defensive ability like CoS rogues simply won't be able to compete with caster opponents and the new defensive and offensive skills they recieved.
Mark Jan 15th 2007 6:54AM
As long as it can stolen with spellsteal, I have no problem with it. Would love to see a poison resist from a stolen cloak of shadows.
Simon Jan 14th 2007 3:27PM
Make it trigger 5 global cooldown so you can only do white attacks or something of the sort
Kerni Jan 14th 2007 1:36PM
It needs to have an energy cost AND share a CD with Evasion.
Dahlaine Jan 14th 2007 4:06PM
Its not that overpowered and its really really really nice for PvE so please stop starting threads such as these. We have such low survivability its ridiculous, and being able to avoid those AoE squashes like the arcane breath from the Nethersprite and the deep breath from Nightbane, will be incredibly nice.
Virgil Jan 14th 2007 6:18PM
From a paladin perspective I see this as being overpowered. A long while ago, we could bust out Divine Shield (bubble) and then immediately BOP ourselves after the bubble ended.
Now it has been nerfed so that we cannot use another "bubble type spell" on ourselves for 45 seconds after we cast the first one. Also, Divine Shield and Divine Protection (shorter bubble that we cannot attack though) are on the same cooldown.
Combining the cooldown with evasion is an excellent idea and would hopefully keep the spell from being overpowered.
Deltu Jan 14th 2007 1:47PM
How about just having the rogue not regenerate energy while the effect is up? It wouldn't impact the escape functionality while hurting (not removing) its ability to be used entirely offensively....
roseroyce04 Jan 14th 2007 1:51PM
Cloak of Shadows is fine. Learn to play.
Miyaku Jan 14th 2007 2:02PM
In response to:
"Would it be overpowered to give casters a talent @ 66 that removed all wound/bleed effects and game them a 90% chance to dodge all physical attacks for 5 seconds, every minute?
Yeah.. exactly."
By now most people have realized that you can't make exact comparisons between class abilities. That's like saying a mage's frostbolt is overpowered cause it slows while a warlock's shadowbolt does not.
Was CoS overpowered when it went into 2.0.1 live and was reset by preparation? Yes. Why? for the same reason that warlock dots are out of control, hunters do sick damage, etc etc... the game is no longer intended to be balanced around lvl 60. Wait till you're level 70 before you make wild accusations about skills being overpowered.
Deathlike Jan 14th 2007 2:19PM
I agree with the people who are thinking about it relatively.
At 60, I can see it being rediculously overpowered, as most rogues can hold their own as it is (we've all seen World of Roguecraft.) But think about level 70. Is it still impossibly powerful, or is it more of a needed skill?
If it IS a required skill, though, it seems to me that Blizzard needs to balance a little bit better than that. If Rogues absolutely NEED Cloak of Shadows to survive every brawl with a caster, something else should be changed.
Also, a couple of people have suggested that it share a cooldown with Evasion, and probably other skills (Vanish, Blind, Etc.) I believe that this is too simple of a fix. We need to remember the synergy certain talents and abilities have with others. I haven't played Rogue enough to know how useful Evasion really is, but I can imagine it takes skill to really use because of Overpower/Riposte/Counterattack and other such skills that have "in-response-to" effects.
To explain better, how would sharing a cooldown with Evasion actually effect Cloak of Shadows in play?
Would it mean choosing between surviving the warrior or surviving the mage? The idea creates some interesting changes to strategy that MAY effect the skill it takes to play Rogue, or might just be plain stupid. This is why it's so difficult for Blizzard to balance the classes, especially in a one-on-one situation.
rpnguyen Jan 14th 2007 2:24PM
Yeah, it's slightly overpowered, but think about what was happening before, as my main is a rogue. I must admit, back for the slight period when Clos was available as a 41 sub talent, I ate up mages and warlocks.
If a rogue opened on a mage, the mage would blink out (if not on a cooldown, and it's only 15seconds), then would kite the rogue. The rogue could burn a vanish to get out of nova (5 min base cooldown), but then the mage could just blast out a few low rank AEs to get the rogue out of stealth again.
If a rogue opened on a warlock, there was pretty much no way to win without 100-0 the lock, because chain death coil + fear and application of dots = gg for the rogue, because there's no point in vanishing when you have a bunch of dots on you. If the warlock is smart he'll run away when you are feared and cast curse of exhaustion so you can't even get within melee range of him.
Maybe an increased cooldown or decrease in the resist %/resist period will help things, but this is something that rogues definitely need.
On to the subject of rogues' raid desirability...T_T
Wasyl Jan 14th 2007 2:31PM
Anyone who plays a rogue can tell you we needed something like this. Fighting any class 1 on 1 is an uphill battle for a rogue, we can usually only win if we burn one or more of our 5-minute cooldowns. In group PVP, we lose our biggest advantage, the stunlock, because there are multiple targets beating on us and we're one of the squishiest classes. CoS is not overpowered at all, it is simply something to keep us alive a little bit longer. Every cloth class has some kind of buffer against damage to protect their squishiness (mages have mana shield, priests have power word: shield, warlocks have health stones and soul link if they spec for it). Rogues have absolutely nothing to extend our lives, we have low armor, low HP, we drop extremely quickly, as clothies would without their buffer spells. This is just the rogue equivalent to that.
Suzaku Jan 15th 2007 12:49AM
Rogues need this, for many reasons. For one, it's impossible for Rogues to stealth or vanish if they have any DoTs on them, because the first tick will bring them right out of it.
All a warlock really has to do is spam all their DoTs on the rogue and they'll probably kill them, even if they get killed by the rogue first.
And it's not like mages, priests, warlocks, and druids don't have ways to mitigate damage, pets to stun rogues, or the ability to tank, all of which they only need to do for probably about 3-4 seconds.
Finnicks Jan 14th 2007 5:00PM
This is direct at soapinmouth's comment, #4.
Way to take a quote out of context. If you read the entire article, you'd know that the author was talking about CoS in the context of a 41-pnt talent. The author did not think that CoS was worth 41 talent points. If you read further into the article, you'll read how the author agrees that, if it remains trainable when BC goes live, she will definately use it.
ggman Jan 14th 2007 2:53PM
I would be fine with rogues getting this ability even though the one minute cooldown absurd, as long as Mages got ice block as trainable too. Every class needs some kind of counter against dots (even if its a 5 min cooldown). Fire or Arcane mages with dots have no chance.
Ikuu Jan 14th 2007 3:01PM
Just learn how to counter it, anyway, the game is not balanced for level 60 play, I'm sure when we're all running around at level 70. It will become apparent why the felt the need to add this skill now.