Understanding the Cheat Death nerf
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Jun 18th 2008 at 10:00PM
As regular forumgoers may have noted, there's been a lot of antipathy toward rogues in PVP lately. Most of this is based on the newfound popularity of the seventh-tier subtlety talent Cheat Death, which was buffed to mega-awesome proportions. Here's the old Cheat Death:- You have a 10/20/30 percent chance to survive any damaging attack that would otherwise kill you.
- You have a 33/66/100% chance to completely avoid any damaging attack that would otherwise kill you and reduce all damage taken by 90% for 3 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.
- Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue's health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.
The big benefactors from this are ... mostly anyone fighting a rogue. Burst damage classes like mages will benefit from being able to take the rogue down to 10% with their big spells, and sustained damage or DOT classes will be able to gnaw away at that remaining health if the rogue isn't resilience capped. This will also ease some of the complaining about Cheat Death-enabled rogues getting healed back to full during the proc, or Cloak of Shadowing away and vanishing before starting an inescapable stun lock.
The major losers here are leveling rogues and rogues who PvP in high-damage PvE gear. If you don't have much or any resilience on your gear, that 90% damage reduction is going to get pretty low, pretty fast. Rogues will have to start stacking resilience like everyone else, even though it will hurt their damage output. Time to put away that 4/8 Tier 6 and Warglaives ...
It's tough to gauge what the full reaction to these changes will be from the wider rogue community. Community Managers have stepped into the rogue forums to remove gloating posts by warriors and mages. So far, most rogues seem to have realized long ago that a change was on its way and have come to terms with it.
What do you think about this change?
Filed under: Rogue, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
matt Jun 18th 2008 10:10PM
As a mage, I have to say: gloating mages are idiots.
Rogues are the primary way a mage is getting anywhere in arenas. (Maybe priests in 2s.)
Faar Jun 19th 2008 6:05AM
Gloating is always FTL IMO, because if a gloater actually was smart rather than just childish, he'd KNOW nerfhammer will fall on his class next time and then he'd cry and cry like a little baby girl, and it'd be the rogues' turn to gloat... ;)
I don't mind cheat death nearly as much as I utterly hate and despise cloak of skill. That one's well and truly borked, as far as balance goes. Bump cloak up to 3 mins CD, that way rogues actually have to think before triggering it. 1 min is a disaster, considering the power of this ability.
Especially as it allows rogues to circumvent unstable affliction's proc as well, which is completely wrong IMO. If everyone else gets one hell of a headache removing UA, so should rogues as well.
Schadow Jun 19th 2008 7:21AM
Cloak of Shadows is not only a PvP skill. I dislike PvP, but use Cloak all the time to remove dots so I can vanish and dump threat.
If you stuff around with the cooldown, then on the Gruul fight you can expect to have rogues shattering people because we won't be able to escape the ground slam effect like we can now.
As for the OP worrying about PvE geared rogues in PvP, I go hybrid on the rare occasions I do PvP, centering on a combination of stun lock and high damage output. I only go up the Subtlety tree high enough for Hemo and Prep. A full shadowstep Build nerfs my PvE-geared DPS way too much for me to be very effective. If I can't take something down during stun-lock, I'm generally kite-fodder.
So as far as I am concerned, this is a PvP-only change. Shadowstep isn't a viable raid build, and there'd be no reason to go that deep in the tree otherwise.
Jesse Jun 19th 2008 8:43AM
two of my 70's are a rogue and a mage.
I pvp with both, and honestly, even on my rogue I found cheat death to be pretty OP...
Until I try out the new version, I won't pass judgement, but at 312 resilience, I feel like I'll probably still be fine with the new implementation.
ChD is less about the damage absorption and more about skipping the one fatal blow while your healers bring you back anyway.
IMO hunters need something similar to buff survivability before they'll get popular in arenas as well.
Heilig Jun 19th 2008 10:01AM
I'm sorry, man, but if your excuse for saying CloS isn't OP is because you will kill people on Gruul without it, you should be banned from any raiding, period. There are 8 other classes that manage to avoid killing people just fine without it. By that logic, the cooldown on pally bubble should be one minute. But if they changed that, you would be screaming about it being too OP.
wut Jun 19th 2008 12:13PM
I'm guessing you don't play any melee classes. You must have absolutely no idea how much AoE and splash damage can occur at close range. I can't count the times CoS has saved my butt in encounters. Not only that, but it also saves the healers tons* of work. Everything from CoS'ing off doomfire, to avoiding naj's exploding bubble, to remove teon's crushing shadows, plus many, many more uses.
CoS is so unbelievably useful in PvE that nerfing it for the sake of PvP whiners would be a tragedy. I am so sick of seeing blizz nerf the hell out of every useful skill for the sake of PvP balance.
On another note, regarding the article - as a rogue, I think this nerf is pretty lame. I did love going into BG's with my PvE gear and just exploding people with 2.5k hemo's back to back to back then vanishing when cheat death procs. It is a little OP, so I can see the nerf - but it wont change much, I will just have to be more careful now. :P
Schadow Jun 19th 2008 7:09PM
@ Heilig:
Whether or not you believe CloS to be OP for PvP isn't my problem. My problem is I don't want PvP nerfs impacting PvE play.
The Gruul encounter is just one of many where it is beneficial to have rogues, because they can so easily cloak and get to safety. As far as the "8 other classes that manage to avoid it", I submit that A: they don't - people take shatter damage all the time, and B: *adding* another class to that will only compound the problem (more people in the same space - do the math), and C: the ability to hide behind the various terrain features to avoid the ground slam is not available to melee DPS classes.
CloS is a valuable PvE tool that helps to counter some of the very melee-unfriendly fights out there. I would prefer not to see yet another PvE nerf based on PvP whining.
Eternalpayn Jun 18th 2008 10:13PM
I'm glad I just respecced my level 66 rogue to combat...
"The major losers here are leveling rogues and noobs."
Fixed.
Jessierockeron Jun 18th 2008 10:20PM
I think the gloating mages and warriors are the ones that lose to rogues in duels. In real PvP you have allies that help you, duels are fun but not important.
Ryuhou Jun 19th 2008 5:05AM
@Jessierockeron - Isn't that called PvE? :p
PvP is your own strength, you just have help every now and then by randoms that pass by or if your in a group.
arb Jun 19th 2008 11:23AM
@Ryuhou: Spoken like a true levelling player - do you not do BGs or Arena? PvP isn't just about ganking in STV or killing people randomly in Azeroth. Try BGs and Arena where you usually do have support... if you're going to be successful that is - teamwork FTW.
Ikarus Jun 19th 2008 2:18PM
People keep using the term "PvP" to mean arena, and yes in arena you have support. but in the BG's you can't really depend on support from other people. at least thats been my experience
Sean Riley Jun 18th 2008 10:24PM
Speaking as a leveling rogue, even I'm fine with this change. It was probably overpowered.
Worcester Jun 19th 2008 10:26AM
I disagree completely. Cheat Death has been viable to a leveling rogue when you're completely outnumbered or outmatched by an opponent. At it's best, it gives you just enough time to Sprint and Evade away from a ganker or elite mob that you clearly can't take.
With the nerf, Cheat Death is only really viable for level 70 Rogues in an Arena. You'll most likely need a healer on-hand to make any use of it... and that's only IF the damage reduction kicks in.
Also, it seems like most classes have some resistance to attacks from their own class. Granted, I don't have many real alts, but don't Shadow Priests have skills to resist shadow damage? Fire Mages from fire damage? It seems logical that a burst damage-oriented Rogue would have a very useful skill to resist burst damage.
Worcester Jun 19th 2008 11:01AM
Edit.
Old name... "Cheat Death"
New name... "Delay Death"
Sean Riley Jun 19th 2008 3:34PM
You misunderstand my point: While I'm a leveling rogue, and yes, this will suck for me, the power was overpowered at level 70 and I understood the need for a nerf.
That said, if it affects leveling rogues MORE than level 70s, which seems to be what you're implying, then yeah, that sucks. They should be rather trying for the reverse.
Preston Jun 19th 2008 5:15PM
Who are these people leveling rogues as subtlety? I've noticed a lot of them lately. Combat is the PvE/leveling spec...
Sean Riley Jun 19th 2008 7:00PM
In my case, a roleplayer. Combat or (especially!) assassination would be all wrong for my character, a delinquent youth who got good at hiding and sneaking about.
As for non-RPers, no idea.
Worcester Jun 20th 2008 11:02AM
Ah, I see your point about the difference at 70 vs. leveling. I guess that was kind of my point too. Here's a skill that you can get at around 50, which can help you level, but it's now worthless until you get to 70 AND get a load of resilience. It seems like a wasted skill now.
To the comment about "the" leveling spec, please, please, please stop telling other people how to play their class. Just because you can kill things 20% faster in one spec doesn't make you a better player. Case in point: go back and read the Rookie Mistakes article from a few days ago. I cannot believe how many level 70's still make these mistakes, most likely because they burned through the levels without paying attention to the game, or experimenting on their own.
A Sub build, for those who don't know, is a great solo build because of the CC and escapes. Cheat Death WAS one of those useful skills for Rogues who have bitten off more than they can chew.
Den Jun 18th 2008 10:29PM
As someone that plays a rogue this was needed.
Warglaives will still be used, but maybe not full slayers. Remember they still have 2x Vanish, CoS and 2x Evasion. So it isn't like their survivability is going to be lacking.