Encrypted Text: Why good rogues take bad talents
by Chase Christian 
Jul 21st 2010 at 5:00PM
If you've been reading my column regularly, you know that DPS should be the main focus of any raiding rogue. As a "pure" DPS class, we're really required to do amazing DPS or risk being sidelined for more useful classes. We're designed around the concept of maximizing DPS, and using spreadsheets and theorycrafting has become a core part of our class culture. I love putting my new gear upgrades into one of Aldriana's sheets and figuring out how to flex my gems and balance various stat caps. I know that there are a ton of rogues who feel the same way.
So why are rogues in the Cataclysm beta wasting talent points on Improved Gouge and Blade Twisting then? Why has the development team chocked our talent trees so full of fluff that we're forced to pick up junk talents just to progress down our trees? We don't need talents like Reinforced Leather if our healers are doing their jobs, and why make raiders pick up PvP talents like Improved Kick? Does this mean that Blizzard failed when trying to streamline the talent trees? Actually, it means exactly the opposite: they've succeeded in every possible way.
Utility talents are there on purpose.
Improved Gouge seems pretty simple at first glance. It's a combination of the old Improved Gouge talent in the first tier of combat, mixed with an energy reduction perk as well. What makes it interesting is that a rogue could combine this talent with Glyph of Gouge, yielding a free, 6-second incapacitation effect that only costs a global cooldown to use. The talent is pretty powerful in PvP and could also be used in dungeons to provide a simple way to interrupt or lock down enemy targets. It takes everything about Gouge and makes it better-- a fun talent by any account.
So why don't rogues want to pick it up? Gouge isn't part of any DPS rotation, and that makes it a marginal ability for any rogue concerned with the DPS bottom line. Gouge is considered to be a PvP-only technique, and raiders love to complain about PvP talents in their PvE builds. They blame the "useless" talents in their tree for their inadequacies, and weaker DPS talents become the reason that a warlock beat them on the meters. It wouldn't be rogue-like to waste talents that could go to DPS on a utility talent liked Improved Gouge.
Rogues are stubborn.
Someone at Blizzard realized that rogues were going to need utility/fun talents shoved down their throats in order to get us to pick them up. Look at the Cataclysm beta's latest combat talent tree if you want to remove any doubt. Our tree has had its point values specifically allocated values so that a serious PvE raider is forced to spend at least four talent points in two of a possible seven talent options. If you want to make it to Killing Spree, you don't even have a choice: you're dropping four talent points into non-DPS talents. And that is awesome.
How else could Blizzard get us to flex our options, to truly try out some of the fun talents built into our trees? Rogues simply won't do something unless it increases their damage, and Blizzard has caught on to that fact. We're being forced to experiment, forced to specialized, forced to break the cookie-cutter builds and to try out talents on our own. We can spec to heal ourselves and take less damage for that encounter with intensive incoming damage, or we can spec into a silencing Kick for the next version of Faction Champions. The key is that we can do any of these things without costing any of our DPS. We're having our cake and eating it too.
The developers know best.
Like our mothers used to force us to eat our spinach, the dev team knows what's best for rogues. We're going to be happier with an environment of flexibility and creativity. The issue is that it's been so long since we've been able to spec into fun talents without getting laughed at that we're scared to love again. Don't you remember specing into subtlety in the height of HaT's reign? I remember moving quickly through stealth again and Cheat Death saving me when I accidentally ate a Flame Breath. Subtlety has constantly been plagued with an imbalance of utility versus damage.
As adult rogues, we had to put away our play things when we reached level 80. We picked up our combat or assassination union cards, and we went to work killing dragons and the undead without a single spark of hope in our hearts. We skipped Unfair Advantage, even though we had so much fun with it while leveling. We missed having 120 energy via Vigor, even though we enjoyed the burst DPS of unloading our damage into an enemy. The developers are trying to give that back to us. We're getting free points to spend anywhere we see fit, and nothing there's nothing that any theorycrafter can say about it will make a difference. You can't theorycraft that Improved Kick is more valuable than Improved Sprint, and so we truly get to choose whichever we want.
But but but ... our DPS!
Our DPS is going to be fine. Blizzard introduced the mastery system to ensure that no talent spec would fall behind the others, and so that we wouldn't have to feel guilty picking up a few utility talents along the way. Doing good DPS no longer comes down to which tree you put your talents into, but rather how skilled you are at that tree's rotation. You can try all three builds, find the one that provides the perks and playstyle that you enjoy, and then play that. Let Blizzard's crew worry about balancing your DPS; it's your job to figure out how you like to play and to embrace it. I can't wait to debate with other rogues over which perk talents to pick out. It's about time we started talking about what feels the most fun instead of which talents produce the most optimal DPS output.
Check back every Wednesday for the latest strategies in Encrypted Text! Get ready for Icecrown Citadel with our rogue guide, part 1, part 2 (Plagueworks), part 3 (Crimson Halls) and part 4 (Frostwing Halls). Just hit 80 and need information? Try Combat 101 or Mutilate 101. Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
MrJackSauce Jul 21st 2010 5:13PM
That is the awesome thing about talents that lots of people have yet to pick up on. Blizzard are working at making this stuff FUN, not to just put numbers on a couple of meters and push down a green bar till it's empty. Win-win all round.
jishdefish Jul 21st 2010 7:20PM
Yay! I'm glad us rogues have some sense.
I've been trying to say this exact same thing on the forums. I see alot of people complaining about 'filler' talents (talents that you spend in after the dps/heal/tank ones to make it to the next tier) and lacking the 'choices' they were promised in the same argument. They don't realize that the 'filler' is the 'choice' as these talents are meant not to increase your dps meter, but your fun meter.
Though, some trees aren't as far along as combat, I'll grant them that, but Blizzard will remedy that situation soon, I hope.
Grocery Jul 22nd 2010 12:58PM
Improved sprint is a DPS increase over improved kick, sorry. The mobility gain is great for fights with slows. There will be a fight, if not a handful of fights, where imp sprint gets you out of a snare, and you get more DPS because of it.
I must admit, I am excited for their plans!
Kbs Jul 21st 2010 5:14PM
As a rogue playing sense Vanilla, i have to say.. This makes me happy!
After having to re-gem or re-tool my rogue after patch this, or patch that to make sure my damage was the best i could dish out, those lovely perk talents always needed to fall to the side. Cant wait to see what we all end up toying around with
maybob77 Aug 28th 2010 7:03PM
they should make dps talent points and tactical or pvp talent points.
Camo Jul 21st 2010 5:19PM
Oh yeah like Imp. Eviscerate in the assassination tree as an alternative to a "works on killing blow" talent. I hope that gets fixed in the future.
midnight08 Jul 22nd 2010 12:07PM
In case you didnt consider it, i'm pretty sure deadly momentum is in place to make it easier for mut to target swap...
Camo Jul 22nd 2010 5:05PM
Yeah but ONLY if you can get the killing blow. DM is like Remorseless Attacks now with SnD and Recup added. So pretty bad if you're raiding.
jordan Jul 21st 2010 5:25PM
Assassination also has the luxury of using points in utility talents. sub feels like too many of the talents do something though. My main complaint is initiative. It appears to be a dps improvement but it's kind of not really one since you won't use combo pts during shadow dance. I'm kind of on the fence about even taking it because of it's questionable usefulness. If I'm better off taking an ability that increases my survivability over it, why is it still there?
zdave Jul 21st 2010 5:38PM
Some pvp rogues find the extra CP useful for burst damage. Or so I hear, personally I don't like bursting down my arena opponents.
jordan Jul 21st 2010 5:52PM
Right, but fights will last longer in cataclysm, so even in pvp it's not all that great, you can rack up a few combo points from hat going in to get an opener and using setup. you might as well take something that lets you live a little longer like elusiveness dirty tricks cheat death or even enveloping shadows. They should just get rid of it and replace it with sturdy recuperation.
zdave Jul 21st 2010 6:10PM
That's the whole point of the article: choice. I choose to take Initiative and get at least 3 uses out of it in arena (opening, vanish, prep/vanish), more if I can get out of combat and restealth. That's arena though, I know, it's a crapshoot. In battlegrounds, you would see even more use out of it. You're in and out of combat all the time. I'll do a bg later and count how many extra CPs Initiative gives me over the course of it.
Raiding, though, yeah take those survivability talents.
McFaxify Jul 22nd 2010 5:44AM
I sometimes use Eviscerate during Shadow Dance, if it's worth it.
Derrick Jones Jul 21st 2010 5:29PM
I was going to write a long drawn out response but I remembered a quote from the Twitter Q&A that ***sums up everything I wanted to say***:
"Q. The Combat tree seems really lackluster; i was taking talents like +armor and Recuperate to fill up my tree. Any plans to buff it?
A. If you were able to spend all 41 points on nothing but increasing your damage, we’d consider that a failure in our current design, because those would be the only choices. But with “utility”; talents there’s no clear answer -- some rogues, even serious raiding min/max types, might have preferred to be able to use Sprint more often rather than taking Reinforced Leather, for example. ***In the end, we’ll make sure you’re able to do the damage you need to do, in order to have fun and feel competitive in all aspects of the game.***"
And another one that goes well with this:
"Q. Can we expect more fun talents and maybe even shiny new abilities in further iterations of the new talent trees?
A. Yes, the current beta trees are still very much works in progress. As paladins in particular will see shortly, that ongoing work certainly can include fun talents and shiny new abilities."
Nathanyel Jul 21st 2010 5:30PM
The last point is the most important: no matter the individual talents, the devs will ensure that every PvE DPS spec can compete with the others.
For combat, it's either that the "DPS" is already baked into the basic rogue without talents slash the corresponding combat skills, or that the non-utility talents are strong enough to make up for that.
Actually, as a feral, I'd like to see more of that in our tree as well. We have increased movement speed/feral charge and increased healing received akin to mutilation (say, it's not even unique) but other than that, no real "utility". You can explain this by the druid having utility as the base "thing", while the "DPS" comes from the talents, kinda the opposite allocation of the combat rogue. And especially for feral, it makes sense, as the talents have to convert a caster template into a melee/tank - sure feral's basics are available to all druids, but most of the actual DPS comes from the talents.
For (combat) rogues, it's the other way around: The DPS comes mostly from the class itself, while talents increase that to a certain point and refine the playstyle with additional abilities and (sic) utility.
turtlehead Jul 22nd 2010 10:40AM
Feral is weird. I'm dead certain if they could they'd nuke cats out of existence so they could make that tree work cleanly. Going fewer points only aggravates the cat/bear issues. Heck, I bet they wish they could rescind pure DPS classes so they wouldn't have to struggle to get triple trees to play equally (won't happen) and be clearly differentiated (an often ugly struggle).
Btw, recuperate is AWESOME. Wish my mage toons had an equivalent talent.
RAEGLATEM Jul 21st 2010 5:34PM
Hahaha, pretty dam good article!
zdave Jul 21st 2010 5:35PM
In the new beta build, since they have removed the damage modifier from Shadowstep, I think rogues should be able to Shadowstep to friendly npc's and players as well as enemy targets. That would be sweet.
Firestyle Jul 21st 2010 5:40PM
As a retired rogue gone healer, I'd say you should really be trying to pick up those extra survivability talents such as reinforced leather and improved kick.
Dead rogues don't do any dps and TBH, melee is kinda on the low end of the priority list when you're low on mana. Doing anything to keep that mana bar full means more dps.
zdave Jul 21st 2010 5:53PM
What does any of that have to do with Shadowstep? If anything, being able to 'step away to a party member will save your ass from dying in a fire (or any number of things in battlegrounds), not to mention helping the healers' mana.