#0 - March 13, 2009, 1:14 a.m.
Now, lets be clear: I fully realize that not all classes need the same number of changes, and thus it is not reasonable to expect that they all get the same number of changes. And if Rogues were generally in a good place balancewise right now, I wouldn't worry about the number of changes being made. My point is simply that, given the nature of changes to other classes, the developers are clearly willing to make significant adjustments to various classes in order to get them in a good place balancewise; and rogues clearly need significant adjustments in this respect. Thus, the fact that we are not receiving them is extremely puzzling and, quite frankly, frustrating.
So, to begin with, lets look at the sum total of rogue changes across the last few PTR builds:
In 9684: HFB lasts twice as long and costs half as much.
In 9658: Envenom glyph added and TotT adjusted slightly.
In 9637: Shiv nerfed.
So, lets review: in the past week and a half, across 3 PTR builds, we've received 4 changes - which is not very many by any standard. And lets take a minute to look at the substance of these changes: the Shiv nerf was presumably made to kill shiv-spam PvE builds... except that such builds were largely dead anyway due to the PPM poisons chanage. The TotT change is basically a bug fix. Which leaves two changes of substance, to wit, the HFB change and Envenom Glyph.
Now, lets be clear: the HFB change does make the ability somewhat less annoying. It is somewhat less tedious and costly to apply now. But I don't think it really addresses the core issues with the ability. This change strikes me as sort of like being told that a revolutionary new medicine is going to make it hurt significantly less when you slam your head in a car door. It's a great change, and we're certainly happy that it hurts less, but what we really want to know is why the heck we're slamming our head in a car door in the first place. The ability is still poorly designed, cumbersome to use, and generally awful, and that's what we'd like to see changed more than any minor usability adjustments to the ability. If I may borrow a colorful analogy from the recent political season: the HFB change in the current build is like putting a piece of marshmallow into the middle of a huge cow patty.
The Envenom Glyph, on the other hand, is a reasonably good idea in theory with a fairly poor implementation in practice. A way of performing Envenom without removing stacks was needed to reduce the importance of OH weapon speed for Mutilate builds, but this implementation is at least as large a buff for HAT builds (which don't need the help), and has also given rise to Rupture-free cycles, which are particularly problematic in light of the restrictions on HFB.
In short: we've had relatively few changes, and, in general, they have not been good changes. And this is something that we - or at least I - would like to see change.
So, we've addressed the general lack and lackluster nature or rogue changes; let us now take a few minutes to address the problems with the class in it's current incarnation. A brief listing of the most immediate ones that spring to mind are as follows:
1) Without dwelling too heavily on the details (as they have been extensively documented - see http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t45381-3_1_rogue_changes_early_preview/p9/#post1094993 for my previous thoughts on the topic), HFB is just a miserable talent. In short: it's way too large a portion of our DPS from a single talent point, and using it ranges from tedious at best (on single-target fights) to impossible (on fights with significant target-switching - for instance, on Gothik it is basically unusable). This is further exacerbated by the aforementioned rupture-free cycles, causing rogues to have yet another external dependance for optimal DPS.
2) Master Poisoner *should* be a valuable contribution to any raid, as it's a significant damage buff to all members of the raid. Alas, rogues are by far the worst source of it; we have to spend 3 talent points which give no personal benefit to get it, and even then we don't get full uptime out of it unless we Glyph Envenom (which we usually do, but having it be borderline required is irksome). It would be nice if our raid buff provided some personal benefit and/or reason to take it, like the talented buffs for almost every other class do.
(continued in following post)
