As one of the fellow rogue tanks, (and even from a dps perspective), the runes for phase 2 currently appear to be rather lackluster for both specs. Going into each of the runes, there’s clear issues (and clear (albeit quite marginal) winners) for each slot.
Waist Slot
- Poisoned Knife – Probably the best of the three for the belt slot, although that’s not saying much. The real reason you’d take this over shuriken toss as a rogue tank is due to the ability to apply Deadly Poison from your offhand to guarantee the extra 20% damage on Mutilate right off the beginning of the encounter. Not to mention it is far better at pulling packs than Shuriken Toss, which I’ll be sure to go into detail soon.
- Shadowstep – As many other forum posts have stated, this version of Shadowstep is extremely gimped. It’s on the GCD, so in PvP you’re not able to actually use it effectively as anyone that can put the two neurons in their brain together can react quick enough to abuse your 1.5 seconds of ‘nothing personal kid’ roleplay and absolutely stomp on you. In PvE, it’s nice I guess to travel I suppose.
- Shuriken Toss – Oh boy. Shuriken Toss. The Fischer Price Fan of Knives. There’s several issues with this rune meant to serve as a way for a rogue tank to get cleave threat:
- First, it’s 15% of your attack power. 15. Percent. At 400 attack power that’s 60, 500 is 75, etcetera. Not only am I giving five enemies a nice trim off the top, but I’m also wasting thirty energy just for someone else to sneeze on whatever mob is in question and pull off of me.
- Secondly, it’s capped. I understand the reasoning for capping AoE capabilities, however it feels awful when paired with a raid hosting several AoE runes and abilities (Hello Mages, Warlocks, Shadow Priests (Mind Sear is uncapped by the way. A rune. A scaling rune. With uncapped AoE damage.)) I can only hit five mobs, it doesn’t work with blade dance, and pairing it with the pitiful threat/damage output, feels awful to be capped as well.
- And finally, using it as a way to pull trash is awful. If you happen to hit a pack of four, it’ll randomly bounce all the way to Yugoslavia, Brazil, all the way up to Mongolia, then back to the second pack that’s nowhere near the pack you threw it at. Either make it uncapped so I can quite literally chain the entire instance and wipe my raid or reduce the bounce range slightly so I can’t do that.
- With that said, the two good things as changes from datamining is the energy cost reduction (60 to 30 energy) and the combo point generation. With that said, it has no place as either a dps or a tank rune. One of the biggest disappointments of phase 2 for tank rogues. Either make it scale with weapon damage, with much more attack power, or give it a good threat scaling so that we can actually hold threat using this tool instead of wasting a rune slot.
Boot Runes
- Rolling with the Punches – A cool concept, and good if you need the health pool for raids. With that said, I’m not sure I’m a fan of having more health because I’m dodging and parrying, and there’s a reason for that: A rogue tank’s entire gimmick is to dodge or parry. Being rewarded with up to 30% health is rather insane as well, scaling with improved fortitude, tank consumes, and commanding shout, which gives you a ton of health already. If I had to give feedback for this rune, I’d rather the increased health get nerfed to around 15% and shift some power in giving some health back on dodge/parry, or perhaps some energy. Either way, it’ll probably just need to be nerfed. It’s an extremely strong stat stick if you need the stamina, otherwise remains useless the more mitigation you get.
- Waylay – The one rune I won’t be getting this phase, and instead I’m opting to use the rune’s items as quest stacking because of how disappointing it is. 50% slow and 10% attack speed slow is nice for pvp, as you’re able to run deadly brew and mutilate, using wounding/mind numbing poison. You probably would still rather Master of Subtlety simply to nuke the druid or shaman before they nuke you, otherwise you’re going to die.
- Master of Subtlety – A rather uninspiring rune, but otherwise the best in this slot for PvE for obvious reasons. 10% increased damage and threat for a tank for 6 seconds on engaging (using Poisoned Knife to pull out of stealth) and subsequently able to vanish and pop back out for another 6 seconds of 10% bonus damage. I’ll likely be taking this if I don’t need Rolling with the Punches, but it’ll be completely useless after 6 to 12 seconds of a fight.
While I have ideas for some runes in mind more than others due to my preference for tanking, these are only suggestions, as what the forums are for. With that said, none of these runes are given thought to how strong rogues can be in 1v1 in PvP, as I’m focused on the PvE portion of this content, and there’s more pressing balance issues in pvp that others have addressed.
All in all, the rogue runes for this phase feel like nothing more than meager fillers or passives that have limited usage, especially as a tank. While the phase progresses I hope to see some changes that fine-tune these runes to provide more usefulness (Looking at you, Fan of Knives wannabe). Otherwise I do think I’ll be enjoying Gnomeregan despite the disappointing runes I’ve received.
P.S. Yes, I know mutilate is strong. That’s because they reduced the energy cost to 40. That doesn’t make these current phase 2 runes feel any better, if anything it makes them feel worse to know that phase 1 runes are so, so much better than phase 2 runes.