Spec specific topics exist for each of the three Rogue trees. I would like to start a thread discussing some general changes.
Thistle Tea as a choice node.
Thank you very much as this was asked for a long time and it helps out a spec like Assassination to make the choice when to pool energy or when to use Thistle Tea as a bridge. The flexibility this gives veteran Rogue players is great while allowing new players to Rogue to still use the passive version.
Atrophic Poison change is a small win and that is worth it as it means the discussion is still ongoing and tuning may continue for Rogue group utility. Thank you for this as well and I think this is a fantastic small step forward but more importantly a great sign that this issue is at the top of the list of things to be addressed for Rogues now and in the future.
With the increased health of NPCs and players how will Rogue healing be tuned with 12.1? That is a question on my mind at the moment.
I look forward to testing some of these things out and providing more feedback as the PTR goes along. Thanks for reading.
Thislte Tea as a choice node is fantastic and it allows player choice. Player choice is kind of important for a MMORPG like WoW and I think Thistle Tea now brings something for all levels of players whether they are new or experienced to the game.
The ultra experienced players do not bother with Thistle Tea at a certain point in an expansion (eg mid to late) as they drop it in favor of something else. For new players to Rogues the Thistle Tea talent is fantastic for players still learning how to pool for energy for combo point generators and also when trying to use Feint for example. Thistle Tea talent as a passive gives those players a bridge for baseline energy and/or other energy refund mechanics to help them catch up with the energy used. For most other players having a choice between active or passive is really nice because it increases the value of tea even if they do not use it frequently enough passively and can now be more proactive in its use.
Lots of positive Rogue general changes. For spec specific change discussions please visit one of the three current spec specific topics started by other authors and support their work.
You still don’t understand Mafic that Thistle Tea is a design block that hinders Assassination spec from getting any meaningful changes ? The only thing it does is to give you a brief moment of inconsistent energy flow between downtimes, then you are back to waiting simulator. Its just a bandaid that is trying to fix the broken energy economy on the spec, yet in a very bad way.
I can consider myself as experienced player, since i play assasination for 18 years in all types of content and I hate Thistle Tea since it was introduced as a talent capstone.
it should not exist in the first place, as was said before, the energy from tea should be redistributed into baseline energy regen or abilities that actually have impact on general gameplay.
Originally Tea wasn’t even a rogue ability, but just a helpful item for open world content. Its basically a mana potion, it has nothing else in common with the class in general.
I hate Thistle Tea with every fiber of my being. It needs to be gone.
I still insist that Rogue needs to move towards a model of rewarding having extra energy by converting it into more damage rather than punishing the Rogue for not having enough energy by denying the ability to press buttons. (I would even accept our GCD going to 1.5 for this)
Buffing Atrophic Poison isn’t going to make a difference. It’s still next to useless in dungeons and it doesn’t affect environment damage, making it unreliable in general. Atrophic needs to be scrapped and we should get a DPS-increasing group buff instead.
Even if they remove Thistle Tea I do not think the devs are going to change how Assassination works because they are doubling down with how the spec flows based on Apex alone. They really believe that pooling energy is important for the spec so focused on DoTs.
Maybe in fact that it is a balancing fulcrum that the spec with DoTs like Assassination has needs to pool energy or it would be too hard to balance if it had more energy to work with on demand along with more direct damage.
Pooling energy does reward more damage when needed. The dilemma is not if pooling energy is rewarding to use at times but should pooling energy be necessary to use constantly?
For Sub Rogue you do not need to pool energy all the time, but it is a choice you can still do. Lesser degree with Outlaw but yes even Outlaw can pool energy in very niche situations too.
But the more important question that has been raised is this. Is pooling energy consistently fit into the framework of a faster paced WoW?
If Midnight continues to slow down specs APM and that trend continues into TLT then that is okay. But if specs are sped up again than the pooling of energy that is needed constantly becomes antiquated. And that means Rogues are falling behind again relative other classes and specs.
In other words until we see how the dust settles with Midnight design for all classes that is only when we can answer that question truthfully and objectively.
With the ptr changes to Implacable there is basically zero reason to pool for any of the three specs. There are simply moments where you run out of energy and it feels bad.
I mean I’m not necessarily asking for all Rogue specs to become 60 APM specs but this is something Blizzard needs to figure out because Rogue players are overwhelmingly disapproving of how our energy economy feels.
Implacable is only available to Assassination but I think I understood your point. My view of the blue post wording is that they want to make Implacable less awkward to use but pooling energy is still important aspect of the game play.
The energy economy for Rogues feels in an okay spot but it isn’t like shadowlands levels where you are energy capping constantly either. I think the devs do not want Rogues to be energy capped or near it because they would have to balance the DPS numbers accordingly.
Basically it would feel bad using finishers because of the frequency of finishers increases with more energy economy, and at that point combo point generators which are the energy dumps are more of the focus at that point.
Outlaw is built that way for the most part but it has a reward for that trade off aka CDR. Sub and Assassination do not have that so increased finishers on Sub would feel really bad because the spec already has the best energy economy and best combo point generations easily. At that point they would have turn down Sub’s mastery which would feel bad and right now Sub’s mastery feels very rewarding to obtain and stack compared to many other specs in the game.
For Assassination an increase in frequency in finishers means they would have to lower damage over time of many DoTs and who knows how they would balance Envenom.
They kind of tried this by giving Sub CDR in various forms but the desync CDs were hard to balance since the spec is designed to hold and line up CDs during Shadow Dance.
Outlaw does not have that design constraint because for the most part it uses CDs on demand do to the nature of CDR. The last time Outlaw/Combat would hold CDs was for red deep insight situations when Bandit Guile was a thing but even that was niche. Similar with the new version of BTE with multiple stacks it is very situational as 9/10 you are using on CD any cool downs available.
