The Devs (specifically Ghostcrawler) discuss what’s happening with the various classes in the 4.3 patch. Not all specs are covered and Rogues aren’t covered at all. I have no idea what that means. This is a clip from part 1, part two is below this:

Part 1:

Back in June, I wrote a blog explaining the context behind some of the changes in the upcoming patch that might not be intuitively obvious. That blog ended up being one of the most popular ones we’ve ever done; even players who disagreed with the specific changes appreciated our explanations for what we were trying to accomplish. Therefore, we’d like to continue in that fashion and we figured there was no reason to wait until 4.3 was “on the shelves” to get the ball rolling.

One note before I dive into things. If you haven’t read the previous blog, “Rate of Change,” now might be a good time. There are some changes that we want to make to class mechanics or balance in general that we don’t think are fair or appropriate to spring on players in the middle of an expansion. These include things like the power of interrupts or the active mitigation model we want to implement for tanks. We’ll get there, but in short term we fundamentally believe that it’s important to pick our battles.

On with the show. Note that most of these changes are mechanics changes. We have not yet finished enough testing to be confident in our benchmark damage, healing, and tanking numbers for 4.3. When we finish those, and when we see what some players are capable of doing on the PTR (or even what they theorycraft or sim based on PTR numbers) there will be additional changes. Off the top of my head, I’d say Fury warrior damage is almost certainly too high and Resto druid AE healing (ignoring the effects of Tranquility of course) is also too potent.

You’ll also notice some classes aren’t mentioned at all. It’s possible we’re just happy with them, but it’s more likely we just haven’t gotten to them yet. We don’t want to hold a PTR until every single thing is done, because that minimizes test time.

Melee DPS

Overall, we think melee DPS in dungeons and raids is still too low. We think melee DPS is fine in PvP, and we think melee DPS is competitive against ranged specs against target dummies, but in actual encounters with all of their moving pieces, melee falls behind. To attempt to adjust for this imbalance, we have improved the benefit to attack power given by the various raid buffs (Blessing of Might et al.) to melee only. Hunter DPS is fine, or even high in 4.2, so we didn’t want this buff to extend to them, which is why the AP benefit is now 20% for melee attacks but still 10% for ranged attacks.

Vengeance

As promised, we allow for this tanking mechanic to now ramp up quickly when the tank is taking damage.

The rest of the above post deals with class specific changes, see it here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3615095

Part 2 goes into more details. Again, not all specs are covered and Rogues aren’t covered at all. The changes to the Mortal Strike type of effects (reduced healing on the target) should cover Wound Poison, though.

Mortal Strike (and similar debuffs)

We dropped the healing debuff from 50% to 10% some time ago, but were convinced at 10% that it was hard to appreciate the effect at all. We want to try Mortal Strike et al. at 25% to see if it feels useful but not mandatory. If 25% is too much and 10% is too little, then it may mean the entire mechanic may not have much of a future. We decided to only change the debuff for the warrior, rogue, and hunter, restoring the original relationship between “strong” and “weak” MS that we had in Lich King.

Click through to see the class details: 4.3 class changes

There will be thousands of comments on the above posts, might as well click through and add yours. QQing doesn’t help, but if you can add some solid evidence to support your remarks, then go for it.

• It is the highest heal-per-mana (hpm) spell for priests.
• You can click it from up to 20 yards away.
• Clicking it will not change your target and does not trigger the global cooldown.
• It heals for more per tick than Renew.
• It can be used while stunned, disoriented, sapped, blinded or casting.

WoWhead’s description:

• Lightwell
• 30% of base mana
• 40 yd range
• 0.5 sec cast
• 3 min cooldown
• Creates a Holy Lightwell.  Friendly players can click the Lightwell to restore (((2878 + ($SP * .308)) * 3) * 1.25) health over 6 sec.  Attacks done to you equal to 30% of your total health will cancel the effect. Lightwell lasts for 3 min or 10 charges.
• You can click it from up to 20 yards away.

From a comment on that page:

This spell is way more powerful then you all think.  This spell can be used while

• Tanking
• Kiting
• Blinded
• Stunned
• Disoriented
• Sapped
• Casting another heal or spell
• You can click it from up to 20 yards away.

You don’t even need to un-click your current target. Lets compare with a more favored heal over time, Such as Renew.

Lightwell costs 30% of base mana, and does 10charges or “casts”.
So really its 3% of your base mana for every charge.

(the following is at 290 spell power)
Each charge heals 10,000 over 6seconds.
As for renew its 6,124 over 12seconds and costing 18% more mana per cast (compared to each charge)

You can literally be in two places at once, having your light well positioned properly. Heal ranged dps, or yourself while your to busy focusing on people who are dieing rather then injured. The ticks also tick faster [down from over 6seconds] with your haste. All you have to do is, Click.. and we will be well on our way to appreciating this spell.

Did you know that  You can click it from up to 20 yards away?

For both builds…

• Daggers only
• Slow main, fast off-hand
• Instant poison in main, deadly in off, crippling is applied via deadly brew
• Wpn DPS > Agility > Mastery/Haste/Expertise > Crit

Level 85 Assassination Rogue DPS Build (31/2/8)

This build is aimed at maximum DPS, not max suvivability.

Assassination (31 Points)

• Coup de Grace – Rank 3/3
• Lethality – Rank 3/3
• Ruthlessness – Rank 3/3
• Quickening – Rank 2/2
• Puncturing Wounds – Rank 3/3
• Deadly Brew – Rank 1/2
• Cold Blood – Rank 1/1
• Vile Poisons – Rank 3/3
• Seal Fate – Rank 2/2
• Murderous Intent – Rank 2/2
• Overkill – Rank 1/1
• Master Poisoner – Rank 1/1
• Cut to the Chase – Rank 3/3
• Venomous Wounds – Rank 2/2
• Vendetta – Rank 1/1

Combat (2 Points)

• Precision – Rank 2/3

Subtlety (8 Points)

• Nightstalker – Rank 2/2 – In theory this will allow for more “attack from stealth” situations.
• Relentless Strikes – Rank 3/3
• Opportunity – Rank 3/3

Glyphs

• Prime – Glyph of Mutilate
• Prime – Glyph of Rupture
• Prime – Glyph of Backstab
• Major – Glyph of Tricks of the Trade
• Major – Glyph of Feint
• Major – Glyph of Sprint
• Minor – Glyph of Safe Fall

Level 85 Assassination Rogue PvP build (32/2/7)

Think of this build as a starting point and adjust to fit your game. For example, if Improved Expose Armor doesn’t work for you then change it.

Assassination (32 Points)

• Coup de Grace – Rank 3/3
• Lethality – Rank 3/3
• Ruthlessness – Rank 3/3
• Quickening – Rank 2/2
• Puncturing Wounds – Rank 3/3
• Deadly Brew – Rank 2/2
• Cold Blood – Rank 1/1
• Vile Poisons – Rank 3/3
• Seal Fate – Rank 2/2
• Overkill – Rank 1/1
• Master Poisoner – Rank 1/1
• Improved Expose Armor – Rank 2/2
• Cut to the Chase – Rank 3/3
• Venomous Wounds – Rank 2/2
• Vendetta – Rank 1/1

Combat (2 Points)

• 1. Improved Recuperate – Rank 2/2

Subtlety (7 Points)

• Nightstalker – Rank 2/2
• Relentless Strikes – Rank 3/3
• Opportunity – Rank 2/3

Glyphs

• Prime – Glyph of Mutilate
• Prime – Glyph of Rupture
• Prime – Glyph of Vendetta
• Major – Glyph of Blind
• Major – Glyph of Kick
• Major – Glyph of Garrote
• Minor – Glyph of Distract
• Minor – Glyph of Poisons
• Minor – Glyph of Safe Fall

More details here: Assassination Rogue Guide

Note that you need 31 points to grab talents from the other trees, but you do not need to have the top talent in whichever tree. Mastery happens at 80.

Sub. did about 24-2500 DPS on the 83 target dummy and Assassination was close to 4k.I’m not claiming to be an expert anything, but that’s a pretty big difference. I didn’t even have Vendetta up on the Assassination test, showing what a nub I am.  Before 4.0 it was about 2k DPS or so with an Assassination build and the same gear.

• Mongoose on both daggers
• Instant poison on the MH, Deadly on the OH
• No other buffs
• About 4562 Gearscore (I know, it sucks.)

Assassination build (4.0:)

1. 3/3 Coup de Grace
2. 3/3 Lethality
3. 3/3 Ruthlessness
4. 2/2 Quickening
5. 3/3 Puncturing Wounds
6. 1/2 Deadly Brew
7. 1/1 Cold Blood
8. 3/3 Vile Poisons
9. 2/2 Seal Fate
10. 2/2 Murderous Intent
11. Overkill
12. Master Poisoner
13. 3/3 Cut to the Chase
14. 2/2 Venomous Wounds
15. Vendetta
16. 2/3 Precision
17. 3/3 Relentless Strikes

Prime glyphs: Mutilate, Backstab, Rupture

Major Glyphs: Feint, Garrote, Fan of Knives

Minor Glyphs: Whatever. I have Pick Lock, Poisons, Safe Fall

Subtlety Build for 4.0

1. 2/2 Nightstalker
2. 3/3 Improved Ambush
3. 3/3 Relentless Strikes
4. 1/3 Elusiveness
5. 2/2 Waylay
6. 3/3 Opportunity
7. 2/2 Initiative
8. 2/2 Find Weakness
9. Hemorrhage
10. 3/3 Honor Among Thieves (will probably lose this. Your group gets the extra crit rating, so it’s useful for group fights, but it seems to be bugged right now.)
11. Premeditation
12. 2/3 Cheat Death
13. Preparation
14. 2/2 Sanguinary Vein
15. 3/3 Slaughter from the Shadows
16. Shadowdance
17. 3/3 Precision
18. 1/3 Coup de Grace

More DPS?

1. Drop Nightstalker and Elusiveness for 3/3 Energetic Recovery (more energy)
2. Drop Cheat Death for 2/2 Serrated Blades

Glyphs:

• Prime: Hemo, Evisc, Backstab
• Major: Ambush, Garrote, Cloak of Shadows
• Minor: Safe Fall, Blurred Speed, Poisons

Macros:

Opener macro, since I can never remember to hit that Premeditation button. The pickpocket is in there for when you’re not fighting players:

#showtooltip Ambush
/cast Pick Pocket
/cast Premeditation
/cast Ambush

#showtooltip Eviscerate (or change to Envenom)
/cast  Cold Blood
/cast Eviscerate (or change to Envenom)

Ambush is looking really brutal in PvP. Glyph for Ambush (adds range) and Eviscerate (adds crit chance to Ev.) Ambush gives 5 combo points with the above build, then Evisc/Rupture

Leveling

At this moment in time all the trees are good for leveling. Combat has better consistent DPS than the others and Subtlety has the huge opener. I haven’t leveled Assassination yet, but it should be between the two, at first guess.

If you’re leveling a Rogue then take a glance at our Rogue leveling page.

Instead of 71 talent points at 80 you’ll have 41 at 85.

Instead of putting a few points her and a few there, you will be locked into one tree until you buy the top tier talent. Those 41 points will buy every talent in any one specialization, but you can go 31/5/5 or 31/10 or 39/2 or something like that. Obviously this means that your Pally will be Protection or Holy or Retribution.

That nice 31/20/20 build of yours? Poof! It’s gone!

Each specialization will automatically get certain abilities. For example, all Subtlety rogues will get Shadowstep. These aren’t optional abilities. The top tier ability is Mastery, which is trainable. Mastery gives a bonus to some defining characteristic of your builds. Fire mages, for example, get increased periodic damage. Mastery rating will be on gear and can be stacked.

Whether you will want to stack it depends on all the usual things. Some on the forums are saying that you do not want to stack Warrior Mastery, but on other classes it’s great.

I expect there will be a lot of tuning for awhile.

Abilities have changed, too. You no longer get them every other level and you no longer have to get levels in the ability. Instead of Shiftypoke1 through 12, you just get Shiftypoke once and it scales with your level. I’m sure there will be plenty of forum remarks regarding that change, in addition to all the others.

Glyphs? There will be a made rush for glyphs on patch day. 85s will have 9 glyphs that they can slot (prime, major, minor, 3 of each) but every class can learn all the glyphs to their class and swap them as they like. Kinda like if you have several gear sets which you swap depending on that you’re doing. If you class has 20 glyphs you just buy all of then and then figure out which is the best set. Once you’ve bought the set you’ll never have to buy them again.

Mad rush on patch day? I think so. My inscription is 450 so I’ll be ready.

Oh yeah, the builds.

I’ve taken a shot at putting up 4.0 leveling builds for Druids and mages. Check them out if you like and tell me here if they’re good, bad, or ugly. I have not leveled anything 1-85 in the beta (though Zygor has) so it’s quite possible that an “interesting” error will creep in.

• 4.0 Mage Leveling Guide (Fire only, for the moment.)
• 4.0 Druid Leveling Guide (Feral)

• Broke 1k gold on day 7, 2k on day 13, and 3k on day 18

This is on a new server, no 80s, no rich friends, no gold buying, no transfers, and the highest character so far is a 31 Rogue. Stop scoffing, I’m slow, Ok?

So when people are yammering about their money woes in trade or guild chat, I’m scratching my head and says, “WTF???” I used to offer suggestions, but no one is interested, so I just read the stuff and smile (or sigh.) Someone’s buying those three man mounts and nice raid purples (for 6-10k) on the AH and it ain’t them (don’t have the mount, but I’ve bought some of those purples.)

In the off chance that you are interested, I’ve been doing a day by day accounting of what I’m doing, here: 1k Gold in 30 Says, from Scratch

I’ve been reading the blueprint forums where people logged their speed run results. This little pocket change stuff I’m doing is silly low. No wonder no one’s interested. Ah well, it’s fun for me.

Cataclysm

The 4.0 patch, as you all know, is bringing major changes to the talent system and a few other areas, as well. That patch will be released before Cataclysm hits. I don’t have an exact date, but I’m sure everyone’s seen the “…downloading data…” note on the launcher.

You can see the test realm patch notes here.

I’ve put up a 4.0 Rogue guide and will have the others up as soon as I can get my act in gear. The rogue guide includes remarks on Mastery, leveling builds, and a few other things. Let me know what you think.

I linked to it here, The Craft of War: Blind, but that link died. The new link is, where else?, to YouiTube.

Check it out, here.

Hey Bliz! A few buffs please. I want my Rogue to be able to do that.

1 -  Know how to re-stealth

If you can’t re-stealth in combat, you are drastically reducing your survivability. The main techniques for acheiving this are to

1. blind and wait to leave combat
2. gouge/kidney shot your oppenent and run out
3. get your oppenent crippled and sprint away
4. vanish

Here’s the rest: Top 3 Rogue PvP Tips

So I prodded a friend, who does raid a lot, into writing an article on Rogue Raid DPS which I found quite useful. Now it’s time to start playing around with some of this stuff and see what I can come up with and see if I can get to the point where my Rogue is useful.

My first raid was 25 Man OS (no drakes) and I beat most of the healers for DPS output. I was running a PvP mutilate build and had no clue so didn’t respec.

More browsing brought me to the ElitistJerks.com Roguecraft Spreadsheet which factors in a huge amount of stuff. It includes a Mutilate build and various defaults for maximum DPS.

I specced into that build and hit 2k DPS on the Orgrimmar practice dummies, so maybe there’s hope for cracking the top 20 of a 25 man raid?

Anyway, here’s what I’m working with for now:

Mutilate Build Details

Here’s the build on WoWhead

Note: this is a dagger build and assumes use of instant and/or deadly poisons. Lev 80 (non elite) mobs go down real fast with this build.

Assassination:

1. 5/5 Malice – more crit chance
2. 3/3 Ruthlessness – more combo points
3. 2/2 Blood Splatter – Adds to your DoTs
4. 3/3 Puncuring Wounds – +15% Mut crit, +30% Backstab crit
5. 5/5 Lethality
6. 3/3 Vile Poisons – Greater chance to actually apply poisons
7. 2/2 Fleet footed – Moved faster while stealthed and spend less time being rooted
8. 1 Cold Blood – add this into a macro with your favorite strike. I add mine to Eviscerate.
9. 5/5 Seal fate – Use less energy
10. 3/3 Focused attacks – gain energy from crits
11. 3/3 Find Weakness – All damage increased by 6%
12. 1 Mutilate – Your bread and butter attack
13. 3/3 Turn the tables – Adds 6% crit chance to bread and butter attacks. lots of arguing going on over whether to choose this or 3/3 Master Poisoner. Comments?
14. 5/5 Cut to the chance – lets you keep Slice and Dice up permanently.
15. 1 Hunger for Blood – More damage, Rarr! Edit: Will be changed (improved?) when the 3.1 patch hits.

Combat

1. 5/5 Dual Weild Specialization – More DPS
2. 5/5 Precision – Your Dual Weild gives a major “to hit” penalty. This compensates somewhat.
3. 3/5 Close Quarters cbt. – More crit chance

Subtlety

1. 5/5 Relentless Strikes – Restores energy
2. 2/2 Opportunity – +20% damage to your bread and butter strikes.

Weapons I’m using right now. Both drop off the Auction House.

1. Main – Titansteel Shanker
2. Off hand – Librarian’s Paper Cutter

Enchants:

• Exceptional Agility (+26 ag) on Main hand
• Titanium wpn chain on off hand (+28 hit rating)

I’ll be playing with some weapon choices, poison combos, gems, etc. to see what I can do to boost DPS.  Your comments? Thoughts? Changes? What do you have to say?

Edit 4/9: Joined a PUG into 10 man OS. Hit almost 2400 dps on the trash (#2 on the DPS list,) but the group disintigrated before the first drake. No one died, but people suddenly realized they had to wash their socks, so poof. All of a sudden I’m raid leader with two people in the raid.

The Recount addon said I had a miss rate of almost 15%, so I guess I need to look for more Hit ratng. Might try the Titanium Weapon Chain on the main hand as a start and swap an Ag gem for a Hit gem.

Changed off-hand to Namlak’s Supernumerary Sticker

Mongoose provides better DPS than Exceptional Agility and Berserking is better still, but Mongoose is over 400 gold (and Berserking is a lot more.) I’ll see if I can get better weapons before blowing that much cash on Berserking.

Rogues, Stormwind, Nobility pwning their lessers…

Actually, what this really is is an awesome video. The creator says he’s a professional animator and this is his first real, personal, piece.

This is only the second personal creative work I’ve ever posted so I’m a bit nervous about it. The first being an image I painted years ago which…um… we don’t talk about. It’s a bit nerve-wracking to post creative work for others to judge.

With over 500 comments , all along the lines of, “Dude, this is Awesome!” I don’t think he has anything to worry about.

This will probably spoil you for other WoW videos and you really need to see it in High Def, which is why I’m not posting the YouTube version here. Check it out, now:

The Craft of War: BLIND

Credit where credit is due, I found this on Jame’s Blog.

The woman with the staff is here

update 8/31/10: Above link was broken. Click here for the HD YouTube vid.