WoW Cataclysm: The Combat Rogue
- July 18th, 2010
- Posted in Beta Testing
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The history of the Rogue is long and somewhat boring to be honest. We’ve always managed to be one of the most powerful classes throughout the history of World of Warcraft mostly due to the “stealth factor”. Our ability to surprise our enemies and choose our fights has generally compensated for any of the deficiencies of the class throughout the years. This appears to be changing come Cataclysm, where surprise just can’t beat a whole boatload of stamina. As such, the developers have given the Rogue a number of new tricks to their arsenal in order to turn us into more of a light nimble hand-to-hand fighter rather than a surprise from the shadows assassin.
The first move that stood out immediately for me was Recuperate. This is a new finishing move, which means it requires combo points. The more combo points you spend, the more health it heals. You basically can trade your combo points for a very respectable HoT (heal over time), that can be further improved with a damage reduction bonus through talent points. For anyone that has played a Rogue, the thought of trading damage for healing seems almost unfathomable. It will be interesting to see if in the long run many Rogues opt to use this ability, or ignore it.
As every class is painfully aware, your talent trees and how you apply talent points has drastically changed. You no longer get a talent point every level, and all of the talent trees have been trimmed down to 31-point pinnacles. At level 10, players are required to choose a “specialization”, which is nothing more than unlocking one of the three talent trees. For the next 31 talent points, players must spend them in that single tree before having the opportunity to diversify. With a grand total of 41 talent points, and slimmed down trees, this leaves very little room for ingenuity.
A number of the signature moves for each tree have been given to players automatically once a specialization is chosen. This is to keep players from accidentally missing class and talent tree defining abilities due to uneducated talent choices. For example, if you choose to specialize in the Assassination tree, you will immediately get Mutilate. This means a player interested in playing a Mutilate Rogue doesn’t have to spend the first 40 levels using Backstab. Likewise in the Subtlety tree, players automatically get Shadowstep at level 10. They don’t need to wait until 31 points are spent before they can use this tree defining ability.
Let’s take a look at my favorite type of Rogue, the combat Rogue. I currently play the combat Rogue on both live and beta servers. Players immediately get Blade Flurry, along with Vitality and Dual Wield Specialization. There is no argument here that these are required abilities from the combat tree that should never be overlooked. The combat tree itself has a grand total of 41 points that can be applied. Now remember, you must spend 31 of these points in the combat tree if you choose to be a combat Rogue, and the remaining 10 can be spent as you see fit. However, let’s not kid ourselves; there isn’t that much flexibility here at all.
There are a couple new talents in the combat tree, like:
- Reinforced Leather (x/2) – Increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 25%/50%.
- Improved Recuperate (x/2) – Causes your Recuperate ability to restore an additional 1% of your maximum health and reduces all damage taken by 3% while your Recuperate ability is active.
- Bandit’s Guile (x/3) – Your sinister strike and Revealing Strike abilities have a 100% chance to grant you an evolving insight into an opponent’s defenses increasing damage to that target by up to 15%. Opponents will adapt their defenses once this maximum is reached or you strike a different opponent, and the cycle will begin anew.
- Relentless Blades (x/2) – Your damaging finishing moves reduce the cooldown of your Adrenaline Rush, Killing Spree, and Sprint abilities by 2 seconds per combo point.
- Revealing Strike (x/1) – An instant strike that causes 100% of your normal weapon damage and increases the effectiveness of your next offensive finishing move on that target by 20% for 15 seconds. Awards one combo point.
Revealing Strikes looks interesting and changes up the combat Rogue’s relatively boring rotation of spamming Sinister Strike a bunch of times before using a finisher. Revealing Strikes is best used for the last combo point right before using a finisher, although due to its 15 second duration, it doesn’t have to be. Now keep in mind, with the Improved Sinister Strike talent, your Sinister Strike ability does 109% of your weapon damage plus a fixed amount of damage on top of that. All of this for 39 energy. Revealing Strikes costs 40 energy (that 1 point hardly makes a difference) and only does a flat 100% of weapon damage in trade for a 20% boost to your finisher. The trade off makes it really seem like Revealing Strikes is useful for 4 or 5 point finishing moves only. I’m sure at some point the number crunchers will give us a more definitive answer.
All of the rest of the talents in the combat tree are pretty much the usual suspects. You have your required talents like Improved Sinister Strike, Precision, Aggression, Combat Potency, Adrenaline Rush, Savage Combat, and of course Killing Spree. You also have the pvp centric filler talents that you have to choose between, like Improved Sprint, Improved Gouge, Improved Thrown Specialization, et cetera. There really is zero benefit once you get down to the 31-point talent to waste anymore points on filler talents in this tree. You are pretty much required to pickup Relentless Strikes from the Subtlety tree. Free energy after all can never be passed up. Lethality in the Assassination tree also screams for your attention, which pretty much leaves you with 4 left over points to spend on filler how you wish by the time you reach level 85.
Here is my opinion of what the cookie cutter Combat Rogue will look like. I left the four filler points unspent so that you can see how much “flexibility” the talent trees bring. And as with all beta information, things are subject to change!
Great insight, m8. But as you said in your early paragraphs, the “boatload of stamina” could be the scary part of Cataclysm.
In WotLK, nothing was as “satisfying” as playing WSG bg, only to be told to take on a Prot Paladin holding the flag with some ~30k hp (with Lay on Hands, double that) and some healshaman in the background.
Taking on either one was futile. This could get ugly in Cata.
le grouve.
Great write up Sprawl.
While I understand that Blizz is trying to streamline things and reduce bloat, with these particular options as you’ve noted, there won’t be much diversity in talent specs. I guess we’ll have to rely on the 3 tiers of glyphs for character spice?
I’m not sure how to feel, maybe it is just me resisting change?
The diversity seems to be the filler points and how you spend them, especially when talking about a Rogue. It doesn’t matter what talents Blizzard adds, the Rogue is always “pick all the damage talents”. Once you do all of that, more or less, the rest is your diversity.
After playing with the new Recuperate (HoT finisher), I’m sold on it as great tool to add to the Rogue arsenal!
See this video. Overpowered?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0Hz1-wv2PE
Hey Sprawl!
I was looking over your WoW Cataclysm videos on your youtube channel (I subscribed) and I am quite impressed. Your Deepholm video is awesome! 🙂
The reason for my email is to let you know that my company, TGN Stratics, is expanding into the WoW space (our other sites have over 5 million pageviews per month) and we were hoping that we could incorporate your videos into our new site.
We are rapidly building up a wiki based around Cataclysm and our videos / youtube channels are getting lots of views. We’d love to work together on this project if you are interested.
Look forward to your feedback,
Curtis Pyke
VP Community Development – TGN Stratics
I would like to exchange links with your site zsprawl.com
Is this possible?
Of course!
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pimp
Hey nice write up! I’ve been playing a combat rogue since BC and I cant play anything else, Ive tried xD. Quick question, whats the word on Mastery use with the combat spec? ive heard it helps but ive also heard it hurts.. any idea yet?
peace
They really boosted Mastery’s bonus with combat from beta but I’m not completely sure if it is up to par yet. I do love it when it chain procs the extra hits (think like the old sword spec talent of the past, except with much higher proc rates).
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#fMGZcGfcocbRGo0h:o0czrdcVm
please check out my build and id like some input back on if u believe this is a good cataclysm raid setup
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#fcIoZfGccocbRGo:soMfdbcMm
is my current leveling/survival setup and id also like an opinion
Builds look pretty solid, but I don’t think I’d go without Relentless Strikes. I also like my Recuperate filler points, but they are called filler points for a reason so get what you prefer.
well were u looking at the raid or survival spec that i posted a link for
they r both pretty diff
Adding this info to my blog if thats ok dude.
I follow your site to wish you continued success.