Upcoming Changes For Rogues Announced

Mmm, finally Rogues have received a nice blue post from Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard Poster Gamnin updated the stabbing community on changes they can expect to see in the near future. Gamnin admits that these are changes that are currently being worked on, as well as future goals. Therefore, some of these changes may not come for some time. Nevertheless, many of them have me in a twitter.

Got me in a twitter:

• Removal of numerous reagents (Thieves’ Tools, Flash Powder).
• Poison skill removed – poisons available via vendors.
• Level 75 unannounced ability designed and teased as adding group utility.
• Fist weapon spec merged with dagger spec.
• Mace Specialization will now grant armor penetration when using a mace.

Much hotness:

• Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes on Evasion, Sprint, Vanish.
• Subtlety Tier 1 redesigned to be more attractive
• Fewer dagger specifics talents in subtlety to allow more diverse build options
• Hunger for Blood will remove any harmful physical effects. No longer just Bleed or Magic.

I have always fancied the dagger specialization more, just because I felt that it required more “skill”. In actuality, it just requires that you move around a lot more (and have more patience) but I will keep telling myself that that equals skill. Unfortunately, raiders have claimed that dagger builds were doing less DPS than the other specs for some time, a statement which Blizzard owned up to.  With that in mind, the merger of maces into the dagger spec and armor penetration instead of a stun proc make maces much more attractive to me.  Maybe it is time to give up my trusty blades?

The removal of the poison skill makes sense, as it was simply as waste of time to create them so often. On top of that, its not like it was difficult to do or troublesome to locate the materials. For those reasons, the switch to a vendor item makes a lot of sense. But seeing as I never carried around poison mats, just a few stacks of crafted poisons, I don’t see how it will help bag space.

As for the hotness changes?  I did not note that Cloak of Shadows’ cooldown is being raised to two minutes since I was focusing on the good.  But that makes the changes to Hunger for Blood look more enticing for the PvP players out there.  And should I make that jump to maces, it is nice to know that Blizzard will try to make the subtlety tree a viable option.

Be sure to check out the blue post though. Gamnin mentions a lot of other changes and future additions that I did not touch upon.  Sadly, there wasn’t enough to convince me that daggers will be taking over as highest DPS again – and I feel they should be the highest.