The Cataclysm Rogue Preview.

So apparently there was some news overnight.

New Rogue Abilities

Redirect (available at level 81): Rogues will be getting a new ability to help them deal with changing targets. Redirect will transfer any active combo points to the rogue’s current target, helping to ensure combo points aren’t wasted when swapping targets or when targets die. In addition, self-buff abilities like Slice and Dice will no longer require a target, so rogues can spend extra combo points on those types of abilities (more on this below). Redirect will have a 1-minute cooldown and no other costs.

Combo point management is one of those things that separates a good rogue from a great one.  As someone who’s squarely in the “good” camp, I welcome this change.  It’s on a cooldown so it’s not a given that you’ll always have the points available; the skill will be in determining when to use it.

Deadly poison alone still ensures we’re better at single-target than multiple, but this will go a long way toward helping those crazy multi-target fights.

Combat Readiness (level 83): Combat Readiness is a new ability that we intend rogues to trigger defensively. While this ability is active, whenever the rogue is struck by a melee or ranged attack, he or she will gain a stacking buff called Combat Insight that results in a 10% reduction in damage taken. Combat Insight will stack up to 5 times and the timer will be refreshed whenever a new stack is applied. Our goal is to make rogues better equipped to go toe-to-toe with other melee classes when Evasion or stuns are not in play. This ability lasts 6 seconds and has a 2-minute cooldown.

A PvP change, but a welcome one (though I guess it could be used in PvE periodic damage situations if you like your healers).  For all the complaints about stunlocking, the dirty little secret of Rogues in PvP is that we’re not all that formidable if you can actually manage to hit us.  With the nerfs to stuns below, this will even the playing field a bit.

Smoke Bomb (level 85): The rogue drops a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interferes with enemy targeting. Enemies who are outside the cloud will find themselves unable to target units inside the cloud with single-target abilities. Enemies can move inside the cloud to attack, or they can use area-of-effect (AoE) abilities at any time to attack opponents in a cloud. In PvP, this will open up new dimensions of tactical positional gameplay, as the ability offers a variety of offensive and defensive uses. In PvE, Smoke Cloud can serve to shield your group from hostile ranged attacks, while also drawing enemies closer without the need to rely on conventional line-of-sight obstructions. Smoke Cloud lasts 10 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown.

Uh.

Wha.

Erm, changing pants.

All right, the PvP implications are obvious.  You’re locking down a poor squishy who has lots of ranged friends.  Smoke bomb, and hey presto! the friends are in range of your Blind.  It’s not clear whether healers would be able to target their friends inside the cloud–it sounds like not, given the description of “units inside the cloud.”  (Every time I write that, I think of “cloud computing,” a buzzword which really gets on my nerves.  ”Put your data on the cloud!”  Shut up!  Ahem.)

But even for PvE!  Suppose there’s a caster somewhere that for some reason didn’t get picked up properly.  Your tank’s ranged silence is on cooldown.  What to do to get that caster in melee range?  Simple!  Pop a smoke bomb!

I’m curious to know how it will be targeted–with a reticule, like Distract, or just popping outward from the Rogue, like Fan of Knives.  If I had to bet I would say the latter–we’re so melee-focused that giving us a ranged defense would just be bizarre.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

We’re also planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you’re already familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we want for each spec.

• In PvP, we want to reduce the rogue’s dependency on binary cooldowns and “stun-locks,” and give them more passive survivability in return. One major change is that we’ll put Cheap Shot on the same diminishing return as other stuns. The increase to Armor and Stamina on cloth, leather, and mail gear will help with this goal as well.

I’m okay with this, on a first glance.  While ganking is part of a rogue’s arsenal, it’s not much fun for the other class.  Granted, it’s fun for a certain kind of rogue player–the same rogue player who finds camping graveyards in BGs at the expense of objectives fun.  I’m not that rogue.  Well–not often, anyway.

• In PvE, even accounting for active modifiers like Slice and Dice and Envenom, a very large portion of the rogue’s damage is attributable to passive sources of damage. Yes, they are using abilities for the entire duration of a fight, but we want to reduce the percentage of rogue damage that comes from auto-attacks and poisons. More of their damage will be coming from active abilities and special attacks.

I’m curious to know how they’ll do this.  Will weapon DPS as listed on the tooltip no longer be accurate?  Will all abilities do, say 200% weapon damage and weapon DPS be lower to compensate?  I don’t understand how this can happen without gutting other weapon-wielding classes.  I’m in favor of the general concept, though.

• We would like to improve the rogue leveling experience. Positional attacks and DoT-ramping mechanics will be de-emphasized at low levels and then re-introduced at higher levels for group gameplay. We are also providing rogues with a new low-level ability, Recuperate, to convert combo points into a small heal-over-time (HoT).

YES.  Yes yes yes.  Rogue leveling is horrible unless you really know what you’re doing, and even then you’re stopping to eat and bandage so often.  A self-heal is HUGE at lower levels.  But what about losing combo points to Recuperate?  Well….

• To complement the change to combo points, non-damage abilities such as Recuperate and Slice and Dice will no longer have target requirements and can be used with any of the rogue’s existing combo points, including combo points remaining on recently killed targets. This will not affect damage abilities, which will still require combo points to be present on the specific target you want to damage. To coincide with this, the UI will be updated so that rogues know how many combo points they have active.

Also huge for leveling, and for roguery in general.  How long will combo points last, however?  Could I even start a fight with Slice and Dice active already this way?  HUGE!

A new combo point UI is desperately needed.  I can’t wait to see what they come up with–and what addon developers do to enhance it.

• Ambush will now work with all weapons, but will have a reduced coefficient when not using a dagger. When opening from Stealth, all rogues will be able to choose from burst damage, DoT abilities, or a stun.
• As we’ve done recently with some of the Subtlety abilities, we want to make sure more rogue abilities aren’t overly penalized by weapon choice. With a few exceptions (like Backstab), you should be able to use a dagger, axe, mace, sword, or fist weapon without being penalized for most attacks.

About time.  A combat rogue will have a reason to use Stealth now, even if it’s just a piddling Ambush reason.  As for the second, I wonder where my beloved Mutilate will fit.  If I had to guess I’d say it’ll still be restricted to daggers, as it’s all about attacking with both weapons for massive damage.  Attacking with two slow swords or axes would be incredibly overpowered.

• Deadly Throw and Fan of Knives will now use the weapon in the ranged slot. In addition, we hope to allow rogues to apply poisons to their throwing weapons.

Uh, doesn’t Deadly Throw do that already?  Fan of Knives will be quite the change though.  It may mean that we never use bows or guns as stat-sticks again, if Fan winds up being restricted to Thrown.  Note that they don’t actually say that–but geez, what sense would it make to throw Njordnar Bone Bow at your enemy?  ”The bow clatters to the Lich King’s feet and rests there.  He laughs at your folly.”

And they “hope” to allow poisons on Thrown weapons.  I hope that “hope” means it will happen, but they haven’t figured out how to make it happen yet.  If Fan does not allow poisons, it will gut our already minimal AoE damage.

• We are very happy with Tricks of the Trade as a general mechanic and as a way to give rogues more group utility, but we don’t want it to account for as much threat transfer as it does now.

This was probably inevitable, as there was a certain point where Tricks, coupled with better threat generation in general, basically meant you could ignore threat throughout most encounters.  For me, at least, this is less true now; with Mutilate rogues at their current damage point, my threat has skyrocketed, and the need to manage it has come back (at least with certain tanks).  It’s more difficult, sure.  But it’s a mechanic Blizzard wants, and I have no problem with it remaining as such.

New Talents and Talent Changes

In Cataclysm, the overall feel of each of the rogue’s talent trees will change, as we would like each tree to have a clearly defined niche and purpose. The talent details below are meant to give you an idea of what we’re going for.

• Assassination will be more about daggers, poisons, and burst damage.
• Combat will be all about swords, maces, fist weapons, axes, and being engaged toe-to-toe with your enemies. A Combat rogue will be able to survive longer without needing to rely on Stealth and evasion mechanics.
• The Subtlety tree will primarily be based around utilizing Stealth, openers, finishers, and survivability. It’ll be about daggers, too, but less so than Assassination.
• In general, Subtlety rogues needs to do more damage than they do today, and the other trees need to have more tools.

Interesting, if a bit general.  The last statement in particular is good. I do wonder, though, whether Subtlety will ever have a place in PvE if it emphasizes “survivability.” I mean, that’s what healers are for! But giving more tools to the other trees will be interesting, depending on what it means in practice.

• Weapon-specialization talents (for all classes, not just rogues) are going away. We do not want you to have to respec when you get a different weapon. Interesting talents, such as Hack and Slash, will work with all weapons. Boring talents, such as Mace Specialization and Close Quarters Combat, will be going away.

I don’t think anyone will be penning any odes to the loss of Mace Specialization anytime soon.

• The Assassination and Combat talent trees currently have a lot of passive bonuses. We plan to dial back the amount of Critical Strike Rating provided by these trees so that rogues still want it on their gear.

Hmm.  Seems like they’re fighting last year’s war here–it’s only because of the massive gear inflation from hard modes that some of us are worried about the crit cap.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

[removed for dullness]

The initial tier of rogue Mastery bonuses will be very similar between the trees. However, the deeper that a player goes into any tree, the more specialized and beneficial the Masteries will be to the play style for that spec. Assassination will have better poisons than the other two specs. Combat will have very steady and consistent overall damage. Subtlety will have strong finishers.

I’m a little confused about what Blizzard’s intent with Mastery is.  With the Shaman preview, it seemed cool!  Lightning Overload for all spells, bloody hell!  For the rest of the classes, they’ve been pretty lukewarm.  Likewise here: better poisons, oh boy.  Stronger damage, woot.  Strong finishers, yahoo.  Based on what I heard from Blizzcon and elsewhere, I thought that this idea (the boring one) was actually closer to their intentions.

Missing in all of this:

• If they’re getting rid of passive talents like Precision, where will we get hit rating?
• Will Wound Poison be dropping to 20% heal reduction to match Mortal Strike?
• What exactly does “improving the leveling experience” mean?
• If Tricks delivers too much threat, what’s the alternative?
• What are the “more tools” that Assassination and Combat will get?

But of course, if they told us everything, we’d have nothing to look forward to.

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