Cheating Death
Posted on July 18th, 2008 by Lithanial under World of Warcraft
Patch 2.4.3 has now gone live on all realms, with it came a couple of rogue tweaks. The big change everyone is talking about though is to the subtlety talent, cheat death.
Before 2.4.3, cheat death would absorb the damage from any attack that would kill the rogue and provide 90% damage immunity for three seconds afterward. This effect could only happen once per minute; however when combined with the rogues’ large repertoire of escape maneuvers, it allowed them to survive long enough to either disengage or receive healing.
The overall impact of this talent was that, when supported by a healer, rogues were nigh impossible to kill in arena combat. As such many rogues with access to high damage PvE kit began to sacrifice survivability stats for damage boosts with little to no consequences as to how durable they actually were.
Due to this combination of high damage from PvE kit coupled with massive survivability without any effort, rogues became one of the most dominant arena classes, being present within most of the top team setups along with seeing widespread use throughout tournament play.
However at the start of Burning Crusade, Blizzard made it clear that their aim was to keep PvE and PvP itemization separate to prevent a relapse to original release WoW where players had to be successful within PvE content to have a high enough standard of equipment to compete in PvP. Cheat death was preventing this ideal from coming into effect for the rogue class.
As such, cheat death is now reliant on resilience and has been toned down in effect. Rather than absorbing the full damage of an attack it will instead reduce you to 10% of your health, and instead of automatically providing 90% damage mitigation it will provide four times the absorption that your resilience rating provides against critical strike damage.
Due to this change, cheat death is largely ineffectual without high levels of resilience. In fact, you now require 443 resilience rating in order to achieve the previous level of 90% damage mitigation; an amount only reachable with full PvP itemization coupled with defensive enchanting or gemming.
With this move, PvE itemization no longer has such a powerful advantage over PvP equipment within the arena. This will lead to a reduction in the damage output of rogues in general due to a shift towards survivability. As a side effect however, new or under-equipped players will be struggling to make cheat death effective for them until they boost resilience levels, making them prime targets for attack within lower rated arenas.
At least that is how the change should work in theory. Unfortunately it seems that cheat death has somehow become bugged and is in many cases only activating after death has occurred, leading to many rogues declaring it a waste of talent points. This will likely be fixed quickly however but for now it may be worth steering clear of the talent.
What this change means for top end arena and tournament effectiveness of rogues, however remains to be seen, but chances are, they won’t be anywhere near as dominating as before.
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It is a waste for most rogues now. You need the best of the best gear for it to be even close to what it used to be. What does this mean for lv 60 and below rogues? Respec
It was only 3 seconds. For most rogues, you felt like it only lasted for 1 sec. Only if you had the best of the best, Sunwell/T6 AND be coupled with a healer could you be as good as people complained about. Cheat death stopped being effective when Blizzard fixed the accidental bug where it used to block 99% of damage for 3 sec. Now it is entirely useless, and should be removed.
I respecced. (level 70 working on PVP gear set)
Actually, it was the high end rogues with dual glaives (usually) and the 4pc t6 bonus coupled with only a couple arena pieces that were complained about. However, many players in low-end arenas felt that rogues were unstoppable as well. They hear the top arena players complaining about it, and feel like all rogues are OP. I admit, a rogue in pve gear deals a huge amount of dmg and the cheat death nerf would have happened eventually. However, the hemo nerf was sort of a slap in the face. It is a very small nerf, but an unnecessary one nonetheless. Mostly due to the fact that many rogues have decided, with the 5% loss to hemo damage, they should continue to wear pve gear and simply forget about cheat death. Honestly, in how many games was cheat death a huge factor? The good rogues have decided they will adapt and overcome, and continue to wear pve gear.
So what came of this change? Nothing, as far as I can see. Honestly, I agree with many people who agree that the hemo damage increase should be taken off of the t6 4pc bonus. I also find it funny that warrior/druid is completely balanced but rogue/priest is imba because the rogue is wearing pve gear.
How long have warriors and druids dominated the 2v2 brackets? They have gotten no nerf as of yet, despite many pleas that druid’s shapeshifting should have a short cooldown. Five seconds is plenty, actually. Let’s make that druid think a little bit before he decides to cyclone, cheetah, bear, charge, cheetah, cyclone, HoT. Honestly.
Holy crap I typed a lot.
/endrant
Sorry but a cooldown on a druids shapeshifts is never going to happen, you would utterly destroy the feral druid.
It hasnt been warrior and druid that has dominated the 2v2, its been warrior + any healer right back since the start of arena season 1 simply due to the fact that the rage mechanic allows a warrior to never run out of steam, enabling them to outlast most things when accompanied by a skilled healer.
gotta agree with takiss on OP druids. thats why i put one on my team, but damn they have too much CC and too much ability to gtfo. its a bit much.
but, the cheat death nerf was necessary. cause rogues would pop about everything and survive forever when they shoulda been wtf pwned about 15 secs before, but now theyve disengaged and are ready to stun lock ur ass again. i was tired of their health 100-8% in 3 secs and fuckin 8- disengage in another 10.
im so pissed about this… my shadowstep rogue has 2k AP and 38.76% crit me and a resto druid practically carried our 3v3 team i would go in and not have to worry about dying because of cheat death and then the druid would heal me and shammy would spam lightning bolts… it was OP but i got nerfed so bad that i decided to switch over to mut and i dont nearly have the survivability as before /cry
You’re crying because now you actually have to worry about dying? Honestly? Try playing something that’s not ridiculously over powered in the Arena, then, like a Hunter or Enhancement Shaman.
If this were the attitude of all rogues, I’d say Rogues need to be nerfed into the ground. I think Cheat Death was a poorly thought out skill to begin with. It’s a nice concept, but it needs work before it stops being an I WIN button, but still remains viable.
Wow… now you actually have to learn how to play the class, rather than just rushing in spamming 2 buttons and watching your opponents fall before you.
Yes it is dissapointing that arenas would not be as easy as before but this nerf helps separate the boys from the men. Takiss was spot on by saying how good players adapt and overcome.
It’s Cheat Death, not Cheat Deaths.
As a Warlock, I say it’s not enough.
Finally, a well overdue correction with Rogues. They have been able to kill with impunity and a good player can take you down without any trouble at all. It is about the only class that I think is way out of balance.
Ever wonder why ‘I hate rogues!…’ is the most popular saying in trade chat? Now you know…
I hate rogues…..and I play one!! Of course…I am talking about the opposite faction.
People always claim that rogues are “OP” but people focus on rogues way too much in PvP, it has to be said that druid are another class that is overpowered. i think it was well stated by Orely.
However as a rogue player myself, i have to say that cheat death was a “skill” that was over relied on by some players and it did deserve the nerf however it is wrong to say that rogues are still overpowered.
Sup, I am a rogue, and i agree that Cheat Death needed a nerf…however, it is a skill that requires lvl 50 or somethin like that (my point is the skill is pre bc). So how in the … can they make it require resiliance to b useful. Now blizzard have made Cheat Death useless unless u hav a fully pvp epicd rogue. I dnt see ne other classes with any moves requiring ne gear at all. well thats my 2 cents.
to be fair “instant death” cheat death came in at the earliest (i’m really not sure if it actually came out with this patch) during the “before the storm” patch which was a release of the 41 point talent system basically for testing before tbc, and I really dont remember if it even came out then, i think it was implemented later, regardless it cant really be classified as a pre-bc talent being at the best it was released with the BC talent system and most likely later during BC. but yeh the nerf was needed but it seems odd that rogues just drop dead randomly without proccing cheat death, that should probably be fixed…
Blizzard can take their time fixing that…might as well make the rogues feel whats its like for any squishy class. And yes, before TBC, rather before the patch right before TBC, our talent trees only went up to the 31st talent.
well all i can say is one OP talent down.. 1 to go.. next on the block i hope is “cloak of skill” with an instant “i win” button at a moments notice, CoS then vanish then back to stunlock.. and throw in a cheat death.. wow.. so much skill.. lol
now all u hear is the rogues amoungst us /cry about how they ruined the class.. well tbh.. the good players are happy. cos now the flavour of the month class has had a few people /delete and roll druids.. the next OP class to be fixed (we can only hope)
on the matter of warriors.. well.. they arent that OP.. a good warrior is a sight to behold.. i dont mind dieing to one of them…. wo all the rogues that are persevering.. i /salute you.. to the people crying about how much of a nerf you got.. i say try playing a warlock and see how u like getting nerfed in each and every patch since BC.
i find this funny… now i have been playing for a month.. but u guys complaining about cheat death and cos… plz
cheat death where it would barely proc even if fully specced.. and would only proc maybe if it was for a critical hit.. so wat if ur damage gets reduced after 20 ac sitting on u while its up isnt even worth for it to proc.. u think rogues are op cause of 2 talents..
druids with their shift out of traps, etc druids with their multiple stuns
warriors with their high hp, to high mitigation of damage taken, to high damage out put if speced and known how to play..
locks with high hp and a dot dot run away (ooo wow big skill)
mages with let me sit back shoot some frost bolts run away frost nova oo wait he on me little pet to iceblock and cool down iceblock so its used again
plz.. srry to say all classes in pvp and pve still have their slots on what they where made for..
rogues are no longer the number 1 damage class like blizzard originally made them to b. they are also no longer the number one survivability class..
y does every1 comeplain that rogues r too good? and y does evry patch blizzard has, nerf rogues? it is simple getting out of a stunlock, just use your medallion after cheap shot and your g2g.if you dont have a medallion for pvp at 70, then u r really dumb.and for the cheat death thing, it simple to bypass that 2. just fear the rogue right b4 or right when the rogue cheat death. if u cant fear, then stun, if u cant stun then make it bleed. the only classes it dosnt help is mages and shammys(cant think of anything they can use atm).also, rogues dont have too much hp, and they wear leather. but i want to thank every1 for complaining about rogues being too good. without u, blizz wouldnt have nerfed them and i wouldnt have realized the ultimate 5v5.if im correct about this 5v5, then i should be getting my brutal shoulders soon.
yap! yap! yap!, complain, complain complain…….*&^$…..when are we going to hear something different……is it impossible? i play on of the hardest class in pvp, im a holy priest, a rogue comes a long and stun lock me, do i complain? NO…. its how they are made so what if they can play their class like that…..i dont give a crap about loosing or dieing…go lvl a holy priest from 10 to 70 then you wont complain about dieing any more…. if blizzard nerf a class all you goptta do is shut your trap and adapt as fast as possible. some might say preist did not get too many nerf but we got some that pissed me off for what…15 min?… if you cant adapt to a new situation then why are you playing a game where everything can happen?.
We complain about rogues because of the insane amount of damage you do in a very short time, especially in T6. On top of that you have poisons, and then you have CoS on what…a 1 min CD? And besides in arena youve got at least 1 partner, so even if you trinket out of the stunlock…what happens next? A fear, a cyclone, roots, frost nova, stun? Once that happens I’m dead before I could even get PS off. If you’re QQing about mages, then you must be a bad rogue or you just have a bad partner. Mages are squishy, stunlock and they’re dead, if they ice block then go after their partner or have your partner dispel it.
But yes, have to agree that the drood is also another OP class…”Oh noes! Something’s happening…lawl shapeshift and run nub….bam cyclone spam for 10 years and we r win! yay!”
zomg!!!!1111nerf ROCK it way too OP balh blah blah, oh btw scissors is just fine.
signed paper.
Sorry for the crude example but this is about all im geting out of the prior comments.