Everyone is stoked about the new talent trees in the upcoming expansion. There are an extreme amount of new abilities that come into context, creating a whole new field of strategies. WotLK will certainly shift the way we play not only in PvP, but PvE as well.
If you haven’t checked out the new talent points then get your butt over to Blizzard’s website and be amazed.
Of all the characters out there, I am glad to say rogues look insanely sick. I think they are finally getting the true buff they deserve in certain aspects. Now don’t get me wrong, rogues already have a great advantage in the PvP world. But it is pretty basic; stunlock and hemo.
Rogues in PvP only have 1 of 2 choices. That is, go 20/41 assassination/hemo or go combat fists and pray you have a good priest (2v2 only). But what about the good old days when rogues use to deal that large burst of DPS via ambush? We still have a high DPS rate right now, but it is more of a consistent damage rather than a good burst. This being due to the resilience gear making such talents like ambush and backstab basically useless.
As we look at the different talent trees for the rogue, what is blizzard trying to tell us? Look at the subtlety tree, here is where it really excited me the most; Waylay and Slaughter from the Shadows. Nothing but pure ambush/backstab buffs.
With those two buffs, ambush rogues finally have their place back in the WoW society of what they should be; assassins striking from out of the shadows with a vicious dagger. What really pulls it all together is the shadow dance. This is the main feature that blizzard sticks out saying, ‘Hey, ambush rogues are back in the game.”
If you realize what shadow dance does, then there is no other substitution then using ambush between stealths. Using garrote over and over will be a vigorous waste, while cheap shot would be pointless with diminishing returns. This talent point was made directly for multiple ambush uses; anything else is not even an option.
Even though ambush rogues are very rare right now, I still play the spec (as well as every other spec). Using a 2k AP unbuffed rogue will crit SS ambushes at around 4-5.5k points of damage. If you add resilience into the picture you can lose up to about 1k of damage depending on the resilience rating.
I hit S3 warriors around 3k of SS ambush damage; it’s really only a chip in their side with their massive 13k hps+ and daunting plate armor. Now let’s bring blade dance into the picture. I can open up with a 3k ambush through SS, then I trigger blade dance. This gives me 3 extra opportunity attacks to use ambush at will, with 2.5k points of damage per strike. Do the math, even with resilience gear the warrior will be down over 10k of damage within a short period of time. And the best part; there will be no stun locking, which in turn procs second wind.
This is still assuming that I can get all 3 strikes from the blade dance off. Who knows what factors will be brought in, such as rend or a lock’s magic spell causing a dot on the rogue, disabling stealth. Then again, this should happen so fast that a warrior shouldn’t be able to do anything but /beg. As soon as he turns around the blade dance should be set in motion, confusing him and hopefully creating outright terror. I would definitely panic if I got hit like that.
Now another scenario; let’s assume a decently geared mage but with NO resilience is attacked by this set up. Rouges with 2k AP can SS ambush crit mages for 5k damage easy (resilience drops this down to 3.5-4k). Using blade dance, a mage will be dead in seconds if they do not think fast by using frost nova, blinking out, or ice block (POM polymorph FTW). What other choice do they have? Any character is automatically thrown into the defensive while the rogue can have their way with them and be in total domination of the battle. That is, after all, the whole idea of a rogue; getting the opportunity attack.
The real questions are: How will this all play out at level 80? How much AP will rogues have that level? Is resilience going to destroy their DD (direct damage) like it has now?
All I can say is, I am very excited to find out.