ShS to 21/31 and move Prep to 41Follow

Quick idea for a revamp on sub.

ShS shouldn't be 41. You are right. It's a 21, MAYBE 31 pointer. The only thing currently in the tree that would be anything near 41 point is Prep. Not the current version though.

New 41 point would be Prep. The new function would be that it resets all rogue cooldowns. Sprint, evasion, Blind, KS, anything else I can't think of.

Now, it can't be coupled with anything game breaking, aka 2 AR's, two CB's, but it still makes it a pretty powerful move.


Am I overlooking something that makes this stupid?

A deep feeling I have is Prep even though its a changed version wouldn't be powerful enough. Merely because while it would be nice having two of literally every cooldown, you can't combine it with anything to worthwile. It's essentially Cold Snap for rogues, although cold snap is lower in their tree.

Yea that's what I was slowly starting to think after I wrote it.


Only other option I see is ShS trainable for a real 41pt, but that wouldn't happen.

The core problem of Sub are twofold:

1 - Too many talents that improve stealth or require Stealth. Stealth is fleeting and easily countered, not to mention that with vanish being bugged, it's not that easy to re-enter stealth. On top of that, you spend very little time in stealth compared to outside of it. In other words, most deep Sub rogue have between 20% and 40% talents doing absolutly nothing for them 90% of the time.

MoD, Camo, Iniative, MoS, Heightened Sense, Premeditation - I'm looking at you guys!

2 - Most of the 'clickable' ability are weak. Premed isn't worth 31 point. Shadowstep isn't worth 41. Prep is barely worth 21 anymore. Hemo isn't worth the 40 point investment needed to make it good.

The only clickable that's good in Sub is Ghostly Strike. And well, it's good, but it's not not good enough.

You'll notice that Premed is part of both problem!

While Sub does have some good talent (Serrated Blade, Elusivness, Deadliness, Cheat death, etc) they simply don't make up for the weakness of the other talents you have to take to get them.

Combined, those 2 issues are why Sub's damage is crappy - A lack of any powerful signature move and way to many spent on improving stealth rather then damage.

The problem is, Sub is the stealth talent tree. You can't really take those talents out and they have to be somewhere.

So what do you do? A few option would work here.

To Solve Problem 1:

1.1 - Synergise:

Is there any reason for Camouflage Talent? Seriously? Why hasn't it been collapsed with MoD already? Camo is now a dump talent that very few people max out, and even when you do max it out they're basically shortchanging themselves.

3 other talents that would greatly benefit from some kind of synergy:
Initiative (Highly Over rated)
MoS (Piece of crap)
Heightened Sense (Another filler, pretty much equal to Camo).
Enveloping Shadow (ugh)

Merging those 5 talents in some way (Say, Camo/MoD and Iniative/MoS - they work great, same number of talents) would free up the tree to include new, more interesting talents as well as give Sub Rogue much better stealth - no longer will druid outstealth us if we don't spend 12 talents purely on Stealth enhancements...

Of course, inventing new talents is big Con to this. It means a lot of work for Blizzard. The new talents might also suck, but even if they do, the Sub Tree will still be better for it simply because of the Synergy.

Idea for Talent Replacement:

For MoS, Improved Deadly Throw: A 3 point talent. Every point in this increase the damage done by DT by 5% and the lenght of the snare by 1 second. Or hell... give DT a 20% chance to proc a combo point ;)... We want Sub to be the pvp tree? Well, improving DT is only going to help.

1.2 - Add passive abilities:

If you aren't going to Synergise, then give those 5 stealth talents somekind of passive increase that I'll mean you're still boosting your damage while you're increasing your stealth. ATK/Crit/Hit/Whatever.

A good exemple of this is how Dirty Deeds went from being a 'meh' talent to a really powerful ability when they added the extra damage on wounded target component.

To solve Problem 2:

2.1 Reposition:

The power increase for Shadowstep to be an acceptable level 41 talent is mind boggling (especially with an untouched sub tree). I don't think Blizzard will actually do what's needed for it. Adding a stun to it might work, but then it'd be way to close to intercept.

So give up. Bring it lower in the tree. Make it a 6th Tier talent with dirty deeds as a pre-req or something. Or even simpler, make it replace Premeditation (although I think it needs to be lower then that, but that might make it too strong. Still, going from 41 to 31 would be huge)...

Which bring us to Premeditation.... Premeditation is a terrible ability, and overall it could probably be junked out of the tree rather then moved down and most rogues wouldn't even care. And yet, it's at 31! Incredible.

2.2 Fix the 31/41 talent issue:

And this is what this really come down to. Warriors have shown that a good 31 point talent can make up for crappy 41 points talent. Giving us a good 31 point talent would actually solve a lot, if not all, of the issue of Sub. Even if shadowstep was to stay at 41.

You see, as far as clickable go, the main issue is that both our 31 & 41 points talents are terrible. We have all this attack and crit from our talents and armor penetration... yet we have nothing to really use them with.

While I don't suggest a 'big hit move' a la MS, since Sub that deep will have Hemo, some defining and powerful ability (akin to AR in power, if not in form) need to be added somewhere in the tree. Yes, shadowstep is iconic, but it lacks the power and it is more of a toy ability then anything else. We need real 31/41 talents (at least one of them!).


And that's my take on the Sub Tree.



Edited, Jan 8th 2008 9:21pm by Tyrandor

Prep is definitely not worth 41 points.

And yeah ShS isn't, and premed is pretty useless.

A talent that increase a rogue's rate of energy regeneration would be cool, which would mirror Endless Rage. "Tireless" or something.

Make energy tick for 21-23 every 2 seconds instead of 20.

Or maybe like a short CD (30 secondsish) thistle tea-esque technique that just restores energy.

Vicious Strike
Require 30 in Subtlety. To take Premed's Place.
30 Energy. 10 Second Cooldown

Require a target with the Hemorrhage Debuff. The ability will simply not light up if the target doesn't have the debuff. Deals 200% Weapon Damage +40.

Note: Cooldown Reset by Prep.
Note: Damage increase by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% by Sinister Calling.

:P



Make it usable out of Stealth and that'd be badass.

Edited, Jan 8th 2008 11:43pm by Tyrandor

Blizzard's own statements (via blue) are what scare me regarding the sub tree. They have said both #1 that they want more rogues to spec sub, hence the buffs (which to us says for pvp since rogue pve is nothing more than max dps), and #2 "while we will continue to tweak things, it will be nothing major as the trees will get a major overhaul come WotLK."

This says to me that Blizz intends for the rogues weakest tree to be the primary pvp tree, and they have no intention of making it viable pre-Xpac.

Lucky for me I don't hate the idea of combat maces that much.

Get in dirty Deed Range.... SHS+VS, prep, SHS+VS

Muahaha.

Notice the ':P' at the end, I know it's broken, just having fun :P.