So my turn at making a post on Rogues.

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we'll be making several changes to class talents and abilities across the board. Here, you'll get a glimpse at what's in store for the rogue class, including a look the new high-level abilities and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the rogue's different talent specs.

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.

This is all right I guess.   It does address a bit on our losing our "rage/runes/mana" (sorta) when changing target to target.   With a 1 minute CD, it's a little bit of extra burst, little less ramp up time for adds.   But it's not that huge, a slightly better quality of life thing.

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.

This would mostly be a pvp move.  It can seem a bit OP at most, but when players adapt to seeing this they can work around it.   All it takes is for you to stop attacking the rogue for 6 seconds, and the stacks will fall off.  So like most things, bad players will be screwed, good players that are attentive and have the tools will negate this.    For PvE, maybe during fights with constant raid damage or so it'd help the healers out a bit.   But rogues are dps heroes, we don't care, dps dps dps til we kill ourselves right?

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.

This potentially has some major implications.   But when it comes right down to it, if rogues find a way to use it to negate any major boss mechanics, Blizz will simply fix it to not work on it anymore.   But in the meantime, maybe use it to LoS trash for the tanks.   Maybe use it to save the healers/ranged from being targetting by some ability.  Maybe.     PvP will probably be more fun, create your own LoS pilller kind of thing.

 

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.    So, rogues are less squishy
  
  
• 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.   Nothing really new here, they've always said they wanted more yellow damage out of us.  Will likely somehow boost our finisher damage more (while balancing the others) to tip the scale more towards yellows.  
  
  
• 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).    More non-dps abiltiies...   Well, I'd guess this is like our very own Gift of the Naaru, but self only.   So a bit of a heal if we really need be.  Less downtime while levelling/soloing.
  
  
• 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.   This is kinda like back in Vanilla and early BC, where combo points remained on a dead target for a few seconds and rogues were able to refresh SnD inbetween adds.   Well with this, this de-emphasizes what Redirect would do for us, but I guess more is better.
  
  
• 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.  This sounds nice, gotta see the final numbers to see if it's worth it.   Cause atm, I don't even bother with steath as Combat.  As mutilate, I just mutilate from stealth to get the combo points to ramp up faster.   So, these better hit damn hard if they want us using them, pve that is.
  
  
• 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.     Sub will likely be a fairly huge revamp if Blizz wants to keep their goal of 3 viable specs, we'll have to see.
  
  
• 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.   This is likely a nerf no matter how GC tells us that the numbers aren't final and that it's not a nerf.   The thing is, this means FoK can only proc 1 poison, instead of 2.   Utility wise, damage wise, it was OP cause it can proc 2 poisons.   But there's a de-emphasize on aoe spamming and more CC in Cata, so, whateva, we all get hit with a nerf no matter how much we don't like it.
  
  
• 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.  QQ this means it'll be harder to assassinate someone in the raid.   Oh well.

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.
  
  
• 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.  This I'll like, only cause I finally (probably) don't have to respec every time I pick up a different weapon.  
  
  
• 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.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Assassination
Melee damage
Melee critical damage
Poison damage

Nothing really unexpected here.   Mutilates are the poison high crit rogue, so, go them.

Combat
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Harder-hitting combo-point generators

Haste, in all likelihood, this does refer to the new haste, which means we get energy regen out of it.  So, if that's the cast, this likely replaces Vitality and Lightning Reflexes out of our tree.     Guess the 3rd mastery just boosts how hard Sinister Strike hits, so more yellow damage a go.

Subtlety
Melee damage
Armor Penetration
Harder-hitting finishers

Armor penetration for this tree is weird.   In fact, this mastery was originally the Combat's, and Combat's here.   Well it was called More Energy Regen or something like that.   But the way these 3 are lined up, my theory is that the masteries are making Assassion uses Envenom (duh), Combat uses Rupture, while Subtlety uses Evis.   The ArP would certainly be a Evis booster.  

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.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your initial thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

 

Well this concludes my analysis.   All in all, there's nothing ground breakingly major for the rogues.   We get a few utility tricks.   A few conveniences for target switching.    And that's about it.

Have to wait fo the Talent Tree previews to make a real judgement call for the rogues.   That's where the meat and potatoes are!      See ya then!   Or if you wanna discuss something below, go ahead.