A Look at Rogue Changes in 1.12

by David "Xerin" Piner

Rogues are one of the most popular classes in World of Warcraft and why not! They have some of the best DPS (damage per second) in the game and look really cool. The ability to stealth can save yourself from a lot of downtime and they are the ultimate levelers. There are a few problems with them. As cooler and better gear enters into the game, a lot of the talents stop being very effective. For instance, talents not being based off of percentages can find themselves becoming downright useless against those who are much better equipped then when the game first came out. Luckily, the new Rogue review fixes a lot of these issues and rounds up the talents very nicely.

The new changes add a lot of new variety to everyone’s talent build. Instead of choosing a way to go and picking the best talents then choosing which sub-par ones you’d like, you now have a vast wealth of excellent talents to choose from. Many talents that many considered useless were removed or merged with other talents to make them much more desirable.

Here is a list of changes currently lined up for the Rogue class! They are in no way the final list since everything is still in a testing phase, but what we have learned from past class reviews is that the changes are pretty near what the end result will be.

Murder has been changed to increase damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin by 1%/2%.

Remorseless Attacks has been reduced to 2 ranks, with the new effectiveness being 20% and 40%.

Endurance has been changed to reduce the cooldown of your Sprint and Evasion abilities by 45 sec/1.5 min. It no longer increases the duration of Evasion.

Weapon Expertise will now increases your skill with Fist, Dagger, and Sword weapons. It will no longer affect Maces, and this change is being followed up by

Mace Specialization will now also add 1-5 weapon skill with Maces, in addition to the stun effect the talent already provides.

Adrenaline Rush now has a reduced cooldown of 5 min.

Elusiveness has been reduced to a 2 point talent and now reduces the cooldown of Vanish and Blind by 45 sec/1.5 min. It no longer reduces the cooldown for Evasion.

Opportunity is being moved to a tier 1 talent, swapping places with Camouflage.

Ghostly Strike has been reverted back to the previous 125% weapon damage, but retains its new Energy cost of 40.

Setup will now also provide combo points if you fully resist an attackers spell.

Improved Rupture, Improved Cheap Shot, and Improved Garrote have been removed.

New talent 'Serrated Blades' is a tier 4 talent in the Subtlety tree, causes your attacks to ignore X of your targets Armor, and increases the damage dealt by your Rupture ability. The amount of Armor reduced increases with your level. At level 60, the ranks will reduce target Armor by 100/200/300 respectively.

New talent 'Dirty Deeds' replaces the Improved Cheap Shot talent, reducing the Energy cost of both the Cheap Shot and Garrote abilities by 10/20.

Garrote, Eviscerate, and Rupture now all scale with Attack Power. The previously announced Eviscerate book will still be made available in an undisclosed location. While we had always planned to scale these abilites at a point in the future, we felt that the rank upgrade for Eviscerate and damage increase for Garotte would provide a well needed boost in the current game and carry these abilities until the scaling mechanic was implemented. Our ultimate goal to scale the abilities in a future update was decided to be moved ahead, and the current plan is to implement scaling for these abilities in 1.12, instead of in a later update.

Looking over the list you can tell a lot of the changes are very positive with very few “nerfs” in the mix. My favorite of the bunch is moving Hemorrhage into a more suitable spot and providing plenty of talents in the near vicinity that supplement it nicely. This gives Rogues some much needed variety along with a great line devoted to quickly killing enemies in PvP!

What kind of preview would it be without a look at some sample builds? As always with Rogues, any build involving the Combat line will need to be altereted to your weapon set. For instance, if you use Daggers then the Dagger specality line is very important. Five percent critical strike chance with Daggers along with the five percent in the Malice talent gives you a whooping 10% additional chance to gain a critical strike! So be sure to look over the new talents (here is a link to the official talent builder) and see what fits your playstyle best. There is a lot of new and updated talents too choose from.

Sample Hemorrhage Build

This build is mostly for PvP combat but will do for raiding and PvE as well (considering a 10% AP boost as a large increase in DPS). This build focuses mostly on killing targets quickly then moving back into the shadows.

Assassination Talents

Malice - rank 5/5
Murder - rank 2/2
Improved Slice and Dice - rank 3/3
Relentless Strikes - rank 1/1
Improved Expose Armor - rank 2/2
Lethality - rank 5/5
Improved Poisons - rank 2/5
Cold Blood - rank 1/1

Subtlety Talents

Master of Deception - rank 5/5
Sleight of Hand - rank 2/2
Elusiveness - rank 2/2
Camouflage - rank 5/5
Ghostly Strike - rank 1/1
Setup - rank 3/3
Serrated Blades - rank 3/3
Heightened Senses - rank 2/2
Preparation - rank 1/1
Hemorrhage - rank 1/1
Deadliness - rank 5/5

Sample PvE Build

This build contains a lot of the PvE friendly talents in the updated combat line along with some of the “must haves” in the Assassination line. This build focuses on constant sustained DPS whereas a “Hemo build” focuses on killing targets fast and moving back into the shadows.

Assassination Talent

Improved Eviscerate - rank 1/3
Malice - rank 5/5
Ruthlessness - rank 3/3
Improved Slice and Dice - rank 3/3
Relentless Strikes - rank 1/1
Lethality - rank 5/5

Combat Talents

Improved Gouge - rank 3/3
Improved Sinister Strike - rank 2/2
Deflection - rank 5/5
Precision - rank 5/5
Riposte - rank 1/1
Dual Wield Specialization - rank 5/5
Blade Flurry - rank 1/1
Sword Specialization - rank 5/5
Weapon Expertise - rank 2/2
Aggression - rank 3/3
Adrenaline Rush - rank 1/1

In summary, we are going to see a lot of variety within Rogues in the upcoming patch. There is really going to be no one spec fits all way to go about things, with people putting points into what fits their playstyle the most over what is the considered standard that every uses.

Disagree with my opinion or feel there is something I've missed about the Rogue 1.12 changes? Feel free to shoot me an email at Xerin@TenTonHammer.com. Want to talk about Rogues in 1.12? Head to our forums!