Shiv Changes

The new Shiv will apply concentrated effects of the active utility poison. Those effects are not included in the poison tooltips currently available on the calculator, but here are the current versions:

• Crippling Poison – Reduces the target’s speed by 70% for 12 seconds.
• Mind-Numbing Poison – Increases the casting time of an enemy's next spellcast within 8 seconds by 100%.
• Wound Poison – Reduces the target’s healing received by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Leeching Poison – Instantly restores 5% of the Rogue’s health.
• Paralytic Poison – Roots the target in place for 4 seconds.

In before "Blues do read this forum"!

02/15/2012 04:47 PMPosted by Midvale

Yeah they should take the stun off of the actual poison and swap it with this effect as the stun is really random.

Well, yes. The random part is kind of important though.

An additional controllable stun that's on a different DR would be excessive. On the other hand, if it's on the same DR as CS and KS then that's... not good. By putting the root on Shiv and leaving the stun on the poison stacking we avoid that entirely, and rogues get a sweet stun that's on the random proc DR instead.

Despite the title of the thread (which I will callously change), we're interested in player feedback on the shiv change as a whole, though.

So what do you think?

Welp looks like my thread is derailed. Thanks blue.

Sorry Midvale. Still pals?

Just for visibility:

Question: Why did attacks using % weapon damage drop so much?

Answer: We are in the process of recalculating the way damage is dealt. Individual weapon damage is going up by the same proportion in order to keep DPS at level 85 about the same. This should ensure that, at lower levels, these abilities aren’t overpowered.

Also, I'll try to drop back this thread tomorrow with some answers to a few on-topic questions that have already been asked.

02/15/2012 10:10 PMPosted by Tantojutsu

We always knew you loved us.

I have to chuckle because I recall the days of entire threads dedicated to the question of why "Blizz" hates rogues and *vanish* OMGSPIDERS /\/\(;..;)/\/\.

But yes, we really always did. We love all our adventuring childrens and we have no favorites (this means you, reader who plays another class who is currently considering re-posting this thread in another class forum while claiming that Blizzard loves rogues best because they got a blue post here.)

Now then, to business!

Q. Will the thrown weapon talents have a chance to apply one or both active poisons?
We're not sure about this yet. It's more likely that we'll apply damage poisons than the non-lethal ones, especially in the case of Shuriken, because a fairly spammable ranged snare is probably too good.

Sorry, guys. You can still use Shuriken + Deadly Throw though!

Q. If I have Deadly Brew, will Shiv amplify that Crippling Poison effect in addition to my active poisons?
No. Deadly Brew isn't the same as having Crippling actually active.

Q. For clarification, how exactly do active poisons work? One lethal, one utility, both with potential to proc from both weapons?
One Lethal, one Non-Lethal, and both poisons are effectively on both weapons. Whenever you land either a mainhand or off-hand strike, you have a chance to apply both your Lethal and Non-Lethal poison.

Q. How does poison proccing work now, and what does that mean for weapon speed.
Poison procs are largely unchanged, except, y’know, for all poisons being percentage-based in the future. We’re looking to get rid of the "fast 1.4 speed dagger" thing. The plan is for offhand daggers to just be daggers and interchangeable with main hand daggers. So we're anticipating Assassination and Subtlety rogues will use 1.8/1.8 daggers for the most part, while Combat will use a 2.6 main hand and a 1.8 offhand dagger. I know some of you noticed a Main Gauche change, and the intention isn’t a nerf. If it needs adjustment, it’s important to remember that numbers are still in flux.

On a separate note, while we don’t have an elegant system in place for it, we do know that a lot of Combat rogues want to at least have the appearance of dual wielding swords/axes/maces. There are a lot of hurdles, but maybe we’ll find a good way to deliver on that. No promises though! So, again, don’t get your hopes up too high.

Q. So, how about an offensive dispel using the shiv system (perhaps as an alternative to Mind Numbing)?
It's something we might consider, but if too many people have access to an effect like that, then magic buffs are increasingly devalued, and that causes all kinds of problems. For example, something like Hand of Protection is cool, but significantly less meaningful if too many classes out there can remove it with a button press. So, we'll think about it, but don't get your hopes up.

Q. Is Mind Numbing nerfed, now that it won’t affect all casts for the duration?
That's a bit of a misunderstanding. Base Mind-Numbing is unchanged and works as it does now. The new Shiv effect stacks on top of the base Mind-Numbing, and is more than triply effective on the single next spellcast.

Q. Any chance of a sweet UI element warning the rogue that he’s approaching 5 stacks of paralytic poison, or letting him know that it went off?
Making it easier to track buffs and debuffs in the UI, including using the Spell Alert system, is something we're always looking at.

Q. Y U NERF CRIPPLING?
Sadly, because it was too good -- which is pretty much the same reason anything ever gets nerfed. Basically, we're looking to chill out some of the passive, automatically-applied snares on some classes get because there's no real gameplay to them beyond just I touch you and you're snared.

Crippling is an important tool though, and we didn't want to take it away entirely. By lowering the base snare and allowing Shiv to still apply the -70% form, snaring opponents or kiting other melee classes that also have snares becomes something you'll need to think about and manage.

Is Crippling going to last 12 seconds in PVP now, instead of 8 seconds?
Nay. PvP durations are capped at 8 (and nothing should break that rule), but PvP durations aren’t shown in the tooltips.

Q. Under the proposed system, it looks like it won’t be possible to take both Paralytic and Leeching Poison. Will we have to have to choose between Paralytic and Crippling?
You can take both Paralytic and Leeching, but you'll be able to actively make use of one at a time. That said, switching poisons isn't necessarily impossible in the heat of combat -- the cast time on swapping will be fairly short.

That said, we're taking a look at the decision involved in the current placement of the different Poison-related talents, and that's something we may reevaluate. Still early days yet – and that applies to everything in this list.

Q. But Daxx! RAWR RAIDING! What's this PvP nonsense?
We'd like Shiv to be useful when raiding too, and increasing the availability of such effects makes it easier to design encounters that permit them to shine. It bears mentioning that, even now, the various Shiv effects could be useful in existing raid encounters. There’s no reason to expect that they couldn't be useful in Mists raid design too.

Also, there's more to PvE than raiding. Just because a talent isn't useful when you're fighting Ultraxion doesn't mean it isn't useful in PvE at large. There's still leveling (remember, tier 1 talents should ideally be relevant and useful to a level 15 player!), outdoor dailies, the upcoming challenge modes, and more to consider.

Sooooo… Does this mean that rogue damage might go up if we lose some control/mobility/survivability?
We want rogue PvE damage to remain top-tier. But yes, if rogues end up with less control or mobility or survivability, and they have to choose among those areas, then that allows us to safely improve their damage potential in PvP while keeping the class balanced overall.

02/16/2012 01:08 PMPosted by Mikkia

I feel the need to correct your spider legs, try this /X\(;.;)/X\, I feel it to be more accurate, thank me anytime!

Hey, there were a lot of different spiders floating around at the time, though I concede that your version was amongst the most common.

02/16/2012 01:36 PMPosted by Detteew

Any chance you guys will consider making Wound a lethal poison?

There's a chance, we'll have a look.

I think I see, in the Shiv tool-tip. It says 25% weapon damage (far less than 200!), dis-enrage, and a concentrated form of your active non-lethal poison.

It's still a weapon strike, you'd think it'd still have a chance to apply a poison, even if it isn't guaranteed.

Yep, Shiv can still proc poison normally when it's triggered.

Also, for those who were curious, it's looking like it will be about a 3 second cast time to swap poisons in combat. So, you won't be flip flopping between poisons on a whim, but if it's really clutch to swap to a different poison, then it's not totally out of the question.

Not to sound rude, but I don't think you guys learn from your mistakes. This sounds like Combat Maces all over again.

Your feedback is appreciated. We'll be keeping an eye on how this ability pans out, just as we will with all the upcoming changes. That said, I'm not sure that mace stun and Paralytic Poison is an apples to apples comparison.

One of the things that made Mace stun so vicious is that it simply happened. You could make brief contact with an enemy and get a lucky, sometimes clutch, proc. At the time, Stormherald was floating around amongst warriors which only exacerbated the issue. That's important context for the purposes of this comparison. Sure, chance plays a role (only in that each stack has a percentage chance to proc) but I don't think it's as much of a factor with Paralytic as it was with Mace Stun.

Consider that poisons are dispellable, and you need five stack of Paralytic to get a stun off. It seems reasonably likely that the Paralytic stun will have a different dynamic in PvP than Mace Stun had. If your target is dropping stacks or you aren't able to make consistent enough contact to get stacks on faster than they drop off you may have some trouble getting the stun to land. It will also introduce the dynamic of trying to 'plan' your kidney shots around your Paralytic, so you aren't overlapping stuns.

Also, all of that aside, taking a talent in Mists of Pandara means that you're making trade-offs that you weren't making by taking Mace Spec in Burning Crusade.

On a side-note, I noticed some other, non-poison/shiv related questions in this thread. Please stay on topic guys. I know that it's tempting to jump all over the map (I've done it), but it's best to stay focused.