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View Full Version : Honor Among Thieves + Armor Changes


Punkrocker
10-24-2008, 12:19 PM
From MMO-Champion:

As I have posted a couple of times recently, we decided to raise the armor of level 83 raid bosses by 10% to correct for some dps difference between casters and melee + hunters. I wanted to address the issue head on with the rogues.

We have done a lot of testing recently, and concluded that even with this change, Assassination rogues are likely the top dps spec in the game against single bosses that don't move around a lot (like Patchwerk). This isn't a bad place for them to be. They pay a small price both for being melee (where more damage tends to occur) and for lacking the ability to respec into a non-damage build. We don't think they will be as far above hybrids as they have been before -- as I've posted before, it's very important that hybrid classes do higher dps now that their buffs do not stack.

Combat builds, especially swords, is competitive but probably behind Assassination. This is something we'd like to address, especially if it turns out to be a major difference between the specs. Additional armor does hurt Combat, but also remember it's just raid bosses and not other players (or trash or heroic bosses).

Subtelty, sadly, is just much harder to test since so much of their damage relies on other players. Our preliminary evidence is that they generate plenty of combo points from Honor Among Thieves, but this might mean their personal dps when not in a group suffers. This is something we're still testing.

I will add that some players have wondered if Honor Among Thieves is bugged since the cp can occur more often than 1 sec. In this case, the tooltip is just unclear. When Jimmy the Shaman crits, he cannnot "send you" a combo point more often than 1 per sec. But if you have lots of players critting all the time, you can build them up quickly. So Honor is (here it comes) working as intended.

Link to post:
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/7/11676577982-upcoming-boss-armor-change.html

The last part should explain what you were seeing in raids, Fox. I don't think this is going to make Subtlety raid viable, but played properly with Honor Among Thieves and in the right group it shouldn't be too bad.

I'm anxious to see where combat swords (with legendaries) stacks come level 80, and what might be in place to replace the Illidan swords. I wouldn't mind switching to mutilate at some point, but the competition for daggers is going to be extremely tight since I'm betting most hunters will want them as well as all the rogues, provided a good 2 handed hunter weapon doesn't show up in game.

Fox
10-24-2008, 04:17 PM
Yea I knew I was getting too many points too fast, but that makes perfect sense. My subtelty spec was still a little off...and I'm sure it will be more competitive with an additional ten talent points. It took awhile getting used to doing more finishers than hemo/ss spam. I think that subtelty will still be behind a pure damage build (combat or mutilate whatever ends up being best at 80), but might provide more raid benefit with the hemo glyph at lvl 80. Perhaps it may be raid viable, but I doubt it. I'll probably have a hemo build as my secondary spec to change in and out of for trash.

Nidaba
10-24-2008, 11:04 PM
Could you dump the swords into the hands of the hunters? It's not like the warriors / enh shamans will need/want them. It might be similar to the situation in TBC, where daggers defaulted to hunters because no-one else used them. Now, instead of daggers, it's swords?

Just a thought. :)

Fox
10-25-2008, 01:37 PM
That would help if there were actually swords in the game. Last time I checked the only main hand dropped from trash. I plan on going fist/daggers with both combat and subtlety specs. I would either use the arena or KT fist weapon mainhand and a 1.4 speed dagger to offhand.

Nidaba
10-25-2008, 03:01 PM
4 MH options all told in the first "tiers" of raiding:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=39291
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=43611 (lolol) [BoE]
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40407
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40345 (unfortunately expertise)

Punkrocker
10-26-2008, 10:35 PM
Fist mh sword oh seems to be the best combo, provided there isn't a dagger that's .1 or more faster than the fastest sword. All things being equal, fist/sword will out dps fist/dagger, but by a very small margin. I think the fastest sword found on beta was 1.5 while there was a 1.4 dagger found. We'll just have to see how things play out...I'm obviously sticking with the legendaries until most everyone else is set up, then I'll be grabbing a fist + whatever else I can get my hands on.