One Rogue's Journey

In the last few days there have been several posts talking about the changes to mana and energy regeneration in the Wrath beta. Basically, you will no longer be receiving your mana and energy every “tick” but rather a steady stream of regeneration (Check out the video below to see this in action). At first glance I didn’t give it much thought (silly choice on my part), after all you’ll still be receiving the same 20 energy every 2 seconds so nothing has changed, right? Wrong. Staring at Illidan’s ass last night (as a rogue you spend a nearly all your time staring at boss ass of some variety), I realized as I sat with ~35 energy and waited two seconds to sinister strike again the awesomeness of this change struck me.

Let’s break down the 20 energy per 2 seconds: 10 energy per 1 or 5 energy per 0.5 second or 1 energy per 0.1 seconds. This means that under the new system I would only have to wait 0.5 seconds in order to Sinister Strike again instead of 2. “So what?” you might say, “you’re still out the 15 energy you would have had, you’re just moving the waiting to a different point in the time line, the actually amount of energy you gain and can use hasn’t changed.” This is true, and let’s look at the following situation to prove that:

Just like I said earlier, you’re sitting at 35 energy (we are going to ignore Combat Potency procs for this little exercise). Let’s look at the current system first. Two seconds later you have 55 energy and Sinister Strike for 40, leaving you with 15. You wait two more seconds, putting you at 35 again, at which point you Slice and Dice for 25 and proc Relentless Strikes which puts you right back at 35 energy.

2 seconds: Sinister Strike, 2 more seconds: Slice and Dice
4 seconds pass, total energy gain = 0

Now the new system: Again, you’re sitting at 35 energy. 0.5 seconds later you Sinister strike, putting you at zero. 2.5 seconds later you have 25 energy and Slice and Dice, procing Relentless Strikes, putting you at 25, 1 second later you are back at 35.

4 seconds pass, total energy gain = 0

See, nothing has really changed. However, let’s add ruthlessness to the mix and think of this in terms of energy pooling. Earlier finishing moves means quicker combo point generation which can mean even earlier finishing moves which means more Relentless Strikes procs. It is hard to simulate this with easy math so I’m kind of going by feel here. So what I’m thinking here is that we will probably see just a slight energy increase per rotation with this change but over the course of a long fight this can turn into a huge boon.

Overall, this change can’t be bad and has every potential to be great.