One Rogue's Journey

This week was a lazy week for me as I managed to do nearly none of the things I had set out to do. C’est la vie. I won’t do much rambling today because there is something exciting this week: a ninja patch! That’s right, patch 3.0.9 is supposedly going live tomorrow and there are a few changes that are mighty interesting to us, my stabby brethren (and sisteren, is that a word? It is now.). So let’s take a look at these changes before jumping into the list.

• Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)

Looks like they are buffing HfB to it’s 3.1 15% early. Very nice for Mutilate rogues, of course, they won’t be too happy about the next change.

• Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.

Ouch, that one stings. My thoughts are that this change is going to balance out with the HfB to maybe only be a slight nerf but I haven’t really done the math to confirm that. I’m sure we’ll hear plenty from the community once the patch drops.

• Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.

A nerf to Mind Numbing is not surprising considering they made the same nerf to Curse of Tongues and Slow. It’s sad, but fair across the board.

• Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

Now this is something we can all be excited about. Hello 10% more white damage. As a combat rogue my white damage is about 50% of my DPS so, to me, this is a flat 5% DPS increase. Tasty. Mutilate rogues will probably see a similar increase and it’s possible that this, in conjunction with the HfB change, will balance out the hit that Mutilate took.

So this looks like the first step to tuning down the burst damage of rogues while turning up the sustained damage. Changes to slice and dice are a great way to effect PvE while having a limited effect on PvP. Crazy and surprising ninja patch over all though.

Last Week’s Results

• Achievements

So, I said I would do all the critter based achievements and in the end I only did Pest Control. What can I say, I apologize for nothing.

• Professions

I actually did a fair amount of fishing, making my way up to Artisan. And yes, it was every bit as painful as I originally thought it would be.

• PvP

OK, so I never even thought about going into Wintergrasp. See my previous comment about apologizing for nothing.

This Week’s List

• Achievements

To All The Squirrel’s I’ve Loved Before. Maybe I’ll do better if I only try for one at a time.

• Blog-Related

Finish writing my Rogue Leveling Guide and the 10 Rogue Commandments. Look for those this week!

So what’s everyone else up to this week and how do you feel about the patch?