One Rogue's Journey

I’m going to jump right into this one. Here are two new notes from the PTR that I haven’t discussed yet.

Shiv: This ability can no longer generate a critical strike, and the poisons it applies cannot be critical strikes either.

So there you have it. Blizzard’s answer to the Shiv Build that’s started to float around recently. I was never a huge fan of this build (no real reason, it just didn’t “feel” right) so I’m not exactly heartbroken over this. Blizzard has stated before that they don’t want Shiv to be a main combo point builder for us, in fact that’s why they removed it’s ability to proc Combat Potency in the beta. I feel this is a pretty solid way to kill that build.

Glyph of Backstab: Now increases remaining duration on Rupture by 2 sec. each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 sec.

Ah, backstab. I love you so much. It is far beyond the normal acceptable love that a man can have for an ability (is there such a thing) and borders far into the realm of weird coming out the other end into a land know as creepy. The backstab mechanic feels to me to be the truest in nature to rogues,  but it contains some fatal flaws that keep it from being a truly viable top spec. Namely, inferior combo point generation, and a positional requirement.

Backstab costs as much energy as Mutilate but rewards one less combo point so it’s combo point generation is going to be much much lower. This glyph is a good way to help that, it will allow for higher rupture uptime with fewer combo points – bravo Blizzard. Unfortunately there is still the problem of the positional requirement. Granted you are suppose to be behind the mob as much as possible, there are still too many fights requiring a lot of movement and it can be difficult to always be in that 90 to 270 degree sweet spot, thus forcing no attack or an inferior (based on your inherently faster weapon speed) sinister strike.

It is a rough situation.  I don’t feel that removing the positional requirement is the answer (it is, after all, backstab). But something has to be done if Combat Daggers is ever going to be a top spec (and maybe they don’t think it should be which is fair but sad). Perhaps allowing it to generate another combo point on critical strike or lowering the energy cost.

Stay tuned this week for some potential 3.1 rogue builds!