I was on wowhead yesterday when I saw the new rogue talents for Cata at the top of the screen. I was like, whoah … no man, what the hell is this? Is this real? I then forgot all about it and went to bed cause that’s how I roll, but this morning it’s getting a big beat-up on wow.com so I suppose that it is real.

For those of you who don’t want to listen to me and just get on with it, here is the talent calculator and here is wowheads take on it.

So have you looked through all of those? I hope you have because I’m not going to repass over what they have already written. Here are my general thoughts:

Assassination tree.

It’s assiasination tree or nothing for PvP with their 51 point talent of Vendetta. 30 seconds of stealth negation means that it’s a no-brainer to open this when coming into an arena match and seeing nobody. Which will be interesting as rogue v rogue. A long-range sap macro with your mouse will be extra special in these moments which will combine nicely with the new tier 2 talent of blackjack. The tier 10 venomous wounds talent being so deep in this tree also helps for pvp as this is rogues only DoT ability.

Combat tree.

So it looks like blizzard wants rogues to be back up tanks now. Reinforced leather? This one is weird to me, it just sticks out from nowhere. It’s high enough in the combat tree that mutilate pvp rogues could spec down to it if they want it for PvP. I don’t know what to think about this one. Why not just give us mail so at least we can annoy hunters too? It’s a 5 point talent which means that if you’re going to take it you need to waste a lot of points on it. CQC and Hack & Slash are gone as we knew they would be, which is great as all weapon combos are now up for grabs. And the tier 10 resteless blades means that combat is still the cooldown tree par excellence.

Subtlety tree.

I’ve never played sublety, so I really have no clue what to say. Master of Deception is gone though which I like very much as it makes a level playing field on stealth. The changes to Honor Among Thieves are pretty impressive though, which could really make this tree a viable PvE spec. 100% chance to get a combo point every 2 seconds when another raid member crits whether damage or heals? You’re just going to have a steady stream of combo points.

Someone came up with this build for combat on the wowhead comments. I don’t know whether I would put the 5 point in relentless strikes or put them in vile and improved poisons, (which would also let you go down to Cold Blood and Fleet Footed instead of wasting a point in Blade twisting), but the real point of showing this build is that with all the changes, with all the carry on about really mixing it up, it still kinda looks the same as now.

Anyway, these trees are a work in progress so don’t expect it to be the finished product.

About these ads