3.2: Retribution Paladin Impressions, Deadly/Envenom The Way To Go? Shadow Dance Hero Reckful Goes Mutilate & BG9

Hope all the readers had a good July 4th!  We stayed local this year for obvious reasons, how was your weekend?

Went on the PTR briefly last night, wasn't expecting much because there wasn't any real rogue changes, and without tier 9 / season 7 gear, the resilience change is absolutely devastating to the beloved rogue class.  If you think the last PTR dueling event was difficult for rogues, this one is even worse as it is harder than ever to drop someone before you run out of cooldowns with resilience change slowing down the tempo.  RMP will be very vulnerable to DK/lock/druid type of teams, at least earlier in the season, with DOT damage staying as is and RMP taking a flat 12% damage reduction.  Rogue/lock synergy is probably not strong enough to beat DK/lock or warrior/lock.  Destruction still has the same problem when it comes to getting an opening to nuke away, and your nukes won't hurt as much as it does now to end the fight instantly if left open. 

Retribution paladin/warlock synergy superior to rogue/warlock synergy?

Yes, even in 3.2.  Seal of vengeance does amazing sustained/burst damage, puts up a ton of trash debuffs to cover warlock DOTs, and comes with its own DOT unaffected by the 3.2 resilience change.  Hammer of justice is every bit as effective as kidney shot if there is enough DOTs on the target to prevent dispel.  Repentance is a long range blind on a shorter CD that does not share diminishing returns with fear.  Blessing of protection/freedom is huge for warlock vs cleave teams, and cleanse coupled with fel hunter actually provides some decent defensive dispels. 

A lot of people overreacted on the retribution burst changes, from my experience on PTR it is still one untrinketed hammer of justice and you are out, don't expect rogues to beat retribution paladins any time soon.  They can literally stand there with a shield + one hand and flash of light off art of war procs + sacred shield to beat any warrior/rogue, without doing anything else.  You should see more healing coming out of retribution paladins in 3.2 arena, and ret/affliction/healer should be one of the top teams.  It gives them the damage of a double DPS team and the durability of a double healer team, and you have more flexibility in healer options than warrior/lock or dk/lock as well.  The defensive stops ret bring to the table really help priest/shaman.

Affliction with some sort of DOT/envenom build may be interesting however.  I tried dropping improved eviscerate (and a few points from lethality) for improved poisons/blood spatter.  It is interesting in duels against heavy armor for sure, and some Korean rogues already run a similar build in 3.1.  It probably won't work with RMP but should be a lot more effective with warlock comps.  Deadly poison provides outstanding wound protection against shaman/druid teams, and with the attack power coefficient change, it is serious damage.  I may even drop dual wield spec for 10% attack power (especially when using a fast offhand) like 41/0/30 to max out the DOTs.  I saw this build in action against heavy armor in last PTR's rogue duels, it was pretty solid and hopefully, we will see it getting some main stream arena action to offer some variety to 41/5/25.

41/0/30 DOT: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#f0xfojToiroczZZebfbh0dbV:fiT

Shadow Dance Hero Reckful Goes Mutilate, & BG9

With Exodus, Reckful-kun's old guild suspended from the whole Yogg Saron fiasco, the shadow dance hero transferred to BG9 and in just one week his dual-comp (Rogue/Mage/Priest and Rogue/Ret/Priest) team hit the second spot. 

Unfortunately, even the man who made shadow dance relevant is no longer playing the spec today, and with the upcoming resilience changes further hurting burst damage across the board, it is hard to imagine ambush/backstab coming back into action any time soon.

"Shadow dance would be a great spec if improved ambush increased ambush damage by 50% instead of 50% crit chance.  25% crit damage reduction makes your crits 50% less effective (+100% damage is now +50% damage), that is why I favor AP by an even bigger margin for 3.2." - Reckful

And it is hard to argue with the player who stayed with the spec for so long.  Having said that, I think Reckful has the best blend of PVP/PVE gear of any rogue right now, can anyone beat his stats as 41/5/25 (with engineering + pyro rocket, which accounts for 100 base AP vs someone who doesn't have engineering):



On the other side of the spectrum

Litreocola put together a very interesting 27/0/44 shadowstep spec with full agility gem stacking.  The result is pretty fear inspiring, 4236 attack power, 40.74% crit and 33% dodge.  That is without any serious Uldular gear.



Subtlety's 10% AP and 15% agility scale amazingly well with late expansion gear, and with T9/S7 around the corner, will we see deep subtlety taking a big step forward?  Cheat death and shadow step probably still can't match-up to deadly brew's double wound goodness and mutilate's vastly superior damage per energy, but with stats like Litre's it is getting interesting, probably a hemo buff away from going main stream.

I thought of a lot of ways Blizzard can buff hemo, but the easiest solution is probably making the debuff scale with attack power.  75 damage with glyph is 105 damage, not terrible at the start of S5, a joke at end of S7.  Mutilate got its biggest buff with wound poison / deadly brew changes, if hemo added say, 300 damage to all of your white hits, 27/0/44 will definitely be a mainstream spec.

Also, with serrated blade offering armor penetration earlier in the tree, perhaps filthy tricks should provide resilience penetration?  Shadow dance on one minute cooldown is great, but ambush still needs to do enough damage against high resilience targets.  When a shadow dance kidney shot does similar damage of a mutilate kidney shot (keep in mind mutilate can take improved kidney shot), something is wrong.