The Straw That Broke The Camel's Back, The Shiv Experiment

As predicted before the 3.0.9 patch was released, the beloved rogue class hit rock bottom on the prestigious SK-100 world rankings, tied with priest at 3%.  For the first time since the start of S5, a class is threatening paladins for the #1 throne, as with the rise of restoration shamans (who moved ahead of DKs for third place), hunters are now at 22% class presentation, only 2% behind paladins.

Paladin: 24%
Hunter: 22%
Shaman: 15%
Deathknight: 13%
Druid: 6%
Mage: 6%
Warlock: 4%
Warrior: 4%
Priest: 3%
Rogue: 3% (no rogue on top 50)

Why The Combined Rating Is THE Best Indicator Of Class Strength

Having analyzed and blogged arena ladders since day one, the combined SK-100 is without a doubt the best benchmark of overall class strength at the highest playing level.  Why?  Because it is THE hardest ladder to climb, hence the hardest ladder to dilute.  The SK-100 is immune to class population effects, when you are talking about 100 elite players out of 11 million, it doesn't matter if there are twice as many players of class A vs class B (see Death Knights vs Shamans), if class B gets stronger, it can and will move ahead of class A on SK-100.

More importantly, many classes/specs can find their niche in a specific comp in a specific bracket, especially when played by creative and talented players (such as Brutal Gladiator Reckful, the shadow dance hero who still inspires confidence in me).  But when you are talking about raw class muscles, you must talk about all three brackets.  To hit SK-100 at all you are going to be top five in at least two of three brackets in a BG, and top 20 in the final bracket.  And once you are talking about the more prestigious spots, like top 20 of SK-100, you have to be top three in all three brackets.  What does it mean?  It means you have to be that much more well rounded compared to players who focus in just one bracket to get their weekly arena points.  And your understanding of your own class and the meta game is simply at a higher level as a result.

And whether you like it or not, there are only two ways to earn a sponsorship.  1) Do exceptionally well on the tournament realm 2) Climb to the very top of SK-100.  Chances are, having both is an even bigger asset.  In 2008, how many teams had players who reached highest standings on SK-100 in their careers?  Almost every team!  Serennia-sama, Azael, Hafu, Glickz, Venruki, Sodah, Cherez, Hamchook . . . the list goes on and on.  It is THE gold standard.  It is the equivalent of a Harvard MBA for WOW players who are looking for sponsorships.  Can you get a team without it?  Yes, but your chance is just that much better if you hit it.  Look at Nick/Hamchook & Co of 2009, and SK giving Serennia-sama a second chance after they used the term "ex-SK player" on him just a few months ago before he hit top of the ladder again.

We can see exactly what happened to teams that at one point did compete on SK-100 and stopped, such as Inactive-chan's CAPSLOCKCREW and of course, Pandemic.  There is no substitute for hundreds of not thousands of games together to build chemistry, and 2v2/5v5 helps the 3v3 game tremendously as they allow you to be that much more versatile with your character.

And Unfortunately, Rogue Is The Least Versatile Class At The Moment

10 second duration on wound/cripple poison, while not anywhere near as devastating as the mutilate nerfs, is just another nail in the coffin.  Our healing debuff / snare was already a joke given how easy it is to snare/CC a rogue and dispel his poisons, this just makes it even easier to get kited.  It is like a straw on a camel that already got stabbed and bleeding to death, but still a straw on the wrong camel nonetheless.

Hunter nerfs are inevitable.  The best way for me to describe them, is a frost mage's control, burst, survivability and escape tools, except his damage is all instant and he has the lasting power / mana drain of a warlock and the best mortal strike debuff in the game.  But even if you hit them with the nerf bat, rogues still don't bring anything unique to the table.  Mobility?  Non-existent after first 30 seconds.  Survivability?  Worse than any other class right now.  Burst damage?  Every melee class is capable of equal or better bursts of evis->mutilate->mutilate->CB evis, and they don't have to save 130 energy and 5 combo points.

Stunlock!  That must be it!  Unfortunately that is gone too.  Every class has at least one stun damage/duration reduction talent and paladin hand of freedom is too big of a counter to our definitive special.  Kidney shot was THE best stun in the game, the one ability that defined our class.  Now it is worse than druid maim . . . so easy to remove, shares DR with all other stuns.

The Shiv Experiment

I got so desperate I bought Avool's Sword of Jin and Librarian Papercutter to try Realz's shiv spec again.  Shiv has been getting a lot of publicity at Elitist Jerks forums, as Shiv with instant poison was proven to outdamage fully talented sinister strikes.  Yes 3/3 vile poison was proven to be more effective than 3/5 relentless strikes on PVE meters!  Instant poison gets 10% bonus from attack power and because it is not reduced by armor (while sinister strike gets roughly 1/14, or 7% from attack power, on top of armor reduction), it simply scales much better than sinister strikes, making 18/51/2 superior to 15/51/5 by a good margin.

I went with 33/4/34 and it is a stronger build than standard mutilate against plate armor.  I did significant more damage to paladins, and we stole a game against Brewkz/Tugget.  Cheat death + quick recovery + 700 plus resilience + battlemaster gave me enough survivability against most classes.  Shiv with instant poison and slice and dice did amazing sustained damage against heavy armor, especially combined with fully talented rupture bleed. 

The weakness is of course, you lack the equivalent of a full energy burst combo.  Mutilate rogues actually countered me very hard because while I can shiv them right through evasion and win the damage meter overall, I never had the burst to finish them off.  While all they have to do is put up expose armor and full energy mutilate mutilate eviscerate and I am done. 

Also, classes with spell resistance made my life extremely difficult.  You can never kill a felhunter with the shiv spec, or arcane mage, or warlock himself (although you can't really do it with mutilate either, instant fear(s) / demonic portal that breaks all snare, just too much survivability when backed by paladins).

I will admit I do not have the optimal gear to play shiv spec yet.  That will require Hailstorm in OH and Webbed Death in MH, and full attack power gems.  However, unless you fight nothing but plates, the increase in nature damage (and the vulnerability to spell resistance) can not make up for the lack of burst damage.  Especially consider double wound mutilate with fast weapons already give you a ton of nature damage and it can bleed every bit as good as shiv spec can.

I am also very concerned about Blizzard nerfing shiv for PVE reasons.  They already removed the glyph of shiv (-5 energy) and made combat potency only applicable to white damages, they made it clear they do not consider shiv a main attack and probably will take additional steps to address shiv's advantage over sinister strike in PVE. 

Fine, but I really believe they should take a look at hemo as well.  Do they consider hemo a main attack?  Because as a debuffer it is woefully inadequate.  Either increase the debuff significantly, reduce the energy cost / actual hemo damage, or buff the attack itself.  Rogue's glory days of classic and TBC were all built around hemo specs.  To fix subtlety, they really need to look at hemo first.