Upcoming 3.3 Balance Adjustments Nerf Rogue Damage
Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has listed some possible upcoming 3.3 balance adjustments, and rogues are first up for nerfs. "As many of you have suspected, we think rogue damage is too high," he said. The newest hotfixes reduce the base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood to 5% and decrease the bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons.
Other possible upcoming changes could boost warlock PvE damage, nerf protection warriors in PvP, adjust the Elemental 4-piece Tier 10 set bonus, and refine the Icecrown weapon procs. These changes, if pursued, would be made through hotfixes or an upcoming patch.
You can read Ghostcrawler's full announcement and the hotfixes for Jan. 7 after the jump. The hotfixes include a reduction of Rotface's hit points in the 10-person encounter, which is described in more detail in this post.
Upcoming 3.3 Balance Adjustments
As many of you have suspected, we think rogue damage is too high. We will be making hotfixes to lower the maximum damage output of Assassination and Combat rogues. The Combat nerf will be slight. Both specs should still do just fine on damage meters (assuming skill, gear etc.) but shouldn't be beating out other specs to such a large degree.
Other things on our radar that you might see soon -- none of these are promises and we have no specific changes to announce yet:
-- Warlock damage in PvE is a little low.
-- Protection warriors have too much utility and damage for PvP. (We don't want to hurt their tanking in PvE of course.)
-- We are considering adjusting (not replacing) the Elemental 4 piece Tier 10 set bonus.
-- We'll continue to refine and look at the Icecrown weapon procs.
-- Other stuff (yes, we've heard your concerns), but these are the big things we are focusing on at this time.
Some of these changes, should we decide to pursue them, can be handled via hotfix and others will be made in an upcoming patch.
We usually don't make such general announcements before we're ready to share the specifics, so we'll see how this works out.
- Rotface’s hit points have been reduced in the 10 person encounter.
- Stealthed rogues should no longer trigger traps in Ice Crown Citadel from long range.
- The base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood has been reduced from 10% to 5%.
- The bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons has been decreased. This applies to Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Wound Poison.
The changes made to Rotface were an effort to fix a bug that fell through the cracks in development and testing. The previous iteration of Rotface in 10 player difficulty used (and still uses) the same timer as the 25 player difficulty version when dispersing its Mutated Infection ability.
What this means, plainly, is that a disproportionate number of people were being put out of the fight near the 30% mark in 10 player (by a large percentage) versus 25 player, making the entire fight much more difficult than intended.
Obviously if you severely outgeared the fight, none of this mattered to you. The HP change will have no effect on your 10 player clears. You will, in fact, still kill Rotface.
The 25 player version of Rotface remains unchanged.
