Forum post of the day: Rogues are unhappy
The patch went live today, and Blizzard wasn't kidding about the Cheat Death Nerf. In case you missed it, here's how it reads:
Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue's health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.
Needless to say, Rogues are pretty unhappy, especially since Blizzard hasn't taken much interest in fixing the "vanish bug." Skudo of Altar of Storms takes this as proof that Blizzard hates Rogues. On top of that this must mean that Blizzard favors Druids since they rescinded their decision to make Scare Beast an instant ability.
Korz of Draka believes that the change isn't really that bad. He's more upset about reduction in damage to Hemorrhage (Sinister Calling now increases damage to Backstab and Hemorrhage by 1/2/3/4/5% (down from 2/4/6/8/10%.))Bubblenherth of Dark Iron believes that Cheat Death has been a crutch for Rogues. His sentiments echo throughout the forums that the reported reduction in popularity for the rogue class is a positive change. Their opinion can be summed up with the phrase "good riddance."
I have to say that I've found Cheat Death to be annoying. I hate watching my Hammer of Wrath fizzle, or hearing the inevitable cursing for a bombed Execute. To me it seems like a pretty massive change to talented abilities. If nothing else, Blizzard should consider offering a free respec for Rogues because these changes do significantly affect the class. Rogues should retain their popularity. They still have numerous crowd control abilities in their bag of and have outstanding burst damage. Like so many other buffs and nerfs, we'll all survive this one.
What do you think about the changes to the Rogue class?
