More Cataclysm details for Rogues

To clarify on Combat Readiness: when activated being hit will build up the Combat Insight buff. If not struck within 6 seconds of the last hit it will fall off and the Combat Readiness state will end. If the rogue continues to be hit however Combat Insight will continue to reapply, and it can be applied up to a maximum of 30 seconds total..

Recuperate is long overdue, and will be interesting to see how much it actually heals for.

Numbers aren't quite hammered out yet but it restores based on max health and the more combo points used the longer it lasts. While it's introduced as a low level ability it obviously scales with gear and base health upgrades (being based on max health and all) and be useful for more than just leveling.

Combat readiness says it refreshes the timer each time you're attacked so does that mean it'll stay up as long as you're being attacked within the 6 seconds?

Yes, and can be up for a total of 30 seconds.

Some of you are focused too much on the word "cooldown." Consider for a moment what the abilities actually do. The current traditional PvP encounter with a rogue is to jump out at someone from stealth, then try to burn them down while applying a chain of stuns. One of two things happen (i.e. it's a pretty binary outcome): you kill the target in time, or you run out ouf stuns and the target kills you. Now I know that situation is kind of stereotypical perhaps to the point of contrivance, but you should get the basic idea.

We want to make that outcome less binary. With abilities like Combat Readiness you should be able to go toe to toe with a plate wearer for a short period of time. With Smoke Bomb, you should be able to escape spells for a short period of time, or at least get the caster to move closer to you. Does this mean you're now a plate-wearer instead of a rogue? Of course not. But it means you aren't so dependent on killing things while they're locked down. It means you get to think on your feet a little rather than apply a pre-determined sequence of attacks that either succeeds or fails.

In addition, with the boosts to leather armor and Stamina though, you will be a little tougher to kill even without any cooldowns.

We've said something similar in some of the other previews, but let me address real quick why we didn't add new damage-dealing openers, cp generators or finishers. It's because you have plenty of openers, cp generators and finishers.

We don't want to add new abilities for the sake of adding them, and in fact we've spent a lot of the last two expansions trying to make sure your full arsenal of attacks had a purpose. We don't want to consider the hypothetical level 120 rogue and imagine that you have four versions of Ambush and a whole action bar of Sinister Strike with various subtle shades of distinction.

We do like to add new abilities, because that's an exciting part of a new expansion. But we like to find roles for them. Some are going to necessarily be more situational, but that's why we offer them as core abilities rather than talents that have a heftier cost.

One more point: Fan of Knives was not nerfed. I'm not sure where that concept is coming from unless you are interpreting that from changing the weapon it's based on to the ranged weapon. We didn't talk much about numbers, so unless you see "We want this abilitiy to do less damage," then you're just jumping to conclusions. It's safer to assume that every number in the game is changing, but the relative roles of abilities and talents are staying the same unless we specify otherwise (not that we're listing every single talent tree change in these previews - far from it.)

We just want the ranged weapon to be more than a stat stick for rogues. Adding poisons to FoK is actually a pretty hefty buff. Yes, this means that bows and guns aren't of much interest to rogues (after leveling). But in this case we want Fan of KNIVES to be taken literally. :)

Now, having said all that, we suspect you will AE less often in Cataclysm. You'll CC more and you'll burn targets down one at a time more often. But that just means all classes will do less damge with AEs. That's not a rogue nerf.