Blizzard
a little pre-holiday gift for y’all! in the last big post here, we talked about how Outlaw’s 4-piece and Assassination’s 2-piece would be undergoing some iteration - and with no new builds until January, it felt like rogues might like a look at upcoming changes that will be implemented and waiting for you when it comes time to log in:
(disclaimer that these numbers may change before january, etc etc)
Assassination
- 2-Piece Bonus: Shiv causes enemies within 15 yrds to take 100% increased damage from your Poisons and Bleeds for 9 seconds.
further changed from Friday’s post, the 2-piece now includes Poisons as well as changes from a Critical Strike bonus to Increased Damage, meaning that Crit still works on top of this as a synergistic stat rather than causing it to lose value for rogues. to clarify, the debuff is added to enemies at the time of using Shiv, so running away from targets after you’ve done this doesn’t cause them to lose the debuff or anything.
4-piece is unchanged, with the exception of the Deadly Poison bugfix mentioned just a bit further up!
Outlaw:
- 4-Piece Bonus: Pistol Shot has a 50% chance to load a Hidden Bullet from your sleeves, up to 6 times. After loading 6 bullets, your next Pistol Shot also fires Between The Eyes as though 6 combo points were spent.
goals here are to avoid some awkwardness with the previous iteration, such as 1) the cooldown refresh often coming near when BTE was cooling down anyways, and 2) refreshing the cooldown still required the rogue to build up combo points to use. additionally, these ‘free’ BTE’s will still count as finishers for the purposes of talents like Alacrity, but also Outlaw passives like Ruthlessness and Restless Blades, which hopefully makes the Tier Set much smoother to play than previously.
this change is accompanied by a few other fixes - first, a nerf to the 2-piece - a bug was found where the chance to proc was actually 62.5% instead of 25% - this likely means it’ll go from being overpowered to in need of a slight numbers buff.
second, free Pistol Shots from the 2-piece bonus won’t consume or benefit from Opportunity, the Greenskin’s Wickers legendary effect, or the above 4-piece - all of those will only work on Pistol Shots you yourself cast, which should give players more control over their burst windows and overall game flow, which was a major point of feedback from the set’s original implementation.
Greenskin’s Wickers benefits especially from this, as now you can set up Between The Eyes → 300% Pistol Shot w/ 6 bullets → 4-piece instantly casts a 6-point Between the Eyes → 300% Pistol Shot combos with proper planning and execution.
thanks for being patient! happy to clarify if parts of this post were unclear, but otherwise look forward to the next meaningful updates or info to come in January - see you then!