QuoteQ: Why did you go after Mutilate and not Overkill/Dirtydeeds/Vigor+Glyph?
A: An Overkill change would have required more redesign of the talents and abilities than we were willing to make for a small patch like this. We're also unconvinced it would have fixed the problem alone.
Basically, it might have helped stealth burst, but wouldn't have helped with unstealthed burst, which was still too high in our opinion. Two Mutilates and a Cold Blood Eviscerate within one Kidney Shot duration is a ton of damage, and is possible with unglyphed Vigor and no Overkill. Add a partner or an interrupt or whatever and it can mean death for most players in very few GCDs.
Overkill and glyphed Vigor are something we will probably look at for 3.1, depending on how the current changes shake out.
QuoteI have been a mutilate rogue since s3. Mutilate has always been about setting up a kill, and bursting someone down inside of a KS, with strong poisons and decent sustained DPS to help make up for the lack of mobility.
Now the burst feels very, very low. We do not have the mobility or survivabity to play the outlast game. Poisons are not as strong as they were pre-TBC, since wound doesnt stack and they have 0 dispell resist. At this point people will be QQing "OMG they have a 50% proc rate!!!", but they dont realize that mutilate already had a 40% proc rate on PVP poisons, because they were used to playing agaisnt sub rogues.
We agree with you about how an Assassination rogue should play – setting up a kill and then delivering it. But bursting someone down who is crowd-controlled while the victim has very limited decisions they can actually make to avoid death is only fun for the rogue. The Mutilate button push is just very strong when poisons are nearly always on the victim.
I have said before that we don't think Arena is fun when healers are immortal until mana-drained. However, we also don't think Arena is fun when someone always dies in the opening few seconds. The matches need to last long enough for something to actually happen -- for you to decide who you are going to attack or how to respond to their actions.
If someone literally has almost no response for your attacks then that is not skill that is allowing you to win matches (and I am not just talking to rogues here). [Emphasis added - P]
We have made burst nerfs to Retribution paladins, death knights, Arms warriors, Arcane mages, hunters, Feral druids and now rogues. Almost unanimously, the nerfed classes thought that nerfs were needed but that our specific nerfs went too far. Nerfing classes is never fun. Players hate it, and ultimately it means we screwed up or at the very least failed to predict new tactics. But we still need to do it for the good of the game when we think it is warranted. There will be more.