The decision to make Preparation baseline in patch 5.2, as revealed in the patch preview notes before the holidays, has resurrected a side question: Why not just get rid of Prep entirely?
@GideonHawkins We've discussed that a lot. Our concern is you'd see rogues years from now still asking / demanding Prep back.—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 31, 2012
Ghostcrawler’s response feels odd to me, since player concerns/demands have rarely been the sole driving force behind Blizzard’s class design decisions — they make the choices they feel will be good for the game as a whole, and if those sync up with widespread player demands, then it’s a win-win. I’d have expected his answer to focus more on how integral and critical a spell Prep can be when used well.
In my four-plus years playing WoW, I don’t think I’ve *ever* used Prep (leveled mostly as Mut; been mostly Mut/Combat since; once new talent tiers were launched, have used BoS or Step), so I’m not in much of a position to talk about its practical applications. But on an illogical, almost sentimental level, Prep feels to me like one of those abilities that makes the game more interesting for players — particularly in PvP, and especially particularly in arena — who know how to use it strategically. Meanwhile, to everyone else, it’s one of those abilities that feels like useless flotsam, yet another cooldown they feel forced to juggle but with no clear, game-changing benefit.
It may be that baselining Prep is the first step (ha) toward ultimately removing it entirely and rebalancing our cooldowns around its loss. But would we miss it if it were gone? I suspect the majority of us wouldn’t, but those that do would *really really* miss it sorely, and feel like we’d have lost yet another tool that helps separate skilled rogues from not-so-skilled rogues.