In the past week, there’s been a lot of new content on the PTR. Sadly, there haven’t been a lot of rogue changes. However, there’s still a lot for the stealthiest class in the game to look at!
And with Blizzard’s recent announcement about the nature of our bonuses T12 bonus, I’m already drooling with anticipation.
First and foremost, the bonuses:
- 2-Piece Bonus: Your melee critical strikes deal 6% additional damage as Fire over 4 seconds.
- 4-Piece Bonus: Your Tricks of the Trade ability also causes you to gain a 25% increase to one of your combat ratings at random for 30 seconds.
So rogues get mini-Ignite, and we’ll have a gain in crit, mastery, or haste every 30 seconds.
Brief mention of math:
The math is already being done over at EJ, but basically both bonuses are kicking the crap out of Tier 11, and the 2pc bonus is valued at around the 400 EP mark, or about 450 DPS. What’s more interesting, is the increase in value of rating, particularly because of the 4pc bonus. The slightly less mathy result is an 8.33 percent increase in the value of each rating.
Essentially, with natural increases to combat ratings because of the higher ilvl on T12 on top of this change because of the set bonus, we’re seeing ratings closing the gap on agility, which means socket bonuses are probably worth getting now.
Note: Because poisons are not able to proc the 2pc bonus because they count as spells, the EP value, and bonus damage are much more beneficial to Combat.
We’re not done!
That’s right, there’s stats to consider:
Courtesy of the datamining at MMO-Champion!
Looking over these stats, I’m not surprised at the amount of crit, given that the set bonuses revolve around it. Just like T 11, there’s one piece with expertise (chest) and one piece with mastery (shoulders), so it’s not impossible to pick up the 4pc bonus in either spec while gimping your other ratings.
Critical strike consistently has the lowest EP value for rogue specs, and it appears that Blizzard is trying to move toward changing this fact. Even if that doesn’t happen, and the math still supports mastery/haste trumping crit in T12, we’re still going to reap the benefits of these bonuses for a long time.
It’s pretty spectacular, when you think about it.