Ilyria
10-19-2007, 06:08 PM
I've been Mutilate for my entire arena career, and one of the things that I've always lamented the most was the Assassination tree's lack of a real cooldown. Both the other trees have cooldowns as their 31pt talents while Assassination doesn't, leaving us Mut rogues solely with CB. The idea behind the ability ties in with the playstyle of daggers in that it is a single, powerful burst while Adren Rush ties in with the playstyle of Sinister Strike weapons in that it is a period of high sustained dps, but while Adren Rush continues to serve this function Cold Blood does not.
Now I didn't play a rogue pre-BC (I was a warlock), so I have no memories of the days when 30+ crit was commonplace. All I remember is that when BC was new, new 70s sat at around 22% unbuffed and as gear progressed again we slowly returned to 30+. As my crit has climbed over time, I've noticed that the burst provided by CB has diminished. Even against a 400 resil opponent, I have a high chance that one of my Mutilate strikes will crit, so when I pop that CB the damage I do really isn't very special, certainly not worthy of a 3 min cooldown when compared to other abilities on the same or shorter timers (Blind, Death Coil, HoJ even).
However, instead of advocating a shorter cooldown on CB, I propose that CB can be made truer to it's intended function as a single devastating blow by ignoring the critical damage reduction of Resilience. Back in the days of pre-BC on my warlock, the sight of a Rogue with a blue ball on his hand was alarming, but today I highly doubt anyone takes Cold Blood into account when fighting a Rogue, or even takes note of it, while certainly they keep our other CDs in mind. "Adren rush is active, kite him" "He can still vanish, keep a bleed up" etc, but never a "Keep me topped off, he hasn't used Cold Blood yet." I believe that this change will restore the old fear of the only offensive cooldown in a Mutilate Rogue's arsenal.
Now I didn't play a rogue pre-BC (I was a warlock), so I have no memories of the days when 30+ crit was commonplace. All I remember is that when BC was new, new 70s sat at around 22% unbuffed and as gear progressed again we slowly returned to 30+. As my crit has climbed over time, I've noticed that the burst provided by CB has diminished. Even against a 400 resil opponent, I have a high chance that one of my Mutilate strikes will crit, so when I pop that CB the damage I do really isn't very special, certainly not worthy of a 3 min cooldown when compared to other abilities on the same or shorter timers (Blind, Death Coil, HoJ even).
However, instead of advocating a shorter cooldown on CB, I propose that CB can be made truer to it's intended function as a single devastating blow by ignoring the critical damage reduction of Resilience. Back in the days of pre-BC on my warlock, the sight of a Rogue with a blue ball on his hand was alarming, but today I highly doubt anyone takes Cold Blood into account when fighting a Rogue, or even takes note of it, while certainly they keep our other CDs in mind. "Adren rush is active, kite him" "He can still vanish, keep a bleed up" etc, but never a "Keep me topped off, he hasn't used Cold Blood yet." I believe that this change will restore the old fear of the only offensive cooldown in a Mutilate Rogue's arsenal.