These Nerfs are Just Overkill

chronic — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:03:24 +0000

Frankly I’m surprised Overkill survived this long. In Season 5 when people complained about burst damage – in particular rogue stunlocks – overkill was usually the first thing that got mentioned as an obvious knob to tweak. Not only that, but PvE rogues have long lamented it being a pre-requisite for mutilate but almost entirely worthless in a raid situation where your restealthing options are limited to a single vanish (that resets your swing timer!)

So here’s the new version they’ve come up with:

Overkill: Talent redesigned. Now increases energy regeneration by 30% while stealthed, and for 20 seconds after breaking stealth.

I think I like this, although it’s only marginally more energy regen than the combat talent Vitality and will have significantly less uptime¹. I haven’t crunched any real numbers on it, but let’s have a look at how it affects a typical mut/prep opener.

Assumptions: mut glyph, vigor glyph, no FA (for simplicity), no ruthlessness, full RS, dirty deeds.

Old-style Overkill

Time	Expenditure	Energy	Combo Points
t+0		130
t+1	Cheapshot -30, Regen +10	110	2
t+2	Mutilate -45, Regen +10	75	5
t+3	Pause, Regen +10	85	5
t+4	Kidney Shot -15, Regen +10, Relentless +25	105
t+5	Mutilate -45, Regen +10	70	3
t+6	Mutilate -45, Regen +10, Overkill Fades	35	5
t+7	Evis+Lolrockets -35, Regen +10, Relentless +25	35
t+8	Pause, Regen +10	45
t+9	Pause, Regen +10	55
t+10	KS fades, Mutilate -55, Regen +10	10	3
t+11	Warrior pops retal, you die.

New-style Overkill

Time	Expenditure	Energy	Combo Points
t+0		130
t+1	Cheapshot -40, Regen +13	103	2
t+2	Mutilate -55, Regen +13	61	5
t+3	Pause, Regen +13	74	5
t+4	Kidney Shot -25, Regen +13, Relentless +25	87
t+5	Mutilate -55, Regen +13	45	3
t+6	Pause, Regen + 13	58	3
t+7	Mutilate -55, Regen +13	16	5
t+8	Pause, Regen +13	29	5
t+9	Pause, Regen +13	42	5
t+10	KS fades, Evis+Lolrockets -35, Regen +13, Relentless +25	45
t+11	Warrior pops retal, you die.

So basically your damage is spread out more over the 10 second period now than it used to be, and the second set has one less mutilate. However, the new buff persists significantly longer than the old overkill after leaving stealth, so in terms of sustained damage you’re trading a potential saving of 60 energy over 6 seconds (if you use an ability every GCD during overkill, which is not really realistic anyway) versus a potential generation of 60 energy over 20 seconds (+3 energy per second, but does nothing if you’re capped). Sounds fair.

It’s a bit different for openers versus rogues but cs->rup->mut->mut->ks depends on Relentless Strikes and Seal Fate RNG to a large extent anyway. It’s a definite nerf for swap sap -> cs openers, but I die in cheapshot as much as I kill other rogues in cheapshot so, well, let’s hear it for symmetrical rebalancing. And it seems much easier to take advantage of in PvE now.

Even if it was a massive nerf I think I’d still be looking forward to this patch, though, when you take a gander over some of the other things that are going in:

+5 seconds on charge CD. Maybe I’ll actually be able to peel a warrior briefly?
DK PvP glove bonus reworked to a runic power energize. Small mercies.
Frost Presence and Tree Form armor toned down. Although they added some armor to barkskin, I really don’t mind that. Barkskin is for dispel resist, and if they use it for anything else then that’s just fine with me.
Eye for an Eye damage decreased. Hells yeah, one step closer to not soloing myself on afk ret paladins.

Freedom nerf I’m still on the fence about. Six seconds is probably enough, it sounds balanced on paper, but I’ll have to play with (and against) it to see.

You can see Zarhym’s post about the patch notes here.

¹ Unless you can end games in 60 seconds reliably, in which case it could possibly have identical uptime!

~chron » 3.1.3

These Nerfs are Just Overkill

Old-style Overkill

New-style Overkill