Rogue Discussion (2/4) - Poisons
Rogues currently have several poisons available to them. Among those it is has been agreed upon that Wound Poison is pointless. Deadly poisons have a very limited use in keeping other Rogues from getting back into stealth on you. I am personally very satisfied with Mind Numbing poison it works great when I am soloing bosses in dungeons such as DM. I usually apply it to my off hand though unless I know ahead of time I am going to be facing a lot of casters. The top two poisons and most commonly used are Crippling and Instant. Crippling is irreplaceable in a PVP setting. It brings Hunters, Mages, Priests, Warlocks to their knees as well as knocking Warriors down a few notches. If your PVPing without crippling up your probably dieing more then necessary. Instant Poison is the defacto PvE poison. It does tons of damage without getting in the way of our blinds or gouges. It can also be good in PvP combined with dual life stealing, hand of justice and maelstrom trinket.
Before I get any farther let me clear up some of the problems that really are not problems at all just misunderstandings. First, poisons are worthless in Molten Core. If you do not already know rogue poisons are Fire based. Is this a bit odd? Yea. But it does explain why they are almost completely useless in MC and against fire mobs in general. This does not mean that poisons are worthless in all end game instances. The new instances coming out for Sithilus are rumored to be Natured base.
After looking over the first couple of pages of feedback to Tyren's stickied thread on rogue poisons I decided to comment on the most common. Most of the ideas fall into basic alterations to poisons, altering poison talents, or increasing the fun and utility of poisons.
The basic alterations that most rogues are seeking are pretty straight forward. We would like to see a price reduction since we are heavily based on our reagents (Blind Powder, Flash Powder, Poison Ingredients). I have no idea how much would be needed to ease the financial burden of poisons but this is not nearly as important as increasing the stack size of poisons and allowing Rogues to apply poison while stealthed. Currently poisons stack in 10's which means I am carrying 8 stacks of poisons. That is half a bag atm devoted to poisons. Allowing Rogues to apply poisons while stealthed maybe a bit controversial since it gives us the power to prep for the fights we can already pick and choose. See a mage load up crip and mind numbing. See a rogue load up crippling and deadly, etc etc. It would be a nice compensation for the recent damage adjustments that shaved damage off our instant attacks.
Altering poison talents takes a little more thought. Ideas have ranged from simply increasing the proc percentage of poisons to greatly increasing the damage done to them. Personally I feel that they should keep the one increasing chance for your poison to proc. The rest should be reworked into new talents. For example allowing rogues to poison throwing weapons and maybe even have a chance to throw a poisoned weapon and stay stealthed. There's a lot of room for creativity here that could make rogue poisons more fun.
Some of the ideas that don't include reworking talents include making Rare poisons... kinda like they descibe on the Rogue class page. Making more varieties of poisons including a rage poison and a poison that prevents druids from shape shifting. There are lots of ideas here and its easy to go nuts and forget that some balance must remain. I think it would be neat to have poison ingredients that dropped in Molten Core or Blackwing Lair that allowed us to make more effective poisons against the mobs in those zones or other zones.
regardless of what ideas you like its evident that rogues would like the poison skill be beefed up a bit more. Am I complaining? No. Rogue poisons already 100 times more useful then poisons in Everquest. However since the door has been opened for constructive discussion on the topic of poisons I think there are things they can do to improve the use of them and make them more fun to use.
If you could change one thing about poisons what would it be?
- Reduce the price of the ingredients
- Increase the stack size of poisons in inventory
- Allow poisons to be applied while in stealth
- Allow rogues to apply poisons to ranged weapons
- Allow rogues to apply poisons to another player's weapons. (only 1 or 2 others)
- Rework the poison talents to make them more potent.
- Include Rare poisons into the game as originally intended or hinted at.
Please leave your votes in the comment section for this post.
~Cerias Shadows
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Osiris' Rogue Guide v3(New)
Stealth FAQ (EU)
Grinding Guide 1.0






