Rogue in Forever

Rogue kept more of its Classic talents than most classes and retuned more of them than any: 23 of the 43 talents that can be compared line for line pay different numbers at maximum rank. Underneath that, one tree got a new attack that half the class references, one collapsed four talents into one, and one was rebuilt around a bleed.

Game data from build 1.60.1.69913 against Era 1.15.9.69722. The trees are in the Rogue calculator.

Mutilate is the 21-point Assassination talent and a new ability at level 30, with further ranks at 40, 50 and 60. It hits with both weapons for 75% weapon damage each plus a flat amount (17.2 per weapon at rank 1, 50.2 at rank 4), deals 20% more against a poisoned target, and awards two combo points.

It is not an isolated addition. Five talents across all three trees were rewritten to name it: Remorseless Attacks, Lethality, Cold Blood, Opportunity in Subtlety, and the new Combat talent Puncturing Wounds, which gives Backstab 10% to 30% critical strike chance, Mutilate 5% to 15%, and Backstab a 15% to 45% chance of an extra combo point.

The 31-point talent behind it is Venom, a finisher rather than a cooldown: it raises poison damage by 30% and poison application chance by 10% for 9 seconds at one combo point, up to 21 at five.

Coup de Grace arrives at level 30 as a new baseline ability: Eviscerate deals 2% more damage per stack of your Deadly Poison on the target.

Era’s Combat tree had Dagger Specialization, Mace Specialization, Fist Weapon Specialization and Sword Specialization. Forever has one five-rank talent, Hack and Slash, whose benefit depends on what you are holding. At five points:

• Axe or Sword: 5% chance of an extra attack on the target.
• Dagger or Fist: +5% critical strike chance.
• Mace: attacks ignore 15% of the target’s armour.

Weapon Expertise was repurposed in the same pass: Era’s version added 5 weapon skill with swords, fists and daggers, Forever’s takes 2% off the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried, whatever you are holding. Warrior’s Arms tree got the same treatment; see the Warrior guide.

Hemorrhage is a different ability. Era’s Hemorrhage put a 30-charge debuff on the target that added up to 3 Physical damage per hit. Forever’s deals 100% weapon damage, 145% with a dagger, and makes the target take 15% more Rupture damage from you for 15 sec.

The 31-point talent follows from that: Thousand Cuts takes 3 Energy off your next Hemorrhage or Backstab every time Rupture ticks, and stacks. Serrated Blades still adds 30% Rupture damage, and now ignores a clean 9% of armour where Era’s scaled with level.

Two more talents are new to the tree. Quietus (5 ranks) adds 2% to 10% damage to Sinister Strike, Ghostly Strike and Hemorrhage against targets below 35% health. Cutthroat (5 ranks) gives Backstab a 3% to 15% chance to make your next Ambush not require Stealth. Dirty Tricks takes 25% or 50% off the Energy cost of Sap and Blind, and Improved Distract widens Distract and drops the detection of everything it hits.

Subtlety is also the only tab in the game with two one-point talents in the same tier: Preparation and Hemorrhage both sit at the 21-point row.

Two of the three 16-point talents are Era talents moved earlier in the tree: Cold Blood from the 21-point row, Premeditation from the 31-point row. The Combat one, Flawless Execution, is new and short: 10 Energy off Eviscerate.

Rogue has the fewest changed abilities of the nine classes: eight read differently, and two of those are the reworked Hemorrhage and Premeditation above. The rest:

• Sap dropped “Must be stealthed” and gained “Does not break Stealth”.
• Distract now also reduces the Stealth detection of everything it distracts, as if it were one level lower.
• Rupture does less damage at every combo point: 24.7 over 8 sec at one point against Era’s 40, 87.2 over 16 sec at five against Era’s 144, both still increased by attack power.
• Backstab adds 10 rather than 15 at rank 1.
• Gouge and Sap both changed their break condition from “any damage caused” to “any damage taken”.

Assassination lost Improved Eviscerate, which moved to Combat; Combat lost Improved Gouge, which moved to Assassination, plus Improved Backstab and the three weapon specialisations Hack and Slash replaced; Subtlety lost Sleight of Hand, Improved Sap and Deadliness.

The beta cap is 20, rising to 30 later in the test (Blizzard: Beta Now Live). Mutilate, Coup de Grace and Venom all start at 30 or later, so none of the new Assassination chain is testable at the current cap, and 11 talent points do not reach any 16-point talent.

Nothing Rogue-specific appears in Blizzard’s Known Issues thread for September 17 (Blizzard Forums: Beta Known Issues – September 17), beyond the glancing blow mechanics listed as wrong for melee and casters alike.

Coming soon The stack limit on Thousand Cuts and the disarm duration on Riposte. Both figures are left unfilled in the game’s own text for this build.

That these trees are the ones a Forever character spends points in is our reading of the beta build, not something we have confirmed in game. The reasoning is in Forever talent trees.