Huygens' 4.0.6 Rogue Changes Bandwagon

This thread is 100% original and informative. It also may or may not be made of chocolate.

Baseline

• Garrote now costs 45 Energy, down from 50.

Obvious buff. 5 Energy doesn't really seem like a lot, but nothing to complain about.

• Blind now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
• Crippling Poison now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
• Sap now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

These are part of the genertic CC nerf that's hitting every class, so these are a bit of a wash.

• Stealth is no longer broken by enemies using Demoralizing Shout or Demoralizing Roar.

Hell yes. This just makes it harder for a warrior to bring us out of stealth.

• Combat Readiness now lasts for 20 seconds, down from 30 seconds, but the Combat Insight stacking buff lasts 10 seconds, up from 6 seconds.

This one's tricky. It's a nerf in the sense that you'll only be able to keep the effect up for a max of 20 seconds, but a buff in the sense that it will be easier to maintain 5 stacks of Combat Insight. After this change, waiting out the effect might not be as viable a strategy for dealing with rogues who pop Combat Readiness.

• Smoke Bomb now lasts for 5 seconds, down from 10 seconds.

Nerf :( I guess Blizzard didn't like the strategy some people had developed of rooting a healer and smoke bombing the main target for 10 seconds of no heals.

Assassination (Overall: Meh)

• Deadly Momentum critical strike bonus now lasts for 15 seconds, up from 10.

This one's meh. Neither the PvE nor the PvP Assassination specs even use Deadly Momentum to begin with. I'd probably prefer it if they just re-did the talent entirely.

Combat (Overall: Buffed)

• Blade Flurry is now a toggle that can be turned off by pressing the button again.

Sort of a buff. Blade Flurry makes your attacks strike an additional nearby opponent, but reduces your energy regen by 20%. Essentially this change means for AoE trash packs you'll turn Blade Flurry on, then turn it back off for bosses.

• Main Gauche (Mastery) now provides a chance to deal an attack for 100% of main-hand damage. This attack can trigger Combat Potency.

Buff. Currently Main Gauche has a change to cause an addition off-hand attack. Because of the Slow MH Fast OH paradigm, this change will cause the extra attack you earn to have higher damage while still having a 20% chance to gain 15 energy from Combat Potency.

• Restless Blades now also reduces the cooldown of Redirect.

Another obvious buff. Not the greatest buff in the world, but it will help combat rogues to keep their damage up while switching between adds and bosses.

• Vitality now increases attack power by 25%, up from 20%.

5% more attack power never hurt anyone. Except the guy on the pointy end of your weapon.

• Revealing Strike now increases finisher effectiveness by 35% (45% glyphed), up from 20% (30% glyphed).

Another obvious buff, though I suspect the use of Revealing Strike and Kidney Shot together will be nerfed in the near future.

Subtlety (Overall: Net Buff)

• Elusiveness now reduces the cooldown of Cloak of Shadows by 10/20 seconds, down from 15/30 seconds.

Nerf. Don't ask me why, I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish with this.

• Executioner (Mastery) has been increased from 2% to 2.5% per point.

Buff. It remains to be seen if this makes heavy Mastery stacking as Sub viable.

• Find Weakness now grants 35/70% armor reduction, up from 25/50%.

Buff! Yay!

• Preparation no longer resets the cooldown of Evasion.

Nerf! Boo! This doesn't seem necessary to me, but Blizzard probably didn't like sub rogues having two evasions now that we also have Combat Readiness to defend against melee.

• Sanguinary Vein now gives a rogue a 50/100% chance for their own Bleed effects to not break their Gouge.

PvP buff. This will give us a lot more control and allow us to swap targets and CC easier.

• Shadowstep's cooldown has been increased to 24 seconds, up from 20 seconds.

Another nerf. It's only a 4 second difference so it's actually not that bad really.

• Sinister Calling now grants 30% Agility, up from 25%, and increases Backstab and Hemorrhage damage by an additional 40%, up from 25%.

What Sub rogues everywhere have been waiting for. Sub's biggest drawbacks in PvE and PvP since Cata's launch have been the low damage, especially when compared to Assassination. They appear to be correcting that somewhat. Now you'll be getting and extra 5% agility and 15% more damage on Backstab and Hemorrhage just for going Subtlety.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Garrote now increases the duration of Garrote by 1.5 seconds, down from 2.

This is a PvP nerf that really isn't all that bad. Garrote was the opener used on casters and if glyphed will currently silence them for 5 seconds. Now typically if you wanted the full effect of having your opponent unable to fight back, you would typically wait until the silence faded to use Kidney Shot. But because sub rogues gain combo points rather quickly through Honor Amoung Theives, most of the time you'll end up with 5 combo points and just be auto attacking waiting for garrote to fade. So really the only thing you lose here is time to pool energy for burst damage during the Kidney Shot, but since Garrote's energy cost has been reduced, it's not really a big deal.