Stealth detection items nerfed
by Eliah Hecht 
May 14th 2009 at 7:00PM
I tried to make a "stealth nerf" pun in the headline, but it just wasn't coming to me. Anyway, Blizzard has decided that items that grant stealth detection were feeling too mandatory in arenas, "forc[ing] players to use lower level equipment even when more powerful items were available to them." Therefore, they've nerfed the lot of them.
- Ultra-Spectropic Detection Goggles can no longer be used in arenas.
- Epic engineering goggles will no longer grant stealth detection.
- Stealth detection on many other items (Catseye Ultra Goggles, Blood Guard's Dragonhide Gauntlets, Marshal's Dragonhide Gauntlets, Knight-Lieutenant's Dragonhide Gloves, General's Dragonhide Gloves, Bloodvine Lens, Knight-Lieutenant's Dragonhide Grips, Blood Guard's Dragonhide Grips, The Night Watchman) has been reduced.
This hotfix is already live; tooltips are not updated, yet, but will be in the next patch (patch 3.1.2).
What's your reaction to this? Obviously it's bad when people feel compelled to wear low-level items because they're overpowered (witness the Badge of Tenacity for Druid tanks), but is this going to lead to rogues becoming even more overpowered than (I hear) they already are?
Filed under: Engineering, Items, News items, PvP, Arena
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Crescent May 14th 2009 7:06PM
Sweet, this seems like a fair nerf. And it will help my 2v2 team.
DragonFireKai May 14th 2009 7:56PM
THE GOGGLES!...THEY DO NOTHING!
BaldOak May 14th 2009 8:25PM
I don't understand what's fair about it, really.
But then again, now i have a reason to use other, far more powerful helms.
So it's an alright trade i suppose... Now they need to take away perception completely. :)
Mr Magoo May 14th 2009 8:53PM
All blizzard have done here is remove options and choice. Nothing more. Their premise on "helping" characters not have to use lower level items is silly. You CHOOSE to use them. If they were worse, you would CHOOSE not to.
As a side benefit they are buffing rogues in certain situations (who did not need it) and nerfing an already pointless profession and replacing it with nothing.
This is not QQ. This is just what they have done. I was not wearing the helm.
Yeng May 14th 2009 11:16PM
So um...maybe they should nerf stealth instead of the items to detect it?
domilol May 15th 2009 6:52AM
As someone said further down in the comments, go do Arenajunkies.com and check out all the top rogues, they are ALL using Engi goggles because it's no longer a choice, but almost mandatory to do well against ANY other rogue that are also wearing those googles, especially humans/night elf rogues, there is no choice in the matter, if you wanted to do well you needed it.
If you aren't doing Arena with a rogue or as a rogue in the 2200+ brackets you will never understand the competitive advantage those goggles bring vs other rogues, I can bet 100% that most people that are enforcing 'choice' is on the line of "lol 1 level of stealth detect? sure thats imbalanced", well, it is, looking at it from the view of a bystander it may not be big but from a competitive view it is stupidly overpowered when it comes to Rogue vs Rogue and getting the sap on the other rogue
For any class that isn't a rogue using these goggles the nerf is almost insignificant, classes other than rogues (and maybe feral druids?) have limited base stealth detect, adding an extra level to that rarely ever makes a difference, but for a Rogue vs Rogue situation it's pretty game breaking.
But i don't expect anyone to read this, I'm fairly sure people already in a state of "OMG WHY BUFF ROGUES FFS BLIZZ" and can't see past the fact that it was actually addressing Rogue vs Rogue imbalance and has little to no effect on Rogue vs Other Class, but so is the way of ignorance.
Todd May 15th 2009 9:02AM
These items didn't really help detecting rogues, anyways. Rogues can talent to be above the figure these items grant for detection.
Probably doesn't matter anyways, rogues will still own in PvP but still suck with PvE. WTB more raid utility, naa. Let them suck.
Gormakr May 15th 2009 9:44AM
@Domilol:
This is a buff to rogues. You need to take your argument 1 step further.
Yes, rogues were wearing these items to deal with other rogues in arenas.
Now rogues won't wear these items. They will wear something that will be less powerful vs. rogues and more powerful vs. other classes.
As a result, they'll have somewhat better stats in return for the loss of that stealth detection.
Those improved stats will make them harder to defeat for other, non-stealth classes.
domilol May 15th 2009 10:10AM
@Gormak
Just because you hit harder doesn't mean you will be doing better, rogues specifically took the goggles because it helped win them more games than the extra stats ever.
Against vsing teams with no rogues them, I guess yes, its a buff, but a small one albeit but against vsing teams with rogues it's undoubtably a nerf, the rogues can no longer get saps at the rate of success they use to be able to (sure it's all realtive, but the reduction of stealth detect means the reduction of the detect aoe meaning there is abit more luck in the equation now than seeing the rogue 10yards out).
Again, sure it may be a small buff against non stealth teams (I see it rather as a change since they already had that capacity) but you have to realize the rogues used those goggles because it won them more games than the other helms ever did. Buff to specifics but a nerf overall.
physis May 15th 2009 3:45PM
I think people are misunderstanding the reason Blizzard changed the way these goggles work. I also think Blizzard changed them in the wrong way. The problem was that the goggles were conflicting with their intention to widen the scope of professions. At the last Blizzcon (I believe), the professions team discussed their desire to take away BoP items that were forcing people to become a certain profession for min/maxing. Hence they made all epic crafted items BoE from Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring. The only major crafting profession they didn't change was engineering. I believe they kept this because they wanted to continue to make the engineering profession feel unique (the engineering profession does frequently demand this on the forum). However, this is an example of wanting two contradictory things in WoW: to be unique and to be balanced.
Because the powerful engineering goggles were BoP, people had to switch to the profession to get the goggles for the desired PvP effects. stealth detection. This created the conflict of interest they have been addressing in the last two patches. They have been nerfing all the BoP engineering items. While some of those nerfs have been deserved, they could level the playing field a lot by allowing non-engineers to equip those items. Yes, keep the hand and cloak enchants specific to Engineers. Yes, allow only engineers to use flying machines. But there is no reason to keep the equippable Engineering items specific to the engineering profession. They will have to continuously nerf them or people will continue to flock to the profession for undesired reasons.
drwatson May 14th 2009 7:07PM
GOD damnit blizz! What is with all these stealth nerfs? Every fucking day it feels like they change something. "tooltips to be updated later" Leave shit alone.
Craig R May 14th 2009 8:23PM
no no this is a stealth BUFF!
turkeyspit May 14th 2009 9:51PM
Craig wins!
Task May 14th 2009 7:07PM
Although I'm not an engineer, I feel bad for a few of my friends who are said engineers, and they will not be happy, regardless if they participate in Arena or not.
domilol May 15th 2009 7:02AM
Engineering in PvP gives more of an advantage (Pyro Rockets, Lightning Gen, rocket boots, pre-nerf stealth goggles) than every other profession combined, it boggles my mind that engineers complain when they nerf Engineering for PvP as if they are some sort of victim of a bastard step child beating when they have such huge advantages over anyone that isn't Engineering (for PvP, can't speak on PvE).
DruidGuard May 14th 2009 7:07PM
This is much worse than a slap in the face.
This is a slap in the goggles.
JamieG May 15th 2009 6:45AM
Win
skychilde012389 May 14th 2009 7:09PM
Should've named it, "Never saw this nerf coming." or something to that effect.
Sharlyntria May 14th 2009 7:28PM
What about:
Stealth detection stealth nerf detected
Malkavos May 15th 2009 12:00AM
Or "Stealthy Stealth Detection Nerf Detected".