Cheating Death

Man-oh-mangoberry has there been an uproar about the nerf to Cheat Death yesterday. Most of the people complaining about it acknowledge that it was overpowered but that the nerf went too far. Here's what my Cheat Death experiences were like:

Kaylee (frost mage with Shatter) catches a rogue (at about 1/3 health) in a frost nova and gets off a shatter combo. The frostbolt is completely absorbed. Experience tells me that my frostbolts crit for about 3200 in battlegrounds. Rogue _still_ has 1/3 health. Then my ice lance hits for 200 and frost nova breaks. Then comes a fireblast for 100. Ice lance for 30. Now the rogue is in melee range, pops Cloak of Skill and... Oh... Some healer has noticed that the rogue is low on health. Dead mage. Or...

Same frost nova shatter combo gets the rogue down to 1500 hit points or so but there are no healers so the rogue runs (grrr... Pussies). I follow the rogue spamming ice lance because as soon as Cheat Death wears off, he'll drop. 100 here. 30 there... Then rogue pops sprint and Cloak of Skill. Resist, resist, resist, Out of range. Meanwhile, I've stumbled into the main Alliance force. Dead mage.

And with cheat death, it didn't matter if you had any resilience. Hell, the bigger the crit that would have killed you, the more invulnerable you became. Might as well wear your all DPS all the time PvE gear.

But that has been changed. Now a blow that would kill that rogue drops them to 10% health. Subsequent attacks have their damage reduced by an amount that is dependent on their resilience but not to exceed 90%. To get to 90% it would take (from what I've seen) 442-443 resilience. That's pretty much getting every piece of PvP gear and having it enchanted/gemmed for resilience.

Last night in the one AV I did with Kaylee, I got my shatter combo set up on a low health rogue. Frostbolt takes the rogue down to 10% health (yay. A spell actually did something to a rogue) and the followup ice lance did about 800 damage. The fireblast that followed hit for about 600. Dead rogue!!! I'm guessing that rogue had enough resilience to reduce the amount of incoming damage by about 60%. But with the initial blow not being resisted completely and that extra 30% damage, I had a fighting chance.

Yesterday was a very good day to die... For rogues.