I was playing the Burning Crusade at the house of a friend when I hit level 66. I went to the trainer and saw my new skills available for purchase. A deep chuckle began in my throat, quickly progressing to maniacal laughter. My friend, a warlock, looked over my shoulder to see what was so funny. He rolled his eyes when he saw what I was laughing at - I was about to purchase Cloak of Shadows. "Don't be so happy. It's going to be nerfed soon," he said. All I could say was "Then we better duel really, really fast. Ready?"

I am very happy with Cloak of Shadows, and have put it in the row of "Emergency Kill Quick Buttons" along with Berserking, Evasion, Adrenaline Rush, and every trinket that increases attack power when activated. I've also been having fun with Deadly Throw, which allows me to be a jerk to mages and hunters. Envenom is ... well, Envenom sucks.

Every class seems to have at least one really awesome new ability. Whether it's the mage's Ice Lance (most often heard being said to rogues, as in "Just wait until we have Ice Lance"), the priest's Shadow Word: Death, or the warlock's Ritual of Souls (which isn't that great but will at least stop people from opening trade for healthstones), players have something really exciting to look forward to as they ding new levels. What ability are you most looking forward to, or if you've already gotten to 70, what ability do you like the most?

It's always hard to decide if it's time for your own class to be hit with the nerf bat. No one wants to become weaker, and even the most grossly overpowered bugs or changes can be defended to the death as "vital to the class." And that's why it's time to talk about Cloak of Shadows.

This former 41-point rogue talent is going to be trainable for all rogues at 66. It's a zero-energy instant cast effect that removes all harmful spell effects and increases your chance to resist spells by 90 percent for five seconds. It's also on a one minute cooldown.

As you can imagine, this has mages, priests, and especially warlocks somewhat steamed. This basically lets rogues clear off any damaging dots and resist most spells for five seconds, which is more than enough time to vanish, cheap shot, and then you're pretty much doomed if they're a dagger rogue. If they're a sword rogue, they can probably take your health down quite a bit while you're sitting there wanding them for five seconds anyway.

So far, most of the rogue response to complaints consists of "It has a cooldown!" "LOL Deathcoil!" and "It's just an escape ability!" As a rogue myself, I know that this is probably not going to be used as an escape ability by anyone but ... me, who hates fighting other players. If a rogue starts a fight with you -- and most of the time it WILL be the rogue who picks a fight because of stealth -- they're not going to use five seconds of essential invulnerability to run away. They're going to use it to stunlock or stab you.

Cloak of Shadows does seem to be somewhat overpowered. Although rogues needed something to combat casters (especially the annoying mages -- who's level 1 Arcane Explosioning now?), a instant, no-cost dot remover and 5 second invulnerability with a ONE MINUTE cooldown is a bit much, even in this rogue's eyes. But how can we even it out? An energy cost? A longer cooldown? Some people have suggested buffing it to 10 seconds and then having it share a cooldown with Evasion, which sounds nice to me.

Do you think Cloak of Shadows will need to be fixed, and if so, how would you fix it?

The 41-point talent for rogues in the subtlety tree, Cloak of Shadows, never really impressed me. However, while I can't see myself spending that many talent points for it, I can certainly see its uses, and I know I'll be using it frequently if the change in the Burning Crusade beta -- making it a trainable skill -- makes it to the live realms. And before you think it's too good to be true and start pointing out that Cloak of Shadows is still listed as the 41-point talent in the official talent calculator, you should know that Tseric seems to have confirmed the change -- or at least, in his posted response to the thread about the change, he doesn't deny it -- only talks about reasons for making trainable high level talents.

Of course, if the 41-point talent is trainable, that leaves the question of what the new talent might be -- and I believe the above screenshot is legitimate. The Shadowstep ability is getting too much discussion on the beta forums for it to have been a fabrication by a single person.