Synchronized Strike has been displaced by Shadow Rend. Sure, Shadow Rend is new and shiny; very effective at offering rogues more options and enabling new builds. It’s a great way to generate (and regenerate shadows), especially with the new unique Tabi of Dusk and Dawn.
This leaves Synchronized Strike in a really poor spot, I suspect zero serious rogue builds will use this skill this season and in the future if no balance changes are made. My suggestions for small fixes before a more serious pass:
- Lower mana cost to 20 or increase the value of the Dynamics node (increase mana efficiency to 20% per point, 2 points max)
- Change Wave of Darkness to be a flat +5 mana cost, not 5 per shadow. This node is already inferior to Shadow Rend by being locked behind 4 lousy points of armor shred and 1 point of shadow daggers (wasted point if not using a shadow daggers build). Shadow Rend adds a flat 5 mana cost to trigger Shadow Cascade and even allows regeneration of shadows as a follow up node.
- Foreshadowing - this should change from increased damage to more damage; separating it from Shadow Rend thematically as creating much more powerful shadows.
- Retreat into Shadow - too niche to be useful. Change to give a 2/4/6% chance per shadow created to take 0 damage. This offers more chance based damage reduction, thematically fitting for Rogue.