Originally Posted by ceasefire
My first impression is that Rogues have gotten completely out of control. 80% of our games at 1600-1900 were versus Rogue/x teams, and they completely infest the 3v3 bracket as well.
I don't think Blizzard bases class balance on completely min/maxed geared out characters fighting at top levels, but here's something to ponder. I reckon at top gear levels for each class and equal skill, a PvE geared Rogue and a Druid are literally unbeatable by any other composition in the game.
That does not bode well for game balance, and I think just for the fact that the top Rogues are amassing 4 piece/4 piece and Warglaives at alarming frequency, they should be due for a huge nerf. And this is from the perspective of a Warrior (supposed Rogue counter class but laughably, laughably not). Rogues with PvE gear have probably the highest power levels of any class any spec in any arena season. Surely 50% of all 1700+ 2v2 teams or 3v3 teams having a Rogue is not intended? Certainly Rogue/Rogue 2v2, R/R/D 3v3, and other comps were really never intended? All other classes have to worry about balances with each other, Rogues can simply ignore everything.
And for the record, I agree Warriors are a bit powerful at the moment too.
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The negative impact of T6/Sunwell gear in arenas is pretty obvious by now, but unfortunately there aren't any easy fixes to it that won't inflict major collateral damage on arena balance as a whole. In my opinion, one of the only reasons that Rogues (PvE geared rogues in particular) are so common in arenas right now is due to the extreme popularity of resto druids in team makeups. Back in the earlier days of arenas, you didn't see much of rogues because they didn't really counter any popular comps well enough to justify a slot and the gear simply wasn't there. This is also an obvious factor in the huge hit taken by warlocks this season, since a typical rogue can curbstomp a warlock even without the benefit of 4pct6.
Now that the ladder is older, people all have access to max resilience/high stam, and a lot of rogues have access to warglaives and 8pct6, it's an entirely different ballgame - the only effective and reliable way of killing a resto druid in 2s or 3s without taking out his partners first is to put a 4pct6 shadowstep glaive rogue on him. There are plenty of other classes that can be played well in a comp designed to beat druid teams, but properly geared rogues simply outshine those classes.
As a side note I also believe that this is partly responsible for the new popularity of hunters: A well-played and properly specced hunter is capable of keeping a rogue under control mostly unassisted, and can also do significant damage to a rogue since hunter ranged attacks bypass basically every defensive mechanism a rogue has (except Evasion). Despite the fact that Hunters are hardly the best DPS class in arenas, the fact that they can almost completely lock out a rogue makes them a strong option right now.
However, the gear is at least half of the problem. If you nerf rogues across the board to counter the PvE gear related issues, you'll probably mostly fix their representation, but rogues *without* t6 and warglaives will probably end up much lower in effectiveness than they need to be to effectively counter druids. There's a good chance that as a result, druids would become even more popular on the ladder, which isn't really any better of a situation than the one we're in now - comp variety in the 2s and 3s ladders would stagnate even more. We could hope that Blizzard would rebalance *all* the classes for PvP, but historically this is a pretty unlikely proposition.
One other commonly proposed solution is just to disable PvE gear in arenas. This would solve most of the rogue issues (though you'd probably need some talent adjustments to go with it), but it would also completely cripple a lot of succesful teams, simply because almost every melee DPSer or hunter is wearing a few pieces of PvE gear (if not more). This might not be a bad thing overall, but every rogue/warrior wearing the exact same set of equipment isn't something I look forward to.
Off the top of my head, I want to see Blizzard scaling back the influence gear has on Subtlety damage output and also reducing the viability of Combat talents in PvP. I think careful, slow changes in those two directions would be enough to discourage the stupid number of PvE-geared rogues in arenas, if combined with the New Improved Cheat Death (Now With Less Cheat). Rogues simply shouldn't be able to be viable in arenas as Combat at this point, and Shadowstep specs gain altogether too much damage generation from gear and stats when they should really be more dependent on talents and player skill.
An obvious example would be reducing the weapon damage multiplier on Hemorrhage and replacing it with a smaller flat +x damage bonus, like sinister strike, with the goal of 'equalizing' Hemo damage somewhere around a full S3 damage output level. Mind you, I haven't worked out math on this or thought about it in depth, but I think you get the idea. Hemo with a MH glaive and buffs up simply hits too hard.
However, just changing rogues isn't going to be enough - they need to take another look at druid balance, and finally find a way to actually *tune* druids so that they interact correctly with all the other classes in the metagame, instead of just arbitrarily fucking around with mechanics and skill variables. Simple changes like adjusting Cyclone range or putting more aggressive DR on entangling roots aren't going to be adequate - the actual mechanics (like no-cooldown shifting and travel forms/mounts in arenas) that contribute to the success of rogues, druids, and other 'overpowered' classes need to be tuned. Otherwise, we're going to spend the next year or two watching blizzard go through an infinite cycle of adjusting classes up and down over and over again in response to the latest PvP gimmick.
Also, on a vaguely related incessant bitching note, they could finally fix melee mechanics in general (LoS, pillar humping, swinging through pillars, tauren hitboxes, instant attack latency, etc...), and doing that would probably provide a near-instant boost to the popularity of enhance shamans, feral druids, ret paladins, rogues and warriors in arenas - which, if combined with a nerf to the strength of pve geared rogues, would be a good thing for everyone.