The Role of Rogues

When last I posted, I discussed what sort of changes I believe rogues need to be competitive in the modern raiding game. Having read other discussion on the topic - both in response to my post and otherwise - it seems to me that it might be a good idea to take a step back from discussion of *what* changes are needed and address *why* changes are needed. That is: while I proposed solutions last time, I feel that there's still some disagreement about what the problem is. Hence, I would like to clarify the problem that *I* believe needs to be solved - some of you will disagree, and that's fine, but I feel like its a discussion worth having.

Some, for instance, suggest that we don't need additional burst damage or target-switching tools; that if we could simply do better sustained DPS than everyone else, that would balance our ineffectualness at certain tasks on certain encounters. Others (mostly nonrogues) have suggested that we should merely be content to reside in the middle of the pack - after all, *someone* has to be in the middle of the pack - why not rogues? Still others point out that we have many advantages in terms of defensive cooldowns that allow us to excel on fights like Al'akir and Twin Dragons; that the lower amount of healing we need compensates us for the lower amount of DPS we do. The problem, I feel, is that all of these answers miss the point, which is: rogues, in their current incarnation, fundamentally occupy a different role than other classes. And that's a bad thing.

So, for instance, compare an Assassination Rogue to a Fury Warrior; in some ways, we're quite similar - both are melee DPS classes, both have a pretty good interrupt for fights that require one, and (following the tweaks to both classes on PTR), our overall damage output across all T11 fights will be relatively similar. And by Blizzard's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class", that means we should be relatively interchangeable. But when you look a little closer... we're really not.

On a fight like Cho'gall, the warrior is just better - their ability to rapidly switch targets makes them vastly better at killing elementals. The one week I was on that duty, our fury warrior did quite literally double my damage to elementals (3.95 million to 2.07 million). That isn't the sort of thing that our planned 5% buff - or their planned 5% nerf - will fix. Its not a sustained DPS problem - its just that the mechanics of that fight means that one fury warrior can do the work of two assassination rogues.

On the other hand, there are fights like V+T, where a rogue is just better than a fury warrior; we have many survivability cooldowns and can respec to get more; this allows us to dominate the shadow realm in a way that no other class can match - particularly a fury warrior, who has no such cooldowns. And even neglecting the shadow realm, its a raid-damage heavy fight with relatively slow target switches, so our competitive single-target DPS and defensive cooldowns would be an asset there as well.

The list goes on - on Al'akir our cooldowns significantly reduce healer load; on Conclave their burst helps break shields; on Maloriak FoK + Vile Poisons gives us vastly better AoE Damage, while on Magmaw their cleaves allow them to dominate. There's actually very few fights that don't favor one spec over the other.

Now, some would say this is a good thing - neither class dominates the other across the board; both have their own strengths and weaknesses. We both have fights we do well, and fights where we do not so well. This is how balance is supposed to work, right?

Well... no. There's basically 3 problems with this philosophy.

First, there's the simple fact that sustained DPS fights are usually boring - when one builds a list of the most interesting and fun raid bosses, one probably will not find Patchwerk or Brutallus atop the list. I don't think anyone really wants to see a full tier of (basically) tank and spank bosses; what makes fights interesting is the need to switch targets and burn things down quickly and generally do more than just beat on a single target. Unfortunately, that means "interesting" fights tend to favor the "burst and cleave" toolkit over the "sustained and survivability" toolkit.

Second, there's the fact that our toolkit tends to have more overlap with casters. Assassination AoE might be better than Fury AoE, but why use either when you can have a fire mage? When you need sustained DPS on a target, why not use a shadow priest or warlock - who can multidot to help on other targets - instead of an Assassination rogue (who can't)? More and more, the melee role is about the quick swaps and burst damage while the ranged provide the sustained pressure; this increasingly marginalizes the rogue's role.

Finally, there's (again) the issue of "bring the player, not the class". Blizzard doesn't want to make fights that absolutely require a rogue; hence, fights built around the concept of "you need someone with really good survival to spend all fight in the shadow realm" will never be the norm, as right now *only* rogues can really do that. So there's the occasional gimmick fight where rogues are bordering on indispensable... but *most* fights are built more for the Fury Warrior toolkit.

Hence: the fact that rogues have a role to themselves is, fundamentally, a problem. Thus, Blizzard needs to adopt one of two approaches to fixing it.

The first is what I detailed previously - give rogues the ability to fulfill the more traditional melee role, with burst damage and cleaves and all the other tools that entails. Its fine if a Fury Warrior can do 10% (heck, 25%) more damage on Cho'gall elementals than we can; but when they're doing quite literally twice as much, that's a problem - this gap would need to be reduced. The problem with this approach is that it somewhat goes against our essential character; we're a class that hits fast rather than hard, and relies on control in PvP rather than raw smash-your-face-in damage, and so forth; its hard to preserve this while still letting us fill the same roles as Warriors do.

The other option (which isn't without its own set of problems) would be to expand our role to be an essential part of all fights, and then allow other classes to fill it. Right now we're the class that survives where other people can't, and this serves us well on V+T and Al'akir; if they made almost all fights require such a component (much like almost all current fights require burst damage), and added those survivability tools to, say, Unholy DKs and Ret Pallies... now we don't need burst, because we have a clear and well-defined role in all fights that we share with others. Of course, this severely limits Blizzard's ability to design fights, so I think this solution is unlikely - nor am I sure it would be terribly fun if it did come to pass - but its the sort of change they'd need to make if they don't want to let rogues have burst. Just doing more damage isn't enough; just having more survivability isn't enough. They need to give us a clearly defined role and make that role essential on all fights in a way that neither sustained melee DPS nor survivability is right now.