Let me open with a link:

http://mythicalblog.com/blog/2006/03...-suck-in-rpgs/

I was browsing along for an article that this blogger had allegedly published some time ago that has apparently since disappeared, and found that instead. Textbook serendipty.

The short version goes something like this: Take any classical RPG system, and take three races, Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. Setting humans as the baseline to compare all other races against, if you give Elves +1 int because they're so wiley, and then punish them -1 strength because they're wiley and need to be balanced against humans, you have two even races, right? But then throw in dwarves, who have +1 strength, because they're always mining, and -1 int to balance that strength out. What do you have now? Three balanced races, one of which is always the worst (or tied for worst) at anything.

Advance this now to itemization in WoW. I don't mean to advance this as purely a feral issue (a thread from 0 to feral in 0 posts, how cool), because the issue has also beaten its head into rogue itemization time and again: most rogues (or so personal experience would indicate) have no interest, love, or care for survival stats, beyond stamina (and even then...). Considering dodge and parry are useless against magic attacks, and that would seem to be the majority of what flattens rogues in personal experience, this is the old issue of humans (er, dodge) being second worst at everything.

There was a blue post about rogues and dodge on their gear, but my cardplace mojo fails me.

I don't mean to create a new thread for which there are already ample avenues to lament specific classes or comparisons, but I thought the link, philosophy, and insight would be of interest to others, and thought it too global for one of the specific class threads.

Well I think the main issue with rogues and dodge itemization is very similar to itemization for ferals. The simple fact of the matter is that you get insane benefits from agi as a rogue, including huge dodge. The amount of dodge rating it takes to get 1% more dodge as a rogue compared to the amount of agi is about the same, but then when you take into account that the rogue also gets AP, crit, armor from the agility, there's really no reason to give dodge, but rather just put that extra value into some more agility and some stam and they'll end up more survivable and happy.

Similar with druids, any bear item with dodge rating is just a joke because they do infinitely better with agility.

Put that alongside the fact that to gain any noticable benefit from dodge with our low hp pools, we'd need to stack that much of it that our damage would be negligable and you have the entire reason 99% of the rogue community are annoyed at the re-itemisation of our t4 shoulders.