I got a bit of a shock last night. A friend came over to my place, having played a warlock in end game raiding, but never a melee class. He was interested in playing my rogue for the night, and my guild said that'd be fine (we cleared it with the guild ahead of time), so we tried it. Also, he'd never played a rogue in non-end game WoW either, so it's not like he was used to instancing or killing at all with rogue abilities.

After some initial advice, i didnt say a single thing about what to do or when through the course of the night. Here's what I told him in an email:

On boss after boss, trash pulls included, his spot on the dmg meters was pretty much identical to where I'd be if i were playing my own character. 7th place overall dps for the night. 3rd place patchwerk (i'm usually 2nd to 5th depending on ignites, warriors, which rogues are online).

again, he'd never played any melee class in a raid before, much less a rogue. While it's cool for my friend, being able to do that, at the same time it's pretty damn disheartening to know that given a script like the one above, which has some obvious deviations from corner cases of raiding best practices (when deadly, rupture, etc is ok, when to use blade flurry and AR, etc), the end result is the same.

23 months so far playing my rogue, and another person can do just as well after 5 minutes of instruction.

Either he's very gifted as a player, or i'm very bad, and all the other players in my guild are very bad (we're working on sapph now, so i dont believe that's the case), or the skill it takes to play a raiding rogue is close to 0, at least for:

Naxx trash
anubrekhan
razuvious
patchwerk
grobulus
gluth

(i took over after that for faerlina, maex, and noth).

Maybe on gothik he wouldnt have known how to manage his cooldowns quite so well as a long time rogue. Other than that though, ... /sigh.

I cant really imagine that healing classes would be similarly easy to step in and play without some serious familiarization time. Same with tanking. Are rogues really that easy mode?

I'm pretty sure lately people have just been making threads to increase their post count.

Edit: Since it wasn't clear, my point was that this thread is nothing more than a whine about how your friend can do as well as you did. With insightful observations as "Class ____ is easy to pick up in raid dps with a page guide" I'm surprised it wasn't reported more than it already was. You even used the phrase "are rogues really easy mode?".

Just acknowledge that your buddy is a smart player and leave it at that. Even with the script (which is a pretty good rogue primer), he adapted quickly and intelligently which says more than class identity.

I agree unfortunatly.

I've been playing a raiding rogue for 1.5 years now, and in doing so I think I can honestly say that I mastered the skill it takes to play a rogue in a raid enviorment about halfway through MC.

DPS classes in most MMO's have always been easier to play than healer/tank or support classes. And givin wow's oversimplification of the whole aspect of MMO's it only seems natural that playing a raiding rogue is extremly easy.

I like to think that if/when I top out the meters on various boss fights it's because I know certain nuiancess of the rogue class that others don't. Or because my energy/CP cycle is more effecient than the next guys..but alas the truth of the matter is simply
a, gear
b, lucky crits
c, staying alive
or (most important)
d, actually paying attention the entire boss fight.

The fault isn't ours and in fact I believe that some of the smartest raiders play rogues, but i think our options are limited. So limited in fact that somone who hasn't played a rogue (as in your case) can pickup and master the class in just a few hours.

I mean really, when you think about it. We have 2 main abilities in raids SS and backstab. And our entire purpose revolves around how best to make use of those 2 abilities while adding small dps boosters such as SnD/evis/rupture. Meanwhile having cooldowns such as AR/BF that boost our 2 main abilties for a fraction of a minute. In the grand scheme of things..thats it..thats all a rogue (besides keeping him/herself alive of course) has to do in order to be effective in a raid :/

Are you implying that I, or anyone else for that matter, wouldn't be able to hop on a mage (or warlock for that matter) and put up similar numbers as the original player? Tell me when its most efficient to fireball and scorch and I guarantee I'll be up there with the rest of the mages. The raiding game isn't about individual skill for the most part, its about organization and having everyone understand the fight and their role in the fight. And if you've done the fights with one class, you probably know exactly what goes on and you're fully prepared for everything.

I wouldn't base someone's "skill" on the dps they do, mainly because the biggest factor there is gear. Sure some people do bad for their gear, but thats nothing that a simple "use SnD more often" or "don't SnD while your previous one is still up" can't fix. If I had to rate people on skill, the ones on the top would almost always be based on consistency and alertness. How often do you forget to shadow pot on loatheb and die at 40%? How often do you get rammed by blizzard on Sapphiron? How many attempts does it take you to learn the 4h rotation, to learn to stay away from voids? There's always those few people that never seem to fuck up, and I guarantee those few people (if they're dps classes) don't lag behind in dps. Its all about paying attention and wanting to excel. There isn't too much that can't be picked up in this game, especially when it comes to raiding.

Note: Most of my comments do not apply to healers, because I do think there's significant skill involved in topping the effective healing meters.

To be honest, it doesn't take a whole lot of skill to do well on the damage charts as a rogue. It just requires someone who is alert, always has a target, and who keeps SnD and poisons up all the time. The role is extremely simple in most every case. Some fights take a bit more experience than others, but for the most part, we just mash a couple of buttons over and over until the mob dies.

I snipped the rest, but I agree completely. In my experience, there's no such thing as a "good rogue" or a "good mage" or a "good" member of any class. There are only good players, and these are people who can generally "figure out" any class with a little time and practice. In my guild, we had an excellent rogue decide to switch to a priest, and an excellent priest decide to switch to a rogue. After a brief re-gearing period, we had... an excellent rogue and an excellent priest.

Coming from you, that's the very definition of irony.

It really comes down to how fast you move and how much attention you pay. Spamming backstab with S&D up is, uh, not hard.

I think that Ghostz' post above and the OP both speak more to the restricted ability set involved in traditional raiding roles than to anything about Rogues in specific. I've switched with my roommate (Warrior) plenty of times mid-instance and he does fine given the 6 or 7 heals on my bar and Theorycraft to tell him how much they'll heal for. At the same time, though, it would be ugly to see him try to take a PUG through a 5-man on my Priest, handling pulls with Shackle/Mind Control/Mind Soothe, juggling aggro around with fear/Fade, and keeping the group up while maintaining mana so there's no downtime. I'm sure your friend would flounder if you had dropped him into a PvP situation and asked him to win a 2v1.

This isn't a 'raiding is easy' post - but the hard part of raiding isn't in the individual task, once all the strategic work and preparation prerequisites have been handled.

I think this is true of alot of class's in end game raiding. The 'skill' as it were is getting 40 people who have a clue and also having a clue about each fight yourself.

Understanding fights / trash is pretty similar for most class's especially if you are going from dps to dps. Of course there are little quirks and tricks with all class's that give you that extra 10% but as has alredy been said, anyone with average+ intelligence and raiding experience could switch pretty easily.

I myself have been swapping with a warlock every so often and Its really not much of a difference going from 1 dps class to another.

Just echoing what a lot of other people are saying:


Proactive classes (DPS classes mostly) are really easy to pick up even without any experience, as long as you:

1) already know the encounter
2) have a good grasp of game mechanics
3) are not a complete dumbass of a player


Reactive classes (healers) have a bit more of a "acquaintance curve" associated with them (I shy away from calling it a learning curve, since it's more just getting used to the healing thing rather than actually learning anything ground breaking), but otherwise, they follow the aforementioned 3 aspects.


If you have a good player, who can learn and internalize the encounters, and who has a firm grasp of game mechanics, chances are they'll be a good player no matter what class you stick in front of them. We've definitely found the same to be true of our rerolls, in that good players who rerolled different classes are still good in their new classes, while bad players are, for the most part, still bad.