I agree with Kalman, here. Rogues suffer from being given some very individual-oriented abilities, and then making those abilities pre-reqs for some of our more useful abilities. Openers are a no-go in raid, typically. Our job shifts from sneaky assassin to straight and pure dps in that situation, and even that is lackluster when compared to other pure dps classes.

I'd like to see more group-oriented usefulness in the class, be it slowing affects, to-hit or AP debuffs, to decent crowd control. Other than sap, rogue "cc" pulls the rogue's dps out of the group equation for the duration of it. Without imp sap, using sap is a pretty decent way of killing off a rogue. It isn't quite as simple or easy as polymorph.

Classes that I see as fairly balanced:
Warlocks - With the corruption/CoA coefficient nerf, they come in line with much of the rest of the raid dps classes. The three trees offer an incredible variety of play styles, and all are viable.

Hunters - The changes to the class were initially met with trepidation, but overall, hunters have been delighted. I agree with them.

Paladins - They finally have a reason for wearing plate. I'm *very* happy that their tanking abilities have been buffed. I still haven't heard much on the ret front.

Mages - Their focus hasn't changed, but it is still coherent. As a cloth wearing sheer dps class, they are wonderful. Many mages rolled the class for the "glass cannon" aspect, and they truly are. It still appears as if Arcane is the utility tree, but it provides a good backbone for the shallow frost or fire talents that can go with it.

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It appears as if the designers can't decide on how to hand druids and warriors. The warrior class is one that becomes more and more difficult to play as the gear upgrades. Druids were given great tanking options, and now have had much of their multi-target use taken away. The Swipe nerf is perhaps the biggest class change in the current patch. Instead of being a plain damage nerf, as is the case with warlocks, the threat modifiers for Swipe and Maul were the cornerstone of the Bearal tank. Now, instead of having the resident bear charge in and swipe a couple times before opening up the AOE cannon, things have become a bit more convoluted. I don't understand the designer's intentions for the class, in this respect.

Warriors just need some love, seriously. From Arms being uninteresting, to Devastate being a 41 point prot dps talent... you just have to scratch your head and wonder.

I'm completely unaware of Shaman, so I'll avoid that class.

edit: nm, thought some more about it...

Warriors and priests are more "hybridy" (I just invented a word!) than the hybrids, that is the great irony. I specifically did not mention mages or rogues.

No one ever asked a feral/balance druid to come to a raid. No one ever asked a loladin to come to a raid. No one ever asked an enhancement shaman to come to a raid. DPS warriors were the only ones who were allowed to deviate, en masse, from their "pure" role.

I am boldly stating my prediction that priests will be better at their 2 roles than druids or paladins.

Priest healing > druid healing (roughly equal, but I give the slight advantage to priests)
Priest dps/utility in shadowform > druid tanking (now that druid threat doesn't scale, I have much less hope in end-game druid tanking)

Same for paladins.

Misery alone is reason enough to bring a shadow priest. Crazy health and mana regen for an entire group just put it over the top.

I would beg to differ from the healer perspective :P. Anyway, to me, it seems clear the vision for rogues in pve is the highest single target damage, with options for threat control; and the most options for controlling a fight against SOME (i.e., stunnable or kickable) mobs. The general trend has been towards more fights that enable stuns to be used, particularly as the general theme of fights sways away from One Big Baddy towards fights with more elements or mobs to CC or kill. Sure, a warrior can usually stop a Small Eye Tentacle from beaming just fine, but we usually assign rogues to that job for a reason. Now, they may not always live up to this vision(other classes outdpsing rogues in what should be "rogue-advantage" fights) but I don't think the vision is at all unclear; just in need of some tweaks here and there.

As for my own main, I feel the 2.0 paladin really is the "paladin unleashed." It seems like what the class should have been all along. 3 trees, one to become an extremely durable/longevity healer with melee-based caster combat, one to become a viable tank(if still somewhat niche at the moment, though possibly that will add to the necessity of it), and one to become a relatively low dps melee fighter with some heals and a variety of melee triggered dps increasing buffs and debuffs. Though some regard the shaman/paladin swap as a cop-out, it really seems clear that they had quite specific ideas about the two classes and balance concerns were holding them back.

I am really also liking what I've seen of shaman, while we're on the topic, though I do think some "gameplay additions" to increase interactivity/strategy would be nice.
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This really needn't be the case. The key is cross-class synergy. That allows you to buff raid DPS selectively without buffing individual DPS. There are several classes with high utility that lose that utility in raids. Frost mages are one, rogues another. Beastmastery hunters have historically got a short straw in raids, too - the added utility of having a pet is largely lost if all the pet can do is contribute a little DPS. Warlocks, too - though their raid utility with healthstones and soulstones is pretty high. However when was the last time you needed their seduce/fear in a raid setting?

Blizzard have clearly been moving to increase the viability of all these in a raid situation - depending on what the latest lock changes do, I think locks and beastmasters are about set. Rogues and frost mages could still use a bit of a bump in raids, perhaps (any raiding 70s able to comment?). I can think of a number of ways to do it - for example give rogues a poison that gives vulnerability to fire or frost. Hemo is a good example of the right kind of talent - one that selectively buffs raid DPS without affecting PvP DPS majorly. I haven't raided enough on my rogue to get a feel for whether the debuff is powerful enough to function as it seems to be intended, though.

Rogues are Control.
I definately agree with Kalman about the vision for rogues. They are probably the hands down best solo pvp class, with skilled play, you can learn how to control nearly any class and beat them. Like him or not, you can see Ming figuring out/testing ways to do that over on his blog.

Control Tools
Solid control tools for a rogue in pvp include:
1. The basic stun lock. Versus classes that cannot break stuns, mezs or blind, you can 100-0 a class through correct sequences.
2. 1v2 tools. With Sap, Blind, Preparation and Gouge, you can kill two (lesser geared) players at once, by rendering one unable to fight while dpsing the other one. 1vN only works if players arrive in a Bruce Lee Movie line of opponents, each one waiting their turn to be killed.
3. Wound Poison. Vs classes that turtle and heal, Wound poison is a solid control tool. It cuts healing down to the point where they can't out last us, they have to out dps us.
4. 5-8 kiting. The basic tempo mechanic of energy means we are best converting energy to damage in a short period of time, then getting 'safe', regen to full, then dumping energy again. Vs melee classes (Bear, Warrior) that use rage, this is particular effective, since you can slow via crippling, then stay within 5-8 meters avoiding both melee and intercept until ready.

There are probably more, but I think this vision is fundamentally good, assuming solo pvp is the game. It breaks down greatly in PvE (where control makes content trival) and to some extent Group PvP, where you can't control more than 1-2 players, so a rogue's fragility means he is quickly killed.

I play a mage, a druid and a priest.

Mage - the class has a poor vision, which (ironically) is well implemented. My main gripe is that the trees are too similar. Yes all the mage trees are balanced, but that is because they do exactly the same thing. Compare that with other pure DPS classes - warlocks, hunters and rogues - they all have substantially varying talents. Maybe it was the intent to make mages the class with 3 near identical trees (the only real differentiators are certain one point talents such as ice block) but I find that very boring. Which is why my mage will not be my main come expansion time.

Druids - historically the opposite of mages. Good vision with poor implementation. The trees are interesting and diverse but historically have been very unequal in power, making most choices non-competitive. However, it seems they got it right in the expansion. So I am giving my druid a go as my new main.

Priests - the duality between holy and shadow is very nice as a concept. However, the class suffers from a lack of diverse specs - its holy/disc or deep shadow. Holy/shadow is not viable. If they overhaul discipline and holy a little the class would be great and probably at the top for both vision and execution. Right now shadow is well implemented and holy/disc is nice on paper with some need for polish.

As for classes that I do not play it seems hunters and warriors have the best visions.

Did you actually think that wouldn't happen when you made this thread?

So far, that was the most reports I've ever seen regarding a single topic. Good show!

Another thing. Making predictions or purporting facts based on virtually no experience will get you banned, so don't do this.