Doesn't really help when blizzard keeps destroying great ideas that work only in PVE, but won't overpower PVP wise. +Weapon skill and etc.

Even though things don't look too exciting for rogues, I'm going to stick in there with my rogue. I've come too far to throw the class to the side and play one of my green geared alts.

Im going to be sticking with my rogue, simply because none of the other classes are as appealing to me. If it gets to the point that I'm a wasted raid spot, then I'll simply stop playing. RL is starting to pull me out of hardcore raiding as it is, and making the class i love useless in a raid enviroment may just be the straw that breaks the camels back.

I am also a Rogue reroller (to a Warlock). I was dissapointed in the new stuff and the overall dps, but don't forget the ranged silence ability (Deadly throw). That ability sounds like it could find a use in PvE (especially since the silence will work on all those trash mob casters), but it does seem to be primarily for PvP.

I kinda disagree on the deadly throw usefulness in PvE part... to start with, the silence is a bonus granted to deadly throw by a gear bonus from the arena gloves. This is a PvP armor item and quite some PvE oriented rogues don't really want to bother with the arena league. As a gear bonus, you can't really take it for granted.

Second, since it is a ranged finishing move you'll need both range and combo points. To bad that barring premed, rogues don't really get to build CP on range. Running out and back in reduces time on target, and that reduces dps.

This is under the assumption that the CP requirement for deadly throw is true (I haven't played beta) but if it wouldn't need any it would be a first for a finisher.

Problem is that it requires combo points to do anything.. a ranged silence is pretty moot when you have to melee the target for 20 seconds to buy a ranged silence.

Deadly throw is primarily a ranged snare. I think you need the PvP gloves to give it a silence effect. Regardless, considering kick, I don't see it a particularly useful in PvE. Its still not a new role though.

I do have some regrets about rerolling when it comes to PvP, since we have all sort of great control measures, but even then, most of those are solo oriented. Right now I can go into AV, and know for a fact that if only two people are defending a tower, I can probably kill both of them. That's hella fun, and I know I will be less likely to pull that off with a Shaman.

But overall, I think rogues are trapped in a box by their non-group friendly abilities. Things like stealth, lockpicking, picking pockets, and stuns are all things with very limited use in a group environment, and prevent us from gaining additional roles.

I was looking through items on thott beta and the pvp set (not arena one) seems to have the deadly throw bonus too. Does anyone know if this is correct (or alternatively, if im a massive retard (also very possible)?

Ya. I am really hoping blizzard will realize how pointless it will be to bring more than 1 rogue to an instance a few weeks after TBC is released. The only reason to have a rogue will be for any gimmik rooms like supression. After that if you need more dps grab a shadow-priest, mage, lock, etc. Even if the raw damage is slightly lower you are still gaining enough utility to more than make up for a little more dps.

Blizzard stated that rogue's raid-utility is damage. That is great unless they arn't the clear-cut best damage dealers.

Er, except I'm still holding my own above and beyond all of these other DPS classes, and gear's only going to make me better come 70.

granted, you put my shadow priest in with 1 or 2 other shadow priests and all bets are off simply because of the threat mitigation that shadow priests have .. but ..

I get the feeling that Blizzard is putting off raid balancing until after release, and for now just focusing on finishing all the content they wanted, and squashing as many bugs as possible. The best example of this are Heroic instances, which by most accounts are only bearable with a setup of 2 tanks + 2 healers + 1 CC/DPS class (read: mage).

That being said, I don't plan on rerolling just because I'm so attached to my rogue, although I have considered making a pally or mage. At least one of our rogues is definitely rerolling a warlock, another is considering making his 60 warlock alt his main, and a third is considering doing the same with his mage. >.<

I'm on the borderline of 'wait til blizzard fixes us'/'rerolling for expansion'. If I was horde, I would reroll pally without hesitation, but as I am alliance, I'm not too keen on rerolling shaman.

Looking more at our current role/abilities, I don't really see a way to fix the class without some sort of huge overhaul. We trade far too much viability for our stealth, which has little to no impact in raiding, and after seeing the +skill mechanic nerfed to oblivion and the lack of response to the PvE deficiencies rogues have dealt with since release, I have little hope. The official rogue forum is a cesspool and thus there has been little to no blue feedback as to what, if anything, they are working/planning on for this class. Melee dps is simply headed to extinction.

Reading the TBC instance thread, it appears as though grouping in a 5man as a rogue is going to be as painful as grouping was when people were mainly running ubrs, i.e. bring a rogue to absorb the leather, not as a viable group member (although we have a 100% return to stealth sap now, oh boy...)

Where are the trade-offs? We have to eat aoes, take hits like champs with low mitigation, have multi-minute long CDs, for what? mediocre dps? I'm close to giving up.

Or if they just made expose armor friggin stack with sunder.

It wouldn't solve the issue of CC within a 5 man heroic though would it? there would probably still be a substantial cut off point for expose armour being worthwhile based on your amount of melee within your group, especially since you only use 1 rogue for it, which would have been % wise lower amount of loss to your overall melee dps pool in a 40 man raid. So say you have 2-3 rogue's in a 25 man with 1 on expose duty (since it could easily be cycled for 1 rogue) whereas previously you may have had between 4/8 rogues (depending on your guild and perhaps encounter) but 1 rogue in that situation would clearly be a lower % dps loss across the amount there while the gains would have perhaps been larger (since raid's can assume to have previously had more melee dps % wise than they now will in the min/max perspective).

As mentioned the optimal for a 5 man would follow to the lines of 2 tanks capable classes 2 heal capable classes 1 cc capable class. Don't get me wrong, working a rogue into the composition is probably perfectly viable but is it ideal or even favourable so early in the expansion when most people will be new to the instance's and the mob's capabilities. By the time people can over gear the instance's to really be comfortable doing them with a rogue I'd imagine they'd be fairly worthless lootwise, though that's not to say they won't happen.

Edit: Whoops, forgot to add, an incombat sap would surely also be limited by our vanish's unless it was also for use OOS, in which case it could surely be highly overpowered or were you hoping for say a 25s CD on it aswell as a reasonably moderate energy cost?

I know it might have been a while, but Sap already has a significant energy cost (60 energy); that fact alone would prevent an incombat out of stealth sap from being particularly overpowered.

Hell, give it a cast time for all I care to match up with poly, or make it so that if you have aggro from the target you can't sap them to prevent PvP abuse.

I agree that the two fastest, easiest fixes would be to Sap and Expose Armor. I was thinking an energy cost of 100 to sap out of stealth would solve the balance issue pretty well, especially if all other aspects of it remained unchanged. I like the idea of EA being changed to a self buff, but it would have to have a duration long enough to allow cycles of something like 3EA/5Ev/5SnD with common raid builds.

I also think their change to weapon skill is moronic. Change it to "ignores 1% of targets armor per 1 point of skill (not skill rating)" and we'd have a worthy talent that helped in both PvP and PvE.

Finally, the two worst stinkers of abilities/talents we have now are Anesthetic Poison and Deadened Nerves. Both of these are so bad they need to be completely rethought from scratch. No sane person would ever use them. They are on par with the old Improved Distract and Thrown Weapon Spec.

PS: Give Mace Spec a chance to restore a small amount of energy, like the warrior version gives rage.

Dont forget blade twisting. They added 2 skills with a nice synergy. Daze chance on hit proc, and a plus dmg to dazed targets. They decide that the plus dmg is too much, and remove it, but leave a tier6 daze chance on hit proc talent. What exactly is that?

Well, actually they did changed it.

Full patch notes - http://forums.patchtimer.org/thread.cgi?thread_id=3925

Nevertheless WE still sucks. I also feel that we might get the short end of the stick. Choosing between a mage with poly in a 5 man compared and a rogue, whoose sap is not renewable, works only against humanoids and out of combat is pretty easy. The same applies to hunters, locks and even shadowpriests. Hell, even a DW shaman offers solid dps, buffs and healing. I won't give up my class, having leveled my second rogue to 60 last week, but nevertheless at the moment one gets the feeling we are confined to pvp only...

I'm also working my shaman alt up to 60 before TBC. Rogues just don't have anywhere close to a big enough lead in PvE DPS right now to justify the complete lack of raid utility. I would much rather play an enhancement shaman with 10-15% less damage but strong group buffs, spot healing, and better damage mitigation.

Not every talent is good for all players, that is why there are more than 41 points avaliable in a tree. The daze talent seems to be quite powerful in PvP and would help a warrior's heroic strikes do a bit more damage in PvE.


I saw the patch notes on Weapon skill talent being buffed, so that helps a bit on the dps front.

Shame this, I was enjoying getting 53 energy back from a partially blocked evis :(

As for the CC concerns - we may not be as completely versatile as mages/warlocks in terms of dps alongside add management, but in doing the heroics my secondary job was typically looking after the healer via blind, kidney shot, gouge and anything else. Ok, it may not be as clinically efficient as Poly, but I certainly found it enjoyable from a personal perspective. Particularly in Heroics, the challenge was doing this effectively without getting myself insta-gibbed.

Well yeah sap has a 65 energy cost currently but casting a seduce or polymorph as a % of an available pool is significantly less, and let's be fair we don't run around with 65 energy spare, especially if you're using daggers whereby you're already energy starved, we'd be using thistle tea (only 40 energy at 70 anyhow) to recouperate the energy to perform an "in-combat" out of stealth sap, which is another cooldown reliant move similar to blind, perhaps it would be enough to be considered balanced - I'm not sure. Though polymorph is a 1.5s cast time compared to the potential 6s wait for 0-60 energy, that's four times the difference, so when I say a moderate energy cost I was thinking more to the order of 30-40 energy.

I know some people don't like these more direct comparison's but let's face it, when you're balancing a group you want to make these comparison's if you planning on making a well reasoned decision. We can always operate around a basis of a rogue working at 0 - 60 energy (depending on spec) but also always assume a mage will have enough mana for any of it's spell's while remaining aware that yes eventually mana implication's become more involved in encounter's but CC add's a degree of control that help's alleviate mana issue's to some extent so I'd say the comparison's are reasonable.