Dwargue

i know Kalman is pushing for bigger rogue damage to distinguish the rogues from the other classes, and i guess that's totally valid. I enjoyed the dps chase once.

for me, i'm rerolling because i don't enjoy the rogue's role in raiding anymore, not according to blizz's design. Rogues do much more than DPS (or at least capable of, if the rogue is skillful enough) in 5, 10, 15 man raids. but in end game, there's really nothing for rogues to do other than DPS. why? because most mobs are immune to our greatest asset (stun/poison - in terms of utility). This is a specific thing that blizz has intentionall chosen, and i don't see that changing in WoW 2.0, tBC, nor 2 months after tBC.

my love of the rogue class is the only reason why i took so long to reroll.

 

GrizleyCQ

I've been playing a rogue for seven years now across three games. Yes, I have an attachmet to the playstyle, to the stealth all of it.

However. I also have an attachment to raiding, to being at the cutting edge of progression and to feel like I am making a solid contribution to that progress. If as stated mages are number 1 single target damage, plus decurse, plus ae, plus Kmart, plus attack from range, plus buff and get fun little extras like ports and blink then I am not going to enjoy being a rogue. For the simple reason that I know the raid will be better off if they replace me with a mage.

You won't be stacking rogues when mages do more damage and require less healing. Period. You will bring 1-2 rogues incase there is a trap or some dagger drops so they can loot it, the rest of them will sit outside the instance. Emotional connection or no my guild, and any other progression guild will do what it takes to progress. Our warlocks spent a whole lot of time sitting outside nax twiddling thier thumbs cause really we only have a use for 2 in the raid. Now taking into account rogues dont have a killer debuff like CoR or CoE and where do we end up when our damage is sub par?

The people talking about how good thier rogues do need to realize that all rogues are losing ~8% damage, more in some cases come the next patch. Meanwhile mages are getting increased coefficients on thier spells, new spells etc. Don't tell me that rogues damage is fine when Kalgan has said mages are top single target damage with "jawdropping damage" that he "hopes isn't too much".

 

Valen

You completly missed the point i think. It's not about 5 mans or soloing or pvp. It's about the design route that blizzard is taking, based on the words of the lead class designer of the game. I'm worried about the blizzard's design philosophy, which suggests that mages should be able to dish out more damage than any other class, even on a single stationary target. Imbalances will be fixed sooner or later, I agree with you there. The problem is that from what people understand from kalgan's post, there is no imbalance in blizzard's world to start with.

I to be honset don't want it to be paladin fiasco all over again. It took blizzard 2 years to finally make a decent class out of paladin, simply because they didn't realize how much the class actually underperformed.


EDIT: Btw. because of the nature of 25 man raids we will not get all the buffs that we used to get anymore. Group balance is much harder to come up with, and beside that battleshout which was our main buff in raids will be rare, simply because when warriors main tank, they will have commanding shout up. Another design mistake by blizzard.

 

GrizleyCQ

You talk about how classes get fixed when they are broken/worthless for raiding.

Oh really, look at hunters. They get a crappy bandaid shot and do horrible dps. They get dragged along for TSA and tranq shot.

How about warlocks. We bring 2, one for CoR, one for CoE. A third might slip into the raid if we have 39, then again we might just go short 1 player and not worry about healing a weak dpser.

Druids? "Hey at least I have innervate as a baseline talent now" Too many fights require fast healing or AE healing, a druid does neither.

I don't want to be sitting here 2 years from now saying "Any day now they will fix rogues..."

I mean most of you are rogues FFS, how well does vanish work for you? TWO YEARS and you still get meleed out of vanish etc. Look at our review, we got one buff... WE, it put us back in competition for top dps vs anything but the best fury warriors. Fast forward to the very next patch and they take WE away. Thats just not right.

 

Dwargue

and there you have it. i don't see blizz making tweaks to the rogue class because they've basically said this all along: rogues are performing to our vision of the class and have no shown ANY signs that they're concerned about the outlook of the rogue class.

 

Ayr

Then, again no offense, the perceived problem is not that you don't have auras/raid utility, you just want to be top DPS dog with no competition. I'm not playing a rogue so I won't comment on rogue viability (although they seem perfectly fine in Beta from my subjective lvl. 69 perspective), I just wanted to point out the problem, as you yourself expressed it, is not a lack of auras/buffs, but something else entirely. Also, count your blessings, I heard a lot of mages curse their so called "utility" when they have to waste quality DPS time on decursing.

 

Dwargue

my favorite is actually giving us poison lasting through death/instance, and then immediately taking it again. i thought that was pretty classy.

 

Faytte

Quality time casting an insta-cast at predetermined periods during boss encounters?

The issue he is saying is that, a rogue without these other abilities such as decursing or auras, becomes unfavorable to bring to a raid when he can do '1' job and no longer can do it clearly better than everyone else. If for instance priests had a similar heal repertoire to druids but lacked the animal forms, buffs, and rezzing (normal or combat) or the other things that made a druid a druid, then he would need to be clearly 'better' in healing to make them desirable to bring in the raid over an additional druid.

And its not to get into an emo qq, rogue did not ask to be overtly linear and have a single job in raids; that is how the raids encounters and the class have been designed though. With that in mind if everyone else has 2+ roles in a raid and rogue just has 1, then I would think the rogue would clearly better in their 1 role.

Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.
~Paradise Lost (bk. IX, l. 171)

 

• frmorrison

Exactly the point, which is why Rogues have been mostly the top dps in raids for the past 2 years.

However, Kalgan said that isn't the case anymore even with all Mages losing 3% to spell hit. It would be nice if he claified the point.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Glass

No, I think you're confused. Of course I want to be top DPS with no competition... But I realize that is unrealistic in the way that Blizzard balances the game. Therefore, I am saying that since other classes can approach and exceed our dps (which is our only job) then we should be given an aura/raid utility to make up for it.

Mages that curse thier utility (haha get it?) are bad players. That's why you have to ask for int 30 times before you get it, and beg for water.

 

Grimmlokk

So hit 70 and got a MH dagger, pretty close to a Maexxna Fang/DS level weapon. Spec'd 16/40/5 combat dagger and my damage definately seemed improved over various mace specs I'd tried. Even with a fairly low crit rate(28ish baseline). Got a new OH dagger too and got to play around with Shiv a little bit. 33 energy with the 1.3 spd(37 with 1.7). I can definately see this being used to build CP's for the initial SnD in Combat Dagger builds, or to catch up Cp's on an unlucky cycle. With Potency I could get 5 cp's in a few seconds with ease. This is all from running some higher instances.

Gonna re-spec Mutilate today and see how that goes, though the superfast OH won't be so great for it, it's 8dps higher than any other OH dagger I have. Will try with the 62dps 1.7spd one a bit too.

Now happy happy joy joy stuff aside: When the fuck did they change Anesthetic poison? I was all giddy to test out a de-agro poison on my offhand with Shiv. Go and make a stack of 20, and what do I see but this "Each strike has a 20% chance of poisoning the enemy which instantly inflicts 134 to 172 Nature damage, but causes no additional threat.". Instead of the previous 30% chance to lower threat. So now it's just a crappy instant poison that adds no agro? I've never been worried in the least about what agro my poisons add. This might be a great thing, but it's not at all what I wanted to play with=/

Overall damage: Not shiny or happy=/ Was grouped with a pretty decked out Elemental shaman the other day(was still using maces, both lvl 69). He'd outdamage me on single targets fairly often, and almost always on 2+, even when burning AR/BF. No one ever outdamages me normally. Ever. Not even close. I've had enhancement shaman blow me away some fights now, always close in any fight at the least now. I haven't grouped with a good 69/70 mage yet but I'm not hopeful. And the real kick in the balls came when I was with a good Feral Druid last night. Both of us 70. On fights where he could just melee and not have to heal he beat me more often than not. Sometimes by a wide margin. Feral talents are fucking ridiculous. I know as we gear up we should pull even and then ahead of them, but right now it's GD disheartening. I expect to see insane bitching if our talents stay this mediocre and people see what druids and other classes can do compared to us come release.

And speaking of gear, rogue quest/reputation gear is very disappointing for high end people. On top of the fact that we already had very limited quest rewards to start with, they went and made some of it Feral gear so we have even less. I did every quest in Netherstorm(highest quest zone now) and in the end use I think 1 item from there, maybe 2. Vendored probably close to 2 dozen worthless quest rewards. And I don't mean just not good enough for me, maybe 3-4 quests had *anything* tailored to rogues. Almost every quest has something tailor made for Feral druids(my druid guildmate called TBC "AQ40, but bigger"). Reputation rewards aren't much better. Couple great offhand daggers, but mostly nothing gear-wise you'll use.

I'm still really enjoying my rogue, but I always have and probably always will. They've added almost nothing to the class itself in TBC that increases *my* desire to play a rogue. I'm not a PVPer, and once I hit 70 live I'll be spec'd for maximum raid damage just like I am now, just like thousands of other rogues will be. It's kind of disappointing, but I can see where casual people will be loving life with Shadowstep and Mutilate to play with I guess.

edit: Almost forgot. Twice last night had Vanish not drop agro at all. I don't mean I vanish, it breaks, I mean I vanish, NPC(not stealth seer or boss) just keeps pounding me. It's as unreliable as ever.

 

Faytte

Venturing a guess. The loss to the mages +hit to spells doesnt rival the losses to rogues extended boss dps from +skill. A top tier rogue in current content is getting something around 65% to almost 70% of their total boss damage from white attacks, so the loss from +skill is rather large compared to the +hit talent (which can be made up with itemization one day).

Now if you also look at the dps gain via new talents, the 'raiding rogues' pick ups are rather tame. Yes combat potency is *very* nice, but everything else we got in combat is fairly garbage. The next effect there is that the 'rate' of our dps increase due to talents is probably less than that of other dps centric classes. So, likely what Kalgan is indicating is that where as there was a gap before where rogues could 'edge' out other dps, between our new talents, the + skill change (which rogues were utilizing the most of any of the melee classes on a whole) and the relative increases to other classes, there probably wont be any more 'edging out' on the meters.

Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.
~Paradise Lost (bk. IX, l. 171)

 

probiscus

Grimm, thanks for the heads up. W/r/t getting beat by the feral, next time you're pvping with him, just get one of your alliance warlock buddies to amp a CoW, that'll put him back in his place :)

 

Fellwraith

No, I don't think I did. Our class has significant advantages getting to 70 first. That means we get better gear sooner and don't have to worry about the initial raid set-up issues some people are bemoaning. You won't need to break into an established raid group because you're already 70.

I can pretty much assure you that there will be a fury warrior (who will want the battleshout for his additional AP) in a prototypical 25 man raid. There will be a dedicated melee dps group, just like there will be a caster dps group and a healer group. There's too many synergistic buffs not to set up your parties this way in TBC. It'd be pretty foolish if you didn't set up a rogue/rogue/rogue/fury warrior/shaman group.

Blizz has proven that they do factor in class set-up in encounter design. I wouldn't want to fight 2 Fankriss snakes or Sartura without controlled stuns. I wouldn't want to fight razuvious with only fury warriors and ranged dps. Could you do any of these fights just bringing in an undergeared alt or just 1 rogue? No way.

Do I think they need to add additional poison functionality? Yes, I do. Something along the lines of a +dmg/healing poison, a +% dmg poison or the like. The new poison they'e put in is relatively lackluster for a low threat class. It's relatively easy to implement something like a new poison later on as the raidgame starts up (maybe we could learn it from our friends on the hilltop near taurenmill).

Do I think rogues won't get included in "ideal" raid set-ups because they "only do dps" or because it's a pity/social invite? No, I do not. There's been too many cases where we add functionality essential to the success of a fight not to. Gimmickry or not, we are a needed class.

 

• frmorrison

You think the 41 combat talent (8% more backstab damage) is worse than some extra crit damage?

That poison is worthless, but I think most Rogues would use DP since it is the most dps.

Yah, Feral got huge talent upgrades, and the gear (its biggest problem) is really out there for questing.

At least vanish gives an aggro wipe :), even if it fails a lot.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

GrizleyCQ

I'm guessing you are horde. Paladins can provide 6 second stuns on demand, if they spec and gear for it they can do it nearly as fast as we can Kidney shot, with the bonus of not gving up any dps/healing etc. Bloodelf paladins will fill in nicely for any stun required fights.

Name one that rogues were needed for anything other than pure offensive firepower.

Supression room? Um, thats about it, I'm out of ideas.

 

• Wodin

Well, Kel would be sorta hard without rogues kicking.

 

GrizleyCQ

Pummel, shield bash, counterspell.

Sure kicking is nice, it gives another 5-6 potential interupts, but its hardly essential to bring rogues to KT. You could easilly argue mages are a better bet with range, frostblast is fun.

 

Grimmlokk

I wasn't spec'd for max raid type damage. I wanted more Lethality because I haven't had serious backstab power at my disposal since Barman Shanker was hawtnezz=P SA is completely unappealing for me for 5 man content. Not because it's bad, it's just boring. For a raiding dagger build I imagine I'll pick it up. If I go maces/swords though I'll probably stop at AR and max SF instead of going for Potency(which I really like BTW).

Also my point about Vanish was that twice it did *NOT* agro wipe. At all. Once on a trash mob, once on a boss. Neither one with Stealth detection.
--------------------------------------------------

On another note, for the most part the TBC 5 man zones have been really fun. They feel way more, I don't know, epic? The encounters are mostly fun and well designed. And even the annoying ones are entertaining. In Shadow Lab there's an ogre called Blackheart the Inciter(something like that). Every minute or so he stops fighting and makes your entire group go apeshit and start attacking eachother while he stands and laughs. Or the 2 headed ogre in Shattered Halls who argues with himself and changes targets based on which head is in charge. It's just an agro wipe/target lock mechanic, but it's well done/scripted. The Botanica in Tempest Keep is really well done. Blood Elf instance, very clean and very nice architecture. 5 bosses yet it moves pretty fast. No massive amounts of trash between any of the bosses. Interesting and varied trash pulls. Stuns/interrupts are *very* helpful. Good variety to boss fights. Last boss was very fun, druid/shaman healers ended with zero mana but we won, using an unorthodox plan due to group make up.

That all said, we don't bring anything particularly important to them except damage again. Tons of crap in the lower instances sees right through stealth(can shadowstep > sap them if yer feeling tricky>:)), and even with Imp sap, if you have a good tank and healer it's not needed. Our MT has been in TBC since like early alpha, so he didn't bring most of his Naxx gear over, and he's in basically head to toe TBC gear. He handles 3-4 mobs at a time just fine with any competent healer. And sap just doesn't compare to Sheep/Seduce.

Finally, JUST PUT BLINDING POWDER ON THE GOD DAMNED ROGUE VENDORS ALREADY! Why the fuck has this not happened already? Why why why why why!

 

deric

(I haven't seen KT, but..)

Your MT can shield bash, in def stance, on a 12sec CD; your fury warriors can pummel on the same 10sec CD as kick, and I'm assuming the interrupt component of counterspell and earth shock work fine as well.

e;f;b

 

Antiarc

If you'd like to be depressed about the state of the rogue class, go tool around in the arena.

I've done a couple hundred arena matches by now, mutilate specced, and I can say with certainty that I either have to open fast and hard and instagib some cloth, or I die very quickly. If I can manage to drop their cloth fast enough, then our team gains a numbers advantage and I can usually survive, as there's less attention focused on me.

In a straight-up fight, I'm getting utterly ripped apart. I've had priests out-heal my damage (priest shield wall = gg rogue), hunters and warriors basically shrug me off, mages annihilate me with spells from range. Ferals are out-meleeing me. Moonkin are ripping me apart. Oddly, warlocks are the one class I've had the least trouble with - likely because entering the arena auto-cooldowns my Insignia, which allows me the one fear break that I need, and no warlock on test right now is using a Succy.

I can open very hard and provide a full 9 seconds of stun, but if my target isn't dead before that, I'm in trouble. The PVP rogue has, once again, been pidgeonholed into a "gank or die" class, and it's extremely frustrating. We're being told that we're gankers, pure and simple. I have no idea how a combat rogue will manage in the arenas. With the increased stamina pools, it's becoming harder and harder to even be good as a ganker. With the introduction of Resilience, it's a lot harder to rely on that burst damage from stealth to drop your target.

I've been levelling my warrior alongside my rogue, and...yeah, it's nice having the stealth pause button, and it's nice to be able to stealth ahead to a target and drop them...but my warrior isn't exactly having any problem tearing right the hell through packs of enemies. He's in non-TBC blues-and-greens, 3 MC epics including an OEB. Specced 2h Fury, and absolutely tearing things apart. I kill individual enemies a little slower than my rogue (barring crit streaks, where I can 2-3 shot a mob), but I can kill 2-4 enemies at once, all the time, without any problems, all the time. Questing feels just as easy with my blues-and-greens warrior as it does with my AQ40-and-Naxx epics rogue, and my warrior can switch to tanking gear (TBC greens have me at 6k HP unbuffed in tank gear now) and be an indispensable member of a group. If I'm not needed to tank, out comes the OEB and I get to tear into things.

It's becoming a lot harder to want to level my rogue first.

 

◊ Kalman

Every time rogues say "Well, if we have no utility, give us clearly superior DPS", everyone else says "What? That's no fair, we're DPS classes too!"

Every time rogues say "Well, if we can't have top DPS, give us some utility to match other classes, not just in PvP and 5 mans but in the raiding game as well" everyone else says "Shut up, you're a DPS class, you don't need utility" or "Stuns and interrupts are utility!" (ignoring paladins' arguably superior stuns and the widespread range of interrupts out there).

No wonder rogues get frustrated.

 

Antiarc

Kicking ass on whom?

The arenas are really hit or miss. Yes, I can burn all my cooldowns and completely shred a target. If things crit, stuns aren't resisted, I don't get caught with my pants down, etc etc - everything goes right - then I'm an absolute monster capable of dropping cloth/leather in a heartbeat. CS, Mutilate, KS, CB -> ZHM -> Imp KS/FW Crit Mutilate dishes a lot of damage, and there's no doubting that.

However, if anything does go wrong, I'm screwed over pretty proper. An alert healer healing my target causes serious problems. If a stun is resisted or broken, I'm in trouble. If poison doesn't proc, my Mutilates don't hit very hard at all. If I get FF'd and can't Vanish for a second CS, I lose a ton of options. If I smack a frost mage and get chilled, and the mage has room to blink, I'm in trouble. Water Elementals are causing huge problems for me with their ranged frost nova.

My complaint is that it's so very all-or-nothing right now, with very little in between ground. You either dominate or you die horribly. It's still the "Burst as much as you can, as fast as you can" game that Blizzard said they want to move away from. Rogues are still relegated to a ganking role, rather than having the options that other classes seem to. Our role is to get the jump and instagib our target, and virtually nothing else. In the arenas where your opponents know you're there, rogues lose a tremendous advantage. Felhunters and Perception make finding rogues/druids in the opening moments of a match rather trivial, and pulling a rogue out of stealth early removes a vast amount of his damage potential.

The best measures may be to look at who is winning Arena matches. The most effective combos I've seen so far are Priest/Mage and Priest/Hunter, by far, no contest. A rogue can't drop the mage due to the priest healing him, and can't drop the priest before the mage nukes him into oblivion due to Inner Fire/PW:Shield/Shield Wall/Shadowform/Whatever they're specced. Hunters have a lot of HP and AC, so you aren't going to instagib them. Same argument as the mage applies for the priest with the hunter banging on the rogue once he jumps the priest. Dual rogue teams are really weak unless against a dual-cloth team, where they usually can instagib one of the cloth and then gain a 2v1 advantage on the remaining team member. Other than that...the most effective teams I've seen are healers + ranged damage.

 

Tower

This is the only reason we've ever been any good in PvP besides the occasional Cheap Shot > Kidney Shot (Killshot before they can act). And if you don't have the one cooldown up that's going to allow you to restealth against a particular class, it's actually pointless to use them. With alll the new talents to thhe other classes, rogues pretty much have to spec Sub to PvP effectively, as even they will have cooled down timers when they enter the arena.

In WSG n such you're likely going to catch someone offguard, timer based or mana or in a strange position, so a rogue with cooldowns and in stealth is likely going to capitalize 1v1. Or at leas the objective isn't necessarily to kill everyone, just get the flag across the field (and rogues can be slippery as we all know).

5v5 Deathmatch, where a team is protecting itself and knows a rogue is on offense and will save their timers to save oneself and each other kinda defeats the purpose of a rogue having stealth. I mean, yeah, you can't target us, but you know we're there. You can spam low level AE, have a hunter flare every second its up, drop consecration etc etc. People getting owned by rogues in PUG arenas will stop once TBC goes live and teams start forming up. The fact you can make a 5v5 fight a 5v4.33 fight by using preventive tactics like flare, perception, felhunter when you can click the PvP tab and see a rogue is present etc etc is kinda a big fuck you to the rogue class in PvP.

 

Glass

So they actually give you a bg scoresheet with the opposing playernames/classes? Ugh.. so it's a 5 vs 5 duel then... We all know how well rogues do in duels against classes that have stealth counters.