• Digo

So as most other classes have seen renewed group desirability and support with the release of 2.0 and beyond, rogues seem headed for the same fate that befell EQ warriors: only desirable for raids, and second string in groups. In short, we need some kind of added group support or synergy.

I think expanding poisons to offer more group support is the way to go:

- resistance debuffs
- mitigation debuffs (expose armor does not count)
- hit chance debuffs
- debuff that converts a % of physical damage into shadow damage

Basically, anything that promotes class redundancy (bringing 2 of any other class to a group is more desirable) and synergy will help the class without breaking us in PVP.

 

GrizleyCQ

I have a very strong feeling that rogues will get buffed soon. The only part that worries me is getting buffed in a direction that is not fun or desired.

Rogues will end up top damage again. The only question is by how much.

As a side not not directly related to rogues or being emo... An enhancement shaman thrown in a group with a rogue or any melee really is impressive. Very impressive. A shaman is a great duo partner for a rogue, maybe the best one around. Certainly far better than a paladin.

 

• Glass

I really don't know how they're going to buff us. It seems the rogue is viewed as a primarily pvp class now. Since they already had the mechanic that allowed a pve *only* buff (weapon skill) that left pvp unchanged and they took it away, I just don't see how they're going to do it.

If I wasn't a class lead I would be a mage, shadowpriest or paladin along with all the other rogues that wised up. I have a hard time selling my class to anyone (let alone keeping moral up within my ranks). It's a tough situation when you're trying to put toghether plans for raid slots and you know damn well that any other class benefits the raid as a whole more than you do.

What I'd rather not see, is blizzard beating every other class down to what a rogue is currently. I don't want to see mage/hunter/lock/shadowpriest nerfs because it only punishes the raid.

 

• Nite_Moogle

From the perspective of someone who has played a lot of roles in the game, I think that the perception of "top DPS" is a fallacy simply because it's situational. I don't have a problem with any of the four (or five) main DPS classes coming in on top from an objective standpoint and it's pretty well proven that in the right situation any of them can top DPS charts. The trick is to also value the class' "bag of tricks" which is a rather intangible thing. Warlocks are often trod on because of the extreme versatility their pets offer them, Hunters because of their pet and survivability and mages due to their wide array of secondary tricks. Rogues also get a lot of these things, but the huge difference is that the vast majority of these tools are not that useful in PVE. It's the inverse problem that warriors have: Rogues can't do a lot more damage than they do otherwise PVP becomes very unbalanced if they are willing to blow cooldowns, just like Warriors can't have too much damage taken away from them or they become unplayable in solo situations with poor gear.

I think Digo is very much on the right track: there needs to be more that a Rogue brings to a group or a raid beyond superior DPS. They have minimal crowd control and almost no group-improving abilities to speak of, and they desperately need something in these respects.

Gurgthock: the time taken to implement the 10 hugs achievement could have been used to make a new 5-man

 

◊ Twid

I've been on a daze kick recently, and having a rogue that specs into blade twisting will increase the tanks threat due to increased damage from heroic strike. It's not a huge make or break talent, but is a synergistic aspect of the class that could be overlooked.

With the onset of more groups having druids as tanks, expose armor is actually something that should count. You can't guarantee that every 5 man group you run with will have a warrior, in which case expose armor is something to consider.

Mutilate is already something that promotes class redundancy. If you have a mutilate rogue, they ideally want a slower offhand to hit harder as far as I know (haven't picked up my rogue much in the past months). In combat, having a faster offhand for combat potency is ideal for energy regeneration. So if you have the deadly poison on the combat rogue, you get the benefit of a poisoned mob for mutilate, and the mutilate rogue can even use envenom with the excess of combo points, knowing that the combat rogue will be stacking up the deadly again very quickly.

[13:45] <kenlyric> goddammit, I wish google news had a "only real news" alert.
[13:45] <Kalman> I wish journalists had one.

On the topic of Knight Rider:
<Vontre> What is a KITT?
<Nite_Moogle> jesus christ vontre were you in a test tube until 1995?

 

Ultramagnetic

Another option could be a group based threat reduction spell. Something like Mass Camouflage that you can cast periodically to lower the threat of your group for a short time.

In fact any changes to rogue threat would leave PVP unaffected.

"No, in America no one from the government comes to your house...and does your laundry."

 

• Nite_Moogle

An inverse of Misdirection would be pretty interesting and would take advantage of the innate threat reduction abilities that the Rogue gets.

Gurgthock: the time taken to implement the 10 hugs achievement could have been used to make a new 5-man

 

Plea

Hey I want this kind of thread for warriors too!

 

• Apate

Please don't....

EDIT: that should be in regards to a warrior 'emo' thread, as well as warrior 'emo' in this thread. History doesn't favor that kind of thing.

See you, auntie.
"lol" is not a period lol
You don't need a machine to make a rainbow. For rainbows are made of happy thoughts, and dreams, and chocolate unicorns, and gumdrops, and licorice sunsets, and fuzzy gumdrop bears, and sugar-coated chocolate gumdrop land.

Originally Posted by DeeNogger I am coming for you Apate.

 

GrizleyCQ

The problem is rogues have too many threat management abilities, not a lack of them.

As an alliance rogue I can't remeber the last time I pulled agro or even slowed down to avoid pulling agro. The basic rule is, don't hit the mob before the tank, and down blow any cooldowns (adreneline rush etc) before 2 sunders.

I know horde has had more agro issues, but now they have salv too. Windfury will give alliance more to worry about with burst dps but thats why we have vanish and feint right?

 

◊ Twid

I think this thread could use a bit more of a descriptive, and less "WoW forum" type title though. I think the question that remains though is that what level of dps hit would rogues be willing to take to have a less "solitary" aspect in groups? Simply boosting their group viability runs the risk of tipping the scales in the other direction, where rogues become a class that you absolutely need in a group.

At this point, I don't think there is a single class that is absolutely required for a 5 man group, which is I believe what Blizzard has intended for this aspect of the game. I have yet to group with a hunter, and I am almost 68. I have seen situations where a hunter would be incredibly useful, but nothing required them to be present. In fact, most groups I have run instances with have been very light on crowd control. The most common group makeup I have seen has been Warrior/Warrior/Rogue/Priest/Warlock, and while having 4 AoE fears is occasionally helpful, most often it results in lots and lots of adds.

[13:45] <kenlyric> goddammit, I wish google news had a "only real news" alert.
[13:45] <Kalman> I wish journalists had one.

On the topic of Knight Rider:
<Vontre> What is a KITT?
<Nite_Moogle> jesus christ vontre were you in a test tube until 1995?

 

zeidrich

I disagree, though as a caveat: I haven't seen heroic instances.

You've mentioned that you feel rogues are not desirable in groups, but are in raids, so I will ignore the raid side aspect.

In small groups a rogue has:
High damage
Immediate de-aggro
Long lasting initial crowd control
Much higher survivability than casters.
Kick to interrupt.
Stun-lock + evasion as offtanking.

In situations where there's so many mobs that some are going to go untanked in some circumstances, the hardiness of a rogue through higher AR and dodge makes them less of a liability than a caster.

As well, a rogue will ensure that you get that locked chest that seems to be present in every 5-man instance that I've done.

While I think the discussion would be fine if it were in the context of raids, where you might not be able to take advantage of your full suite of abilities. In the context of a 5-man group I feel it's not warranted. In the 5-mans which I've been in I would decide between bringing a rogue or a mage based on player skill. In my eyes, they are both high DPS. The mage has more reliable CC, but the rogue has higher survivability. Whoever's better at controlling their class is the one I would invite.

Were it a pug, and I had no prior knowledge of either the mage or the rogue, I would probably take the rogue. Because he is just less likely to die. If he pulls aggro he can vanish, or hit evasion, or at least take more hits than the mage allowing me to pull the mob off him. But I don't care about pug rogues anyways.

In a 5-man, personal DPS is far less important than personal responsibility for your situation. Kind of the opposite from your typical pre-TBC 40man.

 

• Digo

This is interesting, not so much for actually using mutilate, but the idea of reactive attacks. Currently, rogues only have one, and it's a talent. Riposte. Why aren't there more abilities like this in the game?

Example:
Ninja Attack: puts a debuff on the target that lasts 2 seconds. Any other rogues that use their Ninja Attack during this time will do (big numbers) of damage. Ninja Attack costs 60 energy and is on a 10 second cooldown.

 

• Glass

Just a side note: I would love to see some of the alliance raiders who are used to having paladins, start running thier groups with no paladins and substitute shaman instead just to get a taste. It just boggles the mind (from a horde perspective) to see someone say they've never had to worry about aggro. Make sure you run a group with shaman that drops soe and wf at all times and make sure you have no paladins.

A few months before they announced the paladin/shaman availability a buddy of ours (we all work together) who is in an alliance raiding guild (and has never played horde aside from herbing alts) actually said to us "paladins don't make that big of a difference, you wouldn't even notice". We could have slapped him. Nevermind the fact that my first 60 was a paladin and I was in a guild with him...

We asked him how many 40 mans he'd run without paladins.. his response was "I think we did ony one time with only one paladin one time". They were on the emps in aq40 at the time (it was the highest instance in the game then). :(

Sorry to digress...

 

• Apate

I think than one avenue in which Rogues could bring more versatility and desirability to a group is with new poisons. It wouldn't require any great changes, and there is the potential for cross-class synergy among other things.

See you, auntie.
"lol" is not a period lol
You don't need a machine to make a rainbow. For rainbows are made of happy thoughts, and dreams, and chocolate unicorns, and gumdrops, and licorice sunsets, and fuzzy gumdrop bears, and sugar-coated chocolate gumdrop land.

Originally Posted by DeeNogger I am coming for you Apate.

 

• Glass

The reactive idea is interesting. It would be nice to have a similar buff to the druid buff but maybe make it a bleed effect that the rogues could keep up on the target.

Talent called "Bloodbath" 60 energy 45 second cooldown

Initial rogue starts the debuf on the target (effect could be a shadow bleed effect, so all targets could be affected)

Debuff lasts for 45 seconds and can only be sustained by having another rogue use the "bloodbath" ability during the time it is up. Kind of like a melee ignite.

During the time the target is affected with bloodbath, each member of the rogue's party gain 3 energy/25 health/25 mana per crit of the rogue in their party (regular melee or special).

Something like that...

Just throwing numbers out there while distracted at work, so of course they would need some serious fiddling. You get the point.

 

Cel

That would be such a fun skill in both PvP and PvE... I really like that idea. Rogues working together is not really done beyond saying something like "you cheapshot, I'll ambush" in PvP. Having skills where we can benefit from things others do would be very good.

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell

Alpha is recruiting... go go.

 

Gort

I don't want to think about how familiar that sounds. And I'm HORDE. Anyway.


Reactive abilities would be quite enjoyable... Part of K'T I enjoyed was the sudden coordination the rogues needed on interrupt, with a sudden increase in the amount of "whoa, I'm on a team, that's right..." as opposed to the usual "Zzzzzzstabstabstabzzzzz...". And I fully support anything "ninja".


With regard to 5man utility though, I oddly feel exactly the reverse: I'm far more useful in a 5man than anything larger. I have a ridiculous number of "OHSH*T!" buttons, be it evasion, blind, etc, and every 5man I've done so far has mobs susceptible to those. Nothing gamebreaking, nothing "required" bar lockpicking to get into the chests, but there's a nontrivial amount of times a quick blind on a loose caster, evasion on something out of CC, or vanish->shadowstep->CS on something heading for a healer has come in handy. More along those lines would be great. It's outright boring just stabbing things over and over and over. Restful, meditative, sure, whatever, and I'd miss the ability to play stinking drunk with only a 10% reduction in effectiveness, but anything along the lines of utility skills, threat mods to others, etc would be vastly preferable to simple upped damage output. Hell, give me a real use for Distract.


Also, sudden thought. Sap no longer has a heartbeat resist, and I don't think it can miss/be resisted, so I do believe we have the only unresistable, 100% full-duration, non-aggroing CC in the game. (May be wrong, though.)

 

GrizleyCQ

By the same token the alliance rogues are drooling over a shaman buffing the hell out of them. ;) I grouped my rogue and shaman for pling quickly through the lower levels and once the shaman got windfury... man it was sick. It was only rank one so there was almost no atk bonus just a free swing, but was killing level 40 elites in SM on a single SS and then procs from windfury, sword spec and HoJ.

Still, even without salv a good tank is nearly impossible to pull agro off of. My blessing choice was always might, kings, salv in that order. It wasn't common for me to be without salv, but it wasn't unheard of either.

 

• Glass

Haha, alliance rogues are drooling over shaman buffs because they've never had to worry about aggro.



I think 'nearly impossible' might be stretching it a bit. If I want aggro, I can get it. The point is the wiggle room for doing dps is greatly increased with a buff like salvation. Much more than what might (or windfury) gives you. Threat reduction is typically much more valuable than stats as far as dealing raid damage goes.

That's for a rogue, we already have threat modifiers (if you want to really count feint). Having salvation just lets us do that much more damage. Now imagine being a dps warrior on the horde with no salvation... not a pretty picture.

 

GrizleyCQ

I think nearly impossible is about right. Our main tank played a little game with rogues for a while, let me get the mob in position, then go all out and try to get agro. It basically never happened when the mob was a threat. If the tank is taking enough damage to chain his abilities plus heroic on every swing a rogue just doesn't do enough damage to pull it off.

If its on a stratholm mob hitting a tank in dreadnaught, or its a fury warrior acting like a wannabe tank sure, a rogue has agro np. In a normal raid situation though its really really hard to pull agro as a rogue.

 

• Glass

it was because you had salvation! :P

Seriously though, I would tend to agree that it's not easy to get aggro. Only when you really don't want it do you ever get it... I've had unlucky strings of wf crits where I spiked so bad I got slapped around (I'm talking literally 10-12 crits in a row with double wf procs). I've also had odd times where I ran off like an idiot and got back to number 1 on threat after vanishing at 70% (flamegore etc.). But yes, most of the time it's not a problem. Like I said, salvation is a huge margin for error.

Now are you talking rogues playing sensible? or just going balls out as dagger with no salvation, feints, vanishes, and using wf? Because a rogue playing stupid can get threat pretty easily on the horde side.


Back on topic. I'm extremely jealous that hunters got the threat redirect. That screams rogue! :)

 

alienangel