saiyajinmaster

Unless they fix it before heavy raiding, even against immune mobs you get the haste from 2 piece assassination. I regularly KS bosses just for the haste before using my real finisher.

 

Mem

A rather UI related question but I guess I get more views for my questions here: what kind of slice 'n dice bar do you use at the moment (candybar won't work for some reason [probably because I run the localized version atm) and is there any mod that allows you to track your deadly poison stack on the mob (we did some 5 mans yesterday with three envenom spamming rogues and relying on guesswork here is rather tiresome :D).

 

• chalon

Kalman I thought you said you were going to quit, not roll a mage! :)

I skimmed through this thread, and I haven't logged in to WoW since September, and heck I really haven't read this forum since then. But I do see a definite parity with what people describe and the state of the Rogue in early WoW release.

Here are my assumptions:
1. Rogues are *mostly* still king of single-target DPS in sustained fights (ie., the Patchwerk style of fight) where melee does not have to worry about aggro or damage.
2. Rogues struggle with DPS when there's lots of target switching, as they always have.
3. Sap is a little more useful than it used to be, but for it to be viable in heroic 5-mans and raid zones you have to compromise DPS talents, which hurts your bottom line.
4. Other than Sap, rogues provide very little added utility to 5-mans in comparison to Mages/Warlocks/Feral Druids/Shadow Priests. This is really the way it has always been. (As an aside, how do rogues compare to hunters in both DPS and utility, has it changed from where hunters and rogues both were roughly equally "useless" in utility for 5-mans and can put out similar damage?)

So if those assumptions are correct, then the current state of rogues in the PvE game is something like this...
1. For 25-man raid zones, rogues still provide exceptional DPS (especially when factoring in raid buffs). They don't have much added utility, but in a 25-man raid you have at least a few spots where exceptional DPS is nice to have. So currently rogues are probably mostly "fine" for 25-mans. Though certainly, in some cases other classes' damage in 25-man may be too close for comfort.
2. In Kharazan, rogues can still provide pretty good DPS in comparison to other classes, though there are some parts which are frustrating due to anti-melee abilities/lack of utility.
3. In heroic 5-mans, rogues have a hard time of keeping a lead in DPS, and the lack of utility really hurts their contribution to the group.

Now during the MC-->Naxx period of time (so basically from Jan/Feb 2005 until killing KT), it really wasn't a big deal for competitive end-game PvE rogues if they were only so-so in 5-man instances. All the major end-game content was in 40-man raids, so the "serious" ones like myself only cared about min/maxing absolute DPS in the 40-man raid zones.

But now, a significant portion of end-game content is 5-man instances heroic or not. And it's not even a matter of choice, because there are hard requirements in that you HAVE to do lots and lots of 5-mans for faction. And then you have to complete specific heroic 5-mans as well all in the glorious progression chart of doom (yeah, switching to 25-mans certainly made raiding by default SO much more accessible! :rolleyes: ). So because of this, it's not acceptible anymore to just be "really good" at raid DPS and pretty bad at 5-mans. If they plan to keep moving forward with a 5-man/25-man synergy, then the current state of affairs really doesn't work.

I think part of the design of the rogue class, as bad as it sounds, is that it's never going to be a pivotal role in 5-man instances in the sense of say a Warrior, Priest, or Mage. Even if you have an excellent reputation and are well-known on your server, you rarely will get random tells from people asking you to come to such and such 5-man with them. So for those of you who want to feel like they're super-valuable in a 5-man, I'm sorry to say that it really isn't going to ever happen. If you want to feel like "the man" in a 5-man, roll a Warrior or Priest. In fact, I had rolled a Warrior alt a bit before I quit the game for that very same reason (though I quit before I was able to fully achieve my gear plan). Blizzard does not see rogues as being on the same desirability level as the holy trinity. It's a little unfortunate certainly, but it's not going to change.

That being said, it certainly doesn't mean that rogues don't need and can't have more utility. Rolling a rogue, you have to accept that you're never going to be "the man," but I think the understandable problem a lot of rogues are facing is not just the egotistical one of not feeling as valuable as someone else in your party. It's downright to the point where you feel almost like a hinderance to your party by being there. But then the catch-22 is how do you give more utility to a class that isn't designed to be a support class, but at the same time needs to have some unique contribution to the 5-man group?

I do think it's realistic to slightly buff DPS for rogues in the fairly short term, but I don't think you are going to see more than maybe a 2-3% DPS boost at the most. Blizzard most likely feels that giving any more DPS to rogues would make them too strong in raid settings. At the very least, they certainly aren't going to greatly tweak rogue DPS until they can see how it plays out in a raid setting. The thing is, all the theorycraft in the world done in this thread about rogue vs. feral druid or w/ever DPS is pretty meaningless in terms of raid DPS since almost nothing is known about a good portion of the 25-man fights in TBC. They are almost definitely going for a "wait and see" approach on tweaking DPS because they don't want to imbalance 25-man content before enough people have gotten a chance to go at it.

Now the interesting thing is that if you do go heavy Sub, you actually do have pretty nice added utility in 5-mans, especially from Imp. Sap and the like. But the problem this brings up is then you have a strong disparity between what is a "raid" spec and what is a "5-man" spec, which is very problematic when you're going back and forth (theoretically) between 5-man heroics and 25-man raid zones on a daily basis (and don't forget of course about PvP specs, but that's an entirely different story altogether).

But for combat/assassination, not so much so. The interesting thing is the originalish TBC Combat talents really would have been a great deal of help on the utility front. If they had kept the attack that dazed enemies, having enemies dazed in a 5-man is a really nice utility ability. They could have easily made bosses/raid mobs all immune to the effect of the daze, but at the very least it would have been excellent in 5-mans.

So I certainly don't envy the designer who's charged with improving rogue's roles in 5-mans. There's a fine line betwene making sure that rogues are a more useful in 5-mans, but at the same time aren't horrendously overpowered in 25-mans. I really do like the idea of some sort of AE stun as being part of the puzzle, though (I think cleave is more realistic than warstomp though, Grizley :P).

Apologies for rambling and all that, it's a bit late and as I've pointed out I don't really follow WoW that much anymore.

PS. Yes, I really haven't logged in since September, and have 0 desire to get TBC, especially after seeing this thread! :P

And hello to Wodin, Kalman, Pf, Grizley, Digo, and I'm sure other familiar people that I'm sure I missed in this thread. :ninja:

 

Darien

I don't know that I agree with you there. Unless there is something I am not taking into account, you should be able to sap fine in heroics w/out improved sap. I am specced 41/20/0 right now and every time I need to sap, I have been able to get back to the group without taking any damage whatsoever. Caster mobs are solved by sap then CoS on the way back to the group. The hunter type mobs (like in shattered halls) or mobs with charge (I can't remember if there are any) would be the only issues, depending on how hard they hit in heroics.

The caveat is you *must* sap one of the mobs closest to the group and you *must* sap near the edge of melee range while you are moving out of range toward the group. This gives you a several yard advantage on the rest of the pack and ample time for the tank to do his thing getting them off you.

 

Pigz

Even if you can do this 80% of the time your dead 20% of the time, and I really don't see that as viable even 80% of the time. The mobs hit hard, harder than you can think when I say hard. Things can crit you for over 9k easy, thats one mob. Most everything hits for 4k easy. On those times your dead your group has to deal with mobs that hit way to hard while losing 20-40% of their dps.

Not to mention pulls where you have 2 things that cleave and you want to be able to sap one thats near the back with the other.

It's just not viable, too many things can go wrong.

The only things that don't hit overly hard are the casters, which you can still pretty much solo while the rest of the group takes down other mobs. This allows you to imp sap a melee and offtank/solo a caster effectively taking 2 mobs out of the equation.

AS for are hunters still the same? No, they have increased damage and a new ability called Misdirection which allows hunters to select a target to gain all aggro from the hunter's abilities for the next few seconds.

 

GrizleyCQ

Hey Chalon.

One of the differences I see between release and now is at release rogues were completely unmatched at single target dps with a good weapon, especially as combat spec. That just got better for rogues as we moved through MC and picked up better and better dps gear while casters got more and more mana so they could sit there and throw 500 damage frostbolts for literally hours. Right now rogues are not a high dps class. At best they are an average dps class in a typical setting. They CAN be a high dps class but it requires a group consisting of a feral druid, a warrior, an enhancement shaman and 2 rogues. In that group they have no real guarentee of outdamaging any of the other classes and that makes baby jesus sad. Rogues should have a comfortable 10%+ damage lead on damage meters and I just don't see it. On Kazzak the warriors and casters blew the rogues away, in Karazan rogues can be top damage on some fights, which seems good at first... until you realize its only because the rogue is spending 100% of his time on dps while the mages are dispelling, sheeping adds and stealing buffs.

I would not want to sap on a heroic without imp sap. Most of those mobs will flat out crush you in a single hit. Sure if you sap the one nearest the group and sprint back and get lucky with lag and the mobs dont have ranged attacks and the mobs dont outrun you and the tank is able to taunt them all off you before they catch up it can work. But lets face it, without imp sap you are risking a death every pull without being able to CC as well as at least 2 classes that outdamage you.

The problem is really the buffs. Rogues have a very low baseline damage, my enhancement shaman does far more dps soloing than my rogue does. Of course at the cost of stuns and stealth. A big part of that is my shaman has a bunch of totems to drop for a very large buff to strength, agility, even spell damage. Or the totems can be utility. I <3 tremor totem. Now if you put the shaman and rogue in the same group the rogue catches up to the shamans dps, now say you are doing a 5 man or even a 25 man where you don't have the shaman in the group. The rogue does completely pitiful damage vs say a warlock who has very little need of buffs from other classes. The only real synergy for a warlock is a shadow priest and one in the raid will do fine. Mages don't even need that priest.

It almost looks like they are moving to fix that a little bit with the wrath of air totem, it buffs casters spellpower by 101, its probably not the dps that SoE and windfury are, let alone equal to the sum of all the melee buffs. But its a step in the right direction. For fun play around with Pf's sheet, put on the best gear possible and look at the unbuffed damage. Its pathetic.

I'm honestly not sure how they can go about fixing the buff issue, it could somewhat relieved if rogues had some sort of powerful buff themselves. Irony would be giving rogues a caster buff and lowering caster dps by 20% without a rogue present. Not that I expect anything like that to happen. My prediction is rogue dps increased by ~10%, maybe through glancing blow relief, and a slight utility buff. Probably making imp sap baseline.

 

• Digo

Ways to improve rogue DPS without breaking us for PVP?

- Change SND to a 6 second buff procced on special attack crits, enhanced by talents. This frees us up to actually use our 5 combo point finishers with more regularity and scales with our gear. (I.E. procs more as our gear gets better.) I always use 1 pt SND in PVP as combat daggers, but I doubt that's common for most rogues who spend most of their time trying to stunlock.

- "Mark of Death." The rogue casts a self-buff that a) puts the rogue into combat, b) breaks stealth. The buff lasts 30 seconds. Each second, the rogue gains 10 more attack power. Costs 60 energy, 30 second cooldown from being cast. This works just like having a Talisman of Ascendance for melee: your attacks do more damage over time and increases your efficiency by focusing on a single target. You're losing valuable buffed attacks by not attacking, which is often the case in PVP. (Gouge and wait, run away to stealth, etc.) Hence, giving us a PVE buff without making us broken in PVP.

- Weapon skill negates armor on higher level targets.

- Special attack crits have a chance to proc a buff that allows the rogue's attacks in the next 3 seconds to ignore armor.

 

• Glass

Wow, it sure was nice seeing Chalon post... Good to see you're doing well. The sad part is, he hasn't logged into wow in 5 months and he can sum up our current state in one post. He hasn't lost the magic.

 

Vhal

So, my guild just started heroic instances. I was anxious as, well, there's a lot of emo in this rogue emo thread.

I've come to the conclusion, though, that the sky is far from falling -- at least, for rogues in heroic content.

Rogues are, with the changes to CC, now a strong CC class. With as much damage as trash mobs are putting out in heroic mode dungeons, having a CC modality -- even one that can't be reapplied -- that is done pre-pull and is guaranteed to last full duration is useful. And then, on the pull, rogues can serve as an offtank for one mob -- cheap shot, (insert some CP-building move here), kidney shot leads to a dead mob with only a couple of melee hits (usually from delaying the KS long enough to build another CP) taken. And, even with enough dps in the group to "stun tank", I'm still pushing my "destroyed spec" 13/41/7 with 1545 unbuffed AP to top the damage meters by a good 25% over the hunter (and enhancement shaman) I normally group with. And while I can't really say how good their dps is compared to others of their class, between us we put out enough dps for "stun tanking" to be viable -- and I'm still comfortably in the lead in dps, even dropping a lot of CPs to control instead of raw dps. I do, though, get some of that dps back from the two-piece assassination set (6s haste on CS or KS), which after more play in 5-man content now looks like it was built specifically for that -- giving rogues some dps back from using control abilities in 5-mans.

So, meh. Heroic mode dungeons make me feel more useful as a party slot than non-heroic. Sap is very strong CC in 5-man stuff, as is stunlocking.

Later stuff, well, we're starting Karazhan next week. Things could change radically, but I'm not holding my breath.

I love my rogue :P

Edit: Haven't done TK heroics yet. They will, obviously, offer less utility for rogues.

 

Switchblade

Well after clearing shattered halls on heroic.. im about ready to kill myself. Pull..3k cleave spam die..Sap..Die..Oh shit dog aggro...5k bites..die.. Haha random aggro orge boss smash rogue in face with 3k fiery weapon proc ontop of the melee damage...die. This is probably the one heroic that takes a heavy load on the class.

http://ctprofiles.net/1031812

 

• Glass

Tell me what you're using and I'll tell you how bad the hunter/shaman are ;). No offense, but between someone who has upgraded all of thier gear in the expansion compared to those that were running in bonescythe before the expansion came out, I'm going to take the word of the bonescythe. I'm glad you're happy with your rogue, but many of us are competing on damage meters with folks that are the very tops of thier classes. If you are outdamaging a hunter in a heroic by 25% (and I assume the elemental by more than that) you should definitely buy them both new mice because they have broken ones.

 

Vhal

As I said, we do enough damage to make stun tanking viable.
Maybe that's the problem, this obsession with Bonescythe. I see so many tier3 rogues still wearing it at 70; the first pieces better than Bonescythe start dropping in Ramparts. Any rogue still wearing any strength gear at this point is going to be doing less damage than I am.

 

• Glass

Well I was going to edit out my post because I thought it was too bitter even for me. But I'll let others handle this one >.>

 

Vhal

Yeah, whatever.

You insult my other dps players, but we're putting out enough that 9 seconds of stun is viable offtanking in heroic instances and Sap is a stong CC, as it really doesn't need to last past 45 seconds.

I realize that I'm seeing more of an upgrade than a tier3 rogue, going from tier2-2.5 gear to TBC gear, but still -- Pf's spreadsheet agrees with my calculations; Ramparts drops superior-to-Bonescythe leather, and it just gets better from there. And yet, I still see lots of rogues with access to it wearing it. Of course, the set bonuses are good, but when you have multiple superior pieces in every slot...

 

• Glass

Good thing heroic instances don't boost the hp of the mobs. What are you going to do when we finally start hitting raids and sap and 6 second stuns are out of the picture? You do realize that nobody is complaining seriously about 5 man viability. We're all glad you're having fun, some of us were hoping for a little more from the class. Something that the one or two new gimmicks we got from 60-70 didn't offer us in our "review". The gap has closed bigtime between our class and hybrids that want to specialize, whether you want to admit it or not. Nobody cares about 5 man viability. Try to look past the glory days of MC and BWL with weapon specialization and look to the instances where we started falling off the table, that's where we are headed again.

 

◊ Kalman

Er. *Ramparts* drops leather that's better than Bonescythe? The only thing you can possibly be referring to is the Shifting Sash, and that's pretty arguable over the BS waistguard; losing any of the set bonuses makes it worse, to my mind.

There isn't this excess of upgrades over Bonescythe that you're referring to, either, especially when accounting for things like pre-existing enchants. Shoulder-wise, there are some excellent options.... unless of course your BS has the 30 AP enchant on it, in which case stepping down to the Aldor or Scryer enchant is a definite problem. Legs? Head? There are upgrades, sure, but not until 70 blues for the most part, especially on things with ZG enchants already on them.

Honestly, you sound like you're talking out of your ass (9 seconds of stun is viable offtanking in a heroic? No it isn't. It's a way to keep a healer from getting nuked long enough for a real tank to pick it up - that isn't offtanking any more than Frost Nova is offtanking), so people are going to assume you are.

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• Wodin

While I'm not going to say the sky is falling, I will note that despite the fact that Nihilum had three rogues in the Gruul raid, none of them cracked the top 10 on DMs.

The only two I'm really not looking forward to are Shattered Halls and Arcatraz. The AEs in Botanica and Mechanar are annoying but shouldn't be scaled up to instagib status like I'm expecting out of the former instances.

 

Vhal

Shifting Sash is equivalent with blue gems, Bracers of Finesse provide more raw dps (excluding set bonuses, as said), but once you start stacking multiple superior pieces, even the set bonuses go away in usefulness.
Um, that's the point -- when you hit level 70, there are plenty of upgrades to Bonescythe out there. Ramparts starts dropping pieces that are individually superior to Bonescythe -- it starts at the ilvl 85 blues. Once you have a set of up to 115 ilvl blues, you're doing more damage than Bonescythe. Note that I've posted in other threads that legs/head tend to wait until enchants (the good head enchant only available at level 70 anyway). Aldor exalted is only a slight drop in dps on the shoulders from the Sapphiron enchant.
Um, I've done it. 9 seconds of stun (plus the odd couple of hits you might take in the process) is enough time to take one mob down in heroic instances.

Standard five humanoid mob pull is sap, trap, tank, tank, stun and the stunned mob rarely hits me more than once if that.

 

Vhal

Don't have the experience there, and it might suck. *shrug*

Ugh, Shattered Halls is so buggy with stealth on normal I fear doing it in heroic.

 

◊ Kalman

8 Agi and 14 critrating vs 28 AP? That's by no means a clear-cut DPS upgrade; it may be more raw DPS for *your* gear, but there's also most likely a gearing where it isn't.

Equal DPS doesn't make an upgrade if you lose mitigation or stamina. There are good reasons to continue wearing Bonescythe up until you're running the level 70 5 mans, it isn't some stigma of "this person knows nothing" to see someone doing so.

That's nice, but no one really cares. You aren't a viable offtank; you can keep a mob occupied for 9 seconds. So can JUST ABOUT ANY OTHER CLASS. A mage can simply frostkite. Fearing classes can fear (assuming there's room, yes.) Hunters can kite, or trap, or... let's not even get into it. Then there are the classes that can actually offtank. Stunning a mob for 9 seconds is not offtanking, unless you want to call every class in the fucking game an offtank.

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