Look, I'm no rogue nor do I have a ton of empirical evidence, but I take exception to this. How does a perfectly played DPS class require *any* healing? If a mob is expertly tanked, the dps class doesnt pull aggro, and CC is respected, WHERE IS THE ROGUE TAKING DAMAGE? That to me, thats what perfect play implies. Why does a rogue magically require maintenance more than a warlock, mage, hunter? What instances are you doing in which they require more healing in every single fight? I can think of some circumstances (first boss in Auchenai crypts, the melee range bleed debuff) where a rogue may situationally take more damage, but even at the same time he's dealing MORE damage than mages/warlocks due to the aura of that fight. No clear superiority.

Our current experiences with 10/20 mans (PRE TBC IM NOT PSYCHIC NOR EXPERIENCE WITH KARAZAHN) flat out contradict your assertion that rogue talents will be useless. The smaller the scale of a raid, the more influence that one kidney shot has, but then again Sartura could be kidney shot as well. If you're upset that you can't stun bosses that's fine, I'm upset that I can't fear them or death coil them too. Big whoop. Trash is still a good portion of the time we spend in PVE and trash is pretty susceptible to rogue CC. If they're immune to rogue stuff, what hunter/warlock/mage abilities are mysteriously working on them?

Cleaves and AOE's. Ranged classes don't have to worry about them, but rogues do =(. Although we do not know what the big 25 man's will be like yet, I bet the mobs will have AOE's just like mobs in Naxx/BWL/AQ40 etc.

Massive mana burns. Every "shadowcaster" type mob does them, that is a hell of lot more bothersome than occasional cleave damage which can't you still avoid by positioning behind the mob?

I love bringing rogues to instances as opposed to our aggro-loving magi and warlocks....Especially considering most of ours are some sort of Dagger using build and they all have Imp. Sap...One of the most flawless Auchenai Crypt runs I have ever done involved 2 rogues (one Mutilate/Sub, the other Shadowstep), a Resto Shaman, an 41/5/10 warrior, and a Beast Mastery hunter, all of us between 65-67...we were pretty much fighting just one mob at a time during the humanoid pulls, and the elite skeleton, and the non-elite skeleton pulls were no problem. Shirrak went down ridiculously fast and Maladaar was a complete joke...I'm probably not going to understand the rogue complaints for a while, never really noticed a problem on my 60 raiding rogue either...Then again, i'm a "The glass is half-full...of beer!" guy as opposed to "Aw, i'm down 1/2 a glass of beer" guy.

And nobody really knows how useful a rogue is going to be in a 25-man yet anyways...

Asscleaves, whirlwind, trample ( I think thats the name of the melee AOE destroyers/giants had?) are a few examples of AOE that are not based on position. . In Naxx there were tons of mobs I just did not want to melee because of their AOE. Deathknight Wing/ Abom Trash were really bad for Fury Warriors and rogues.

Prayer of Mending is pretty amazing for AOE upkeep on the melee classes, since if one of you is getting hit by an AOE odds are someone else right next to you is too, thus keeping Mending where it needs to be for best use. I can't wait til we get some chain heal up in this bitch too.

If rogues could stealth the whole group enabling the raid to skip past most of the trash and just do the bosses, or skip past the early bosses too, they'd be amazing.

Sadly that won't happen in this game.

For off the wall ideas, they could make bosses gimmicky like in some other games (FFO I think?) in that they have different random weaknesses or abilities based on what day it is, and it could require a rogue to figure out what you have on any given encounter. Seems rather artificial though, unless they devoted far more time than they will to making it complex enough to be interesting for the rogue.

I honestly don't think there's anything particularly new and fun we can come up with that a rogue could usefully do, since all the standard tasks are already provided for in non-gimmic encounters. Whatever utility could be added to a rogue would either be:

a. some boring incoming damage increasing or outgoing damage reducing debuff
b. another aggro control ability that would be of limited use
c. some groupwide buff like the ones we already have on other classes (increased damage, increased AP, increased crit, regen of some sort).

Personally I think that a good raid solution is a per-rogue finisher that reduces mob armor by x amount. call it "expose armor" :p

But, it would stack with sunder and other rogues' "expose armor". Instant extra group viability, it's *almost* in the game as is, and promotes commraderie amongs multiple classes. 150 armor per combo talent point. Numbers out of the air: three rogues dropping 5 point exposes would decrease mob armor by 150 * 3 * 5 = 2250. It would stack fully with faerie fire and sunder, etc.

Another ability that might be nice is a per-rogue stackable poison (up to 5) "angel dust". It *increases* the targets armor, but also increases magic damage on target. 1% per application, so at the max, with 3 rogues, you could have 15% bonus to magic damage on target, but with a 15% armor increase. It'd be situational, but a way for run-in/run-out fights to still have a more meaningful contribution from rogues (eg gluth, gheddon). It also provides something for casters to be happy about with respect to rogues, and rogues wouldnt be completely non-damaging, as melee isnt hit *too* hard, and rupture would still work fine.

I'm in favour of any ability that adds more obvious group/raid utility to rogues but I have to say that I have no complaints about the current smorgasboard of abilities we have to offer. Imp Sap is (now) superb for CC, Imp Kidney Shot means ALL damage to the KS'd mob is increased by up to 9% (focus fire on that sucker) and Quick Recovery means that rogues are much easier to keep alive (or they can heal themselves more efficiently; 510 per tick for me with heavy netherweave bandages). Add Blind, up to a 5.5 second gouge that can be used regularly and poisons that cripple/slow casting and or limit healing and I really think rogues have a lot to offer. Not to mention the obvious ability to get out off trouble/aggro with vanish, lock picking and (in groups without warriors) expose armour.

But - and this is a big but - not every rogue uses these abilities to their potential prefering instead to focus (mindlessly) on DPS AND many of these abilities are not readily noticable to the rest of the group (they see no buff icons from the rogue etc). So - something small and nifty that a rogue can offer a group/raid as a buff would increase the perception of usefulness (that most connoiseurs know should exist anyway). As yet, though 70 is still a ways off for me, I have not noticed that rogue DPS is lacking as much as so many rogues on the rogue forums seem to think it is - gone are the golden days of out-DPSing everyone by a country mile in single target DPS in raids with a beer in one hand due to weapon skill advantages (that should never have been removed as they were) but we're still not at all shabby at putting out the pain.

I would have thought a moderate group buff that heightened the group's ability to detect stealth and reduced its chances to be critically hit by a small margin (call it Foresight or Lightning Reflexes or Anticipation or something) would do the job - just to get that icon on the buff bar would improve rogue desirablity immeasurably - because, as it is, there is a growing perception amoung the unenlightened that rogues are a solo class obsessed with PvP who have less to offer a group than anyone else.

I find gouge and blind to be near useless in a 5man. Their short durations may prevent a few hits on the party, but compare it to other in-combat CC abilities from mages and warlocks. And mages and locks can continue to dps while they have applied CC, whereas a rogue running around gouging/stunning mobs is doing very low dps simply because we have to run to melee range of mobs, let alone spending/losing combo points on short duration stuns and switching targets.

5 mans are just excruciating for me as it simply exposes how little the rogue class offers to groups in comparison to the other classes. Sap is our only golden goose and it requires 7 talent points in our 'PvP tree' to be useful.

Quick recovery and imp kidney shot are very nice, however I can only think of one PVE focused build that would be able to access those talents without gimping the build (combat mutilate).

Don't sell Kick short. And gouge used as an interrupt. Now that most people are using enemy cast bars you should be able to realise how useful they are.

And melee damage is rather useful in many situations at which rogues are far and above the kings.

I was talking about useful CC, not about interrupts (additionally mobs in previous 40 mans were often immune to gouge). Interrupts have always been useful since mobs have had casting graphics, however, as a 45 energy short disorient breakable on damage, gouge is woefully inadequate as CC in pve.

I just wish we had some sort of idea of what blizzard intends to do with rogues. 'Wait and see' isn't really helping the emo-ness

Rogues will be the primary damage class again.

Ravenholdt questline will be finished.

Rogues are the hands-down best interrupt class in the game if they are played correctly. Run mana tombs without a lot of CC sometime and tell me how it works out for you. I ran a nightmare group through the other day and I was practically begging for a rogue by the end (destruction lock, BM hunter, shadow priest, druid and me). Despite having 2 interrupts of my own and 16% damage reduction vs spells, the druid was working overtime to keep me up.

If mana burns start becoming standard issue on mobs, no one will be saying that "rogues take more damage". Not only does a caster lose dps endurance, he's also soaking up heals. That's vastly inferior to a rogue who's only going to need a renew or a spot heal.

In the magic heavy instances, I'm betting you're going to see a lot of people preferring rogues to most other dps. Not only can they interrupt, become magic immune, and provide limited cc, but their consistant attacks also cause "pushback" of the mob's casting bars. Rogues kill casters in a hurry in pve.

I'm about 99.999% sure no such thing exists. This is purely a player mechanic.

I wouldn't be too sure. Caster mobs seem to take a fair while to get casts off while I'm attacking. I don't know if that's due to my pet, my autoshots or my specials though. It's not guaranteed, so they presumably have some sort or "reduces the chance of being interrupted" talent. Perhaps it prevents melee interruption more than ranged?

I would concur. I've never seen a change in cast bar progression no matter how much I hit something.

Exactly. We really do interrupts/disruption quite well, and while, say, blind or gouge are no substitute for a sheep/trap, both will buy enough time for a sheep/trap to go off. Crippling/Mind-numbing are also of obvious use, and while both are replaceable, they require no effort on our part other than "hitting the mob", and there's something to be said for completely passive useful debuffs.

That is not a bad strategy. Burns a lot of long cooldowns but you effectively manage to keep one melee mob tied up for 15 seconds (and then die) and one mob of any type for another 15.5.

Of course you could compare it to a mage doing something like this...

Frostnova
Sheep
Coldsnap, Frostnova
Water Elemental Nova
Then (10ish?) seconds later another nova.

They control an unlimited number of melee mobs and one mob of any type for 24 seconds, and then after a couple seconds of non-controlled mobs they nova again. Thats quite a bit of control.

Or if you know there is a nasty pull coming a warlock can provide incredible amounts of control via AE Fear, Fear, pet and drain tanking. Not to mention banish vs elementals... and lets not forget they control demons and take 2 out of the fight with one spell. Remeber back when dire maul first went in? Warlocks soloing the 4 packs of demons nobody else could even come close to touching? Same thing again.

Rogue CC is improving with Imp Sap but its still not up to the standards of the other classes with crowd control options.

Grizley, am I missing something or is the example you're using not making a lot of sense? You're comparing a 41 frost mage using coldsnap to stagger aoe roots against a pack consisting of melee +1 other mob, assuming no resists, and arguing that because a mage CAN do that rogues SHOULD have parity? "Mages can arcane explosion, rogues can't so I guess we should change it so that blade flurry hits 5 nearby targets?" At what point can we simply say, the class was never designed to do that so that comparison is pretty silly? edit: Blowing a set of 5 minute cooldowns seems preferable to me than using a 15min cooldown (or whatever coldsnap is) anyday of the week as well, after all they're there to be used and 5 minutes implies you SHOULD be using them.

Exactly how often is that scenario coming up, versus the utility that rogues can bring to every. single. pull when it comes to incapacitate, interrupt, and stun effects? Is it remotely possible that blizzard just plain never intends to ever give a high burst, stealth-based melee dps class area of effect crowd control (drums of panic lol)? How often are we running into that scenario that rogues should fear for their jobs?

Also the warlock example is similarly confusing. Aoe fear is 8seconds/40cd on 5 targets, good good. Fear is our standard 20sec casted spell. Fear is a fickle CC but easily maintained by a good warlock- I'd put it above sheep/sap in terms of utility just because dots don't break it often, and we have curse of recklessness as a panic button if they're going somewhere bad. Banish is probably the best form of CC, unbreakable and highly specialized. If using enslave demon they're trading spell-lock/seduce/60+ group stamina/fat blue goober for the enslaved demon. It can break randomly (I don't use the spell frequently enough to have some sort of factual understanding of its mechanics... how often does the average rogue kidney shot again?), and then you're in a worse position than before. Again, very potent CC but highly specialized. The "take 2 out of the fight with one spell" I'm assuming means enslave one and make it fight another as offtank, and yeah that's pretty sweet (when you're fighting demons), but to compare it to the interrupts and stuns that rogues can apply pretty much across the board regardless of mob category, I think we're still pretty even.

Look let's be blunt. Rogues have a plethora of CC (which mainly take the form of stuns/incapacitates) that is applicable in almost every situation in the current 5 mans. Barring the highly specialized warlock demon/elemental CC abilities (which I admit are not really matched by any other class) I'm not seeing how we can argue that rogues are below par.

ps. On a tanget, as far as I'm concerned, banish/enslave are legacy abilities from a time when warlocks were not a complete class but still steeped in lore, similar in origin to the felsteed and ritual of summoning. Blizzard gave every meeting stone in the game the same functionality as summon because it made a lot more sense from a gameplay perspective. Things can and do change.

I'm fairly certain this is due to the fact that most mobs have longer cast times than players do for similar spells (i.e. no Improved Fireball) to allow for players to actually get interrupts off and also because there is no latency between the caster and the server. The server knows exactly when the entity is starting its casting instead of seeing it a few tenths of a second later when a player starts casting. If you watch the newly provided cast bars either the NPCs are interrupted or they get the spell off regardless of how much you pound on them while they are casting.

Perhaps if people would stop bundling stuns/interrupts/incaps with cc they would see how we are below par. You seem to be forgetting that none of our stuns/incaps are reliable. I know as a warlock you don't get too many dodges, parries, blocks or misses but everyone one of the things people loosely call "cc" are vulnerable to this, and once they're dodged, parried, blocked or missed we can't just turn around and do them again. They're either on a long cooldown (blind) or require the build up of combo points + energy + waiting out a long enough cooldown to make the "cc" useless (20 seconds for a kidney shot, a kick being 10 seconds, etc.).

We can't just "push the button again" if it fails.. unlike poly, seduce, etc.