Kaiza

Updated! With solutions I though off, and were covered by many other people in this thread, or though up by them. Also, some clarfications.

Before I begin, I'm obviously going to cover the PVP issues, and I hope this doesn't seem like a pointless complain thread, as I'll try my best to be as clear and constructive as I can. Basically I'm trying to get constructive opinions of others on this topic, and I thought this would be the best place for it. The following is written based on the new changes Blizzard has released about the PVP trinket change, and I am judging from what they said in THAT post. Also, a few points of what I'm talking about, with the trinket changes, is somewhat covered in another post made. In any case, to the main post, which is going to be very, very long.

Rogues, are arguably one of the weakest classes when it comes to 5 vs 5's. Our damage isn't top notch in the long run. Our survivabiltiy is a joke when our cooldowns are down. Our CC we bring is limited, and almost all of it can be removed, with the exception of sap, which is VERY easy to avoid. Almost all other classes bring a certain "ace in the hole" besides us, whether it's damage, cc, healing, or a certain extremely powerful class only ability.

Now, I'm going to specify the previous points I made.

First of all, rogues are a very powerful class in the first 15-20 seconds in the game, when our cooldowns are up. As time goes on, our power diminishes. Rogues are THE most cooldown dependant class in the game, in all aspects of PVP. As the game drags on, our damage, mobility, cc, all packaged with cooldowns, are gone for the most part. Meanwhile, a warrior is hitting as hard as ever, smashing faces in with his Deep Thunder/Stormherald, and much superior stats. We have no reason we shouldn't be attacked, and as soon as they force us to blow what we have, we can get assist trained into oblivion.

Our abilities are not unique in any way. Other classes can do DPS, and much more, while having better burst or sustained. Other classes can provide either a deadly debuff making them get the brunt of damage, windfury to make warriors deadlier, or provide something like bloodlust, turning every member of your team into a powerhouse. We have expose armor, which reduces armor...by less than 3000 full talented, 5 points. Our only viable cc, blind, can be removed by 3 classes, 1 of which is on practically on almost every arena team worth a shit, another who are very common. We dont provide any lifesavers like a healthstone, or a shield, or a heal, or really anything. Our stuns aren't apparantly with trinkets, and stun resist gem/talent, and we aren't even close to being as good interrupters as a mage per say. To make it even worse, the few seconds we COULD buy for our team wtih a well placed blind, now a good player can instantly remove that from HIMSELF within a split second. No more waiting for it to be dispelled.

Despite all of this, there is though one style of 5 vs 5 play we can fit in too, and that is the Insta Gib team. Stack around 4 DPS with 1 paladin, with heavy CC, who can nuke a target down in a few seconds, and you get what I'm talking about. The only qualifying tournament teams in the U.S. and Europe taht werent forced to play rogues used that set up. The #1 team in Europe's qualifyer brackets happened to use a rogue, 2 warlocks, a shadowpriest, and a paladin set up. The only thing is, they only gott to #1 when Grammer Police (running a warrior, shaman, paladin, priest, mage cookie cutter set up) quit. That's because a coordinated team with a more balanced set up, who are good enough to manage outlasting can easily beat an "insta gib" set up. Sure, they might lose for the first few matches, when they dont know what they're up against, but afterwards the "insta gib" team doesn't really stand a chance.

Now, the things we were good at were 1 vs 1 (to an extent), 2 vs 2, and 3 vs 3. Of course not as prominent as warlocks per say in any of these, we held our own. Now with the PVP trinket changes, as far as we've been told, it's going to get worse. There are some cc's that everybody and their parents can break, thanks to the PVP trinket/racials, but then you have abilities like blind and cyclone, the latter almost making or breaking a class, and blind being a rogue's most useful CC, on a 3 minute CD, and even with 3 classes who can remove it, it's still a very good CC. As mentioned, we are being denied the privelage of even that, which makes us even worse, at the few things we were good at.

Now, for the latter part of this post, you may argue that none of the things I mentioned really matter. Well, duels obviously don't as far as gameplay goes, although I personally think it's a great way to understand you classes, other classes, and up your reflexes. 2 vs 2's are obviously very rock-paper-scissors like, but 3 vs 3, while still having some of those flaws 2's have, are still more entertaining, more balanced, and you can make money off it with a top notch team in WSVG . Even as a non hybrid, we are still not the best of anything , "good" to mediocre" at some things.

In any case, I'd first like to see the reception to this thread before I put forth any solutions. Besides, are far as I know my points suck and you guys stopped half way through this thread was so bad. If your still reading, one final note.

This thread takes in the problems for a rogue only, as I've been playing one for over 2 and half years, going through a decent amount of PVE progress, while mainly putting forth my time into PVP. I don't play a ton, and I have been inactive for a good amount of time, or played very little in some cases, which is why my gear isn't exactly the best. I would say that I know my class very well in PVP though, Think of this thread what it will, but I definately don't mean it as the end all and be all of things, nor do I think that whatever I say is undoubtedly correct.


A few people I have noticed think we shouldnt compare ourselves to warriors. Let's see, warriors are the only other pure melee DPS class in the game, just with much, MUCH higher prominence in almost every aspect of PVP (and of course in PVE, but not as melee DPS usually). Since people here are taking 1's seriously, rogues have it extremely bad in duels vs well geared people, and warriors themselves aren't the best either. 2 vs 2, warrior and paladin has an even greater edge with the new pvp trinket, while most rogue combos took a HUGE nerf because of it. 3 vs 3, most top teams include a warrior, much more frequenlty than a rogue, and 5 vs 5, it's no competition.

Now tell me, why is it so unreasonable that rogues would like to be as useful as warriors?

Now, as for solutions, Lane hit many of them right on the spot.

Mobility: We have terrible mobility, we can get kited very easily. Our only speed boost is on a 5 second cooldown, with a really long duration that we dont need for the most part. On the other hand, warriors have intercept...

Solution:
Sprint is changed to a 30 second cooldown with a 5 second duration. Imp sprint now also reduces the sprint CD by 5/10 seconds. Ther Season 3 gladiator set reduces sprint by 5 seconds.

Damage: Warriors and warlocks if given the chance, both do much higher damage than us as tim goes by. It doesnt matter if warriors dont have infinite rage, but numbers don't lie.

Solutions: Here's quite the assortment of solutions. Allow EA to be talented to provide 3/6% damage boost, undo normalization, let MH weapons have a slower speed, let windfury work as well as poisons, make some sense out of other classes being able to have much better defensive AND offensive stats than us. Maybe combined a bit too imba, but as a melee DPS class, with low armor, there should be NO reason why we shouldnt be outdoing everybody elses damage by a long shot when we're actually on the target.

CC: Now with the new trinkets, our CC has gone to dust. Before, 3 classes could remove our what I'd say would be the most powerful CC, blind. Now, everybody can remove it. Sap with all the requirements couldnt be even considered a good CC, since it was very rare you would get it off. We also can't silence from 32 feet away. Mages for example, not only have better survival as a cltoh class, and better burst (especially if they're ap frost), they have the best CC in the game. Sure poly can be broken, but it can be spammed from 32 yards away, breakign the sync of the opponents team.

Solution: Give us some sort of powerful CC. Blind is on a 3 minute cooldown for most arena specs, but there is absolutley NOTHING about it that justifies it being that long of a CD. I dont know how , but gives us SOMETHING, or make us stronger in other fields to compensate for it.

Group Synergy: The most important factor, a grand total of nearly everything, and then some. How well do we fit in with most groups in 5's? There is no decent balanced group with a rogue on it. None. The only group we belong to, as stated is Insta gib groups, who most balanced groups will be able to outplay, outmanuever, and outlast.

Solution: Basically the last 3 solutions. I can't think of anything for now that would be a good addition but won't overpower us. Let us have better survivablity so our healers dont have to go crazy with their mana on us? Give us a powerful debuff near the likes of MS? Let us increase the damage of our group by a long shot? I don't know what, but I'm sure some creative minds can think of something perfect.


Thusly, I close this gigantic wall of text. I think everything is covered as far as PVP goes.

 

DecimusGarona

The biggest problem with rogues in 5v5 is that they really suck at assist training somebody. You fear a rogue, or use some other CC on him, it becomes very difficult for him to regain melee range on his target even after the initial CC is broken. In 5v5 you can't CC or lockdown everyone capable of CCing the rogue, and he quickly becomes useless against organized teams that know how to control rogues.

Warriors, the other melee class, have the best abilities to break and become immune to fear. They can also intercept to close the gap when being kited. Also MS is not dispellable, whereas wound poison is.

Rogues are very brutal in 2v2 and 3v3, but a lot like druids they lose a good portion of their effectiveness in the bigger fights. However, I do think that a 5 stealth team in 5v5 is something that could be explored more, especially with the growing popularity of all cloth teams to counter MS warrior/paladin teams. I can only imagine the chaos caused by multiple shadowstep rogues bursting down one person, then vanishing and repeating, to turn a 5v5 into a 5v3 very quickly.

 

tristantio

There seems to be a balance in that classes which excel on small teams such as warlocks/rogues become less powerful as more players are added to the picture in regards to a "balanced" team.

While there are 5v5 teams that have altered their "balanced" setup to aim towards a warlock/shadow priest focus, this type of setup is heavily caster and many times doesn't contain a warrior.

Couldn't a rogue/druid heavy 5v5 eventually be the setup that overcomes the shadow priest/warlock groups?

The rogues are able to strip off all the DoTs and should be able to dps down a UA warlock (no soul link) quite quickly while keeping the paladin blinded/cycloned even with a PvP trinket and bubble.

Also in regards to rogue survivability, wouldn't it help if you added more PvP gear to your setup? While your rating is good it seems you're wearing level 70 instance blues and suffering by only having 71 resilience and 8000 health.

Ming has a similar spec to yours (18/43/0) but maintains the same attack power while having 365 resilience and almost 11k health.
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...s+Blade&n=Ming

Her 3v3 rating is quite impressive too, running a priest/warlock/rogue setup.

 

PsiVen

This, I think, is the root of the problem. Rogues ironically lack the mobility of warriors and frankly even Ret paladins will have an easier time staying on target. Serious changes to sprint would put rogues much more in line with other classes IMO.

 

Gulaja

It must be noted that Blind can now be removed by the new PvP trinket.

 

Veng

Rogue mechanics simply make it so that as the number of people you fight increases, rogue damage, utility, and survivability drastically decreases.

The fact that combo points are removed from a target when you add one to another target is really terrible at this stage of the game. Pre-BC, being able to stack combo points on a target and having them stay while switching targets would have been fairly broken due to the fact that everyone had low HP and resilience didn't exist. In today's PvP, when I run over to the paladin to gouge, etc, I have effectively ruined whatever time I spent building up combo points on my previous target. This makes no sense and really needs to change.

Sprint should have been made more like Blink during the rogue revamp, but instead we're stuck with a garbage skill that becomes mediocre when talented. 25 second cooldown, Improves movement speed by 70%, Breaks immobilizing effects and makes the user immune to stuns / immobilizing effects for 3 seconds is what the skill should be. If they don't implement something like this, the least they could do is actually make Vanish useful for anything other than breaking immobilizing effects.

Resilience cripples rogues more than any other class in the game (other than feral druids). When a warrior can MS hit for as much as I can SS crit, theres no question which melee class will be more desirable in an arena setting.

The survivability and CC capability of Mages needs to be nerfed drastically in order to allow rogues a place in 5's as well. The Hypothermia debuff was a good start, but doesn't detract from mage survivability nearly enough. It's really the same situation as warriors on the offensive end; Mages provide reliable CC with better survivability from range, so why bring a rogue?

I don't know about most rogues, but I'm really disgusted with the way our class plays right, especially in 5v5's. To me, Cloak of Shadows seems like such a blatant band-aid for the fact that rogues were awful in PvP towards the end of BC beta.

Theres much more to the problem, but these are just some of the things that I've been thinking about while I watch warlocks whine about being "gimp" in guild chat and ride the bench on my 5v5 team.

 

tristantio

Warriors are slightly better in terms of removing CC with intercept, however warriors also have no CC beyond hamstring/piercing shout/intimidating shout.

You can't compare a warrior with a paladin keeping freedom on to a rogue who doesn't have this luxury, it's only a valid comparison if the rogue AND warrior both have this luxury. Also while a caster can still cast with a warrior beating on them, this is next to impossible with a rogue on the caster. I know as a warlock I'd much rather be getting beat on by a warrior than a rogue in most cases (Although perhaps this would be different if I were an orc warlock).

 

◊ Vontre

This is all the same old trite, and to be very blunt, people who are better than you will find better ways to play their class (as some first place teams already have) rather than accepting this self-defeating circle jerk of whining. A few of you have valid points and if you think rogues have some minor issues/tweaking that could be done, you are right. Pretty much every class does. If you seriously think that being able to break all snares every 30 seconds would be even remotely close to balanced you have no idea how balance in this game works. You're not getting intercept, and rogues do not serve the same purpose as warriors. Think about what you can do instead of what you'd like to do, you'll get a lot farther that way.

www.magegraf.com
www.magegraf.com/mage_dps.zip

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

 

Monsanto

I think the main thing is that arena PvP is generally punishing to melee. Melee are heavily penalized by server lag, numerous snares, etc. Warriors are the exception to the rule (somewhat) because of intercept, which is a really powerful ability, and especially so for arena. During the initial moments of a match, a rogue is equivalent to a warrior in terms of being able to keep on a target (due to sprint/vanish), but as mentioned, that effectiveness completely disappears for a rogue, whereas a warrior can do it every 15 seconds.

The combo point mechanic is also far inferior to rage or mana mechanics in the arena, since target switching is a vital part of doing arenas. When I'm playing my warrior, I can do driveby hamstrings, or swap targets when I get frost nova'd and someone new walks in range. Rogues are severely punished for changing targets.

Druid: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...hol&n=Monzanto
Warrior: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...n=Thundershaft
Warlock: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...gos&n=Valdamar

 

Veng

And I think you're a moron. See how that argument works? Yep, thats right, it doesn't.

Love the irony of this part, too

 

◊ Shadowed

Why? He's right.

The only big issue I have in arenas is the fact that I'll get latency sometimes which requires spending 3-4 seconds spamming Shiv before I can actually get crippling off.

 

tristantio

I think he's referencing it in regards to being a rogue. Also rogues have deadly throw which is good for snaring a running target while warriors don't. The rogue is equally capable of having a paladin give him blessing of freedom.

In the event there is a team with a warrior and a rogue and only one paladin, of COURSE the rogue is going to be kited/snared if the warrior is getting freedom and the rogue isn't. If the rogue was getting freedom instead, it would be the warrior who was being kited.

Currently a rogue being on a casting class completely shuts down that caster, even if a 2 minute trinket can be used to remove one form of stun. If a warrior is on a casting class this is not the case. That's the big difference, while a warrior can maintain DPS he can only interrupt once every 10 seconds with a pummel or shield bash. The rogue has so many more caster interrupts available it's not even funny. Also you can't really say "well warriors can have mace spec" because theoretically a rogue could go mace spec for additional ability to lock down an enemy caster.

 

tristantio

Also you have to take into consideration ALL racials when changing any basic class mechanics.

If rogues could remove all snares every 30 seconds with a new type of sprint ability, what happens when you have a gnome rogue capable of a complete snare removal every 30 seconds, and an additional removal every 1 minute?

He would be able to remove all snares from himself 3 times per minute, basically creating a death sentence for whichever target he's focusing on (or at least a complete shut down of the caster present).

 

PSokar

I could not agree more with this statement. Rogues do not have the same role as warriors, and probably never will. Last night my team played with a rogue a bit and tacked on 40 points. Sure rogues could use some tuning; but they are by no means "broken". It depends quite a bit on the team, the gear, and the player but there are rogues on high rated teams out there.

I think a big part of the problem is a lot of rogues are confused about how to play, and their team is even more confused about how to play with them. I felt like I learned something about what rogues should be doing in certain set-ups last night. Ironically having the rogue stay in stealth while our warrior wailed on the other team who kinda sat around waiting for our rogue to appear and half-heartedly dps'ed the warrior in the meantime turned out to be pretty effective.

 

◊ Shadowed

When we were playing 5vs5 on my Warrior with Paladin/Warrior/Rogue/Shaman/Mage, I rarely got BoF, the times I actually had it was the rare case of a Hunter who traps the middle of BEM and I need to get over the piller which doesn't matter anymore.

I'd rather a Rogue have BoF really, they can do a better job of keeping a target nearby with snares and stuns then a Warrior can.

 

Gulaja

I think this is a key statement here. Of course the warrior will get BoF over the Rogue, he has better DPS. Than again, arenas aren't all about DPS!

I think the biggest issue with Rogues is Warriors. I just don't think they work well with Warriors. Since most 5v5 groups have warriors, there is obviously going to be issues at the 5v5 level. Rogues do best when they aren't being attacked and they can turn a situation into a 1v1. Warriors do the best when they are being attacked (death, snares, and stuns not counting) and the situation is *not* a 1v1. Since it's generally easier to kill a Rogue than a warrior, and you can also shut down his DPS by attacking him, a Rogue is a better target choice than the Warrior.

When Rogues are teamed with classes that are more of glass cannons than them, they do best. This is a big reason IMO why Rogue/Priest 2v2s are so popular in the bracket. The Priest is the obvious target and the Rogue can DPS scottfree for the most part.

Anyways, I recently started a 3v3 with Hunter, Rogue/Warrior, and Paladin. The Hunter and myself are always in, the rogue and warrior switch in and out depending on time of night. We are stuck below 1700, but I believe that's simply a gear & strategy issue as our Rogue was wearing greens. Once we figure out strats that compliment our playstyle and can consistantly win for us, we'll do much better. Hunter/Rogue/Pal combo seems to work because a hunter is just as important of a target for some combos as the Rogue is. Envenom + Holy Shock + Hammer of Wrath also become legitimate tactics for BoP.

 

Sagerix

And honestly, that's a huge issue that isn't brought up very often. Last week I got a 5 point Kidney Shot off on a druid, watched the stun animation on him, stood right next to him and was repeatedly told I was too far from my target to attack. I ran around the area hoping to find a spot the game was happy with, nothing. 6 seconds later the druid rubber banded forward 10 feet and I had wasted 5 combo points on giving him a breather.

I wouldn't think much of it if something similar didn't happen every single week at this point. I'm sure there are other classes impacted by it, but I can't imagine any of them impacted as much as Rogues are by it.

 

Gulaja

It seriously impacts any twitch-based class. This was one of the reasons I switched from Rogue to Paladin.

 

DecimusGarona

If you think it is an issue for rogues, try playing a feral druid where the melee range is INSIDE your character. Its one of the main reasons I initially switched to restoration, because as a feral I just didn't have a good enough connection to actually hit anyone in the arena. Your opponent has to stand still with their back to you like a short bus allstar if you want to get a shred off.

Besides feral druids though, I'd say that dagger rogues clearly have it the worst. I played an alt rogue to 60 a long time ago, and PvPing with daggers was quite brutal.

 

Kaiza

I should have put more emphasis, but mobililty is one of THE biggest problems we have. We can't get in or out. We can't do the type of crazy assist trains that Pandemic pulled on Flow for example.

If I had my choice, I would want sprint on 30 second CD, lasting only 5 or so seconds. Imp Sprint would reduce the CD by 10 and remove snares PVP set would reduce it by 5, making it somewhat mirror intercept



This was an extremely dum