The biggest issue I have in PVP is the same one I've had since original beta: Server desync. I can't even count the number of times in arenas I've had to just give up on snaring/rooting someone who I was right on top of due to them being "too far away". I hate having to stand still until the server decides they're far enough way for me to Deadly Throw. Stun desync is one thing, but at least they're stunned. When I'm chasing someone futilely trying to save a teammate with a timely stun/snare and I have to run 5 yards ahead of the character to actually hit them, makes me hate being a rogue.
I haven't done any 5v5 so can't really comment there.
edit: Is there somewhere i could download movies of these tourney arena matches? Or see details at least?
Blind works wonders for resyncing out of sync players. I find it sad the number of times I use it just so I can catch up 1 yard to start doing damage. I tried looking at your armory, but the mouseover didn't happen to work. My suggestion would be to make sure you have Boar or Cat's Speed. This was absolutely huge for me.
I don't mind being kited by a slow affect (Frostshock, Hunters, CoE, Crippling, Hamstring, etc). The annoyance is when players like a paladin can just run directly opposite of you and you aren't able to touch him. The smart ones even keep you in combat so you can't mount. Don't even think about trying to catch up with someone in stealth.
Something that frustrated me and my rogue was the use of Adren rush and blade flurry ie would break stealth. I think that these (and some more) should not break stealth anymore would up the class some what.
Do not matter how much you play, you will never get the carrot.
TBC brought some nice goodies to rogues called Envenom, Deadly Throw (+ silence with Grand marshals gloves and gladiator ones)CoS and Shiv. So about rogues in general, i've been playing my rogue for 2,5 years as well and I don't feel much gimped, only some subtle things. Oh about CoS, it doesnt break a fear, it needs to be cast before the rogue senses a fear coming, so n onrogues, don't whine about its "imbaness" its indeed the thing we needed to not be completely disposed of in pvp.
I've read most of your posts and I partly agree with most of what's being said, tho the reason for this post is to bring up the warrior vs rogue a bit. Since i'm satisfied with my rogue against any other class, the warrior part is just hilarious. In arena you will face 99,9% MS warriors.
The difference between a warrior and a rogue for having its target in melee range and slowing it down is this. Warriors can spam hamstring upon a rogue. The rogue can only sprint (if improved) or vanish out of it, but then the rogue is still near and the the bleed effect (can't CoS out of it) will make him appear soon again and the warrior's charge is ready again to intercept you and hamstrings you again. Hamstring cannot be dispelled or CoS'd out. What rogues got is cripple poison, which can be dispelled and the warrior's charge will still work when crippled. This is the most annoying thing. Warriors have plate armor, do more burst + sustained dps than a rogue. have more attack power, more crit, more HP and have better abilities to keep its target in range.
MS Warriors vs rogues? Hah i'm not even going into that (Ok, just a little). The mythical name of a warrior should be that a warrior is the master of a 1on1 and therefore I don't mind the warrior having a larger chance to win, thats what he's for. That being said, If a rogue opens on a warrior (mythical name, assassin) the rogue should have more than 50% chance to win. If a warrior opens on an appeared rogue, yes the warrior should have a larger chance to win from it, but the way it is now... ATM there is about a 10% chance a rogue can win from a warrior with his average arena gear, resilience, stun resists.
(wowhead + armory are down atm). This will make you a rocket on the lose in arena 5v5, just look at all the goodies that you got twice with prep. Its even strong in raid dps, i'd say about 85-90% dps of a good combat rogue. I think that having a good rogue in 5v5, opening with BF, AR, Evasion, CS, Ghostly strike in the start can boost your team's winning chance a lot, pump 5 wound poisons in your target, have your teammates assist you and outdps the healing. Rogues are perfect for interrupting heals as well, no other class can do this as good as a rogue.
Last edited by Phadron : 06/08/07 at 5:03 AM.
Reason: Something to add
Blind works wonders for resyncing out of sync players. I find it sad the number of times I use it just so I can catch up 1 yard to start doing damage. I tried looking at your armory, but the mouseover didn't happen to work. My suggestion would be to make sure you have Boar or Cat's Speed. This was absolutely huge for me.
I don't mind being kited by a slow affect (Frostshock, Hunters, CoE, Crippling, Hamstring, etc). The annoyance is when players like a paladin can just run directly opposite of you and you aren't able to touch him. The smart ones even keep you in combat so you can't mount. Don't even think about trying to catch up with someone in stealth.
Oh I'm neither geared nor spec'd for PVP, it's just something I do with a feral friend for fun, and an offhand weapon. It's just that the desync thing has annoyed the shit out of me since beta. And it has cost me more matches/kills than anything else.
Oh I'm neither geared nor spec'd for PVP, it's just something I do with a feral friend for fun, and an offhand weapon. It's just that the desync thing has annoyed the shit out of me since beta. And it has cost me more matches/kills than anything else.
What is your latency then? I find it annoying, but nowhere near the problem that you seem to have. Our biggest problem happens to be Deep Thunder+Mace Spec.
Rogues really need some kind of mobility boost if they are to start approaching being viable in 5v5. Adjusting sprint's cooldown and duration downwards would be good, although to what level is anyone's guess. 30 second cooldown on sprint might be too good, but it should be reduced to a level where getting more than one use out of it per arena without being speced prep becomes a possibility.
The other big point is contribution while being the punching bag. Warlocks can still dot and provide COT while they are being trained on, mages have great tools to get away and can still drop a key counterspell while getting away from a train, hunters have more armor, hitpoints, and do their jobs at 41 yards away. Rogues just get completely shutdown when they get people on them (especially a mace spec warrior), and since they require melee range to do anything, the entire opposing team will likely be in range to do whatever they want to the rogue.
In a nutshell, I think the 3 main issues that need to be addressed for rogues in 5v5-
1) Mobility. 15 second intercept + piercing howl is straight up godly. Sprint is an absolute joke in comparison, even when talented.
2) A unique perk that only a rogue brings to the team. Warriors provide a flask for the whole team, warlocks provide healthstones, etc. Something like this that other classes can't replicate. Expose armor is underrated, but the combo point generation to really get use out of it only comes with mutilate. And on the 4 dps burn team the rogue is the only physical dps, so expose armor gets really marginalized there. Rogues need something unique.
3) A downside to training on the rogue. Something other than stacking the rogue's team with other, more threatening DPS classes like 2 warlocks and a shadow priest.
Sadly, we actually stopped running our rogue a little over a month ago, maybe a bit longer than that, and subbed in a hunter instead. It just works better, unfortunately. Useless is the wrong word to use, our lineup worked extremely well and would still work well, but for the majority of the season everyone, even teams we played over and over, always tried to kill our priest first, leaving me and the rogue to tear people in half, the rogue had imp. expose armor and was mutilate so we always had a 5 point expose on our target, and it was brutal. But then once the BG9/Ming propaganda really started getting out, everyone started training on the rogue instead of the priest. It made things considerably more difficult, we subbed in a hunter, and everything was just better. I wouldn't say useless, I would say "lacking".
You pretty much hit all the biggest points right on the spot. Inactive though, didn't he quti his rogue? In any case, he seemed like an extremely talented player from that small duel clip I saw, as far as finesse, reactions, and skill in general went. I think that is neccesary for any rogue who wants to even attempt to be on a good 5 vs 5 team, which is then obviously limited by the weaknesses of the class.
To having to picking out the main assist train target, to keeping himself alive, to trying to maximize CD usage, you have to be really coordinated. Also, I think in ideal situations mutilate would probably be the best spec considering the comparably great sustained, while having good burst too. The positional requirements are hard, but still.
If imp. expose armor happened to be something like "Increases damage from all sources by x/2x/', I think that would also be a huge buff to rogues. For a mutilate rogues, combine an exposed target with Kidney shot, providing 20% damage for the team, and 30% himself, That could provide a rogue with insane burst, basically death for the assist trained target.
Of course, I haven't blaanced tings out yet, but just a though.
Oh, and as for the trinket, it removes everything but Death Coil. There is no reason for deathcoil not to be affected by w/e, hopefully it'll be changed. If not, Blizzard will just capitalize on failure, and make good classes even better.
Originally Posted by Vontre
This is almost blinding. All I can say is you either didn't read what I said, or have no comprehension of it.
Ok, you first went on how overused this argument is, despite being VERY valid. You ask that all rogues just adapt with what we're given, but we're not given much at all. Your argument is pointless.
If mages had no sheep, or counterspell, or damage for examle, that's like somebody saying, "deal with it and make the best of it you can". Well without those things, you basically don't fit ideally in almost any role in the game. I understand what yoru saying, your points are just terrible.
You can't just have us ignore the points. You can't just say, warriors are MEANT to be better at 5's. What if a class was better than you at every aspect of the game, the one you were supposed to be competing with?
I don't mind being kited by a slow affect (Frostshock, Hunters, CoE, Crippling, Hamstring, etc). The annoyance is when players like a paladin can just run directly opposite of you and you aren't able to touch him. The smart ones even keep you in combat so you can't mount. Don't even think about trying to catch up with someone in stealth.
My rogue isn't my main anymore, but when I did pvp on him I found this highly annoying - but often corrected by a distract. I'd autorun after the target and lob a distract if/when we dropped combat. Yes, the smart folks would keep an instant cast spell active to preclude the loss of combat - but not ever class has this tool available.
Sadly, we actually stopped running our rogue a little over a month ago, maybe a bit longer than that, and subbed in a hunter instead. It just works better, unfortunately. Useless is the wrong word to use, our lineup worked extremely well and would still work well, but for the majority of the season everyone, even teams we played over and over, always tried to kill our priest first, leaving me and the rogue to tear people in half, the rogue had imp. expose armor and was mutilate so we always had a 5 point expose on our target, and it was brutal. But then once the BG9/Ming propaganda really started getting out, everyone started training on the rogue instead of the priest. It made things considerably more difficult, we subbed in a hunter, and everything was just better. I wouldn't say useless, I would say "lacking".
What would you say would would be a good solution to improve rogues? You touched on mobility, but survivability seems like a real issue too. It seems really heavily tied to cooldowns, and if you get a hammer of justice on you when you use evasion you can't expect to live too long.
Also are you guys still running your druid in 5v5? My 5v5 group is at 2080ish but usually when we lose it's because I die early and it's pretty depressing.
What would you say would would be a good solution to improve rogues? You touched on mobility, but survivability seems like a real issue too. It seems really heavily tied to cooldowns, and if you get a hammer of justice on you when you use evasion you can't expect to live too long.
Also are you guys still running your druid in 5v5? My 5v5 group is at 2080ish but usually when we lose it's because I die early and it's pretty depressing.
Mobility was an issue until TBC when we got CLoS, the only ones that really make it hard are Warriors and Hunters, and Warriors have to be in melee range to damage us anyway, and you can (usually) get something off on the Hunter if he's trying to Wing Clip.
I think there's a handful of things that could be done to increase rogue viability in arenas. I personally think much of it should happen in the sub tree, as that tree has a lot survival oriented talents and improvement to crowd control, which in a turtle 5v5 seems like a good niche for a rogue. Personally I think Rogue burst is pretty strong and reasonably consistent, they already seem to make a good fit for insta-gib teams (which are usually sans warriors). It's just a matter of finding a spot in the other kind.
1. Blind may need to be reconsidered in relation to prep now that anyone can remove it with a trinket.
2. Sprint being reduced in it's speed boost effect, but the timer being adjusted down would be a large help in mobility.
3. Allow shadow step to be used outside of stealth, give it a 1 second stun on the target, and a 30 second cooldown. It then becomes a talented "intercept" for rogues, and also allows them to potentially escape focus fire by swiftly relocating.
4. Give rogues a mana burning DoT poison.
5. Combo points may need to be moved to a self buff, rather than applied directly to targets. Give them a 30 second or so duration out of combat so that they can't run around front loading 5-point eviscerates or kidney strikes.
Anyone professing to discuss rogue viability in arenas needs to keep in mind a couple of key traits between ranged and melee. I'll lack the time to flesh this out, but hopefully I can get some notions across.
When I watch a high level 5v5 arena video, I see ranged domination. Being able to dps at ranged is incredibly important. Not only does it provide fluidity of target selection, but it is also a strong defensive mechanism. When you're at near max range, you can easily juke out of danger. Line of sight mechanisms work better (for and against you, I guess, but arenas are about surviving, not about maxlawldps). Also, at range, you have greater control of exactly who is and is not inside your sphere of influence.
Rogues and Warriors are melee. It is everyone else who controls our sphere, not vice versa. Warriors work because they can withstand the dangers of their sphere, while Rogues cannot. Yet, at the same time, Rogue fighting is generally perceived to be alot about control in a general sense, but arenas remove any ability to control our own sphere. Just mull that over for a bit, I am continuing to do so.
Then, sadly, we have a 1v1 through 5v5 issue. When I PvP in BGs, my kill ratio is strongly reliant on one factor - do I remain in melee range of my target or not. Or, did I have the cooldowns available to remain in melee range or not.
I am reasonably geared and I fear no scrub in a BG. I don't really fear a smattering of glad gear on my opponents, either. I will fight warriors, especially if evasion is up, but any hunter, warlock, or mage regardless of gear can take me down if I lack key mobility cooldowns.
And this is the problem - if I have a near mashable sprint for arenas, those strenuous fights are turning into cake wins because my only apparently caveat for winning most encounters is a simple question, have I stayed in melee range or not?
The number of available snares and controls in 3v3 and 5v5 very rapidly dismisses my cool downs and I am left simply not in melee range.
And very rapidly before I flee. I have faith that Blizzard desires Rogues to be a 5v5 staple. The slow destruction of the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets from multiple directions seems to support this (although that interim buff, I don't understand). Additionally, will anyone (but warriors maybe) benefit from a new season of arena weapons more than Rogues? I imagine not.
What would you say would would be a good solution to improve rogues? You touched on mobility, but survivability seems like a real issue too. It seems really heavily tied to cooldowns, and if you get a hammer of justice on you when you use evasion you can't expect to live too long.
I really don't have any ideas for rogue survivability, trinkets removing stun (and soon to be death coil) will help rogues to some extent to avoid the HOJ or death coil + assist call on them when they can't use any defensive cooldowns, but again, you only get one trinket, and they can just call for an assist on the rogue again a little bit later when he has no trinket.
Also are you guys still running your druid in 5v5? My 5v5 group is at 2080ish but usually when we lose it's because I die early and it's pretty deprengssi.
Typed up a big response to this and realized I'd basically be derailing the thread, responding via PM instead.
It's rather hard to balance, we aren't suppose to have as good survivability as a Warrior does, however we have pretty good short term survivability against caster groups, it really depends on what kind of setup you're using.
Making Dodge worth a damn would be a start, maybe due to the rogue's mastery of the melee arts, they retain all abilities to mitigate melee attacks (dodge, parry) even while stunned? Honestly there needs to be a low-mid tier Subtlety talent that maybe allows your dodge rating to be converted into resilience. We don't want a bubble, we want to dodge when we want to and we want to fucking vanish when we need to get out of combat (not hit vanish and immediately be taken out, or chased down by a pet and reengaged). A rogue vanish in 5v5, then is immediately intercepted by a warrior and finally killed.
Do exactly what they did with PvP healing priests, give them talent like Blessed Resilience which makes them a non-friendly focus-fire target for quick bursting, then place it in the middle of a talent tree which will limit utility, which in this case is limiting rogue damage, putting it in Subtlety. And no, Quick Recovery is not this talent, it is powerful though. Silly that it is in Assassination.
Give them a talent in Subtlety that reduces the effectiveness of snares and their duration, maybe up to 60-75% (yes this can be balanced, look at the changes to Concentration Aura). This means the rogue can still be snared, but the ground he must cover to regain melee range is lessened.
The Subtlety tree used to be considered the PvP tree, now it's a trick parlor for duels (and come the Insignia Patch, a trick parlor for Battlegrounds).
I never really used sub for PvP though "back-in-the-day", it always was more of the tricks tree where you got 20 different things to play against.
Really I don't see snares being a big issue, the main problem is things like Hunter traps, but thats an aura not an applied snare, in 5vs5 the only time I really end up with being kited is because a Hunter has a trap down and is running circles arond it.
While it's apparent that these teams use a core makeup with a variable 4th or 5th member, it still shows that there is value to a rogue for a well played rogue/team, after all I highly doubt these rogues are being taken along as a charity case, and even if that is the case, they still have the same 80%+ win percentage that the other members have.
If the team had a 50% win percentage with the rogue included then there might be a valid complaint.
While it's apparent that these teams use a core makeup with a variable 4th or 5th member, it still shows that there is value to a rogue for a well played rogue/team, after all I highly doubt these rogues are being taken along as a charity case, and even if that is the case, they still have the same 80%+ win percentage that the other members have.
If the team had a 50% win percentage with the rogue included then there might be a valid complaint.
Wait, what? You're using Power Trip as an example of a team that uses a rogue, when they wrote multiple articles detailing exactly why they felt rogues were bad in high-end play.
The rogues in the final rounds of the House of Blues were there solely due to the disqualifications of their teammates, and the tournament is pretty widely regarded as a joke precisely because the core setups are so radically shifted. They're very skilled players, but they're ordinarily benched.
The one case you might have that rogues are viable in 5v5 is the Euro team Feel the Pain, which runs Rogue/2xUA Warlock/Shadow Priest/Paladin.
Wait, what? You're using Power Trip as an example of a team that uses a rogue, when they wrote multiple articles detailing exactly why they felt rogues were bad in high-end play.
The rogues in the final rounds of the House of Blues were there solely due to the disqualifications of their teammates, and the tournament is pretty widely regarded as a joke precisely because the core setups are so radically shifted. They're very skilled players, but they're ordinarily benched.
The one case you might have that rogues are viable in 5v5 is the Euro team Feel the Pain, which runs Rogue/2xUA Warlock/Shadow Priest/Paladin.
Good point, but it does re-iterate what I mentioned earlier in the thread that a rogue may not fit into a "balanced" party as well, however that doesn't mean they don't have an effective slot in a more niche party.
Edit: Also my bad on being a bit ill-informed on their history, I was just reading the tournament standings today and had seen that. All the same, couldn't they have opted for any class other than rogue to fill in their disqualified position people if rogues truly are believed to be useless in 5v5?
For a rogue, our major advantage is choosing the target we intend to engage and where we intend to engage them. The synergy of our abilities is dependent on getting the opening and working from there. Even so, this is good on the first target and sometimes the second (assuming you can Cloak of Shadows/Vanish after the first kill and don't have any bleeds on you). After that you are almost certainly working at a disadvantage to the remaining enemies who know you are there and know you can't stealth.
This is tolerable now. The fear is that with the trinket change we might even lose that opening burst which makes us effective in some situations. Whether there is reason to be concerned or not is something we'll only find out with time. If everybody you open on can immediate free themselves and begin counterattacking then we'll either need to figure out new strategies or we'll suffer quite a bit. Drysc's quote scares me a bit as Blizzard seems to be aware this might his us right in the face.
As for changes they could make that might help rogues without overpowering us, that's the trick. We all think of things that would help us but it doesn't take much for other classes to look at our changes more objectively and punch holes in them. With that being said, I'll throw a couple out there and let people batter them a bit.
1. I'd like some sort of complement to Deadly Throw, trained or otherwise, which physically knocks back the target a few feet in addition to slowing them. Call it a personal issue, I'm tired of the last men standing being myself and a hunter and him standing on top of a trap knowing that my Cloak and Vanish are on cooldown. It just seems like a logical counter to that tactic, as well as helping to throw off an occasional kite.
2. Something I've thought about but am not sure how to put in without making it overpowered is a special dodge ability which you can activate which will dodge the next special aimed at you. Because of our lack of armor and the concept that dodge should be helping us, something along this lines might help bring us closer to where it feels like we should be. See the Execute coming, pop the ability and dodge it. Think the Execute is coming, but the Warrior hits hamstring instead? Dodge the Hamstring and eat the Execute 3 seconds later. Have it dodge 1 ability with a longer (2+) minute cooldown. It doesn't seem like this would overpower us, but it might give us a tiny bit more survivability.
Good point, but it does re-iterate what I mentioned earlier in the thread that a rogue may not fit into a "balanced" party as well, however that doesn't mean they don't have an effective slot in a more niche party.
Edit: Also my bad on being a bit ill-informed on their history, I was just reading the tournament standings today and had seen that. All the same, couldn't they have opted for any class other than rogue to fill in their disqualified position people if rogues truly are believed to be useless in 5v5?
Their team had their priests DQ'd and didn't have anyone else to use in that slot. The original setup they ran at the start of the season was War/Priest/Pld/Mage/Wildcard, with Wildcard being either the rogue(Nitrana) or the hunter(Reznap). The article I linked coincided with them shutting down Nitrana entirely(he started leveling up an Elemental Shaman for season 2).
06/08/07, 2:42 AM
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