It's usually pretty rare actually that anyone goes after our rogue in 5v5, despite everyone complaining about how fragile rogues are.

We run: Rogue, Priest, Warlock (felguard, so obviously soul-link to other teams), Paladin, Warrior.

80% of the games they go after our priest first, which works great for us , because he's very used to kiting, and has 400 resilience atm, and is used mostly in an offensive/defensive dispell capability with much less +healing than most priests. 10% of the time they go after our warlock, and I'd say the other 5 % is split between the Warrior (lol magic burst teams) or the rogue.

If we ran a shaman instead of a priest... They'd probably go after our rogue or maybe even myself more often... But we don't, so they go after the class that fucks over their own healers the most... If our priest is left alone, their healers will all be completely oom within 45 seconds and then the game is over.

S1: Enchance Shaman/Holy Paladin/AP,Fire Mage/Shadow Priest/Mutilate Rogue (Me) *or* Enchance Shaman/Holy Paladin/Holy Priest/AP, Fire Mage/Mutilate Rogue (Me again)

They go for the Shadow Priest or Enchance Shaman first, I've been focused maybe 4-5 times, I'm the first one to attack basically every game so they have every chance to focus fire me and the times that they do I just Evasion/Vanish and they go and try too kill the Shaman, Priest or Mage depending whos playing. We got to around 1,950 before season ended, but we started with 2 months left and relatively poor PvP gear on me and the Shaman.


[e]

I'm not saying Rogues are perfect, but people overhype the problems that Rogues have, the goal is to not change the class to be a copy of Warriors but with an easier to screw up name.

Don't really remember if anyone already made this suggestion, but here it goes:
Change EA to a % based modifier like a lot of people already suggested.
Change the talent Imp EA to shave a moderate % of resilience per combo point (say, 5% per CP?)

There, new utility, rogues would suddenly be wanted into arena groups (I think).

No, I didn't read it wrong, I just think you're vastly overstating the effects of rage compared to the effects of armor.

Would you rather I go through every single effect that can change rage generation? It's an example, it's far easier to use armor as an example of how damage changes rather then go through all the effects and go dig the rage formulas out.

Warriors don't have infinite rage generation, and don't do amazing damage all the time people over hype the damage they can do when things chain crit or when they go up against someone who only has 200 resilience and they're being attacked by another source.

The problem with this is that where rogues are really hurting the most, the Arena, is the exact thing the class is not good at. The stealthy, quick, thief-type class in a game is never going to be well-suited for gladiatorial combat.

As if the presence of five sets of eyes, flares, stealth detect helms and dots weren't enough, Blizzard also included the Shadowsight buffs, which let you spot a stealthed class on the other side of the arena. Restealthing successfully, let alone getting away long enough to recover and reset is a rare occurance unless you managed to fake someone out, even if Vanish is involved.

So with all the finesse of a "light" stealth class stripped away, the only way to make the rogue tougher is to make it a stronger toe-to-toe fighter with better damage and/or durability. Which leads, once again, back to the "this is becoming a warrior" problem.

This weakness is pretty much completely confined to the Arena. In BG's and world PvP, rogues can use their full utility, have the advantage of surprise, and can pick both their targets and when to attack those targets. They might not have good chances against full Gladiator ice mages, soul link warlocks and warriors, but they don't have to fight them when the tough opponent is at 100% health and looking for someone to rip apart.

And, one can use broader parts of the game as well in any situation outside the Arena. For example, a rogue could carry Fel Iron grenades, as I do as a warrior.

That the stealth assassin class of the game is having problems in the one situation that forces it to fight openly - in front of multiple coordinated opponents, no less - is no more surprising than how the most durable combat pairs (warrior and paladin, demonology warlock and paladin) are highly successful. Everyone's seen rogues splattered under a blacksmith zerg in AB or after a mid-zerg assassination in AV.

Why Blizzard decided to make gladiatorial combat the centerpiece of the game and reward it accordingly is a lot more difficult to understand. If it was a sidelight that mainly awarded bragging rights, there would not be nearly as many complaints from rogues, or from the WoW population in general.

There also would not have been nearly as many direct nerfs to longstanding abilities, talents and CC balances as have been handed out in name of Arena.

Your defending of rogues highlights the issues even more glaringly though. This doesn't only apply to rogues admittedly:

It's either: play on a team with other, bigger threats (priests, afflocks, ele shaman, etc.), and have to PvE for the gear - Full resilience gear and 5% hit / 1200 AP is pretty pointless if you're not being focused. 15% hit and 1500 AP is a huge difference, even, especially, to poison application.

OR

It's wear full resi gear, get focused, and go pop, because rogues don't REALLY have an out, and have the lowest mitigation in the game.

Not sure how much clearer I can make this.

Yes Rogues have issues, no they don't need to be revamped to fix them. I'm not saying their 100% fine I'm saying that you aren't going to solve the problem by copying everything Warriors have, for one Blizzard isn't going to give us an ability thats basically an exact copy of Warriors.

You admit that we have issues and then say that those issues don't need resolving? What do we need to do then? Give up and reroll?
Rogues might be mid-top tier class in a suitable matrix (2warlocks, SP, Rogue, Paladin for example) but overall the class is lower tier.
Something needs to be done to fix this. If it's copying warrior abilities then so be it. If it's anything else... More power to Blizzard I guess.

Also the fact remains that a rogue must pve to be successful with that matrix (1250ap, 28% crit, 64hitrating won't cut it). Oh and take a look at S1 and S2 shoulders. Itemization at it's finest.

Theres a big difference between increasing survivability and increasing survivability, changing all of our damage abilities, changing our abilities and/or adding new ones.

Fixing the main issues in arenas shouldn't require the entire class to be changed as some people are suggesting.

You do a reasonably good job of outlining subtle strengths of rogues vs warriors, but while they are interesting observations, the brute force of the stats don't lie. Those subtle differences mean jack squat in 5v5.

Blizzard does seem to have a track record of desperately attempting to buff classes with unique abilities. A distaste for simply copying the strengths of one class to fix another. It depends on how far you take it. Druids needed CC, so they gave them cyclone, which is unique in duration, ability to dispel, and graphical effect, but at the base it is still a repeatable CC, ranged, with a cast time which could be described as short, with trinket removal.

So is it unique or a copy cat? Is an altered Shadow Step unique or a carbon copy of Warrior mobility?

Ya, ok, Rogues don't need a revamp, they just need a conceptual revamp of the Sub tree and a revamp in the cool down set we've had since original content. Not a revamp, just a revamp.

I am all for unique abilities, to be sure, but those are also the hardest to imagine, to implement without unforeseen side effects, and to balance correctly. I do believe rogues have a strong conceptual base, but in play, in game, those concepts have not grown at nearly the same pace as all the other classes, nor have our archaic cool downs kept up with gear.

Hands down, I would buff Sub. The PvE trees should not be our bread and butter in 5v5. We already have a tree which in theory is for PvP, with unique abilities designed for our class, and each one thrown away in favor of wildly superior PvE talents.

These are interesting points and I think a little more "high-level" than specific abilities that need buffs or nerfs from class to class. I think the majority of responses in this thread indicate that rogues aren't very effective in the arena for many different reasons. But my question is, what is Blizzard's stance on classes like a rogue that are falling behind in arena participation?

Since Blizz is pushing Arena competition as serious business, e-sports and all that, paying people to compete and trying to make WoW Arena the next big competition game, do they have an obligation to balance the classes in the game for the Arena? Do they have an obligation to their players to at least acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each class in the Arena to provide a level playing field? I think the answer is yes, and so far they've done an absolutely horrible job.

there are many things working against the rogue in arena, you all have covered them, they've been talked about to death in the official forums...

to skip all that, what we need for:

survivability- vanish *must* work reliably. Add a 2 second pally bubble to the vanish if you need to. It must work, that's the bottom line.

damage- for prolonged fights (which is what blizzard and everyone really wants) we must have dw spec. that's midway through the combat talent tree. make it passive or remove the hit penalty against players only.

anti-kite- some kiting is fine and necessary in my opinion. but the rogue class can be completely shut down by this tactic making them useless against even targets they're supposed to be designed to kill. we need sprint redesigned.

more on sprint: 5 minute cooldown and 15 second duration are both too long. I'd venture to say that 2.5min cooldown and 7.5 second sprint is also too long. 1 minute cd, 5 second sprint is better. 30 second cd, 3 second sprint is ideal. This sprint *must* absolutely break all snaring and prevent snaring during its duration (see blazing speed). If that's improved sprint talent, so be it.

Long post, but I've been thinking about this for a while now, as I look at WoW more objectively than as a top of the food chain epic warrior. I'm suspending my account as of early July because I'm starting at the University of Wisconsin Law School in the fall, and I don't want this addictive product around my first year. Hence, more or less objective observations:

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There are several reasons why I don't believe WoW is very well suited at all for being an e-sport, but I'll limit my comment to class balance.

For better or worse, the nine classes in World of Warcraft are all fairly distinct. Sure, you can break roles down to "healer" "DPS" "tank" or "healer", "ranged " and "melee," but each class functions very differently in how it does that job. And each class can further specialize theoretically into one of three trees (ignoring for a moment that some trees and talents are weaker than others and far less popular).

I made a warlock alt that I leveled to 60 (kind of abandoned at 61.5 at the moment), and my brother also had me level his mage from 50-60. To say that the two "cloth damage" classes play differently is a massive understatement.

Beyond the different ways of fufilling a "role" on a PvP team or in a group or raid, there's also a degree of difficulty inherent to playing each class. Some classes simply can survive more mistakes than others; they are "easier" and better suited for new players. My warrior main died quite a bit on his was to Level 20, let alone his long climb to 60. My human paladin twink (currently 19) hasn't died once, not even to the infamous Defias Pillager. Partly that's better gear, but it has much more to do with the multiple "lives" a paladin gets.

The two pet classes designed to "solo" according to Blizzard's character info, hunters and warlocks, are similarly relatively easy to play due to being mechanically powerful. Hunters being notoriously easy and fast to level for anyone, and warlocks being more complex, but absolutely ungodly powerful and effecient if they are understood by their player. The inherent margin of error in a warlock that stems from that strength at perfect play also makes it more than passably deadly even in the hands of a mediocre or poor player.

This goes on and on for each class. They all play differently, and it can be mathmatically determined which ones are easier to play by comparing time taken to level and number of deaths suffered.

Rogues and warriors compare as melee damage dealers, but with one that is designed to get hit (down to its damage being based on being hit) and one that is designed not to get hit, via stealth, escape moves and tremendous fight control compared to the "tank" class. They couldn't be more different other than when they are both standing behind a big two-headed dog and ripping up its rear legs.

As far as racial abilities, Blizzard allowed the infamous original Will of the Forsaken, which was abbreviated "WTF" instead of "WoTF" by the unlucky victims of undead rogues. Not to mention Devouring Plague, orc stun resist and Nelf hunters with Shadowmeld. Some of that has been changed/nerfed, but Blizzard was once again originally going for diversity, not balance.

Apart from their broad diversity and level of difficulty, classes also differ in how they scale with gear (see the twinking of low-level melee characters versus low level cloth), and how they benefit from teaming with other classes in certain combinations. Even before factoring in player skill and latency, there are a bewildering number of possible combinations of classes, numbers, specs, levels and circumstances in a given PvP fight.

There is no way to balance that. Blizzard has also recognized that certain classes are more powerful than others 1v1, and even designed in that certain classes are "counters" to others 1v1. Consequently, they outright state that the game is not balanced around 1v1 PvP and that world PvP is not meant to be fair.

They also made the original PvP trinkets with a degree of Rock, Paper, Scissors in mind. For example, warriors could break stuns and snares (good for killing rogues) but were flat-out helpless against Polymorph.

So Blizzard knew and knows full well that the classes in their game were not and are not balanced on a basic mechanical level. Some classes beat other classes, and some classes slaughter almost all other classes once they get certain types of gear, or if they have certain cooldowns ready to spend. Some classes require expert play (relatively speaking) to threaten other players, other classes are dangerous with just hitting a few keys and become terrifying with player of the quality it takes to make the "hard" class effective.

Blizzard also determined that 2v2 and 3v3 Arena were also inherently vulnerable to the existing 1v1 balance issues, or extremely strong complimentary pairs/trios, and decided these would be worth less points.

Where Blizzard seems to have gone out to lunch is the belief that declaring 5v5 the most balanced and awarding the most points (incentive to play), adding an anti-crit stat to the gear that will be worn by those engaging in PvP, and now norming PvP trinkets somehow has created an even playing field.

It hasn't. With the exception of gimmick teams and 4DPS zerg teams, Arena heavily favors classes that can stand out there and take serious abuse long enough to be healed, by a healer that can also take serious abuse.

With more HP, far more armor, similar damage, and a mechanic that makes getting hit "good", warriors become preferable to rogues. Not only can they swat rogues on the opposing team, they were not built with stealth, fight control and escape abilities in mind. It just so happens that Arena minimizes the first two and makes the third irrelevent. Toss on a -50% healing debuff that is almost impossible to remove for good measure.

Rogues have company, though. Especially now that Cyclone is dispellable, paladins are the dominant healing class in Arena, computing out to not only be far more valuable than any other class on a team, but to, in the overwhelming majority of cases, define if a team is good or not just by their presence.

Who would have thought a plate-armored, shield-wearing class with immune spells for himself and others would be effective in a heavy focus-fire environment. That it can remove snares and clense and has very good mana duration is just a bonus.

Priests can and do still find spots in Arena teams due to their own fair survivability with heavy gear and correct spec as well as being the only real counter to a paladin (dispell bubble, burn mana), but as for the healing druid...

Arena and PvP in general are also starting to have the joy of heavily PvP geared warlocks, who have evolved back to being the "lol raid boss strat" monsters they were before 2.0, now that they have gotten full sets of Level 70 epic gear, and have been able to resume stacking their famous two stats, with the added bonus of not relying on crits for most of their effectiveness. Not to mention that trinket change...

~

The PvP trinket change itself franky mystifies me and I believe it was an enormous mistake.

As a heavily epiced warrior (everything but a Tier 2-3 BS mace, see top of post) the only thing that stops me from killing anything other than a Prot/Holy paladin in PvP tank gear is crowd control. While being CC'd of course makes me swear at my screen and bitch into Vent, the class that just CC'd me is a lot happier. He either gets a chance to take me out, or he gets to get away and get help. I don't need much time to turn someone into red paste, and everyone knows that. My gear advertises it.

It may be just "one" CC break, but that can be a big one if its the warlock's Soul Fire Seduce, a rogue's Blind or a hunter's Ice Cube of Doom, and so on. With me having almost no cooldown CC of my own, I'll join the shamans and paladins in jumping up and down with joy, but I don't see how this is fair.

No one can argue with a straight face that the PvP trinket change is a redesign that effects everyone equally. Classes with no "major" CC and/or with abilities to wreck someone if they're free of CC for any length of time get a serious buff, and incapacitation classes get a tremendous nerf.

I've generally not been one to rant about "Bliz is idiots, they don't have a plan for the game, they don't get balance, blah, blah" but I'm starting to wonder. The last thing classes that are struggling in Arena needed was less knockout CC.

Good thread, I've read the whole thing as it has unfolded and feel compelled to comment.

The introduction of resilience has hurt rogues particularly badly. While overall a good thing as PvP burst damage was out of control pre-BC, rogues have been designed since release around ending fights as fast as possible, since a rogue with no cooldowns is something terrifyingly close to useless. In the old days, killing someone before even a non-prep rogue ran out of cooldowns was not at all unheard of. Now, however, it is much more difficult to burst down a target before your cooldowns are gone, which is no doubt leading to the "rogues are too easy to kite" remarks.

Also, not allowing consumables in the arena was a good idea at first, but alchemy is a great tool for addressing the weaknesses of a rogue; using a free action potion for a self-BoF would go a long way towards preventing kiting, independent of spec. Too often I feel like Arena is a "Hey guys, let's fight with wooden swords while blindfolded and see who wins" type of deal because of artificial limitations on a match. I understand restricting flasks and elixirs, but why can't we use a health/mana potion? Is anyone honestly not able to afford one potion per match with how easy it is to make gold now?

Rants aside, I believe, first and foremost, preparation is ESSENTIAL for any amount of arena play. Damage is good but rogues simply were not designed for straight up in your face damage in PvP; leave that to the warriors. Rogues are built for dirty tricks and living to fight another day. How does that translate to arena?

First, don't run in ahead of everyone else and start attacking the healer in front of the other four foes. I get the feeling too many rogues are trying this. Sap is less useful since the trinket change but forcing your enemy to blow their trinket early can easily mean doom for them later on. I tend to use sprint in stealth as soon as the gates open and flank the other team, waiting to make my move. I never attack before my team has engaged the enemy, at which point I'll attempt to sap off one of the healers or jump a soft target so I can lock them down for a bit.

Second, use your cooldowns like a maniac. Don't ever die without everything on cooldown. If you manage to take even one enemy with you, you have done your job. If you take two down, so much the better. If you manage to prevent the only healer on the other team from doing a thing, congrats, you probably just won the fight for your team. Warriors may have great raw damage but they simply cannot lock a caster down as well as or as long as a rogue can, simply because mace spec is unpredictable.

Third, you will not be ignored for long because of the rogue hate that goes back to the early days of world PvP. Oftentimes you will find a warrior on you; casters are not the threat they once were as long as CloS is up. Don't fret, attempt your escape. Vanish is of course the first option, assuming deep wounds isn't on you yet. If it is, wait until the first tick and then vanish, watching to make sure the warrior's autoattack isn't about to hit you. You then have three seconds to get away, and odds are he will chase you. When he finds you again, use blind if you have it, or gouge. Hit evasion and keep your frontside to him; overpower will be the only thing hitting you. You probably won't win, but consider this: while the warrior is busy with you, he's not busy with your healer(s) or casters. Granted, many players won't be enthused with throwing themselves in front of the bus for the sake of the team, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do for the win. It might sound like a lot of theorycraft, but situations like this have happened to me in my arena experiences. Two warriors on you at the same time is particularly painful, but two rogues on one warrior would be equally painful for the "plate" wearer.

In a nutshell, focus on playing to the strengths of a rogue as much as Arena will allow; if you want to be on the front line dishing out and absorbing the punishment you should be playing a warrior. We are far from useless when specced, geared, and played correctly.

The pvp trinket change to me, seems like a really hamfisted overreaction to people complaining about CC in 2v2 and to a lesser extent, 3v3. But I thought from the get go that Blizzard put those brackets in more for fun, and less for serious competition and balance due to their very rock paper scissors like nature. Awarding fewer points seemed to cement this also. Then they drop a huge bomb and change the pvp trinkets due to say, rogue/druid 2v2 teams using sap, blind, stuns, and cyclone to the maximum? Did anyone have serious gripes about these types of things in 5v5 games? I felt cyclone was perfectly fine in it's unremoveable state in 5v5.

Now if they are going to start increasing the "seriousness" of the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets, as evident by this pvp trinket change, are they also going to increase the amount of arena points those brackets award? I just get the impression there are so many different forces tugging at the whole arena balance situation that Blizzard doesn't even know what they want to do with the whole thing.

I knew the pvp trinket change was huge the moment I read it, but after a week of adjusting to it and using it, it's even bigger than I initially thought. I find myself thinking "Sorry man" when I trinket blind or freezing trap, because I already trounce rogues and hunters an extreme majority of the time, being able to trinket those 2 effects is not only kicking them when they're down, it's kicking them in the nuts when they're down.

I had an idea, don't wheter this could be balanced right. So the numbers are obviously not really balanced right now.

Change Shadowstep to be trainable and used in combat. Set Cooldown to 30 or 45 Seconds.

Add two new talents to the sub tree

Talent 1: Improved Shadowstep, Requires 41 points
The next backstab, ambush, or garrote within 10 seconds after using Shadowstep deals 20% more damage. Decreases cooldown of Shadowstep by 15 or 30 seconds.

Talent 2: *need name*
Once you die you inflict XX shadow damage to all oponents within XX yards. Requires 35 points in Subtlety .

Unless 'XX' is 25,000, I'd rather not have any 'improved death' talents that no one will take

Other idea is decent, though very unlikely (and a bit 'intercepty')

It's just a little absurd that rogues have Vanish and Improved Sprint and maybe Cloak of Shadows to break snares whereas warriors are intercepting every 10s in arena gear. What's that, max of 7 root breaks in 5m? Compared to a warrior's 30? 4x as good? Come on.

That's not just 'better' than me at staying in melee, that's an entire other plane of existence. I am so easy to kite even with 20% snare resist that it's pretty sad. Once those cooldowns are gone that's it. Watch me hobble towards you as you autorun the other way.

Constructively, I think that vastly increased time on target is needed for a rogue. I'm fine with a copy and paste of intercept, but even giving us a better snare would be nice -- you can't Cleanse Hamstring, but Crippling only stays on if you have stacks of another poison on your target. Maybe make Crippling unremoveable for X seconds after it's applied, or give us Crippling III that stacks for an additional 1% snare (i.e. just to make it harder to cleanse) a few times.

Once that's done, improve rogue survivability. Stuns not shutting down our defenses would be a huge help. So would being able to 360 degree dodge attacks. In my dream world, Evasion would just be +50% dodge but passively rogues would have the ability to apply half their dodge to ranged attacks all the time, which would give me a slight edge against hunters.

But even after all that you've really just taken a rogue and given them: intercept, more physical defense (aka armor), and a better snare (hamstring). You're still a warrior without Mortal Strike, though I guess you always have Kidney Shot and Kick being slightly better than Pummel.

If I were to continue down that line, I'd really improve rogue disruption abilities. Make Blind a 30s cooldown with no reagent. Make Kick have a shorter cooldown. Make rogue disorient effects not break from dot damage. Something along those lines would make a rogue a dedicated caster counter, not one that runs out of steam after the first 15s of the fight.

Probably overpowering to grant all at once, but I'm just brainstorming.

We need the "Throw Change" ability with an equation like:
damage = (money spent in copper) * 0.015

On a more serious note, I believe that they need to move our special abilities from very long cooldowns to very short cooldowns with energy costs associated.

ex:
Sprint - 20 second cooldown, 25 energy activation cost and energy regenerates at 50% normal rate while active. Sprint is active until you deactivate it by using the ability again.
Vanish - 60 second cooldown, 75 energy cost
Blade Flurry - 30 second cooldown, 15 energy activation cost and energy regenerates at 50% normal rate while active.

This will add more strategy to energy management and make playing rogues and playing against rogues more interesting. For example, if a team sees that a rogue is going full out and is at 0 energy, they can safely assist train on him for at least 8 seconds before he can vanish.

30 Seconds base
20 Seconds talents
15 Seconds with Gladiator/HWL/GM 4 Piece.

Sorry. So only three times as good at staying on their target as me.