I defy you to show me any indication that they are not interested in rogue tanking? They haven't said anything one way or the other. Sunwell Radiance was put in even before rogue tanking was a twinkle in our eye, so I'd say that's right out as an argument against rogue tanks. It's really just what you're inferring from what you already know. Why not if there is a tanking shortage add in 2 more classes for tanking rather than just the Death Knight?

Seriously, is it that hard to accept that it might be something they choose to do? Is there some moral outrage if rogue tanks happen that I'm missing? I really don't understand all the resistance to just the -idea- at this point.

I'd really say that the burden of evidence is on you to show developer intent, not anyone else to show lack of it, or even an ambivalent situation. And the idea rogue tanking, in some way or another, has been around since before the expansion, so it predates Sunwell Radiance by a good bit. I've seen videos of a rogue tanking Ony that predated Naxx and possibly AQ.

The last few times the subject of rogue tanking came up, the threads got closed. Just saying....

Well, give then apparent ideological repulsion to the very concept, I can see why. No worries though, I'm pretty much done. No point in trying to have a discussion if I'm the only one trying to have it.

Never happened on europe forums, but then, there's very little developer news on the europe forums, and locking is rather slow there.
But the enmity against rogue tanking seems to have grown bigger ever since druids got tanking. But the reactions are a lot like the ones druids got pre-TBC when they proposed tanking as a druid.

Pre-TBC, it wasn't uncommon for a rogue to take over in case an MT died somewhere, even if only temporarily while the tank got battleressed and rebuffed.

Right now, just the suggestion of doing so is met with a lot of resistance.
One can spend a whole day looking for a tank for some instances, since no tank wants to do PuGs (understandibly though), while for rogues it's actually a fun thing to do, regardless of group, since it's one of the few occasions in PvE where you actually get to use ALL of your abilities as a rogue.

Well, the point is that this thread is called Rogue PvE DPS - not Rogue Tanking. Within the confines of this thread, therefore, we should confine ourselves to DPS discussion. When and if (if being the relevant term) we have some evidence that rogues are intended to avoidance-tank stuff, we can fire up a new rogue tanking thread. But at the moment, it's just rampant speculation, not very productive, and in general has no place in this thread.

Seriously. Drop it.

This thread is for discussion of rogue PvE DPS, including but not limited to:

1) Discussion of any topics covered by the Rogue: PvE DPS article.
2) Discussion of rogue PvE DPS in practice in specific encounters or areas of WoW.
3) Discussion of any current theorycrafting topics relating to rogue PvE DPS.
4) Discussion of Wrath of the Lich King talents/abilities and their relation to rogue PvE DPS.

This thread is not for discussion of any other ill-conceived notions of other roles for the rogue class, including but not limited to rogue tanking. Please do not waste your breath discussing them here; there are other threads where you may do so, and quite frankly, no one cares how good you speculate rogue tanking might possibly be if Blizzard maybe gets the idea that rogues could perhaps be tanks.

(edit) To be 100% explicitly clear, if any talents are ever introduced that make rogue tanking a legitimate spec and pursuit as a rogue in raids, as opposed to just a gimmick that can be used on some tanks with ridiculously high-end gear, I will create the rogue tanking discussion thread myself. This thread has a stated purpose. Please use it for that purpose.

Here's a li'l snippet that caught my eye:

Hello no.1 choice for CC in an instance ?

Wavering Will might be interesting if it'd affect any sort of dangerous beasty, but doubt it would affect bosses for the most part.

I'm wondering, does Hunger For Blood function on a seperate buff timer or on a stacked version? What I mean is do you have to refresh every seperate set of buffs (thus spending 90 energy per 10 secs) or just once to refresh the entire stack (thus spending 30 energy per 10 secs). I'm assuming the latter. Anyone have any data on this?

I'm happy to see Assa and Sub tree getting a little more attention, altough something inside me says the gearing might still favor combat. The thing is though, it seems to me that sub might actually be able to do some very solid dps up to the point of doing VERY good dps. With 45 energy backstabs, you're looking at a flat 22,5 seconds per 5cp cycle. With Honor among Thieves you should be looking at a cp generation of around 0,5 per second at the least if your party members have a decent crit rate (assuming standard melee grp). That means you could get a combo point generation of around 0,725 up to 1 per second (!) that's potentially the fastest cp generation of all builds. That is worst case scenario, assuming you cant proc Honor Among Thieves yourself and not taking Relentless or Ruthlesness into account. With the new Eviscerates and the ap scaling from Sinister and Deadliness you may well be looking at a very interesting and fun build for dps. Of course without knowing what gear will look like at lvl 80, it's hard to do some proper math, but I feel this may well be a similair spec as survival huntering is right now in tbc, very viable at a certain gear level.

All in all, I'm quite content with the new talents. I just hope they wont nerf it to hell so that we all have to spec combat again. Cause seriously after over 2 years of combat swords, I kinda have had it

I wouldn't go as far as calling it "no.1 choice", considering you still can't re-apply it during a fight. It's still a big boost, of course.

Noone thought about the chance that fist weapon and dagger specs might outdps swords when you spec into Prey on the weak?

Are you using more damage meters to compare results with? Also, have you updated Recount? Have you tried running WWS (much more accurate)? Basing your findings on just one meter sounds a bit trivial.

Summerize from an earlier post which had napkin math:
No. HaT triggers on damaging/healing spells and abilities, not just on every crit. You'll be looking closer at something like 1 CP / 6 seconds while grouped, assuming it triggers on your own critting abilities as well.

Ah yes, I forgot about the 30% procrate, doh!

Still my own (quick) numbers dont match with 1 per 6 seconds. it of course all depends on group setup. I used this for quick calcs:

Assuming a group (all 35% crit) consisting of:
- 2 mutilate rogues
- 1 arms warrior
- 1 combat rogue
- 1 sub rogue
(no enhancement shammy, cause not sure if it will proc on wf type abilities)

Mutilate rogues will have a 50% crit chance on mutilate, so lets assume a crit per 6,2 secs (assuming a 3 e/s from focused attacks as posted earlier in this thread)
Arms warrior spams impr MS, so that should be a crit per 15 secs.
Combat rogue spams SS with Combat Potency should end up with 1 crit per 11,1 secs

That should make
2 muti rogues : 0,322 cp/s
arms warrior : 0,066 cp/s
combat rogue: 0,09 cp/s
sub rogue (player): 0,145 cp/s

That would be a total of 0,623 cp/s. Add 30% proc, you'd be looking at a 0,1869 cp/s. Add the 0,22 from normal backstabbing, you'd have a 0,4069 cp/s. Which would make for a 2,5 cp/s on and about.

Furthermore you can see how quickly these numbers change if you add fast attacks with high crit chances, like Mutilate and Backstab. Furthermore if you consider wf procs are considered yellow damage and thus can be special abilities, the cp generation are only going up.

Just my 0.02 $

Hunger for Blood seems nice indeed. I'm assuming it works like Mages's Improved Scorch...meaning that you can pretty much stack it to 3 right before the pull and then just make sure that you use it eery 10 seconds to refresh the whole stack.

That pretty much let's your tank get a heads up in threat and you can then start dpsing with 15% extra damage. Though the time required to gain the energy lost is about 8-10 seconds which will probably have you spamming it one more time at the beginning.

It maybe more efficient to "slowly" stack it while dpsing which should take about 3 DPS cycles to do and then just make sure you keep it up.

However, assuming this is true you need about 180 energy per minute to maintain the buff up.

Now, when we factor in Focused Attacks and assuming you can get a crit every second (and with poison crits being affected by your crit rating, that is one more source for crits, particulary interesting if you use IP on OH or possibly on both hands if no WF), that means you get 3 energy per second...on 60 seconds that's...yep 180 energy.

To me it seems that Focused Attacks is the talent that allows us to use Hunger for Blood effectively, though I can expect some changes to the cycles in regards to this...

The talent that bugs me more is Cut To The Chase...which is interesting no doubt but I don't know how that will change the way we view our cycles...it seems to me that Blizzard is encouraging us to use Envenom and Eviscerate more than we use Rupture...but then, in the very same tree, we get a buff to Rupture aswell...

I expect this talent to be very high end...when we reach lvl 80 our crit has gone down surely and it will take a while until this talent is worth it. Ideally, with enough crit you can probably garantee cycles using only Rupture and Envenom/Eviscerate while keeping SnD up but this seems difficult to achieve and too luck dependant.

I'm very curious to see what we can make out from the spreadsheet when it becomes available...but, for now, it seems that there will be some "safe" cycles to have good DPS, but in order to maximize it in a Mutilate build you will probably have to adapt a lot to what happens when you use a Finisher. Ofc, if you opt for always using 5 point Envenoms or Eviscerates you will always have energy return and possibly a combo point...that can be enough for you to refresh SnD if they don't crit but it seems difficult to control.

A lot of work will have to be done...I for one am starting to develop a simulator to test these things out, but due to the nature of Alpha, I won't bother too much with it as everything might change.

So is there anything stopping you from using it out of combat? ie. it could be stacked to 3 before combat begins? Or is it like an attack, needing you to be in range of a target?

You can use it out of combat, in effect pre-stacking the buff... and it doesn't break stealth.

Which means we finally have a non-combat "almost spammable" effect again, it's not swirly ball of awesomeness, but hey it's something
Good to know it doenst break stealth though.

Edit: Not spammable as correctly noted

Referring to hunger for blood. The text says that it consumes Bleed and Magic effects. I'm assuming that this only applies to HOSTILE magic effects, or is it possible to keep it stacked for 0 energy by consuming waterbreathing, waterwalking, arcane int, divine spirit, and other rogue-useless magic effects.

Except then you might end up consuming valuable DPS-boosting buffs, which certainly wouldn't be worth it...

And for Ribs, no it's not really "spammable" since it uses energy.

It really depends on if it consumes a 'random' buff or if there's a hierarchy in place. Long story short, it's way too early to tell with this talent. Depending on the precise mechanics of both it's magic removal, and the fights in WOTLK, it will range from costing 180 energy/min to 0...and that makes a huge difference.