• Vulajin

The problem is, you have all these other classes which each bring irreplaceable buffs to the raid. Obviously a rogue feeding off all those buffs could be top DPS, but then, what happens when the need for X number of all these irreplaceable classes means that you can't actually fit a rogue in? Sure, you could leave one out and bring a rogue, but then, are you potentially losing total raid DPS by trading the irreplaceable buff for a rogue who does great personal DPS but brings no buff?

That's a situation that is becoming frighteningly possible with the current state of the game.

 

Jakani

Well, your melee group already needs a Warrior and a Shaman. Now you have Ret paladin, DK, and Rogues fighting over the last three slots. Ret offers more to the raid than a rogue, so bring one of those, and depending on what DKs can bring, they may take another slot. That leaves 1 raid slot in a 25 man raid for a rogue. In order to be worth that slot, we need to offer something really significant. A minor increase in dps is not equivalant to a raid-wide or party buff.

 

Banja

The issue, as I see it, comes down to the rogues ability to wipe aggro.

I had the same fears and concerns when TBC was being discussed and talents were previewed-I was disgusted with the lack of tweaking on rogues (still am) and appalled by the fact that other classes got bigger, cooler, more versatile moves/buffs. When they announced some of the changes to DPS warriors I threw a holy fit and almost quit.

Maybe I'm wrong-it's possible, afterall 99% of the posters here seems to be much more intelligent and congnizant than I am about the game's mechanics (<3 you guys btw) -but the fact is fury warriors, enhancement shaman even kitty druids tend to have a 'threat cap' versus their DPS, meaning there is a point (and not a super high one in my (limited) experience) where their DPS has to be scaled back to avoid dying.

At this point in time I'm not super concerned about it.

 

orcsgotbooty

You realize the changes to fury warriors were massive nerfs don't you?

 

lubricious

The problem of rogue viability is not a new one. It is true that given the proper raid composition and optimization, a rogue can be top DPS. The problem with that is the amount of DPS lead and what is required to attain it.

If a rogue does 5% more damage than anyone else in the raid, but other DPS classes can add 3% damage to 3 other people in the raid (Hunter's FI for example), then that extra buff damage quickly makes them in actuality a bigger net DPS gain than the extra personal DPS you provide.

Adding to that effect is the problem of proximity and damage taken. A caster or hunter can easily be positioned anywhere within range and DPS without causing any extra liability to themselves or the tanks. A rogue has no such option, you must be within melee range and you must be behind the boss, period.

So really there's little choice in the matter. Unless WotLK is planning to give rogues such insanely powerful DPS that it blasts past the added contributions of a party buff (yeah, right), we desperately need some kind of utility.

Here's a few options I'd like to see:

Combat tree = [Berserker's Taint] 1/2/3 points, gives party haste buff of 1/2/3% respectively for 10 seconds when Sinister Strike or Backstab critically hits.

Assassination tree = [Corrupted Nerves] 1/2/3 points, When poisons are applied, target loses 1/2/3% attack speed to regular attacks for the duration of the poison effect (does not stack).

Subtlety tree = [Anti-Coagulation] 1/2/3 points, adds 1/2/3% to bleed effects and adds 5/10/15 damage to hemorrage bonus (this would probably be on top of another rank of hemo).

Those would add some new twists on the utility that should prove effective. Just a few thoughts.

Edited to clarify.

 

Monkens

What do you guys consider imp.exposed armor?

It looks pretty good..But i'm not a rogue so.

Seems like that brings something to melee =O

 

• Scheme

It's very useful, but we can't use it if a warrior is tanking, since it prevents the warrior from being able to use Sunder/Devastate.

 

◊ Hanos

At this point I am not super concerned about your opinion, because you don't have any appreciation for the issues that rogues currently face.

Let me be blunt here, you don't have a clue. Your mid-level T5 raiding experience does not give you an accurate view of what current class issues are. You could kill any boss you have faced to this point with any raid make-up that meets some basic X Tanks, Y Healers, Z DPS requirements, synergy and group stacking is something you can do for fun, but it isn't required on any level. Also, you apparently have no idea about how group synergy works, especially when you have to start picking people to drop.

Right now the best possible melee group is:
Arms Warrior
Enhancement Shaman
Ret Paladin (if Horde)
Rogue
Feral Druid/Rogue/BM Hunter

Now, most guilds don't run 2 full melee groups, however they run some tank/hunter group of some variety.

A rogue is only viable in that group, so let's say a Death Knight is also only viable in that group. Who do you drop? You can't drop the Shaman, because that hurts everyone due to Unleash Rage and Totems, you can't drop the warrior because everyone loses Battle Shout, and right now the contribution of a BM Hunter is probably great then that of a rogue if you have the Feral in there and the Shaman is Twisting so the hunter get's GoA, because on top of their personal damage the hunter is tossing up Hunter's Mark and giving 3% more damage.

The blunt truth is that rogues are not actually the highest DPS, we are the highest on the meters, there is a HUGE difference. Try taking the buff values and subtracting them from rogues and applying them to the buffers, same with debuffs, you quickly see that we are very, very easily marginalized, if a Death Knight brings any sort of Buff/Debuff, odds are they will out do rogues, thus we need one to compete.

Right now a rogue is essential in no way shape or form. Threat isn't a material issue on any fight in Sunwell to this point, and never really was in T6 either... but you experience through mid-T5 wouldn't tell you that, so you still think our Threat Dump is king... oh yeah, did you forget Hunters have one too... that they can use a hell of a lot more? Our threat dump is nice, but it is basically an added bonus at this point.

What we need is something to make us essential, and something that doesn't penalize stacking. Right now there is no disadvantage to bringing 2 BM hunters in addition to 1 Survival, the stack Mark faster and they all buff each other, hell a 3 Hunter, Feral, Shaman group probably comes close to the DPS of the melee group and is lower maintenance.

We need a group buff, something equivalent to Battle Shout/Unleash Rage/Ferocious Inspiration/Leader of the Pack/Imp Sanctity Aura/etc. all of these are group only buffs, that require a spot in the group to reach the ideal, rogues need one that stacks so that we can hold onto at least 2 raid slots. A boss debuff would be nice, but it isn't enough to get us in the melee group, we need a buff that everyone else wants and needs.

The bottomline is we have gone from benefiting from buffs to requiring them to stay competitive. If we don't have an Enhancement Shaman and a DPS Warrior, we might as well not bring rogues to raids, we need to be able to provide synergy as well as benefit from it, we bring nothing else to the raid, and at this point the marginal difference isn't enough to make us required, especially if Death Knights can provide something more.


EA is Great, when you can use it, which is when you don't have a Warrior tank... which isn't very often.

PvP = The Reason We Can't Have Nice Things

 

madman

An ignore armor buff for the rogue's group would make sense imo. Although a debuff would probably be more in line with a rogue's image as a sneaky, selfish assasin, I think the ignore armor buff is the closest thing.

 

• Feist-Mok

This thread is slowly starting to give me visions of raiding returning to the early days of Kara, where a Rogue would get brought in for Shade, and kicked right out for another Warlock right after.

Our interrupt might be (arguably) 'the best' but if it's only important on one gimmick fight per raid instance, it does not justify our raidslot.

To be entirely honest, I don't neccesarily want a group buff. Some additional utility poisons might be nice, but I actually, the more I reflect on it, really kind of like the position we've been in for most of TBC raiding: If you don't bring anything to the raid but damage, you had better bring the most. I think it IS possible to do that without giving us additional synergies, and I think it can be done by creating something along the lines mentioned earlier - a stacking self buff that rewards time on target. Make it the new 51 combat talent, call it "Savage Concentration" or somesuch. Make it slow to stack up but easy to refresh - but only if you can stay on target, thus making it useless in pvp/trash scenarios - and at high stacks (say, on average possible after 3 minutes on target), have it be enough of a damage increase to make rogues unquestionably way ahead on damage.

 

Ashere

I'd really prefer the hemorrhage debuff to be scaling with gear, for example with AP. Since hemorrhage was killed, the whole hemorrhage specific itemization was killed with it.
And no, it wouldn't have to be a huge buff. 0.1% AP in damage per charge would've done it for lvl 70 hemorrhage. A bit more is probably needed for lvl 80, but who knows, there might be a completely new main attack coming in WotLK. I'd rather see hemorrhage unnormalized again or properly fixed, but ah well.

 

Nehil

I do remember those days, we would actually stack 2 rogues for that fight then replace both of us with mages, so stupid. We do need a group buff, or at least make us damage kings. Right now we do top damage yes, but have you looked at how many buffs we get? look at a mage next time, they get... ummmm... a boomkin(I am refering to group buffs not boss debuffs btw), IF they are lucky, oh and a totem that gives them 101 spell damage, thats like battle should giving us 200ap. My point is the only reason we are top dps is because your guild is nice enough to set up a group centered around buffing melee, then, letting you in, a class with NO additional buff to that group. We either need 1. a good group buff, or 2. need to be hella buffed ourselves so we can top the meters no matter the group.

 

• Neto-

Sadly we are no longer "top DPS", since hunters are awfully close to our DPS and have already beaten our best Brutallus parse - I'd expect Blizzard to do something come WotLK. Hunters with the legendary bow will definitely beat rogues.

 

jonnnney

The mages in our guild get a shadow priest and an elemental shaman. The priest gives about 350 mp5 and the shaman gives 3 spell hit, 3 spell crit, 121 spell damage (set bonus), and about another 50 mp5 with the totems. And while the shadow priest lags behind the elemental shaman can give the mages a run for their money. And the mages and shaman get most of the top spots on dps for bosses. The best I can hope for is 3rd or 4th.

But anyways mages are pretty much ranged rogues in this respect, if you were doing a big boss that had limited caster dps would you rather 3 mages with 1 sp and 1 ele shaman. Or two mages with 1 sp 1 ele shaman and 1 boomkin (assuming he could do equal damage)? It is not as pronounced but it is there.

 

SchmoZz

While I agree that rogues need to bring some kind of buff/debuff to the table in order to remain competitive for raid spots with other synergistic classes. The problem is, as mentioned, how reliant on synergy in the first place to do damage. We bring one thing and one thing only, damage. All the other classes that bring the synergy we require have viable spots as other specs. Shaman as healers, Pallys as tanks/healers, Warriors as Tanks. These classes can therefore secure multiple spots in the raid without having to be in the DPS group. If rogues get a party buff you would have to assume that it won't stack, this will mean that bringing that second rogue is still a waste because his buff is either wasted in the same group, or he misses out on being in the DPS group and his value is diminished through lack of buffs.

Giving rogues spec based synergy similar to FI/EW that scales is probably the best solution provided they can balance it right. The only reason I dislike this is that it is too similar to hunters and I would prefer something new. I can't come up with what that would be however.

 

Yarema

Imo this is quite a good idea (procing of every special attack crit instead maybe), kinda similar to hunter FI and yet different enough. This way bringing more than 1 rogue would also be justifiable assuming it would stack from different rogues just like FI. Numbers are ofc debatable due to balance issues, but generally i`d say this could go.

 

Timujingeo

Having experienced the 'happy days' of 5-6 rogues in a 40 man instances pre-BC it was a shock when the 25 mans came along and suddenly no one wanted rogues with their so-so damage that came at the cost of dedicated healing.
Most of the rogues in my old guild saw the writing on the wall the first time a shadow priest joined us in a raid and showed the way with dps; at least one re-rolled SP there and then.
Myself, I hoped that Bliz would throw us some hope that the rogue class was indeed not dead. A brief respite was the introduction of Clos which finally gave rogues some defence in both PVP and PVE.
Unfortunately, this really has been the only piece of good news in years and I must admit I'm surprised it hasn't been nerfed given the endless whining to Bliz from other classes.
Personally, I've always felt that rogues should have extra abilities on boss fights. The stacking of something like expose armour with sunder armour is perhaps the most elegant and 'rogueish' ability I would like to see.
It fits with a rogue up close with his or her enemy attempting to force a dagger in through any available chink of armour in order to defeat them.
Maybe the ability could be similar to expose armour but that has the chance to proc and temporarily remove x armour dependant on your available combo points.
Whatever the solution, we need to bring something other than pure dps to the raid table otherwise come WolK the rogue class will be all but dead for most PVE raiding.

 

• Rerox

Stop whining. take a look at WWSScoreBoard and you know that it's simply not true what you are making us believe.

13 out of 15 of the Top DPS People parsed from MH/BT/SW-Logs are Rogues (no most of them don't have dual Warglaives). Take a look at most boss breakdowns and you see very strong numbers for Rogues.

Rogues were fine before TBC, they are fine with TBC and they will be fine with WotLK. We don't need to become buffbots to be viable for Raids.

 

Left

Ok, "highest averaged DPS" (ie, overall) is mostly rogues, but take a look at the Brutallus numbers: the highest DPS slot on there is a hunter, and hunters take 5 of the other 14 spots as well. (8 are rogues, 1 is a warrior.) Felmyst is all casters (but that's a fight issue) and the "Grand Warlock Alythess" grouping is topped by a hunter. Lower down the page, our benchmark fight (Teron Gorefiend) is topped by a hunter, and rogues have less than half the top slots. The only BT fight listed that rogues are overwhelmingly on top of is Bloodboil.

In fact, the only place on that page where I see "rogue dominance" is in Hyjal, down at the bottom of the page, where almost all the listed players are rogues. In other words, I don't understand what you think you are proving by linking that page. To me, it shows rogues as ambiguous DPS leaders, at best.

EDIT: And now, I'm noticing that a lot of those Hyjal fights are gimmicked up by using "Unholy Frenzy" to make rogues artificially reach really, really high numbers. EG, take Rensy: that top DPS parse has him getting 3x "Unholy Frenzy", 40 seconds of Heroism (possibly more), and 2x Drums of Battle in a 1:27 fight. Tell me that's not a total gimmick.

Moreover, if a hunter can do 2000 DPS and add 3% DPS to the rest of his group, then his raid contribution is greater than a rogue doing 2100 DPS. And he can do it with less group stacking and leeching fewer buffs. So simply saying "rogue DPS is fine" doesn't make sense to me. In my opinion, people still bring rogues at all because most raid leaders don't understand the concept of synergistic DPS contributions and still think the being on the top of the personal DPS meter means you are "top DPS".

As an aside, I think the bottom of the page shows the types of fights where rogues really shine: highly mobile fights with a stationary boss which don't penalize boss proximity. With our instant attacks, energy regen mechanic, survivability in AOE effects, and the fact that we can DPS strongly while rotating around the boss mean that fights like Anetheron, Archimonde, and Azgalor allow us to really shine in comparison to stationary classes (even vs. hunters and locks). Sure, sometimes we get totally screwed with time-off-target (death and decay, airburst, whatever), but when we don't we can really do a lot better DPS than the less mobile DPS classes.

 

Timujingeo

First off, i'm not 'whining', I'm talking about 'real' raiding where given the choice of classes to take, rogues lose out to fury warriors, elemental shamans and the like. This is happening now in most guilds I know and tbh it can only get worse when DK's come on the scene.
So, if you read my post again, you'll see that like most posters on here I'm advocating an extra 'something' to make rogues an essential raid class instead of the 'filler' that we are at present.
Sorry if this offends you but this is the case with all the hybrid dps classes at the moment and it needs to urgently change.

 

• Vulajin

Yes, and this would be enough -- except, you need that one ret paladin, and that one arms warrior, and that one enhance shaman, to satisfy the required synergies for the raid group. As long as there's filler space where rogues can be put and contribute more DPS than stacking an extra something else, we're okay, but as it is we seem to be nearing the point where everyone else's synergy is reducing the number of spots left in the raid for rogues.

Unfortunately, even if they did institute some type of synergy for rogues, that would just compound the existing "you must have 1 of each of these classes" issue. As is, though, I don't think it's unrealistic to worry that the "1 of each of these" rule might be marginalizing rogues to the point where perhaps only one or none of us are brought to raids.

And of course, as Left mentioned, we're not even necessarily unquestionably top DPS anymore either. I don't have a problem with not being tops, but if a BM hunter is able to match or top my DPS while providing Ferocious Inspiration, then why would the raid want to fill in extra spaces with me instead of with a BM hunter?

Anyway, this is all just random crap to discuss as we wonder what on earth Blizzard has in mind for us in Wrath. I hate to contribute to the idle speculation, but I don't think the discussion is unwarranted given the existence of the raid synergies thread in Public Discussion.

 

tetracycloide

Presently rogues are unquestionably top average DPS but this is different from being top boss or single target DPS.

What tangible utility does this provide? Is high trash and fairly high boss DPS worth a raid slot? What would trash be like without rogues?

Trash would be slower, not a ton slower but slower. Consider the implications of what 20 extra mins to clear to the next boss after 8 or so packs of trash. On farm kills it's annoying but not much more than that however when sumed over an entire raid it can mean the difference between one and two night clears, leaving more time for progression. On progression kills it can be an extra attempt or two in a raid night because getting to the boss took that much less time.

Gear is another factor. Stacking other DPS classes instead of rogues is a less efficient use of gear which also leads to slower progression. Sure you can argue that the best geared BM hunter or warlock is putting out rogue numbers for boss DPS. But if you have two rogues you would not be replacing the two rogues with the top geared of another class you would be adding a 3rd, 4th, or 5th geared of another DPS class to replace them with. Would another class that is behind that many people for gear really be an improvement over a rogue? Unlikely.

One could make the argument that if death knights offer significant raid buffs and gain significantly from being in the melee group that there is a legitimate threat for a rogue's raid slot there but currently there is very very little tangible benefit to dumping your top two rogues to pull ranged DPS off the bench.

Ultimately Given similar levels of raid DPS and similar levels of competence and similar raiding schedules between a raid without rogues and a raid with rogues the raid with rogues will progress faster because trash will clear faster and loot will be more efficiently distributed. This is not likely to change in WotLK which is why rogues will continue to be invited to raids.

My vanity is justified.

 

Evanaescent

I may be taking a great leap of faith towards becoming a publicized idiot on this one, but I've scanned the thread and found a few ideas that sound cool, viable, and I've personally thought of before in terms of group buffs, mob debuffs, and the like.

Here's one that is admittedly absurdly simple, but I haven't seen thrown around yet so I will hope this is an alright place to do it.

Hypothetically, why not simply increase current relative rogue DPS by some arbitrary percent. I guess my point is, if some people, and potentially the developers, have issues with turning rogues into just another de/buffing class - can we not attain the same effective goal of (a) More stable rogue spots, and (b) increased raid DPS by simply making the rogue do 20% more damage? Given todays average DPS levels, that would put things in the rough neighbourhood of rogues doing ~3600 DPS, hunters doing ~3000, etc, etc.

Ignore PVP/Arena balancing for a moment - would this justify more rogue spots and satisfy more rogues and more importantly more raid leaders? I would assume that most raiders and raid leaders care very little, or at least less than most about individual dps, and that the RDPS number at the bottom is all we really care about. If this were the 'simpler' way of giving rogues more utility, how would this compare to giving us a stacking [bleed/disease/poison/curse of shadowsteps] on the mob, or whatever?

The only immediate negative I can perceive is imbalances with soloing, maybe making rogues "overpowered" as levellers or questers, and the obvious PVP implications, which I'm sure people can construct their own ideas for, but to illustrate my point, expertise bonuses, glancing penalty reduction, etc etc.

Does anyone see this as being at least part of the finalized solution, or is this something that's just too simple and dumb for anyone to enjoy in the long run?

 

Cally

I'd have to agree with Left and Vulajin. Any fight that favors rogues also favors BM hunters in most cases. Given that BM hunters provide dps on par with rogues while also providing a stacking 3% damage increase that benefits ANY dps class, I could easily replace a rogue with a BM hunter. Some of the best rogue gear is also the best hunter gear. Token drops notwithstanding, it would probably be easier to gear up a hunter than a rogue since they can wear both mail and leather. Conceivably, a hunter would have twice the chance of getting good gear versus a rogue.

 

jonnnney

As wonderful as this would be, blizzard cares far too much about arena and pvp for this to happen. If there were a way to only increase our raid damage, and some people have suggested methods for this, that is one thing. But if rogues were to do some random % more damage without an increase in defensive value for other classes then it would "break" pvp in the eyes of blizzard.