Look, I understand that the whining on the regular forums is infantile and so trying to project an image that is the opposite of that is to be expected on a board like this. But statements like these are simply unhelpful. What is the point of mentioning that mages still got taken to progression raids in tBC? Blizzard has admitted multiple times that the situation with mages in tBC was unacceptable. That stacking 4 warlocks and bringing one mage to a boss fight was a sign of poor class balance. That they were working to remedy this and trying to ensure that the optimal raid didn't have such imbalances because one class was so much better than another at the same role.

Given all of that, what is the point of stating that if rogues are poorly balanced we won't be entirely excluded from raids? At worst Blizz hears this and assumes that we don't need improvements (highly unlikely of course). At best Blizz ignores statements like these. Unless you think it would actually be ok for us to be as poorly designed for raids as mages were in tBC, then what possible point is there to stating – for the umpteenth time – the obvious fact that there won't be literarily zero rogues in WotLK progression raids? Why do so many knowledgeable people keep bringing it up as though it were at all pertinent?

There's also those seaforium charges Engineers can make and the skeleton keys Blacksmithing can make ... I'm aware they didn't make any new skeleton keys in TBC, but pre-BC the max-level key (Arcanite Skeleton Key) was equal to 300 LP, and the max-level charge in TBC (Elemental Seaforium Charge) is equal to 350 LP. They can easily introduce new recipes to match 400 LP in WotLK, and it shouldn't be unreasonable for Blizz to expect one of these three options to be in a raid. It doesn't even have to be a requirement, but something to make life easier like in Shattered Halls.

really? do people care that much about being able to use lock picking in raids/dungeons? really?

who gives a shit...

im pretty sure raiding would mean contributing to a RAID and progressing through an instance to KILL bosses, and in our case contributing by putting out the highest dps possible while staying alive.

do people think that there will be some massive parade at the end of the game because you were able to open a chest/door that gave you a shortcut to a boss or in another case the option to kill a new boss? IMO lock picking is pretty much a passive ability and if you didn't skill it up while you were leveling then you were super lazy or didn't give a shit.

whats next on the list for the lock picking argument? you want half of the loot that come out of the locked boxes you pick in org? think of it like mage food/water/portal....it comes with the class, its not going to make or break a raid/dungeon, and its sure as hell not going to make people drool over bringing a rogue over someone who is engineering and can make a charge to blow up a lock. Nor will we lose a raid spot because of it.

lets read some more crying about something else MORE ridiculous than lock picking please.



**and yes this is my first post, but i have been reading EJ forums for quite some time, i think that this topic of our "WotLK pve dps thread" finally caused me to point out something so useless and petty.

Miscellaneous thoughts about topics in the last page.

First, on hybrid SF/Combat builds for swords/fists: I just don't see that these are going to be that good. As has been previously discussed in this thread, the damage contribution of SF is just not that large, and losing Combat Potency and other powerful combat talents to get it strikes me as unlikely to be productive. At the moment I think the only SF/Combat build that makes any sense whatsoever is 30/41, and that's more a reflection on the weakness of the high-level combat abilities than it is a sign of the viability of SF/Combat builds.

I'm also of the opinion that worrying about exact builds should wait until after we actually have the final talent trees, but maybe that's just me.

On the topic of our utility abilities and their places in raids: I'm not averse to the occasional suppression-room type encounter where we have to fill other than our usual role through use of our secondary abilities; however, I think any attempt to make them a significant portion of raiding (i.e., more than one or two gimmick fights per expansion) would turn out to be annoying. I also think it highly unlikely that any encounter will actually require a rogue class-specific ability, given the movement in the expansion towards making classes more interchangeable. Our security in raids will likely not come from being able to do something that no one else can, but the fact that no class can do anything that another class can't - we'll just be a high-DPS class with some miscellaneous utility just like everyone else. As we do have certain weaknesses I imagine our DPS will be a bit higher than most classes, but I think it's unlikely that we'll be asked to do anything truly rogue-specific - or at least, if we are, it'll only be in the occasional gimmick fight, I suspect.

In general: I do think we want to have more than the pity raid spots that Mages were getting in this expansion, and I don't think anyone is advocating otherwise. I also think that the way we're going to get them is not by increased use of our class abilities, but more or less the same way we always have - high DPS, useful utility in terms of snare/debuff removal, good threat management, and one of the better interrupts. And if that's not what we're seeing so far in the WotLK beta, I would argue that that's a clear symptom of the fact that the class hasn't been tuned in the beta yet.

I think it's quite clear at this point that the utility we are going to be getting (yes, Blizzard has said we will be getting some) will not be some gimmick such as lockpicking or trap disarming, so I'm not sure why the debate is raging over whether lockpicking or the like is "viable" or "useful" utility. On that subject there was some fairly extensive discussion of the Suppression Room a while back in this thread, the conclusion being that while rogue gimmicks do exist and are somewhat interesting when used once in a while, it wouldn't be a lot of fun for that to be one of our "main goals."

As for Sap, Sap will become more viable in that it's now usable on a lot more mob types -- in addition, we get a new rank increasing the duration to 55 seconds. Although it'd be nice to have a refreshable Sap (as other have mentioned) the PvP ramifications of that change could be huge depending on how the change would be implemented. I'm not sure anyone thinks that a rogue should be able to CC anything within 10 yards for 10 seconds for a minimal energy cost.

They can make the mechanics for Sap different in PvE and PvP. I don't see how a PvE renewable Sap is imbalanced.

I am not entirely sure if this is the correct thread for this, but as it is about DPS and WotLK I guess it fits in perfectly well. I read here the other day about the latest beta patch on WotLK servers which implemented rogue glyphs and to a somewhat of a surprise found out that most of the glyphs are rather worthless for DPS. For example there is not a single direct buff for the combo-awarding abilities that are widely used by raiding rogues.

Certainly, a longer duration for rupture and slice and dice are nice and dandy but I fail to see are they really on par with e.g. the mage's flat out 2% critical strike increase from molten armor, 5% DPS increase to frostbolt damage or 20% additional mana gained through mage armor. On top of the relatively weak DPS upgrade the glyphs provide some of them seem fairly odd: For what purpose does +5 yards to the range of ambush serve?

All in all, I'd like to hear opinions as of what kind of glyphs there should be in order to turn them from mere gimmick into something tangible on DPS front. I personally would rather see situational boosts (e.g. when there are five stacks of deadly poison...) on the combo-awarding abilities rather than longer duration for evasion which nowadays feels moreso a kiss of death than a lifesaver.

Has there been any information on the damage mechanics of fan of knives, is it more like sinister strike or eviscerate? Specifically whether there is a general attack power modifier or it is 1.7 for daggers and 2.4 for non-daggers. I do not want to have to keep some fists, maces, or swords as backup for additional aoe damage with a dagger build.

Also is anyone else as concerned as me with the potential changes of armor penetration? I like how it is now where you scaling stat seems boring to me and odd considering all the armor debuffs have set values instead of percentages. Examples of armor penetration rating have occurred on some wotlk items but not others
Saronite Ambusher
Elanor's Edge

Also while I agree that focusing on requiring lock picking alone in raids is kinda silly. I would like to see some situations where a few stealth characters can change the tide of battle on a gauntlet type situation or allow for skipping certain groups of trash. I still remember whenever we did SSC someone in the raid would mention the naked dwarf running off to solo tidewalker for a few seconds so that the hallway was clear of murlocs. That ways rogues may not specifically be required to attend for the 10 mans as druids, mages, or even some warlock and hunter pets could assist.

On a side note total armor penetration is not shown in the armory which angers me.

I think the benefit of glyphs is going to be really tricky for the devs. They have their work cut out for them. You can create simple scaling glyphs that increase our crit damage or rate, haste, etc, but anything that tinkers with durations will lead to trouble. The +3s SnD glyph is nice in theory, I mean permanent 2/5 t4? But ends up tripping over itself when you look at the other seemingly enticing raid glyphs like +5s of rupture, which others have already pointed to with a ? above their heads.

The easy thing to do would be to look at tier set bonuses, IMO, and see if any of them can suitably qualify but then you get to the problem (?) of what to do with the actual sets. At first I looked at set bonuses we used to enjoy and thought that would be our answer (picking out the ones I found noteworthy):

T0 / T0.5
Chance on melee attack to restore 35 energy (!!!)

T1
Reduces cooldown of Vanish by 30s
Heals 500 health when Vanish is performed

ZG
Decreases energy cost of Evi/Rup by 5

Aq20 (BIG FAN of this set, especially considering the 5 piece new sets)
-10 energy cost of SnD (!!!)

T2
Increases chance to apply poisons by 5%
Gives the Rogue a chance to inflict 283 to 317 damage on the target and heal the Rogue for 50 health every 1 sec. for 6 sec. on a melee hit.

T2.5
15% increased Eviscerate damage

T3
Your Backstab, Sinister Strike, and Hemorrhage critical hits cause you to regain 5 energy.
Reduces the threat from your Backstab, Sinister Strike, Hemorrhage, and Eviscerate abilities.
Your Eviscerate has a chance per combo point to reveal a flaw in your opponent's armor, granting a 100% critical hit chance for your next Backstab, Sinister Strike, or Hemorrhage.

Assassination Blue
KS/CS proc +160 haste rating for 6s

Wastewalker Blue
+35 hit rating (!!!)
Chance on hit for +160 AP for 15s

T4
+3s SnD Duration
+15% (additive to Ruthlessness) chance on finisher to apply another CP

T5
Chance at free energy finisher

T6
Increase SnD haste by 5%
Increase BS, SS, Hemo, Mut damage by 6% (additive, wish this was multiplicative)


Any of those would make really great starting points for glyph ideas. But, that wouldn't leave Blizzard much to put on the sets. They could take some combination of these (Which is the route they were forced to go) allowing us to use glyphs to "keep" the previous bonuses we enjoyed, but that seems kind of dull.

I agree with you really to early to address builds with out even having a real class review.

As for SF/Combat builds I would have to say 31/40 might actually be competitive. Dropping surprise attacks for 1 point in deadly brew and running IP both hands. (This is pure speculation as i have not run any numbers to back this up.)

But, until blizzard gives us a polishing pass and new ranks of poisons it will all be speculation.

The problem with rogues and mages in BC was that they tended to gravitate towards one dominant spec and rotation. Thus, if you had 4 friends that were rogues, they would all be the same spec and it would be hard to justify bringing 4 rogues since all they provide is dps. They can't even spec into another role, not even one that provides buffs/debuffs, with the exception of a few cases where imp. EA is required. However, the mechanics and rotations remain more or less the same.

Now, on the other hand, consider druids. If your 4 friends were druids, they have a variety of choices to gain a raid spot. Feral, resto, balance, and with WOTLK changes, the ability to be a main tank or a cat dps. In the case of warriors, protection, arms, and fury are all viable and offer different playstyles.

Since rogues/mages can't spec into a tanking or healing role, they should be able to spec into something that gives something more to the raid other than pure personal dps. Now if your 4 friends are rogues, with 2 of them being pure dps, the other 2 can do *SOMETHING* else via a different spec that is also raid viable and offers a different playstyle. Now, instead of specifically recruiting an arms warrior for BF/demo shout, you can have that extra rogue spec into something that would provide similar buffs/debuffs at the cost of personal dps.

The TLDR version: rogues and mages should have an alternate PVE viable raid spec to give players more choice in what they plan to bring to a raid. It also provides for a more varied playstyle and perhaps different gearing options.

I don't mean to be an ass (okay, that's a lie), but "Hey could the math people on the EJ boards run the numbers for me on this weird idea I have?" is really counter productive. If you think an alteration to a more common build to pick up some other talents has some value, JUST DO SOME QUICK NUMBERS. I'll lay out the basic format:

Start with the standard build, and identify the key components you're removing. In this case, it was dropping SA. In general, find the % contribution of damage it provides (10% damage on ~25% of a T6+ rogue's damage, or roughly 2.5% from 1 talent point).

Then compare what you think this will add. Compare the two numbers, and if your post looks really dumb (like, oops, taking away 2.5% damage to add .5%) then stop posting! If it looks GOOD - post it. Your math might be slightly wrong, but for heaven's sake, at least try. We'd much rather correct small mistakes in math than just get these ... requests for doing theorycraft on everyone's weird idea of what might work out. Creative energy is good - but offing all the 'hard work' onto others is kinda icky. We want to help people understand the class better, but honestly, it helps if you can at least try to participate rather than dictate.

It doesn't take much imagination to make lock picking or any ability useful in a raid. Make a mechanical boss who can be LP once every minute and it reduces the armor to 50% (stacks with sunder so effectively 0 armor) for 10/20 seconds. Sure its not necessary, and its not gamebreaking, but it helps add a special moment to use cooldowns/pots and get some good hits in.

They could also add that if you have maximized lock picking you can "use" things 50% faster. This causes Magtheridon cube clicking to be easier, and without causing too much pain you can make the fight doable by anyone but easier on the rogue.

How about impKidneyShot to debuff the target with the 9% damage increase, regardless of stun resistance, or meld a 9% damage boost with CttC/evisc/envenom to make it actually usable. Most of this is just smoke and mirrors until we get the first pass on talents anyway.

For mages, I was thinking along the lines of a deep arcane or frost tree for dps + utility and deep fire for pure dps. The "utility" that the mage brings is of some value so that raid leaders don't automatically make you spec into the current 2/48/11 build. And that utility would be different than what warlocks currently bring so now raid leaders will have to decide whether to bring a mage or a warlock and not automatically dismiss the mage.

For rogues, what you stated is certainly interesting but I would be more than happy if Blizzard, say, buffed hemo so that it provided a debuff on par but not stackable with a warrior's BF. It would also be more interesting if at least 2 of the rogue trees were raid viable but used different combo point building moves and finishers, and also had different cycles. That way, we can talk about, and theorycraft about how a rogue can spec into this particular spec, gem this particular way, and apply this different rotation to provide dps and utility to the raid. We can also turn around and talk about this *OTHER* spec that would provide the highest personal dps while running different finishers and rotations.

In TBC, rogues ran with the standard combat build throughout all the tiered content. All other specs were talked about but not used. Tri-spec hemo was interesting for awhile before it was nerfed. Deep assassination was hardly used, and as it stands right now, not used at all with PVE rogues using deep combat and PVP rogues using deep sub. So for WOTLK, I'd like to choose between 2 different specs (ie. deep assassination or deep combat) for PVE raiding rather than shunning one spec for the other automatically.

They're giving something similar to frost mages, giving them a chance to proc their 'frozen' damage bonuses on freeze immune boss mobs. I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar mechanic come to Imp. Kidney.

Like I Said, I have personally not run any numbers to back the statement up. I agree, I came off wrong in my post and I apologize to the community for that. Honestly there is still a lot of work to be done on Rogues and we do not even have new ranks of poison, so things will probably change. I hope this helps to clarify what I was saying.

Using the Roguecraft LK 0.1.0 Sheet by Vulajin with S3 weapons and mix of Sunwell/BT gear going 31/40 (2805) gives you more DPS then 30/41 (2742) If you go IP/IP over IP/DP it is actually higher DPS. IP/IP in 30/41/0 is (2766)

This is all based off Roguecraft LK 0.1.0 spread sheet by Vulajin. Found here:

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t27244-rogue_roguecraft_spreadsheet/

Well, mobs sort of have to aggro if their buddies get pulled, or else the refreshability of sap wouldn't be an issue at all - you could sap one, pull the rest, and then not even worry about resapping - it's not aggroed, so it just stands there and waits for you to solo pull it when you're done with whatever else you're doing. This would make it significantly more powerful than sheep as a PvE CC, so I somehow doubt that they'll be doing that (though I certainly won't complain if they do).

Indeed. It's late here, so it took me a few more minutes to think through the complete exploit. Pack of 4 cc-able mobs. 3 rogues, 3 saps, pull 1 at a time. Tiresome, but would trivialise a bunch of stuff. Guess the other way to implement it would be for the 'link agro' to kick in when sap expires, allowing you to resap before it expires but not have them stand around after. However I don't see any of this happening, especially if the new sap is 55 seconds and works on more targets than any other CC.

Incidentally, seems that 120dps is the current figure for 1h lvl 80 blues. Guess that confirms what was discussed a few pages back - there will be upgrades in the dungeons but best of the best TBC weapons may get you by as entry level Naxx gear.

I'm starting to get pretty fucking nervous...do they intend to let us test our new abilities under live-server conditions or are they going to stick with the talents and simply say "Rogues are fine, fuck off"?

I'm not sure I understand how this is an exploit? Or even how this is really that different than bringing 3 mages who sheep 3 of the pack of 4 that you are talking about? It is a bit easier to apply the initial CC, but beyond that it is more difficult to keep those mobs CC'ed, as that current mechanics require that a rogue be stealthed to apply sap. I'm not sure I would really want to sit around for the cool down period for vanish before pulling the next set of mobs either.

It's more my fault for not explaining myself more thoroughly. This has been a pretty bad day for me in terms of clarity in thinking / communicating. What I meant to say is that having a non-stealth-requiring renew of Sap on an already sapped target, no different from a mage re-sheeping, wouldn't be imbalanced in PvE. Damage would break it and then we're out of luck, which would make it weaker than conventional renewable CC. If that rogue's sap target is still sapped, though, the rogue could run over and bonk it on the head once more to buy his group a little more time. It's less important in raids but would do wonders for the small group rogue trying to put in an honest(?) hour's work in an instance.

(and yes, I'm fully aware we can vanish->sap in arena, despite being a terribad pvper)

If sap stopped the mobs agroing at all, the player group would be able to go out of combat, sit, drink, rez, rebuff between *mobs*, let alone groups. That's quite different to having a mob turned into a sheep, that might roam off into another group or into some splash damage, might heartbeat resist at any time and quite possibly head straight for the cloth wearing mage and kill him.