Without diverting too much - yeah mages are fine, they have a decurse button. I'd be happy to see warlocks get a bit of a tap with the nerf stick because their AOE is just too good, but I don't see it as omg - no more mages ever. However that wasn't the point. It was about how rogues stack up against other DPS classes. While you might look at stand and deliver fights and raw DPS in isolation when viewing a spreadsheet, that only takes into account one side of the story _in practice_. Most fights aren't stand and deliver. Most fights involve mobility and target switching. Most fights involve personal responsibility for keeping yourself alive and reducing incoming raid damage. I maintain that a rogue is better at handling all of these aspects than the other DPS classes, while still doing top notch sustained DPS.

Why would you want to run 2 dps melee groups ? Doesn't that just fill up the dam of tears for some other class ?

We can easily fit 2, or 3 rogues in a 25 man raid. Seems to me that's pretty fair. With the addition of 1 other class to melee, that will drop to 2. Again, not a particular issue.

Barring any other spectactular performance one way or the other (ie player skill or lack thereof) I see that 2-3 of each class "seems about right".

1 MT (warrior)
1 OT (druid, prot pally, warrior)
2-3 paladins
1-2 holy priests
1-2 shadow priests
1-2 enhance shaman
1 elemental shaman
2-3 resto shaman
1-2 tree druids
2-3 warlocks
2-3 mages
2-3 hunters
2-3 rogues
2-3 dps warriors (1 arms, 1-2 fury)

21-32 for a 25 man raid - plenty of flexibility.

Lets add in the Deathknight. Say 1-2. 1 will replace a rogue/fury warrior and 1 a warlock/mage (be my guess based on what I can see)

I'm still not seeing doom, gloom and misery for Rogues any time soon.

When the top 15 retribution paladins are doing 800dps less, or about 2/3rds of the equivalent rogues, I'm not the least bit worried that retribution paladins are going to be replacing rogues en-masse for DPS positions. Feel free to correct me but isn't bubble on a 5min cooldown ?

Ignoring the fact that for the most part they're of extremely marginal benefit for alliance. Irony at its finest.

I can't wait until you find out that you can't cloak someone elses Felmyst encapsulate damage or any of the aoe on M'uru.

Edit: Hell, you can't even cloak Twins conflag.

Trying to get back on topic.

Which DPS class deals with this best ? Would you replace a rogue under those circumstances ?

We usually do sit a rogue or two on Felmyst. Our first kill we took only 1 rogue and had an extra mage and warlock I believe. The mage and warlock both dps the Skeletons well and are able to dps Felmyst when hes in the sky. The mage is also nice since he can Ice Block the Encapsulate and Blink away from someone elses. But this fight is highly specialized away from melee dps as much as Brutallus allows for stacking of melee.

For Twins our enhance switches to resto for chain heal. But for M'uru rogues are pretty much required for add dps.

I agree with what you're doing here. But I hardly feel that it spells the end of rogue DPS and raid slots as we know it. Provided there is some variety within a release/expansion and/or raid zone, there will always be considerable desire to run 2-3 (if not 4) rogues on the roster, with 2 on a normal raid night, dropping down to 1 on special encounters that don't favour them, or 3 when it does.

I'm still not seeing the doom and gloom which is what I was reading from rogues about unreleased content, with unreleased talents about unknown raid zones.

Speculation without any information surely will lead to anxiety.

I see few problems with the rogue class now, and while adding some small degree of raid utility would be nice, I can't imagine a situation where rogues are undesirable in any form of raid content now, and in the future.

Coming back to the point on wotlk and rogue adding to synergy, I had a slightly off the wall though that might be worth sharing.

I started thinking about this while going through the 'consolidating raid utility' thread... that amongst the root causes of these problems is Windfury. It seems to me that the side benefits of the extra attack mechanic are behind a lot of these problems. Ret paladin and arms warrior have become dependent on the extra rage generation or seal procs that the extra attacks give. It's also damned useful for warr/pal tanks. This dependency on windfury ends up constraining the raid leader in his melee group and I think is fundamental to the issues we'll face in WOTLK.

So how about giving rogues windfury? OK, from a lore point of view, clearly not as Windfury totem :P But imagine a "Quicksilver Poison" a temporary weapon enchant. For group purposes, it would be summoned as an item in a similar mechanic to soulwell/ritual of refreshment - self service, raid wide "chance on hit for extra attack" on mainhand weapons only. The effect itself would probably be equivalent to the windfury of a resto shaman, so it's still beneficial to have an enhancement shaman in a melee group.

OK, I did say it was off the wall. But the main thrust of my point is that without fixing the windfury mechanic and the dependence that other classes have upon it, Lich King melee groups will be more constrained than ever and it's us that'll feel the pain. Breaking that up, in such a way that enables more flexibility in physical dps group setups and without making enhancement shaman redundant is part of the answer.

I agree Windfury is part of the problem. I'm not sure I like the idea of giving a windfury bis to rogues. As I've previously stated, I think lore wise rogues shouldn't give buff to the party. I'd rather see him debuff the target.

However, I like your "Quicksilver poison" idea....except it could be applied to the target! "Gives a chance to get an extra attack after successfully hitting the target". We could have the caster version of the poison too!

I'll never understand why people choose to be in-your-face confrontational when presented with a point of view that differs from their own. Anyway.

Right now I think a very big disconnect people are having is the notion that rogues are top-notch dps. I interpret this to mean that we are peerless and clearly the #1 in this department (if this is not the way it was intended, please correct). We aren't anymore. The scoreboard shows that. You can say what you want about the gear or the fact that the scoreboard is showing off the top performances of the players that are also clearly being prioritized for buff stacking, but that doesn't change the fact that the statement that rogues are top-notch dps is false. No consensus or base level of comprehension of the "other guy" will occur until that statement's validity is decided upon.

Insofar as "gloom and doom" and premature anxiety are concerned, I think Blizzard has done its fair share of engendering this. Between their promises that rogues would get a review a few patches back only to see the Rogue changes summed up in 1 bullet point didn't help. The fact that there are no hypothetical rogue WotLK spells/talents even on the table shows that Blizzard is at least taking their time to thoughtfully consider what they're going to do with the class. As it stands, though, they are failing. By their own presentation, their intention is for us to be the peerless single target dpsers. The current state of the game has this as true assuming you have a set of legendary weapons. Any statement that this is intended as their tuning mechanic does not pass the straight-face test with me, at least, but I know there are contrary opinions to this.

Let's steer the conversation somewhere productive if we can't get a consensus on what's above. The poison-simulating-Windfury idea that rogues could apply to other party members sounds really nice, since it would alleviate the threat-from-wft problem. It still doesn't proxy for Unleashed Rage and SoE, but it's a very simple solution and a pleasant buff in rogue utility.

As we know, rogue standing by the tank, in front of mob equipped with melee weapon, is a threat to the raid. Because of possibility to get parried, which causes extra attack on tank. (Until tank rage is a problem ofc and he likes to be beaten more or we need to use Gouge to counterspell, because mob is immune to Kick) So normally rogues stand behind the target and spam SS at mob's back (or boss ankles, because bosses are too tall to reach their necks) without the risk of being parried.
But sometimes (we experienced it yesterday on Teron) boss turns around to some person in the raid just to cast some nasty spell, and in this moment he seems to be able to parry our attacks. Well - recount says so.
My question is - can this very parry, which happen when casting spell at other-than-tank player, cause extra attack on tank?

Regards.

All evidence points to this happening, yes. If tank gibbing is your main concern, it would technically be optimal to cancel your autoattack as a mob turns.

The best way, bar none, for rogues to remain raid viable is for an MS warrior and enhancment shaman together in the same group to be raid essential. Give MS warriors and enhancement shaman stronger raid wide buffs and no raid will want to be without them. Ensuring that a group with 3 open slots and the above classes and specs is a raid priority is the best way to ensure that a rogue will be a best in group RDPS addtion to at least 1-3 slots in any given raid.

Rogues scale extreamly well with melee buffs, we know this, so all that need be done to make rogues useful in raids is to ensure that their buffers are not only indispensable for melee group DPS but RDPS as well.

The greatest threat to rogue raid slots are death knights, it is already advantageous to stack ret, MS, and enhance in the same group leaving only 2 open slots. If stacking death knights in the melee DPS group also becomes advantageous then rogues will be left with one optimal slot per raid. Hopefully this is an issue blizzard is aware of and they tailor the death knight group buffs, if any, to tanks or ranged DPS and do not tie their ability to provide raid or group buff to the melee buffs they recieve, like they did with ret paladins.

Are you taking [Drums of Battle] into account? At the T4 level they're more of a personal upgrade than switching T4 shoulders for Swiftstrike, and the buff applies to your entire group. As your gear improves, the benefit from the Drums improves as well. There's a reason a lot of raiding guilds are subsidizing skilling up leatherworking for anyone who wants to switch over...

I've been thinking about it, and while its more likely that Blizzard will add new abilities or talents to make rogues more necessary, I think there are still options with current abilities and talents.
What about allowing Expose Armor to partially stack with Sunder Armor? Perhaps a 25% effectiveness per rogue, stacking up to 3 times. It provides a highly sought after debuff at near full effectiveness with 3 rogues, stacks with sunder so Warrior tanks can still maintain threat, and gives ample reason for raids to keep their 2-3 rogues.

Boss armor will drop below zero with Sunders, EA, and CoR, and on high end gear there already is a lot of armor penetration.

Sunder: 2600
EA(imp): 3000
CoR: 800
FF: 600
_________
6800

EDIT: whops, I forgot FF

Yes, but those numbers could easily be tweaked to find the spot where its not overpowered, yet still be desirable to raid groups. Perhaps two stacks capping at 40%.
I agree that a poison (perhaps stacking with multiple rogues) that enhances bleed effects seems to be the best way to go. I also think a stacking debuff is almost necessary to keep more than one rogue in the raid. Theoretically, you're looking at a drop to one rogue anyway, one debuff that doesn't stack with multiple rogues would be unlikely to change that.
I do firmly believe that Blizzard is aware of a possible future imbalance and am hoping that the fears expressed here will not be realized.

If Expose Armor counted as five stacks of Sunder for the purpose of Devastate (or superceded Sunder Armor's armor reduction effect without overwriting the Sunder Armor debuff), that would go a long way to making it more viable.

Then again, you only need one rogue to carry that debuff. It's Expose Weakness redux.

In the current WOTLK alpha, Rend is buffed and scales with AP, warriors have an AOE bleed (which, if I recall corrently, current theorycrafting suggests will mostly be a tanking ability), and Improved Rend has been revamped.

It isn't clear how much of a typical warrior's DPS will be bleeds, but it likely will be more than it is now.

I think that armor penetration is a natural thing for rogues to provide....one way around the current Sunder Armor conflict would be to add some small secondary effect (could be as little as a small DoT) to Sunder Armor so that it's not overwritten when EA is applied. A bit hack-ish, but it could work.

On the crazy/out there side of things, one interesting idea would be to allow Rogues to perform high DPS coordinated attacks with other melee DPS'ers. These combo moves would always involve a rogue, but might be different depending on who the rogue paired with. Such an arrangement could also easily scale up with the number of rogues present. Of course, from a coding perspective it'd be a fair amount of work to make that happen relative to other options, not realistic for WotLK unless Blizzard's already planning on it and hasn't told anyone, but I'm just brainstorming at this point.

This would be no different to ISB. Having rogues with poisons that allow for CoE/CoS/CoR type effects would be good without making them OP. Possibly adding a Disease Vulnerability. Or make them Fire/Frost/Shadow/Nature/Disease.

We already have the Wound Poison/MS/Aimed Shot behaviour copied, so why not others.

Other things to extend would be the Threat modification poison. Have poisons that modify the threat behaviour of certain damage types. Increased threat from Fire, reduced threat from Frost. Increased threat from melee, reduced threat from spells.

But the major reason why bleeds are such a low % of warrior damage is that your crits reset not only the duration but the ticks of deep wounds. As you gear up you see the amount of contribution from DW decline. It's always seemed like a mechanic that should be recoded, and if it's purely meant to be a pvp talent, it should probably swap positions with impale so Fury warriors can skip those points.

In respect to the idea of a bleed poison and mangle.. First, I think it's obvious why sunder and EA don't stack. Not only does it create huge problems in PvP, it would basically necessitate that those debuffs be up on the boss at all times because they'd be the largest increases to physical dps in the game. And it's doubtful Blizzard would want us zeroing boss armor without itemization, so they'd be forced to increase boss armor to reign in physical dps and make ArP still have value, so it'd probably do nothing but force one rogue on the raid to forgo rupture for EA to maintain the status quo we have now.

Also, while it's possible it won't stack with Mangle, warriors have a talent called Trauma linked to Blood Frenzy that increases bleed damage by 30% when one of their normal attacks crit. Bloodletting increases the damage of Rend (buffed again) and Bloodbath (aoe bleed) by 75%. Both Rend and Bloodbath do 4 times their damage against a target that enrages. So there are indicators that bleeds might perform much better in wotlk than they do in TBC, if Trauma and Mangle do stack, you're looking at something like 69% bigger rupture ticks if you have an MS warrior/feral in the raid. Not a terrible boost to that finisher. The reason why I could see these abilities stacking is that it's a mechanic that could provide more sustained damage that doesn't really impact PvP dps.

It should also be noted that while currently only rogues, druids, and warriors have bleed effects, the new hunter spells/talents haven't been revealed, and a bleed isn't outside the realm of possibility or proper theme for them.

I believe majority haven`t noticed, but WWS report of last nights Last Resort run is out with Stefang (first hunter with legendary bow) leaving rogues quite some way behind even on rogue friendly fights. I wouldn`t want to go as far as saying that this proves BM hunters (with FI effect on party) do more dps than rogues, but it`s certainly interesting to see new comparisons.

Last Resort
Wow Web Stats

There's some indications that duration-refreshes on DoTs are being recoded to not be a DPS loss. There are several refresh talents available for affliction warlocks and shadow priests under the current talents, and the (leaked, not-necessarily-sourced) report is that it works correctly (at least most of the time). This should improve the DPS from deep wounds, especially for DW-fury builds that take Impale.