I think one important thing lost in all this current discussion of rogues vs. other classes for DPS is that all of this discussion in the last 2 days is based on Brutallus WWS parses. This is a fight that is nearly optimum for melee DPS like rogues.

The fact that the argument is still very close under these optimum conditions whether a Hunter might be superior is exactly the problem. In a rogue's best fights, a rogue can make a reasonable case to be in a raid but its not even 100% cut and dry. The problem is that there are not that many optimum fights for the rogue class and it's hard to imagine that the expansion will bring us 75% of fights where rogues can stand in one spot and swing away.

The real problem is that currently, there is a solid argument to remove the rogue class from non-optimum fights since rogues tend to be the most replaceable class as they contribute one thing, DPS and if that DPS isn't there, there really is no other role for a rogue in that raid. Add that being melee tends to mean rogues take more damage than ranged classes due to boss AoE effects, and you get to the real issue about rogues currently. Do the same thing you did on Brutallus and do that for the rest of the Sunwell bosses and see how rogues stack up DPS-wise overall...

Now, I'm not going to be doom and gloom about it. The proposed talents for rogues in WotLK haven't been released yet, so we do not know. What we do know is that there will be a new class that does seem to contribute raid buffs, that is melee-based and very likely to benefit from the same buffs that other melee classes do. If Death Knights can bring similar DPS, it seems that it will add more incentive to replace a rogue with another class that buffs the group.

I think the real issue is what is Blizzard going to do to make it worthwhile to bring rogues to a boss where the situation isn't so optimal and how does one design bosses to penalize range and melee more equally in those sort of fights. The biggest issue I see is that you can't require too much ranged movement or many of the ranged healers won't be effective either. I believe that issue may be the main reason ranged DPS tends to get as much of a pass for taking damage as they do.

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 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.

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.