Looking at the parse, taking DPS time into account, Aldriana would be second, after the Warlock. Even so, 10,000 dmg is hardly a big difference and could have been pushed either way by the RNG factor.

Taking a peek into the the other fights, it looks like he is in Top 5 in almost every fight. Yes, the damage needs a little tweaking but a far cry from the Rogues are useless insinuation that some people are throwing around.

While it is true that we make excellent sponges, as someone said on the last page, let's not forget that we DO now offer a couple unique buffs that are more than just circumstantial:
Savage Combat (although not technically unique, it might as well be...)
Tricks of the Trade.

Tricks is amazing, and it is a sizable DPS increase for the raid in most situations to boot. Unfortunately, many rogues don't choose to utilize it to the utmost and just Trick-trade, as I like to call it. If you really min-max its efficiency, it can be scarily effective. The more rogues you have, the more 15% damage buffs you can give someone. And right now doing that for a fury warrior or hunter is very, very nice for raid DPS.

And, the elephant in the room, it will allow for immense AoE TPS next patch, to the extent that real AOE DPS classes won't even have to consider starting slow. As it is already, Tricks has given that DPS immediacy to raids, which is a pretty nice buff, too.

I disagree about "competitive" being the best we can hope for.
"competitive" should be the LEAST we should expect. The infamous debate about the "pure vs hybrid" has been raging for months for a reason, and this reason is balance. The "hybrids" have the advantage of being able to change role, the "pure" should then have the advantage of having at the very minimum "competitive DPS".

Additionnally, this "competitive" DPS is about single target, which is actually the main strong point of the rogue - we are noticeably less efficient when it comes to AoE. If we're only able to be the equivalent of others when it comes to single target damage, our weaker AoE makes us, as a whole less interesting to bring than a class which can do the same DPS on single target and higher DPS while zoning (of course buffs also come into play, but one of the complaint is precisely that rogues' buffs aren't particularly impressive, though they are far from useless, and as such they won't be the thing justifying any sub-part performance in the DPS department).
Hopefully, the change to FoK will perhaps correct this. We can't really estimate how much for now, we'll have to wait and see.

But I think that the principle is clear and obvious (and has nothing to do with whining) : if we're not better at something, we should not be weaker at something else. And conversely, if we're weaker at something, we should be better and something else.
And it's that which, in my opinion, fuel this uneasy feeling. Many rogues feels that we've only "equal" or "weaker" points, and no "stronger" point to compensate.

Same thing for the buffs/debuffs : ours aren't bad, but at best they're "equal" to others (as easy to use and as efficient), either they are "weaker" (harder to use/less efficient).

To sum it up, it's not that the rogue class in a "dead" or "abysmal" state. But it's in a definitely "second-rate" state. As in : we're not a liability per se, but I definitely feel we're a "by default" class ; as in, we're the second choice for mostly anything, because at best we're as good as others, and for some points we're weaker.

Hope that I don't sound whiny - my intention was only about explaining why people feel bad about rogues these days, which imply talking about negative situations.

I'm not quite sure why you missed two of the most important factors out, unless you meant to include them in the catch-all number (2). These factors are:

(4) Our damage is highly dependent on raid buffs, meaning that in smaller groups such as 5- and 10-man content, where there is less likelihood of having the full buff suite, we are selectively disadvantaged relative to the other classes.

(5) Our damage is highly gear-dependent (Mutilate especially) due to the reliance on very fast weapons, which are currently very lacking.

It would be interesting to take the breakdown of the rogues that are doing well / OK / badly in parses and simply correlate that to the number of [Webbed Death]s they happen to be lucky enough to have obtained. My suspicion is that the correlation would be quite strong.

I'd like to point out that no, we don't have to "wait and see"; a couple pages back you can find a post by Vulajin with the theorycraft of the no-cooldown FoK, and at the very least it is comparable to the other classes AOE DPS.

On a second note, there are some things that need to be reminded of when comparing our Patchwerk DPS versus casters Patchwerk DPS. Bloodlust uptime is much more significant for a Mage, for example, than it is for us. A 2min Patchwerk kill will inflate Mage DPS much more than ours, and I'd venture in saying that Moonkin DPS as well. Our benefit from haste is pretty minimal compared to casters, as we really only get more melee swings, which yes, turns out to be more yellow damage and poison procs but it doesn't compare to having your nuke that does 80% of your damage increased by haste - and not only that, depending on the health percentage that it is used at, the damage during Bloodlust is increased (because of Dirty Deeds-like talents), effectively inflating the benefit from Bloodlust even more; and after all that, there are also cooldowns that have synergy with Bloodlust, such as Bestial Wrath, that we do not have.

Also, as much as we "need a lot of buffs", it goes both ways: a great deal of our damage is magic, and the other part is physical. Hence, it will take a 25man raid to "cap out" our buffs and achieve maximum DPS, but in 5mans and 10mans, the chance that we benefit from at least one buff in a random group is higher than, say, if all our damage was physical.

While I don't see the situation as "rogues are doomed", nor do I like to see the empty half of the glass, you really are pushing it there. Out of the 6 buffs you listed, only savage combat is really expected to be used in 25 mans, on a typical boss fight. The rest of the "raid buffs" are useless 90% of the time. Yes, ineffective and expensive. I don't see why we should lie to ourselves.

Linking a WWS where a rogue does X dps is counter-productive and just not useful and completly pointless. Out of 300-400 other classes that do X dps, a rogue doing X dps as well when all the stars allign isn't really a positive thing; Infact it's negative.

As I said in my first post, if the class did play smooth enough, the difference between top and average rogues wouldn't be in such an extend that you see one out of top 12 and other one always toping meters. That's bad design, a design that requires you to not only do perfect rotations [or reading forums X everyday], but is very unforgiving when something doesn't work as it should. We might like it, but the guy that really just raids 2 nights a week and doesn't want to read EJ every week will get beaten and frustrated pretty easily, hence all the whining on forums.

Actually no. Theory is theory and means very little without empirical confirmation. It would be nice to have some confirmation from the PTR on the following points. While the answers may be known for Live, they may well have changed.

1) Will FoK proc Focused Attacks and/or Combat Potency?

2) Does Cold Blood affect FoK?

3) Does Blade Flurry affect FoK?

4) Is there a cap to total damage of FoK, as there is for all other AoE abilities?

5) Is there a cap to the total number of targets for FoK?

6) Does FoK proc poisons normally?

I would say that NONE of these are safe assumptions to make now that Blizzard has reworked the ability.

I believe the theorycraft found higher up this thread assumes that FoK has no cap on target number or on total damage, that it procs poisons (as it does on Live), and that crits from it proc Focused Attacks (as it does on Live). That means that if any of the assumptions are wrong, the theorycraft will substantially overestimate FoK output. However, the theorycraft did not however take into account the impact of Cold Blood or Blade Flurry, which will have the opposite effect.

So, we have the premier theorycrafter/player with a plethora of best in slot drops and he barely squeezes out a win by the slimest of margins on a 'pro rogue fight'. This is not even considering the other raids members gear or dedication to play and theorycrafting. And this is "ok" and that we are "up there". So, it is perfectly acceptable to 'in the perfect scenario' (ie. all buffs, perhaps other better geared players not showing up for raid, having a premiere theorycrafter, having awesome gear) barely inch out a win on one boss while 'hopefully being in the top 5 on every other boss fight'? Since most do not have Aldrianas gear nor expertise (though many are trying to achieve that level of knowledge), then they will surely slide down the payscale. You mention 'at worst, we are sligthly below'. That is not 'at worst', that is a given/standard now. It is common for us to be alot worse (being alot worse is our own perceptions, I agree) on the meters on every boss fight than other classes. Not to disparage your ability, but how were the other top 5 geared? Did all the notables make it to the raid? I mean, we can't quantify your performance unless we know if that parse was actually a valid slice of equally geared and equally skilled players.

The posters contention on our 'raid buffs' is so highly circumstantial and specific, you can't even conclude that its a 'best source' when compared to a consistent and viable raid buff. Also, like our DPS, if you need a perfect scenario to realize a perfect buff, and it has been shown that these two parameters can certainly be omitted to succeed, then again - why a rogue? In other words, Wound poison is awesome, but it is so circumstanial and specific that its value is overshadowed by its non-value in 98% of situtations. Sure, its cool to bring out 'when needed', but its not a show stopper. Also, Anaesthetic Poison, again gimp our dps for a very specific need. Also, when considering such fringe case uses, will a raid group desire a rogue for that fringe case when they can bring 'insert another class here' which can bring a buff that is usefull in all or most of the time, Their utility and better dps (yes, we know most classes beat us in dps) will actually benefit the raid as a whole, better. But even moreso than all of that, I never ever once needed Anaesthetic Poison for anything, yet I am suppose have value in something that just isn't needed except for that 'one' case that I havent' stumbled upon? Is rogue reputation, which is takign a huge dive, worth giving up for these buffs that can be ignored to succeed?

For example, when the raid has 2% to all stats and +500 AP and wisdom etc.. from Pally buffs, everyone can value that in real time and it shows on their meters. They clear the instance faster, it bloats everyones dps and it is a very much needed utitily to have. This has reputation, this has value, When we speak of value and utility, have you ever seen a raid NOT have a pally, or a warrior, or a mage or a druid? Have you seen one without a rogue? Is the sky falling, no. Are we one legged men in an ass kicking contest? No. But, are we that last kid on the the baseball diamond to be picked? I'd say, probably.

I thought about this the other day when I had some disagreements with another here on our value. Sure, we all can wax poetic about 'our state', but if we can't even agree that there is a big or small issue how can we even begin to come together for a solution? So, how about we have the premieres here take each tree -- and buff it on how they envision the class being/going. Vul, Ald, Chalon etc.. what would you like to see in each tree to realize our potential? Not only to compete with other classes, but for the specs themselves to be viable vs. each other.

Well, wishlisting doesn't really do much, and is also against the forum rules. However, I do think it'd be worthwhile to talk a bit about how the various trees are fairing, given that most of this discussion has been generic:

1. Assassination - I feel like in Murderable fights, Mutilate DPS is acceptable. For non-Murderable fights, we need maybe a couple percent buff, because the aforementioned 4 other classes will put us in our place on non-Murderable fights pretty consistently. Pretty humorously, this means that if in Ulduar most bosses are Murderable, our DPS will probably be "fine" -- though it's hard to say exactly how much of a buff Fury Warriors will get in the next patch, so we might be slightly behind them.

In terms of the cycle, I really, really enjoy the current state of the Mutilate cycle. I disagree with people who say it's "too hard" or what have you, on the contrary I feel it's rewarding because you can do little things that improve your cycle. It's not always cut and dry when to do what, at least without practice, which I think is a good thing. It shouldn't just be mindlessly spamming your finishers.

As for the unique buffs, really Master Poisoner isn't that great. I haven't specced for it in quite some time, because I usually run with a Pally that has Heart of the Crusader, and every 25-man always has an Elemental Shaman due to their unique buff. I don't like how the self benefit of MP is only a PvP benefit, which is funny given that no one picks it up in PvP Mutilate.

2. Combat - In short duration fights, its DPS is probably as good as non-Murderable Mutilate, just because they can line up all their cooldowns with Bloodlust. On long duration fights though, it does fall behind a bit. I wouldn't really be able to speak for their cycle because to be honest, I haven't really raided at 80 with Combat.

As for Savage Combat -- it's implementation is far better than Master Poisoner, since you actually want the self-buff. Also given that Arms Warrior DPS is markedly lower than Fury at the moment, this makes a Combat Rogue the best supplier of the buff.

3. Subtlety - Still a huge mess. They really need to fix the HaT bug ASAP, but even when that happens you still have a mess of a tree of PvE. There is so much filler to get anywhere in the tree, they really failed with their goal of making it a decent tree for PvE. Even if non-bugged HaT does decent DPS, I think the tree needs a redesign to be made more viable for PvE.

The cycle for HaT is incredibly stupid as well. Spamming Eviscerate is the complete opposite of what they've tried to do with the other cycles, even combat.

4. PvP - We don't really talk about it much on this forum, but the main complaint I have with the PvP design is it's so reliant on Preparation. Any build without Prep is worthless in serious PvP, which really limits your choices. Either you run Mutilate/Prep, or you run deep Subtlety. Yeah some people are still running around with say 51 combat, but they don't really know what they're doing :P. However, we certainly are very strong in PvP right now.

The only change they have announced is that they are removing the cool down. There is no reason to "rework the ability" (i.e., redesign it, change its mechanics) when you only need to change its cool down. It's probably one of the easiest changes you could make to an ability.

No, we can't possibly know that the ability will work exactly the same as it does on live, but we can't know that about ANY ability in the entire game. It's not feasible to throw away everything we've discovered about the game mechanics and test them all again every time there is a patch.

The only realistic way to deal with a game of this magnitude is to assume things have not changed until we observe evidence that they have changed, or until Blizzard gives a hint through patch notes or blue posts. At this point they haven't done either.

(Edit: Sorry, I seem to have completely forgotten that they are also changing it to use 150% weapon damage with daggers. So, you're right, we should probably at least verify that nothing obvious has changed when it hits live, but for the time being, I still don't see a reason to just throw everything out the window. This doesn't strike me as a particularly complicated change from a programming perspective.)

You seem to think that being a theorycrafter makes you some kind of incredibly skilled individual. It does not. I'd argue that pretty much anyone who read these forums consistently and care about maximizing DPS and somehow had the exact same crits/procs/etc and were playing a character with the same gear and in the same raid, you would at least reach the 5k level. After you reach a certain point (that's by no means hard to get to), there isn't much that can be done to increase your DPS and it turns into mostly a class composition/fight duration/RNG luck situation. Also, Lunacy is an end-game guild that has been around for some time, I'm sure that if you aren't at the very least decent you wouldn't be in that guild.

There's no point in arguing that our DPS isn't fine at this point other than a couple percent behind, because if you disagree, what do you really want? Rogues as undisputed first? That's not going to happen, sorry. If a single class is too dominant, they'll be tuned down. See: hunters. GC said Rogues should be near top if not top DPS, and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they tuned us taking Murder into account (please don't start a discussion about how terrible that is for Naxx rogues; though I agree that such an effective talent being situational doesn't sound like the brightest idea).

About Anesthetic Poison, weapon swap macros. It works great for Gluth and Sartharion +3, it's better than Tranq in many ways and frankly not using it and then arguing that it can be ignored to succeed is a terrible argument. Name any buff -- there's no content in this game that you can't do without it, perhaps excluding Sartharion +3.

I'm not saying that there aren't issues with the class - there are, I can name a bunch of them off the top of my head: Expose Armor, HfB/CttC punishment in interrupted fights, dagger itemization, Deadly poison scaling versus other poisons, Honor Among Thieves bugs, etc. However, being way behind on DPS is not one of them.

While the bulk of this is true, I think there are still several performance optimizations which one can do that are either completely or nearly completely not talked about on these forums. None of them amount to a ton of extra dps, but they'll push your averages higher. Also note this is where the skill and attention required per dps gain ratio gets stupidly low.

My biggest problem so far with raiding and dps order is that no matter what I do, or how well I play, I cannot beat a fury warrior in dps.

Patchwerk 25man I was at 4300 dps, he was over 5k. I'm not using HAT, just the standard 5/51/15 with a 5SnD/5Rup rotation, with eviscerates thrown in when SnD is ok on it's timer.

I just don't believe Fury Warr's should beat the piss out of us on the meters.

Lose 100ish hit rating, swap your glove/bracer enchants for ap enchants, get a diff trinket than grim toll (allthough its not terrible, Id really try to swap for a greatness deck next week), replace your oh fist with a lpc. That should net you a chunk more dps. I ran 4700ish in similar gear, allthough, the meat of your post, was the same with me, I was beat by hunters/tg warriors.

@ the above statement:
I do not recommend dropping the Fist of Nerub for the LPC. Running the numbers through the spreadsheet (admittedly, this number is tailored to my gear and not yours) results in a loss of 23 DPS (.5% damage). The LPC is a nice starter weapon, but is not superiour to ilvl 213 weaponry.

For the purposes of the rest of this discussion, assume that I'm talking about COMBAT! I don't know my ass from my elbow when it comes to Mutilate, and frankly, I can't be arsed to fuck with that right now. Daggers have always been anathema to me - from an intellectual perspective I have a hard time justifying to myself that a little piece of metal as inconsequential as a prison shank can put out the raw boss-killing power of a pair of swords or brass knuckles - and while I accept that they are (quite easily arguably) the best way to go at the moment, it's not for me. That disclaimer aside, here goes the rest of my rant/free-flowing-bile-spewing monologue.

As for where the state of rogues actually is, I'm a bit conflicted. I like to think that I'm still doing rather well for myself, and as far as gearing goes, rudimentary things like the ranking list of ArmoryLite pegs me in the top 10 rogues on my server, so I'm doing as well as anyone else really can be on Korgath. Rogue DPS just seems lacklustre, missing any sort of differentiating feature that makes a rogue really worth bringing.

First off, I'm looking at Vulajin's magical tweak-the-numbers spreadsheet, and inputted what I consider to be a top-of-the-line set of rogue gear. For a quick down-and-dirty list for you accountants out there: Calamity MH, Webbed OH, Valorous Head/Shoulders/Chest/Legs, Frosted Adroit Handguards, Fools Trial, Drape of the Deadly Foe, Surge Needle Ring, Strong-Handed Ring, Belt of the Tortured, Thrusting Bands, Dawnwalkers, Fury of the Five Flights, DMC: Greatness. Basically as much best-in-slot gear as you can thrust together into one mathematical construct.

And the result is a resounding ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. A measly 4800 DPS, with zero tweaks done to the buffs section and a quick fix-er-up of the spec and CP/etc options. Frankly, considering the fact that this represents the "in an ideal world" scenario, and we're seeing real-world examples of other classes not only beating that number, but thrashing it to death and then urinating on its corpse, I'm not seeing real basis for discussion here. Assuming we accept the spreadsheet as a valid and accurate representation of where things ought to be, it's very hard for me to accept the premise that rogue DPS is "balanced" by any reasonable standard.

Second, to quickly gloss over the "pure DPS classes ought to out-damage hybrids" debate (as I don't exactly have anything new and interesting to add to what is likely to become a dead horse argument), you're damn right pure DPS classes ought to out-damage hybrids. You can basically summarize our position as "We have nothing else to bring to the table other than our few token buffs, all of which can be done by other classes anyway, and so our only shining asset is our DPS." Assuming you accept that premise as valid, then the rogue class is indeed threatened if we can no longer pump out the excellent DPS that has been the hallmark of the class going back in one (roughly) uninterrupted line to the days of Ye Olden Dayes of vanilla.

It is not exactly a secret that the other "pure" DPS classes are eating our metaphorical lunch. Mages and Warlocks clearly have our number, and Hunters are kicking everyone's asses all over the map (which is why they have been called onto the carpet and will be well and truly chastened come patch time). But it's not just that; hybrids are edging us out too on many fights. TG warriors, enhancement shamans, and ret paladins are all nipping at our heels, and on AOE-heavy fights, we even have shadow priests and death knights pulling up uncomfortably close to us.

Now, with those things in mind, it's also important to note that content is not "tuned" to the point where bringing a rogue is a specific liability. The sky is not falling and Hell is not freezing over. You're not going to fuck your raid over by bringing a rogue in place of another DPS class, certainly not in Naxx, and even in what could be considered the more difficult fights (Malygos, Sarth-3-Drake) a rogue is not going to keep you from accomplishing your goal. But it's worth remembering that when Blizzard manages to come up with another fight that truly challenges your DPS (vis-a-vis the Brutallus method), if things stand as they are, rogues will get left in the dust.

Got that out of the way? Good, let's talk about some solutions.

One, combat is being rather clearly outperformed by mutilate on any boss fight where the rogue can maintain a reasonable on-target percentage of time. Both Assassination and Combat should be on roughly equal footing.

Two, off-hand weapon itemization (for combat) is at best lacklustre and at worst downright shitty. Rogues do not thrive on 1.6 speed weapons, and they don't even like 1.5 speed. There is a reason that every goddamned rogoue is looking for Webbed Death and will basically mortgage their right nut for one; EVERY rogue is looking for one, and Assassination rogues without Sinister Revenge are looking for TWO. For an item that is already dependent on the RNG, compounded with very high demand, this is a problem. And more to the point, why the fuck is the LPC, an ilvl 200 BLUE even up for consideration as one of the best rogue offhands? I mean, it's great and all that it's nice and accessible, and it lends a certain reassurance that Blizzard seems to know what they're doing (that rogues like fast OH's). And then Blizzard seems to shit all over itself by making it superiour to EVERY SINGLE HEROIC and NAXX-10 off-hand, and comparable to NAXX-25 off-hands. No. Stop. This is not good design philosophy, to make it such that you can obviate almost the entirety of raiding by purchasing a BOE blue.

Three, I don't like (even the rumours that) Blizzard is balancing fights around Murder. If anything, take Murder out as an available talent and rebalance rogues around us NOT having it, as it is a situational talent (applicable to certain boss types) and is only available to one spec (which, considering Blizzard's stated aim of not making one spec dominant over another seems a little counter-productive). And rogues need top stop bandying it about as some sort of Blizzard apologist argument "oh things will be okay once Murder kicks in." because it's just plain wrong.

Four, while combat is - in general - a safe (albeit uninteresting) choice, our 51 point talent just isn't cutting the mustard. I'm not going to discuss it as it has been rehashed over and over and over (with more compelling logic than I can produce at this hour), but when you add up the pros and cons and have to make a decision of whether to use it or not, it's just not worth bothering in many cases. It opens you up to a myriad of disasters (tail swipes, red-shit on KT and Sarth drakes, a one-way trip to CleaveLand) and has a propensity for putting you somewhere you don't want to be (on another target, in "front" of your target, etc), not to mention the loss of control of your character (leaving you open to energy capping if you get lucky with combat potency procs). And while I won't deign to liken it to things like Titan's Grip, I'll just say that for a 51 point talent, it's one of the most thoroughly underwhelming talents out there. Any time you have to really argue with yourself about whether using an (ostensibly good) talent because there's a chance that it might thoroughly fuck you over, it has to make you wonder whether taking it in the first place was worth it. And frankly, the only reason most rogues have it (aside from it's use on trash, which we don't give a shit about) is that we look and go "Well, we already have 50 points sunk in the tree, fuck it, we might as well."

Fifth, I really get the sense that I'm red-lining the entire fight, and still not being competitive. I've taken my DPS very seriously from day one, as that's the entire reason I rerolled for my guild. I spend more hours than I'm really comfortable admitting to reading about rogues, theorycrafting about rogues, plotting future upgrades, kicking the tires on target dummies, and just in general being a giant geek when it comes to approaching the rogue dilemma. And while that work has paid off, and continues to pay off, I look at my de facto performance in raids and am underwhelmed; I'm busting my ass out there and barely breaking even with people that I know are coasting along on the metaphorical coattails of their respective classes. And I don't like that feeling, especially as it flies in the face of the "bring the player not the class" ethos.


Realistically? Rogues, and in particular combat rogues just aren't doing DPS commensurate with what we expect of them. Assuming gear level and skill are equal, they are not competitive with their "pure" DPS counterparts. The solution is that rogues need to do more DPS. That's about as simple as I can put it.

I admit that I'm probably one of the better geared rogues out there - but I'm sure there are well-geared members of other classes out there as well, so saying "you do good DPS relative to other top performers only because your gear is good" is not really the soundest argument there is. The top-performing warlock edged me on DPS... but the other warlocks were back in the pack (9th and 10th on DPS). Both hunters were close... but hunters are being nerfed. And so on. There is no member of any class that consistantly outDPSes me at this point, so I don't think there's any immediate basis - based on my experience - to assert that we're significantly underpowered.

Now, admittedly, there are a lot of rogues that are doing less well than I am, which may mean we need a buff. But I think the question that needs to be asked is: what am I doing that they're not? If I'm competitive only because I'm well geared... that means everyone else will catch up as their gear improves. If I'm competitive because I'm spamming cycles better than they are... I don't see how that's really relevant - there are bad members of every class. Maybe it's just that I've been freakishly lucky in some manner on most of these attempts - but I doubt it. Regardless, I don't think we can necessarily say that rogues are systematically gimped until we understand why some rogues are doing so much better than others - because, clearly, at the top end, good rogues are doing DPS that is approaching the best DPS totals by other classes. So until we understand why other rogues are not, we don't really have any way of saying whether we're underpowered in general, simply too hard to play, or what. Which is why I say: we may or may need a DPS buff - I'm not sure. But if one assumes we do, it can't be more than 3-5%, because any more than that and rogues will start consistantly winning many if not most fights, which, rightly or wrongly, is not what Blizzard wants.

TotT applies 2 buffs to the buffer and 1 to the buffed player each time it's used. So, for instance, on the 5200 parse, I applied 3 and got 5. Which, yes, favors me slightly relative to the rogue I was with Tricksing. But it's not such a ridiculous imbalance that it invalidates the result.

Well, first of all in that particular parse you didn't have any Fury Warriors. Take a Fury Warrior of equal gear/skill and they'll beat you 9 out of 10 times. That will be 10/10 times in the next patch.

Second, you should note that the best Warlock, who beat you by a non-trivial margin, still has a substantial number of upgrades left. He's sitting at 1800 spell power in his armory, and IIRC you are looking at maybe 2200 when you're fully geared in T7 best-in-slot. On the other hand, you have maybe 2-3 upgrades left, and they're far more marginal than a net gain of 400 spell power.

So I do feel like it's a bit misleading to say that our DPS is okay just based on the experience in your guild's runs.

The best parse that can illustrate what I'm talking about is the highest-ranked WWS kill of Patchwerk where Rogues are NOT exploiting Honor Among Thieves, which is from Premonition: Wow Web Stats

Nessala still could use some upgrades, yes, but the upgrades he's getting aren't going to make him competitive with that DPS. He's at 5.2k DPS and ~750(!!) behind the Warlock, ~600 behind the Mages, ~350 behind the Fury Warrior, and ~300 behind the Enhancement Shaman(!!). I don't know how you can look at a parse like that and not think there's some issue which needs to be resolved.

On the other hand, Nessala beat me by 50 DPS, despite a significantly shorter fight (hence higher Heroism uptime), asymmetric TotTs, better consumables (Flask versus Agi pot), and so on. So it's not unreasonable to posit that my number would have also been significantly higher under those circumstances - never mind the fact that my parse was far from perfect, given that I dropped HFB during it. Would I have benefitted enough to beat the 5990-DPS warlock in that parse? Maybe not, but there's a very reasonable case to be made that I would have been at least 5th, if not 4th or higher. As always, comparisons between fights of vastly differing lengths are iffy at best. And if you compare that fight to the 4 other PW kills that are closest in DPS rank according to WWS, you find that only 6 people in the 4 parses combined beat my 5189 number - and 4 of them are soon-to-be-nerfed hunters. So, amongst 5 PW kills of very comparable length, my DPS scores 4th among non-hunters. Would I rather that it was first? Sure. But I think there's a very plausible argument to be made that my DPS is very competitive with top parses, given the length of the fight.

Also, again, I'm not arguing that a buff isn't needed. Simply that if a buff *is* needed, it's not on the order of 1000 DPS as some have been claiming. If you're only doing 4k on PW, there's some problem going on beyond the balance of the class, and that needs to be kept in mind when we're discussing overall balance.

Bugged Adrenaline rush glyph and KS together is actually very powerful. :P

I played combat up to 1900ish, constantly being in top 30 cyclone EU (which is the top EU BG), but after trying mut/prep, I admit it is much easier. I would say overkill has a much bigger impact though than preperation in that build.

Just in case it interests someone, here is what I learned about combat PvP. I know we mainly talk PvE, but I think the performance of the trees in PvP also are important when it comes to a proper "State of Rogue" discussion.

- AR is only usefull against Warrior/Healer teams. Every other combo will interrupt your AR if they know what they are doing. There is simply too much CC now. Which makes me wonder: Shouldn't AR get a Bestrial Wrath component? It would make sense as the talent is extremly limited now, without any updates in the last 4-5 years.
- Blade Twisting fails at what it is supposed to do: Removing the need of Crippling. It certainly needs to be changed, or it will remain useless.
- Nerves of Steel, Unfair advantage and Surprise attacks mean that you will beat every other Rogue/Healer mirror easily. Those talents are incredibly powerful against Rogue teams.
- All of above + Riposte make you destroy any warrior/healer team.
- Throwing Spec, gives you 3 interrupts. With FoK off CD, you will have no CD on interrupts aside from your energy.
- The biggest problem of a 5/51/15 build is the lack of Hightened senses. You will almost always get sap'd if you try to get a rogue; Especially against double dps (M/R) teams, it's a killer.
- Mobility is extremly limited.
- You win most fights that get longer than normal (2-3 mins), as you can use all your CDs twice and also are much more efficient to heal than other rogues. So a challenge is to try to make the fights last longer and play very definsivly and then burst down with CC/KS combo when nobody expects it.

Regardless, combat is really not that far behind, especially with all the pvp talents in the tree. But it still doesn't give you the possibilities of mutilate and at some point you will feel skill-capped. If they make a few changes, I'm sure combat will end up as a very powerful pvp tree though, even without prep.

You're basically looking at a 25% heroism uptime in your fight vs. a 31% heroism uptime in Premonition's. It's not nearly as much of a difference as you're implying. Your number would have at best, gone up ~100 DPS, which means you would've been in 6th place, still behind the Enhancement Shaman. In fact I threw in best in slot stuff into Vulajin's sheet and 180s fight vs. 143s fight, given heroism right at the start is only a DPS difference of about ~50. Even if you throw in the Flasks, etc, maybe you gain 200 DPS, but that's a generous bump.

But even if it's 200 DPS, that's still not competive with the top; it's still behind 2 hybrid classes, and it's absolutely dwarfed by the Mage/Warlock numbers.

EDIT: Re: the PvP stuff, yeah, I would love something that makes me "semi-unstoppable" for a few seconds. I mean, you have Beast Within, Blade Storm, Icebound Fortitude (to a lesser extent), all which more or less prevent you from being stopped. It'd be nice if we had something like that, but on the other hand I could only imagine all the whine posts there would be about it (not to mention, it would probably be somewhat overpowered!)

Bickering about the margins at the very top end where most people have most of the upgrades they want is an exercise in futility, given that one of the problems is the higher gear dependence of rogues and the difficulty in obtaining some specific parts that gear (i.e. fast daggers) due to itemisation issues. You need to look at the numbers back in Patchwerk parses 5, 000 - 20,000 and not just the top 20 parses. You can't just handwave stuff away with "everyone else will catch up as their gear improves". If other classes are all ahead of rogues at lower gear levels, and rogues only catch up when they're at the bleeding edge, then that is in itself a serious problem.

Unfortunately, without an exhaustive survey of 10,000 or more parses and some very close sample/control matching, anything I point to on WWS will be easily dismissable as anecdotal evidence. I'm pretty confident that Blizzard is running the numbers though, hence GC's comments reported further upthread.