To Chalon's point: when you account for the differences in fight duration, buffs, and Tricks, I actually estimate the DPS difference to be closer to 300 DPS. And if you assume I didn't drop HFB, that's probably another 30 DPS or so. And 5189 + 300 + 30 = 5519 would be right around 5th place. Now, can you argue that we should be higher? Yeah, probably - though as has been previously pointed out, extremely short fights favor casters, who lose all need to worry about mana, and benefit more from the high heroism uptime. So I don't think it's quite as bad as it looks.

Ultimately, though, to Songster's point, looking at any particular WWS isn't really going to tell the story - we don't know if the lock got lucky in that parse or not, and so forth. I've never tried to argue that rogue DPS is or isn't fine on any particular fight - I'm merely attempting to bound the magnitude of the hypothetical adjustment we might need. And the fact that rogues are already able to push numbers that are reasonably competitive with most classes seems to me to be to a reasonable suggestion that the magnitude of our shortcoming is not as large as some have asserted.

Regardless - again to Songster's point - this is something we're unlikely to resolve. For every person arguing that DPS is fine - or close to fine, anyway - there's someone arguing that it's hugely sub-par. And, frankly, without a systematic analysis of hundreds of fights, we're probably not going to be able to prove it either way. So perhaps we should stop debating a topic that we're never going to reach consensus on, and focus more on understanding the other, more specific issues with the class - poison scaling, cycle disruption, expose armor, and so forth.

Not only that, it's important to note that Mages, Warriors and Warlocks have some talent or ability that does more damage sub-35% or something like that. Having Bloodlust up from that point until the boss dies is definitely a big deal, or popping cooldowns such as Icy Veins. In a direct comparison to other classes, we would actually do better if Bloodlust isn't used at all, which I'd consider an issue with the class (as much as GC said that haste is "being looked at").

I'm not sure how that could be properly addressed without going into "wishlist" mode, something you've said you wanted to avoid? (Not trying to be confrontational, just asking for guidance)

As for my two cents:

I keep reading in this thread that it's acceptable that our DPS is "approaching" or "competitive" with that of other classes. It is they, the hybrid or raid-buffing classes, whose DPS should be competing with ours, and not the other way around.

I don't mean to add to the choir, but our damage-dealing needs to be moderately buffed, or we too need to become a hybrid class, perhaps as viable off-tanks. (I'd be happy to post some specifics about the latter, but I'd like to avoid derailing the thread and enter "wishlist" mode.)

edit: clarity, added paragraph

Maybe, we should analyze the WWS of the Rogues are are approaching top tier DPS and Rogues that are not able to achieve the same and see if there is a pattern. We can use the Spreadsheet Theoritical DPS vs the Rogue's actual DPS to see if such an analysis is warranted for a Patchwerk fight.

Just throwing a suggestion out there.

Also, when talking about Mut DPS, if the chance to proc poison twice is a bug that will be fixed, you are looking at a lower DPS as Mut Rogue again.

Mutilate applying the OH poison twice bug has been around for a damn long time, it isn't something they recently broke - besides that, the chance that they just downright fix the bug without any compensation whatsoever to make up for the damage lost that way is slim.

You're missing a very important point here. World of Wacraft is a huge game, with PvE and PvP content, many complex mechanics, just changing something because it "feels right" can have big consequences. If Blizzard listened to the rogues announcing the Doom Day and just increased our sustained DPS by 15%, we would be above everyone right now, and in the future, with further gear scaling, we could push so much ahead that any DPS not a rogue would be considered bad, or suboptimal. It isn't that easy.

Point well taken. But when I see WWS parses which show near-optimally geared rogues, playing near-optimally on melee-friendly fights, and not coming up at the very top of the meters versus raid-useful or hybrid classes, it makes me think that Blizzard needs to break our class as badly as they broke Ret Paladins in 3.0.2, and start scaling us back, or rethink our class as a hybrid.

Beyond the finesse involved with compiling and analyzing our DPS, perhaps the most accurate way for Blizzard to ascertain the state of our class when it comes to raid viability would be to look at how many rogues, on average, are in current end-game raids?

Why dont we have an accessible low hp dmg talent. Combat has a near top tier crit dmg modifier, and sub has dirty deeds. Subs isnt accessible to a viable raid build, and combats only applies to your crit dmg. Mages have an accessible one, as do warriors, warlocks, etc etc. I think Ive said it before, but things like warlocks below 20% drain soul ability, etc, really oculd be built into a rogue staple skill to give us an edge when something is dying, without upsetting pvp much at all. This isnt a wihslist item either, what I am asking is why we dont have something like that.

Even if you use Heroism early, we will never benefit as much from it as a caster does. Haste is just better for them than it is for us.

I mean, very rough comparison: mutilate rogue damage would be 35% melee, 20% instant, 10% deadly, 20% mutilate, 7% Envenom and 7% Rupture. With Bloodlust active, you will do 30% more auto attacks, and nothing else benefits from it directly. More auto attacks, however, is 30% more poison procs, so your instant poison damage goes up a lot, the deadly poison too but not as much. Mutilate, Envenom and Rupture are also affected, but really not that much, as the only thing that increases the number of Mutilates, and therefore Ruptures/Envenoms, is the amount of Focused Attacks procs. So, at best, we can say that about 60% of our damage benefit from Bloodlust.

Casters, on the other hand, will benefit from Bloodlust entirely on their main nuke, and if you count the indirect abilities that benefit from Bloodlust, they should be well over the 60~% range that we are.

Heroism in it's current form seems to be an overly effective unique Raidbuff anyways, not even considering it's use für heroic Achievements and the like, and in my mind goes against the "bring the player" goal Blizzard is advocating.
Likewise some Buffs are thinly spread around obscure specs and the values of some of the buffs/debuffs are too far apart.
I hope the Buff/Debuff system will get some overhauls that even out the values of available buffs and prevent bad distribution from shoehorning rogues into combatspecs and the like.
Since we are currently not too great at the buff-armsrace (or rather in a bad sitation if you don't like combat) this could result in our slack being cut.

If Heroism/Bloodlust affected Rogues the way it affected other classes like Mages and Warlocks, it would lower the energy cost of our abilities (or increase energy regeneration) by 30% as well as apply the melee haste bonus; it would also have a similar affect on DK rune regeneration. Mana regeneration outside the 5-second-rule would also have to be affected similarly; this would have the added benefit of helping healers who may feel Heroism/Bloodlust is wasted for them when no great amount of healing is required.

Unfortunately, a change like that would see a massive outcry from classes like Paladins asking for it to lower cooldowns on things like Divine Storm or Warriors asking for increased Rage generation even though the mechanics for both are completely different.

A change like that would increase the value of the Buff even more and I'm not convinced that this would be an improvement of the situation.

Edit: Admittedly the situation would improve for rogues obviously, but my hassle is more with the uneven distribution of buff power.

The impact of a haste buff will depend on how large it is. I mean, if they *double* it's value, that's bad; but if they buff it by, say, 25%, the stat ordering would be something like hit > expertise > hit > agi > AP > haste > hit > ArPen, which is totally reasonable.

Hello. Sorry if this is a bad start, but I wanted to ask: is it really sensible to consider rogues as a class separately from the environment in which they exist? What I mean is, for example, you could argue that rogue DPS as it is now, without any changes, would show more if the fights were longer. That may be true or it may not, but the fact is that the fights are *not* longer, so what does it matter?

A lot of things could be different: there could be less running around in fights, aoe's could be less dominant, there could be more fast daggers than slow ones, there could be more situations in which pizens are useful, and so on. But these things are not the case. It could be that there is nothing wrong with the balancing of rogues under certain conditions, except that those conditions are not found in the game, in which case is there really nothing wrong with the balancing of rogues ?

I'm not explaining very well. Imagine a game in which you hunt rabbits on a plain, and you can play a wolf, a hawk, a lion, or a shark. Now there's nothing inherently weak about the shark; it's maybe the deadliest predator of the four, but it won't do very well, and it will probably be considered a bad choice even if they promise to put in a small lake sometime in the future.

I'm certainly not saying that things are as bad as that. I'm just trying to explain what I mean when I ask, shouldn't the environment be considered as part of the state of the class? Sorry if it doesn't make much sense, but oh well.

If a haste change isn't forthcoming, I would seriously reconsider the idea of buffing a 'buff' to favor rogues to increase their PVE damage. This is that same ol' issue. Making rogues ineffectual without the proper combinations of 'others buffs'. There are a plethora of ways to buff/increase pve damage in a meaningful way rather than buffing others raid buffs for a rogue benefit. Why not just increase the haste of SnD if haste is a matter of reconsideration has it applies to rogues? IMHO, there are so many ways to effectually buff rogues in a 'rogue' way, that the idea of looking outside ourselves for viability is counterproductive.

Make poison dmg like it was in beta and it will be fixed. You're not screwing with buffs, and it's something every spec uses. Poison has become such a large part of our damage and is unique to the class that it seems like the obvious area to make an adjustment, either through mechanics or buffing the poisons themselves. If doing something to haste or Arpen is done it factors hugely on gear and other classes, meaning more work and places where bugs can pop up, making the damage done by all poisons increased either by proc or a straight increase in damage is something that can be done without ever touching any other class' mechanics

Having poison damage scale even higher than it does currently actually reduces the value of stats like ArPen, due to the fact that poison damage is not armor-dependent. By pushing ArPen further down the list of stat values we leave ourselves with fewer options for tweaks down the road and a stat that will reduce our total number of gearing options.

So, you and another rogue were throwing tricks on each other and you don't seem to think this invalidates your results? What would your numbers be if you would minus the 'expected dps increase' by not having ToTT thrown on you?

When I raid, very very rarely is there another rogue present and to toss around "tank buff" (sure, it has other uses, but its intent was to buff tank aggro) seems to be an invalid way to say "see, I do good damage".

Also, I find your wording interesting - "not such a Ridiculous imbalance". It is an imbalance nontheless, and must be looked into. To me, moderately imbalanced is enough to invalidate things.

*(because of my lack of raiding with other rogues, I don't and have not pinged ToTT off another rogue/vice versa - so I am viewing this from the side that does not include tricks as a buff to ourselves or a realistic dps increase )*

Tricks isn't "primarily" a tank threat buff - if that had been the intent, they would have just put the 15% DPS gain on the rogue instead of the target, and/or made threat in some way relevant. It's not. Clearly it was designed to help with tank threat as needed, but also allow use as a DPS buff. And as it can be used by as many rogues as you have in the raid to buff raid DPS, it does provide a per-rogue DPS buff to the raid; if you weren't using it on another rogue, you'd be using it on a mage or a lock or whatever to buff raid DPS. The only difference in this case is that I'm using it symmetrically on another rogue, such that we're both actually doing damage roughly equal to what we're contributing to the raid.

As for your picking on the term "ridiculously imbalanced" - if you'll note, no where in the past couple of pages have I claimed that rogues are perfectly balanced. Nowhere have I claimed that we don't need a DPS buff. All I've been claiming is that the people claiming that our DPS is 1000 short of where it needs to be, or that the class is out-and-out doomed and no longer worthy of being brought to anything harder than Naxx10, are full of shit. I'm asserting that if we need a buff, it's a small one. And the fact that I got a bonus 100 DPS on a 5200 parse from Tricks rotations doesn't in any way invalidate that point.

Well one concern that I don't see discussed very much so far is it seems we mostly remain a 'one (unbugged) build for raiding' class. It's just that the build has moved to Mutilate. As far as I can tell almost all the deep theorycrafter raiders (those that spec based on raid output) have moved to Mutilate with fast daggers creating the same issue Rogues had in TBC (i.e. all wanting the same poorly itemized weapons which has been identified) as we all want top DPS to justify our raid place. Of course some of that may be novelty or drop timing, but it seems a common trend across those I'd expect to spec for pure boss DPS.

So perhaps a mild buff to Combat builds is warranted (say a couple percent) so we see a more even distribution of builds across the 'informed' raiders (even allowing for the buff). And it'd be nice to see a viable 'Backstab' build to use up those slow daggers on the MH.

It could also be helpful to restate any feedback this thread could provide to Blizzard devs so that is has some practical value. Perhaps the following could be further improved:

* It appears Rogues in near optimal circumstances are struggling to achieve very top-end DPS vs. other pure DPS classes. Unless Rogues are expected to scale better than other classes some slight buff is required.
* It seems that more 'average' Rogues are struggling more for DPS than the 'excellent' Rogues. While there should be some gain for being excellent, perhaps there are some 'usability' issues with Rogue DPS that can be further improved somewhat.
* It appears Combat builds are still lagging behind Mutilate builds by enough that most 'pure DPS' raiders are all moving to Mutilate leaving Rogues a 'one spec' raid class again. It'd be ideal if Combat was a little more competitive.
* Killing Spree has enough usability issues (these could be detailed) to reduce its attractiveness as a raid /PvP(?) talent. These include:
- Returning the player to areas of danger in fights with cleaves and tail sweeps. Ideally for usability of KSp Rogues would like to return the player to the same spot at the end (perhaps relative to the target).
- Some statement about the 'bug' with KSp on using the Glyph of Adrenaline Rush would be helpful so we can assess the long-term viability of this glyph for raiding.

What else could be included/improved?

It's not clear to me that the widespread shift to Mutilate is entirely due to it being superior; while I think it's perhaps somewhat ahead, I'm not sure the margin is sufficient to account for the widespread exodus from combat by itself; rather, I suspect it has at least something to do with people wanting to play it because it's new and different, as opposed to combat which plays much like the same old spec we've all been playing for the past 4 years.

You have to remember that Combat rogues bring a very non-insignificant buff - Savage Combat. That more than makes up for slightly lower DPS. In my eyes, they intend Combat to be the "buff spec" (much like Survival was for hunters back in TBC) and Mutilate the DPS spec. Mutilate has always been the clear winner in Humanoid, Giant, Beast and Dragonkin fights in Wrath, and if they balanced Mutilate around Murder (which seems to be the case), it makes sense to have Combat about 5% behind but bring a raid buff.

And regarding Adrenaline Rush glyph, as far as I am aware, it is fixed in the current PTR build.

For what it's worth, I personally changed from combat to mutilate at 3.0 (and played through Sunwell with it) because new, improved Vitality talent made combatspec hectic SS-smashing and too 'twitchy' to my tastes. Even when HfB went fast from new and different to old and tedious, the spec seemed worth learning. Couple of lucky daggerdrops of course helped, as no-one else was competing over them.

As for the state of rogues, I'm confident that the devs are aware of the situation. MMO-Champion blue summary hints that the rogue single-target damage (and maybe HfB, yay) is being checked, but the methods and timetable are on the unclear side.