As a means of clarification: I'm referring to "buttons" in a generalized sense - given that people have all manner of control schemes, a given ability may be activated via a keypress by some people and a mouse button click by others. Some people move with the mouse, some with the keyboard (and no, we're not going to debate the merits of each). So yes, mouse movements/clicks are part of skill as well, as they're pretty much isomorphic to button presses. Point being, the difficulty comes from knowing what to do and making the correct decisions, not because it takes the handspeed of a professional RTS player to execute all the clicks/button presses/whatever.

At the risk of being mildly insulting: asserting that Mutilate hasn't gained a new ability since 2.0 is naive to the point of stupidity. Yes, most abilities that Mutilate uses now existed at the launch of TBC (with the exception of Hunger for Blood, Overkill, and Tricks of the Trade, but we'll ignore that for the moment). And if you can't see the difference between Mutilate then - which was basically a Combat clone with a different combo point generator - and Mutilate now, then you have no business participating in this discussion. Rotating 4+ Eviscerate, Rupture, and SnD (which is what Mutilate was at TBC launch) is nothing like the current game of rolling Envenoms.

And yes, you can do things to improve your envenom uptime beyond what you get from mashing Envenom every time you have 4+ combo points. And no, I'm not going to explain how given that it has been extensively documented within these forums, hence does not need to be repeated here. You're basically arguing if you play a mutilate rogue naively without paying any attention to the optimizations that are possible, the rotation is easy. Well, no shit. Find me a class where that isn't true.

Basically, your last couple of posts are staggeringly out of touch with the current state of rogues, and clearly ignorant of the discussions held previously in this very thread - they read as little better than trolling in most cases. If you're not going to take the time to understand what you're talking about, please stop talking.

As an aside, the fact that the class is similar to where it was 3 years ago isn't necessarily a bad thing. We're rogues. The class is not going to abruptly turn into a warlock clone. We're always going to generate combo points, do finishers, and hit cooldowns. That's what rogues do. If that's not what you want to do, then you're playing the wrong class. Fortunately, there's plenty of room for complexity and optimization within that framework - it's just a matter of putting the pieces together to realize that potential.

I don't see how mutilate losing abilities - SnD (effectively), Rupture, Evis - is an indication of it being new and refreshing. Combat clone or not, it was dumbed down (more on this later, as that's the key). The core abilities are all old. Hunger for Blood has no dependence on CP and a very minute energy cost, meaning that refreshing it is hardly a challenge and can be done without thinking in advance. ToTT with 2T10, is just a use-on-cd ability that has no cost associated with it whatsoever, so there is no synergy there. I compare this with maintaining SR, Rip and Rake on a feral druid, all of which take significant resources. Overkill is too patchy and on a longish timer to consider a part of the rotation.
I didn't say "mash envenom on 4cps". Going over most of the thread at In-Depth Mutilate Cycle Analysis and similar threads didn't show anything particularly useful that isn't summed up by:
1. Mutilate to 4-5cps.
2. If envenom isn't up use it.
3. Otherwise, pool energy and clip if needed.

The point is, even if this isn't the optimal tactic, executing this one will get you too close to the maximum DPS you can do. In this regard the rotation could use more abilities (namely Rupture). Could they have built an interesting rotation with nothing but Mutilate and Envenom as the bread and butter? maybe. But Arcane mages are the exception, not the rule.

General aside for new abilities - they do tend to add them across the board, although one can view this as bread for the masses (hopefully this translates well). As the game progresses these will end up being niche abilities, to be sure, but they're there. Resto druids are pretty much up in arms for not getting one, for instance - it doesn't help that the class is a mess. But that's getting offtopic. The main issue isn't old or new abilities - rupture for mutilate might as well be new - it's that relying on 2 abilities for an entire rotation is a shaky ground.

Point being: timing envenoms to happen just as the previous one drops takes skill and attention. And it will be more important to do correctly in Cat with having to weave another finisher into the cycle. And the timings and details change at 35% when your rate of combo point generation improves. Is it impossibly hard? No. But it does take some attention to do optimally, and, hence, skill.

The larger point is that while there's a legitimate argument to be made that optimal rogue play should require more skill, that's very much not the same thing as saying that rogues need more buttons to push. Personally, I'd far rather see us move in the arcane mage direction - where we have relatively few buttons but need to pay attention to how we use them and when - than have half a dozen extra keybinds added that we press mindlessly every N seconds. If they need to add more buttons to add sufficient skill dependency, so be it, but the latter should be the driving force in changes, not the former.

If anything, forcing additional buttons into the rotation reduces complexity, as the individual impact decreases. For a good example, take a look at the state of Retribution Paladins in Wrath. They are widely derided as being the most faceroll-easy spec in the game, for the relative 'simplicity' of their rotation - specifically the fact that for the most part, the variance between a player getting it perfect and screwing it up pretty badly is enormously small, so long as they're hitting something every GCD. But even though Ret is rightfully derided as being pretty simple, it actually requires a pretty massive number of keybinds - the standard Ret-DPS rotation involves seven spells on 15 second or shorter cooldowns, in addition to burst cooldowns like Avenging Wrath or application of various situational utility like cleanses or Hand of Freedom/Salv.

A large part of what appeals to me about the Rogue class is that we derive our complexity from being able to apply a relatively small toolkit to a broad variety of situations, and that we maximize the value of our tools based on skills like timing and resource management rather than simply mashing all of the buttons we have as fast as we can mash them.

While I'm not too familiar with ret rotation (I know it's considered facerolling), I think you're over romanticizing the immense complexities needed to master the rogue class. I will say again this is mostly referring to Mutilate, which may be dead currently as a raid spec (just by looking at armories).
That said, Rets are GCD and CD based class. Miss a GCD and you lost damage. A rogue that misses a GCD (say because of having to run away or being incapacitated) is simply pooling energy - his damage is stored up.
Energy - compared to CDs, Runes (which is similar) and rage - is simpler to manage and work with. A starting ret or DK will make mistakes, will prioritize the wrong abilities, will fail badly. A new mutilate rogue - not so much.
Maybe the best example of what could have been are ferals. Ferals have the same resources - energy and CPs. Oddly enough, a feral isn't asked to notice when a buff that he "cast" a few seconds ago has expired and to reapply if it possible - because if not, well, that's just the RNG's fault and you wait. He is instead tasked with managing 2 dots and a self buff that are hard to maintain (because they require resources) and are expected to be up 100% of the time. And that's assuming mangle is out of the equation. If all that is covered they can use yet another finisher that must be timed so it won't eat too much energy. This while keeping an eye for clearcasting procs from autoattacks (not another special, mind you, so there's no 1s window) and not wasting them on 4 abilities that would cause a DPS lost but on shred alone.
Really, Envenoming when it's down?

edit regarding post below: I think that's a bit reversed. A spec that pressed a button every GCD is more susceptible for messing up as the fight gets more and more complex. A rogue that is standing in melee range and is on 0 energy following say an Mutilate can wait for a good few seconds doing nothing but maneuvering (say following a kited boss - Heigan is a nice example) and his DPS won't suffer one bit since it's all queued up. Other specs have to move AND constantly decide what button to press. That is BY DEFINITION harder.

I have to agree with Feist-Mok even though I was thinking about another example.

Think about the Enhsham, right now it's one of the specs that use the more buttons in their "rotations", that might seem difficult, but in fact it's not because you never have to take any decision at any time because you pre-built theorycrafted priority-list does it for you.

I feel like we're coming back to what I said in my previous post, you can say a spec's got depth when it builds a gap between average and awesome players. Right now I don't feel like enhsham gameplay does no matter how many bindings they have to use, because an awesome player won't be able to do significantly more damage than an average player since the average player did memorize his priority-list.

Now look back once again to 3.1 muti rogue, we were already using really few buttons, performing Muti/Envenom based rotations whilst maintaining rupture up but the simple fact that DP stacks were reset after each Envenom made it really harder to handle as you constantly had to keep an eye on various parameters and you had to make decisions really quickly. This design had definitely got depth, as it tended to build a significant difference between average and awesome rogues. In fact there nearly always were moments in a fight where the decisions you made weren't optimal. That spec was hard to handle even though it used really few bindings, way more difficult to me than the current enhsham GP and its numerous bindings.

And that's a fact that right now what is really confusing about current mutilate build is that the gap between an awesome player and even a bad player that only mashes his buttons to perform 4-5cp envenoms without taking his envenom uptime nor energy pooling to consideration is really low on a patchwerk fight. And it's even lower and lower as the gear becomes better (because energy regeneration then naturally decreases envenom downtime). I feel like it's what confuses Fallenangel.

But there still is a great gap between average players and "berzerk-keymashing players" when it comes to fights that heavily rely on switching, as well as there still is a significant gap between awesome players and good players on this kind of fights because the ability to feel your own character's energy regeneration speed, the fight's very mechanics and other parameters of that kind makes a strong difference.

The main mistake is to only take Saurfang into consideration, of course a button-masher in full BiS won't be significantly lower than an awesome player with the same gear on this fight, and that can be frustrating, but it doesn't mean Mutispec is all about being able to output lots of damage by simply mashing two buttons like a dumbass, which is not true.

Well, this might have been too hard for my bad english, if I'm not understandable don't worry about telling me, I would then whip myself as a punishment.

edit regarding edit regarding post below:

I just can't get to understand what you mean with the example you gave. Are you meaning it's technically impossible to press an attack button while pressing a movement button? Or are you meaning pressing a movement button takes 100% of a player's mental ressources?

In the first case it's untrue, I heard some players had multiple fingers.
In the second case if it's right then rogues surely have a great advantage on GCD-based classes as they can act like "Oh well I won't be able to think about my dps output for about two seconds as I must move right now, but that doesn't matter as I will only be pooling energy for theses two seconds" whereas GCD-based classes have to act like "Oh damn, I have to move for two seconds and it will take my whole entire mind's focus, I'm gonna lose two GCD's in this even if I stay in melee range all along this move". But... Are you really serious?

Sorry for the "Troll-looking-like answer" (which is not what I aim to) but I just can't get to see any kind of relation between what I said and what you answered to it without considering the ability to attack while moving (or to attack while taking a look at what's happening around you) is something impossible.

Yes. Moving and using abilities is harder than moving. It divides up your attention. It makes you less focused on each task. It makes you more prone to error. It makes it easier to make mistakes.
I'll say it again. Doing something is harder than doing nothing. If class A has to sit there and do nothing besides target the boss and do X DPS while class B has to press 1 every second to do the same, then class B is by definition harder to play. It might not be hard enough, it might require improvements but it is harder. Harder meaning it's easier to disrupt class B's DPS and it's easier for a player of class B to fuck up, meaning the DPS-skill gap in class B will be greater.
And all of this is what separates players by skill level (not the only thing, mind you, before someone decides to lash on that). Rogue rotation is more forgiving. If you don't use Envenom you risk maybe possibly in the future clipping it. That's about the only penalty you get.
No one likes to hear that their class is simpler or easier to play or whatnot. That's ok, it's not you that design classes, it's the devs to blame.

Far be it from me to support GCD locked classes. One of the reasons I disliked DKs was exactly that. There is a fine line between doing too much and doing too little, however; DKs and Rets are (currently) on one side, and Mut Rogues are, the way I see it anyway, too far on the other side. Both can use tweaking and are indeed getting some. Whether that's enough or not, is hard to tell without raiding or at least playing. I do not have a beta key to test it out.
I'll concede the moving point, although I wasn't referring to moving away but more to kiting situations. Maybe it has more to do with class balance than the elusive concept of skill. Rupture is not part of a Mutilate rotation as it is on live, though, and that's where my judgement is coming from.
And yes the way to make a GCD class even worse is to make all the abilities the same (=hit for the same amount) and make the CDs short enough that you always have what to press. That is bad, and that will be fixed. Seeing as rogue is the DPS class I played the most (granted not currently) and I am familiar with feral DPS rotation, none of which are GCD locked, I can't comment much beyond that.
Lets say Mutilate and Sub do comparable damage and one is much harder to play than the other. Why would a raiding rogue pick the harder spec? Respeccing is much simpler than rerolling, so the barrier to switch is very low. Liking the playstyle more is not a good enough incentive.

But even a muti rogue has to keep focusing on his dps output while moving even if he may lose less damage than a GCD class by not performing anything else than moving while following a kitted boss. It doesn't mean muti rogue don't have to do it just because the impact is smaller. And I still think you took the bad example. Heigan is a fight that only relies on automatisms, the frequency at witch you move becomes an automatism after a given number of pulls, playing a "GCD-based-only" spec becomes automatic after a given number of hours playing it. There ain't any kind of attention needed to maintain it, or only a little few as this kind of mechanisms tend to become "natural" with the time. Ofc, when you try a "heigan-like" for the first time you might be willing to focus only on movement and not doing anything else while doing it, and of course with this context playing the current version of mutispec is less harming than playing a "GCD-based-only" spec that will lose raw dps by losing a given amount of actions. But it's only true the few first times you fight against the boss, the next time you'll be able to focus more on your actions, and again and agin 'till moving only takes a little part of your attention. You then come back to a state where you are nearly totally focused on your actions, and it then becomes harder to think about what to do at which moment rather than just copy/pasting a given priority-list.

Also note that I didn't compare current Mutilate design to GCD-based gameplays even if you answer just like if I did. I only searched for a spec that requires lots of attention (and thus has a great depth) without needing 10 buttons, which I feel like 3.1 mutispec had, to compare it to "GCD-based-only" specs with hudge amounts of buttons. And if you take your example, at a certain point, fighting Heigan with a "GCD-based-only" spec will become all about routine, you move like a robot, you press buttons according to your priority list like a robot. With a spec like 3.1 Muti moving will become a routine, but managing your dps output never will.

We always come to the same point, giving depth to a spec has nothing to do with giving it lots of keybindings.

Sounds quite condescending, doesn't it? Unfortunately you're totally wrong, I've been lamenting the fact that Master Poisoner got upped for about one year now, because it removed a lot of the spec's depth and complexity. And I keep lamenting the fact that any dumbass can get to an awesome DPS outpout on given fights by simply mashing buttons. It's not a matter to me to tell that current mutilate design is sometimes desperately easy to handle, because I really feel like it is. And even the "energy pooling + fight mechanics managing" point on switch based fights sometimes seems really boring to me comparing to what I used to deal with a few patches ago.

But I still feel like it doesn't have anything to do with the number of buttons to press, but only with the talents' design. Adding rupture to mutilate's current gameplay wouldn't make the spec as tricky to handle as it was back in 3.1, yet it would use exactly the same attacks.


Edit @neg^:

I honestly doubt comparing Cataclysm Muti rogue to current feral druid is such a great idea. The main point that rogues usualy miss about feral gameplay is the "energy-starving" aspect. There ain't any kind of passive energy generation that scales with the stuff as a feral except clearcast (that scales with haste and that don't directly grant energy but allows a free move and you're willing to use shred on every clearcast so those procs can't be used to help you refresh any of your buffs/dot or only indirectly by generating free Cp's). When you're running out of cd's it's really tricky to maintain everything you're willing to maintain because your energy looks like it will never grow up again each time you use an attack and that makes a strong difference with both muti/combat specs.

It looks much more like a combat high rupture gameplay (With SR being SnD and Rip being rupture) in which you would remove the energy granted by Combat potency. You then add a Dot-applying CP generator you need to refresh (rake) and you might be not too far from what feral gameplay currently is.

Ofc, there still lacks a few parameters (like the fact you must time absolutely all of your attacks to avoid them being cast just after an autoattack, which could make you waste a clearcast proc) which contribute to make feral-DPS the hardest to handle rogue spec (?) at the moment.

You mean ferals play like muti rogues seem to head for Cataclysm? Or even now in some cases for us that mostly raid 10-mans with quite often bad buff/debuff overlap. Without any source for bleeds there's not much to do but weave in inferioir finishers to keep up the abomination known as HfB. Add in expose and engineering and it can quite quickly become an exercise in frustration.

@Saweni:

Yepp, I don't know much about feral gameplay, I just focused on the timing on 2 dots and 1-2 self buffs. How it's all kept up I'm blissfully unaware of. My point was that even mutilate can be alot more then just envenom timing. For the average rogue it might be, but at times you need you juggle quite a few more timers. It's a good thing there will (hopefully) be a noticeable difference come Cataclysm.

@fallenangel

You seem to be missing the distinction between complexity and depth. Yes, a rotation that hits 10 buttons and does fundamentally the same thing as a rotation that hits 2 buttons is more complex and difficult to pull off. However, for most of us, that additional complexity isn't actually compelling. For most of the people on this board, keyboard gymnastics are not what we want to distinguish good players from bad. For most of us, what we actually want is for there to be more meaningful decisions that have to be made during game play that separates the good players from the bad.

In short, being "difficult" just because you hit a bunch of different buttons isn't actually compelling game play.