The Tank

[Occhidiangela]

I think it's the level.  Rogues are not a problem in Deadmines.  You can virtually have a rogue as a tank in there, provided he is high enough level.  Mob damage vs. rogue health/defense goes up a LOT more in the higher level instances.

the VC instance was toned down considerably, such that you can be pretty sloppy and still get through it.  At least compared to later instances.

Rogues rarely gouge in groups because:
- someone else always hits the gouged mob, breaking the effect
- you are usually gang tackling one mob... see the first point

When playing the rogue, the only time I use gouge in a group is when I think I need to not do damage, but I still want combo points towards a finisher.  It really sucks that you can't go from one target to another as a rogue, since you lose the combo points on your first target when you do that.  It would make gouge more useful if you could gouge one target, then attack a second for 4 seconds, then go back to the first.  As it is now, if I want gouge to keep the target inactive, I have to stand there with my thumb, well, you know.

So you won't get much protection out of gouge.  Unless the rogue has an affinity for standing around doing nothing for 4 seconds or building up combo points just to lose them.

Also rogues do a lot more damage than a cat druid.  I you're talking a lvl 20-24 rogue in Deadmines, a crit on eviscerate does about 200 damage all at once.  This may be right after a crit on a backstab (if they have improved backstab, theres a REAL good chance of crit on backstab) that gave 150 or so  PLUS the normal attacks he's doing (about 20 dps or so at that level).  it's that kind of damage over only 2 or 3 seconds  that can pull aggro you can't get back for a while.
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I gather that the rogue pulling aggro is, in general, a bad idea? As a rogue, I must say it strikes me as a horrible idea, intuitively. Again, sorry for not being a Beta Vet. Some of this is sorta intuitive, but the devil is in the details.

Occhi