Rogue 1.12 Preview

[MongoJerry]

That is what Foils are about Quark. As a Rogue, you have a cleared advantage over Mages and Priests and most Warlocks. The Rogue was designed for Anti-cloth duty when it comes to PvP. What's so hard to believe that another class(es) are designed for anti-Rogue duty?

It's not as clear-cut as that. Rogues also have anti-hunter abilities -- the most obvious being the ability to detect and disarm traps. While certain classes or class builds have an easier time beating other specific classes or class builds, it isn't pure rock/paper/scissors. There are supposed to be moves and counter moves that all classes can use when fighting other classes.

[Xame]

Have to love a PVP argument with two of the most feared pvp classes on the battlefield. Rogues get to pick their fights (see roguecraft video) except when they get the big red arrow (at least for now) and Hunters get a pet and wingclip, scatter shot and FD-trap macro escapes. Both are hard to kill on the open battlefield because of their large number of escapes combined with hard hitting dps and movement impairing effects.

As far as the hunters are anti-rogue, I've NEVER seen this. Both classes would rather drop clothies for quick kills then try to fight each other. The hunters mark is more often placed on a priest then a rogue. The mark and flares are only a self defence techniques against rogues if a rogue trys to go after a hunter. With near total domination over clothies and fair fights with druids and shaman (well somewhat) why bother with each other or warriors.

As far as the talent spec redo. I'm disappointed. Not because what the talents might do for the class but what they don't do for the class. For the mages talent respec it left a lot of issues as to what would be a good build. The cookie cutter builds where mostly destroyed and you ended up with mage talent builds all over the map. For the rogue builds I'm not seeing a weaking of combat. It's not that I'm calling for a weaking of the rogue, but all three trees should be equally interesting for both pvp and pve and you should have to make sacrifices to get the good talents by not getting other good talents. I expect to hear as many complaints by rogues as cheers since the rogue really isn't a broken class. I'm also not a big fan of PvP only talents and many of the changes appear focused there. This appears to be the work of the shaman talent review group :P , simply uninspired tweeking and a buff all around on a class that really wasn't broken.

[MongoJerry]

As far as the hunters are anti-rogue, I've NEVER seen this. Both classes would rather drop clothies for quick kills then try to fight each other. The hunters mark is more often placed on a priest then a rogue. The mark and flares are only a self defence techniques against rogues if a rogue trys to go after a hunter. With near total domination over clothies and fair fights with druids and shaman (well somewhat) why bother with each other or warriors.

As a priest, I destroy hunters one-vs-one, even when I'm holy spec'd. Their only chance is if they catch me out of mana at the start of a fight. When shadow spec'd, I destroy rogues, too. When holy spec'd, I die so fast to reasonably equipped rogues, it's not even funny.

As far as the talent spec redo. I'm disappointed. Not because what the talents might do for the class but what they don't do for the class. For the mages talent respec it left a lot of issues as to what would be a good build. The cookie cutter builds where mostly destroyed and you ended up with mage talent builds all over the map. For the rogue builds I'm not seeing a weaking of combat and a strengthing of the other trees. It's not that I'm calling for a weaking of the rogue, but all three trees should be equally interesting for both pvp and pve and you should have to make sacrifices to get the good talents by not getting other good talents. I expect to hear as many complaints by rogues as cheers since the rogue really isn't a broken class. I'm also not a big fan of PvP only talents and many of the changes appear focused there. This appears to be the work of the shaman talent review group :P , simply uninspired tweeking.

We haven't seen the talent calculators, yet, so we don't know where things might have been repositioned or how talent costs have been changed. That's where decisions about possible new builds come in to play, so we'll have to wait and see about that.

[Xame]

As a priest, I destroy hunters one-vs-one, even when I'm holy spec'd. Their only chance is if they catch me out of mana at the start of a fight. When shadow spec'd, I destroy rogues, too. When holy spec'd, I die so fast to reasonably equipped rogues, it's not even funny.

I agree that the mark has little effect on a priest in a one - one fight. The mark is placed on the priest in group pvp to make sure "this one dies first". Priests are far too deadly in group combat if left standing for too long (a priest healing a rogue will cut up a large group pretty quickly if the priest is left untouched). What is interesting is what a hunter brings to a fight in terms of personal surviablity, dps and harrassment. Even though they can be beaten one-v-one. Their long range snipering of cloth targets is what puts them up in the pvp ranks everytime. Similarly rogues can drop a cloth target and then vanish before the group can react. Most clothies hide in pvp since standing out will get you killed quick.

In the typical AV pvp battles I see, hunters work in groups of two or three and setup snippers nests. They trap the enterences to the nest and use one of their pets as a lookout. A target is marked (clothie) and all hunters shoot it (almost insta-kill). If someone happens to get in the nest, its scatter shot, FD and then a trap on the feet for the quick crowd control to get range (or switch weapons and just beat it down).

Similarly, I've seen rogues working in killing crews grabbing three casters at a time and dropping them with their stun locks. A five person team (three clothies, shaman and warrior) can just be erased by three rogues with very limited damage to the rogues. The element of surprize being very huge in getting a few free seconds.

The new rogue talent that is the most pvp game changing will be the use of the offensive "sprint" to break movement effects and close the distance to a target. Granted, it will depend on how many of the movement impairing effects it clears but this will be huge. A mage frost novas a rogue so that they can wind up the cast; sprint, blind, good bye mage. Previously this would have been, vanish and the mage runs away (a draw).

Also the line: "Garrote, Rupture, and Eviscerate are being increased in damage" and "Hemorrhage will be moved up in the tree to become a 21 point talent" leads me to believe that the developers are looking for rogues to get more dot slots on bosses for pve. Thus creating more strategy choices for the raid. Kind of a "run in, put on a dot and back out to save healer mana".

[Quark]

I step away from the computer for one day and all hell breaks loose.

Summary?

I know that I had hinted at specific functionality, and I take that mistake upon myself for making statements based on information which was not final and/or fully intended. Expose Armor will not stack with Sunder Armor in 1.12.

The changes to make it perform as a percentage is still intended, and it should now give a pretty nice boost against high-armor targets versus the current Expose Armor functionality.

Drysc did the impossible. He made Rogues (well, Combat and Seal Fate Rogues, Combat Dagger doesn't have the combo points available) actually believe we had some utility for a raid beyond our own selfish DPS.

Rupture was found to be performing at-par to where we want it to be and will not be changed. While there was certainly some intention initially (and why it was included in my post) to improve or change how it functioned, after careful study it has been decided to not change the Rupture ability. I know that may be a dissapointment, but after careful study, no change was necessary.

Eviscerate is being improved by a new book, allowing a new rank and a general base-damage increase.

Garotte is receiving a damage boost. While final numbers are still unavailable, we are shooting for an approximate 50% damage increase.

So let's go over this step by step.

Rupture: Rupture has the unique benefit of a steady damage per combo point -> 187. Whether 1 or 5, it's the same. This ended up meaning at 5 combo points, it was superior to Eviscerate (187.2 @ 5) because of armor, assuming Rupture stays up for 22 seconds. Due to energy considerations, the best boss cycle for non-Combat Dagger is 5/5/3 or 5/3/5, Rupture is better in these cases. Simply due to being a DoT, it looks to become completely inferior to Eviscerate in 1.12 again (like it was pre-raiding). Apparantly that's "intended".

Eviscerate: Drysc came up with some lame excuse about the scaling they tried to work out hurting the lowest rogues while only marginally helping the best. Apparantly "put out a new book!" every once in a while is better than actually making the ability work logically. The consequences of this are that undergeared Rogues in PvP will have fun ala "World of Roguecraft" again, in another tier or two it'll be just as useless raiding as it is now, and Seal Fate Dagger will still be inferior to any raid build. Oh, and any time a non-scaling ability starts to fall behind the masses will start screaming for a new book.

Garrote: Garrote was inferior to Ambush both overall damage and DPS wise back when I was in half blues. A 50% increase now? Yep, it's still inferior in both categories.

They managed to buff non-60 and undergeared Rogues, the two types of Rogues that needed it the least.

[MongoJerry]

In the typical AV pvp battles

Sorry, you lost me the moment you put the words "AV" and "pvp" in the same sentence. Yes, I read the rest of your post, but it had no meaning, because it assumed you were in the AV zergfest where a host of class skills don't have the chance to be used. If you must talk about battlegrounds, then we can talk about WSG or even Arathi Basin. But AV? Nah, that's not the environment to talk about class balance or so-called "class foils."

In the typical AV pvp battles I see, hunters work in groups of two or three and setup snippers nests. They trap the enterences to the nest and use one of their pets as a lookout. A target is marked (clothie) and all hunters shoot it (almost insta-kill). If someone happens to get in the nest, its scatter shot, FD and then a trap on the feet for the quick crowd control to get range (or switch weapons and just beat it down).

As a priest, I'm usually in a group with at least one warrior, a mage or two, and maybe a random rogue or extra warrior. The sniper nests are easy. You get up against the tower out of line of sight of the hunters, any traps in the entrance are quickly dispelled, both warrior and priest fear takes care of any attempted organized defense while the mage sheeps one of the hunters for good measure. The hunters can't get range in line of sight inside the towers and are quickly and methodically dispatched with the attacking group hardly taking a sliver of damage.

No, the only time the sniper nests "work" is when the hunter's defensive zerg is able to hold off the attacking group sufficiently -- e.g when the defensive zerg is able to plug up the bridge to Alliance base. Then, hunters in sniper nests have a field day dealing a 41-yard rain of death. But I would hardly consider that to be a "typical" PvP situation.

They managed to buff non-60 and undergeared Rogues, the two types of Rogues that needed it the least.

"You are hit by Unknown Entity's Ambush for 2300." (non-crit!) Yeah, right. I agree that expose armor stacking with sunder would have added a nice raid utility to rogues, but well-equiped rogue dps does not need a boost. Our rogues like to bitch and complain about the same kind of stuff you did and yet they still burn everyone on the damage meter. I think rogues just like to complain.

I will say that the one gripe that rogues have that's really legitimate is the fact that dps warriors are scaling up to the level of rogue dps. This is a problem due to the design flaw that causes both warrior direct damage to go up with equipment and rage generation go up with damage. It's not right that a plate wielding "tank" class should be jumping up to the level of rogue dps. But this is a problem that should be addressed with the warrior class, not with the rogue class.

[Quark]

"You are hit by Unknown Entity's Ambush for 2300." (non-crit!) Yeah, right.

Why don't you lie a little more, MJ? It really helps prove your points. My max Ambush, crit, the best I ever had? 1984. Go full Tier 3, Kingsfall, and raid buffed, the DPS calc shows a max damage of 779. So the ambush max, versus a 0 armor target, would be 2627. Crit. With gear that no Rogue has seen yet, nor will see for quite awhile.

That pales in comparison to what other classes can do, from up to 41 yards away, just like you have shown yourself (your mage thread).

[MongoJerry]

Why don't you lie a little more, MJ? It really helps prove your points. My max Ambush, crit, the best I ever had? 1984. Go full Tier 3, Kingsfall, and raid buffed, the DPS calc shows a max damage of 779. So the ambush max, versus a 0 armor target, would be 2627. Crit. With gear that no Rogue has seen yet, nor will see for quite awhile.

That pales in comparison to what other classes can do, from up to 41 yards away, just like you have shown yourself (your mage thread).

Um, since it actually happened to me, it's not a lie. You probably aren't as geared as some of the rogues who have full AQ loot and the best weapons available. One of my guild's rogues got a 2500+ non-crit ambush the other day. Yes, it was a lucky hit, but the fact is that it was real. As far as the ranged stuff, they can't follow it up with a series of stuns and backstabs that can finish a person off before they get a chance to fight back.

Do not accuse people of lying with no basis yourself. I don't know what's wrong with your dps calculator -- perhaps you're not including trinkets and other non-armor gear.

[lemekim]

Um, since it actually happened to me, it's not a lie. You probably aren't as geared as some of the rogues who have full AQ loot and the best weapons available. One of my guild's rogues got a 2500+ non-crit ambush the other day. Yes, it was a lucky hit, but the fact is that it was real. As far as the ranged stuff, they can't follow it up with a series of stuns and backstabs that can finish a person off before they get a chance to fight back.

Do not accuse people of lying with no basis yourself. I don't know what's wrong with your dps calculator -- perhaps you're not including trinkets and other non-armor gear.

Technically, 2500 non-crit ambush is impossible without an astounding array of buffs, including zerker buff from BGs. However.

What probably REALLY happened is more of a combat log issue. It has been a long standing bug, that if even a tiniest part of a crit is absorbed (by various spells, e.g. PW:S, which fits you, given that you are a priest), the crit is reported in combat log as a hit, so you get something that looks like this:

Rogue hits you for 1500 (1000 absorbed).

Most likely this is exactly what happened. The crit is still a crit - if a warrior with deep wounds spec crits you, and that crit is absorbed, the deep wounds will still activate. However, in combat it's still listed as a hit, and it might be an easy mistake to make.

Now, if you will insist that this hit happened without any absorb shields, I will be the first agree with Quark and call you flat out a liar.

[Quark]

Do not accuse people of lying with no basis yourself. I don't know what's wrong with your dps calculator -- perhaps you're not including trinkets and other non-armor gear.

Basis? Okay, here. Raid buffed, average main-hand melee damage (as shown on char screen, so it doesn't include crits) given my gear comes out to be 310. That's Perdition's, 8/8 BF, DFT, Blackhand's Breath, Concentrated Hatred. Upgrade all of that to Naxx loot, excluding the trinkets, you get 368 average. This is simple weapon damage + AP bonus.

You're basically telling me that an 18% buff, plus some timered trinkets and beserker increases the damage by 250%? I don't think so. Especially when your Rogues don't have that loot themselves, yet.

[MongoJerry]

Back to the topic at hand, though, I can see Blizzard's quandry. Ideally, attacks should scale with one's equipment. If one "levels" at the level-cap by obtaining items, it's obvious that one should be able to deal more damage when one obtains better equipment. Attacks like eviscerate, rupture, and hunter volley are odd-ball in that they don't scale with equipment.

However, despite the complaints of many rogues, overall rogue dps is fine. Both in blues and in epics, they deal a *ton* of damage. Unless an encounter is designed to specifically disrupt them (e.g. Barron Geddon's fire pulse or Ouro's Sweep), rogues will dish out far more damage than any other class. Thus enters the conundrum. How do you make eviscerate and rupture scale with equipment without making rogue dps jump even further ahead than it already is?

You can make it so that an epic'd out rogue does about the same amount of damage with eviscerate as he or she does now but then nerf the base damage of eviscerate. Ah, but that nerfs all those rogues in blue gear.

Or, you can make eviscerate scale with damage, increasing its damage for epic'd out rogues but then nerf other rogue skills and equipment to compensate for the dps gain. This is probably the correct solution, but it would involve a lot of work, because it would involve changing a whole host of rogue skills and most likely a lot of equipment as well.

So, not wanting to take either of the above steps, Blizzard is saying, "Well, maybe Eviscerate isn't doing quite as much damage for high end rogues as we would like, but we don't want them to be able to go overboard with it either. So, we'll add in a new rank of Eviscerate to keep the situation controlled." It's not a great solution, but I can understand why Blizzard is making it.

[MongoJerry]

Basis? Okay, here. Raid buffed, average main-hand melee damage (as shown on char screen, so it doesn't include crits) given my gear comes out to be 310. That's Perdition's, 8/8 BF, DFT, Blackhand's Breath, Concentrated Hatred. Upgrade all of that to Naxx loot, excluding the trinkets, you get 368 average. This is simple weapon damage + AP bonus.

You're basically telling me that an 18% buff, plus some timered trinkets and beserker increases the damage by 250%? I don't think so. Especially when your Rogues don't have that loot themselves, yet.

You know, it is possible that it happened in a battleground so that the rogue in question may have had a berserker buff on. It's been a while, so I'm fuzzy on the details of the situation. I just remember very strongly looking at my combat log after a particularly fast death and seeing the non-crit ambush for over 2300 damage and commenting on it in guild chat and in TS. I'll ask Araxis, our resident decked out rogue who had the 2500 ambush if he remembers if he had a berserker buff on or not as well.

However, none of this changes the central thesis, which is that overall rogue dps is about what it should be. Now, if you're suggesting that a certain rogue build isn't scaling as well as another build, I'm happy to buy into that point. However, the problem may lie with the second build scaling up too quickly rather than the first build scaling up too slowly. This is similar to my comments above about dps warriors. Many of our guild's rogues complain about how dps warriors get to wear plate and yet are scaling to the point where they are competing with rogues on the damage meter. However, this is a problem with the multiplicate scaling of warriors (better equipment increases damage which simultaneously increases rage generation) and not a problem with rogues.

[Lissa]

Basis? Okay, here. Raid buffed, average main-hand melee damage (as shown on char screen, so it doesn't include crits) given my gear comes out to be 310. That's Perdition's, 8/8 BF, DFT, Blackhand's Breath, Concentrated Hatred. Upgrade all of that to Naxx loot, excluding the trinkets, you get 368 average. This is simple weapon damage + AP bonus.

You're basically telling me that an 18% buff, plus some timered trinkets and beserker increases the damage by 250%? I don't think so. Especially when your Rogues don't have that loot themselves, yet.

Quark, didn't you get rid of Oppurtunity from your build? There's 20% more Ambush damage right there. Throw in Bezerker and you're looking at atleast a 50% damage increase (since % damages multiply and not add). So right there that's up to 150%.

Mongo, do you recall if you any armor debuffs at the time or Bezerker yourself? Did you have Inner Fire up?

Without Inner Fire up, a Priest losses around 15% armor reduction Quark (any clothie without their castable Armor losses around 15% damage reduction).

It's in the realm of possibility...the pRNG would have had to be near max damage for the weapon's range and it would probably have required two Bezerekers to be up and the Rogue have Opportunity.

[Quark]

Quark, didn't you get rid of Oppurtunity from your build?

:huh: :blink: :wacko:
Uh, no. You see, for daggers to scale on the level of swords, we need Opportunity. I don't have Improved Ambush, which only increases crit chance. That has nothing to do with the theoretical maximum.

<strike> There's 20% more Ambush damage right there.</strike> Throw in Bezerker and you're looking at atleast a 50% damage increase (since % damages multiply and not add). So right there that's up to 150%.

Nit: 156% (1.2 x 1.3 = 1.56), but I have Opportunity anyway, so it's back down to 130% (of mine, not of base). Trinkets don't make up that extra 120%.

Mongo, do you recall if you any armor debuffs at the time or Bezerker yourself? Did you have Inner Fire up?

Without Inner Fire up, a Priest losses around 15% armor reduction Quark (any clothie without their castable Armor losses around 15% damage reduction).

My calculations were at zero armor.

It's in the realm of possibility...the pRNG would have had to be near max damage for the weapon's range and it would probably have required two Bezerekers to be up and the Rogue have Opportunity.

Except your assumptions were wrong.

[Lissa]

:huh: :blink: :wacko:
Uh, no. You see, for daggers to scale on the level of swords, we need Opportunity. I don't have Improved Ambush, which only increases crit chance. That has nothing to do with the theoretical maximum.

I knew Improved Ambush was just crit chance, that was why I was wondering on the Opportunity front. I know you didn't go that deep into Subtlety, but you did have more in Assassination.

Nit: 156% (1.2 x 1.3 = 1.56), but I have Opportunity anyway, so it's back down to 130% (of mine, not of base).

It's been a while since I've serious PvPed, so I remembered Bezerker as +25% damage and increase damage taken by +10%.

Trinkets don't make up that extra 120%.

I wasn't thinking Trinkets at all. I was thinking % damage multipliers. With enough +% damage multipliers, even at +10% here and there, can really increase damage significantly (it's why mages and warlocks can still one shot warriors in the BGs, get Berzerker stance, the Bezerk buff, debuffs like the curses, and talents and suddenly damage can increase by up to 400%).

My calculations were at zero armor.

Again, I was looking at +% damage multipliers to see the likelihood of what Mongo said happening. With only 5% damage reduction, throwing .95 into the damage calculation isn't going to drop damage that much.

Except your assumptions were wrong.

I disagree. I was looking at all the possible +% damage adders and subtractors to get an idea if it was possible. I don't know your complete build except you're combat dagger. So I was looking for every little thing that could figure in.

Here's a possibility for you since you want to look at trinkets.

Use a ZHM (I think that's the one that adds +40 damage stepping down 2 damage per hit for 20 seconds) while in stealth and not in combat, switch the trinket to a +AP trinket. Have Bezerker on both the target and the attacker, have Opportunity, have the target be a clothie without their armor spell up, maybe add in Curse of Recklessness (which means 0 armor) or a single Sunder (again, 0 armor for a clothie). Can you see it happening then with a Pugio?

It seems possible to me, there's a lot of +damage % multipliers and a lot of initial +damage.

[lemekim]

Here's a possibility for you since you want to look at trinkets.

Use a ZHM (I think that's the one that adds +40 damage stepping down 2 damage per hit for 20 seconds) while in stealth and not in combat, switch the trinket to a +AP trinket. Have Bezerker on both the target and the attacker, have Opportunity, have the target be a clothie without their armor spell up, maybe add in Curse of Recklessness (which means 0 armor) or a single Sunder (again, 0 armor for a clothie). Can you see it happening then with a Pugio?

It seems possible to me, there's a lot of +damage % multipliers and a lot of initial +damage.

Using ZHM breaks stealth. And if you take it off, the buff dissapears. That's a no go.

Let's look at this situation in reverse: what AP does the rogue need to get 2500 ambush NON-CRIT?

Let's take away Berserker buff on the rogue, Berserker debuff on Mongo - 2500 / (1.3*1.1) = 1748 damage ambush. Taking away Opportunity, that's 1748/1.2 = 1456 ambush. This means that the base damage is: (1456 - 290) / 2.5 = 466.4

The top end damage on Death's Sting (currently highest damage dagger) is 144 damage, so the amount of base damage that has to come from AP is 322.4.

Because Ambush is one of the normalized attacks, the DPS needed to reach that base damage is 322.4/1.7 = 189.6 DPS - or 2655 attack power. NOBODY is running around with that kind of AP, not even buffed and with trinkets. And remember that these calculations are done on UNARMORED person - if you take even 15% reduction from armor, the amount of AP needed to reach this ambush damage is closer to 3500.

Conclusion?

As I said before, the only logical explanation for what you saw was that the combat log incorrectly reported a crit as a hit, because it was partially absorbed. This is not a matter of "getting better gear", this is a matter of it being simply impossible.

[MongoJerry]

the only logical explanation for what you saw was that the combat log incorrectly reported a crit as a hit, because it was partially absorbed.

Ah, now *that* is a reasonable possibility. Note: As a priest, especially now that I'm holy spec'd, I almost never pick up the Berserker buff. It's entertaining to see how one throw-away comment can start a whole side conversation. I will now amend my earlier comments:

"You are hit by Unknown Entity's Ambush for 2300." (Shows as non-crit, because some of it was absorbed!) Yeah, right. I agree that expose armor stacking with sunder would have added a nice raid utility to rogues, but well-equiped rogue dps does not need a boost. Our rogues like to bitch and complain about the same kind of stuff you did and yet they still burn everyone on the damage meter. I think rogues just like to complain.

I will say that the one gripe that rogues have that's really legitimate is the fact that dps warriors are scaling up to the level of rogue dps. This is a problem due to the design flaw that causes both warrior direct damage to go up with equipment and rage generation go up with damage. It's not right that a plate wielding "tank" class should be jumping up to the level of rogue dps. But this is a problem that should be addressed with the warrior class, not with the rogue class.

I've had to listen to lots of complaining from rogues about their class, and Quark, your comments were in the same vein. When discussing how to "fix" the class, the suggestions invariably come down to wanting to do more dps. But when you look at the situation objectively, overall rogue dps is right on target and the role that rogues play in groups fits exactly what a rogue is supposed to be able to do. In PvE, rogue dps on single-target fights is already the highest of any class in the game to the point where Blizzard has to design some encounter features to specifically to knock rogues down a peg (e.g. Baron Geddon's fire pulse or Ouro's Sweep as mentioned before). In PvP, I know rogues want to be able to kill everything and everyone all the time, but if that were possible, then everyone would play a rogue. But even if rogues can't kill everything and everyone all the time, they play several crucial roles in group PvP play with their ability to lock up healers, assassinate cloth targets, surprise enemies with superior numbers (you thought you had a 2v2 but surprise! It's a 2v4!), and sap and ninja flags and graveyards. If you don't think rogues are a feared class in PvP, contemplate why it is in Arathi Basin that teams leave at least two if not three people behind to defend each flag point even when there is no enemy to be seen for a quarter zone away.

This is not to say that some adjustments couldn't be made to the class. If some builds need tweeking to bring them up to par with other rogue builds, then I'll bow to your superior knowledge of rogues to tell me what specific builds are gimped and what could be done to bring them up to par with other currently more popular builds. However, looking at the broad picture, overall rogue dps is not the main issue with the class.

The two areas that I see that should be addressed are:

1. What are some unique abilities that rogues could contribute to raids? As it stands, nearly all of what a rogue does is dps, which is something that other classes can also do -- perhaps not quite as well in some encounters but other classes can fill in the gap. What are some things that rogues can do besides dealing damage?

Every other class provides some sort of buff or debuff that contributes to a raid as a whole, but rogues don't provide one. That's one reason I was disappointed that Blizzard is "taking back" the change that would have made expose armor stack with sunder armor. The rogues should be able to contribute *something* to the raid overall.

But I think the main problem with rogues in PvE raids is with the design of the encounters themselves. In 5-man dungeons, rogues can have more fun with their crowd control abilities. But in raids, boss mobs by nature can't be sapped, stunned, or slowed by poisons. So in most raid encounters, the only thing rogues can do is dps. Luckily, I can report that the situation is getting better in Naxxramas. In there, many mobs can be affected by various crowd control devices (yes, usually adds, but they need to be dealt with), and things like stuns and evasion tanking can play a crucial role in helping guilds beat raid encounters. If Blizzard gets more creative with their encounters and specifically designs them with rogue abilities in mind, that will help rogues feel that they play a bigger role in raids than being the local dps drones.

2. Blizzard needs to look at dps warriors and see how they relate to rogues. If fragile rogues and plate-wearing dps warriors (who can throw on a shield on a moment's notice) can do the same amount of damage, that's a design flaw. I think the problem lies with the warrior class, though, rather than with the rogue class.

[Quark]

2. Blizzard needs to look at dps warriors and see how they relate to rogues. If fragile rogues and plate-wearing dps warriors (who can throw on a shield on a moment's notice) can do the same amount of damage, that's a design flaw. I think the problem lies with the warrior class, though, rather than with the rogue class.

That's the thing, though. With the Mage review, many mages are now at that same point. They're the 2nd most deserving class for pure DPS, yes, but not the first. So now that's two classes that are ~= to a Rogue in DPS, yet both provide much more to a raid.

Tseric said a few months ago that they're looking at Rage generation (where the warrior vs rogue debate really begins to fall apart), today he say's they're not changing Rage.

Rogues themselves may have enough DPS, but a Rogue review cannot be complete unless we serve a function in raids. That means either some sort of utility (which Drysc promised then said "oops"), or superior (not equal) dps.

Naxx may be better, but excuse me while I'm skeptical. Onyxia used to be vulnerable to Mind Numbing Poison. She no longer is, and the GMs swear she's never been. Yauj is vulnerable to Curse of Tongues, but not Mind Numbing Poison. That's rogue utility.

Weapon Expertise is a quick-fix to a glaring problem in itemization, while helping Rogue raid-boss DPS and not affecting PvP DPS. Yet they're making it only available to one (three builds) playstyle: Combat Swords (Maces/Fists). For a Dagger rogue to get it, they must sacrifice Lethality as it stands. One of the 3 talents that everyone says get it: Lethality, Improved Backstab, and Opportunity. (Sidenote: there's actually a 4th/5th, the little mentioned Relentless Strikes and its required Ruthlessness. A Rogue without Relentless Strikes simply can't compare to a rogue with one, no matter the spec). They took a very minor issue (Dagger rogues forced to tri-spec) and blew it out of the water by making Combat even more of a requirement.

Make no mistake, Weapon Expertise by itself may solve my DPS concerns. Weapon Skill is that powerful. But Seal Fate can't possibly grab it (and doesn't scale well enough anyway, especially without Rupture changing), while Combat Daggers is going to have to sacrifice some of their best talents for it. Thus, you have only Combat Swords left, and the easiest rogue build becomes the most powerful.

Long ago I said the only sword that would ever make me spec out of daggers was Thunderfury. If this review goes in as is, that either means I'll be surpassed by my own class or forced to eat my words and respec to swords. Aged Core Leather Gloves can hold this off for a bit, but they can only last so long. They were my first epic and they're by far my lowest ilvl epic. Yet if something isn't changed I simply can't replace them. Mugger's Belt is even worse. I'm actually glad I never got them, because I'd be constantly debating wearing an ilvl 62 rare item over my set of epic belts.

[Concillian]

Rupture: Rupture has the unique benefit of a steady damage per combo point -> 187. Whether 1 or 5, it's the same. This ended up meaning at 5 combo points, it was superior to Eviscerate (187.2 @ 5) because of armor, assuming Rupture stays up for 22 seconds. Due to energy considerations, the best boss cycle for non-Combat Dagger is 5/5/3 or 5/3/5, Rupture is better in these cases. Simply due to being a DoT, it looks to become completely inferior to Eviscerate in 1.12 again (like it was pre-raiding). Apparantly that's "intended".

When you consider the crit rate of epic rogues, eviscerate compares nicely. Current Eviscerate < Rupture and Current crit eviscerate > Rupture. I thought it was pretty well balanced except for the fact that few people would use rupture at all in PvE due to the debuff limit and few would use DoTs in PvP when they have a chance at an instant.

Garrote has the same issue, raiding won't want the debuff slot and PvP will always prefer the direct damage to a DoT.

IMO it makes sense to pay most attention to skills people will actually use. You'd have to buff Rupture and Garrotte to the point of ridiculousness before people would actually use them.

They managed to buff non-60 and undergeared Rogues, the two types of Rogues that needed it the least.

Maybe I'm unique in the perspective that I didn't really see rogues having huge problems aside from the bugs in their skills and itemization of rogue only items wasted on +STR instead of +AP. They still do a hell of a lot of DPS when played well at any gearing levels. The weapon skill talent will help even things out for PvE raiders, since there are so many people unaware of he extreme benefit of weapon skill, and it brings a lot of gearing flexibility to those who were aware of it.

I would probably point to itemization as a larger problem than any talent issues in the rogue of 1.11. Itemization for the other physical DPS classes is much better (hunters and warriors), and arguably the raiding sets are worst itemized for rogues... in Tier 1 & 2 from the AP vs. STR thinga and in Tier 3 because they tend to lump all the 'points' into a single stat on the individual pieces (plus it still has STR :blink:)

I always saw the rogue talent trees as laid out fairly well :shrug: (well, with the exception of the worst talent EVER -- throwing weapon spec)

[NotSoDarklord]

I wish blizzard could change spell functionality from rank to rank (afaik at least they can't). Then the easy solution would be to just add a new rank that drops in high end content with the desired scalability. I sure can think of a lot of butt-ugly ways around this though! (New DD finisher that scales and is flagged to function as evisc/be affected by any gear or talents that affect evisc, new DD finisher with all existing evisc talent or gear modifiers changed to include this neuvoeviscerate).


It's a shame blizzard didn't opt for the scaling now. The chances of them ever doing it shrunk from unlikely to nonexistent in my opinion.