the squishiness of cloth, without the range or compensation

There’s a lot of debate on the forums about the state of rogues in the game, and without considering every complaint, here are my thoughts on where rogues are right now. This isn’t a plea to developers, as once again more changes have come to the PTR, and rogues have gotten… nothing. No changes whatsoever. For the 3rd or 4th week in a row. I think it’s probably fair to say that rogues haven’t gotten any attention or consideration. So I don’t expect anything new, and I’m just operating based on what I see now.

PvE

In PvE, rogues are competitive, but they are not compensated for their disadvantages versus other classes. In PvP, rogues are easier to kill than even cloth classes, and the cooldowns that we once relied upon for our survival are no longer effective in WotLK.

Let’s talk about PvE first. Ultimately, rogues are fine in PvE, I think. Not optimal, and certainly not balanced versus hybrids (or even ranged), but in my experience, a well-played rogue that focuses on maxing dps and time-on-target can hold his own.

The Hybrid problem

The devs have already posted that pure dps classes should deliver the highest dps for most fights, at similar gear and skill levels. And yet I can’t help but notice how much damage hybrid classes still do (elemental shammies/ret pallies doing comparable damage to rogues on almost every boss, despite being able to heal, etc. Feral druids are pretty high on the charts given that they can heal and tank. The list goes on…). Despite repeated claims that raids should bring the player, not the class, I can’t help but wonder why anyone would choose to fill their last raid spot with a high-dps hybrid rather than a rogue.

For example, let’s say a 10-man raid has formed and has one spot left for a dps. There are two players of equal gear and skill available — an elemental shaman and a HfB Mutilate rogue. The raidleader knows from experience that these two players do approximately equal dps, within, say 1-200 dps. I think the raid leader is a fool if he doesn’t take the shaman. In addition to bringing Heroism, the shammy can emergency heal and cleanse poison/disease, all while putting out dps comparable to the rogue’s. The rogue brings…. tricks of the trade and the ability to remove enrage from Gluth. Slam dunk for the shammy, in my opinion.

What’s the solution? That developers actually spend some time on the rogue class (and theoretically on other pure-dps classes), rather than just talking about dps hierarchies. But I don’t expect much, because of…

The Ranged Problem

Of the four classes that are considered “pure-dps” classes (see above link), rogues are the only melee class. This means that rogues require an extra dps boost over other dps classes, given how often we have to stop dps or interrupt rotations, whereas ranged dps classes simply don’t have to deal with anything of the sort in Naxx.

Before people go nuts on me for that comment, consider that Locust Swarm on Anub’rekan only affects melee (by “affect”, I mean, we have to run away from the boss while ranged classes continue to spam their macros). Running to spores on Loatheb requires melee to completely stop dps, unlike ranged. Tail swipe when a ranged class takes aggro affects melee, not ranged. Get webbed by Maexxna? If you’re a melee, you’re doing 0 dps until you run all the way back. And optimal positioning of Kel’Thuzad is simple for ranged classes, but melee classes have to stack properly and adjust constantly based on voids near the tank and teleports. Not to mention that ranged get a nice shiny platform to stand on for Heigan, while melee get to lava dance the whole time — oh, and ranged can dps during the lava dance anyway. I could go on and on.

The point is that even when if the developers set pure dps above other classes, rogues will still suffer from a melee disadvantage, without compensation for that disadvantage. Nothing I have seen in Ulduar will change this, vehicle fights excepted (which are a horseshit gimmick in terms of class balance, by the way).

PvP

In contrast to PvE, I absolutely don’t think rogues are okay in PvP. And I’m not talking about random word pvp where a rogue can still win one-on-ones by burning offensive cooldowns. I’m talking about organized pvp, primarily arena, where heals are to be had and rushdowns among skilled players are rare. Unfortunately, WotLK dynamics eliminate rogue survivability, which has always been tied to cooldowns which are no longer effective. Evasion is useless against almost any class. DKs do more magic/disease damage than physical damage, and therefore evasion is just as ineffective against them as it is against ret pallies. Other rogues (rare as they are in arena these days) can at least shiv through evasion, warriors have new tools to deal with evasion, in addition to increased survivability that makes evasion rushdown nigh impossible. For the same reason, dismantle is also dismal against any classes other than hunters, rogues and warriors, and again, these classes have ways to deal with the brief dismantle duration.

Cloak of Shadows was stealth nerfed and fears and snares still land. Vanish is bugged from what it should be, now requiring other cooldowns + macros to work correctly… and it still bugs and fails. Blind remains the only cooldown that retains the same power that it had pre-WotLK. Even stuns have been nerfed, and the devs have stated that this is by design. So where does that leave us? With a class that doesn’t effectively burst from 100 -> 0 anymore, but still doesn’t have the survivability to succeed after the “burst window” is over.

I know that it’s not fun to be stunlocked. I know that it’s not fun to be ambushed for half of your health. I have an 80 mage and an 80 warlock. The mage is fine, as long as I’m not afk. I can react to an ambush CB eviscerate unless I’m completely drunk, and either control the rogue or reset the fight. Rogues can tear apart my warlock if they don’t make mistakes. But both my mage and my warlock have ways to take control of the fight from most rogues. And once they do, they have the upper hand.

I dunno what the result of this rant is. I guess my main complaint is that rogues are no longer a burst class. If there were no burst classes, I could live with that. But burst still exists in arcane mages (ice block, sheep, slows, roots and huge burst), feral druids (huge burst from energy pooling, heals, ridiculous bear-form mitigation, snare removal, cyclone and spammable intercepts) and ret pallies — burst magic (unmitigated) damage with bubble, heals, snare immunity, stun removal, plate armor and a ranged execute. So it’s not that they have removed burst, it’s just that they have removed it from the one class that requires burst the most.

What can you do about it? Nothing, apparently. Other than some long overdue glyphs, 3.1 doesn’t bring rogues anything (other than revamped DKs/Paladins/Priests/Druids/etc to fight against). In the mean time, take advantage of whatever you can. For instance, the bugged backstab glyph. Of course, as Aedak once famously stated:

It is a bug. If it helps you, it will be fixed. If it is detrimental to you, it will most likely not.

Take advantage while you can, as this may be hot-fixed very soon. In the meantime, some people are trying HfB for PvP, eschewing a second-set of ineffective cooldowns in favor of trying to get a fast kill. Your mileage may vary. Otherwise, just focus on your timing and decision-making and hope for the devs to give some love to rogues instead of working on World of DeathKnightCraft 3.2.

/rant off

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