Rogue resource costs for utility

[Warstar]

Thoughts on rogue utility vs. resource cost.

Rogues have a vast arsenal of tools to use yet almost all of them have anywhere from a small resource to a very large dps crippling resource.

A great example in comparison would be a warrior since they're both melee classes yet warriors are one of the top pvp classes and just dominate with having amazing damage as well as a crazy amount of utility yet rogues have been struggling all expansion long.

Lets look at storm bolt or shock wave compared to kidney shot.

Both storm bolt and shock wave are free with 0 resource cost. Storm bolt is a 30 second CD and shock wave is 40 but pretty easily gotten down to 20. Both attacks are instant and can be used the moment their off CD with no need to build anything or have enough rage to use. Both attacks do damage as well. Hell, storm bolt hits pretty darn hard if the target is fully DRed vs. stuns. Both attacks have a range component to them with storm bolt being up to 30 yards and shock wave hitting up to 8 yards away. Shockwave also has an aoe factor that can potentially stun an entire pvp team at once. And once again just to reiterate: neither of these amazing abilities have any resource cost at all and are completely free and just have a CD attached to them.

Compared to kidney shot which has a 20 second CD so is much shorter which is a plus. But, since cheap shot is also a stun rogues tend to DR themselves pretty easily making that stun CD potentially longer. Kidney shot does no damage what so ever either. If used on a stun DRed or immune target all resources are lost and the CD is reset losing the ability as well as potential damage. Also, not only does KS take 25 energy to use (compared to 0 rage for a warrior) it also takes up to 5 CP to use (once again compared to 0 rage for a warrior).

Just tossing it in here as well are feral druids. Feral druids have main which is almost identical to kidney shot but it also has the added bonus of doing damage as well and only a 10 second CD being half the CD. Also, every time a feral druid does a finisher they have a chance per CP (usually use a 5 point finisher for 100% chance) to get a free healing touch which would be like every time a rogue kidney shotted someone not only did it stun them but also eviscerated and procced a better version of recuperate.

Hell even look at hamstring vs. shiv two abilities which I consider to be very similar in use especially since a lot of rogues run paralytic poison and the shiv effect is a root similar to hamstring's snare. Hamstring/piercing howl is the only utility ability that a warrior has yet it only costs 10 rage vs. a rogues 20 energy.

I find one of the biggest drawbacks to playing a rogue in pvp is that either you do damage or you do utility. A 5 point recoup + a 5 point kidney shot is 10 CP worth of utility with 0 damage done completely nerfing yourself. Compared to a warrior who can keep up 100% damage while doing all their utility and a warrior can peel just as effectively as a rogue if not more effectively since honestly a warrior speced into double time, storm bolt and shock wave has more ways to peel than a rogue does.

I really don't see the point in having to choose between either dps or utility when no other class has to make this choice. Hell it's not like rogues even do that good of damage in pvp either. Warriors and DKs easily out dps a rogue even with a rogue going full retard and doing zero utility just full dps. Enhance shaman blow the poop out of rogues when it comes to burst. It's just so annoying knowing that every other class out there gets to use all their utility free of cost yet I have to choose between dps or control.

I'm sure people are going to chime in saying that if rogue utility resources were lowered or even removed that they'd be over powered and what not but I just wanna say once again to quell any sort of non-sense that even without utility rogues damage is lower than most classes out there and those classes that have better damage than rogues can use all their utility abilities free or very low cost while doing more damage so really what's the argument that rogues shouldn't be able to do the same?

Oh and all CC should share DR with it self. It's annoying as piss to get a 7 second fear into a 7 second poly followed up by a 7 second root. Fair and balanced fox news status.

[Kraineth]

1. Maim damage is not comparable to Eviscerate, eviscerate hits harder. KS is also a 6 second stun, ferals only get 5s stuns

2.Feral damage is based around Finishers, most rogue damage comes from CP builders and Autos

3. Recup is a %healing buff that lasts longer per combo point. Free HT is a one time heal that will get outhealed by recup easily outside of HotW

4. blind/gouge/sap only cost energy and blind/gouge can be talented to be free. Feral CC outside of stuns is cyclone which now has to be hardcast(Lol Good luck) as well as roots

Lets be real before you try and suggest that "every other class" has to choose between damage and CC.

[lolpve]

I agree on principle that most other classes have poorly designed resource systems but the examples you chose were bad.

The main issue I have is with mana, which since TBC has ceased to be meaningful. Mana classes in raids play like a button mashing arcade game with very little attention to timing.

Also the deathknight system is awful. Using one resource replenishes the other, whereas both resources should deplete each other, like with rogues. I know that DKs were put in the game to be beginner-friendly but this is bad design.

[Feali]

You can't compare Energy with rage.

[Warstar]

1. Maim damage is not comparable to Eviscerate, eviscerate hits harder. KS is also a 6 second stun, ferals only get 5s stuns

2.Feral damage is based around Finishers, most rogue damage comes from CP builders and Autos

3. Recup is a %healing buff that lasts longer per combo point. Free HT is a one time heal that will get outhealed by recup easily outside of HotW

4. blind/gouge/sap only cost energy and blind/gouge can be talented to be free. Feral CC outside of stuns is cyclone which now has to be hardcast(Lol Good luck) as well as roots

Lets be real before you try and suggest that "every other class" has to choose between damage and CC.

1. The point is that point for point I'd trade a free heal + damage for 1 second of a stun.
2. Tell that to a berserking druid spamming ravage on you.
3. Burst heal > HoT and this "one time thing" is absolute bull shit when every finisher they do will proc this heal so they never have to choose between damage or healing but rather everything they do gives them a nice heal. Their "HoT" is just doing more damage.
4. Only costing energy contradicts your "most rogue damage comes from CP builders" since CP builders cost energy thus we're trading damage for utility. And, it's rather easy to hard cast cyclone with a properly lined up CC train.

You can't compare Energy with rage.

No one stacks haste in arena so for the most part energy is about as normalized as rage is for it's generation. And compare energy and/or CP the point is we have a resource system that's used to do various things and we have to choose between a utility non-damaging ability vs. a damaging ability where as warriors on the other hand use all their resources on damage (minus hamstring) and get all their other utility abilities for free or in the case of charge not only does it stun them for utility being a great way to peel and/or interrupt a spell cast but it also generates rage for them to do more damage. That'd be awesome if shadow step generated 20 energy per use and stunned the target cast on.

[mongoose6]

Stormbolt only has an increased damage component when applied to a target that is permanently immune to stuns. Hitting someone who is DR immune only results in the normal SB damage minus the stun component. Also the cost for warriors comes from talent selection, they have to choose between a damage talent or a utility talent. Granted both utility talents have a damage component, but a warrior taking shockwave and stormbolt will do far less damage than a warrior rolling bladestorm and avatar. With all that bieng said, I agree that warriors are still a bit OP. They do incredible amounts of damage, have great utility, and can make do with using waaaay less abilities than a rogue.

[ymirsson]

Stormbolt and Shockwave are talents, KS is not. But apart from that, KS indeed is resource intensive.

[Verain]

You can't compare Energy with rage.

To a degree you can.

It used to be, all abilities cost resources. But many of the talented abilities have no such costs, especially for warriors.


One of the biggest issues rogues have had in pvp is that their controls cost a serious amount of dps. On most classes, if you spend two globals CCing people, you likely have most of your damage abilities available and good to go- their cooldowns spun away over those few seconds, and they cost nothing. Meanwhile, rogues are plagued by the need to pool resource to accomplish anything, and to SPEND resource to CC- A rogue opens his CC with not much of anything compared to what he had before. This isn't a gripe about rage- it's a gripe about literally all things. One by one, we've seen this requirement taken away from other classes. If your stun used to take up some resource, now it doesn't- and that means you have that resource to dps during the stun.


Cheap shot costs energy. Kidney shot costs five combo points! How come this doesn't do damage! If kidney shot is going to be resource based, then it SHOULD be- and that means not having a cooldown.


In today's game, this move is archaic, a throwback to an era when everyone had choices to make about these moves. It makes rogues in practice rather bad at CC, and also the CC + burst game that everyone else seems to have been given.

Hamstring/piercing howl is the only utility ability that a warrior has yet it only costs 10 rage vs. a rogues 20 energy.

But see, you can't compare the costs directly. Shiv has a cooldown and a more potent effect, and 20 energy is only slightly "more costs" than 10 rage- the two costs are almost equivalent in general, as 1 point of rage is worth more than 1 point of energy (how much energy do you get while feared? how much rage does a warrior get?). Saying that a move with a variable potent effect and a cooldown is almost the same as a much more mundane move is simply not fair, especially to compare rage to energy directly.

Maim damage is not comparable to Eviscerate, eviscerate hits harder. KS is also a 6 second stun, ferals only get 5s stuns

I don't think it's fair to say "evicerate hits harder". I am pretty sure that is not the case when running combat. Combat and feral do not get a boost to their direct damage finisher from mastery- mutilate and sub do. Feral's mastery does boost their massive dot finisher though.

KS is indeed combo point + 1 second, and feral does cap at 5. That's nice, but... maim does damage, and kidney shot should. Maim has a 10 second cooldown as well. And rogue combo points are cheaper to generate versus feral ones. But ferals can talent for a 30 second period of spam openers, and have aoe disruption or just flat out direct stuns. For most of this expansion, they've had trees that stun people available as well (now they are nerfed to root, but clearly the idea that it's fine was there).

Kidney Shot should deal damage at a minimum, especially with the post-Cata changes that made builders hit softer and finishers hit harder. You give up a whole lot with a kidney shot, and you really shouldn't. The compare point for KS is probably really Ursol's Stun, or whatever, and stormbolt or shockwave, and fist of justice, and whatever that ludicrous untrinketable crap that wind walkers got for literally no reason except to make the game awful in any area they are viable in, which thankfully isn't that many, or asphixiate. I mean, every class just has a fucking stun button, and in all cases it's less restrictive than kidney about landing, and USUALLY the cooldown is within 5 seconds of when DR clears. The ability to kidney a DRed target is nice, but it isn't really as solid as just having a good stun that can't be parried or dodged to begin with.

While removing the kidney cooldown would be consistent with their design, it doesn't ultimately matter. What needs to happen is that many of those listed CCs need to get their asses deleted or seriously nerfed. The idea where every class has a button marked 'stun' was lifted from SWTOR, where it mostly works. It's crap here, however. Kidney Shot should be left alone, and these other classes should be reverted to a state where they don't have rogue like CC.

Stormbolt only has an increased damage component when applied to a target that is permanently immune to stuns. Hitting someone who is DR immune only results in the normal SB damage minus the stun component.

Correct. None of the moves that do damage to immune to CC targets EVER do that effect to players under any circumstances- the whole point is that you use them against raid bosses. So you want to be able to stormbolt a raid boss, as that is intended to be rotational, but not to hammer of justice one.


But I will say this- wouldn't it be cool if kidney shot was like a triple eviscerate versus permanently immune to stun mobs? So you'd want to kidney when it was off cooldown and stuff. I dunno, I like the idea of a powerful finisher with a cooldown, I think a good rogue will nail on on CD and lesser ones will not? Death from Above might be that though, we shall see- and I'd like one that can be used in pvp in a fair manner anyway.

[mongoose6]

But I will say this- wouldn't it be cool if kidney shot was like a triple eviscerate versus permanently immune to stun mobs? So you'd want to kidney when it was off cooldown and stuff.

This makes sense from both a gameplay perspective and an RP perspective. (If you've ever actually taken a shot to the kidney, you know what I'm talking about)

[bzhai]

But I will say this- wouldn't it be cool if kidney shot was like a triple eviscerate versus permanently immune to stun mobs? So you'd want to kidney when it was off cooldown and stuff. I dunno, I like the idea of a powerful finisher with a cooldown, I think a good rogue will nail on on CD and lesser ones will not? Death from Above might be that though, we shall see- and I'd like one that can be used in pvp in a fair manner anyway.

This would open up so many possibilities for our talent tree and reminds me of Wrath days when mages could Deep Freeze bosses for a fuckload of damage.

[dancers]

Energy is generated at a much much faster rate than rage. Don't compare apples to oranges; Classes aren't designed to be compared like this. Rogues are also doing quite well in pvp contrary to what most people think. We are an under represented class. There aren't many of us which often gets interpereted as meaning we are under powered or weaker than other classes. We aren't.

[shadowboy]

Hell, storm bolt hits pretty darn hard if the target is fully DRed vs. stuns.

Wrong. Storm bolt only receives the damage bonus if the target is permanently immune to stuns, i.e., PvE bosses. Fully DR'd stuns do not count as "permanently immune."