Rogue feedback! Why they are so unpopular?!

[checking facts]

GC said a rogue revamp will happen if the warlock one ends up increasing lock popularity.

now let's look at an INDICATOR of popularity. this is by no means popularity itself, but it will give us an idea of how the warlock revamp affected the class.

the indicator I'll use is the class forums activity right here, right now:

Death Knight Forums - 104 users viewing it right now
Druid Forums - 75 users viewing it right now
Hunter Forums - 61 users viewing it right now
Mage Forums - 113 users viewing it right now
Monk Forums - 100 users viewing it right now
Paladin Forums - 68 users viewing it right now
Priest Forums - 71 users viewing it right now
Rogue Forums - 52 users viewing it right now - Lowest
Shaman - 62 users viewing it right now
Warlock - 134 users viewing it right now - Highest
Warrior - 81 users viewing it right now

By looking at this Indicator, it seems the warlock revamp was very beneficial to the class, and so, rogues are next

(also: if you really want a rogue revamp, I suggest you roll a warlock )

[D3athsting]

After 8 years they FINALLY noticed rogue needs a revamp? Well, so it looks like blizz's so called "perfect class" is not so perfect as they want to make us believe, after ignoring feedback for years now there are numbers that clearly state rogue IS NOT FINE, other classes evolved rogue kept his prehistoric mechanics...

[Demeia]

I don't put a lot of stock in the rogue revamp possibilities. For one thing, it's likely they wouldn't attempt this until the next expansion. They would not assume that early warlock converts are going to stay--so how can they be sure it's successful until the end of expansion at the earliest? The fact that GC was talking about not needing 30+ classes in the game is not encouraging for the kind of revamp some rogues would like to see.

I'm fairly sure few people note the "passive damage" issue except for serious rogues. It's probably down mostly to flash and fun for Tziva's "average Joe". It's one of the reasons why the Prep change grates on me: not because PvP rogues didn't need it, I'm sure they did. But because Shadowstep is a relatively flashy ability that it would have been wise to make sure you see rogues perform constantly. Although it would be exploited awfully in battlegrounds, the ability to shadowstep out of LoS and through objects, would have definitely be viewed as stunning. Pity it can't be done. It would certainly have been a "wow" moment to watch the rogue that was on the other side of the wall suddenly be next to you. It certainly should be baseline just for flash.

Our weakness in PvP this expansion was a big factor in the lower rogue numbers--and with monks out there competing with our "groove" I think this is a particularly bad time for rogues.

The Blade Fury nerf is just a "wtf" kind of thing: why on earth are they not solving the problem by giving the other specs cleaves? If it's good for Windwalkers to have cleaves, why not assassination rogues? Hard to see how having one spec with a cleave won't cause the other two specs to switch for a cleave fight. I certainly would. Not that i can get a fist to drop for anything (I'm 0 for about 50). I don't expect them to lose many PvE rogues this patch but I do suspect they will lose some just because this is the kind of thing that really grates. "You're nerfing combat rogues so you can help rogues?" Though of course Blade Fury in its incarnation is absolutely an abomination. Any power that encourages, nay demands, less activity must be despised.

[KCguy]

To me I've always found the class to be incredibly boring. All the spells and all of that good stuff are just so bland and boring. Not one single spell jumps out at me and makes me think, damn, now I have to play one. The simple fact is I just don't enjoy them. Now they have some neat stuff if you're just doing your own thing like stealth, sap and pickpocketing (fun to me). It makes questing so much faster, but the majority of the class to me just makes me want to claw my eyes out. Personally I think they need a complete overhaul just like warlocks got. I don't know why people hate playing them, but those are my reasons.

[Rabian]

I think most of the problem comes with leveling. Lets say you are a brand new WoW player without BoA daggers, etc etc, and you make a rogue. They are the only melee class that can't tank somehow, you walk around seeing other people fighting large groups of mobs but as a rogue you can only fight one or two at a time. Not to mention rogue self heals/survivability while leveling are atrocious compared to every other class. So in my opinion this deters a lot of people from playing rogues at 90, because they never even make it there.

[whathump]

I'm not sure what new players take issue with for rogues. Maybe it's the minimal changes over their lifetime, or that they aren't a very flashy or visually appealing class. Honestly I don't think rogues are meant to or should be flashy, since you're supposed to be a silent assassin. Still, abilities like Cloak of Shadows and Evasion don't look too great. Cloak of Shadows may as well be Purple Skin and Evasion may as well be Half Invisible. Honestly, though, I'd rather have Purple Skin and get a revamp of our rotations.

The main improvement that can be made to rogue gameplay is to vary the rotations a bit, adding a new CP builder that varies by spec (an idea I had for some is Assassination's strike dealing poison damage and increasing the poison damage the target takes for a few seconds; Combat getting one that hits with both weapons and increases melee attack speed or haste for a few seconds and has a CD that can be reset by Sinister Strike; and Subtlety getting one that deals damage, leaves a strong bleed and procs Find Weakness for a couple seconds) and also varying the finishers used by each spec. (Give combat an armor-ignoring finisher but remove rupture, for instance.) I'd like to see rogues move out of passive damage as well, like nerfing poison damage (making assassination's weapon strikes deal part poison damage to compensate for the huge drop in mastery value) and either nerfing or removing slice and dice, while buffing weapon strikes and finishers to compensate.

[JhanZ]

Honestly I don't think rogues are meant to or should be flashy, since you're supposed to be a silent assassin.

It's a fantasy game, who cares about realism. Stealth itself is ridiculous, you are invisible in the open without any sort of foliage nearby. If you wan to explain that then already we are in the realm of little logic and possibly magic. Rogues should be flashy, because that's fun and that's all that matters. Stretching my arm out for a Backstab for 8 years is getting old when that Warrior just shredded the ground in fire as he blitzed you and splattered himself with your guts from the Mortal Strike.

I mean, hell, it's just a Warrior. A dude with no magical abilities and a sword and his armor, and yet he's ripping the ground ablaze and conjuring electrical surges with his Blade Storm and hurling giant lightning hammers and becoming some brown, metallic monstrosity. Come on.

[Deleted]

i think most has been said in this thread now and with most things i can totally agree. have been playing rogue for 6 years now and rerolling really was a hard decision, but playing my dk/warrior (didn't decide which one to play as a main char yet) now is so much more fun... many proccs, great execute, big crits, some flashy stuff, hardly any downtimes, raid utility and a tanking specc (i always loved tanking)... i really hope, that the rogue-revamp will come, at least for 6.0 but until then i won't go back to my little goblin

[cFortyfive]

from what I've seen (with no statistical basis, just my own perception), the warlock revamp was successful. the warlock forums is usually the second most busy class forum on MMOchampion (the monk one is usually the first), and seeing other warlocks on LFR is pretty normal now, while it was very rare on 4.3.

Well not that I totally disagree but you might want to consider also that warlocks are without exaggerating too much really ridiculously good currently. Don't think that I'd be way off claiming that they are among the best damage dealers over all if not the best. Top that off with decent/nice pvp performance and you get a class that people will roll. In comparison to that warlocks in 4.3 were often maybe not even mediocre if the player wasn't at least passable.
Personally I feel that the biggest issue for rogues popularity wise is that they are a pure and a melee. Add to that a couple really clunky mechanics and you simply won't have a huge following unless the class is clearly outperforming others.

[checking facts]

Well not that I totally disagree but you might want to consider also that warlocks are without exaggerating too much really ridiculously good currently. Don't think that I'd be way off claiming that they are among the best damage dealers over all if not the best. Top that off with decent/nice pvp performance and you get a class that people will roll. In comparison to that warlocks in 4.3 were often maybe not even mediocre if the player wasn't at least passable.
Personally I feel that the biggest issue for rogues popularity wise is that they are a pure and a melee. Add to that a couple really clunky mechanics and you simply won't have a huge following unless the class is clearly outperforming others.

the percentage of the game's population who rerolls due to buffs or nerfs is actually quite small. just the semi-hardcore and hardcore raiders and PvPer. the average joe just continues playing his one main and hopes for buffs.

the average joe just plays the class that feels more fun for him, and that feel has to do with a mix of gameplay and aesthetics. rogues are lacking on both sides.

[Nosferato]

well seems that they want to give rogues a raid cd,(yey) 4 years after the others, personally i would have wanted something like the warrior crit banner or the shammys dps raid cd.

[glowpipe]

we are a 1 trick pony that do not excell in our trick.
We got a rather boring inactive playstyle and all other classes can do what we do as well or even better. Pluss most of them can tank/heal.

hybrid taxing added or remove rogues is one of 2 possible outcomes of this

[Lemons]

well seems that they want to give rogues a raid cd,(yey) 4 years after the others, personally i would have wanted something like the warrior crit banner or the shammys dps raid cd.

Yea...well...what can you do. Thematically I think it's hard to explain how exactly a rogue would buff people. Even our Swiftblade's Cunning makes zero sense. The rogue is cunning and thus...everyone attacks faster?

I really like the idea of Smoke Bomb reducing incoming damage however. I'd love to get some more raid utility...especially now that it seems like all the other classes got it coming out their ears after the talent revamp.

More on topic...I'd say the problem isn't just that we do mostly passive damage...rogue has been that way for a while. It's that we do mostly passive damage AND our rotation got so slow in mists. Even combat feels really slow. Our rotation was pretty boring (we don't really get to see huge numbers lighting up the screen all the time like some classes), and mists just made it more boring.

[checking facts]

Yea...well...what can you do. Thematically I think it's hard to explain how exactly a rogue would buff people. Even our Swiftblade's Cunning makes zero sense. The rogue is cunning and thus...everyone attacks faster?

not all buffs are magical. some are just inspirational. like the draenei racial "heroic presence", or warrior shouts and banners, or the "tenacity" buff in wintergrasp. you are doing better because you are better motivated.

[Christan]

There's nothing about Rogues that looks awesome that would make people want to play them if they saw them out in the world.

because you don't "see" the ones that are awesome?
meaning /stealthed lol

i <3 my bank alt rogue, even got him legendaries during ds just to show how easy it was.

i am REALLY looking forward to smoke bomb being a raid cooldown, patch notes looking pretty good

[Demeia]

not all buffs are magical. some are just inspirational. like the draenei racial "heroic presence", or warrior shouts and banners, or the "tenacity" buff in wintergrasp. you are doing better because you are better motivated.

Or the rogue is being enough of a pest that the enemy is slowed down a bit--thus effectively speeding up the enemy. You can always justify things in fantasy. It is after all the product of pure imagination and thus infinitely malleable.

But on track, rogues were once the class to be. I remember wanting to play a rogue in vanilla but believing that I could never, ever find a raid space. I can't help feeling rogues handle adds badly when solo. Of course, with finesse that's not true but how many new rogues have finesse? We certainly look ridiculous compared with hunters--not even a fair comparison really--but also warriors and DKs. They simply can't let us destroy outdoor mobs as fast as we really should and the nerf to blade fury isn't going to help in that department. So I suspect a rogue feels comparatively weak while leveling.

[Delznope]

Rogue is my main, and Pvp is all I do.

Right now there's only two classes I "fear" in pvp. A good / geared arms warrior and a good / geared bm hunter(more specifically his pet). The whole underpowered thing in pvp is invalid. I do very well considering I don't have full malevolent gear. My two spec's are sub and combat. I run around as combat much more than I do as sub for the simple fact that the combo point generator for sub is backstab... and all they've changed to backstab is the energy cost, down to 35 from 45. Sinister trike currently crits 20k or so higher than backstab does. When in sub spec spamming backstab I felt gimp. Although combo points came more quickly it just did not supply the damage that combat even without cd's did.

Killing spree on a single target is going to fuck their day up. If there's two targets, like a hunter and his pet... or two players have blade flurry up and wreck both of their days. Shadow blades and addrenaline rush gives us a huge advantage against plate classes. Warriors, Dk's pallies, are all the easiest they've been to kill in years. Pallies especially. I love being able to gib a malevolent geared pally when they used to rape so hard 2 years ago.

Also there are people in this thread who say rogue has nothing special to offer as far as gameplay. To them I say this. THe ability to pick and choose your fights, to do monstrous damage in a short period of time, and the ability to get the fuck out when things don't go your way. These are pretty nice things to have on the battlefields. ShadowStep, 8 second kidneyshots, smokebombs, blind, sap.. It all sounds pretty sexy to me.

[cFortyfive]

the percentage of the game's population who rerolls due to buffs or nerfs is actually quite small. just the semi-hardcore and hardcore raiders and PvPer. the average joe just continues playing his one main and hopes for buffs.

the average joe just plays the class that feels more fun for him, and that feel has to do with a mix of gameplay and aesthetics. rogues are lacking on both sides.

The "average" joe also equates being easily able to outperform others often with fun though and a lot of people roll their alts because a class is just at the moment performing right especially people who pug a lot as they want something to easily tag along.

[checking facts]

The "average" joe also equates being easily able to outperform others often with fun though and a lot of people roll their alts because a class is just at the moment performing right especially people who pug a lot as they want something to easily tag along.

but the point is: blizz will not overpower rogues on purpose just to boost their popularity. and rogues are not underpowered. they also have a nice, popular theme of "silent assassin/street fighter/ninja/thief/spy" which most people find pretty cool. their abysmal lack of popularity can only have 2 reasons - aesthetics and mechanics.

blizz has to fix rogues, not break them more, to make them popular.

[Verain]

Rogue are underpowered, dramatically so.

After 5.2? I doubt that they will be. However, I could be mistaken- they've reverted several of the rogue buffs (shadow damage on shuriken throw, 50 energy vigor) that were going to allow for threatening burst phases, and the big remaining pvp threat buff, cloak and dagger, may or may not make it live (I would personally prefer the more interesting hit and run). Baseline prep should still pretty much fix the class though- rogues have never been useful without prep, after all.


The interesting thing isn't that warriors are on the top and monks and rogues on the bottom. Every season has variance like that, someone is going to be the worst. The way you know this season is absolute shit (besides just playing it) is to check numbers like:

http://www.worldofwargraphs.com/stat...0-0-0-0-0.html

Now, check out the "class distribution history". Look at the pre-mop data. You see the number one class above 2200 is shaman. You would expect that the top healer would be on top- there's far fewer healing specs, after all. You can see he rolls around 15-17% rep, overrepped a lot. Under him, you see rogues- legendary holders to a man- at around 13-15%. Essentially tied you see priests, and down a bit you see paladins and mages around that 11-12% area. Then you look at the BOTTOM of the chart, and you see warriors, DKs, and hunters fighting for the lowest spot with a miserable 4-6% rep, with all druids a bit above that.

That's all about what we expected during DS- everyone knew resto shaman were too good, sub rogues were too good, all specs of warrior and hunter were too bad, and DKs had little place to live there as well.

Now check out how the patch handled it. The first thing you should notice is that the breadth spanned by the graph is fucking huge compared to before. That means that mop is much much much less balanced than cata. That should not surprise you much either, if you've played at all. Next, notice how the class that needed the most help, warrior, went from a too-low four to five ish percent, up to a ludicrous and UNPRECEDENTED 18-19%- FAR HIGHER than any healer, and way fucking higher than the supposedly horrible legendary rogue patch. Even now, after the nerfs, you still see them cruising at 17%. Meanwhile, rogues, previously the second highest class and overrepped at that supposedly horrible 15 ish percent, fell to around 1%- about three times worse that warriors were in Cata. Even after the 5.1 buffs, you still see rogues at below 4%.

Only monks are doing worse, and no one has played a monk for 8 years and felt forced to switch off.

Warriors now are doing better than Rsham then. Monks and rogues are far worse off than warriors/hunters were then.

The game has become less balanced. If you LIKE the current state, it means exactly one thing- you're playing one of the vastly overrepped classes.