Rogues don't need a tank spec, they need a ranged one

[Chickat]

if 4 specs were happening, they should imo change either combat or assassination to a tanking spec, and add a ranged spec. 2 mdps specs 1 tank and 1 ranged dps

[achromatickang]

Tanking as a Rogue in Rift is actually fun. It has the most unique tanking style in the game, in that it is an avoidance tank. So you stack endurance/stamina to get a super high health pool because when you DO get hit it hits for a lot.

[D3athsting]

What would be the difference between rogues with bows/guns and hunters?

The same difference that exists between mage and warlock or between feral druid(cat) and rogue

[Lynneiah]

There are many ways for a ranged spec to be sufficiently 'rogue-y' to differentiate from hunters.

-Sniper: a stealthy assassin who uses ranged weapons with great precision to take out enemies from a distance, before they know they're there. Snipers have traditionally been associated with stealth and taking enemies by surprise, which is a large part of what makes rogues rogues. There's also already a sniper rogue character in-game in the form of Amber Kearnen.

-Knife tossing ninjas: A very common trope in modern pop culture. Ninjas popping up out of nowhere, tossing knives or shurikens at *everyone*, then disappearing again before anyone is done falling down.

-Gun-toting pirates. Because yarrrr.


And those are just the obvious examples I could come up with off the top of my head. Claiming that ranged rogues wouldn't work because they're not rogue-y enough shows, in my opinion, a distinct lack of imagination.

[Deleted]

As mentioned earlier, I'm not necessarily against the concept - I just feel we need to dig deeper into the how's and why's before we can make up our minds. So let me address some of the fundamental challenges:

Resource system: As far as flavour/uniqueness is concerned, this would probably be the biggest opportunity to make ranged rogues stand out. If we maintain the notion of an energy system spent on combo points building towards big finishers, how could that play out for a ranged? Maybe someone could come up with a couple of abilities to demonstrate the flavour?

Magical vs. physical: Currently, assassination is mostly magical, sublety is both, and combat is mostly physical. Where on that scale should a ranged rogue land, and why?

Ranged vs. melee: We're discussing this as a straight up ranged DPS class, but one of the things I think made monks exciting is how the game play challenged some of the concepts we have taken for granted: healers can also be melee based; damage can not only me avoided or mitigated, but also staggered, etc. What if our new rogue was a melee/ranged hybrid? Like mistweavers they could be operational as ranged, but with obvious synergies in melee range - e.g. some of their finishers only worked at melee?

Gameplay: the sniper archetype Lynneiah proposed would lend itself to a single target master. Personally, I'd be more in favour of a knife tossing ninja - some kind of a multi-dotting Assassin's Creed character; a squishy battlefield tactician whose objective is to find weaknesses and control the fight by incapacitating enemies from range and staying out of harm's way.

[achromatickang]

What would be the difference between rogues with bows/guns and hunters?

There actually is a pretty big difference in other MMOs that I have played. EverQuest and Rift have archer classes who don't use pets, and archer classes who do use pets. Both are about equally affective, but offer a little more variety. Whether it's Rogues that get the ability to use ranged weapons, or another class, I do think it would be nice to have more than one class in the entire game who uses ranged weapons.

[Lynneiah]

I've been thinking a bit on how a sniper spec might work. This is a basic idea of the abilities and mechanics behind the class. The spec could play around with current energy levels, forcing you to wait a while between each shot for your energy to recharge for higher damage per shot, or allows you to spam weaker shots quickly to generate combo points.
Names are debatable.

Ambush: Cost: 60 Energy. Deals a large amount of damage. Generates two combo points. Requires ranged weapon. (same as regular Ambush, only adapted to be used at range instead of behind your target)

Snipe: Cost: All Energy. Deals X+(Y times your current energy) in damage. Generates 1 combo point.

Headshot: Cost: 35 Energy, all combo points. Deals damage based on the amount of combo points spend. If the attack crits, the target bleeds for X damage per combo point per second for ten seconds.

Warning shot: Cost: All combo points. Increases energy generation by X% for (Y times combo points) seconds. Deals no damage (but if the target is wearing a hat, it disappears for five seconds (but doesn't reduce stats))

Vantage Point: Passive ability. Every time your attacks crit, you gain a charge of Vantage Point (up to five). Vantage Point increases base damage by X per charge. Every time you move X yards, you lose a charge of Vantage Point, but every charge lost this way gives you 20 energy.

[shadowboy]

Tanking as a Rogue in Rift is actually fun. It has the most unique tanking style in the game, in that it is an avoidance tank. So you stack endurance/stamina to get a super high health pool because when you DO get hit it hits for a lot.

Avoidance tanking is bad for the game. There's a reason why they axed that concept at the start of cataclysm. It's also why guardian druids are fairly weak tanks at the moment (the MoP version of savage defense is the worst active mitigation ability in game, imo)

[achromatickang]

Avoidance tanking is bad for the game. There's a reason why they axed that concept at the start of cataclysm. It's also why guardian druids are fairly weak tanks at the moment (the MoP version of savage defense is the worst active mitigation ability in game, imo)

Oh it worked really well in Rift, but I did hear some healers complain about my HP moving too spiky. IE. Dodge, dodge, dodge -- basically take no damage, then bam, get hit twice and almost be dead. lol.

[shadowboy]

Oh it worked really well in Rift, but I did hear some healers complain about my HP moving too spiky. IE. Dodge, dodge, dodge -- basically take no damage, then bam, get hit twice and almost be dead. lol.

That's precisely why it's bad.

When we started this tier we had a brewmaster and a druid tanking. We were having trouble with progression (mostly from tank death due to spike damage). Both tanks switched to a more robust tank (pally / dk) and our progression lept forward from that point. The only point where having an avoidance tank really helped us was when our druid was tanking frost king on council--he could actually have the stun charges drop due to his high dodge chance.

[Nouk]

As mentioned earlier, I'm not necessarily against the concept - I just feel we need to dig deeper into the how's and why's before we can make up our minds. So let me address some of the fundamental challenges:

Resource system: As far as flavour/uniqueness is concerned, this would probably be the biggest opportunity to make ranged rogues stand out. If we maintain the notion of an energy system spent on combo points building towards big finishers, how could that play out for a ranged? Maybe someone could come up with a couple of abilities to demonstrate the flavour?

Magical vs. physical: Currently, assassination is mostly magical, sublety is both, and combat is mostly physical. Where on that scale should a ranged rogue land, and why?

Ranged vs. melee: We're discussing this as a straight up ranged DPS class, but one of the things I think made monks exciting is how the game play challenged some of the concepts we have taken for granted: healers can also be melee based; damage can not only me avoided or mitigated, but also staggered, etc. What if our new rogue was a melee/ranged hybrid? Like mistweavers they could be operational as ranged, but with obvious synergies in melee range - e.g. some of their finishers only worked at melee?

Gameplay: the sniper archetype Lynneiah proposed would lend itself to a single target master. Personally, I'd be more in favour of a knife tossing ninja - some kind of a multi-dotting Assassin's Creed character; a squishy battlefield tactician whose objective is to find weaknesses and control the fight by incapacitating enemies from range and staying out of harm's way.

I feel the Sniper Archetype should be in Favour of Marksman-Hunters really. Hunters struggle with Spec identity just as much as we do.

Resource-System: I find Shuriken Toss and Deadly Throw actually showed that it would be fully functional in a ranged Scenario. Energy+CP is exactly needed to give the Spec the Ramp-Up it would need to not be a balancing nightmare (like MM-Hunters). Layer a second Buff-System on it (like Bandits Guile) for safety measure. Big hitters should be a no-go, our Base Kit is to potent in all other areas to have ranged viability AND Burst, staggered with our Control/Mobility/Disengage in PvP. Finisher's could need a damaging and empowering component (example: Envenom) to have those Knobs to tune it properly.

Magical vs. physical: The game needs more physical ranged, so there's that. I like the idea of some magic potential during CD's/buffed Phases (Shadow Blades, or the needed new Finisher.)

Ranged vs. melee: I think its needed to balance out our Kit and PvP. Burst and CC should still require Melee-Range to an extend. Does anyone remember the Vendetta from MoP-Beta? It gave you a new Skill for the duration, "Vengeful Strike" if i recall correctly, which was kinda like Enhancers Ascendence today. A DPS CD with ranged Capability. But i would find the other way around totally acceptable, especially to balance a ranged Spec vs our Melee Specs. Another Problem would be Talents and Skills in General, we would need different Effects based on Spec as most Hybrids do.


I think Bllizzard and the Rogue Community are far to conservative for these kind of Ventures sadly. Look at some of the responses in this Thread and how enraged People are just by the concept of a ranged Rogue.

[Battlebeard]

The best thing about rogue is that is the only pure melee dps class. You have lots of other ranged classes if you want that.

Try Hunter...

[Verain]

The best thing about rogue is that is the only pure melee dps class.

What is best about that, to you?

[Cantheal]

Wrong...


My mage needs a melee spec it is unfair that I am forced to do damage from afar!! LOL

[Lagi]

What is best about that, to you?

The best of being the only pure melee dps is that is unique from any other classes. Its is so unique, that instead of trying and making this class common like any other classes with other resources of damage and or making it a tanking one, we should instead try and make this class even more damage, movement and survival satisfying.

[D3athsting]

What is best about that, to you?

Nothing, absolutely, back in vanilla ranged classes suffered alot on heavy movement fights and hybrids did subpar dmg, nowadays hybrids are tied to pures in terms of dps and ranged have great tools to help their mobility, so i see no reason to be a melee anymore, deal with it.

[Statix]

I was thinking a ranged spec using bows/guns/crossbows? Many mmos let rogue/assassin classes use ranged weapons, why are we the only class with 3 dps melee specs (that 2 and half tbh, i don't consider sub a playable spec) that have the same outdated skills and the same outdated resource system and almost the same rotation? With a ranged spec we would remain a pure dps class but with the ability to be ranged dps if needed.
So why doesn't blizz do this?
I think i know the answer(an all of you know that too): the common sense among pve'ers is that a ranged class is for 90% of encounters preferable over a melee so all rogues would go ranged letting other 2 specs to rust...

They don't need a tank spec, nor do they need a ranged spec. What they need is for the current specs to become interesting and fun again. Assassination needs to work with other weapons than Daggers, because it's a pain in the ass when they don't drop. Rogue AoE is total crap when your average itemlevel is low. Spending Combo Points on Rupture and Slice and Dice feels wrong.

[slime]

I was thinking a ranged spec using bows/guns/crossbows? Many mmos let rogue/assassin classes use ranged weapons, why are we the only class with 3 dps melee specs (that 2 and half tbh, i don't consider sub a playable spec) that have the same outdated skills and the same outdated resource system and almost the same rotation? With a ranged spec we would remain a pure dps class but with the ability to be ranged dps if needed.
So why doesn't blizz do this?
I think i know the answer(an all of you know that too): the common sense among pve'ers is that a ranged class is for 90% of encounters preferable over a melee so all rogues would go ranged letting other 2 specs to rust...

Sir keep your genius to yourself. This is an obvious change rogues need - but all of the ranged class cry babies will be out in force screaming from the mountains if this perceived travisty ever came about. Look what happened when they gave us ONE, FUCKING ONE okay ranged ability. It wasn't even a few hours before this site had 15 threads about NERF SHURIKEN TOSS NOW! ROGUES CAN'T BE RANGED FUCK THAT! All the mages, huntards, and whatever other crutch classes need good old rogues to kite around... where else will they get their kills.

Drop class-calling and class-attacks. Thanks. -Mugajak

[Rupenbritz]

make Assassination ranged if any of the 3. Combat is more "tanky" and Here I am type of fighter, whilst Subtlety is sneaky sneaky backstab. Assassination could definatly stand with a rifle far away and shoot it. (Just from the top of my head )

[Deleted]

I don't want a ranged spec , but I think it would be awesome to have a 2 handed weapon spec instead, just like a few other people have said the reason I rolled rogue was precisely the fact we are pure melee dps class.