Rogue (any spec) vs. Feral 5.4 PvE

[Attractive]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for opinions on pros and cons of rogue (any spec) compared to feral druid for PvE DPS only!

I guess I'm just looking to see what people think as far as viability goes, looking at the upcoming patch. I don't care that one class is a hybrid, I'm just interested in dpsing on one of the two classes.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[Grubjuice]

all four specs are quite similar at this point, with only subtle differences.

A few points:

*Assassination: good at Multi-dotting and AoE, has a very simple single target rotation, brainless buff maintenance, one proc to watch for. Strong Execute. Easy to play. Energy Regen fairly predictable, procs from DoTs (rupture). (my favorite spec for its simplicty)

*Combat: highly variable damage output due to constantly changing cooldown timers and a variable damage buff, can't do spread multi-dotting like Assass or Sub, works best when it can focus on a single target and focus hard on it and can do pretty good small-radius cleaves, Must maintain both a self buff and target-debuff, can be GCD/energy capped at high haste (but this is being addressed in 5.4) Energy regen is random proc from weapon strikes. (notoriously weak in 5.3)

*Subtlety: good for soloing (high opening burst kills most things in two GCDs), some unpredictability in a group setting due to honor among thieves, and requires attention paid to tracking combo points. requires more attention to maintain DoTs/Buffs than Assassination, requires more positional awareness in order to use Backstab. Bland but effective AoE. Energy regen is predictable procing from your Damage buff (slice and dice). (probably best described as 'the thinking man's Rogue')

*Feral: A lot of self healing (good for soloing) or raid healing (if you raid needs that sort of thing), rotation is similar to Subtlety (maintain at least two bleeds and an damage buff, and use positional spell when behind target) but without the unpredictability of Honor Among Thieves and easier combo-point tracking, Bland but effective AoE. Uses short cooldown damage boosts (Tiger's Fury, Dream of Cenarius perhaps), energy regen from random proc (Clearcasting) or short cooldown (Tiger's Fury) (you may be shocked at how much time you actually spend healing instead of attacking)

[Skarssen]

Rogue: only melee allowed to compete with the Harry Potter sissies. Pretty boring game play with so much passive/auto attack damage, but the way to go if you want to deal competitive damage.

Feral: filthy hybrid that will never be allowed to compete with ranged DPS, but will be competitive with the other hybrid melee. Will be nerfed as soon as a mage complains about being killed by a feral in PVP.

[Koji2k11]

at current state of the game Rogue doesn't have ANY spec rogue has Assassination

[Warstar]

at current state of the game Rogue doesn't have ANY spec rogue has Assassination

The rogue class has 2 pve specs.

Assassination is the best damage over all in any situation and especially in a case there's a lot aoe that's around the 10+ mark assassination just soars above combat.

Combat is semi competative but only with the 4 pc. t15 set up other wise it's pretty bad. Does ok in a cleave situation but currently most bosses will die too fast and reduce the amount of cleave possible leaving it a single target race that assassination will generally pull ahead. Overall combat is inferior in almost every way to assassination right now and is mostly populated by people who don't like mutilate and are trying to claw tooth and nail to an inferior spec that's under performing right now.

Apparently feral is simming higher than assassination but I've never met a strong feral that has beaten me even with better gear so idk about that.

As far as a melee class goes rogues bring the most utility out of any melee. Got a couple of passive buffs that we bring. Tricks of the trade is amazing (we have a semi-retarded fury warrior in our raid who doesn't understand why I can pull 2x his dps on a trash pull yet he pulls aggro and dies and I live...) for both a misdirect as well as a dps increasing CD. Rogues have smoke bomb that works both as a nice little raid wall for a 20% reduced damage and also a couple gimmicks out there. They also have things like cloak of shadows that allows rogues to somewhat bypass a lot of magic damage mechanics and completely ignore certain mechanics that other classes have to deal with. They also have cheat death that allows them to survive an instant kill ability. Probably the most useful aspect of rogues is feint which allows a rogue to take less damage than any other class out there.

For a strictly melee dps class personally I think that rogues provide more to a raid than anything else: crazy dps, strong utility, and strongest pve defensive capabilities in the game.

From a raid perspective having a druid be able to multi spec to tank as well as a healer makes druids more desirable in that aspect but if you're never going to do anything like that personally I'd rather play a rogue than a druid.

Druids in pve definitely are dominating right now though and I think they're the strongest pvp melee class right now but I could be wrong about that just going by thing's I've heard. And, on the flip side rogues are possibly the worst pvp class in the game atm.

[Verain]

If you only care about melee dps, I would suggest the rogue. The druid class is much more capable than the rogue class, but your requirements are comparing one 1/4 the druid class to all three rogue specs.

I'm just interested in dpsing on one of the two classes.

Interested in dpsing, or interested in raiding?

Note that druids offer utility that rogues do not. A heavy raid damage phase can be attacked with one of two healing cooldowns, one of which turns you into a healer, one of which forks your damage as heals, and of course you bring tranquility and a battle res, in addition to temporary tanking abilities. Becoming a healer when the raid needs you, resurrecting someone while only interrupting your damage for a couple seconds, these are things that ferals bring very well.

Meanwhile, the rogue offers a pretty powerful 20% damage reduction for people stacked (usually melee and tank, but if everyone stacks it works for that), as well as being able to ignore several raid mechanics, at worst giving the healers an easier time or keeping pressure up through damage and at best allowing a raid mechanic to be immuned or deleted. Feint is amazing fun and the rogue demonstrates mastery of his environment and agility by using it correctly, and watching cloak of shadows immune an effect truly never gets old.


If you want to raid, choose wisely- both offer much. If you just want to do damage, the rogue will make a bigger bar in recount, as this is stated dev intent since vanilla. Plus gold is the class color. Of course it's on top!

[Attractive]

Thanks for all the replies everyone. Based on response, I'm thinking rogue. Even though this is in the rogue forum, hah.

I enjoy mutilate more than the other two specs because it feels like it has the most flavor (and is easy, heh)!

Thanks again for the help