If you were to remove ability bloat, what would you get rid of?

[Deleted]

For a start:

Active abilities I'd Get rid of/Redesign :

- Preparation, and build charges into all defensive rogue abilities. Straight away that free's up one slot.

- Redirect. It's not fun, it's just annoying and bloates. Put the bloody combo points on the rogue and be done with it.

- Recuperation and make it passive. All rogues would gain "some" health every 3 seconds, all the time, just because they're leather wearers.

- Faint because it's lost it's original purpose now, which was to manage threat but the game has changed since then. To compensate, I'd do something with evasion.

- Premeditation. It is fun, it's sort of useful too, but you just macro it to your stealth abilities and forget about it, sorry but times have changed since vanilla. It would be better to redesign or some kind of passive bonus for a sub rogue being in stealth, perhaps reducing cooldown regeneration whilst stealthed.

- Combat Readiness. It never really worked as an ability and no one would miss it at end game, that's why it's a talent at the moment but it should either be removed or get some kind of redesign treatment.


And now there are abilities I'd change:

- Slice and Dice. It's a huge passive damage increase but it stops our active ability damage from being made higher. I'd change slice and dice into a 20 second short cooldown, shared with Kidney shot. I'd reduce the duration but increase the power of the ability.

- Kidneyshot. So many classes get their stuns for free now, it's seems pointless the rogues are not treated in the same way. I'd remove the energy and combo point cost and share a cooldown with slice and dice.

Things to consider for changing:

- Merging fan of knives with shuriken toss and crimson blades with deadly throw.

Basically if you cast fan of knives when the target is not in range, it shuriken tosses, but you could probably do the same thing with a macro anyway to free up space, and sometimes you might not want do that so it's better to just choose your ability.

Other stuff that could be considered bloating
- Disarm
- Gouge
- Shiv
- Smoke bomb
- Expose armour
- Blind / distract (maybe distract could blind a target?)

Something should also be done about sprint and burst of speed too. Now that we have got burst of speed, I don't think it would be very breaking if sprint just had a short cooldown of say 15 seconds.

[Shanur]

In my perfect world, rogues would have 1CP builder, 2 finishers, 1-2 mobility(Sprint shadowstep), 2-3 Utility(Slice, kidney, vanish), 1-2 disruptions(blind/kick). 2 Defensives(cloak/evasion). Stealth should just be toggled passive when out of combat stealth, in combat 4 second fade time. Bring back talent trees roll existing effects like smoke bomb and marked for death into spec specific finishers, maybe even make smoke bomb part of shadowstep(on next hit effect or somthing).

[Deleted]

I'd look at removing Slice and Dice from Assassination and Sublety, think about baking Combat Readiness and Evasion into one (they kind of do the same thing), and look at the awkward interaction between Burst of Speed and Sprint (every minute you get a free BoS - shouldn't require a spell slot). Also, I'd look at having talent choices use the same spell slot. Having to drag BoS down to replace the ShS slot seems fairly redundant.

Don't see the need to reinvent the wheel though.

[Verain]

Rogue do not have button bloat


Also note THIS thread:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Rogue-Edition


"Preparation, and build charges into all defensive rogue abilities. Straight away that free's up one slot."

Prep rewards skillful play and is great. More importantly, putting it into charges is something you would do for balance reasons, not because you can't be arsed to have prep keybound.

"Redirect. It's not fun, it's just annoying and bloates. Put the bloody combo points on the rogue and be done with it."

Again, this is a pretty big topic, such as:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-on-the-player
Redirect is cool and powerful as long as combo points are on the target. I think we should push to get one spec with combo points on the rogue, and obviously that spec wouldn't need redirect. But the point is this isn't "bloat" either- this is a button we have to manage a resource. You are saying, change the resource. That's fine, but it's not related to "button bloat", which, I will reiterate, isn't a thing.


"Recuperation and make it passive. All rogues would gain "some" health every 3 seconds, all the time, just because they're leather wearers."

Because leather is just that sexy?
Recuperate probably doesn't need to be a finisher. It's a finisher with a built in timer, which means it could probably be something else. But, keeping a long duration buff active with combo points is a perfectly fine thing to do as a rogue. I will grant that, given how shit recuperate is, this one thing could maybe be a point.

" Faint because it's lost it's original purpose now, which was to manage threat but the game has changed since then. To compensate, I'd do something with evasion."

FEINT lost its threat feature in MoP along with its cooldown. Feint's thing since Cata has been to reduce AoE damage taken. Elusiveness extends this to all damage. Feint is one of our best buttons- a way to trade a small amount of damage for a LARGE amount of mitigation. This idea is absolutely preposterous and makes me wonder if you even raid at all, in any fashion. Not that I don't use feint a lot in PvP- having it up just as deep goes out goes a long friggin way towards winning. This move relies on timing, punishes bad play, rewards high skill, makes rogues tough and awesome, and is one of the best thing we have going.


"Premeditation. It is fun, it's sort of useful too, but you just macro it to your stealth abilities and forget about it"

I don't just macro it to stealth abilities (I do macro it to shadowmeld abilities). In fact, I normally find myself pressing it during one of the intermediate sections of shadow dance, both in pve and pvp, not the very first one, such that its use doesn't destroy combo points. ADDITIONALLY, this move is on your stealth bar, and is only present in one spec. It is hardly "bloat".

"Combat Readiness. It never really worked as an ability and no one would miss it at end game, that's why it's a talent at the moment but it should either be removed or get some kind of redesign treatment."

It worked great as an ability. Right now, it is a solid defense in PvP and solo PvE, though I greatly dislike it compared to other options on that tier. It hardly qualifies as "bloat", given that you can talent it to be a passive right now.



"Merging fan of knives with shuriken toss and crimson blades with deadly throw."

What is this I don't even? You want our point blank aoe moves to somehow also be single target long range moves?

Other stuff that could be considered bloating
- Disarm
- Gouge
- Shiv
- Smoke bomb
- Expose armour
- Blind / distract (maybe distract could blind a target?)

Dismantle is not bloat, it's a powerful CC and a clutch peel. I could make the case that disarm ITSELF is CC-bloat on the whole game, and to remove it from all classes, and if you were making that point, well, whatever.
Gouge is certainly not bloat, it's a powerful CC with situational use.
Shiv is super clutch, serving as a root, a super snare, a de-enrage (it should be buffed to dispel ALL enrages), and a unique casting debuff, depending on your poison. Shiv is great, and is by no means any form of bloat. Why would unique utility be considered bloat in your book?
Smoke Bomb is a class defining ability. Seeing this on this list makes me actually angry, I can actually feel my blood pressure rise.
Expose Armor isn't bloat as long as this armor debuff is in the game. In fact, we finally have this in a good place. It's also a cheap combo point if you don't care about the damage. If the armor debuff goes away, then obviously this will too.
Blind is not bloat. Blind is powerful CC on a long cooldown, and often gets healer trinkets. What fucking rogue thinks we should lose blind because it fills up our barsywarsy?
Distract is again, a stealth button, and is fun. If you don't like it or don't use it, don't map it. I do.


"Something should also be done about sprint and burst of speed too. Now that we have got burst of speed, I don't think it would be very breaking if sprint just had a short cooldown of say 15 seconds. "


Burst of Speed costs energy, and is a talent. Sprint doesn't need a huge buff because burst of speed exists.

In my perfect world, rogues would have 1CP builder, 2 finishers, 1-2 mobility(Sprint shadowstep), 2-3 Utility(Slice, kidney, vanish), 1-2 disruptions(blind/kick). 2 Defensives(cloak/evasion). Stealth should just be toggled passive when out of combat stealth, in combat 4 second fade time. Bring back talent trees roll existing effects like smoke bomb and marked for death into spec specific finishers, maybe even make smoke bomb part of shadowstep(on next hit effect or somthing).

I really don't understand how this would make the class better in any way. One builder is design regression. Slice and Dice is not "utility", it is raw damage (and is one of the most damaging moves in the game!). Vanish is a defensive more than a "utility". Smoke Bomb should not be on finishers, this move is way too huge to be anything but a large cooldown. If a LoS/defensive thing happened every time you shadowstepped... what?

Your vision of the rogue class seems off. I don't like it.

I'd look at removing Slice and Dice from Assassination and Sublety, think about baking Combat Readiness and Evasion into one (they kind of do the same thing)

I actually really like Slice and Dice in subtlety- it gets boosted by the mastery. If only one spec were to keep it, sub would be my pick. I definitely agree it feels stupid as Mutilate though- we barely use it there, it could and probably should be passive or removed. Your CR/Evasion point is the one I disagree with the most- in general, you will NOT use these two moves at the same time. Having two lesser moves that CAN be combined is way better than having one greater move (especially if the move says "you can't be hit" and "when you are hit, you take less damage on subsequent hits"). I don't use CR much this expac, but when I do it is because I'm the most vulnerable guy on the team and I need another cooldown to make players have to switch off of me. Making evasion better wouldn't accomplish this goal.


I think Deadly Throw should be baseline again. I think we should have a caster-specific defense on the same tier as the physical-specific defensive combat readiness.

awkward interaction between Burst of Speed and Sprint (every minute you get a free BoS - shouldn't require a spell slot)

Sprint lasts longer, lets me walk on water, and doesn't break snares. Burst of Speed is a talent, so I don't always have it (J/K, I DO always have it, but there are other rogues besides me), it lasts a short duration, costs energy, and breaks snares.

I really don't see these two as being the same thing. Sprint is battlefield position, Burst is a dps loss but also a snare break.

"Also, I'd look at having talent choices use the same spell slot. Having to drag BoS down to replace the ShS slot seems fairly redundant."

I have this already and have for months. I think it's
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...entMacros.html

Which lets me create 6 macros in my general tab, and then ALL CLASSES use them. If I change burst of speed to shadowstep, my gap closer button (semicolon, which is Z on a shitty QWERTY keyboard) seamlessly updates itself to that instantly. Other classes benefit more, such as my druid, as druid talents are all free clickybuttons and shit.

But, I'd be down to make this bake in baseline. I would argue that the way it currently works makes NO sense, and that the macro/addon method you should be doing right this second is the only sane way. What benefit do you have to have a version of shadowstep that looks like it might work but actually doesn't until you diddle around in menus? That's just a good way to get yourself killed accidentally!

[Deleted]

From an Assassination point of View, Shadow Blades is the bloatiest ability we have, for the first burst we use it in conjunction with Vendetta. Skill-wise we can wait to use Shadow Blades during a Vendetta (e.g. last 12 seconds on Rentaki's). In long fights we can use Shadow Blades on cooldown and use it on the 3rd Vendetta, but on the average fight it's usually better to just use them together again. I'd rather they baked it into Vendetta, e.g.:

Vendetta
Marks an enemy for death, increasing all damage you deal to the target by 30% and grants unerring vision of your target. Your auto-attacks against the target deal pure Shadow damage and your combo-point-generating abilties to generate an additional combo point when used. Lasts 20 sec.

I'm not a fan, and rarely play combat, but i believe you use Shadow Blades and Adrenaline Rush together all the time. Why not bake them together?

Edit: And actually, if i was to remove an ability, not based on its usefulness or effect, but rather how well it thematically suits the Rogue toolkit, i'd still say Shadowblades should go. Out of every other ability we have, it feels the least rogueish. Maybe that's just me though.

[ymirsson]

I'd remove Detect Traps

[Deleted]

I'd remove Detect Traps

Why would you remove something that doesn't bloat? Are you a hunter in disguise?

[ymirsson]

sorry, this:

[kindar]

... I'm pretty sure OP listed like every rogue ability as bloat, lol.

Rogues don't have ability bloat. Of all classes I'd wager that we have among the least. I've got every ability binded, and there's really not that much. I just leveled a hunter to 90, and I'm blown away at how many buttons they have. I still hate them, but they get a little respect now. Still, there's a few abilities rogues could do without. My list:

1. Shadow walk. I get the concept, I get the applications, but really? You can't even really tell if it's working 90% of the time.

2. Distract. This is a neat ability, one I used to overuse a lot actually, but how often do you honestly use it? On top of that, of those times you've used it, how many times has it given you an advantage over your opponent? Abilities like this are the definition of bloat.

3. Pick Lock. This one kinda hurts to put on the list, it gives our class flavor after all, but I think it's a relic of a game that WoW isn't anymore. I don't personally agree with it, but you can tell the game has been moving away from needing specific classes for a while now. I'm betting pick lock gets changed in one form or another relatively soon.

4. Shadow blades. This is coming more from a combat perspective, but wow. "Hey rogues, new DPS cooldown for you guys! Enjoy!" "Sweet, how do you use it?" "Oh, just macro it into AR and do more damage. If you use it any other way, you're retarded. Cool right?" Really? The ability is worthless, they should have just baked the shadow damage+extra combo points into every rogue specs "big" CD.

5. Preparation. It seems like the rest of the game is moving towards a "charge" system, no reason this shouldn't either.

To me, everything else fits in our toolkit nicely. We get a little bit of everything, and a couple really unique abilities (such as smoke bomb). Between PVE/PVP, I think every other ability we have gets it's fair share of use. The only one I'm iffy about is Premed - I like it and use it a lot, but it's kinda clunky imo.

[Hand Banana]

More ability bloat topics...

I swear people don't know what it even means; it means there are too many abilities you MUST use in your rotation or to maximize efficiency in pvp or pve. Rogues have one of the least bloats in the game and people are constantly complaining that they need a more complex rotation so they need MORE ability bloat. Stuff like distract or pickpocket are not considered in ability bloat because in no scenario are they required to use; you could not even know they exist and do nothing different in pvp or pve for the most part.

Verain's description is spot on.

[Deleted]

Pick Lock would be more useful if there were still world chests around, which there aren't (and even though there are some coming in TI, they're not locked). Hopefully in the future dungeons of the next expansions, we might see some random chest spawns. But on that, Lockboxes are a fun way to have loot, so i don't think Pick Lock should go. Lock picking is definitely iconic for rogues, removing it would hurt more than help i think.

Distract is highly useful in Challenge Modes, especially if you're using Shroud to walk past groups/patrols which are facing towards your stealthed group. In PvP it can be a way to slow the enemy down or bring them in range for a sap. It has no uses in Raid PvE. But, generally, Distract is just a way of making stealth easier (but then we have Shadow Walk - should we remove that instead?)

Agree with Shadow Blades, as with my earlier post.

[Ritterdestod]

Merge slice and dice with recuperation and call it something like "Adrenaline Rush"

[Verain]

... I'm pretty sure OP listed like every rogue ability as bloat, lol.

Rogues don't have ability bloat. Of all classes I'd wager that we have among the least. I've got every ability binded, and there's really not that much. I just leveled a hunter to 90, and I'm blown away at how many buttons they have. I still hate them, but they get a little respect now.

I don't go into hunter forums and tell them they have no bloat. But I do shit on everyone who walks in here selling this line!

Still, there's a few abilities rogues could do without. My list:

1. Shadow walk. I get the concept, I get the applications, but really? You can't even really tell if it's working 90% of the time.

I use this in every arena almost, and it always works! It's useful anytime you think a stealther is around too.

2. Distract. This is a neat ability, one I used to overuse a lot actually, but how often do you honestly use it?

A lot! In every BG, and sometimes in arenas. It's cool and not super powerful, but I like being able to split up enemies, turn around a runner to sap him, etc. I think rogues who don't use this ability shouldn't be trying to take it away from me because they are lazy or something!

On top of that, of those times you've used it, how many times has it given you an advantage over your opponent? Abilities like this are the definition of bloat.

I just disagree completely. This is a fun ability that is situational and that is stealth only.

3. Pick Lock. This one kinda hurts to put on the list, it gives our class flavor after all, but I think it's a relic of a game that WoW isn't anymore. I don't personally agree with it, but you can tell the game has been moving away from needing specific classes for a while now. I'm betting pick lock gets changed in one form or another relatively soon.

I just don't see why. I mean, they could bake it into the click, but who cares about pick lock? Do you have it keybound?

4. Shadow blades. This is coming more from a combat perspective, but wow. "Hey rogues, new DPS cooldown for you guys! Enjoy!" "Sweet, how do you use it?" "Oh, just macro it into AR and do more damage. If you use it any other way, you're retarded. Cool right?" Really? The ability is worthless, they should have just baked the shadow damage+extra combo points into every rogue specs "big" CD.

Ah, and here's where you are objectively wrong.

First, you don't macro it in with AR with the two spec that don't have AR. Second, you can (and often should) use it separately in PvP- you will often unlink them to gain more pressure phases that could get a kill, or even just to have it up while you spree. It ignores armor, which is a pretty great trick for combat. Meanwhile, sub wants to use it with dance sometimes, but not always. Shadow Blades is amazing because it is flavorful (your weapons become shadow energy) and powerful (that ignores armor and you make a bunch of combo points).

Blades is my favorite part about the expac. It changes play, and should not just be turned into mush because one single spec in pve only macros it with another cooldown.

5. Preparation. It seems like the rest of the game is moving towards a "charge" system, no reason this shouldn't either.

Well, it's a big buff to rogues to do it that way. Specifically, the rogues that aren't that great. Prep as it is feel really powerful and cool. It isn't bloat. You are asking for a buff or redesign, pretty much. I very much like Prep the way it is.

The only one I'm iffy about is Premed - I like it and use it a lot, but it's kinda clunky imo.

While premed isn't bloat, it is kind of archaic. Combo points aren't what they used to be. Premed is also one button during stealth or dance only for one spec.

[Kael]

Verain's breakdown is really spot-on. We do have a couple of abilities that don't currently have a good place (in PvE at least - how many raid encounters do you sap/distract/disarm/gouge/blind/shadowwalk/picklock/disarmtraps for?) but that's really not button bloat either. These abilities (mostly!) have their place, and they don't step on each others toes - it's not like I have 3 of them, and I use 1 because the one I want most is on CD, and the third one is never used. Crimson Tempest is almost like bloat for combat and 99% assassination. The answer here, though, isn't to destroy it, but to make the ability worth using consistently in AoE situations.

Our toolkit for raid content fits REALLY easily on the bars compared to several other class/specs in the game, even including all of our "sometimes" buttons like shiv and recuperate. If your MAIN action bar is down to 4-5 buttons and you have, say, 12 others you're likely to hit sometime in 15 minutes of combat, that's pretty balanced. A worse example would be using 12 buttons for your MAIN action bar and another 25 for occasional-use buttons in-combat over 15 minutes - you basically need to bind all over your keyboard/mouse or make macros economically to save space, and end up complicating the game not because you can't figure out what ability you want to use, but where you bound that ability.

IMO bloat refers to the second issue - if, after ~15 hours of play, you can't instantly tell me where every single one of your combat buttons is, either you don't play very seriously at all, or you've got too many buttons.

[Deleted]

... I'm pretty sure OP listed like every rogue ability as bloat, lol.

Rogues don't have ability bloat. Of all classes I'd wager that we have among the least. I've got every ability binded, and there's really not that much. I just leveled a hunter to 90, and I'm blown away at how many buttons they have. I still hate them, but they get a little respect now. Still, there's a few abilities rogues could do without. My list:

1. Shadow walk. I get the concept, I get the applications, but really? You can't even really tell if it's working 90% of the time.

2. Distract. This is a neat ability, one I used to overuse a lot actually, but how often do you honestly use it? On top of that, of those times you've used it, how many times has it given you an advantage over your opponent? Abilities like this are the definition of bloat.

3. Pick Lock. This one kinda hurts to put on the list, it gives our class flavor after all, but I think it's a relic of a game that WoW isn't anymore. I don't personally agree with it, but you can tell the game has been moving away from needing specific classes for a while now. I'm betting pick lock gets changed in one form or another relatively soon.

4. Shadow blades. This is coming more from a combat perspective, but wow. "Hey rogues, new DPS cooldown for you guys! Enjoy!" "Sweet, how do you use it?" "Oh, just macro it into AR and do more damage. If you use it any other way, you're retarded. Cool right?" Really? The ability is worthless, they should have just baked the shadow damage+extra combo points into every rogue specs "big" CD.

5. Preparation. It seems like the rest of the game is moving towards a "charge" system, no reason this shouldn't either.

To me, everything else fits in our toolkit nicely. We get a little bit of everything, and a couple really unique abilities (such as smoke bomb). Between PVE/PVP, I think every other ability we have gets it's fair share of use. The only one I'm iffy about is Premed - I like it and use it a lot, but it's kinda clunky imo.

Hang on, I didn't list everything as bloat. I actually use distract very often, it's useful in solo pve to get past a mob uninterrupted, it's useful in group pve to stop an unaggroed mob walking towards your group. In pvp you probably won't use it much in arena, although it can occasionally be useful for pets, and it forces a player on the receiving end to correct their positioning and sometime's this can be enough to put you in range of sapping them.

So actually I don't consider distract to be bloat. What I was suggesting but perhaps didn't make clear are way for abilities to be merged. Say for example, when you distract an opponent, it also blinds them.



Also, I wasn't necessarily considering damage. A lot of people are just saying "don't get rid of slice and dice because it does a lot of damage!". Well, yes it does a lot of damage, but by having more passive damage we have to do less active damage.


I also very much liked that idea of stealth being an out of combat passive, especially as there's no movement speed penalty for being in stealth any more.

I also like the concept of shadow walk, but I never actually get the chance to use it.

I don't see any reason to get rid of pick lock or disarm trap, considering you don't actually need to have them on your toolbar to use them.

Shadowblades it just a "more damage" button. So is slice and dice, so is vendetta. I don't think any of that can really be changed.

Vendetta is still boring, but so was hunger for blood. For those who don't know or remember, it was the 51 point talent introduced in wotlk and taken away in cataclysm, it ended up as a flat damage increase cooldown lasting 60 seconds, with no cooldown, the only requirement was that the target was bleeding. When damage sucked they buffed the talent, it varied between 5%-18% damage bonus throughout patches so we never really got an interesting final talent for assassination but that doesn't matter any more.

[Verain]

Hang on, I didn't list everything as bloat. I actually use distract very often, it's useful in solo pve to get past a mob uninterrupted, it's useful in group pve to stop an unaggroed mob walking towards your group. In pvp you probably won't use it much in arena, although it can occasionally be useful for pets, and it forces a player on the receiving end to correct their positioning and sometime's this can be enough to put you in range of sapping them.

So actually I don't consider distract to be bloat. What I was suggesting but perhaps didn't make clear are way for abilities to be merged. Say for example, when you distract an opponent, it also blinds them.

Well, the reason that I pounce on stuff like this is that these two moves are orthogonal. Distract is throwaway, with a short cooldown, and very auxillary. Blind is stupendously important and clutch, and is on a long cooldown. I can distract people to my heart's content, with very little mattering, but I NEED blind.

Also, I wasn't necessarily considering damage. A lot of people are just saying "don't get rid of slice and dice because it does a lot of damage!". Well, yes it does a lot of damage, but by having more passive damage we have to do less active damage.

Which is pretty clearly intended. Slice and dice is mostly an autoattack and poison buff, and without it our autoattacks would be weak and puny. And yes, you are correct, they would be forced to give us bigger yellow damage to make up for such a huge nerf... but we could easily become TOO bursty in PvP. More relevantly, two of our specs actually USE slice and dice rotationally, so you'd have to add that rotational complexity back.

So sure, you can get rid of slice and dice. But understand that you are creating another button (or more) in its place, which in any of the silly "bloat" topics is supposed to not be the name of the game.

I also very much liked that idea of stealth being an out of combat passive, especially as there's no movement speed penalty for being in stealth any more.

Well, sometimes I do want to be visible, and I like controlling stealth. I don't see much gain from taking this button away.

I also like the concept of shadow walk, but I never actually get the chance to use it.

Fair enough. It doesn't show up in all playstyles. But it is important in some.

Shadowblades it just a "more damage" button. So is slice and dice, so is vendetta. I don't think any of that can really be changed.

Right, but the way the damage is delivered makes it interesting. Shadowblades can increase your aoe damage, for instance, though it's normally a shame to use it for that. Blades also really helps a whole lot versus armored opponents in PvP.

Slice and dice is not a cooldown. Sure, it's damage. We're dps, many of our buttons are damage!

Vendetta is still boring, but so was hunger for blood. For those who don't know or remember, it was the 51 point talent introduced in wotlk and taken away in cataclysm, it ended up as a flat damage increase cooldown lasting 60 seconds, with no cooldown, the only requirement was that the target was bleeding. When damage sucked they buffed the talent, it varied between 5%-18% damage bonus throughout patches so we never really got an interesting final talent for assassination but that doesn't matter any more.

Vendetta is much nicer than hunger for blood. The reason HfB was so awful, really, is that the spec clearly decided we didn't need to maintain slice and dice, but then gave us a DIFFERENT dorky thing to maintain INSTEAD. That's transparent and silly. Also, your version is only one of many. It first had a dumb stacking effect, for instance. Vendetta is a cooldown, so you can pool your energy and combo points before your later vendettas (you do do this, right?) and then land plenty of damage in that space. Hunger for Blood was a very strange mechanic that at one point actually involved three globals and a bleeding opponent. I don't see much comparison betwixt.

[Warstar]

Rogues don't have button bloat. Every ability we have has a purpose and any "bloat" as people are saying to take away would result in a nerf which is fairly counter intuitive to asking for class changes.

Rogue abilities can be broken into three categories:

Damage
Utility/Control
Flair

Damage abilities are important. From expose armor to envenom. 99% of the time a rogue will never use or need to use expose armor. But if you run in a guild where you don't have tanks who keep it up and it's between you and the dps warrior and you end up being the new guy in the raid so it's your job to keep it up. It's a huge dps increase to the raid so by you sacrificing some personal damage you end up increasing the raid dps by a decent amount.

Utility/control. Seeing feint up on the OPs list made me disregard his entire post under the assumption that he's completely mad and has 0 understanding of the rogue class. Feint is by far our most OP and feared to be nerfed ability that rogues have. It's not flashy. It doesn't boost your epeen at all. But, because of it it makes rogues take less damage in a raid than any other class and makes them very nice to bring to raids. And then you have our plethora of stuns/interrupts/disorients/silences. That is the rogue class. Why the hell would you want any of these taken away? Ok I can't gouge a boss but I sure as hell can gouge a casting add to interrupt it and don't even get me starting on the pvp side of taking any of these away. Even something like distract. It's the only form of CC that can be used on almost anything in the game from a lv1 wolf in goldshire to a lv90 raid boss. If your raid is running through trying to dodge trash to save on time and Joey McSlowass is straggling behind because hes been too busy watching porn and is about to pull a trash mob whose pathing over which will cause a chain of events leading to people dying and time being wasted but you quickly stealth run over and distract the mob it's one of the most thankless things you will ever do as a rogue and I guarantee 99% of the people out there will have no idea that you ever did that but in the long run you saved everyone time and then in PvP distract is just amazing.

Flair. Things like pick pocket and lock picking. We're rogues that's what we do. Blizzard has been kind enough to get rogues more money from grinding mobs/dailies/whatever than any other class in the game. Does it really do anything or make you that much money? Not at all but it's really fun to go around and pick pocket stuff at the same time. It's the only thing that really goes back to the thief archetype that rogues are based off of. Lock picking is is another nice little flair ability we have. It's lost it's niche with the removal of keys but I absolutely loved being able to get into scholomance back at lv60 when no one ever had the key for that place. Neither one of these really create button bloat and are just off on a side bar waiting for the random chance to use them.

Every ability that a rogue has has a use and a place. Our dps rotation is rather simple and we don't have many buttons there at all. We have a lot of utility and thank god. That's amazing. Smoke bomb is what brings a lot of rogues to raids and is a huge pvp tool both offensive and defensive and is a huge game changer. Every rogue ability in the game has a place and a usefulness to it. Just because a person isn't well rounded and doesn't understand say pve v. pvp differences doesn't mean that the rogue class has any bloat what so ever. I'd honestly say that rogues are rather middle of the road as far as buttons are concerned and we get the added benefit that a lot of our buttons are stealth only so you only use them/worry about them while in stealth which creates less of a button bloat scenario because it "hides" a lot of our abilities for most of the time.

There is not a single ability I could think of that I would want to get rid of and as verain has pointed out every ability we have has a reason for being there.

The only "bad" ability that we have could be argued as crimson tempest BUT that's more due to poor design because there is a need for an ability like that especially for combat/sub. The only problem being that it's just kinda bad right now and needs an update.

[ymirsson]

Someone said "betwixt"! I'm amazed and delighted!

And i see no button bloat for rogues beyond several buttons any of our specs (and nearly any other class) has to press before the bam happens just so we can have our beloved ramp up time.

[shadowboy]

FEINT lost its threat feature in MoP along with its cooldown. Feint's thing since Cata has been to reduce AoE damage taken.

Aoe damage reduction was feint's thing in wrath, too.

[Warstar]

Speaking of original feint. Playing a rogue with vanish reducing threat all but making feint worthless combined with blessing of salvation alliance side I knew a lot of rogues who just didn't even bother wasting the gold training feint. Through out every raid in vanilla and TBC with it's original form the only fight I ever used feint on was Gurtogg Bloodboil due to the absolute hell of a time tanks had with threat on that fight.

Compared to now where almost every fight has a use for feint with some being really really really useful and where other classes like warriors will perish the feinting rogue will live.