Stealth openers underwhelming

[Warstar]

Is it just me or are rogues stealth abilities complete crap now a days?

Ambush hits relatively weak. It's decent in shadow dance but more than anything it's strength is more for find weakness rather than the strength of ambush. As combat it's used as an opener but really that's it and it's not even that important. As assassination it's even a better choice to mutilate from stealth than use an actual stealth opener and if that doesn't show a need for an improvement I don't know what does.

Cheap shot as an opener is bad for combat since it puts your stuns on a DR. The only thing it's useful for is in pvp getting a target to stand still and not bounce out of melee range opening with a garrote (especially while mounted). Combat can either open with a CS and then KS for 4 seconds later for a total of 8 seconds of stun with the final DRed stun before stun immune being incredibly tiny... or they can ignore CS and just drop an 8 second stun with kidney shot.

Garrote is really the most useful stealth opener we have but mostly for pvp and mostly for getting up sanguinary veins for sub or the silence and in pve is pretty much never used by combat/assassination.

You'd think that with the relative difficulty of using stealth abilities during combat that they'd have more of an impact rather than ignored most of the time. Most casters open up with their big cast time big damage spell. Countdown timer hasn't hit 1 yet and casters are hard casting their slowest big damage attack so that it flies over the tanks head as they charge into the boss. I get that ambush is an instant cast ability but it should hit hard enough that when we use it we can see a big difference.

I get that stuff like ambush hits harder than sinister strike and procs 2 CP rather than 1 so its better it's just the fact that the opprotunity cost of using ambush is so much larger than anything else so ambush should be so much stronger. I just seems a bit retarded to me that our stealth openers are so relatively weak and don't actually shine.

[Sesshou]

I agree, they are very lackluster for abilities you can only rarely use (opener, vanish, restealth, dance if sub). In pvp, it is still really important to get the opener and a sap off, but in PvE aside from sub, it hardly matters. The only real reason we care about stealth in pve aside from sub is that entire first tier of talents...

Being instant isn't really a reason it can't hit hard. Other melee classes have massive hits.

[Warstar]

I agree, they are very lackluster for abilities you can only rarely use (opener, vanish, restealth, dance if sub). In pvp, it is still really important to get the opener and a sap off, but in PvE aside from sub, it hardly matters. The only real reason we care about stealth in pve aside from sub is that entire first tier of talents...

Being instant isn't really a reason it can't hit hard. Other melee classes have massive hits.

Warriors slam does hit pretty damn hard in pvp and that's a spamable ability with no restrictions outside of rage cost.

Would be a really good form of burst if ambush actually hurt making dance actually really dangerous. Like how when you see an enhance shaman you have to say "watch out for their burst or you will die" rogues don't neccesarily have that so bringing out some heavy hitting abilities would be nice. And it'd be a great way to moderate burst since it'd be tied to stealth.

[Revi]

It would be very nice if they hit a LOT harder in PvE, purely for flavor reasons, but Rogue opener is already pretty powerful in PvP.

[Sesshou]

It would be very nice if they hit a LOT harder in PvE, purely for flavor reasons, but Rogue opener is already pretty powerful in PvP.

From a control perspective sure, how about damage perspective? When was the last time you thought opening with an ambush was worth it?

[Cantor]

Come back after you've played a Feral Druid and tell me again about how Rogue stealth openers are underwhelming.

Edit: I play a heroic Feral and have a Rogue alt, and the Rogue stealth toolkit is better by miles; stealth is a much larger part of the class and it really shows in comparison.

[Deleted]

they should just boost ambush.

[Kael]

Come back after you've played a Feral Druid and tell me again about how Rogue stealth openers are underwhelming.

One thing being horribly broken does not make a slightly less broken thing fixed. This comes up about a few things, but it's just a bad argument. "Not the worst" is not the same as "useful" or "fine". It just means they should both get fixed.

For PvE, yeah, stealth is really, really underwhelming. A passive version of Nightstalker wouldn't feel wrong, imo.

[Sesshou]

Edit: I play a heroic Feral and have a Rogue alt, and the Rogue stealth toolkit is better by miles; stealth is a much larger part of the class and it really shows in comparison.

No shit. Our class gimmick is suppose to be stealth. Yours is suppose to be changing forms and was never intended to be stealth. Your gimmick is actually useful in raids with HotW, but ours on the other hand is not. In fact, its pretty ridiculous how close they've let ferals stealth tools come to the rogue versions without actually giving rogues any new stealth tools.

I'm sorry but all I hear (and the Dev's hear for that matter) from posts like this are, "I miss the days when stealth ganking was really, REALLY OP". And we all respond with a gentle pat on your head and a "there, there deary, there will always be FOTMs rife with imbalance". You know what a stealth opening gets you? A step ahead of your target and a disruption to whatever carefully planned opener they had in mind. That should be more than enough.

In the days of flying mounts, stealth ganking and flying in on an epic mount and dropping on some one are virtually identical since you can't see either coming (ok technically if you sit there looking at the sky instead of actually doing whatever it is you are out in the world to do then you might see it... if the game loads them in fast enough).

And for better or worse, that is the gimmick they decided to build the class idea around. It needs to be an integral part of the class in some way and not oh hey I should vanish so my next ability is nearly free. Currently all that stealth really gives you is access to openers which means they should be very meaningful.

[Warstar]

I'm sorry but all I hear (and the Dev's hear for that matter) from posts like this are, "I miss the days when stealth ganking was really, REALLY OP". And we all respond with a gentle pat on your head and a "there, there deary, there will always be FOTMs rife with imbalance". You know what a stealth opening gets you? A step ahead of your target and a disruption to whatever carefully planned opener they had in mind. That should be more than enough.

Don't think anyone would think asking for a stronger ambush is saying it should crit for 300k+ vs. players similar to the way that ambush used to crit back in vanilla days taking 1/2 of their HP off with one hit.

The fact that mutilate is a higher dps ability than ambush just goes to show how piss poor ambush does. In a world where warriors are critting for 100k+ with slam or warlocks are critting for 200k+ with chaos bolt in pvp and none of those have the requirement of being in stealth. Ambush is just underwhelming and the random chances we get to use it feel meh.

[Hitei]

Should just give rogues a passive:

Opportunist
For every second spent in stealth,
the rogue gains a stack of Opportunity,
increasing damage dealt by 10% on their
next attack-up to to a maximum of 150% damage.
In addition, increases damage dealt from stealth
against targets below 10% by 200%.

People should be afraid of rogues in stealth. Especially with all the stupid AoE in the game.

[Carp The Fish]

Should just give rogues a passive:

Opportunist
For every second spent in stealth,
the rogue gains a stack of Opportunity,
increasing damage dealt by 10% on their
next attack-up to to a maximum of 150% damage.
In addition, increases damage dealt from stealth
against targets below 10% by 200%.

People should be afraid of rogues in stealth. Especially with all the stupid AoE in the game.

Being rewarded for not playing the game is not Blizzard's modus operandi when it comes to raid gameplay.
I like the idea of turning it into an execute (that last bit), but Vanishing and sitting there for 10 seconds to get any meaningful benefit from that buff seems like something any raid officer would kill me for.

As to the original topic, Stealth openers in PvE are boring, especially for Combat. The worse thing is that Vanish doesn't seem like much of a DPS increase for Combat rogues once you start getting past a 570 ilvl and more than 17k Haste.

[Hitei]

Being rewarded for not playing the game is not Blizzard's modus operandi when it comes to raid gameplay.
I like the idea of turning it into an execute (that last bit), but Vanishing and sitting there for 10 seconds to get any meaningful benefit from that buff seems like something any raid officer would kill me for.

As to the original topic, Stealth openers in PvE are boring, especially for Combat. The worse thing is that Vanish doesn't seem like much of a DPS increase for Combat rogues once you start getting past a 570 ilvl and more than 17k Haste.

I can't imagine it would end up being viable in any situation to sit in stealth for ten seconds instead of auto-attacking and using regular out of stealth abilities for those ten seconds. Such a passive would see very little use in the middle of a raid fight, except maybe for rogues to make sure to pause that first one or two seconds between vanish and ambush to ensure that they get the first 10% or 20% stack. Anything beyond that isn't going to be worthwhile unless an ambush for 130% damage does more damage than 3 seconds worth of white swings and one or two regular CP builders.

I'm not sure vanish needs to be viable as a DPS cooldown for anyone but Sub. In the middle of a raid encounter the rogue is already in their element--attacking something from behind while it's paying attention to someone else. It's not like vanishing from sight and hitting someone in the back is a ton more effective from just hitting them in the back when they are busy attacking someone else, and combat is supposed to feel a bit more melee intensive and toe-to-toe.

On the other hand, I do thing Stealth should be something that rewards use at the beginning of fights, as well as in solo-play, where you're the only thing attacking your target.

[Sesshou]

Only thing is that they haven't let us prepot in stealth yet so you couldn't even use that in raids even if we had it.

[Noorac]

Only thing is that they haven't let us prepot in stealth yet so you couldn't even use that in raids even if we had it.

This is so extremely anoying. There are so many things that can be done in stealth without breaking it, but nope, not drink a sip from a tiny vial. I mean I can activate rocket boots that sprays flames from my feet, but not pot.

I feel like stealth in general should be buffed a bit(in terms of how, and how often, it is used). It's such a huge part of the class. In arena the other day, I had a warrior randomly leaping next to me, but not close enough to do damage, however he appearently spots me, and then he follows up with charging me out of stealth. The whole time I was burst of speeding. I can accept the fact that random leaps can land on top of you and knock you out of stealth, but the fact that he spotted me and charged me, especially considering the minimum range of charge... It doesn't feel good.

[Kowloon]

As far as PVP goes… I gotta say, this is a joke right? On my server there's a rogue who stealths in horde Shrine and opens on people basically killing them in seconds unless he gets stopped.

[Orcbert]

This is going to be a little bit of "Rosy Glasses" sort of comments, but I liked rogue pvp better back in vanilla. I specced into having that massive beginning burst. Ambush was worth a button press in pvp. Ambush with a quick backstab and now suddenly it's a race to try and shave off that remaining life before they could mount a comeback.

It was a little over the mark back then as if you were geared you went around one shotting clothies with ease but I would like it tuned back to when stealth openers besides the stun mattered.

[Naiattavain]

we get balanced around shadow dance so pop shadow dance as an opener with your list of macros that you have. you have to have macros on your rogue to even come close to another class on its performance. if this is pvp yes use shadow dance as an opener. pve sub-use shadow dance as an opener with tricks on tank. next expansion with the "stat squish" that is what they call it. this is the subtle hand balancing every class. rogues are going to be equal par with other melee classes. finally they fixed the class. classes used to have a higher level of power but with WoD its all going to be about skill. skill interprets as abilities a second or macro combination. the human brain, cognitive.. every class is going to be balanced with every other class relative even rogue. range are still going to be powerful against melee because they are range and melee have to close the distance to be able to attack. best bet there is to use the range that you have as a rogue to equal somewhat what range you can do. second get another player rogue with you speced the same as you so you don't have to worry about getting cut down. hope this satisfy the OP.

[Sesshou]

hope this satisfy the OP.

I can't really see how that has anything to do with the OP about stealth openers... so I don't see how that can satisfy the OP.

[Naiattavain]

While I would love for Rogue stealth abilities to receive some sort of buff/change, I doubt it'll happen. The class as a whole doesn't seem to get much attention, despite having 3 utterly homogenized specs and a serious disconnect between class identity and class ability.

But I'm just weird, perhaps.

class identity is a thief all three specs. your right though you wrote it best.

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I can't really see how that has anything to do with the OP about stealth openers... so I don't see how that can satisfy the OP.

i can't fix the OP lack to learn either sesshou.