Something has been bothering me "lately".... (Be warned, the following wall of text may crit and I apologize in advance for possible errors, English is not my main language.)
I have been gaming for a very long time, and since an age probably slightly too young have I been enraptured by RPGs.
My favourite class or type, throughout my RPG spectrum, has been the Rogue, or equivalent Assassin-type character. My first ever character in WoW, some 10 years ago, was a Rogue called Video, on the EU realm Vashj.
I feel many share in this inclination of mine, and in new releases it's especially apparent with the amount of players playing them.
Possessing no hard numbers to validate this statement or any of the following, it is based on my subjective personal experiences, which inevitably is inclined to be biased, even if I don't believe for it to be so.
In short; I believe the Rogue class, or any reminding archetype in any game, to be a popular class. People want to play them.
...With that being said, the class loses popularity moving up the progression ladder, in any game. Rogues (not just in WoW) are a very fragile class which requires not just planning ahead, but an understanding of what you're up against, and it's mechanics, in order not to fail, and miserably so. Thus, it often has a high skill climb and roof, in relation to many other classes where one mistake could cost you dearly. This of course is a big deterrent to a lot of people, but also one of the most appealing aspects for others, myself included.
Considering the change WoW has made from being a very social game, where you not only had to actually chat and get along with people to do anything, but also had to build your characters reputation on the server to have a standing chance of participation, and how easy everything else is getting too, I really like how at least one class has managed to remain true in at least one, to me, very important aspect. (Particularly Subtetly.)
(I play Subtetly, so that is the specialization that I will be referring mainly when I'm ranting further...)
But, as the game is 'dumbed' down more and more, other classes getting closer to having one button to win it all, we retain (almost) everything that other classes have been 'pardoned'. Rogues are the only class that in order to compete, have to be not just a Rogue, but an amazing circus artist too, juggling several timers whilst watching cooldowns and managing resources not in relation to interior mechanics but exterior aswell, retaining positional requirements that were scrapped for all other classes because they weren't fun, starting off your rotation 20 seconds before the pull just to get a fightning chance, having to collect at least two item and weapon sets and talent specs and actively having to swap between them to pull off what every other class can do easily with just one set of items and one specialization. We are also the only class that relies on stealthing before combat and are genuinely gimped if, for whatever reason (and there are many) stealth drops before you can open - but we're not longer the only class having stealth, and outside of pvp it has never really been anything but an disadvantage to our class.
All this is fine, and how it should be (with the exception of positional requirement and talent/gear swapping, that's just plain stupid beyond belief.) according to me. I'm not asking for less of a challenge as the challenge is what makes it fun in the first place, nor that they remove stealth as it defines us. But it should be rewarding. And it really isn't. Rogues are the lower-class of World of Warcraft, having to work four times as hard to stay alive, and at the end of the day we are treated as little better than hardened criminals and are punished for our 'decision' to be poor (pure). Even in PvP this bad analogy holds true, as Rogues having become some kind of support class, our job being to act as enablers for the 'upper' classes to do their magic. Fortunately the analogy ends here, and we get to at least share the rewards of our (often hard) labour.
Our population is diminishing, Rogues everywhere are tossing the towel (including myself, after 10 years), and Blizzard does nothing to combat this. I can't imagine Blizzard not being aware of our situation, and of how our numbers are shrinking - so I can only deduct from this that it must be intentional. Since our class inherently is popular, it is to me apparent Blizzard has made a mess out of our class. Especially with how we're treated in relation to the other classes in patch note after patch note. 6.1 brings us nothing but a nerf to increase PvP frustration and lazy number tweaks to a broken ability, and on top of that a nerf to a specialization no one even plays because it sucks, and it was supposed to be a big spur of discussion for classes. And it probably is, for anyone but Rogues.