Rogue PvP help and thoughts....

[Mikki1664]

Hi There,

I am new to PvP, a couple of months ago my guild realised that there would not be enough PvE content to keep us happy without a mountain of alts so we started doing BGs ready fro Rated BGs. Now we have a 40 strong team of fully gear (thanks to Rating removal) PvPers who had little to know PvP experience since Vanilla BGs.

I chose my Rogue as my team only had one to call on (and Mage was just crazy OP) and I have enjoyed the complexity of learning to play Rogue. I am working with more binds that I have ever worked with but I am now to the point where I am good. Outside of Paladins/Casters I win deuls allot (I know it means nothing but I used to lose 100% of 1v1) and I already consider myself a good PvP Rogue. (Other Rogues I come across when in BGs always end up running away or dead....I like that, truith is most Rogues dont use half or the tool kit....TBH I cant remember being disarmed but a simgle Rogue...let alone Blinded to return to Stealth or Gouged...anyway)

The point of this post is S&D. I just never have it up and I am wondering if this is a mistake? I LOVE recup for the Health and Energy regen and I realy find time between focused attacks to get S&D up. If I try and maintain both S&D and Recoup I find I dont get enough finishers out at all and dont laydown enough damage.

SO, Experienced PvP people only please, how important is S&D in general? Is it a must when caught 1 on 1 with some classes? (God knows its like commiting suicide agaist Retribution Aura or Thorns)

And Rogue to me are fun, we have a very large tool kit to get out of trouble and as much as we are a DPS Class in PvE a Sub Rogue is very much a utility class in PvP. Do you think Rogue Sub Damage is low because of this? We can still take out other melee 1vs1 even with lower total output. Or do you think we will get a damage buff in Cata to help us output more. Mastery really is crap for me. We waste so many of our finishers on Recoup, KS and even S&D that the boost to finisher damage is a little trivial and verging on pointless.

Thoughts?

[dippinsawse]

First off, you made an excellent choice going Sub. Even when it weathered its own existence as a sub-optimal spec in pvp and pve simultaneously, I've always loved the feeling behind it and the idea of raw opening burst when breaking stealth. Getting right down to your question, it does come down to personal preference (slightly). Though for myself, and just about every other rogue I know who plays sub, using S&D just doesn't prove itself worthwhile in most situations.

One of the things that Sub really has going for it is how misleading the openers are. In BG's (as you seem to be primarily focused on them) a rogue can pop up on the healers and scare them into thinking their time has come sooner than it actually will. Hopefully this causes them to run from their group or waste their cooldowns, both of which mean you've pretty well done your job. The sad "fact" of this is that faster auto-attacks don't lend well to this purpose and the flow of Sub in BG's--you have one of the best specs for finishing off enemies and locking others up and assisting your team where it's light.

Though I do find that there are a few situations where S&D does come in handy. I prefer to avoid these situations, but if you have good team work it's possible to line up a one or two combo point S&D when you're trying to focus someone down with another ally's burst. If it takes more than that duration to kill them, then you likely have other things more important to worry about, for instance being too far from a flag in AB or not properly working with your team for the objectives (or you're just plain dying).

Hope that answers your question and agrees with your playstyle.

[TaurenNinja]

I think that rogues are incredibly hard to balance, and Blizzard is waiting a long time to see if something needs to be done about their balance or not, because if they would hurry things just because some players complain that rogue damage is too low, then the good rogues would probably become too strong.

Sub balance in particular is very delicate - either their performance is too weak or too good, there's probably only a tiny middle ground which you can't really hit. With several openers from stealth (initial stealth, Vanish, Preparation + Vanish), or even more (depending on whether you are able to re-stealth normally), and 1 or more ShDs, plus the extraordinary mobility, the damage potential of Sub rogues would be enormous (especially against non-plate) if they'd do a lot of damage in general.
So it probably needs to be that Sub rogues don't do as much damage as the other trees, or other classes. The risk here is however that a sub rogue degrades to a class which can't really kill single targets any more and becomes a strong support class instead (I know the game isn't balanced about 1v1s and there will always be a counter class, but when you can't beat *anything* anymore, it just sucks). Not everyone is happy with their rogue being pretty much a support class - CC the enemy or help your team while your team bursts them down - not you.

This is still from a WoTLK perspective. I'm not sure how things will chance in Cata. It seems like the rogue will be more durable (smoke bomb to concentrate on one enemy without fear that others can burst you down from range, stacking passive damage reduction, more HP, self-heal), but with less CCs (especially with the CS/KS nerf) -- more like a warrior who uses stealth to get to his victim instead of running/charging. Also, if all fights will last longer, then S&D will probably be more important for Sub rogues, instead of just for Mutilate or Combat rogues. Right now, Sub is all about burst damage and utility - and if the enemy isn't dead after your burst, it gets difficult for you.

But if you want to have the most fun with your rogue, you have to like that "support" role I guess. In BGs, I think it's important to play as dirty as you can - kill the weak or busy ones in a BG, CC as much as you can, "prepare" the enemy to be bursted down by your allies, and run away from any trouble and find a better opportunity. It's all about finding the right opportunities - and sadly, going 1v1 against someone with full health and full cooldowns still means that you're at a disadvantage. So... avoid that disadvantage by playing dirty. I know from the other classes I play that I get really uneasy if a rogue suddenly attacks me when I've blown most of my cooldowns, or when I'm busy fighting someone else, or when I'm at low HP. These are the situations where a rogue is probably the most dangerous of all opponents. So these are the situations you must actively watch out for, and make use of them. In 3.3.5 when I was still levelling my PvP twink Sub rogue, there was a very good, top twink geared retribution paladin I had no chance at all of killing. After trying it for a few times, I gave up on the idea and instead always chose to CC him, keep him out of fights, hinder him from running away, or just serve him to my team on a silver platter while he was stunned. He was so pissed that he took the effort to relog to my realm and flame me for being such an annoying bitch who had no chance vs him. Well - I didn't *need* to have a chance. That's when I realized the true strength of the rogue in BGs. I know it's not much comfort for a good PvP player, but if you just play BGs for fun...

Right now I'm playing my mage because sometimes I like to be able to do actual high damage while still having lots of CC options, but still... Sub rogue is slightly more fun.

[Bobbojonno]

I think that rogues are incredibly hard to balance, and Blizzard is waiting a long time to see if something needs to be done about their balance or not, because if they would hurry things just because some players complain that rogue damage is too low, then the good rogues would probably become too strong.

Bang on

[dippinsawse]

Though I haven't seen it at 85 with properly balanced numbers, there's also combat. If you're looking to just top damage and berserk on people, this may become somewhat viable if you can run around with a healer. With constant blade flurries and mastery-boosted FoK, you'll have the option of playing as a mobile conduit of martial death while also being less squishy than in wotlk.

I suppose the bottom line to the points you bring up (TaurenNinja), and a clear one at that, is that rogues are still balanced around using their stuns and CC which detracts from the damage they can do because of energy and combo point losses. Whether or not that needs to be changed can be infinitely argued. While it is something that most classes don't have to deal with, most classes also lack such versatile forms of PvP. If you want to lock an opponent down, as sub you can. If you want to keep sustained dps pressure, you can focus more on bleeds and avoid CC'ing--in which case your damage will match that of any other class but be less bursty. Or you can stealth around gibbing stragglers and hindering key targets of the opposing team.

[tinybike]

Though I haven't seen it at 85 with properly balanced numbers, there's also combat. If you're looking to just top damage and berserk on people, this may become somewhat viable if you can run around with a healer. With constant blade flurries and mastery-boosted FoK, you'll have the option of playing as a mobile conduit of martial death while also being less squishy than in wotlk.

Combat (and assass, now) has the same problem it's always had in PvP -- you can't get Preparation, and its mobility is pretty bad. The only thing it really has going for it at the moment is Killing Spree as a root/snarebreaker, but now that the glyph only affects damage output and not cooldown duration, even that advantage is pretty much gone.