Do you think Rogues will be more fun to play in MoP?

[macdisciple]

Oh, I never said I thought that, but probably about 10 months ago when Ghostcrawler was addressing why Rogue was the least played class two of the reasons he gave were that "Rogues don't bring anything unique to a raid," and the other reason was that players didn't think Rogues were fun to play. :P Clearly those of us who play Rogues full time will disagree with that!

I've played one toon at max level, a rogue, for 4.5 years. If I level an alt I create a rogue, level it to +/- 20, delete it and go back to playing my max-level rogue. I like rogues. Nothing else.

[Deleted]

After playing a rogue, it's hard to go back to other classes to be honest. Stealth is so attractive...

EDIT: I've got to say that I quit my rogue in Wrath for a DK for two reasons :
-Hunger for Blood mechanic annoyed me a lot, even more than soul shards did for me in vanilla...and that's saying a lot.
-I had troubles getting in guilds or even instances (this was just before LFD).

But now back to stay...but I see this Sanguinary Veins change and...it's HfB again.

[TWBrien]

So far from my time in the beta I'm really liking assassination. No need to vanish for energy regen and Shadowstep from talents makes movement a breeze. I'm also having fun with subterfuge squeezing a CS/Amb/Amb in before stealth breaks. Yes I'd like something new and shiny besides an auto-attack CD that increases my already ridiculous reliance on auto-attacks(?!?)

[Deleted]

i'd like to see killing spree being fixed. my idea would be to make killing spree work like the legendary procc: 5 cps for 6 seconds without getting depleted. that and a buff to special attacks/nerf to auto attack and i would be absolutely happy

[Tokas]

it seems a lot of you complain about white damage being too high compared to yellow, but if they swap it around, it's still the same DPS, so what's the difference?

[Maelstrom51]

it seems a lot of you complain about white damage being too high compared to yellow, but if they swap it around, it's still the same DPS, so what's the difference?

Less passive damage means there's a bigger dps difference between a good player and a bad player. Currently, a bad player can get within ~80% of the theoretical max dps for his gear, which is way higher than any other class can get.

[Tokas]

Less passive damage means there's a bigger dps difference between a good player and a bad player. Currently, a bad player can get within ~80% of the theoretical max dps for his gear, which is way higher than any other class can get.

well then there's ~20% difference still... noticeable enough imo

[Verain]

it seems a lot of you complain about white damage being too high compared to yellow, but if they swap it around, it's still the same DPS, so what's the difference?

"A lot", is the correct answer.

Now first, our white damage is boosted by active abilities. A big one is slice and dice- if the damage dealt by slice and dice appeared in a big chunk at the end of the duration, I think everyone would view it as very powerful- and it actually WOULD be more powerful, if you could land that wad on someone in pvp. There are other things as well- when you AR, you get more autoattack damage. When you envenom, you get more poison procs. Find weakness buffs your white attacks. The rogue special attacks boost the white damage, which even includes poisons. Personally, I like this system... but it does have weaknesses.

For instance, look at resource pooling and minor burst. While everyone knows sub is awesome at spine, try swapping to an elementium bolt as a rogue, and then as a frost DK. There's a lot more times where the ability to pool resource, switch, do respectable damage, and then go on to other stuff is really important.


Another difference is what happens in pvp. Assume you are on a target full time- in that case, white and yellow damage are interchangeable. Now assume the target peels you. This can be as simple as hammer of justice, or as complex as rooting you while freedoming around a pillar or something- whatever the case may be, if I am away from a target 50% of the time, my white damage in decreased by 50% or MORE, but my yellow damage is not reduced by that much. Stun a rogue with 2 combo points, 20 energy, and cooldowns, and his white damage is GONE... but that energy builds up. He spends it when the stun is over, so the yellow damage has (mostly) shifted temporally, with only some being deleted. The white damage is 100% gone.


This is why the damage gain of a slice and dice is not as great in pvp as in pve, for instance.

But, it isn't just about pvp- in fact, I suspect few rogues complain about the current state of rogue pvp (though all of them go to the spec with the biggest yellow damage distribution- how many combat rogues have you seen recently in pvp?). In pve, you gain greater target swap and greater ability to own your own fate with yellow damage. This is important because right now a rogue playing perfectly doesn't gain much over the subpar rogue (though he does gain). Mechanics that should require thinking ahead sometimes do (sub's mutiple buffs) and other times fail utterly at that goal (combat's spammy fate leaves bandit's guile as something you can't strategize around- if energy was scarcer, you would likely want to pool in yellow, for instance, spending extra time at 20% instead of 0 or 10).

But if rogues were all yellow damage, you would see right away how ludicrous that would be, with sinister strike and eviscerate hitting for quad damage.

[Mormolyce]

Well the basic Rogue rotations haven't changed in a long time, generally in patch notes there's 10 paragraphs on classes like Paladins and 2 lines of really minor changes for Rogues. But a Rogue is a class with 3 melee specs, they don't use any kind of magic so there's not a lot of cool toys they can really give us, even ones with purely convenience value. So I don't think there's really much scope for Blizzard to change them. Rogues also have a pretty complete toolbox for both PVP and PVE so we're not desperately crying out for anything really (except maybe to stack CPs on the Rogue instead of the target but Blizzard have made it pretty clear they're still attached to this antiquated mechanic).

As for current rogue changes, I think that all our specs got improved. I like that Combat officially doesn't use Rupture any more but gets RvS debuff to track instead. I like that Assassination no longer has clumsy Backstab execute and it gets a bit less boring by introducing a proc into it's gameplay. And finally, I like that they reduced number of finishers Subtlety uses and that they have a clear intention for Backstab and Hemorrhage usage.

They've made it so Eviscerate no longer extends Rupture so in effect Sub still has to manually maintain 3 finishers (SnD, Rup and Evisc). But I think the design is still a bit better. What I really don't understand is why they replaced Backstab for Assass, removing its positional dependence for less than a quarter of its rotation, but left Sub with Backstab and ShD for 100% of its rotation. Sigh.

---------- Post added 2012-05-03 at 12:13 AM ----------

i'd like to see killing spree being fixed. my idea would be to make killing spree work like the legendary procc: 5 cps for 6 seconds without getting depleted. that and a buff to special attacks/nerf to auto attack and i would be absolutely happy

Nty. The legendary proc is horrible and Evisc hits like a wet paper bag. It's only really useful for combat in that it interacts with RB and reduces AR/KS cds, which is pretty boring. KS is a perfectly decent ability, and they're putting in a glyph so it doesn't drop your butt in void zones anymore :P

---------- Post added 2012-05-03 at 12:15 AM ----------

it seems a lot of you complain about white damage being too high compared to yellow, but if they swap it around, it's still the same DPS, so what's the difference?

Makes a difference in PVP, particularly at lower levels. White damage and dots are king in PVE where sustained damage matters but useless in PVP where anything other than colossal burst is easily healed through.

P.S. Blizzard is making damage a lot more "white" in MoP, all yellow abilities are getting significantly reduced coefficients in exchange for higher weapon damage, to reduce burst overall. Kind of a turnaround from Cata where they made damage "yellower" than Wotlk to make it less boring.

[Florena]

We still have some interesting new things.

1. That talent whose name escapes me that lets us stay in stealth for 3 extra seconds. Extra openers, and a counter to hunters sitting on a flare without having to blow a cd to get to them before the flare ticks.

2. The option to have redirect on no CD, to build up an extra 5 combo points to keep extras from being wasted, or a ranged combo builder for when being kited or during annoying air phases where we would be energy capped, etc. Three, to me at least, very interesting choices.

3. Sub has been gutted some, I agree. But at the same time, I see this opening the way to allowing all 3 rogue trees to be usable, if not perfect in pve and pvp instead of the 'pvp tree, pve tree, and the other pve tree that sucks when you have more than 1 target."

4. Shroud of Concealment. Okay useless in pve, but this is going to be a fun utility spell in pvp.

5. Crimson Tempest. Makes our aoe rotation more interesting than 'spam FoK until dead.' And we can also build up said combo points with FoK now.

It's not like we're getting nothing interesting, and really rogues don't need a big overhaul. Not saying our current situation is perfect, but it's not all doom and gloom either.

Damage is low right now. I'll worry about that if it persists after the level cap hits 90 and we're testing instances and 90 pvp and in a weak spot. For the time being, I'm not worrying about class balance too much.

[Wow]

They've made it so Eviscerate no longer extends Rupture so in effect Sub still has to manually maintain 3 finishers (SnD, Rup and Evisc). But I think the design is still a bit better.

I'm fine with them wanting us to use rupture I'm not fine tying all our dmg to it being there and killing our target switching with it

[Deleted]

All they had to do was bring back Serrated Blades as a passive ability if they wanted us to use Rupture. Such a stupid change it defies belief, especially because it guts Sub PvP even more, and what is their compensation? A 9 second cheap shot that will cause more QQ than ever before. Whoever is coming up with these changes to Rogue is an idiot.

[Maelstrom51]

Or just increase Rupture damage to make it usable by itself.

[Verain]

Or just increase Rupture damage to make it usable by itself.

^
Just make it more damage than eviscerate by a decent amount. I mean, it hits for SO LITTLE now.

[Deleted]

Of my six high level characters (Druid, rogue, warr, mage, DK and shaman), the only two I play because I truly find them fun are the Rogue and Druid. The rest I don't bother with when they aren't in a strong position game balance wise, but the druid and the rogue, I play those every season, even in Cata when druids have been largely horrible in PVP I still stuck with it.

[Deleted]

Nty. The legendary proc is horrible and Evisc hits like a wet paper bag. It's only really useful for combat in that it interacts with RB and reduces AR/KS cds, which is pretty boring. KS is a perfectly decent ability, and they're putting in a glyph so it doesn't drop your butt in void zones anymore :P[COLOR="red"]

well, i said, i would like to see killing spree working like the the procc from the daggers (only difference that you should be able to manually trigger it). killing spree is a combat cooldown. so when you say that the procc only is nice for combat because of RB, everything should be fine, or am i missing something?
i really don't care about the glyphe as it will cause trouble in another way. fact is: you have no controll over your char during KS. that's what killing me sometimes. also if your targets a pulled away, because maybe the boss has to be kited, with the glyphe you end up standing in the middle of nowhere.
KS as long as it stays the way it is now, will always be a clunky mechanic.

and i really would take the current "yellow numbers" with a grain of salt. on PTR i saw a rogue with heroic gear and legendarys trying to kill a resto druid but the druids health hardly went down... blizzard is testing the new mechanics right now, they didn't really start fine tuning the numbers.

[Avengerx]

KS was/is the only 31 point talent that can kill you. I know people will argue that it only needs to be timed well which is party true, but due to combat's mechanics you want to use it almost as soon as it comes off cd to get optimal results. And instead of trying to fix it somehow, they lenghten the duration to make it even more timing dependant a bit silly I would say. The glyph is interesting but currently I can't name any bosses in ds (I know it's not gonna be used there but still...) where it could be useful.
I think my main problem with the beta rogue is that for one most of the talents are just reused from the sub tree and second the entire tree just screams pvp (at least that's the feeling I got from it).
Concerning the numbers, yes I know it's still beta and hopefully they are gonna be finetuned but previous expansion experiences show that Blizz is unable to do that. I don't remember how we were in tbc,vanilla at the beginning but since wotlk our dps was always subpar to others during the first 2 tiers or so. That's why many rogues would like to see an early tuning. And I mean really, FoK and autoattacks hit harder than Sinister Strike?...Also as been stated around 75% of our damage comes from passive stuff, finetuning that is not easy.
Lastly,I haven't played with muti that much on the beta, but the dispatch proc is something I would like to see on the other speccs aswell. Or something similar at least, some kind of a reactive ability that would make our rotations more enjoyable. Combat could have maybe, chance on rupture dot to do something would also make rupture viable for combat.

[Deleted]

PvE will be more funny than right now, just more tools to choose from = more variety.
PvP will be more fun too if they get the balance right.

[Avengerx]

PvE will be more funny than right now, just more tools to choose from = more variety.
PvP will be more fun too if they get the balance right.

I'm not really sure about the more variety in pve part. Unfortunately unlike with most classes there usually is always a clear choice which talent to take in a tier for pve. As for our rotations,skills etc., muti changed, but combat and sub practically remained the same, you could say they became even less complicated than they were.

[Maelstrom51]

PvE will be more funny than right now, just more tools to choose from = more variety.
PvP will be more fun too if they get the balance right.

Our talent trees have even less variety for PvE. Every tier is either a no-brainer or does not have any affect on PvE at all. At least with the current talent system I could choose to take significantly less AoE damage at the cost of some dps as sub.