Rogues doomed to mediocrity vs Mage/Locks this tier?

[Venant]

Now that guilds have been progressing in heroic raid content for several weeks, it seems like a good time to examine the trajectory that our class is currently on. I had high hopes at the onset of this tier that rogues would be a strong contender for the strongest 'pure dps' class, it seemed like it would be fair considering that the other pure dps classes can basically be turrets for the majority of fights in SoO.

In a situation where you have equally skilled players in a 25 man heroic setting, Mages and Warlocks are just about always stronger at single target and cleave fights. Even in the most patchwerk-like fights (iron jug/malkorak) we will probably be beat out, and the gap will just continue to widen as we move towards BiS. We now have 3 viable specs for pve, but apparently that came at the cost of being relegated to overall mediocrity where there is not a single fight in SoO where rogues are clearly excellent.

They need to restore the dps advantage of melee over ranged to compensate for the fact that target switching completely kills melee dps relative to ranged this tier.

Of course, I doubt any of these issues will be resolved, the devs seem to be on some sort of crusade to either kill the Rogue class off through neglect, or just turn us into the 'pvp class'. On my server there are so few raiding rogues its ridiculous, my guild has not had a new rogue applicant in over a year.

[Deleted]

Well, mages have kinda always been top tier in PvE and PvP. They seem to be Blizzard's favorite class, so I wouldn't think too much about falling behind them.

[Dierdre]

They need to restore the dps advantage of melee over ranged to compensate for the fact that target switching completely kills melee dps relative to ranged this tier.

Bypassing 90% of encounter mechanics surely must work in melee's favor, and having sprint / shadowstep makes target switching trivial.

Having said that: yes, locks ended up being stupidly OP, and mages are slightly overtuned too.

[snaxattax]

rogues are incredibly good. they might not be top overall damage on every fight, but their single target burst is something you build strats around (hgarrosh engineers) and smoke bomb and tricks are almost as strong as healthstones/gateway. burst of speed + feint/cloak also make them take less damage in most fights than most ranged players and make them ideal for soaking the MOP ubiquitous million-damage-voidzone mechanics.

if you actually look at raidbots parse composites for 10s and for 25s, rogues are above median on every fight with at least one spec, and are top or within 5% of top on three. the fact that rogues don't compete with warlocks (and who the hell does?) isn't because rogues are weak, it's that warlocks are incredibly broken. however, post 4t15 nerf/fix/whatever rogues are stronger single target than mages on most fights.

rogue rotations may be boring (i hear many rogues say this), but to say they're 'weak' in PVE raiding is just disingenuous.

[Hardtraxx]

Time to level a mage or warlock -_-

[jtstormrage]

I find I can keep up with Mages and Warlock just fine.

[tauntor]

Stop giving tricks to mages and warlocks? bring two rogues to tricks eachother!

[Venant]

rogues are incredibly good. they might not be top overall damage on every fight, but their single target burst is something you build strats around (hgarrosh engineers) and smoke bomb and tricks are almost as strong as healthstones/gateway. burst of speed + feint/cloak also make them take less damage in most fights than most ranged players and make them ideal for soaking the MOP ubiquitous million-damage-voidzone mechanics.

if you actually look at raidbots parse composites for 10s and for 25s, rogues are above median on every fight with at least one spec, and are top or within 5% of top on three. the fact that rogues don't compete with warlocks (and who the hell does?) isn't because rogues are weak, it's that warlocks are incredibly broken. however, post 4t15 nerf/fix/whatever rogues are stronger single target than mages on most fights.

rogue rotations may be boring (i hear many rogues say this), but to say they're 'weak' in PVE raiding is just disingenuous.

The issue isn't that rogues aren't top overall damage on every fight, it is that rogues aren't top overall damage on any fight. I still don't understand why they had to nerf assassin's resolve, they basically were pushing rogues to go combat even though combat cleave feels like it has been neutered compared to mage/warlock/monk/warrior cleave. Perhaps the design goal is to make rogues play sub, so that we have to deal with ridiculous positional requirements and still lose out in single target dps.

It seems like the argument for raid utility always comes up, but if you seriously wanted to bring utility you are better off running as a hybrid, or as a warlock because having portals/battle res/health stones = amazing utility. Rogues do probably have the strongest personal utility, rogues easily have better survival abilities than any other dps, but then again much of the stuff in SoO you could survive will likely wipe the rest of the raid which means you lose anyway.

[broggernaut]

The issue isn't that rogues aren't top overall damage on every fight, it is that rogues aren't top overall damage on any fight. I still don't understand why they had to nerf assassin's resolve, they basically were pushing rogues to go combat even though combat cleave feels like it has been neutered compared to mage/warlock/monk/warrior cleave. Perhaps the design goal is to make rogues play sub, so that we have to deal with ridiculous positional requirements and still lose out in single target dps.

It seems like the argument for raid utility always comes up, but if you seriously wanted to bring utility you are better off running as a hybrid, or as a warlock because having portals/battle res/health stones = amazing utility. Rogues do probably have the strongest personal utility, rogues easily have better survival abilities than any other dps, but then again much of the stuff in SoO you could survive will likely wipe the rest of the raid which means you lose anyway.

While I was playing Mut I would have agreed with you, but I don't think I can anymore.

Good Combat rogues are absolutely slaying it right now. We're top on IJ and Malk. This stupid combat log change is going to throw off numbers for a little while, unfortunately. I crushed R1 on Malk 25HC last night by almost 30k DPS, no one else was even close. A piece of that is certainly the players around you, but the point still stands we're great on that encounter.

I have a hard time even comparing locks right now because they're so clearly overtuned, but even if you leave them in the running, we're still up top.

On fights we're not DPS#1, we at least have important jobs. Nazgrim adds go down in a KS with Prey on the Weak. We do immense amounts of damage under CD's while on Blackfuse belt. And Combat cleave is extremely strong because we spend so much time inside our CD's.

I'm speaking only from 25HC perspective, but I think to suggest that we're in a mediocre spot is incorrect.

[dyzz]

Any fight with constant cleave (read: most fights) combat is just absurd. I also never understood why people want to be "#1" in dps, if your constantly in top 5 dps in compareable gear (lets face it, there is VERY few people that actually attain BIS everything), who cares? I know its "being competitive" but as long as we are relative (and were before) I never cared much.

[Maconi]

Rogues have been treated like second class citizens since the end of TBC. They get put in the spotlight every once in a while and then it gets taken back by Mages/Warlocks almost instantly.

tl;dr

Yes. Now and forever.

[Ahdehl]

If you're getting beat by mages you're doing something wrong. There isn't a fight in SoO I can think of off the top of my head where they should be higherdps than you.

[re1gn1te]

Not just rogues pretty much all classes fall behind to locks and mages.... at least rogues are still high up on the meters, hunters doomed to be by far the most shit pure dps class all expansion.

[dyzz]

Not just rogues pretty much all classes fall behind to locks and mages.... at least rogues are still high up on the meters, hunters doomed to be by far the most shit pure dps class all expansion.

After being one of the most over the top in BC/Wotlk. Hunters had it great in pve/pvp for a loooooong time.

[Saiyoran]

Not sure why rogues feel the need to be top damage on every fight. You're already ahead of other melee classes for the most part barring cheese fights.

You've got smoke bomb, tricks, good burst which is more important than sustained damage on a number of fights, cloak for immunity, etc. More than enough to justify a raid spot over, say, a DK or ret pally (assuming you have devo from a healer or tank).

Warlocks are broken, nothing to see there. Mages are actually not extremely op at the moment, mostly because they don't have much in terms of raid utility and their damage is not significantly higher than other classes (only slightly higher).

- - - Updated - - -

Not just rogues pretty much all classes fall behind to locks and mages.... at least rogues are still high up on the meters, hunters doomed to be by far the most shit pure dps class all expansion.

Casting while moving op tho.

Our hunter tops our meters (second to our lock of course) all the time on fights like H Sha or H Juggernaut where the other casters spend most of the fight running around trying to avoid shit and not actually casting much.

[Deleted]

Blizzard needs to severely tune down the whole ranged "casting while moving" thingy... basicaly puts ranged in a much better position than melee in all fights. Rogue is the best melee atm in therms of mobility and damage wich makes us the least affected by this ranged situation, but still a little.

All in all, combat in cleave fights with the right trinkets are just very competitive and some good players simply dominate on those situations, but don't forget that in some fights that cleave damage is just meter padding, doesn't matter much to progression lol.


I believe that the next step should be to increase ASSassination a little bit in single target and increase a substancial amount to subtelty in AOE. Rest i do believe rogues are a very well rounded class with top dps, good survival and good raid encounter utility, the main problem is the whole melee vs "always-moving-ranged"

I was always under the idea that ranged classes would be easier to dodge encounter mechanics but slightly worse when moving due to casting, while melee would be more susceptible to aoe damage mechanics near the boss but better at movement keeping up with the boss. When they put ranged with nearly no penalty to movement fights, melee only got the disadvantages in the equation, and nothing more.

[Verain]

Not sure why rogues feel the need to be top damage on every fight.

Because otherwise rogues have no job full stop.

In practice, it isn't "every fight". It's "enough fights" while not being useless on others. I do agree that rogues seemed tuned mostly correct this tier, and I agree with your assessment than the ranged pures tend to be the ones that are out of line- barring hunters, whose apparent new niche is damage that is constant no matter the fight.

[Espe]

Bypassing 90% of encounter mechanics surely must work in melee's favor, and having sprint / shadowstep makes target switching trivial.

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Thank you for at least thoroughly proving your complete ignorance on this subject so that we can disregard your further posts.

When they put ranged with nearly no penalty to movement fights, melee only got the disadvantages in the equation, and nothing more.

You summed it up quite well.

[Squirl]

So much QQ in this thread.

Rogues are in a fantastic spot. All 3 of our specs are viable, so we can swap to play to the strengths of a specific spec when a fight allows. All 3 specs put out fantastic single target damage. Subtlety (and Combat to a lesser degree) has crazy on-demand burst. Mut has really good AoE. Combat has really good cleave. For flat-out damage, rogues are nowhere near mediocre. If this is your experience, there's a large gap in skill or gear or both.

For utility, we have Smoke Bomb, Feint, Cloak of Shadows, Evasion, CR, 4 utility poisons (Crippling, Mind-Numbing, Paralytic, Leeching), their Shiv effect, Gouge, Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, Dismantle, Garrote Silence. We have awesome mobility for PvE with Shadowstep/BoS and Sprint. I have used each of those spells on at least one fight in SoO, and many of them on every fight. We also bring 3 buffs: Attack Speed, Magic Damage taken, and Weakened Armor. We also have Tricks of the Trade for an on-demand damage boost or just an on-CD damage boost for the whole encounter. No one else has a toolkit that big.

I'm not saying other classes don't also bring great utility or that they don't bring better numbers than rogues on some fights. All I'm saying is we're useful on every fight and never far behind on the damage meter. That's more than enough to warrant a raid spot.

So, no. Rogues are not doomed to mediocrity.

[Dierdre]

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Thank you for at least thoroughly proving your complete ignorance on this subject so that we can disregard your further posts.

QQ some more and enlighten me. As our warrior says: "It takes a very bad melee not to switch targets properly."