Holinka: Rogues not underperforming in PvP

[Barnabas]

My class is under performing because there is nobody who plays it that is in the top 20 on ladder. Even multi-rank 1 players aren't #1 anymore. Maybe it's not the class (itself) but maybe the comps rogues have access to right now aren't strong enough to rise that high?

[dak1]

Rogues seem fine in rbgs.

The tactical advantages stealth (and Shroud of Concealment) offer, along with Smoke Bomb and Prey on the Weak, keep Rogues relevant in RBGs. It's also much easier in that environment to get multiple restealths, which Rogues require nowadays, helps.

It's more gimmicky though... things like being able repeatedly Sap/Blind/slow a GDruid FC in DWG, or stealth assault a base with 2 8 sec CCs that don't share diminishing returns, or Shroud+Smoke Bomb+Tricks of the Trade+Prey on the Weak to setup sudden burst kills on flag carriers. Rogue damage, on the other hand, will be extremely marginal in RBGs (10-20% of a DKs or Affliction Locks is more the norm than the exception).

RBGs really isn't a good thing to balance around, as it tends to promote gimmicks (Gorefiend's + Solar Beam+Vortex/Ring of Frost, speed stacking, etc) than it does class balance in combat.

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My class is under performing because there is nobody who plays it that is in the top 20 on ladder. Even multi-rank 1 players aren't #1 anymore. Maybe it's not the class (itself) but maybe the comps rogues have access to right now aren't strong enough to rise that high?

The comps a class has access to are directly related to the relative strengths and weaknesses of a class. Sure, you could say Disc Priests are down, which hurt RMP, but Warlocks and Shamans are balling but RLS isn't anywhere to be found.

Rogues have a lot of issues that were somewhat concealed by comps like Thugcleave when there were stupid PvE trinkets that made burst for Agility classes too strong. I don't think there's any class that demands more of its partners than Rogues (Rogues tend to be more utility to setup and provide damage boosts, and are heavily dependent on their partners for a number of things that other classes/comps don't deal with). You'll have far far far more success jumping on oqueue and forming a random TSG or Beastcleave or LSD or KFC or WMD or MLS team than you will in RPS or RLS or RMP or RMD. There's simply a much higher skill floor for most rogue comps, but they don't have a higher skill ceiling for the effort.

[apepi]

The tactical advantages stealth (and Shroud of Concealment) offer, along with Smoke Bomb and Prey on the Weak, keep Rogues relevant in RBGs. It's also much easier in that environment to get multiple restealths, which Rogues require nowadays, helps.

It's more gimmicky though... things like being able repeatedly Sap/Blind/slow a GDruid FC in DWG, or stealth assault a base with 2 8 sec CCs that don't share diminishing returns, or Shroud+Smoke Bomb+Tricks of the Trade+Prey on the Weak to setup sudden burst kills on flag carriers. Rogue damage, on the other hand, will be extremely marginal in RBGs (10-20% of a DKs or Affliction Locks is more the norm than the exception).

RBGs really isn't a good thing to balance around, as it tends to promote gimmicks (Gorefiend's + Solar Beam+Vortex/Ring of Frost, speed stacking, etc) than it does class balance in combat.

But one reason their damage is so slow is because they are stealthed doing other things. You can not complain about damage then enjoy the stealthiness. Now they might have lower damage than other classes but it factors in cc and how much that they are are in stealth.

Least say what everyone already knows, rogue is a niche class, and has always been a small class in participation. But putting in perspective of how many people are actually playing the class, they are doing pretty well.

[Warstar]

I really don't understand why dual wielding classes/specs seem to be so crap in pvp. Fury warriors, dual wielding frost DKs and rogues all kinda take it. Enhance gets a pass because their burst CDs are insane. But why does a fury warrior who has all the same CDs that an arms warrior have do so much worse in arena than arms even though in pve fury does way more damage single target? Both specs have the same mobility. The same damage CDs and the same defensive CDs. Both specs apply a mortal strike debuff. In pve fury does way higher single target while arms is generally used as an aoe/cleave spec and in arena while cleaving is fun usually it's all about focus firing one target and trying to burst it down. So why is it that fury who does higher single target is actually worse than the aoe/cleave spec at single target pvp?

Does this have some sort of correlation with rogues since they're purely a dual wield spec and don't have the option for a slow heavy hitting spec? Yet even fast v. slow attacks many fast attacks do more damage than few slow all in the same amount of time so the dual wielder should be doing more damage and the more dangerous of the two. Yet fury warriors seem to have the same problem as rogues and outside of CDs they're just ineffective.

[Hand Banana]

I really don't understand why dual wielding classes/specs seem to be so crap in pvp. Fury warriors, dual wielding frost DKs and rogues all kinda take it. Enhance gets a pass because their burst CDs are insane. But why does a fury warrior who has all the same CDs that an arms warrior have do so much worse in arena than arms even though in pve fury does way more damage single target? Both specs have the same mobility. The same damage CDs and the same defensive CDs. Both specs apply a mortal strike debuff. In pve fury does way higher single target while arms is generally used as an aoe/cleave spec and in arena while cleaving is fun usually it's all about focus firing one target and trying to burst it down. So why is it that fury who does higher single target is actually worse than the aoe/cleave spec at single target pvp?

Does this have some sort of correlation with rogues since they're purely a dual wield spec and don't have the option for a slow heavy hitting spec? Yet even fast v. slow attacks many fast attacks do more damage than few slow all in the same amount of time so the dual wielder should be doing more damage and the more dangerous of the two. Yet fury warriors seem to have the same problem as rogues and outside of CDs they're just ineffective.

Well fury wars are a different beast, they suck in pvp because they don't have the hit, expertise, or being in battle stance to get enough rage to maintain their damage. That and being focused on dispellable enrages and having incredibly high crit. Fury's pve rotation involves the CS window and focusing dmg and cds and such around that, and it just doesn't fly in pvp. That and armor values are higher in general, so not being in CS nearly as much sucks for them.

But rogues actually do most of their damage by being a "fast attacks" class. Sblades with SnD on sub is insane, you can damn near white attack someone down in 10 seconds.

[Kael]

But one reason their damage is so slow is because they are stealthed doing other things. You can not complain about damage then enjoy the stealthiness. Now they might have lower damage than other classes but it factors in cc and how much that they are are in stealth.

This is primarily valid for RBGs, which the person you're quoting, clearly explains are far more gimmicky in nature. When it comes to the stated intent of balance (3v3s), the rogue can't spend huge amounts of time stealthed "doing other things," because the only targets they can interact with and remain in stealth are... out of combat. They're not strolling around in stealth popping sap and protecting objectives in the 3v3 Sewers.

Also, "putting in perspective of how many people are actually playing the class," rogues are underrepresented in the 3v3 ladder (for example). There are 49 rogues in the ladder, and rogues make up about 7% of the L90 population. This isn't a subjective matter; accurate representation would see around 74/1000 on the ladder - around a 50% increase in representation. Add in that rogue is most definitely seen as a PvP class (for worse or worse), and we should expect a higher rep, not a lower one. This occurs (gasp) one place, and one only: RBGs, at 77 of the expected 74. 2s, 3s, and 5s are all low rep.

Edit: rogues additionally had piss-poor rep particularly as ratings increased past 2200, but that's no longer easily trackable due to the way arenas are grouped in 5.4, so there isn't much in the way of math beyond the ladder to add.

[Battlebeard]

Rogues are really in a bad place right now and need a serious.

Main reason is:

Non-Subtlety Speccs are way too bad!
Subtlety Specc is way too hard!

This makes competing at a high level as Rogue barely existing.

Even if you become a Subtlety master, you won't stand a chance against those who mastered most other classes.

[Wow]

Rogues are really in a bad place right now and need a serious.

Main reason is:

Non-Subtlety Speccs are way too bad!
Subtlety Specc is way too hard!

This makes competing at a high level as Rogue barely existing.

Even if you become a Subtlety master, you won't stand a chance against those who mastered most other classes.

While I don't think that's the main reason that is a big issue. If one rogue spec works in blizzard's eyes rogues are good if one shammy spec works but the others don't they have to work others and shammys aren't fine...

They could do lots of things to fix the other specs without touching sub. Just flat out give things to the other specs, spec specific talents and glyphs etc. But the fact is most don't find rogue's play style fun which even if they are good they need changes to make them more fun. Going cata to mop rogues went from having some of the best version of abilities to the worst and most of that's before all the nerfs on top of it.

This made even less want to play them and with wod looking to only fix combo points I doubt that will pull many non rogue players in may pull some old rogue players back but overall they barely touched rogues compared to what they should have done. Mages got a bigger overhaul than rogues or hunters....

Also for the most part classes don't follow the old strength and weakness rule set yet rogues do. A class doesn't work out very well if they are still following the rules and everyone else isn't.

[Deleted]

This is coming from the same guy that gave the reason for keeping cloak and dagger was more or less just woundman using it.....

Note that CnD will even further be nerfed in WoD due to the subterfuge nerf. The only use I could think of would be in RBG to Garrote all the healers and then maybe vanish and Cheap Shot all the Healers with subterfuge.

[Verain]

Note that CnD will even further be nerfed in WoD due to the subterfuge nerf. The only use I could think of would be in RBG to Garrote all the healers and then maybe vanish and Cheap Shot all the Healers with subterfuge.

Lol, I bet that subterfuge nerf is just because of the cheap shot / target arena 2 / cheap shot / target arena 3 / cheap shot / killing spree thing. "In order to stop just this one guy, we'll give the enemy team several globals to throw death coil at him. Whew, woundman handled! The other rogues all rolled warrior, so, mission accomplished."

[Gumboy]

The main issue? Warriors do everything rogues do better basically. combined with rogues being much, MUCH harder to play at a high level and this is what you will see.

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Rogues seem fine in rbgs.

Does anyone even take RBG's seriously right now? There are like two teams that play at a high mmr lol.

[Warstar]

Also there's the fact that rogues are the only class that has to chose between control and damage. Either waste dance as control. Spend your CP and energy on kidney shot. Over half of our CC potential are disorients which mean that you have to stop damage on those targets. So all this control that's possible with a rogue prevents our opponents from doing stuff yet also kind of prevents us from doing stuff as well. It's almost like hitting pause on the game.

Especially as combat cheap shot is actually kind of crap since you can either 4 second cs + half duration (4 seconds) kidney shot or open with a non-stun and get a full 8 second kidney shot yet cheap shot is actually inherently a better opener since if you open with ambush or garrote because of lag and latency the target will just run out of melee range and you'll proceed to spend the next 10 seconds in a game of catch up.

Compared to a warrior who has more CC potential than a rogue and a ranged no resource costing stun they can spec into. Or a paladin or DK who has a ranged no resource costing stuns. Or the grand poobah of bull shit the mage who has a ranged stun that actually helps them burst harder!

Or the rogue who sits there tickling the opponent not really doing much if any damage. Then a kidney shot! YES!..... and then more tickling. Unless you go into a dance after this that is.

It just feels like rogues have to trade way too much and other classes don't have that negative impact on their damage. It's reminds me of the way a lot of glyphs work but if rogues drew the short gimped retarded glyph all the other glyphs make fun of. Spec into the glyph of control and you can really lock some people down for awhile yet all of your damage is going to be practically none and every other class will out damage you. Or, go full damage with no control... and still sadly actually get beaten in damage by every other class.

And then there's the problem that rogue's main source of mitigation is dodge which is pure RNG based so sure some times you can dodge a bunch of stuff but then every time you need to dodge to live you take every single hit. Also where a warrior can sit a stun and be comfortable that def stance will still mitigate 25% of the damage intake. Once a rogue gets stunned they just take everything. They can't dodge anymore and just get raped. Monks and druids are also agility/dodge based classes yet they more than make up for this with really kind of too strong healing. Also druids can barkskin while stunned yet rogues just have to take it.

Something like feint with elusiveness usable while stunned would be awesome since that'd be a great way to mitigate the kills us usually while stunned burst. And before people cry OP warriors and DKs already have this up all the time. Look at stupid mw monks. Can't stun them at all or else everything is miss miss miss. Can't tell you how many times I've been on a mw monk in a BG not stunning them getting them into a good position to line up burst, popping dance, and then a stupid fucktard warrior charges over and ruins it....

Also rogue damage is just low over all. Take burst out of the equation and look at over all damage for any bg you go into. Even in a rogue in full bis 550 pvp gear vs. a hunter for instance in 522 gear the hunter will do more damage. And not dk dot aoe dot spreading cheese dps but straight MM single target dps. Even bad hunters will do more damage than a good rogue. Your average BG generally has an assortment of players who have the intelligence of a goldfish and an attention span not much longer. Yet you'll never see great rogues topping charts even when they go full cheese mode and try to. Not talking about RBGs where rogues are off doing stealthy stuff but just your average blood bath in the middle pvp brawls. Rogues are so shit. I get that control is great when working with a team mate yet if you cant help contribute to that then really all you're doing is helping hold people in place while someone else carries you to victory... Rogues need higher damage across the board. Their burst is good but it's not scary. A free casting destro lock with 4 embers is way more dangerous than a rogue will ever be. An enhancement shaman's burst is out of this world and crazy dangerous. DKs and warriors just hit hard all the time and have even harder hitting burst.

And the sad thing is that rogues really just aren't the best at anything. They're good at control yet a frost mage is infinitely better. Warlocks can spam fear over and over and over again until it hits a DR and then proceed to spam fear someone else. Moonkin can spam cyclone, if you ever hit them in melee you get rooted and they have treants that instant cast root you as well as a solar beam/vortex combo. Rogues sustained damage is 100% bottom of the barrel. Our out of CD damage is the worst in the game. And our burst is good but not great and we get out bursted all the time.

[Icecreamcake]

I agree with what you said Warstar and my main reason playing/choosing a Rogue was for their burst yet it seems that most times the windows of opportunity for burst is very minimal and is often times easily countered. Other classes just have much better utilities that can do the same, yet don't have to sacrifice the up time on their damage or pressure they put out. Like what you said in your last paragraph, Mages are practically the ranged version of Rogues and can essentially do everything they can better, at range. I've thought about going Mage recently, although the raiding group I will be raiding with in WoD wants me to stick with my Rogue and I'm not really the guy that plays two different classes, but if I had to I would definitely choose Mage.

Edit: I also agree that the dodge in this game is sort of stupid since there are so many ways to counter dodge yet other classes link Monk and Druids you mentioned who also have rely more on dodge as a defensive aspect have other ways to make up for the lack of dodge I guess you can say. Rogue's have no damage mitigation and practically no self heals, they're forced to run away or flee from a battle to get away from the pressure or damage, but as you mentioned if they get stunned there's practically nothing to save them from taking whatever may come their way.

[Dropndestroyrr]

Maybe I'm missing something, but does Feint not work in pvp?

[dak1]

Maybe I'm missing something, but does Feint not work in pvp?

Explain to me how you think Feint will fix any of the issues being mentioned or make Rogues ok, and I'll explain to you why you're wrong.

[Mormolyce]

Arena representation =/= performance level.

IMO it's more that some other classes are overperforming.

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Also there's the fact that rogues are the only class that has to chose between control and damage. Either waste dance as control. Spend your CP and energy on kidney shot. Over half of our CC potential are disorients which mean that you have to stop damage on those targets. So all this control that's possible with a rogue prevents our opponents from doing stuff yet also kind of prevents us from doing stuff as well. It's almost like hitting pause on the game.

Yeah this used to be (sort of) offset by the fact Rogues had shitloads of control where other classes didn't, now everyone has the level of control a Rogue or Mage does so it's an annoying legacy. Hopefully WoD will change that... we'll see.

[Dropndestroyrr]

Explain to me how you think Feint will fix any of the issues being mentioned or make Rogues ok, and I'll explain to you why you're wrong.

Rogue's have no damage mitigation

I never said anything like what you suggest dak1, don't get your panties in a bunch, not everyone is a troll.

[dak1]

Arena representation =/= performance level.

IMO it's more that some other classes are overperforming.

Really, arena representation is a pretty darn good indicator of performance level historically. The ladder is a sample size of 1000 people, so it's a pretty darn good sample size, and it happens to be the sample size that is often MOST responsive to buffs and nerfs and indicates how classes are doing at the highest levels.

When you say arena rep doesn't correlate to performance level, ask yourself, have you ever seen a class get buffed and drop in rep? Ele Shaman rep a couple patches ago barely saw a single player in the top 100, then they get buffed and now there's 8 in the top 100 including 1 at #8. Ret Paladins are hurting and the top ret is #127.

Really, I can't think of a single class/spec who's rep doesn't correlate very very closely to how the community perceives their current strength. The only class that is underperforming but people still seem to think is strong for some reason is Rogues.

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http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/24...e-rogues-gone/

Thread has been going on for quite a while now over at arena junkies.

Here's some quotes from some 2200+ and 2600+ Rogues:

Ohnoes, 9 time glad, 4 time rank 1:

rogues have been an entire joke this xpac, the amount of effort you have to put in with your team to score a kill against low mmr !@#$ players is ridiculous, which then can lead to your teammates to play w/ other classes where it's easier to win and i personally can't blame them. regardless of how well i play, i literally feel like my class is the reason the team is being held back from doing extremely well and that's not fun, hence all the rerolls/quitting

Mirøx, season 10 rank 1, season 11 and 12 glad, currently 2782:

I dont enjoying playing arena in this expansion at all. Its like, you have to try so hard to even stand a chance to win, and then you see people playing classes like elemental shamans/hunters/warriors, doing %^-* all, and still being same or higher rating than you... Just makes me sad and I cant be arsed to play more than 1 hour where I actually try to win, rest is just going in full retard and trying to oneshot people...

Kpul, season 10 and 11 gad, season 13 rank 1, currently 2309 in 3s:

Rogues aren't fun anymore to play. I know when the stars align i can put out ridiculous damage but when it comes to arenas in order to be successful as a rogue it demands so much synergy to be successful. Its to the point that it's exhausting to get a win even vs the worst teams.

Also, I've been saying it for a long time but whenever you hit seasons where Hunters or Ferals are the most played class you'll see less and less of rogues playing. I know when I enter an arena and I see a team make a gauntlet with flares and AoE spam in a tight corner to prevent the rogue opener I laugh. It makes rogue openers inconsistent and its often unreliable to have a good opener strategy when there are so many targetable AoEs to put a rogue's team in combat.

Rogue gameplay is second nature for me and I'm sure its the same for plenty of other players who have been playing since BC/Wrath. I am constantly asked how to do simple things like "how to open for good burst" and it leads me to believe that rogue gameplay, in order to be successful, needs to take advantage of every global properly otherwise they will fail immensely and thats too much of a learning curve for a new player. Regardless of how much damage rogues can potentially do I think they have the biggest gap between a new player and a skill capped player. The reason there are so few rogues playing is because its exhausting and requires so much setup to win against teams that are hundreds of MMR lower than you compared to other classes. The gameplay is stale and easily countered. The entirety of an arena match as a rogue is determined in the first 20 seconds of an arena and thats not fun / too hard to recover from a mistake. I think the biggest reason rogue population is so low is because rogues look fun on paper/stream but they immediately turn a player away when they see how much setup it takes vs playing another class to actually be successful.

Drankmymilk, season 13 glad, season 14 rank 1, currently 2557 in 3s, and Pusha, seaosn 9 glad (warrior) and 2225 in 3s both agreed with Kpul.

[celinamuna]

How good is rogue+ret paladin in 2s ?

[dak1]

How good is rogue+ret paladin in 2s ?

I can't really seeing it working very well. You might be able to get away with blowing cooldowns and scoring a kill at lower ratings against classes with no immunities, but after that the sustained damage for both will be low, both are viable kill targets, and you're going to be DRing CC for both (Blind + Turn Evil are both fear, First of Justice+Rogue Stuns, Sap+Repentence are both incapacitate). Both will also be fairly kitable, and both will need Hand of Freedom, etc.