Cataclysm Class Preview: Rogue

[Phantazm]

If we beat some other classes is not because we have more simple rotation, is because blizzard failed to balance the classes

balancing the classes properly would lead to us topping meters more often.

a hybrid class in a dps spec should not out dps a pure dps class with equal gear, assuming an at least average skill level playing both.

choosing a class is all about the give and take of mechanics. e.g. rogues trading a degree of survivability and group utility for much higher damage output or druids trading a higher damage output for being able to choose between ranged/melee dps, tanking, and healing for less than 50g and having things like travel and flight forms

[Talenarrus]

Combat Readiness seems like it'll be annoying when fighting against a rogue, but smoke bomb looks awesome and kinda makes me wanna level up my rogue from lvl 17

[Bisshop]

the changes sound great and the change w/ combo pts for SnD is interesting. i do wish we got more that just pvp abilities. some bomb will be fun to play and im sure we will see them go off in the ah's lol

[iorcedurmother]

OR,
trash aoes the Raid sittin in the smoke bomb since cant single target

Trash, or any mob for that matter still needs a main target to cast their spells on, i.e. the tank, they won't just sit there and AoE a random spot, the AoE factor is just for PvP.

Read the thing up there Blizzard even states that they want it to be able to be used as an LoS pull.

[iorcedurmother]

I am unimpressed, theres Not even a direct damaging ability.

Redirect sounds nice, but in a boss setting, why would i ever need to transfer my combo points? this doesnt work well for fights like rotface, festergut, marrowgar, ect. Great for leveling and PvP though.


Smoke Bomb is virtualty useless for a PvE, it doesnt realy do anything in a boss setting. PvP, sure great, cant be targeted cant be hit same for leveling, but in PvE, i doubt i would use it except if i was trying to get the casters closer to use in the rotface/festergut trash.

Umm, oh no it's not gonna work well in past fights that we're already amazing in? It's for fights like Lady DW or Dreamwalker or the LK. It's something rogues have a problem with, especially Mut. since we require 5 stacks of DP to be doing good damage changing targets really kills our dps. It's designed to help in areas that we need it, not increase our dps on fights we're already OP in.

And the smoke bomb will be good for LoS pulls.

One thing's for sure, the reserve combo points will be sweet for Combat, so you can go into the fight with a 5 CP SnD ready to go.

[elvez]

Umm, oh no it's not gonna work well in past fights that we're already amazing in? It's for fights like Lady DW or Dreamwalker or the LK. It's something rogues have a problem with, especially Mut. since we require 5 stacks of DP to be doing good damage changing targets really kills our dps. It's designed to help in areas that we need it, not increase our dps on fights we're already OP in.

Unfortunately Redirect has nothing to do with deadly poison stacks. An ability to instantly apply 5 stacks of deadly poison (similar to what DKs will get), THAT would solve our target switching problems, unless they put an absurdly long cooldown on it again.
Good rogues already waste very little combo points during boss fights, that's why we're not that excited about Redirect, especially with a 1 minute cooldown.

And the smoke bomb will be good for LoS pulls.

I still see it as a pvp ability but let's just hope blizz will surprise us with interesting pve situation where it might be useful.
Still that's not the kind of utility I was hoping to get, and now that mages (a pure dps class) got bloodlust/heroism we're really falling behind on that department.

[bloodforsilence]

sounds interesting, but what actually comes when they release the new trees and talents should hopefully provide for some more fun on my rogue

[Jhagadurn]

Howdy guys,
I posted a lot in the early pages of this thread, but I was hospitalized right after that with severe mono an tonsillitis, so I haven't been able to catch back up until now!...

So, I've been thinking about the rogue changes, and these are the conclusions that I've ended up with. I will present valid, logical arguments, and I will expect the same if you plan on commenting or arguing with me. Please be respectful as well. I understand these are just previews as well, but as we saw with WotLK, the previews were pretty accurate, so it's a good guess these are as well.

New Abilities:
Redirect is a good idea, but its implementation is bad. A skilled rogue player in a PvE situation shouldn't, and usually doesn't waste combo points. I mean, let's be real.... if you know you need to switch targets (let's say... Emalon, back when he was new at least), when you went to swap to the lightning elemental from Emalon, you always used the last of your combo points... and it was probably a good thing. Ohterwise, that's just damage or utility you're delaying, or possibly never using. In fights where targets are dying to quickly, the cooldown will prevent redirect from being useful anyway, and you should probably be using FoK anyway. And as further pointed out, redirect only swaps combo points. If it swapped poisons, which currently are a respectable amount of our damage (and look to be about the same), then it would be a better skill. But it doesn't. At most, I see this skill being useful to the PvP rogue, when a big Korean switch is called for in an Arena, and you shadowstep 20 yards away from your target instantly, with still 3 combo points on your old target... but that's all I think we'll see out of this ability.

Combat Readiness or whatever it is called goes deeply against what I think it means to play a rogue, but I'll get to that later in my post. As for the strength of the ability, it's decent. I won't say that it's great or even good, but it's not bad. Again, I don't see a lot of PvE use, outside of a 5 man where you might pull aggro off a bad tank you randomed with. If it gets to the point where you have a rogue 'tanking' any mob, especially in a raid situation, you've done something terribly wrong. I do think this is a strong ability for PvP, however, for anybody who's ever played DotA, you know how to counter this.... just like the Lord of Arvenus' ultimate ability, you just don't attack the rogue for 6 seconds... Or you do, and don't give a shit.

Smoke Bomb is actually a pretty cool ability, but AGAIN, unless Bliz has some ultra-specific situation for it, this is purely a pvp skill. You could argue that it will be good for LoS pulling, but other classes can do that much better.... notably, any class that can run around a corner and has a taunt... Although I could see some small use there in unique situations. In terms of pvp, I feel that it is a good ability, and rather cool, but not entirely as strong as I would have liked it to be. Essentially, it's the Evasion against ranged attacks, but slightly different. It's rather gimicky. I'm assuming that it will be either an area targeted spell like death and decay, or it will be a spell that radiates from you but stays in place after it is cast. Either way, I highly doubt you will be able to move with it, thus it is very easily countered in pvp. Don't forget, melee opponents can still damage you - and that sucks, because you're going to want to stay in your cloud to protect yourself from ranged attacks, but what if you have a warrior or paladin going ape-shit on you? Also, for those of you that haven't noticed, rogues don't have a ranged attack (if you say throw, go fuck yourself, it's not an attack, it's an annoyance). So say you're getting your face stomped on by a frost mage.... he freezes you to the ground, blinks away, and starts pounding you with frostbolts. You drop a smoke bomb. What does he do? Blizzard. YOu don't leave combat, you don't get to restealth, you still take damage, and the mage is still that far away from you. Now if you can throw the bomb it's a little better, that will let you cover some ground. But I just don't see this ability as being game breaking by any stretch of the imagination. I can see it being an aid to your healer, in pvp, protecting him from ranges CC's and maybe a 10k lavaburst crit, and I can see it being helpful to the rogue for aiding in vanish (since we all know you can get screwed occasionally when you vanish and then a frostbolt catches up to you and hits you and breaks stealth). But that's about it. Fair assessment?

Class direction:
I like where Combat is going - I like the fact that rogues have a spec that allows you to be a miniature warrior that relies more on speed and dexterity than plate and big weapons. But I don't want to be pigeon holed into this play style. I feel that this is what the new abilities are going to do to the class. Combat Readiness in particular is too good to pass up on its use, yet I don't like the idea of it. I also don't like the way the new stat system will be affecting us - making us much more durable in a straight out, toe to toe fight. To me, it seems like Blizzard has just kind of given up on rogues for one reason or another - they have better or more interesting things to work on I guess. Some of the other classes (notable DK's, Hunters, and Warlocks) are getting BIG overhauls in their mechanics, and it looks as if Blizzard just put off trying to balance rogues with rogue-like abilities and play styles, so they are just pushing us to a universal combat playsytle, because its easy to balance.
I can understand Blizzard's decision to move away from the rogue stun-lock gameplay mechanic in pvp. It is really, really lame to be on the recieving end, and it's just kind of a dick move. You essentially have to have an item (not skill, not player skill, an item) to counteract it, which is also in my opinion, kind of lame. But I don't think pushing the class as a whole into this more toe-to-toe combat style of play is the way to do it. I like playing my rogue, cause I like stealth. I like all the Splinter Cell games, and Metal gear - I want that in my wow experience. I wish they would have changed the way stealth works, or reduced the CD on vanish to like 30 seconds and got rid of Cheap shot.

This goes for PvE as well. I personally don't like, and I know many others feel the same way, the current rogue system of kicking ass in pve. Again, if we were warriors, it'd be cool. Just getting behind, and clubbing the bad guys to death, or poking them a lot until they die. But I really feel that in extended fights over 2 or 3 minutes, just standing there wailing on something (even if you do change targets and whatever or have to move, heaven forbid), it's not just rogue feeling. I think a really short vanish CD and more utility inside of stealth or a huge damage buff just outside of it would have made our pve experience a lot better as well.


That's the end of my thoughts. I hope the or cogniscent. I'm all hyped up on hydrocodine right now, so there's a chance that they aren't. But if I could just say one more thing on what I wish Blizzard would have done for rogues.....

Don't give us more moves and kills. Makes the ones we have better, more rogue-like and stealthy, remove the necessity of the stun-lock tactics in pvp, and add some kind of raid utility (possibly through more stealth as well) that makes our pve experience more exciting thatn 4 buttons. Rogues should come from the shadows, fast, hard, and with the element of surprise. 2/3 specs should focus on getting back to the shadows just as fast. Don't make those 2 specs more lame because it's easy to balance the third one.

That's it guys. I'm done.

[Jhagadurn]

No thoughts? comments?