Wishful thinking Combat tank spec?

[shadowboy]

Growl won't taunt raid bosses anyway.

[Sesshou]

It taunts for 3 seconds, that generally leaves you enough room to be highest on the meters, Also say this may work "/y I slept with ALL your Mamas! ".

I thought thats what you thought which is why I made that post. Go actually use it (on a raid boss) and come back because you are just talking out your ass with no idea how things actually work.

[Demeia]

I don't want a tank spec or I would have chosen a tank spec class. Besides, if they are going to add a tank spec I think a Hunter tank--the hunter pet getting healed as the hunter does--would be infinitely more interesting. Or, of course, Warlock.

[kabrai]

I didn't choose a class based on being a tank or not, as I didn't know what those roles were yet, lots of us didn't, we were all new to the MMO scene. But then again I joined in BC and Blizzard was just starting to figure out how to make their classes what they are today. Honestly I think the game has changed enough that pure classes need to be made hybrid in some fashion, but then again I feel like everything cool that rogues should have got were given to monks. Monks make better ninjas then rogues do.

Being the only pure melee dps class, I feel we need something more. In 10 man, I have seen groups take two of almost every other class, even pure dps, but nobody ever brings two rogues as that actually hurts composition, we cannot change buffs like other classes(warlocks, hunters), and our debuffs have very little value as other classes bring them in an easier to use fashion. We do bring top damage right now, and that might be what we need to bring always but it is never the case and I can hear other classes complaining about it too.

We also need to remove the behind the target ability penalty, we don't have 5 min pally buffs anymore, its an ancient relic from a bygone age. Maybe if other classes got a boost with it, I would say its cool but afaik we are the only class that has abilities that can only be used from behind.

I have seen many other players that just refuse to tank on a class that can, and that infuriates me as I love being a rogue, I love our class and everything but in the end, I cannot tank due to just old school "well, they just can't". I mean every class they added to the game has been melee, so what do we offer that other melee classes do not? Its bad enough that melee is usually a detriment to any raid encounter, as ranged typically get no penalty for standing in melee.

[Lexanna]

If you wish to tank as a Rogue, play Rift. As a Tank player for many years now, I can honestly say that 5 tanks in the game is a bit much as is.

[Warstar]

From Blizzard's own mouth:

Combat: A swashbuckler who uses agility and guile to stand toe-to-toe with enemies.

Compared to assassination whose a deadly master of poisons who dispatches enemies with vicious dagger strikes and sub whose a dark stalker who leaps from the shadows who leaps from the shadows to ambush unsuspecting prey. Neither, especially sub, of those two specs could honestly do anything other than be a dps spec because of how they're made to play. Even backstab as much as having a positional requirement sucks hard its very name is "BACK"stab aka stabbing someone in the back aka from behind.

Combat on the other hand sounds exactly like a tank spec with using agility and guile as mitigation tools vs a monster attacking you (tanking the thing attacking you).

Even if you added a fourth tank spec and kept combat as it is it would be a worthwhile thing to do. Saying that adding more utility to a class and changing it from only being a facerole dps spec is absolutely dog poop. If as a pure dps class we brought awesome raid utility and noticeably stronger dps than a hybrid that would be a different story because then as it was in vanilla when people brought 10 rogues to a 40 man in competitive server first raids a pure dps class would have a reason for being there.

Talking with my raid leader the other day, who raids many different 10 mans because he just enjoys raid leading, one of his biggest gripes is how inflexible some raids are. A melee heavy 2 healer low ranged raid is about the worst raid you could possibly make up. The ideal raid comp is "1" to 2 melee with 3 to 4 ranged and that stands true for any fight in ToT. Sure if you're that 1 melee in the group you're sitting pretty and this is probably the best raid ever but a lot of raids would rather stack ranged with having a ranged be ranged/off heal. I don't care if you had the top 3 dps rogues in the entire World of Warcraft at least one of those rogues would be getting sat for a ranged or more likely sat for a hybrid class even if it was a crap enhancement shaman who pulled very low numbers but could off heal well.

Adding hybridization to any "pure" class would not be destroying it in any way shape or form it would be adding flexibility to an inflexible situation. Say even if your raid doesn't necessarily need another tank but one of your current tanks is a paladin/druid who can heal in a fight where you need that 3rd healer you could very well have the rogue OT and your other tank go heal. Then you progress further into your raid and get more epics. Hell it would be a buff to your character and saying otherwise is just malarkey.

[Verain]

1- A lot of this is based on the idea that rogues get no consideration for being pure melee. In fact, rogues have been either top or nearly the top for all of mop, and the non-ranged-supremacy part of Cata- along with similar treatment in LK. Simply put, THE DEVS STILL GIVE PURE CLASSES A DPS EDGE AS STATED DESIGN INTENT HAS NEVER CHANGED. Second, rogues have feint and cloak- cooldowns which allow for a lot of nontrivial tricks. I believe rogues are given solid consideration currently- and I bitched wildly when they weren't.

2- Combat is a well loved (or at least, historically well loved) spec. Unlike taking blood and removing its dps capabilities, doing that for combat would be ludicrous- it's a 10 year spec. We will not be losing combat as dps.

3- Blizzard has come out several times saying that adding hybrid roles to the pure classes could be offputting for players who "don't want to be asked to not be dps".

4- "We don't have raid utility" is a rather serious complaint, and one the devs have been overly lax on in the past. In the present, however, rogues do bring some pretty serious raid utility in the form of smokebomb, a mechanic that stacks with every other health increase / damage reduction in the game, and one that can reward bringing multiple rogues for the first time ever. Meanwhile, expose armor is an acceptable cost for the first time in the history of the game. I think that rogues should be able to bring another raid buff (as in, switching from swiftblade's cunning to the 5% crit aura, or switching your poison brew from extra magical to extra physical). But I think that the devs are really finally listening here.

5- Rogues don't have a compelling tanking mechanic. One would have to be added. Shit like "recuperate gives you passive reduction" would be awful in play (recuperate is falling and I don't have a CP! pain suppress when I re-engage the boss!). If you look at the other tanks, they play fundamentally similarly, with enough differences to give them niches. Their relative power is pretty fucked right now, to be honest- it seems just above the range that most guilds will ask the "wrong" tanks to reroll- but that's likely within the success band for Blizzard (aka, the rerolls are light). But tanking requires the use of resources to tank, and rogues don't have that. We won't be seeing combat converted. We won't see ghostly strike return unchanged as a tank tool (it could be a tank tool, but 15% dodge isn't enough to plan around). We would need the equivalent of the two types of mitigation cooldowns we see on the other guys. If you added a rogue tank spec, a very solid model to look at the changes needed would be between windwalker and brewmaster.





For these reasons, we won't see combat as a tank spec- and we may not see a tank and heal spec at all- or at least until Blizzard changes their minds on the very existence of pure dps classes. For what it is worth, I actually think that all pures should become hybrids. My reasoning is, Blizzard seems poor at giving pures a proper and correct amount of utility- compare mage with lock, for example- while at the same time, overall PLAYER POWER is increased if the player is running a hybrid, while overall CLASS POWER goes up, often wildly, with access to a tank or heal spec. They really do have the damage thing, and a lot of people really weigh that one hard. The only pure who hasn't brought solid performance this whole expansion is the hunter, and that is by design- as hunters gained the ability to fulldps on the move, it's clear that they want that to be a niche (for ALL THREE hunter specs of course, because that's how they treat pures), but don't want hunter stacking to be a cheese way of doing it (meanwhile, the druid stacking we've seen specifically for their versatility, has been handled poorly).


So I'm very in favor of a rogue tank spec, or a rogue heal spec, or both (and likewise for hunters, mages, and locks)- but this would be a design shift, and Blizzard is worried that it would alienate a lot more players than it would appeal to.

[Warstar]

There are plenty of fury/arms warriors or shadow priests for example out there who refuse to play anything but and asking them to do outside of dps would be like asking a rogue to do that now.

World of logs has a lot of hybrids ranked top in the world over pure dps classes which goes against the "pure dps brings more damage" logic.

Hybridizing pure dps class goes along with Blizzards "bring the player not the class" quote that they say over and over and over again. Equally geared/skilled rogue vs warlock even if there is already 1 - 2 warlocks in a 10 man raid there's a good chance that the rogue will get sat for a warlock.

Even if blizz transformed combat to a tank spec rogues wouldn't lose anything at all. They could still have assassination/sub to bounce between of a fotm dps spec. If played as a tank spec combat could have a relatively similar play style to what it has now so people who like combat could still play combat and just have a higher demand for them.

From what I hear now there are players out there who if Blizz said that in 6.0 they're going to give rogues a buff that makes them more desirable to a raid and more utility and that in general wouldn't change game play style all that much that they would cry and say they would rather have an under performing carpel tunnel causing spec. Sounds like some pretty smart people out there who enjoy the taste of paint chips.

[Verain]

There are plenty of fury/arms warriors or shadow priests for example out there who refuse to play anything but and asking them to do outside of dps would be like asking a rogue to do that now.

I generally disagree. I would be happy to tank or heal on my rogue, but she can't do that. I would NOT be willing to change mains, however. Playing a role you don't enjoy as much is more of a press than asking a mage to spec a spec they don't like, but it's not out of line- and more relevantly, Blizzard's take SEEMS to be that there are a lot more rogues who are all about dps than there are stubborn dps-only hybrids.

There's also the "hook a brotha up" factor- especially in 10s, which by numbers is most raiders. If we have 2 of our 4 healers on one night, our spriest will respec and reforge to heals for a 3 heal fight. He doesn't want to do that permanently or anything. The exact same thing is true of our dps dk- with our prot warrior quitting in a couple weeks, he'll likely be blood tanking for us until 5.4. These guys don't like those roles as much as dps, but they are willing to help out, and do- and in my experience, that is FAR more common than some dps queen who would rather the raid not run. That folds into the "player power" and "class power" arguments too.

World of logs has a lot of hybrids ranked top in the world over pure dps classes which goes against the "pure dps brings more damage" logic.

Well, does it really? What specific hybrids are shitting on what specific pures? And note that on many fights, overall dps isn't exactly the best measure of stuff. The only pure I really see low is hunters, and I'm positive that's because of their "dps on the move" experiment. The pure edge doesn't mean "every pure must be on top every single fight" and never did. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that rogues aren't the top of single target dps, just as the manual said we were. And even on fights where we don't show up near the top, we are often being very valuable. For instance, rogues are very beneficial on Horridon. Locks deal more damage than rogues, but that doesn't mean you necessarily will have a smoother Horridon kill by stacking locks- there's diminishing returns on multidotting a quad damage taking target, but add destruction with marked for death actually reducing healing and mechanical pressure immediately.

Hybridizing pure dps class goes along with Blizzards "bring the player not the class" quote that they say over and over and over again. Equally geared/skilled rogue vs warlock even if there is already 1 - 2 warlocks in a 10 man raid there's a good chance that the rogue will get sat for a warlock.

There is no fucking way a guild will take lock main #3 over rogue main #1, sorry. That's not to say that stacking locks this expac hasn't been an issue- the portal networks are way too good, along with their ability to dps on the move (that one at least is going away, though in an unfun meany-face way).

But, I do agree- Blizzard SHOULD hybridize pures. I'm just saying, their current philosophy is exactly what they said it would be, and it is working to a degree.

Even if blizz transformed combat to a tank spec rogues wouldn't lose anything at all.

Bullshit. I love combat. I would hate to lose it- even as I feel it's partly already been lost. Combat has been a really excellent spec with a lot of depth through most of its existence. Even now, pushing revealing strike off the global would probably fix all the issues the spec has- or a more substantive redesign involving a "high energy use" rotation, a larger energy bar, and similar mechanics to take away the button spam issue.

They could still have assassination/sub to bounce between of a fotm dps spec. If played as a tank spec combat could have a relatively similar play style to what it has now so people who like combat could still play combat and just have a higher demand for them.

Right, which would make it a TERRIBLE tank spec, and a TERRIBLE idea. It would need to play like brewmaster or blood, both energy based tank specs- and that demands a fourth spec, not to shit on one of my favorite specs.

From what I hear now there are players out there who if Blizz said that in 6.0 they're going to give rogues a buff that makes them more desirable to a raid and more utility and that in general wouldn't change game play style all that much that they would cry and say they would rather have an under performing carpel tunnel causing spec. Sounds like some pretty smart people out there who enjoy the taste of paint chips.

Oh noes, they fucked up combat design for 2 years out of 10, BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!!


Gimme a break bro. If they want to add new roles, they'll add new specs, not delete my favorite shit.

[Warstar]

@Verain I think you didn't really look at my posts are just kinda saw "change my fav spec so now I'm going to flame you" because honestly you kind of just re-said a lot of the points I've made but in a "screw you" kind of way. You sound like you agree that rogues need a hybridization but just in a different way but same end goal. You don't have to be a douche about it.

A 4th spec would be ideal but in the case of not adding a 4th spec getting a hybrid out of rogue combat would make the most sense. Can't make everyone happy but it would bring more to a linear class. Even if they did a redesign quality of life change to combat that made it higher dps and easier to play people like you would still complain about how because of blah reason this isn't a good change because I like blah better even if everything about makes the spec stronger more desirable and better to bring to raids. Hell if combat rogues could fly in raids, shoot fireballs out their eyes and lightning out their ass doing the strongest single target dps and highest aoe dps out of any class in the game by 25% and take 75% reduced damage from all sources people would still complain saying that back at whenever time rogues were better.

[delus]

I think if they change any spec to a tank spec it should be sub. Why? Because while combat is unique and plays fun subtlety feels rather bland. Likewise, they could just rename combat to subtlety and create the new combat spec on sub's ashes.

[Verain]

@Verain I think you didn't really look at my posts are just kinda saw "change my fav spec so now I'm going to flame you" because honestly you kind of just re-said a lot of the points I've made but in a "screw you" kind of way.

Interestingly, you're the one with the ad hominems.

You sound like you agree that rogues need a hybridization but just in a different way but same end goal. You don't have to be a douche about it.

As demonstrated.

A 4th spec would be ideal but in the case of not adding a 4th spec getting a hybrid out of rogue combat would make the most sense.

Yes, it would. Combat is the only spec that is designed to be a duelist. Conceptually, the other specs are designed to put pain on unsuspecting or disabled targets.

But there would be no reason NOT to make a 4th spec if they were going to hybridize pures (or even SOME pures).

Even if they did a redesign quality of life change to combat that made it higher dps and easier to play people like you would still complain about how because of blah reason this isn't a good change because I like blah better even if everything about makes the spec stronger more desirable and better to bring to raids.

I don't think so. And history is on my side- people didn't complain about combat endlessly during Lich King, BC, or even vanilla, but the QQ began in earnest once the spec was married to full on target uptime to get cooldowns correctly (restless blades turned, say, Mimiron from a very solid combat fight to a very weak combat fight), once we had to track ZG scarabs (I'm pretty sure that bandit's guile caused some class quitters, and I KNOW it caused some spec quitters) with 0 UI support, and once they took away the bonus crit damage from sinisters, causing rogues to need to stack haste for the autoattack benefit instead of any other stat, which causes us to this day to be unable to correctly spend our energy in a strategic or good manner. Oh, and when they changed fan from melee weapon hits to other stuff, and when they moved it from 50 to 35 energy, we lost our ability to spend down.

The only positive change the spec has really seen was the full time blade flurry, but the current version is so finicky about actually picking up targets (and we still have no graphic evidence over who is being hit, making us basically like inferior melee elemental shaman) that many a rogue will be flurrying improperly and not even know it now. We had a whole expac with bandit's guile being single target!

Hell if combat rogues could fly in raids, shoot fireballs out their eyes and lightning out their ass doing the strongest single target dps and highest aoe dps out of any class in the game by 25% and take 75% reduced damage from all sources people would still complain saying that back at whenever time rogues were better.

Well, if I had to press a button every 0.5 seconds for that effect, I'd still complain about that, yes.


The problem isn't that combat has a high APM, it's that a small global cooldown presses on things that shouldn't be pressed. For instance, server lag means that there's a very small window to enter your keystroke for the next effect- whereas, if we had the ability to use an ability off the global (for instance, if revealing strike had a 3 second cooldown on its own, but was off the global) that wouldn't need to be pressed at exactly the right moment for the same general effect.

But even outside of cooldowns, the spec is lacking, and I don't mean dps wise (the spec is not that badly tuned or anything right now, honestly!). I mean that giving us a series of colored lights and think-ahead abilities and then making the correct answer "push crystal meth to win" has defeated both the strategy and resource systems of the spec. How often do you find yourself pooling in yellow? If you had a resource system, the answer would be "often". It is not. Why is there nothing that adds insight instantly? Etc.

[Raegwyn]

just to mention since he deserves it

[Viradiance]

This is the worst idea I have ever heard.

The WHOLE IDEA of Rogues is to be hidden, stealthy and kind of covardly thiefs and buccaneers attacking from behind and vanishing when the going gets tough. Rogue is the very opposite of a tank and the last class to ever tank.

It is also the ONLY pure melee DPS class, so adding speccs like Range, Heal or Tank would kill the class.

Besides, Rogue Tank was added in Mists of Pandaria, it's called MONK!!

Enough threads about how to change Rogues, we need SLIGTH changes but we do not need a revolution.

I couldn't disagree with you more.

But let me just point you to what Rogues were in Warcraft 3.

http://i.imgur.com/LObjoIZ.jpg

Dem shields.


Or how in WoW Alpha, Rogues had access to shields (Bucklers. Hunters used them, too)


The duelist / swashbuckler archetype is well established in most fantasy lore as a one-on-one fighter using 1-2 weapons and outwitting their opponent with speed and guile-- exactly what Combat is purported to do.

Rogues and Monks also have very unique and stark visual differences from one another: Monk tanking is about being so drunk you just don't give a shit that enemies are attacking you and beating the shit out of them with your hands (Brawling) where Rogues would be more parry and weapon masters.

[Kael]

To those edging on personal attacks: cool it, now.

I generally agree with the points both Verain and Warstar are bringing up - and I don't think Combat needs to be turned into a combat spec directly - but having the ability to tank in a pinch (and to be fair, warlocks and hunters both CAN do this) without symbiosis would be nice, even if we don't see a dedicated tank spec. I really would like to see the three remaining pures given an offspec that can be used (either tanking or healing) - primarily for raid flexibility. As mentioned, if for some reason you really really need a tank or healer and the rogue/hunter/warlock is willing to help, the rogue switches classes - see Coldkil. It sucks.

Right now, being ONLY DPS is why if someone doesn't have a raid group and intends to raid, and doesn't automatically hate both healing and tanking, I don't recommend rogues. If you don't have a spot, DPS spots are the hardest to come by - raids are always filling tank and healer spots, even OS tanking and healing spots - and that can easily make the difference between raiding with the group you want to and not.

That said, our DPS is very nice right now - but I also don't think any class is doing all that badly for DPS. That's a discussion for a different forum, though.

[Verain]

Even with Symbiosis, we have no way to grab threat (Growl doesn't seem to function in a raid, leaving its top trick to be world PvP), and of course, relying on a strange buff like that is bizarre anyway.

Blizzard could probably give us a temporary tanking ability if they wanted, but they are likely concerned about how it would work out in 25s. For instance, if you can meaningfully tank for 20 seconds, three rogues give you a minute of tanking without an actual tank, and five rogues could probably let you run less tanks- and tanking is already a hard enough spot to compete for normally (it's hard to find a dedicated tank- we're looking right now as our prot warrior is quitting soon- but also hard to find a guild at the level of progression you want that actually needs you, especially if the tank balance is poor and you have a derptank until Blizzard fixes it). I honestly think that allowing agi leather to tank on bears and monks while still having plate tanks balanced around defensive stats is a strange move indeed (well, not so much paladins, which is even stranger)- but most certainly, the idea of a spec that can tank without paying the dps price is something Blizzard jumped through hoops to address with "feral combat" being deleted and "feral" and "guardian" filling the old role.

If you don't have a spot, DPS spots are the hardest to come by - raids are always filling tank and healer spots, even OS tanking and healing spots - and that can easily make the difference between raiding with the group you want to and not.

Amen. And you can get social pressure against even playing a pure, because you won't be able to switch specs if needed. And demanding not only to be dps, but to be MELEE is even more "selfish"- especially if the boss is like "every 10 seconds I pick a ranged to fuck, and if there's less than 4 ranged I'll pick anything", because now you are actually opting out of raid mechanics. Though that's still better than the effect where a fight forces ranged to do all the mechanics and the melee have to tunnel, like that Beatyface orc in ICC- everyone said "this is a melee fight!" because melee made the meters blur, but in practice you could have sat EVERY single melee, and picked your top ranged to stand in melee, and had the same result- that was just melee being special needs and ranged carrying.


I don't think Blizzard will hybridize the pures, but I think the game would be better if they did. I know I would feel a lot more powerful if I had a sexy spec like blood or brewmaster to run around with, or a chess-playing spec like mistweaver. These specs are hallmarks of these classes, I know that- but it would be nice if rogues got a piece of that pie. I know there are others who disagree. And yea, this would result in dps rogues being tuned lower- if we had the same options as a warrior, you'd have no expectation of being generically tuned higher for a decent number of fights.

[Deleted]

The WHOLE IDEA of Rogues is to be hidden, stealthy and kind of covardly thiefs and buccaneers attacking from behind and vanishing when the going gets tough. Rogue is the very opposite of a tank and the last class to ever tank.

That sounds like sublety and assassination, alright, but not combat.

Not every rogue is an assassin.

[Elbrondane]

If they were to give Rogues a tank spec, the best option would be to add a 4th. I would swap to tank spec so hard, so quickly if they added a tank spec for us.

[Warstar]

The whole idea of a "rogue" from a role playing perspective is a person who lives and/or acts outside of society. A group of hired thugs or bandits would be in the same category as a stealthy assassin. Also the classic argument of pirates vs. ninjas they're both "rogues".

Whether you like the spec or not the reason I said "combat" instead of the other specs was based solely upon blizzards own description of the class of going toe to toe with someone which sounds pretty "tanky" is you ask me. The idea of attacking someone and them attacking you back but using agility and guile to avoid those attacks is about as tank as you could get without saying "This spec is a meat shield."

My whole reason behind this post is that rogues and pure dps classes in general just don't bring enough to the table (warlocks being an exception because of huge utility). A lower dps hybrid spec that can jump into a healing spec and off heal a fight and continue progression is infinitely a better option than a semi higher dps spec that can't do anything. According to blue posts and GC himself all rogue specs play similarily but he doesn't expect a mass overhall and rogues are a well represented class over all. Rogues are found in a lot of raids as a solo melee dps but adding a second rogue or even a second melee if the raid has a different melee isn't a common thing at all. But melee in general has the lowest amount of raid spots generally in the history and in current content. While not as bad as it used to be melee are generally sat for a ranged class and in a perfect world ranged will always out number melee in a raid. A melee heavy raid has a lot harder time than a ranged heavy raid aka have fun being a rogue trying to kill turtles on tortos. Asking for a change to 1 spec or in a better situation adding a 4th spec to all pure classes doesn't take anything away from them but adds so much more. If you're an awesome dps but an absolutely crappy healer you won't get asked to heal but if you're an awesome player and can do more than faceroll a boss then adding that hybrid to a class brings so much to a raid and makes it easier to find a raid spot. In so many raids now they have 1 or 2 melee and those spots are set and it'll be hard as hell trying to find a raid that has a melee spot. There are a lot of people who play melee characters and just not that many openings.

Also, saying that this class isn't as good as another class in a similar role and that I should just class change is a pretty good indication that the class does need some changes/QoL upgrades. Warlocks are in a very good spot right now. They're a pure class but they currently have 3.5 completely different specs and they even have a spec that has 2 completely different play styles. As a rogue and even feral druid you have 3 (4 with feral) almost identical specs that boil down to: generate cp > spend cp with a finisher > keep dots/debuffs up. Minor differences between them and most of it's syntax differences. Backstab/Sinister Strike/Mutilate are all the same ability with minor differences. Envenom and Eviscerate are the same thing. Keeping up Find Weakness/Envenom/Revealing Strike is some what the same thing with small differences in up time. And then all 3 classes keep rupture rolling. Biggest difference would be that combat has SS and RS and combat has BS/Hemo vs assassination only having mutilate and then assassination getting a proc/sub getting a CD for dispatch/ambush and combat having no procs to watch for. Obviously there are other differences but in general all three classes are extremely similar.

[Sesshou]

Whether you like the spec or not the reason I said "combat" instead of the other specs was based solely upon blizzards own description of the class of going toe to toe with someone which sounds pretty "tanky" is you ask me. The idea of attacking someone and them attacking you back but using agility and guile to avoid those attacks is about as tank as you could get without saying "This spec is a meat shield."

I've said since they changed the description that the only way the combat description is faithful is if we have at least limited tanking viability. It says swashbuckler so we should from that description have the ability to use shields (bucklers). It says toe-to-toe which means you are standing in the front, but melee dps always want to stand behind and only tanks really stand in the front. We should at the very least get a taunt. Every melee dps other than us have a taunt (and yeah I realize they are all hybrids).

On the otherhand, if combat as a dps spec was removed, I'd be very sad. I guess maybe if they took the positional req off sub that would somewhat make up for it.