Originally Posted by
BaronBulb
I think a combination of factors are at play here because it was not always this way. I seem to remember at 60 there were rogues everywhere. The game has moved on and changed a lot since its original launch and for the most part, rogues have not. Gonna give my opinions on both pve and pvp separately.
In pvp rogues were designed to end fights swiftly and brutally, this rarely happens these days with the potential for massive health pools and increased amount of defense/utility cd's available to players now. Rogues 'niche' in group pvp was constant on demand stuns and interrupts, this too has also been spread to many other classes who often have better options for healing and survivability without blowing long cd's.
When it comes to pve, from my own experience (raiding from Molten core to Icc as combat/assasination specs) rogues are quite simply boring. In good gear they put out impressive numbers but the playstyle seemed more about watching a buff to your white damage while spamming 2 buttons. The hardest part for raiding rogues back then was not accidently overaggroing the tank and getting 1 shot by some boss melee. This aggro issue has since been resolved but until the day I quit playing on my rogue (End of wotlk) the only viable specs were assasination and combat they still relied largely on nursing the slice and dice buff while hammering 2 buttons.
Being a pure class there is never an option to change your role should fancy something different, rogues are a melee damage class and that's all they will ever do. There is even a trend now that ranged dps > melee dps in raid formation so rogues can suffer in a way that hunters/mage/locks will not. In modern times I do believe they are the only melee class that has no other option than damage and maybe with smaller raid sizes people prefer to main a flexible character, one that can heal or tank if needed, thus allowing them access to more content more frequently.
These are entirely my own opinions based my experience as having a rogue as my main, and I acknowledge that I have missed out on some changes in the 2 expansions where I have not played as a rogue, yet I believe the previous reasons still stand as to the decline of rogue popularity. It was fun while it lasted as my class was competitive if not downright top dps for much of the content I played through and I clocked up a respectable 77k honour kills while pvping so I saw my fair share of action (gangs of rogues in enemy cities was always a blast). But ultimately I began to feel restricted and outright bored by my chosen class, and played alts (prot warrior and all specs of mage mostly) more often until my rogue was completely shelved.