Why invite a Rogue?Follow

I kind of wish I had taken my paladin up first also. My rogue is sitting at 80 and my paladin 74 now. Paladin would be way more fun with multiple job roles. Its like having 3 classes in one.

Personally, I'm not as worried as a lot of people that we can't AoE. AoE is great for trash, but single target DPS is important for bosses. We can do *some* AoE dps as combat, 3 rogues as DPS would survive to any boss. Just not as fast.

No the real problem I see is two things.

One: We DPS, that's what we do. We have a few little bonuses, but nothing compared to any other class. I mean a ret paladin can throw heals, take hits when needed with divine protection and a fullblown taunt, awesome buffs, etc. I'm loving my ret paladin. A rogue can... dps.

Why take a DPS when you can get the same DPS *and* a lot of other things?

Two: Survivability. Blizzard seems to have forgot when they had to go back in BC and change a lot of bosses to not instablick rogues with AoE. Everyone was, for some odd reason, preferring ranged attackers. Gee! Wonder why! So its not as bad now, but its still more stress on healers, which is probably one of the few challenging things right now. Ranged attackers are out of a lot of the AoE, and every other melee save shaman have platemail. Rogues have the least armor of any face-to-face melee class.

So why take a dps+healer burden when you can just take a dps?



p.s. lulz at anyone who says TotT is rogue utility. Because tanks need more aggro... lulz.

Edited, Dec 15th 2008 3:39pm by digitalcraft

One thing I want to mention is that I think Blizzard had it wrong both before and now.

Before hybrids got penalized for certain things that were irrelevant to their position in the party. They got penalized because they *could* do other roles. Didn't matter that it was no help during that party.

Now they don't, which is better, however I don't think Blizzard is taking into account the other capabilities classes have.

i.e. The bonus of heavy armor, or the bonuses of standing at range, or of tossing heals, or of party buffs or enemy debuffs. All these need to be a factor too! Just equalizing dps is not equal at all if many classes have a ton of other capabilities.

3 posts in a row! Wow I'll let other people speak! :D

Edited, Dec 15th 2008 4:23pm by digitalcraft

OP flawlessly sums up the situation at hand. It's scarily similar to a conversation i had today with my arena partner, down to him logging off to level *his* druid. I strongly suspect that rogues scale very well with better gear. The difference i saw in one guild member from one naxx week to another was astounding after 7 days spent replacing blue quest rewards with blue, occasionally epic heroic drops, to the extent he rivaled me on Patchwerk (i'm a ret, and therefore can expect +400 dps on single undead targets).

However, there are more serious problems. The fact that literally half the bosses in WotLK decimate you for the sin of standing within melee range. I can self-heal and eat a few whirlwinds, whirling slashes etc with plate armor. Rogues can't (at least until the Feint change is live).

Combat seems lackluster. The choice therefore is between an obviously bugged HaT spec, or struggling with the most complex dps spec in the game, mutilate.

Either many classes AoE abilities are monstrously too powerful (see: Volley) or trash is simply too easy. Not that rogues have ever shone against large groups of trash, but it isn't fun to frantically tab through a mess of graphics to find something not being destroyed by 3 AoEs.

I effortlessly outdps similarly geared puredps classes, this is patently stupid. I should at least have to struggle to compete, not faceroll 2,3,4,Shift-2 rinse and repeat and leap to the top of the chart. "A good retadin should always compete with a decent rogue"

I'm certainly not any kind of PvE expert, but it seems to me like even in the hardest heroics, HoL, The Old Kingdom etc, tanks are indestructible walls of pain that no amount of trash mobs can conquer. I've run with druids, warrs and tankadins (DKs, not so much) and the kind of accidental body pull that would have normally spelled a wipe are simply gathered up and AoEed down with the first group of mobs.

Trash as a concept is actually starting to feel more like a nuisance you endure to get to the excellent boss fights in WotLK; it's probably twice as bad for rogues.

Yeah if you're in to wildlife. My rogue is HOT. Your cat licks its butt.



EDIT: Also check patch notes for 3.0.8 (next patch). They will be removing cool down from fan of knives and something else to give rogues AOE-bility.

Edited, Dec 15th 2008 11:38pm by ekaterinodar

I know how you feel. Since the pre WOTLK patch I have not been impressed with my rogue. Even in PVP I feel like they have fell behind abit. Before that patch my mage was scared to death of rogues. Now, outside of a stunlock, I can usually slow and kite them to death. I have a 70 rogue who has not gained 1xp since the expansion because I just have no desire to play him. Seems like with a rogue if you get more then 2 things after you at once you either gotta depend on potions and cooldowns to survive or simply run away. Meanwhile my DK is killing 4 to 6 things at once and even my mage can handle 4 or 5 things if I am careful.

I know it won't happen but I have always felt Rogues should get mail armor. I mean hunters get mail armor and they have a pet to help defend them. Every other MMORPG game I have played rogues have gotten chainmail/mail armor (well eq1 and eq2). The extra armor would help alot solo wise IMO. Like I said I know it won't happen though.

Pretty much.

But why would I personally want to do less DPS instead of more?

Hence me rolling a DK.

That, and they're not ridiculously complicated like rogues have become (mut).

My main is a rogue and, while I've only been doing heroics for the last week, I'm looking for a raid group now. I'm finding it not too bad for heroics - I've made a few friends and had good runs on the heroics so far, but making that jump is eluding me. I've got enough gear or at least it would be enough for any other dps/hybrid class - dungeon/rep blues and a few purples - but it's impossible to find a raid group that wants a rogue.

Jord's spot on but I think there's more behind the issue. Right now dps is all about AoE damage and it's unrestricted - nobody's having to hold back because the tanks have so much threat against multiple targets. So the dps that's wanted for groups are the classes that can put out lots of damage to multiple targets.

This might provide a niche for rogues. If tanks' threat doesn't scale as well as the DPSers damage, perhaps we'll be brought in to aid the threat - Tricks of the Trade and Fan of Knives spammed? I hope this isn't the case but it's a possibility.

What Blizzard should do is bring back cc and either scale back other dps classes or increase our output.

As for Jord's point about swords, perhaps this is Blizzard saying we must do PVP to get weapons... again! Hopefully it won't take until the fourth content patch to get badge weapons that are useful, unlike the artifact rubbish that's being peddled now.

I certainly see Jordster's point, but I can't help it-- I love my rogue and the class in general, and I don't want to give up on my main just yet :-)

My guild is pretty casual and we're still building a core group to do 25 player content, so I can't speak to higher level raiding, but as far as 5-man heroics, etc., go, I haven't found it to be a major problem. My server's population is pretty low, so it's not uncommon for groups to need extra dps, and I haven't had anyone turn me down due to being a rogue. Part of that may be residual impressions of the class from TBC, and a lot of players I know who are new to tanking appreciate the cc, so I'm still "employable".

As far as the dps rankings go, I'm usually at the bottom in terms of damage done (trash drops too fast to be competitive while I'm getting into melee range), but the actual dps is about average. I've had to adjust my expectations and focus more on hitting personal, rather than group, bests...

And as many posters have noted, Blizzard has a way of remedying things, so I'll try to keep my rogue as current as possible for when they do.

Just in case they don't, I've also started leveling a druid :-)

Originally Thieves/Rogues in RPGs were used primarily for Utility and rarely did decent damage (as far back as D&D).
Unless they plan on adding tons of traps that need to be disarmed (lockpicking isn't that much of an issue anyway because of keys/charges), I don't see Utility ever being why they're brought to Raids in WoW, therefore they need to do competitive damage (and right now that includes AoE damage).

Blizzard's Utility answer was to give them Tricks of the Trade, which is something that would've been useful in BC but is entirely unnecessary in WotLK, and unfortunately it might be a while before Bliz figures that out.

Edited, Dec 16th 2008 11:09am by angryempath

So far in 5 mans, most rogues I've run with have been 800dps. Well below other dps classes. But I've ran with 2 above 2k, top one at 2350. So it is possible in a nonraid setting, to do over 2k dps.

It just seems harder for rogues.

This was a 'post of the day' on WoWInsider yesterday. The main reasons they found, that I also think are worthy -

Interrupts - still needed in the game and Rogues have the most/fastest around.

As a druid, I still assign CC when we have more than 3 mobs. If we have lots of cc in the group, I'll only handle 2. It's easier on the healer. And yes, while we'll be rolling on gear against each other, for the most part -

Rogues won't take your gear. The other DPSers are clothies or mail wearers. If you don't have a druid, well shame on you, but if don't, that's one less person you have to roll against and one more piece of gear that will be put to good use.