Rogues: The Past, The Present And The Future?

Rogues: The Past, The Present And The Future?

The Past:

I myself have been a Rogue player ever since April 2005. I started out as a young Undead Rogue, I remember my friend telling me about WoW and how cool it was. The mention of fighting against a “Level 500 Dragon”, the massive raids etc. It was someting I never before had experienced in a game. He told me something about the races and I immediately became attracted to an Undead, a Rogue was always my type of character so that was a fast pick. From here on, my adventure started.

I’ve also been a long-time Diablo2 player, and also in this game, I was attracted to the PvP aspect, which was compared to WoW, real crap. It was therefore not long before I reached my lower 20’s on my Rogue. My friend told me of a place called “Duskwood”, and how the graveyard in that zone was seemingly crawling with alliance all of the time. We set on a journey through the harsh lands of Stranglethorn Vale. I remember the epic feeling of really stealthing through a whole zone, the slow walking, seeing an Alliance character passing us while we were hiding in the bushes, I had never experienced the true feeling of a rogue like this before. Miraculously, we made it without so much as a scratch all the way from Grom’gol to the Scourge invested graveyard in Duskwood. This is place where almost 4 and a half years ago my PvP love for this game started. I literally camped the graveyard zone for over 1 week, fulltime. Many wise looking gnomes were brutally slaughtered by my newly poisoned daggers. Many righteous human fell to a swiftly thrust dagger into their back. The rush of adrenaline after a fresh kill, and the bitter escape that came from me after seeing several “Skull” Alliance characters scouring the graveyard for that filthy Undead assassin is something that will forever stay one of the best and most fun experiences in the game for me.

It was not long after that period that me and my friend rerolled to the Alliance and I went forth and played an oh so noble Human Rogue. I levelled this character to 60 and enjoyed many, many and many AB’s and WSG’s. The eventual epic AV grind to my first epic dagger, and me joining my first “raiding” guild not so long after that. As time went on I was a full epic T2 Rogue, rocking the beautiful Chromatically Tempered Sword as one of the first on my server. The sword is still, and will ever be sitting gently in my bank as a relic of times past. With my full T2 gear and an awesome sword for those days, I went the classic Hemo spec and pretty much killed everything in a simple stunlock, there was not much that could touch my glory in those days. Sadly, those days went by far too fast.

TBC was on the horizon and I levelled a Shammy. Enhancement for the whole expansion. Getting beat up time and time again by those ShS rogues, especially the ones with dual glaives, oh how I missed my rogue. I had an Orc Rogue on the side with decent arena gear, but since my Shammy was already in the best of the best gear, I stuck with him. Looking back at this era, Rogues were truly shining here. We really stood out from the rest in terms of what we could bring to a team.

The Present:

We are now in WOTLK, I’m still a diehard PvP fan, but I never took Arena that far before as the top players. I achieved decent ratings, such as 2.3k in 2’s recently with a Destro Lock. Looking back on all this, I’m really starting to wonder, in which direction is Blizzard going with Rogues? Yes, we are still a very powerful class, but the way we work at the moment, and the way Blizzard is “kind of” forcing our talents, I’m confused, especially compared to how we started out in the 60 days.

Lets take a look at some points that got me wondering:

In WOTLK, poisons play a more prominent factor in the performance of the rogue class then ever. Blizzard is forcing us more and more to go for deadly poison. Why are we forced to use a poison that is so devastating for our own CC’s? Blind? Gouge?

Like discussed many times before, why is the Rogue class forced to use a 41 point talent to be the most successful with in PvP? Yes, we can take other specs, but those have proved to be far less effective, while all other classes are rocking their 51 pointers.

Now, lets take a look at Rogue survivability. We are a class that relies much on our stealth ability, the moment we come out, we become vulnerable. The spec most of us play now, has preparation. This ability allows us to survive a bit longer, but still, I sometimes have to blow Prep just so I can finally get a clean vanish off.

They fix vanish and they immediately revert the change, this was a sad moment for the Rogue community. Our Cloak of Shadows ability is very powerful indeed, but it only lasts 5 seconds and is on a 1 minute cooldown. It is not a rare sight to have a DoT on me 1 second after I used CLOS. With CLOS and vanish on cooldown, what is the Rogue supposed to do? We are so easily kited these days that effective cooldown management is very hard, and in longer matches, almost not possible. I myself actually have a ridiculous amount of resilience for a Rogue, 964 to be exact, coupled with the 6% DR from Assassination, I actually still got globalled by a Wizard Cleave, 28K HP (Priest buffed), gone in a second.

The way Rogues have to spec at the moment, forces us to drop some of our key damaging abilities, we are already missing out the top of our Assassination tree, and now we have to drop points from DW spec. Most Rogues also choose to drop some points out of Lethality, while not adding a very big boost in damage, it is in fact an extra bit of burst for Rogues. It is also not practical to get 3/3 Find Weakness, we need our 6% DR. With the upcoming poison buff, this leaves us very little points to pump into offensive abilities.

We are forced to use poison that breaks our CC’s, and we can not spec for full offensive power anymore. We are easily kited, and cooldowns are becoming less reliant and are easily outmanoeuvred by decent players. Let me make this clear though, the Rogue is STILL a very powerful class, and is a good addition to most arena teams. But, we are becoming such easy targets, with most other classes bringing a MS effect and being a harder target to kill, can we still claim our arena spot?

The Future?

Our damage feels a bit behind, and we are using poisons that makes it harder for us to lockdown our own target. This really gets me thinking in what direction Blizzard is taking Rogues? Most classes have some sort of talent / spell / passive effect / glyph that does not break their own CC because of DoTs, isn’t it time for Rogues to receive the same?

In PvP we were the master of locking down a target, we still are very good at that. But if you compare our PvE damage to our PvP performance, the amount of damage other classes can pull of in PvP compared to the beloved Rogue class, seems to be much higher. When I pull off a 2K Evis crit on plate, I really feel forced to spec Envenom, especially with so many plate cleave teams around. Of course I tried HFB in 3's, but without prep, I become a real easy target.

Now, where do you want to see Rogues going? More poisons, or do you finally want to use your 51 pointers? What do you think about your Rogues strengths and weaknesses at the moment? What direction do you think Blizzard will take us? Do you have any suggestions?

As I've been wondering about all this lately, I would very much like to see a discussion, from the points of view of other Rogues, but also the point of view from other classes. Do you still see the Rogue as a real threat?

Pom.

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