Rogues are useful at Razorgore! I don’t know what they do exactly but they help the mages handle other mage NPCs when Razorgore is mind-controlled. I think it’s a bit misguided to base roles in raids on MC because it’s such a primitive instance.
Oh, there’s no doubt that using MC as a baseline will skew things, but the DPS problem actually gets a lot worse as you progress, not better.
I don’t really undervalue it, I think all situations will always be made better by higher DPS. But it’s not me who is denying rogues spots in raids and endgame content.
I think the big issue is how spread out the low level rogue dagger talents are. With most other classes, if you choose to spec down one tree, you can pick up one or two skills that benefits that specific focus, but it’s late in the tree so you can’t get that skill in all three.
With rogues, they are pretty much required to pick up Lethality, improved Backstab, and Opportunity. All of which are on the second level down in the talent tree, only requiring a 10 point investment.
That’s shitty because they have exceptionally useful skills so low in the tree it pigeonholes a rogue looking to spec daggers to an excessive degree. All the goodies are so low in the tree that you’re left with only a handful of points to shift around elsewhere. Well, combat doesn’t have much for dagger rogues still, and if you stretch you can’t even get weapon expertise still, without sacrificing points in lethality or opportunity.
Ok, what about a dagger rogue going high subtlety? There’s still not much in this tree. The bonus from Deadliness to a rogue who uses daggers is still pretty terrible. Warrior’s battleshouts does magnitudes more to increase AP. And 10% is pretty abysmal when you compare it to Lethality or imp backstab (You can only put 3 points into deadliness before you sacrifice points in imp backstab or lethality). Let’s also look at an epic’d out rogue as well. One from my guild who is dagger specced tells me he has 700 attack power, so that’s +75 AP if he can somehow manage to get a full 10% off of the new talent without gimping himself in other areas.
According to WoWwiki 14 attack power = 1 DPS. Daggers use a 1.7 multiplier for the DPS as well. So, (75/14)*1.7 = ~ 9 damage increase on your dagger. That seems pitiful, but truthfully an increase of 9 damage is something for dagger rogues. The problem is that you sacrifice so much to get this one ability, while the rest of the tree has little to nothing for you.
Conversely, assasination is loaded with goodies for dagger rogues in both PvP and PvE scenarios, and on the whole it increases DPS a great amount. Subtlety seems more focused on staying defensive for rogues. However, it fails on the whole because Blizzard still considers dodge an apt defensive move for rogues. 1) it’s not good enough with setup (45% for a combo point on dodge!) to build up points in a PvE or a PvP encounter. You can only really dodge about half the classes attacks in PvP, and even of those forced to do non-magic damage, they also have magic options. 2) Warriors punish a rogue for the amount of dodge he has for every point that’s below 51% dodge. Which means, pretty much every rogue wants to minimize their dodge chance, not increase it. 3) You can’t dodge during a boss fight in PvE! It doesn’t do jack shit for you in that scenario.
So, a lot of the abilities in the subtlety tree that should be assisting a rogue in keeping up with the combo point generation of Seal Fate just don’t add up at all in either scenario. To top it all off, the ability that should equalize some of this, does next to nothing in both scenarios. Premeditation still sucks, and it sucks hard. It’s not useable to any great extent in PvE, and in PvP you get 2 shots of it, and that’s if you burn your 10 minute timer. They’d be far better off adjusting it to have a cooldown of 30 seconds, and to not reset the cooldown timer until those combo points were spent. Also, it should be useable in combat and out of stealth to make it more applicable to the various situations rogues are presented with.
Yes, this is kind of a silly suggestion for a 31 point subtlety talent, to make it not require stealth at all. However, the majority of the points in this tree don’t do anything to help stealth past the first 5 point investment in the tree, and it’s just plain stupid for blizzard to continue insisting this ability be used from stealth. Look Blizz, you’ve already got an intricate plot line involving space cruisers crash landing in the midst of a fantastical medieval society, let’s just accept that the contiguous nature of your game has already been breached. Let’s focus on making it fun and forget about that folly.
Even sillier, is the fact that cold blood can be used in combat with backstab + seal fate to produce the same effect premeditation does, but in combat and with no requirement to do it from stealth. You also get a nice crit hit from it as well.
There’s nothing in the subtlety or combat tree that really makes them compare with the high end assassination for a dagger rogue. The fact that the “good” dagger rogue talents are so low in those trees as well, just kind of drives that fact home. There’s not much wiggle room for a dagger rogue looking for some spec variety. Of course one or the other will be claimed king of efficiency regardless of what happens to the trees. The issue is that the disparity between the efficiency king and any other spec is a gaping fissure of lost DPS at the moment, making the decision extremely simple, and by proxy boring!
I agree with Rywill, though. I think they’ve added some really cool things into subtlety and combat to help beef them comparable to high end assassination for dagger rogues. I really like the new sprint, Heightened senses, Sleight of hand, and Weapon Expertise. I think they’ve still got more work to slave through to continue making those tree’s better. Hopefully, they’ll keep at it and make it a really good review. It seems pretty nifty for a sword rogue right now, at least.
What other class picks a weapon type and sticks with it FOREVAR?
I have no problem with dagger rogues being limited as long as there are options for other weapon types. What gives?
The gear focus is so differentiated that it makes switching harder than just reinvesting talent points.
You get months of regrinding proper gear, and etc. I’d much rather they offer alternative spec options, even if it does prove less efficient than seal fate. It should at least be in the same league, y’know?
Part of this talent review is hard to exactly know the effects of when we don’t know some of the changes to base damage and so on. We know how the talents that are modifiers work…the way modifiers work in WoW, some of these things could be very useful depending on how the base damage is changed, and how all the modifiers stack.
Heh - yeah, this is a nice change.
I agree that I don’t see a lot that benefits rogues in raids, but they do get a better feint now – maybe that will help. I always thought the problem with rogues in raids wasn’t their DPS but that they require too much healing.
Moving setup up the tree might help too – more dodging will result in more damage and also less damage taken.
Really the only thing I used my rogue for was farming money for my alts.
I’m guessing about this but I’m probably the only person on this board who plays a rogue in a guild raiding Naxxramas. The dps problems for rogues get significantly worse the further into the game you go. Mages, Hunters, Warlocks and dps Warriors all start to significantly out damage rogues. It starts in BWL (or even MC if a warrior gets Sulfuras) and it just gets worse. Our top rogue can easily out dps everyone in MC by miles yet comes in 3rd or 4th in BWL and 8th in Naxx. To say Rogues don’t have scaling/dps problems is just plain wrong. This review has done little to add PvE dps or utility.
From what I’ve heard the new feint talent is terrible (it’s equivalent to about 80 damage or something) and Weapon Expertise means that dagger rogues will now barely do more damage than sword rogues (since it’s easier for sword rogues to grab it because they don’t have to spend points in subtlety), making dagger rogues fairly worthless (in PVE) considering the damage they lose when they have to reposition themselves and whatnot.
In addition to that not only do warriors now do more damage than rogues, but mages are starting to outdamage rogues as well Naxxramas gear.
The feint talent wasn’t necessary at all, with the new rank in AQ20 and the +25% Bloodfang set bonus feint isn’t all that weak. If your rogues are still pulling aggro after that it’s because they simply aren’t feinting, or need more +hit gear cause their feints are missing. Besides it’s in a silly place as few PvE rogues even look at the Subtlety tree except for Opportunity, and maybe Imp Ambush. All they really did was reshuffle the Subtlety tree, it’s a little better now but still lackluster and almost completely useless for a raiding rogue. The only way you see much benefit from this review is if you’re deep in the Subtlety tree, so that means Hemo specs and that’s about it.
Nope =D
Okay, I will admit that I’m pretty much always at the top of the damage meters - BUT not by a whole heck of a lot. Hunters and mages and dps warriors can come very close to reaching my level, yet they have a hell of a lot more utility to offer to the raid.
Either give us some actual raiding utility (we still won’t be allowed to use expose armor on typical boss fights), better damage mitigation, or a dps boost - I don’t care which, just balance us for fucks sake.
Nope
But do you have the Triprunner Dungarees, smartypants??
No =(
I’ve never understood this whole thing with debuffs randomly canceling each other out. There’s no logical reason for it unless you assume that the warrior smashes into the portion of armor the rogue just pried loose.
CoH doesn’t have a problem with it, but I remember EQ running into this and it looks like WoW does too. Why?
–GF
Well, in the case of expose armor and sunder armor, wouldn’t the rationale be that if they stacked it would become too powerful and render some fights too easy?
Had them, sold them. =P
First - defining my perspective:
I’m a level 60 casual rogue, just getting rolling in the endgame and not really concerned about my build or gear. And not really avid board poster or board reader or min maxer as far as WoW is concerned.
I’m also a MMO Producer, and it appears that this review of Rogues is so far focused on talents.
Why would you expect a talent review - which affects all rogues - to alter the extreme endgame content?
Why wouldn’t you expect gear changes from the epic endgame to be adjusted?
-Walt
Gear won’t change the fact that we don’t have shit for utility.
Gear won’t drastically increase our survival rate against bosses so as not to be such mana sponges. Hmmm, well wait…yes it COULD - dodge is nice to have…BUT WAIT! Blizzard so brilliantly decided that we have too much agility and is giving us items with just raw attack power instead. No agility = much less dodge = much less survivability to end-game rogues. FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC!
Yes, the 2 piece bonus of Bonescythe will be nice, but it remains to be seen how much of a benefit it will really provide.
Gear that we want is the gear that dps warriors want - and it scales much more effectively for them with rage than it does for us with our relatively gimped energy.