Or:
How Rogue Tanks would be an interesting choice to have, and what Blizzard would need to do to complete their role.
It seems that with the new rogue talent trees in Burning Crusades, along with the shrinking raid size, it may now be possible to use Rogues as in offtank capacity, at the cost of DPS. As warriors are the best tanks as well as respectable DPS, rogues could be the best DPS as well as respectable tanks. This would be a nice way to get better class balance in smaller raid sizes, however, there are few things that would still need to be done to make this a complete reality.
What's the spec?
First, let's start off with a reference spec ( 3/13/45 ) for discussion.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/bc-rogue/talents.html?003000000000000000000005050210000000000000005022231030321010531551
So what are the key talents that would make this work?
Key Ablities
* Lighting Reflexes: +5% dodge
* Deflection: +5% to parry
* Riposte: Disarm after a parry
* Sleight of Hand: -2% to be crit
* Ghostly Strike: +15% to dodge for 7s
* Setup: 45% to add combo point on dodge or resist spell.
* Heightened Senses: -4% to be hit by melee or ranged spells.
* Preparation: Reset key skills like evasion.
* Cheat Death:
+20% chance to not die (How many MT's would kill for this?) +20% not to wipe the raid!
* Enveloping Shadows: +15% to avoid AOE effects (I.e. Cleaves, Blastwaves, etc)
* Sinister Calling: +10% to Agility
* Cloak of Shadows: +90% to avoid spells for 4s
Magic Damage Mitigation
One interesting note is assuming similar stamina and resist gear as warriors (itemization), Rogues could potentially have superior mitigation against mobs that are heavily spell damage based (as opposed to melee). Warrior have shield wall and a passive 10% reduction from defensive stance, where as Rogues have Enveloping Shadows, Heightened Senses, Cloak of Shadows, and Cheat Death.
Limitations
The major limitation of a Rogue/Avoidance tank is that is very luck based. This comes down to
Consistant vs. Unpredicable Damage. Armor, Block and Shield Wall are '
consistant mitigation' which healers love. In leather, with no shield, damage is still going to be spiky. Dodge, Dodge, Dodge, 3k, 3k, 3k, Dead. Oops, rogue down, somebody pick up the loose mob.
So the ideal rogue would be a fight with many fast but smaller attacks. Lots of fast 1k/2k hits, or lots of mobs with 50 damage hits (ala Fankriss) Huge spike damage fights would be really rough without some former of consistant mitigation. Much of this comes down to Blizzard's
fight design in the expansion. If bosses have huge spike damage melee attacks (i.e. Broodlord/Patchwerk), a rogue tank would be like playing russian roulette with your raid.
Don't Leave the Role Unfinished!
In addition, there are still a couple of things which Blizzard will need to change which would make Rogue tanks viable as opposed to just a gimmick. Nothing earthshattering, but small concrete steps which would give rogue's a new viable raid roll. There are two key issues I see, along with a few minor ones.
1)
Itemization (Key Issue): To start with, none of this works if we don't have the gear to tank with. We need leather with high armor (i.e. NecroKnight's Garb for starters), defense (need probably +75 to avoid getting critted along with Sleight of Hand) and especially stamina.
2)
Threat generation (Key Issue): If we can't hold agro, we can't really tank. Threat generation through damage could easily be the way we do it, just like Paladins. Paladins have a skill (Righteous Fury) to increase their threat generation. We need a way as well, because passive threat generation for us
is -29% now. Easily solved with poisons.
Give us a poison that turns off passive threat reduction, or even increases threat generation. See "Threat Poisons" below.
3)
Crushing Blows: These guys are going to be the rogue tank killer. Warriors have shield block (which reduce crushing blow chance) and high armor (to reduce the damage). Druid's extremely high armor makes crushing blows less damaging. We on the other hand, would take full damage and have no way to reduce the frequency of them. This I don't have a great solution to, but maybe they can change Heightened Senses to "reduces the chance you are hit by spells, ranged attacks and crushing blows by 4%.
4)
Snap Agro: If we are looking at an OT role, this probably won't be an issue, since we can dump energy for threat to start with. Snap agro skills might be left to warriors and paladins. However, it could be elegantly solved with a
Taunt poison. Combined with the Shiv skill (guarnteed poison proc), Taunt Poison could give us a snap agro affect, without needing a new skill.
5)
Heavy Subtlety Investment (Minor): To get the all the damage mitigation skills in the subtlety tree, you need 45 points. The only 'free' points are the 3 in Enveloping Shadows and 1 in Cheat Death, both of which are key mitigation talents at the top of the tree. Points in Camouflage are wasted, and it would be nice to free them up somehow. Tying serrated to hemo also limits points flexiable. Not a huge deal, but it feels like you need a bunch of unhelpful talents just to max mitigation, when a rogue tanks will need more damage to hold agro (from the combat/assassination tree).
Threat Poisons
As I mentioned above, we need some way to generate extra threat. The most elegant solution would be some sort of poison. With that in mind, here are the two poisons we could use.
Aggravating Poison
Use: Coats a weapon with a poison that lasts 30 minutes. Each strike has a 30% chance of poisoning the enemy, increasing all generated threat generated by you towards the enemy by 59%. Hemorrhage and Ghostly Strike abilities you use on this target will generate a high amount of threat.
Note: This basically gives us the threat generation of a warrior in defensive stance, without defiance. In addition, it lets Hemo/GS act as sunder/heroic strikes for threat generation. Without this poison, or a mechanic like it, we just won't be able to hold agro without our passive 29% threat reduction.
Enraging Poison
Use: Coats a weapon with a poison that lasts 30 minutes. If the target has Aggravating Poison on it, each strike has a 1% chance of poisoning the enemy, taunting them to attack you for 1s. Has no effect if the target is already attacking you. Increases the cost of Shiv by 20 energy.
Note: This poison would be used on the off hand, along with the new skill "Shiv", which allows you to spend 40 energy to apply your OH poison. It would in effect give us a taunt ability, though it comes with some conditions. The added energy cost to Shiv, and the low application chance means you need shiv to apply it, and you can't do as often. Duration of the taunt is less important than a way to snap agro.
Itemizing for Rogue/Druid Tanks
Since both rogues and druids need non-set pieces, it would be efficient to create hybrid pieces that both classes could use, with the addition of sockets to tweak them. Both classes would use the same basic leather piece, but want slightly different stats on them. Druids want Armor, Stamina, Strength, Dodge and Agility (to a lesser extent). Rogues want Stamina, Defense, Agility, Dodge, and Parry. Leather pieces with higher than normal armor (i.e. Bloodfang vs. Ghoul Skin) are using part of their budget on armor.
So what does an Rogue/Druid Hybrid piece look like?
Demon Skin Tunic
262 Armor (Leather)
+43 Stamina
+21 Agility
Equip: Increases your chance to dodge an attack by 1%.
Equip: Improves your chance to hit by 2%.
2 Sockets (Or however many +13 defense would be worth)
Compare this to the Dreadnaught Breastplate, which has +21 Strength and +13 Defense. I have swapped Strength for Agi, and removed defense and added sockets. Now rogues can add gems with +defense or parry, where as druids could add +armor or +strength.
Conclusion
Smaller raid design could greatly benefit from having multiple classes which could act as tanks. With the talent trees Blizzard has laid out, Rogues are potentially 90% there as a potential tanking class. With a few more changes plus viable itemziation, there is no reason why rogues can't get their turn in the tanking spots.
Your thoughts and comments on this are welcome.
Special thanks to Celandro and Kalman for putting this idea into my head, and their feedback on refining it.
Updates:
* Changed concerns about spell damage to crushing blows upon further reflection
* Refined Enraging poison to be more balanced vs. warrior taunt.
* Added sample itemization
