At the moment we are tied for last place with warriors in most arena rankings, and warriors are getting HUGE buffs for 3.1. Outside of a singular 3v3 comp in RMP (which can't crack top 10 on American tournament realms), rogue doesn't have a single top comp in any bracket. Is your message "unless you can't find a top mage + priest, don't play arena as a rogue?" It sure feels like it, because in all other comps, you can replace the rogue with another class and achieve superior results.

Rogues have the worst mobility, survivability and damage of any true melee classes in PVP. Other classes are seeing big PVP changes for 3.1, we need help before it is too late! So far all you have given us, is more PVE damage. I have watched patch after patch after patch gone by on the PTR, today's patch had changes for 9 out of 10 classes, guess which class was left out?

Lower Mobility Than Plate:

Warriors have 15 second intercepts plus snare/root removal + instant intercept CD refresh on a 45 second cooldown. Feral druid's have unlimited snare/root removals, plus 15 second CD feral charges. Rogues have . . . two sprints (useless against snares), two vanishes (often need to be saved for survivability/offense), or a 30 second CD shadowstep (which forces you to sacrifice a ton of damage) that can't even be used in root. Why is a light armor melee class less mobile than a heavy armor melee class? There is no easier class to kite than rogue, even death knights have 20 second CD death grip's, and paladins have 20 second CD blessing of freedoms.

Lower Survivability Than Cloth:

Rogue is the only class that can't survive a single stun. Kidney shot, hammer of justice, intercept, you name it, you can play the entire game perfectly, and a single intercept can bring you from 100-0 that is with almost 800 resilience and 3/3 deadened nerve on my rogue. Against any team with a rogue, the strategy is train the rogue, because good things will happen when you do it (like a out of mana/CD healer, or more often than not, a dead rogue).

Dodge is supposed to be our saving grace, yet even evasion itself is useless against the WOTLK melee classes, death knight and retribution paladin both have a ton of damage that ignore our evasion. You gave warriors 1234567 more ways to activate their overpower. And unless you want rogues to outmuscle plate armor, most of the time we are chasing a cloth/mail while a heavy plate like DK is hammering us from behind all game long, ignoring our dodge completely.

Lower Damage Than . . . Every DPS Class

Let's see, if I don't wear heavy resilience, I go down in 2-3 hits. If I do wear heavy resilience, every DPS class in full PVP gear does more damage than me. Blood / Shadowfrost DK? It is more like "do they outdamage me by 50% or 100%"?. Fury warriors? They actually kill healers if left to go 1v1 with them, we don't. Hunter/warlock/mage? Full damage from range that can't be stopped at all, vs a class that has to run for his life (or kited all game long)? Did I mention we are easier to CC than any other melee class? Warrior/DK/Feral Druid all have fear immunes. We have absolutely nothing.

No Unique Utility

Healing debuff and snare? Warrior/hunter's don't go down in a single global (or in the case of shaman/druid, it doesn't even cost them a full global). Stuns? What class doesn't have stun duration reduction, or stun damage reduction, or ability to break stuns on demand? That would be . . . rogues! And you took our signature ability, the kidney shot, which cost us a huge chunk of burst damage to use, and made it share DR with all other stuns. Oh yes, you gave paladins, the most popular healer in the game the ability to remove stuns on demand for anyone on his team. Expose armor? Used to be good against cloth/leather/mail, now you made it worthless against EVERY CLASS. With warriors getting an ability to remove invulnerability, where is our niche? Even retribution paladin's hammer of justice is a superior stun to kidney shot.

Suggested Changes:

1) Delete Sleight of Hand from subtlety (who the hell came up with this talent? Did they really think subtlety rogues needed improved feint?), replace it with nerves of steel, which clearly doesn't belong in a PVE tree. This is our anti-stun talent, it makes us in-line with all other classes. Move enveloping shadows to where nerves of steel is, it is a PVE talent that should be in a PVE tree.

2) Delete Filthy Tricks, and give us improved shadowstep which lowers the CD by 5/10 seconds, preferably reduce the energy cost by 50/100% as well.

3) Swap deadly brew and improved poisons, and buff improved poisons for PVE rogues. Every rogue PVP spec deserves deadly brew, it is our only defense when our poisons are gone in one global or less against any class. Make the cripple poison proc from deadly brew instant.

4) Add the interrupt effect back to deadly throw, or give it a root effect, this ability is so worthless in WOTLK I use it once every 20 arena matches. 50% snare for a couple of seconds at the cost of all of my combo points, I still won't catch up to anyone when I am snared myself!

5) Kidney shot needs to be special. It is our signature move, it should not share DR with any other stuns, because we are the class that relies most on stuns. Put cheap shot back on DR with other stuns, and give kidney shot some sort of special effect similar to warlock death coil's horror effect, so the only thing that breaks/affects it, is the PVP trinket. Rogue should have without any question, the best single stun in the game.

7) Hemo needs to make up its mind. Either it needs to be worth the damage per energy as a main attack (at least 125% weapon damage to be competitive, and sinister calling needs to be back to 10%), or it needs to bring a much more significant debuff (perhaps it can allow rogue bleed effects to crit/refresh, with a much longer duration / charge count?).

The one thing that concerns me more than anything else, is your lack of creativity with the rogue class in WOTLK. All other classes got something unique/innovative for PVP, while we are still playing CB/prep/mutilate, a spec that plays/feels very similar to CB/prep/hemo of classic WOW, a big step backward from shadowstep days of TBC!

Dismantle is as useful as warrior disarm, as every serious arena player has a weapon chain. Deadly brew was cool for a while until you nerfed mind numbing poison into the ground so now it feels exactly like wound/crippling days. Shadow dance not only has a longer cooldown than burst abilities from other classes, it is also much much more restrictive and you have zero CC protection during it, and you give up once again, a huge chunk of sustained damage for going that deep into subtlety. Can't you be a little more creative with our class? Hunger for blood was an amazing idea, giving a spec without prep a low CD counter to either magical or physical effects, but you took away the PVP portion completely instead of tweaking it. And I still don't know what is killing spree doing at 51 combat, a burst move in a sustained PVE tree? Why isn't this in the subtlety tree paired with hemo?

I guess back to my original question. Is that it? Is that all we going to get for 3.1? The rogue class is gifted with the most talented/creative players of any class, and we will not give up the love of our community regardless of your patches. But is it really that difficult to look at the arena rankings and reach the conclusion that those three classes need significant nerfs with their 30%/20%/20% presentation on SK-100? Where are the REAL nerfs for those classes in 3.1?

I hope this actually gets responded too, raised alot of points id like answers too

O.o

Showing my support.

I agree.

WTB old 20/0/41 pvp style back it was much more enjoyable them mut is now.

great thread, bumping

first page of a ming post about pvp balance



finally one I agree with though :|

Regardless of who posted it, the points are very valid, and the post sums up the majority of the rogue community's concerns.

It seems to me that Blizz is done trying to tweak rogues. They likely see us as where they want everybody else, but the thing is, you can't bring other classes to where rogues are because we are so far behind. It'd be like taking every class back to BC. I mean, rogues haven't even changed significantly since BC. We have Dismantle(5 seconds to escape from what... warriors?) since DKs have spells, Pallies can bubble/stun/laugh, and hunters have their pets and disengage. I only pointed out the classes we'd bother dismantling. No smart rogue goes all the way to our 51 pt. talents because they suck or they are just not worth it. 120% Mutilates, that's hilarious, we went from being able to kill, to not being able to kill.

The only thing I can do for PvP fun in a BG is to spec Cold Blood/ Initiative/Imp Evisc... then I cold blood, cheap shot, and throw out a CB eviscerate. If I'm lucky, they'll be below half health, better than anything else I can do.

Aye, I'm tired, and I definitely didn't offer any suggestions to help fix us, but the OP has a few golden ideas. I'd like to see a 51pt. Talent worth speccing.

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Q u o t e:
Showing my support.

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This post completely tells the truth of rogue issues today.
It doesn't matter whether or not you have some kind of bias against ming
but he has completely hit our issues on the mark.

Please blizzard we would like to hear your thoughts.
Don't give us that rogues are balanced junk again because
statistics say otherwise.

rogue hero reporting in

Honestly, I have been wondering for how blizzard justifies classes like Hunters when compared to rogues, Both have MS debuffs, Both have Snares (Hunter's snare is aoe and undispellable), yet I have to do mine from melee and do less dmg then the hunter, and he has mana burns and insane kiting abilities, with huge defensive cooldowns THAT WORK (lolvanish). oh yeah and a pet.

I would concede that rogues have a special stun, but they but OUR SIGNATURE MOVE on DR with every crappy stun in the book. Interrupts? Coming to hunters in 3.1 so no longer in issue.

Wheres the benefit in being a rogue over a hunter? And you can do this with basically any class, rogues just do not compare.