First?

Why did you guys lower the damage on mutilate when overkill was the problem, then when overkill was readjusted you kept the mutilate damage low?

Neat, and reserved.

edit:
Couple of questions:

Are you gonna look at HfB? 18% of your damage from 1 talent is a little insane and frankly, quite poor design.

Are we gonna see a look at rogue reliance on prep in PvP? Maybe lowering the CDs of our cooldowns and then decreasing their duration/potency?

Is Expose Armor getting looked at? It is one of the major utilities of our class, and frankly it sucks to use it. Maybe add a selfish gain? (Similar to utility talents).


That is all for now.

When is vanish getting fixed? (didn't see that one coming, did you?)

Why is cloak of shadows still at 90%?

Why doesn't cloak of shadows resist death-grip? (Death-grip doesn't look like a physical ability, and, out of logic, isn't?)

Is the first boss in Heroic Nexus supposed to one-shot rogues with less than 25k hp? I understand I am not alone in this problem.

Reserving 'dis.

Will rogues ever become "useful" in a raid? We bring nothing to the raid except opening their lockboxes and DPSing. I'd like to see a buff we can give everyone, or maybe something that no other class has.

Why can't subtlety dagger rogues be doing decent dps with their abilities, i was so excited to be able to raid and backstabd and ambush in raids, but I had hopes that it would be a thing that came with lich, it was there for a time with the HaT Bug, but that was cheating and i never participated in that, i would like to be able to do more than 2k dps with backstabs and ambushes, but i have yet to be able to do so and have had to switch my main to my death knight because i can consitently pull 2000 DPS at least, i do more usually, in heroic groups. I have abandoned my rogue almost completely for raids because its useless and i wont go back to it till a rogue can do what they are meant to do which is backstab their enemies.

Reserved.



Since Wrath of the Lich King, Blind was increased to a 2 minute cooldown with talents. Has the 1.5 minute cooldown ever been considered again?

So here are what I feel like will be the most repeated, most important questions.

1. What is the deal with Vanish?

This ability has been broken since classic WoW, and the rogue community feels like the issue has never been given closure. Can we ever expect this ability to work like it's supposed to? When, or why not?

2. When will other PvP specs become viable?

I've heard of some people experiencing some degree of success with Killing Spree, and of course the Korean rogues in RMP comps are known to run Shadow Dance, but let's face it, almost every rogue goes Mutilate/Preparation. How do the designers feel about this current trend, and what plans are on the horizon regarding this?

3. Why are we so dependent on our cooldowns?

I think this might answer question 2 to some degree. The arsenal of rogue cooldowns was fundamentally altered in 3.0 with the significant reduction in cooldown duration, but for many of us, the change doesn't seem to have addressed the problem. We would prefer to have a) shorter cooldowns with decreased durations or b) increased baseline mobility/survivability with less potency for the cooldowns. What direction does the development team intend to take on this?

4. Can we get more raid utility (buffs/debuffs)?

It seems like the design philosophy regarding rogues is to provide the highest damage output (shared with other pure damage classes, more or less), and to allow hybrid damage classes to make up the disparity in damage by providing buffs. However, with the addition of dual specs in 3.1, bringing a hybrid now offers an additional advantage over the pure damage classes: switching roles mid-run. The fact is that the DPS bonus offered by pure damage classes isn't attractive enough for raid organizers to merit taking that class over a hybrid. Bring the player, not the class, yeah yeah; the reality is a lot of content is pugged still (in fact, even more now in 3.1 since 3.0 raid content is relatively casual) and in that situation, it's not about the player, it's about the class. So what is Blizzard's stance on rogue raid utility, and what plans are in the future?

Finally, two questions that I am personally interested in, more specific than the previous.

5. Are there any plans to further balance stealth/detection bonuses?

In arena situations where there is a rogue vs. rogue match-up, the rogue with one level less stealth/detection will pretty much always get opened on, and this is a significant factor in deciding the match's outcome.

6. Can we get better cooperation between Expose Armor and Sunder Armor?

Personally, I would like to see something like Sunder Armor using the same debuff. Sunder Armor would no longer stack, but instead, each application of Sunder Armor would add 6 seconds to the duration of the major armor debuff, to a maximum of 30 seconds. Also, I would like the Expose Armor glyph to do something like combo building moves have a x% chance to increase the duration of the debuff by y seconds.

I'm not fond of the 2 minute cooldown for Shadow Dance. I know I shouldn't be able to take 3 enemies at once with it, but in battlegrounds, the wait to be able to do any serious damage is painful. Also, in the Spanish version, Shadow Dance moves to CTRL-F1 when you get it and makes Stealth CTRL-F2. I had to remap all my keys to get Stealth back on CTRL-F1. It made things a little awkward. Keep Stealth on CTRL-F1 no matter what.

My Rogue questions, the core of the questions themselves are bolded for clarity. Some of these questions I feel are vital to the direction of Rogues, others are basically "throw-aways" and I'm just asking because the opportunity has presented itself and I'm curious.

PvE

Since nearly every fight in Ulduar and for the foreseeable future is largely dependent on the use of strong cooldowns at key times (there are no more "tank 'n spank" fights), will Mutilate Rogues be getting a strong cooldown anytime soon? (Overkill was/is marginal as a cooldown ability when compared to every other class.)

Murder only affects certain targets and can swing a Mutilate Rogues DPS from mediocre to great depending on the target. Blizzard has already changed the "only affects certain mobs/players" mechanics for Paladins more than once, are there plans to do this with Rogues and Murder? Are Mutilate Rogues Balanced with or without Murder?

More than 60% of all Rogue Damage in PvE is passive (normal melee hits, poison procs, etc). This is at least three times as much or more than any other class in WoW. Early in WotLK development, the Developers said they wanted to get away from this but the nerf to Mutilate (and subsequent addition of haste to Slice and Dice) in the name of PvP balance only exacerbated the problem. Do the Devs still want to move Rogues away from being so dependent on huge amounts of passive damage in PvE? Are there plans to make Rogues in PvE more dependant on their abilities and not on autoattack?

Blizzard is obviously unhappy with Hunger For Blood (I'm not thrilled myself) and GC has said several times that it will be changed, how long until Hunger For Blood is reworked and what sort of form will it take? Are we stuck like this until 4.0?

Currently Killing Spree has multiple problems (invalid target, not placing you near your target when finished, unusable on certain bosses like Kologarn, etc). Are there any refinements coming to Killing Spree in the future?

High end raiding rogues are fast approaching the "crit cap" for normal melee attacks; this is mainly due to the glancing blows mechanic. I know glancing blows are a way to "tune" melee in encounters but are there any changes planned for glancing blows?

Rogue poisons are similar to Warlock curses in PvE in that you give up damage (in some cases a lot of damage) for some utility. Unlike Warlock curses though, you can't just swap at any time. You need secondary weapons preloaded with the appropriate poison. Are there any changes coming to poisons to allow for easier swapping without requiring a second set of weapons?

Currently Sunder Armor and Expose Armor are mutually exclusive; having one up will often prevent the application of another. This is in direct contrast to all other buffs/debuffs which simply use the stronger of the two. Are there any plans to make Sunder Armor and Expose Armor play nicely with each other?

PvP

Rogue PvP is based on hybrid specs used since the dawn of time (AR/Prep and Mut/Prep) with no real changes in playstyle since the vanilla beta, are there any plans to let Rogues be able to use their 51 point talents in PvP without being laughed at?

Preparation is and always has been vital in all PvP builds; the reasons given are as numerous as the stars themselves (you can spin that 100 different ways). There have been 1000 different suggestions to help solve this problem as well. What are Blizzards plans for Preparation with regards to PvP?

Players don't like being stunned and being out of control, however, this is the primary way a Rogue (who is the only class with no healing capability in any spec) can protect themselves. Does Blizzard plan on changing Rogues with regards to stuns (possibly trading stuns for more passive defense or healing)? Are stuns (and stealth) too iconic to the WoW rogue class to be changed?

Rogues can be gods (figuratively) when they have all their cooldowns available (the source of much QQ); without their cooldowns they are almost nothing though. Will Rogues always be so heavily cooldown dependent?

Hemorrhage is currently a very lackluster attack, simply stated it is "a normal melee attack that may have up to an extra 750 damage added to it." It really has no discernible use and doesn't scale with anything. Are there any plans for making Hemorrhage worth something?

(PvP-Arena)

Here's my question: It's primarily a philosophical one.

"Are Rogues balanced around the idea that they can create an overwhelming lead in the early parts of an Arena game through use of Sap, openers, blind, and cooldowns, at the cost of being significantly weaker when stuck out of stealth and out of cooldowns?"

or, to rephrase:

"Are the developers happy with the Rogue class being essentially "overpowered for 20 seconds (if the match ideally)" and "very easy to kill afterwards"?"

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Q u o t e:
I'm not fond of the 2 minute cooldown for Shadow Dance. I know I shouldn't be able to take 3 enemies at once with it, but in battlegrounds, the wait to be able to do any serious damage is painful. Also, in the Spanish version, Shadow Dance moves to CTRL-F1 when you get it and makes Stealth CTRL-F2. I had to remap all my keys to get Stealth back on CTRL-F1. It made things a little awkward. Keep Stealth on CTRL-F1 no matter what.

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My suggestion here is to add a spammable stealth macro to the end of an ability that's easily in reach. I tacked it onto the end of hemo.

In my case:

#showtooltip Hemorrhage
/cast Hemorrhage
/cast [nostealth] Stealth

Reserved as well.

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Q u o t e:
reserved

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I imagine that reserving "your spot" and coming back to post later does nothing but make it harder for the CMs to collect questions. Blizzard has been gracious enough to offer us answers to a lot of what we want to know. Let's not make more work for them than it already is.

Please?

As rogues, we rely either heavily on disabling the target while beating them down or killing them super fast before they can react. Without stuns or huge burst damage we cannot stand up to other classes yet the common hate for rogues and the common cry for nerf is due to our class mechanics. Will the concept of the rogue class ever be acceptable to other players?

For a cooldown skill, vanish our escape method, is commonly known to not work as intended. It is either due to server lag or bugs or some unintended game mechanic, we often find that vanish will break from getting hit by a mid-air missle or a late hit. Sometimes players can spam attacks and still land it even if the rogue used vanish. Will blizzard ever consider putting in a 1-2 second immunity effect following vanish to insure that it works?

Why is it that the second subtlety after years of uselessness(other than pvp) is suddenly a viable PvE spec only to be nerfed hard?

This isn't a real rogue concern but I'm sure alot of other people are wondering why the rogue armor sets went from looking like actual assassins to bizzare sad face demon costumes?

The class has lost some originality like poison profession, rogue quests, and lockpicking beyond WoTLK. But what about backstab the once glorious rogue skill that brought blood and terror to many players? It has become next to useless with mutilate coming on top in damage and without the position requirement. We would think at 60 energy and the back position requirement this skill would inflict alot of pain but it's just lackluster at the moment.
Will backstab, our original trademark attack, ever be useful beyond level 50 again?

~ Do you guys find CloS at 90% to be acceptable, with the horrible lack of rogue defenses?

~Do you have any plans to give rogues the ability to actually take some hits, rather than just ending up rushed and killed in 2 seconds?
-Adding some rogue defenses that aren't based on RNG, CloS, Evasion [which is useless from behind], as well as base dodge and parry.

~Do you guys think leaving vanish in its current state is ok?
-Getting charged from 20 yds away
- Being unable to get a target to stop targeting you after you sap them
-Randomly getting thrown out of stealth.

~Do you have plans to fix the Ass. tree and its 18% bonus damage 51 point talent?

~Do you ever plan on fixing some of the issues that make the rogue class annoying, rather than telling us 'the change is to big for a minor patch', 'the change is to big for this large patch as well' 'we don't plan to make any changes this expansion'
-Annoying things include:
-Lack of defenses
-Lack of Cooldowns in the Ass tree
-Difficulty with catching up with a class such as frost mages, without blowing every single CD
you have, only to have them blow a 20 second CD to stop you.

~The mechanics to Killing Spree.. are you guys happy with how it works? It's pretty annoying getting teleported between 2 targets, which in the end serves no point other than reduce its burst... I guess.
More in a while :<

~Are you guys happy with rogues having basically no easy to use long range abilities (deadly throw requires combo points)? It would be nice to have something like heroic throw which we could hit a target with for 1-2k damage and gain a combo point for 20-30 energy on a 2-3 min CD.