Amidst all the twichatter about rogue population numbers over the past couple of days, Ghostcrawler took a detour to comment on one of the more interesting questions about rogue specs:
@Somnchai We think Combat is *too* focused on multi-target fights (not so useful in PvP). Would like to buff single target and nerf AE.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 19, 2012
This isn’t the first time GC has tweeted about Combat’s “one trick pony” nature. It’s clearly a question he and the devs are struggling with (and one we players often disagree on, too): How can we keep Combat feeling “special” without making it feel like it’s required for two-target situations and useless (compared to the other specs) everywhere else?
This isn’t a new question. We’ve talked about it extensively over in the WoW rogue forum, and more than a year ago Chase Christian (Madsushi in the WoW forums) eloquently walked through his issues with Combat cleave over on WoW Insider. I don’t pretend I’ve got a brilliant answer. (Or even a stupid one.)
But it’s hard for me to see any solution that keeps Blade Flurry as a Combat-only ability. Blade Flurry has to be powerful enough that it’s the best thing to use against two targets, otherwise there’s no point in it existing. And if it’s the best thing to use against two targets, it’s going to feel “required” to use in any two-target situation (or any situation where you *really* need huge AoE burst through the combination of Blade Flurry + Killing Spree).
Yet if you make Blade Flurry baseline, or you nerf it to the point where it’s not very powerful, then what have you done to one of the very few remaining things that helps differentiate one rogue spec from another?
i recently changed the character which gets most of my attention to my Rogue. He has been a lot of fun to level in Combat spec and my guild have taken me along on a few raids. As a novice rogue i havent felt particularly underpowered as combat however reading around it looks like i may need to adopt a second spec. Further research is required….
NO. RUN AWAY FROM RESEARCH. DO NOT RESEARCH.
That may be the key and the curse. :)
Just my instinct, but remembering back on my own innocent, blissfully ignorant first year or two playing WoW, I may have had more fun — or at least a different, “freer” type of fun — when I had no idea there even was a “best” spec to play or a “best” way to play it. Sure, once you hit max level and you start taking part in group activities that require (or at least encourage) folks to play their class well, it’s good to do the research and know how to maximize your chances of success.
But once that innocence is lost, I wonder if that’s when people start to get disillusioned with the class. According to Cynwise’s numbers, the gap between rogues and other classes all but vanishes when you look at the *entire* player population, not just people at max level. (Though it looks like folks haven’t been even leveling rogues from 86 to 90 as much in Pandaria either.)
Yeah the high level rogue point is key, rogues are rewarding and fun until you hit high level, then you realise despite all that stuff you learnt over your 90 odd levels gains you very little reward. So you analyse your play, learn new techniques/rotations and get even better, you also gear yourself up thinking that will make a massive difference. Does it? Yes. But not enough.
So you go to pvp because you got on ok with that while levelling, it was fun right? You gear for that and learn the opponents moves, the counters to those, what best to use in a situation, use the environment to your advantage to (pillars etc), you learn what best to open with and some other details. Do you get better? yes, Does it make a difference? Yes, but not enough.
Verelyseresponse in “are rogues to evil to be popular in wow” is so spot on, that it puts my feeble explanations to shame.
To Ronebean, just enjoy it when levelling, don’t worry to much about the mechanics of things for now :)