Because there’s no horse quite like a dead horse. Except maybe another dead horse.
@SPACE_EMPEROR Do you really think it's a ranged vs melee thing? Many DPS shaman e.g. don't swap Enh to Ele all the time. Pure vs hybrid?
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 02, 2013
There’s been a lot of discussion swirling lately around the lack of people actively playing rogues in WoW. Heck, I’ve ranted about the issue *twice* (and a one, and a two) in the past several weeks, and I’m the world’s most peaceful rogue bunnyrabbit, so you know that’s gotta mean there’s some sort of trend.
I don’t want to retread too much ground those recent blog entries have already covered. But I don’t think this is solely a people-hate-being-melee (or a raid-leaders-don’t-like-bringing-melee) issue, and I don’t think it’s a people-hate-being-constrained-into-one-role issue either, since we don’t see chronic population issues with mages or hunters (but we do with warlocks). If anything, this is a gameplay/perception issue; people either see the class as unattractive in the first place for some reason, or they stop enjoying the class at some point while (or after) leveling them.
Conversations like this ultimately slide back into the often-stated argument that one of the rogue specs should be turned into a tank spec. I’m sure this would make plenty of players happy. (I know it wouldn’t make *me* happy; even for a person like me who only plays WoW 5 to 10 hours a week, leveling an alt doesn’t feel like such a huge commitment that I wouldn’t just level up a tank if I felt like tanking.) But tanking isn’t exactly the most popular WoW pastime either, if those of you who queue for Raid Finder as DPS — and then spend 45 to 60 minutes waiting for *two* tanks to join in the fun — hadn’t noticed. Giving players the “extra option” of tanking on their rogues if they want isn’t necessarily going to do anything for the class beyond pleasing a small subset of people who want the ability to have their rogues deal less damage but carry all the burdens and responsibilities of tanking.
I’d make a reference here to the idea of a rogue spec being devoted to healing, but c’mon. That would just be a bloody mess. Literally.
Screw spells and to hell with tanking. I won’t lie, I want some sort of fancy glyph that causes my target to collapse to the floor with a bloody spurt when I first smack it.
BUT
My biggest pet peeve is that I super suck at positioning and also don’t pay attention to the large red letters flashing across my screen, so when Shadowstep is on cooldown, it is not uncommon for me to be totally stealthed FOREVER, going “CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP WHY THE HELL ISN’T THIS DAMN SKILL WORKING I AM BEHIND THE MOB OH WAIT NO IT TURNED AROUND.”
Can we make what counts as “behind your target” a little more, uh, wider? Like include slightly more of the kinda off to the back but to the side area?
I played a hunter from 2007 until the announcement of the DS legendaries. At the time, our raid had two hunters, and I was in a better position to switch classes, so I did.
I gotta tell you – I love rogue. I’m not going back. I’ll level my hunter, and I’ll probably run LFR on him when Marksman is viable again, but I’m never going back.
I don’t like how slow energy regen is compared to geared out in Heroic DS gear, and I think maybe the devs could move some of the haste scaling off of gear and give it to us natively, but I like the class. Sub is hard for me, because I haven’t played it much, but I even like Sub.
It is very hard for me to understand why more people don’t play rogue, but it doesn’t hurt my feelings, except when I’m looking for a blog to read ;)
Been playing a while so maybe i’m just jaded but here goes.
Rogues have been altered imo for what they used to be.
In fact a quick history lesson anytime a rogue was deemed relatively overpowered.. (and often this was usually because a “geared” rogue who was pretty decent managed to show what was possible when the rest of us were happy in blissful ignorance) then the nerf bat hotfixes were incoming with alarming speed. Ironically nobody fixed paladins, hunters or dk’s for the same reason in the first arena season of wrath… or took months to fix warriors and mages to some extent first arena season of MoP… but i digress.
Every expansion, rogues have had to get better and better and better to compete, so we took shortcuts.. remember 100% Armor Pen in wrath? Arena with the top end PvE weaps instead of the pvp equivalents?, using a lvl 60 trinket for an extra 40 energy in 70 arena? Not taking the top talent in the combat tree in TBC so we could have AR/Prep Hemo spec?
Rogues seek an advantage anywhere they can get it. They even try to solve their own problems when the devs are being slow about it.
How many people do you think are running about with the caster dagger in their offhand this arena season just for the +PVPPower..and hence…burst.
It makes sense i guess if the game is balanced around high end play that we need to get better, but we rogues have history, we look everywhere for the advantage, its about out smarting your opponent. Quite frankly, for many rogues and i’m pretty boredline myself and its been 8 years…the class itself is a bit one dimensional….but in reality… its just got too unrewarding. Nothing wrong with the playstyle in terms of stealth, open, stay behind the target, manage your threat although this seems rarely needed now as we dont actually do enough burst for it to matter at all anymore (shouldn’t that be a hint)….for years we’ve been living of set bonuses, to make up for the failings in class design, or grant us a new aspect… (energy on deadly poison ticks anyone?).
Its got to the point where when you win in pvp you don’t think “yes we did that” for me thats rare now. you think “they were bad and/or undergeared” and a quick armory usually confirms it. I’m sure when we eventually scale with gear all these supposed whines will seem funny, but in fact the obviousness of what i’m saying is still there… make up for it with set bonuses etc, but the glass cannon has gone. Were still glass but there isn’t much cannon about us anymore, unless of course your opponent is undergeared and/or bad.
Someone said much of what is wrong here, and i’ll link it:
Verelyse comments here:
http://redhattedrogue.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/twitter-are-rogues-too-evil-to-be-popular-in-wow/#comments