Homogenization: It’s not just for milk anymore. Or so the wails of many a rogue this expansion would have us believe.
But in the Mists era, have our three rogue specs truly lost all of their unique flair?
In the context of a thread that discussed class uniqueness more generally, Blizz Community Manager Daxxarri (who has been known to prowl the WoW rogue class forum in the guise of a stealthy Protoss) took a detour to specifically address a person who asked why all rogue specs feel the same:
Rogues are something of an edge case, and moving previously spec defining abilities into the talent tree probably contributes to this, though I’d argue that it’s resulted in a class that’s more fun to play overall. Still, I find that Combat feels different from Assassination feels different from Sub. The differences are admittedly more subtle (no pun intended) than some other classes, though.
It’s Daxxarri’s last point that, for me, gets to the heart of this particular issue. He concedes the point made by many that what “feels” different about each rogue spec can be hard to tease out. But depending on how each of us plays, and on what particular characteristics of a class/spec are most important to us, the three rogue specs can be either glaringly different or impossible to tell apart.
Since before Mists had even launched, rogue players were bemoaning the imminent demise of spec identity. The redesign of the talent trees for this expansion took some of the iconic abilities long tied to the Subtlety spec — Shadowstep, Preparation and Elusiveness, most notably — and made them available to all specs. Some of the changes implemented during this expansion — such as the de-overpowerization of Blade Flurry against two targets — have only further cemented the perception that our specs are being same-ized. Players have also compared and contrasted each rogue spec’s PvE toolkit and found them strikingly similar.
But comparisons don’t end there. If the specs were so similar, Assassination wouldn’t be the overwhelming spec of choice right now in end-game raiding (as I type this, the latest incarnation of Nik’s “Rogue Lookup” spreadsheet has Mut as the active spec for 49 out of 51 top raiding rogues). If the specs were so similar, Subtlety wouldn’t be far and away the choice du jour among competitive PvP rogues in the class’s Patch 5.2 resurgence (despite Blizz PvP honcho Brian Holinka’s suggestion that Mut could be pretty good as well).
“Similarity” is subjective. Is Earth similar to Mars? Are people similar to monkeys? Are Roman Catholics similar to Protestants? That depends on what you feel makes those things similar to, or different from, one another.
The farther out you look at the rogue specs, the more alike they tend to seem — heck, the more alike every melee class/spec, or even every DPS class/spec, tends to seem. All three specs use relatively low-damage abilities to build combo points. They spend those combo points for higher-damage finishers. They need to maintain/refresh self-buffs or debuffs (Slice and Dice, Rupture, Recuperate). They have one or two longish-duration cooldowns they can use for burst damage. They all wield one-handed weapons. They all use stealth similarly. They all rely on the same set of abilities for closing gaps or controlling opponents. They all look damn sexy in Bloodfang Armor.
But the closer you look — or, maybe more to the point, the more you look at certain specific characteristics — the more specs take on a flavor of their own. Assassination is often lampooned as the “slowest” of the specs because its main combo point builder, Mutilate, costs way more energy to use than the CP builders of the other two specs. Subtlety is so widely preferred for PvP right now because the combination of Shadow Dance and the Cloak and Dagger talent help make it extremely bursty (which can be especially powerful when it’s coupled with the burst and crowd-control strengths of other classes, such as hunters and Discipline priests — which is why the “thug cleave” comp is so popular at the moment).
You’re probably asleep already, so I’ll wrap this up, but my point is that spec differences, much like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. I’ve discussed this before, but I’ve long preferred playing Assassination over the other specs in PvE because I’ve enjoyed its flow; Combat tends to feel too frenetic for my taste (especially while its button-mash-inducing DPS cooldowns are active), and Subtlety has felt alien because I haven’t been able to master the efficient use of Shadow Dance. That said, I’ve been playing Combat exclusively for the past few months because LFR bosses refuse to give me any pretty daggers, but are more than willing to throw entire crates of fist weapons at me.
So, to me, the three specs are quite different. To you, they may be virtually identical. Either way, I suspect that spec differentiation (or lack thereof) is not part of the reason why the rogue class as a whole is relatively unpopular.
I dream of the day when Pick Pocketing is a viable spec.
… what?
On second thought, I should have linked to this when I wrote about sexy rogue gear sets. http://mechalis.wordpress.com/transmoggination-trove/leather/
Why thanks. :D I’m kind of surprised you didn’t link to that one classic machinima, Blind, with two rogues (one in Bloodfang) duking it out over Onyxia, back in her Stormwind days:
Speaking of machinima with rogues, this one is my favorite, about an undead rogue who looks pretty darn good for being pretty darn dead and not wearing Bloodfang:
YOU MUST WATCH.
I feel cited! *hugs*
I was gonna include your name, but worried that name-dropping there was too “insider.” :)
The rogue forum remains a less-valuable resource without you, V. :) I ain’t got the energy or brain-knowledge to answer a lot of these q’s.
Mostly it’s an issue of perspective, since Blizzard did so many crazy, creative and wonderful things to rogues in Wrath; and that became the mental reference point for the playerbase (especially for players like me, who started playing in Wrath).
It wasn’t all balanced very well, but it was -interesting-.
But since then Blizzard has been reeling in the creative side of things for the sake of actually balancing our specs for gameplay. Which is kind of boring.
I am glad the different specs still handle differently. Even though I wish they’d just balance the seesaw of “awesome new things” and “not gamebreaking.”
“Crazy, creative and wonderful” like Hunger for Blood? :P
As a Wrath baby myself, I have no basis for comparison to the eras before it, so it’s hard for me to judge the rogue changes they made then. Personally, I still consider Recuperate (added for Cata) one of the greatest additions to the rogue class I’ve ever experienced, from the standpoint of a person who enjoys questing and solo play.
I wonder if the WoW design team would agree with you that they’ve sacrificed in creativity in order to achieve better balance. It’s a pretty alluring argument to me.
Hunger for blood (which was also a defensive dispel originally, although that didn’t make it past 3.1.0 with turned it into the recipient of derision we remember today), killing spree, shadow dance, fan of knives, dismantle (originally part of riposte, and only usable after a successful parry), and tricks of the trade.
The cooldowns for evasion, vanish, and sprint were reduced to 3 minutes, mutilate and envenom both became useful abilities, feint reduced AoE damage, ambush earned a second combo-point. And of course we got glyphs.
Assassination got turn the tables, infectious poisons (which would spread poisons to healers/dispellers – not sure if that went live but it was toyed with on the PTR), deadly brew, and cut to the chase. Combat got prey on the weak, focused attacks was improved, and throwing specialization turned fan of knives into an AoE interrupt. Subtlety got honor among thieves and premeditation was buffed, among other things.
Poisons now scaled with attack power, and Wrath was the first expansion where we had rotations we’d recognize today: in BC you raided as combat and spent every combo point on slice and dice and rupture, and they were never both up all the time (imagine the outcry if we went back to playing like -that- today). This was also when disarm trap began to require stealth and the suppression room became so annoying.
Energy went from ticks to perpetual regeneration in a 2.4 patch, but it was further improved upon in the first Wrath patch. In 3.0.8 cheap shot got its own unique DR, and the cooldown on fan of knives (which had gone from 1 minute to 10 seconds) was removed entirely, and it also now did increased damage with daggers. First poisons became PPM mechanics (instant and wound). Tricks of the trade was tweaked to not trigger until you attacked something.
In 3.1.0 envenom began improving the application chance of deadly poison and the cooldown of adrenaline rush was reduced to 3 minutes. In 3.1.3 overkill was changed to increase energy regeneration like we remember. In 3.2.0 the cooldown of shadow dance was reduced to 1 minute and we got one-handed axes. In 3.2.2 master poisoner was changed to stop envenom from consuming deadly poison stacks (and fan of knives could no longer be used as an interrupt).
In 3.3.0 deadly poison was changed to trigger your other equipped poison when fully stacked (after a very large number of rogues raiding ICC began using a weapon-swapping script religiously to achieve the same effect). Murder was improved to also deal extra damage to undead targets, because ICC. The cooldown on preparation was reduced from 10 minutes to 8 minutes, and in 3.3.3 rupture gained the ability to crit.
That’s most of the notable stuff from Wrath from a PvE perspective, I think.
The first half of cataclysm was also pretty notable for improving on Wrath, with talents like venomous wounds and the buffs to make combat and subtlety viable in PvE during Firelands.
Nutshelled, Wrath was to the history of rogues what the Industrial Revolution was to the history of the world.
Not to be overly dramatic or anything.