Ruffy Rants: Patch 5.3 and the PvE/PvP Ability Chasm

For once, the ginormous pit of nothingness that is my WoW PvP experience may actually be a good thing.

As I have often stated on this blog, I am a PvP wuss. Although I’ve dabbled in it a few times during the 4.5 years I’ve been playing WoW, I’ve inevitably quit for two primary reasons:

• The feeling that I’m actively playing against other human beings, most of whom probably know what they’re doing a hell of a lot better than me, makes me crap my pants a little. OK, a lot. And I only have so much money to spend on pants in a given year.
• That feeling is reinforced by all the times I feel like I’m maybe actually doing things kinda-sorta right, and yet I still am getting my ass handed to me by someone who simply outgears me.

For the first time since I started playing, I feel like a PvP-related patch is actually speaking directly at me. “Hey, Rfeann,” it’s saying. “Don’t be afraid, man. It’s cool. You can come back in the water again. I swear the crocodiles aren’t… well, OK, they’re still there, and they REALLY want to eat you. Like, they’ve already drawn up a whole 10-course tasting menu based around your various internal organs. But their teeth are blunter, so it’s totally cool. Just take a quick dip, maybe?”

And I’m gonna do it. It helps that, shortly after the patch drops, I’ll be starting the part of the legendary quest chain that involves some battleground play; that’ll be my opportunity to dive back in and see how bloody I get.

I’ve got hope that the main systemic PvP changes in store for 5.3 — in particular, resilience going baseline and PvP gear being scaled and removed from the upgrade system — will make it less likely that I’ll find myself demoralized and obliterated in the blink of an eye by ubergeared players who are salivating at the chance to chop off my arm, beat me to death with it and then carry it with them over to the graveyard so that when I respawn, the first thing I will see is my own arm giving me the middle finger as I’m instantly murdered again.

The question is: Are these changes going to be enough to make me *stick with* PvP long enough to get over the other problem I listed above: That I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and am intimidated by all those other players who do?

Two of WoW’s leading design folks, the ever-present Twittermongers Brian Holinka (PvP chief) and Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street (lead systems designer human guy person), were recently interviewed by ArenaJunkies’ Sam “Vanguards” Kwok about the big changes in store for Patch 5.3. Included in the interview is this exchange, which drives straight to the heart of my lingering worry over PvP design:

Sam: PvE and PvP changes seem to collide very often, do you guys believe that balancing both may require a lot of specific PvP and PvE only changes? An example would be Find Weakness in 5.3.

Brian: Yes, and when we do it. Find weakness is a great example where PvE needed a buff and it would’ve cost big problems to PvP. We keep it in mind and Frost bomb is another example. We try not to do it too often, it’s a lot of things to keep track of. We’re the designers and people on Arena Junkies are really passionate players that really keep up on all the changes, but a lot of players are not. To ask our general player base that your spell does this and it does half damage or 25% or something like that, it’s really not something we want to do too often. Especially hey we want eviscerate to hit 10% less on players. That’s really inconsistent and a tough thing. We usually do it when it’s really a significant thing such as Find Weakness is 50% less and Frost bomb is 40% less.

Greg: There’s also this persistent, I’ll just call it a myth, that if we just bite the bullet and make 2 versions of every spell suddenly we’ll have class balance nailed and it’ll never be a problem again. I’m pretty confident if we went ahead and split sub rogues into 2 abilities on every ability with different damage numbers you’ll still see players saying why they can’t just tune down this one ability that’s costing pvp burst problem. In other words players will still want us to make changes even if we have the numbers split up, I don’t think it’ll suddenly make players feel their class is viable in every situation

I’ve seen this argument many, many times over the past few years, from designers and players alike. It used to make a lot more sense to me then that it does now. There is a perpetual, stated reluctance within the WoW design team to create PvP and PvE versions of every spell, and the justification given is concern that 1) it’ll be confusing for players and 2) it won’t necessarily solve balance issues.

Those are both valid concerns. But here’s the thing: I am *already* confused out of my gourd by the difference between PvE and PvP. They are, at the most basic level of gameplay, utterly and completely divergent from one another. When I am fighting another player, virtually *none* of the rules apply that apply when I’m questing, dungeoning or raiding. A player enemy has a different health pool from an NPC. Has a different toolkit. Has different strengths and weaknesses — and those strengths and weaknesses vary depending on the person’s class, spec and knowledge/experience level. And a player enemy is often impossible to predict, particularly for a casual player like me with very little PvP experience.

And on top of all of that, the spells that really matter are *already* entirely different for PvP than PvE. To know that — and to have my brain turn to mush right out the gate — I don’t need to look any further than my crowd control spells. Not only do they have a fraction of their duration in PvP than they do in PvE (Blind: one minute? nope: EIGHT SECONDS), but they also are affected by diminishing returns, which is a stunningly intricate, exceedingly complex system that I’m pretty sure works more or less like this:

I open from stealth with a stun. You are stunned! Take that, nefarious ne’er-do-well!
The stun ended, but I don’t like it when you move. I stun you again! Ha, pusillanimous pig! I shall perforate you with my pointy petards of piercing!
Oh, crap, you came out of that quicker than I expected. Now you’re hurting me. I’m going to Blind you and get some distance. Look at me, I am so clever!
Wait, that didn’t work at all. You’re still hurting me, and now someone’s laughing at me in BG chat because they said I can’t use Blind on someone who was just feared three times in a row.
OK, um, crap, I’m gonna Disarm you OH GOD THAT BARELY LASTED TWO SECONDS WHAT IS HAPPENING EVASION VANISH VANISH OGOD MY ARM I’M BEING BEATEN WITH MY OWN ARM

Arm removal aside, I realize that’s probably not the most realistic example, but I wanted to break up this long-ass blog post with something listy. :) My point is: There are so many types of CC — and what shares diminishing returns with what and for how long feels so arcane, inaccessible and difficult to track — that it’s all a huge confusing jumble in my head. Which is bad, because as a rogue, I know CC is my PvP livelihood, and driving other people mad in battlegrounds seems like it’d be a lot of fun if I knew what the heck I was doing.

But I don’t. For me, PvE and PvP are already vastly different from one another. So, when I read that designers are reluctant to alter the amount of damage a specific ability does in PvE because it’d be different from PvP, it almost makes me laugh. I think: Do those guys think I’d even *notice* something like that?

Top PvPers would notice it, sure — it would be *huge* for them. But they already know PvP inside and out as it is; they will adjust to a change the same way raiders adjust to changes, by factoring it in, adapting and moving on (or complaining about it endlessly in forums and on Twitter).

Me? I’m still too busy trying to remember whether it’s been 18 seconds or 14 seconds since my last stun ended to give a crap whether my Eviscerate will be slightly weaker against a player target than it is against a raid boss who’s three levels higher than me and has 1.2 BILLION health.

So, yes, I’m looking forward to hopefully having my arm handed to me less often when I dip back into the PvP pool once Patch 5.3 launches. But I’ve already spent years trying to master the complexities of end-game *PvE* on my rogue; even if I’m staying alive longer in PvP come 5.3, I’m not sure I’ll have the energy to wrap my brain around that morass of details as well. And the complexities of PvP — which even *casual* players like me need to understand in order to achieve satisfying success — don’t look like they’re changing much anytime soon.

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Blue Post/Ruffy Rants: Are Rogue Specs Too Similar?

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.

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Ruffy Rants: In 5.2, Anticipation Will Likely Still Be the Belle of the Ball

I’ve got some catching up to do with Ghostcrawler rogue tweets; leave it to a cold to snot away a normally-obsessive-compulsive person’s motivation for twitstalking. This one’s from more than a week ago:

@Aulper7 Have you looked at the 5.2 patch notes?

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 12, 2013

 

Without a doubt, it’s looking like our level-90 talent tier options in Patch 5.2 will be much closer (in terms of their value) in raids and challenge-mode dungeons. Shuriken Toss will allow us to autoattack at range, dramatically increasing its power, and Marked for Death’s five free combo points per minute provides us with a nice little active-DPS bump that may be especially useful for burst situations.

But is either change enough to unseat Anticipation as the talent of choice in end-game PvE?

The gist of the feedback over at Elitist Jerks is that few expect ST or MfD to win out. I’m no whiz-bang theorycrafter, but I’m inclined to agree: It’s hard for me to envision many scenarios in which, *over the course of an entire raid fight*, it would be more valuable for me to

1. deal decent DPS at range or
2. gain 5 extra CPs per minute,

instead of using Anticipation, which guarantees me that I will

1. almost never waste a combo point and
2. never have to settle for a four-point finisher instead of a five-point finisher.

As of this post, we know next to nothing about most fights in the upcoming raid tier, so there is always a possibility that a surprising number of fight mechanics will favor the buffed ST or the new MfD. But I was one of a number of rogues who, back in the Mists beta, said the same thing about ST and our soon-to-be-dearly-departed level-90 talent Versatility. “But wait!” said I, I said. “Who knows how many raid fights in Mists will require a huge amount of target switching! Or constant running around at range like a maniac?”

I did a Google image search for “maniac.” This came up. How could I not?

The answer turned out to be: Basically none. Or, at least, not enough of a given raid fight required those things to make it more valuable to choose the “old” ST or Versatility over Anticipation.

Maybe that experience has made me more cynical this time around, and I’m being unfair in my negativity. Then again:

For Shuriken Toss — buffed or not — to be more desirable than Anticipation in a given raid fight, it likely means that the fight itself needs to be brutally unfriendly to melee DPS. Designing a fight like that feels like it’d be fundamentally against Blizzard’s current approach to encounter design, which is to allow for a wide range of classes to be viable.

For Marked for Death to be more desirable than Anticipation, we’d need to gain more DPS through getting a magically full CP bar once per minute than we would by never losing a combo point. In most standard fights, that feels unlikely to happen. *Especially* not for Assassination rogues, who gain two CPs (and sometimes three, thanks to Seal Fate) every time they use Mutilate, thus guaranteeing that they’ll be Envenoming at 4 CPs without Anticipation.

But it’s not just Assassination rogues who lose out if they drop Anticipation. Our new-in-Mists DPS cooldown, Shadow Blades (which adds an extra CP onto every CP-building move we use), ensures that other specs lose out, too. Shadow Blades all but requires Anticipation if we want to use it to maximum effectiveness; otherwise we’re either wasting CPs while it’s active, or we’re using smaller finishers.

The only scenario in which I can see MfD potentially being worth that kind of trade-off is a fight that involves a tremendous amount of target switching or a lot of spawning/despawning targets, such that we don’t have a lot of uptime on our targets (reducing the effectiveness of Shadow Blades and reducing the number of CPs we even have the opportunity to gain on our targets). In that scenario, being able to guarantee a quick 5-CPs-and-BAM could be pretty handy. Especially if burst matters.

Let’s kick this rogue up another notch!

But, for the same reason it seems unlikely that we’re going to see raid fights that punish melee DPS enough to make Shuriken Toss the best choice, it feels unlikely we’re going to see raid fights that punish DPS who can’t frequently switch targets all that well.

It may be that the best we can really hope for in Patch 5.2 is that, for those of us who *do* choose to go with Shuriken Toss or MfD on raid fights because we find those abilities more fun to use than Anticipation, our DPS won’t suffer quite as much for our decision as it would have before Patch 5.2.

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Ruffy Rants: Rogue Spec Differentiation (HUH!) — What Is It Good For?

The Twitxchange with Ghostcrawler below pokes at an issue I’m still working through: How “different” should the three rogue spec rotations feel in PvE?

 

@Ghostcrawler I guess you've changed your idea on this?

—
Kathaaria (@Evilnihil) January 11, 2013

@Evilnihil @Ghostcrawler I don't think they did really. Fan+CT terrible for combat, so now blade flurry fills that. 5 target niche is ok!

—
Verain (@VerainOfUrsin) January 11, 2013

@VerainOfUrsin Yeah. It's also a small way to make rogue spec rotations a little more different too.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 11, 2013

 

This back-and-forth is part of the much larger exchange of tweets we’ve seen about the upcoming Blade Flurry changes in Patch 5.2, which started out as a flat 75% copied-damage reduction and currently stands as a 60% reduction that will now apply to as many as four nearby targets instead of just one.

The final point Ghostcrawler makes in the exchange above raises what, for me, is an intriguing question over how important it is that our three rogue specs have different rotations. Combat’s upcoming Blade Flurry changes will further entrench three surprisingly different AoE damage approaches for the three specs:

• Assassination: Fan of Knives + Tab-Rupture (keeping the bleed on multiple targets to maximize energy regen for more FoKs)
• Combat: Blade Flurry (plus Killing Spree and AdRush for fun burst)
• Subtlety: Fan of Knives + Crimson Tempest (still amazing to type that; it’s an all-AoE rotation! for a ROGUE!)

I realize there’s room for debate over the optimal AoE “rotation” for Assassination (i.e., whether/when Slice and Dice and Envenom should come into play), but we’re still talking three distinct approaches. If making the rogue specs “feel” different in multi-target situations was a design goal, 5.2 will mark a huge success.

The ultimate rogue rotation: Set it and forget it!

But I’m going to play devil’s advocate here, and ask: What’s the point of this success? (I had originally written a paragraph here arguing that the three specs have distinctly different single-target rotations as well, but it got too bogged down in specifics and I drifted away from this central question, so I may save that for another day.) Why is it so important that the rogue *rotations* — be they single-target or multi-target — be different from spec to spec? How is that a valuable intrinsic quality of the class?

I realize there are a fair number — maybe even a large number — of rogue players out there who are steadfastly loyal to a particular spec. Whether it’s the playstyle or the (loosely associated) lore, they identify themselves by the spec as much as the class as a whole. They’re not just rogues — they’re *Combat* (or Mut, or Sub) rogues.

But what is it that makes a *player* a Combat (or whatever) rogue? If you ask players to list the qualities of their favorite spec, how many will focus on mechanics — the ability to toggle Killing Spree, the fun of using Shadow Dance, the sheer thrill that comes with the knowledge that 40% of your damage comes passively from Deadly Poison? (Sorry, sorry — couldn’t help it. Assassination is actually my favorite spec.)

Or is the answer to the question a little more emotional, more aesthetic, than that? I don’t prefer Assassination because I think Envenom is a clever way to actively increase our passive damage (oops, paradox) and separate less-skilled players from more skilled players. (Actually, I think Assassination fails to deliver on that front, but that’s another topic.) Or because I like the incorporation of Rupture for energy regen. Or because I think Vendetta is a fun cooldown. Or because of *any* particular ability or talent.

Assassination: Little. Yellow. Different.

No, I like Assassination the most because it “feels” different. Mutilate is the most expensive CP builder we have; as a result, Assassination has the slowest rotation by far, because a chunk of time is often spent waiting for energy to regen so we can Mutilate again. And I *like* that. It gives me time to look at what’s happening in the raid around me, to think more about where I’m standing and where I should be standing (and where I’ll need to be standing in a few seconds). I’ve always felt that the weaving of Mutilates, well-timed Envenoms and Ruptures makes the Assassination rotation feel like a dance — ironic, since Subtlety is the spec that actually has a (Shadow) Dance in it.

But despite that, I don’t consider myself an “Assassination rogue.” If the Assassination spec were to lose that “dance” feel, I wouldn’t suddenly stop playing the class. I’m a WoW player who enjoys playing a rogue more than other classes primarily because of the stealth/strategy component, not because of how particular mechanics play. And I worry that, if Blizzard devs continue to prioritize efforts to define and balance what essentially is three distinct rogue *classes* — each with its own unique mechanics — that we’re not going to get back to a place where rogues as a whole feel fresh and distinct. We can’t, because we’re too busy trying to tease out what’s fresh and distinct between each individual spec — as well as maintaining balance not only between the three rogue specs, but between rogues and other classes on the whole.

I’m not sure whether this makes me a fan of the idea of having only a single rogue DPS spec for the entire class, or whether it just means I wish that aesthetics, not mechanics, could be all that truly defines the differences between the specs. (Combat’s unique ability to dual-wield slow weapons would be one example here.) I just know that I’m not comfortable with the idea that each rogue spec has to have its mechanical niche. I worry that class design and balance suffer as a result.

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On Twitter/Ruffy Rants: Is It Time to Change Rogues Into Shotguns?

Here’s a juicy topic for a new rogue year.

@Alyndra1 It's a common concern of players for sure.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 01, 2013

@Alyndra1 To use FPS terms, the high auto+poison damage keeps rogues feeling like an SMG instead of a shotgun. Maybe time for a change?

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 01, 2013

@nerdycanuck And I'm not saying the SMG feel is a bad design. Watching bars chew away quickly can be entertaining too. Diversity is good.

—
Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 02, 2013

(Quick acronym glossary: “FPS” is short for “first-person shooter,” and “SMG” is “submachine gun.”)

Concerns over rogue damage feeling too “passive” in Mists date back to beta testing, where a number of rogue players posted to the beta forums that they felt too high a proportion of our damage was coming from autoattacks and poisons, particularly in the Assassination spec. This issue sometimes ran alongside a different complaint that was especially pronounced for Mut rogues: That they spent too much time waiting for their energy to regenerate between using their main damage-dealing abilities (namely Mutilate).

To me, the argument here isn’t over whether too much of our damage is “active” or “passive” — terms that I think mean different things to different people. I, for instance, consider Slice and Dice to be an active ability for Combat and Subtlety rogues, because it’s a button you have to push on a pretty regular basis in order to maintain decent DPS. (Plenty of folks disagree, and do so convincingly.)

The real issue, in my mind, is over whether it feels fun, engaging and meaningful when we use our damage-dealing abilities. And, on a similar vein, whether we feel like we’re doing something cool and special when we use those abilities wisely and correctly. Slice and Dice doesn’t feel satisfying to many people because it only enhances damage we have no active control over. It’s little more than background noise in our gameplay.

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Ruffy Rants: Are Rogues Too Evil to Be Popular in WoW?

Over the past week, there’s been a big ol’ burning hunk of discussion among some WoWians regarding the low number of max-level rogues in the game. (Though, to be honest, this is a topic of conversation I’ve seen come up periodically for years now; it’s just that a recent WoW Insider post brought the issue back to the forefront, causing idiots like me to rant about the problem and pulling Ghostcrawler into a lengthy back-and-forth with players on Twitter about it as well.)

What makes this convo fascinating to me is that there are so many potential reasons to explain why rogues are much more rarely played than most other classes. (And thus, so many potential ways to fix the problem — if it’s even really a “problem.” But that’s a rant for another day. :) )

Much of the discussion tends to revolve around issues of class mechanics — that compared to other classes, we don’t have enough mobility, aren’t strong enough defensively, have too much passive damage, rely too heavily on cooldowns, have to wait too long between using abilities, yada yada ya.

I’m not saying those are stupid explanations for why rogue population numbers are low — heck, I even proposed a few of them in my last rant on this subject. They just ring hollow to me, because the more I think about this issue, the more I feel like that the majority of the playerbase — as in, the people who *don’t* read this blog (or any WoW blog, for that matter) or game forums, and who just like to play the game without studying it intensely — I don’t think the majority of those folks give a crap about those sorts of nuances. I’ve begun to think that for them, whether to play a rogue or not play a rogue comes down to subconscious questions: Do they connect with the class on an emotional level? Does it feel fun to play? Does it feel comfortable, like that old pair of jeans you refuse to throw out even though there’s a huge hole in the crotch and your significant other cringes whenever you squat while you wear them?

To explore these questions, I did what any other moron on the Internet would do: I went on Twitter and harassed the crap out of people who are way more well-known and important than me, like @madsushi (Chase Christian of WoW Insider’s Encrypted Text column), @wowcynwise (Cynwise, a well-known WoW blogger and brain-smart person) and @Ghostcrawler (Greg Street, who does somethingorother with some online game we play sometimes).

The results of this harassment were the twitversations below, which explored two lesser-discussed questions behind why rogue population numbers might be lower than we’d like. I’ll copy/paste the individual tweets below; hope y’all will take a moment to read them and maybe even offer your own thoughts, since I think this is a fascinating issue to explore more deeply (and potentially come up with some realistic solutions for).

The convo started off with me chatting with @madsushi about his keybinds. He then linked me a three-year-old blog post of his, which made me realize he is an AAAAAAAANCIENT blogger by WoW standards. Then these two discussions happened. (Please be sure to note the part, early on, where @madsushi basically calls this blog the best thing ever in the history of anything — I’d highlight it in blinking text, but I don’t want to get all egotistical about how superawesome everybody anywhere thinks I am.)

Is the Rogue Class Suffering Because We Don’t Have Enough Heroes?

• @SvelteKumquat: Has anyone on the planet been (consistently) rogue-blogging longer than you?
• @SvelteKumquat: (Rogging? Blogueing? Blinja-ing?)
• @madsushi: Nope. The old guard of Akrios, Ming, etc all closed up shop. I wish there were more roggers, RHR is a nice addition.
• @SvelteKumquat: :D I prefer to think of it as R-cubed. You think they all burned out generally? Or is it the class? (I kind-of include Aldriana.)
• @madsushi: It’s a mix. Many rerolled, many left for other games, etc. Not many people are built to play the same game/class for years.
• @madsushi: More and more, the vanilla players are fading. Most of the guys in my guild started in Wrath. It’s been a very long time.
• @madsushi: I talked about the lack of rogue heroes recently. Reckful hanging up his daggers was a big blow to our role model roster.
• @SvelteKumquat: Does a class need role models to thrive, though? How many others even truly have such defining icons?
• @madsushi: Swifty and Kungen and Kripp bring a lot of attention and new players to their classes.
• @madsushi: how would a new player know rogues are any good? Who advertises for them in a public venue?
• @SvelteKumquat: Is that relevant to a majority of the folks who play @Warcraft, though? How many pick/stick with a class based on “public” faces?
• @SvelteKumquat: I’m not saying I’m the norm, but I picked rogue b/c I wanted to be stealthy. I’ve stuck w/ it because I still want to be stealthy.
• @SvelteKumquat: I played for ~2 years before I even started to browse the Web and seek out others who played my class. “Public” folks meant nada.
• @madsushi: I just know guys like Swifty get 6-figure views; has to count for something.
• @madsushi: I play Terran in SC2 because I saw Boxer play. I started an alt warlock after seeing a Drakedog PvP video.
• @SvelteKumquat: Wish I could instinctively know whether you or me are outliers or representing the majority. Maybe it’s both. :)

Does WoW Fail to Give Us the Rogue Archetype We Crave?

• @madsushi: Cynwise made a great argument re: the warlock and rogue identity of being frail, evil, cowardly, cheesy. Hard sell for many.
• @SvelteKumquat: The “evil” argument is interesting; didn’t know @wowcynwise talked about that. Something about that tack feels “right” to me.
• @madsushi: Here was post: http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/appendix-b-the-problem-of-evil/ He also mentions the lack of warlocks in lore, rogues have the same problem.
• @madsushi: Garona is really not that important of a lore figure and Wrathion has decided to work with everyone now.
• @SvelteKumquat: Will go read the crap out of this shortly. I Assume Horde faction has enough “good” qualities to avoid the same trap?
• @wowcynwise: Oh man, that post featured “Friendship Wizards.” I still laugh about that.
• @wowcynwise: I think you’re right, Rogues have the same problem. Expecting RP parity with Pally/Druids might be unreasonable.
• @SvelteKumquat: But if what @Ghostcrawler says is true (abt rogue pop dip being since LK), then “evil” perception only goes so far.
• @SvelteKumquat: And wouldn’t it suggest games like Assassin’s Creed would be UNpopular? Evil has plenty of vg allure.
• @madsushi: AC only has to hold your attention for a few weeks, not a few years. Just a stroll down Evil Lane…
• @Ghostcrawler: I think the rogue fantasy is out there. Maybe we just don’t / can’t deliver on it. (AC fan here.)

What do you think? Does Blizzard fail to deliver a real “rogue experience”? And if so, is THAT why not enough people play them? Or is it really just about the mechanics, stupid?

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Ruffy Rants: If the WoW Rogue Population Falls in the Forest…

WoW Insider’s Mathew Rossi knows how to write a sexy headline. “Are rogues a dying class?” is the tantalizing title of a new article posted on Dec. 10 that explores a lovely series of spreadsheets and graphs by Cynwise on Warcraft’s current class population numbers. In it, Rossi writes:

Rogues went from 7.67% of max level at patch 5.0.4, the pre-Mists of Pandaria patch, to 5.51% of max level as of patch 5.1, a drop of over 2%. This is at a time when most other classes either held steady (Paladins, Druids, DK’s and Hunters all held at about even with their Cataclysm and patch 5.0.4 numbers), went up (Warriors saw a jump from 9.25% at max level to 10.14% between 5.0.4 and 5.1, while Warlocks went up from 6.7% to 7%) or saw slight declines (Shamans, Priests and Mages all saw slight declines). By comparison, the rogue decline becomes stark.

So, where have all the rogues gone?

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