First, I just came back to WoW after more than 10 years. When I left, rogues were the dominant PVE DPS class and maybe even the most dominant PVP class, though they had hard counters from warriors and druids in bear. And a lot of people played warriors and there were a decent amount of druids.
But now, they seem to be terrible. And Im not talking about myself being terrible, which I am now a noob since so much has changed, but I dont see other rogues doing well either.
I never see rogues at the top of kills in BGs. Its not even close. The top in kills are always hunters, mages, warriors. The highest rogues get in kills is mid. Also doesnt even look like that many people play rogues anymore, probably because they suck now. Its not because the way rogues play isnt fun, the way WoW does rogue stealth is the funnest Ive played.
But theyre so gimpy it seems like now. Against Im not basing this off my own game play because I know I suck now, but Im looking at who is on top of kills in BGs, its never rogues, theyre not even close.
So if rogues suck at PVP, what is the point of the class? Or are they still viable in arenas?
Are they still good at PVE?
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Most of my experience so far this expansion is with assassination, so that’s what this will generally be tailored to.
Rogues right now feel very weird to play. Sub in pvp is back to being the toady that holds a person in a full nelson while a ‘better’ just beats the person into the dust. The sub rogue is not the reaper of the battleground, they are just a minion cc machine to others. Assassination in pvp does do a bunch of damage, but it’s predictable and anyone experienced are going to just use defensives through it. This leaves the assassination rogue requiring another person to force another to blow cooldowns so they can push in, however most other classes do this role much much better.
In raids however assassination rogues just feels a bit backwards and weird where there’s long gaps where we don’t press anything and I mean anything. Outside of the Kingsbane window we only want to keep garrote, rupture, and envenom on and not press a button more to let our energy pool back up.
In m+ assassination is even more frustrating where we’re a support class more than anything. We’re brought in to spread garrote + ironwire on everything, using vanish to do it again in harder pulls, hoping tanks don’t chain pull keeping us in combat and preventing the above, and if we don’t have stealth we’re doing near tank damage. Also if we don’t know the m+ very well and miss a feint at higher keys we can and will be 1 shot.
All and all rogue is my main class and they don’t feel ‘terrible’ to the point of quitting, but they certainly feel like wearing wet socks.
13 Likes
Based on what you said and my experience so far it seems rogue is terrible.
They given every other class tons of CC and mobility, oh and even can heal themselves.
I did an arena where a lock had the most DPS and healing. lol
I think the game is just too bloated now, at least as far as character mechanics. They kept adding new skills, new abilities, new races, new classes without making sure everything played well together.
I think the original WoW was more fine tuned, things had more thought put into them, now its like they just threw things at the wall to see if they would stick. All for the goal of selling more expansions.
Makes sense being that they were being run by Activision. There were a number of years where Blizzard was as high quality as you could get. Now its like your typical big money studio.
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Feral Druids can do better than them in PvP with less than half the effort.
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Well, it becomes play what you like. If you’re looking to do max damage and be the ultra FotM numbers lord, then yeah rogue won’t be for you right now. If you just really enjoy the sneaky rogue class and the play style of save/spend/burst, rogue is still your class.
I personally fight against my parases against other rogues more than care if I’m on the top of the meters or not (which many of the times I am, but again I don’t care about that one if I’m only parsing 70 or lower at varying points). Classes will be weak or strong through the game’s life, so find mechanics you like and keep going. If you’re good when a class is weak you’ll be a monster when it’s strong.
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We’re certainly not any better
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Assa is just a Bleed / Poison spec, Outlaw is a laughable attempt at replacing Combat, and Sub is an amalgamation of everything its been through, just a shadow of itself. that’s rogue in The War Within. the only thing making rogue a rogue is the fact we have vanish.
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Assassination is probably easy to pick up and harder to master.
While Subtlety is difficult to pick up and the hardest to master.
And Outlaw is… there to pick up and… that’s it.
Honestly, Sin is probably the healthiest Rogue spec going into the next patch.
Sub is the ‘high skill ceiling’ spec.
Outlaw is just the fallback spec for Sub Rogues that can’t handle all the CD’s during Shadow Dance.
Hopefully the laughably low player count for Sub and Outlaw Rogues gets looked at by our alleged class developer on whatever planet he’s currently on.
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All three specs are gear dependent. With full gear Assassination has immense pressure, Outlaw has immense cleave, and Sub still can burst around with stealth/shadow dance windows.
But the problem is you need max gear and advanced knowledge of the class to push out peak performance of the class.
The margin of error playing Rogue has always been thin truthfully since vanilla and holds true in TWW.
But right now you need to 10X the effort to play Rogue versus other classes/specs. You need to out play people full throttle to have a chance.
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The stealth is broken, blind is broken, a lot of things are broken
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Sin is absolute monster in keys in terms of damage. However, the spec feels like garbage to play. SO much pooling you’d think ur back in vanilla.
And then, Outlaw is neutered by target cap even though it’s an overall strong spec. Gimmicky gameplay, but kinda fun too.
Finally, Sub plays okay. It’s always been the spec that makes perfect sense to play gameplay wise. Unfortunately, this is one of the 3 worst M+ specs in the game, and also pure unplayable garbage once you get into mythic raiding. At a garbage 2650 io, I’m currently already rank 27 world for Sub rogue M+ scores lol. To give you an idea of how dead Sub is, on a spec like Sin, you’re like rank 4000+ with that kind of IO. It’s just insane how deeply dead Sub is. We’re talking literal BFA numbers in keys.
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the class dev is probably somewhere in the combat rogue logs. judging by the sheer amount of parses of classic rogues vs retail. it seems that’s where a LOT of rogues went.
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that might just be because assa is literally a top 3 dps spec in M+, so no one plays sub. How is your overall dps as sub compared to others at 2650 io?
It’s not because of their damage however. It’s because of being able to silence and debuff enemies making them deal 15% less damage for 8 seconds.
I would argue then sub is more or less fine, it’s assa who is an outlier.
Except it’s also not. Why take a sub rogue when a ret/frost dk does more dps, has defensive utilities, and battle reses? Sin is taken more as support that does pretty okay damage (think Aug).
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Play a Ret or a DK instead. You’re welcome. Thank me later.
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I was beating my Ret bro in overalls 2 resets ago. Today, I’m 625, he’s 627, we were farming NW 10 for Vault, and he was 1.9 mil dps to my 1.5 mil.
Hilarious take lol. Sub is like 25% behind sin in overall dps.
You’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. I’m saying that sin rogue aren’t taken because of their damage but instead what utility they bring. I’m also not saying sub is fine.
It absolutely is a mix of both man. Sin’s damage is absolutely bonkers right now.