tbc and rogues

[Grul]

tabara said:

Grul - ok so warriors got the shaft too, I doubt anyone will argue with you there - but just talking about the talents: sure every class has talents that are only situationally usefull in every tree - I'm talking about what I see as an essential talent (for heroic 5 man) being 7 points deep in the PvP tree, the tree I would usually have 0 points in and with 5 of those points being wasted if you are not using a dagger.

Yarr guess so The only thing I can see blizz thinking is that they didn't want rogues to be a primary CC class (like mages), so gave them more DPS. They gave mages less damage output than rogues, but more CC, while also giving rogues the option to spec into CC rather than having it as a base feature.

The only spec choice that might have a similar effect in 5-man heroics is between frost/fire mages.
Fire mages have more DPS output than frost I think, if they spec for it. If they do, they lose the slowing goodness of frost. When we did heroic underbogs, Yavimaya (as full frost) was able to kite and solo one mob in each pack. I don't think a Fire mage could have done the same, but Yavi had to give up some DPS to get there.

[mard]

apples and oranges.

you're comparing cc ability to class ability to kite. while mages maybe have to spec frost to reliably kite something, they dont have to spec for sheep to be, for instance, usable at range and not from 5 yards only. or basically to be useful at all on heroic, and to not wipe whole group with it when using not talented version.

oh and also about blizzard giving rogues more dps than mages for the cost of cc - blizzard posters have stated before that mages are now primary single and multi target dps in tbc. and not some randon blue dude with no clue, but one of the actual devs.

[Tardon]

Mard, sorry... but thats just BS.
Frost is FAR more usable in 5-mans than fire is... why? Shatter. Fire is better for raids, due to DPS, and mostly because shatter is usually not appliable in raids... but in 5-mans, where you can snare and nova targets, frost is far supirior. You dont think its good to be able to sheep one, and then kite the other meelee around? Dont think its only rogues that have to spec a certain way to get the most in PvE, in different scenario's.
If a rogue spec's for some stunlocking, they can be extremely usefull in PvE... sap one, stunlock the other, while the rest of the group kills the other stuff, and the rogue will require minimum healing in that time. Yes... you have to spec for it. But what... warriors dont have to spec a certain way to be good tanks?
You say Poly is the best CC in the game... I agree that might be true for PvE, but far so in PvP. You should also remember that Poly is the only CC in game that heals the target.

oh and also about blizzard giving rogues more dps than mages for the cost of cc - blizzard posters have stated before that mages are now primary single and multi target dps in tbc. and not some randon blue dude with no clue, but one of the actual devs.

I would like to see the quote. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I would really like to see that quote... why? Because on the mage forums, we've been told the direct opposite.
I can also present screenshots of damage meters from several raidgroups, Nihilum among others, where warlocks and shadowpriests are higher than mages (yes, rogues get shafted in that sense too, since the locks and priests are higher than them too, just saying our dps isn't as awesome as your making it out to be).

[Grul]

mard said:

oh and also about blizzard giving rogues more dps than mages for the cost of cc - blizzard posters have stated before that mages are now primary single and multi target dps in tbc. and not some randon blue dude with no clue, but one of the actual devs.

Hehe, that means our mages are slacking! I've been running damage meters on every single one of our Karazhan runs, and you've consistently been doing about 140% - 175% of the damage of our mages

[mard]

in heroic instances there is no situation when you're better bringing rogue over another mage to instance. there is no such situation ! heroics are all about cc. sheep is in every aspect better than improved sap. not improved sap is even more laughable when compared to poly. poly heals the target ? who gives a crap about that in instances ? sheeped target will be killed last, it doesnt matter if its healed to full or not.

regarding frost and fire, there is one major difference. frost spec is ridiculously good in pvp too. so you have two specs, frost for 5 man instances, heroic or not, pvp, and decent raid damage, with all the utility mages normally bring to the table. and fire which is better for raiding but not so good for 5 mans.
i have to pick different specs for pvp, heroics and raids. if i spec for raids im useless in heroics, and barely decent in pvp. if i spec for heroics ill fall behind other classes in raid damage. if i spec for pvp im useless in raids. useless, do you get it ? there's nothing else i bring to the raid than dps, and if im not ahead of everyone else in raid dps im just taking the spot and leeching epics, since raid would be beter bringing a mage, or a warlock or a shadowpriest over me.

dont give me that spec for stunlocking bs either. stunlock specs are pvp specs. pvp spec = no raid damage, no 5 man damage, period.
we dont have magical stunlock button on our action bars either, like every other class seems to think. to fully stunlock something you need to cheapshot it, gouge, blind, kidney shot. that requires noone hitting that mob. none of them works in raids.
in heroics stunlocking isnt as useful as you paint it to be either, for one major reason. time. when you have to deal with 6mob pull , each of those being able to twoshot leather wearers and oneshot clothies, even in best possible scenario when you cc them all and only deal with one at a time, there's still only so much time before healer run oom and then everyone gets splattered all over the walls. you need to kill stuff fast or it kills you. and if you send rogue to stunlock something, even if he's specced for it it takes him out of the fight for those 20 seconds of stunlock too. stunlocking = no damage at all, thats how its done.

warriors are another shafted class that deserves some justice. but anyway, yes they have to spec for prot to tank, and for fury / arms or whatever it was to dps. where's the problem again ?
you need warriors to tank, period. you dont need rogues for dps or control becouse there are always better choices, and better classes to pick.

as for blue quote, ill try to dig it up.

Hehe, that means our mages are slacking! I've been running damage meters on every single one of our Karazhan runs, and you've consistently been doing about 140% - 175% of the damage of our mages

mages we usually have in raids are frost. the only fire speced mage we have is szass atm. we dont have any decent warlock, or any lock at all for that matter either.

oh and tard - i've seen those screenshots too. what im saying is that ranged classes in general have same or better damage output, while bringing utility and soaking much less healer mana, as melee classes (or actually just rogues, since we bring nothing except dps and are the biggest mana sponges after warriors), which shouldnt be the case.

[yavimaya]

mard said:

in heroic instances there is no situation when you're better bringing rogue over another mage to instance. there is no such situation !

Okay Mard, calm down and try to stay objective. Statements like this make the rest of your more valid points just seem like a spoilt brat whine. By resorting to exaggerations you may as well just go 1337 speak and have no-one take your points seriously.

First of all, you realise poly can only be used on humanoids or beasts, right? And even then, some mobs are immune anyway? So it's far from the be-all-and-end-all of crowd control, don't get me wrong, it's awesome, but there are still limits to it.
Let's take the example of heroic underbogs. Plenty of stuff in there can't be crowd controlled. The hardest pull in there is probably either the dual bog giants before the first boss, or the imba bog lords at the end, before the final boss. Those fights are about pure straight line damage, and a frost mage falls far far behind a rogue in straight line damage (and it's not because we slack, before you suggest that *eyes Grul*). Whilst I agree having a frost mage there is particularly useful (for the poly on later humanoid pulls and for kiting shamblers on the tough 3-man pulls (since they can't be poly'd, we had to kite one as we had no lock to banish), removing our rogue and taking a 2nd frost mage would have guaranteed we couldn't have done the later pulls.

Secondly, for pvp, frost is not a ridiculously good build. Frost is a 5-man PvE build. In PvE It's good against rogues and warriors admittedly (although that's been marginally reduced due to the new rules on the snaring for warrior charges/intercepts etc.) so I'm sorry if you've been on the rough end of the stick on some encounters with frost mages, but if I was speccing purely for pvp it would be vastly different from my current deep frost (especially as our 41pt talent bugs around 10-15% of the time, where he just sits and does nothing). I've spent a lot of time trying to find a spec where I could keep everything I want for PvE, but improve my pvp spec side, however, after looking at the heroics, I'd rather stick with full frost for it's utility, and just do what I can in pvp as is.

P.S. I think Tardon is more referring to the perma-chill slowing of frost bolts than shatter. Shatter is largely irrelveant in 5-man pve (more so with the new breaking rules on frost nova and frostbite) unless you're packing 2 or 3 frost mages into the group.

[mard]

humanoids and beasts at range, without having to spec for it vs only humanoids and you have to spec for it to actually be useful ?
rather easy choice if you ask me. you're making it sound like sap has not limitations. it's melee range, humanoid only and cant be used in combat. and not talented is useless.

oh, and where are those exaggerations ? statement that you're better with a mage or lock in rogue spot ? well, you are. after all warlocks and mages offer at least similiar dps and dont die to random 6k cleaves or 8k tramples. which those big giants in underbog really like to use btw.

[yavimaya]

yavimaya said:

removing our rogue and taking a 2nd frost mage would have guaranteed we couldn't have done the later pulls.

Mard, I didn't say ANYTHING about sap. This was my main point (quoted above). Now calm down and stay objective.

Oh, and /target Mileka /slap (for sparking him off)

[Slyvar]

Mard,

2 points here:

1) I believe blizz has accepted that 5k cleaves in heroics is just a little silly, so that may change quite soon
2) I've spent a lot of time looking at damage meters. There are very few people that I've ever grouped with that can match, let alone beat, your dps. Saying all mages and locks DPS better than you is just inaccurate. And if you think we can just merrily DPS as much as we like, that's wrong two. We're limited by mana, no easy way to shed threat, and actually quite a few mobs that are immune or resistant to one damage type, and quite a few mobs that reflect spells back at you. Of course, you wouldn't notice them since you only notice the ones that do bad things to melee.

Every class has it's own strengths and weaknesses, and frankly there's no matching the rogue for it's DPS. Having vanish means you can really nuke a mob (and using feint occasionally if vanish is on cooldown *grin*) and SAP is useful if you spec for it. I can't think of a way you'd even have a chance in some of the heroics if you didn't have a rogue and a mage. So yeah maybe you have to spec for imp sap, but wow is a game that does have a degree of specialisiation in it and everyone should just accept that. There's no spec that makes you good at everything, not a single one. Locks for instance have a lot of spec choices to make, and some of them REALLY suck in PvE but are great in pvp. Same for pvp to pve.

[mard]

one specific mob in one specific instance proves nothing tho.
the whole point is that the class lacks something that would make people say "hey we need rogue for this so lets bring one", just like you pretty much always want a mage in your group. and in raids we're easily replacable becouse of locks, shadow priests and mages outdamaging us on boss encounters (they're all specced for it, yes, but all those rogues in high end raiding guilds are specced for raids too. its not like they're raiding with shadowstep builds, you can be sure about that). thats mainly becouse of the way those encounters are built, with aoe, cleaves etc. blizzard claims they're looking into it, but we dont know what they'll come up with, if anything. so unless they fix it its nil argument really. but im repeating myself >.<

oh and slyvar, you were actually giving me good run for my money back in that mechanar run, when i was combat mutilate specced, and i actually think you finished the run as 1st on meters. sure the place isnt very rogue friendly (doh, which is really ? >.<) with half the stuff being poison immune, but really you dont have to look very far to find someone who can match my, or any rogue really, dps.
aggro reduction abilities were sort of trademark of rogue class, but now pretty much everyone has aggro reducing talents, mages got invisibility which resets it completely ( i know it has casting time ! ) and so on.

Every class has it's own strengths and weaknesses, and frankly there's no matching the rogue for it's DPS.

sadly, thats not true, and you'll see for yourself if we (or when we) get to fights like nightbane, gruul, things in serpentshrine cavern. if they wont fix the whole anti-melee issue before that.

[Tardon]

yavimaya said:

P.S. I think Tardon is more referring to the perma-chill slowing of frost bolts than shatter. Shatter is largely irrelveant in 5-man pve (more so with the new breaking rules on frost nova and frostbite) unless you're packing 2 or 3 frost mages into the group.

Nope I did mean shatter... why? Because you can't freez targets in most raid encounters (though that might change), and such, you can't get higher crit/"shatter nukes" with shatter, since its not frozen.

Sly, sadly, when looking at DPS meters, Mard is correct, that currently Warlocks and ShadowPriests are top of the DPS meter.
HOWEVER, Mard, you are forgetting two huge things, which Sly only brought up briefly... mana, and aggro control. Rogues can keep DPS'ing infinetly, if they dont die. Mages and lock's can keep going until they run out of mana.
And on aggro, warlocks are quite shafted as far as i know, and while its true mages got invis, the casting time isn't the problem... its the fact that if you take ANY damage in the time you "fade", it gets cancelled, and a lot of encounters have AoE going on. Rogue aggro reset is instant, and sure to work.


And last, listen to Yavi... take a step back, and take a look at the big picture. Now, I can whine quite a bit myself, but sometimes you gotta relax a little. You exagerate your points, and make such blunt (and incorrect) statements, that your "real" points dissapear in all the whine and over exaduration. You may have some points, but they are becomming hard to spot, because some of your statements draw to much attention, and those statements make it seem like your entire post is meaningless.
Now... this makes me feel like going to the mage forums and make a good "NFER LOCKS FFS" thread and perhaps ask for a DPS boost at the same time heck... i'll talk a bit about invis at the same time *goes posting*


EDIT: still waiting for that dev post yer qouting

[mard]

yes, all my points were exagerated.
rogues, primary dps class that has nothing else to offer, are not being outdpsed by dps specced healers, warlocks, mages. i've made up everything about 5k+ cleaves, tramples, random aoes, all that stuff. sap always work, you can sap in heroics without any problem at all, we can stun everything in every instance while maintaining our normal dps. we have tons of utility, and are true kings of dps. all the "real" problems are surely in my head, becouse i havent seen any of them playing my toon.

the question was about how are rogues in tbc. the answer is simple : in end game raiding and heroics they're burden to the group. but aparently i know nothing about my class and should shut the f**k up.
so be it then.

[Slyvar]

Mard,

Not contributing to the arguement so much as giving more info on locks...

You're right, that run I did end up 1st. BUT that is with a spec that they've now reduced in power due to that very point - that the DPS was too high. Previously we had +5% to all damage, now we get 5% crit instead. Which is pretty lame in comparison!

As far as threat goes, we have one threat reduction spell but it's on a 5 minute cooldown. We have a talent to reduce dot threat, and one to reduce destruction spell threat. Of those two, probably the destruction spell one is the more useful, but it's a fairly small reduction and the destruction spells it's aimed at helping all have extra threat to begin with.

So we've got more aggro reduction than we used to, but still not much.

Actually I missed one way of getting aggro reduction - demonology locks, if they get one talent deep in the tree, can have an imp out which I think reduces threat. However, that particular spec tends to rely on felguard to do a lot of the DPS so having the imp out to begin with reduces the DPS ability quite a bit.

Cest la vie!

Sly

[Tardon]

mard said:

but aparently i know nothing about my class and should shut the f**k up.
so be it then.

I take what you say seriously, however its statements like that, that make me disregard it again.
Now of course, if you were merely stating an oppinion, that would be cool... however, you have taken up an argument, and as such, you have to accept that to get anywhere, overexageration, overboard sarcasm and swearing is a no go.
Everyone is entitled to their own oppinion, of course, but as an argument, it just dosn't work out.
And at least thats what I think your trying to do... show what you think are fatal flaws in the rogue class, correct?

[Grul]

mard said:

rogues, primary dps class that has nothing else to offer, are not being outdpsed by dps specced healers, warlocks, mages.

I've yet to see this happen though... I've run damage meters every single 5-man and Karazhan run we've done so far, and checked results with other people running meters.

Every single Karazhan or 5-man run has had a rogue as top on DPS (when we've had a rogue in group of course ).

The DPS meter in the run which had 2 rogues and 2 mages looked like:
1. Mardragg
2. Mileka
3. Felbane
4. Maff

The only person I've seen come close to rogue damage was Slyvar in some 5-man runs. He kept getting aggro and dying though And they've also since nerfed that spec since it was too damaging.

There was also one run where you had nearly double the damage output of the person 2nd on the list (you'd done 1.3 million damage, the person second on the list did 700k).


And I don't care what blizz says... if I want DPS for an instance, I'll ask a rogue