The Class That Stood Still

For the past week or so my partner and I have slowly yet surely been rising rank by rank in our battle groups 2's arena bracket. Yet I find that no matter how many games we win there are almost 2-3 lost games to match them. It is becoming more and more apparent with each patch that the rogue class is a never changing class. Yes in Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) we as a class got several new abilities, however none of which are of any use in the most widespread use of a rogue...Player VS. Player (PVP). It seems as though every time Blizz tries to make the game a little more interesting for rogues as a class, they seem to crash and burn hopelessly into an endless abyss of broken talents and worthless abilities.

Patch 3.0.9

• Rogues
  • Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
  • Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
  • Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
  • Slice and Dice (Rank 2): This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

Patch 3.1.0

• Deadly Poison: The amount of damage this poison generates from the rogue’s attack power has been increased from 8% per application to 12%.
• Deadly Throw: Missile speed increased.
• Instant Poison: Redesigned to have its chance to be applied based on the speed of the weapon (frequency-based).
• Shiv: This ability can no longer generate a critical strike, and the poisons it applies cannot be critical strikes either.
• Tricks of the Trade: Will now begin following the first damaging attack.
• Wound Poison: Redesigned to have its chance to be applied based on the speed of the weapon (frequency-based).
• Talents
  • Assassination
    • Hunger For Blood: No longer stacks. Damage bonus changed to 15% for a single application. Requires a bleed effect active on the rogue’s target. No longer removes bleeds from the rogue. Now costs 15 energy and lasts for 60 seconds.
    • Master Poisoner: Now also increases the bonus to apply Deadly Poison when Envenom is used by an additional 15/30/45%.
  • Combat
    • Adrenaline Rush cool down reduced to 3 minutes.
    • Killing Spree: Now also increases all damage done by the rogue while active by 20%.
    • Savage Combat improved to 2/4% increased damage against poisoned targets.
    • Lightning Reflexes reduced to 3 ranks for 2/4/6% dodge and 4/7/10% melee haste.
  • Subtlety
    • Shadow Dance now opens a new action bar when used.
    • Sinister Calling: The damage bonus to Backstab and Hemorrhage is now 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%

Patch 3.1.3

Rogues

• Overkill: Talent redesigned. Now increases energy regeneration by 30% while stealthed, and for 20 seconds after breaking stealth.

As stated previously, no matter how Blizz tries to change the way our class is played from a PVP/PVE stand point, they have yet to improve upon how we function as a class in both PVE and PVP situations alike.  

With the most recent change to our design (Overkill Nerf) we lost our main form of damage output, which is burst damage.  The whole idea behind the original overkill was to allow for more opening burst damage on an opponent.  If our main priority in an arena match was to focus solely on one target and constantly dps him, then the recent changes to Overkill would be completely and unquestionably acceptable.  However, this is most definitely not the case.

With the old Overkill, rogues gained an extra 25 energy that could be put forth in another burst attack, not to mention another possible yet probable 25 energy gained from Relentless Strikes talent, all of which only allows us to scale with other classes that deserve a rather large nerf bomb.

With the “new and improved Overkill” FFS… we merely gain a miniscule DPS boost in single target PVE situations.  Might I add that this only affects how we DPS in single target situations. 

When it comes down to it, Blizz has given the shaft to the Rogue class ever since Burning Crusade came out over 2 years ago.  After the first expansion came out with new 41 talent point trees (i.ex.. Mutilate, Shadow step and Surprise Attacks) they never changed anything majorly in our abilities as rogues to allow us an advantage in a pvp situation.  Now I understand that giving one class an advantage over another would just be ridiculous and would cause a massive drop in the average amount of players.  However, I find it redundant to continuously change a class to better itself in situations and in some cases, reduce an ability to soften the rough edges of encounters to allow for some fair game play. 

After BC introduced millions of players to the world of Arena, we found ourselves searching and calculating what spec would mesh best with our partners and against certain comps.  Though many people disliked it, there was only one reliable and affective spec to use in any arena situation, this was the Subtlety spec.  This is a topic for another post so I will end this here. XD

Face it, when it came right down to it, we only had one affective spec for PVE encounters…Combat.  Surprise Attacks practically made the spec, sure imp Slice and Dice was amazing to have but it would have been nothing had finishers not been  affective.  Since BC, rogues have been awaiting a long overdue change to the line up of effective and useful abilities to add to our arsenal.  Our rotations typically consisted of Sinister Strike, SND, SS and Rupture.  With the introduction of WoTLK brought very minute changes to our skills and our rotations.  The only useful ability we received from WoTLK is Tricks of the Trade (TOT), and in very few cases…Fan of Knives (FOK).  Neither of these abilities allowed us to change how rogues are viewed in PVE and PVP encounters. 

As we all know, rogues are viewed as one of THE most over powered PVP classes in the game.  This is most definitely not the case, when really broken down into a series of moves you’ll find that if something goes wrong in an encounter, we are basically fucked in many ways.  The fact that we have abilities that serve no purpose in either PVP nor PVE encounters is absolutely a waste of memory on my laptop.  If Blizz is going to try and actually change the game for the Rogue class in a positive way, then I believe they should begin by making some useful 51 point talents.

Shadow Dance is probably the most useful 51 point talent that WoTLK has to offer to our class.  Albeit it is in a sense just making abilities that require stealth available out of stealth for a matter of a few seconds.  This is only enabling us to remember how broken vanish is…yet another story for another day.  Our class is in need of something new that Blizz has to offer us in order to change the way people view rogues. 

Overall, our class is in a DIRE need of something to switch up the way we view the game that we have come to love so much.  Allowing us to gain new and useful abilities would open up numerous possibilities as to how people go about playing one of the best classes to roll in the World of Warcraft.

Roll with the punches, thaboush OUT!!