Rogue Q&A

Blizzard has been doing a series in which they have asked players to put forth their most pressing class questions and then they (Blizzard's developers and team members) will chose from them to try to give us (the players) an idea as to the direction they are thinking about those issues.

Considering that the patch notes for rogues for 3.2 consisted of about 5 LINES I was not to surprised that the Rogue Q&A was one of the last ones they touched on.

Over all not any big surprises...Blizzard has been clear, they like where rogues are at this point.

They’re a premier melee dps class -- the personification of skulking and swashbuckling flair. It’s their primary and only role -- they’re not going to turn into tanks or healers.

They did touch on the Vanish issue...which has been broken for so long that most of us have just learned to adjust and EXPECT it NOT to work some times so you have a back up plan "just in case". Their proposed solution sounds intriguing but I don't see anything happening any time soon.

No, Vanish isn’t working properly and breaks when you breathe on the rogue funny. There are two problems with fixing it. One is that technically it’s just not easy. We would need to change the ways spells are resolved on the server side. Now that is something we can do, but the outcome would be taking a powerful ability and making it more powerful. We need to solve the frustration part of the ability, but not also greatly buff rogue survivability or damage potential when doing it. The solution we like the most is something like Vanish puts you in stealth for 1 second minimum no matter what else happens.

One question and response that really stuck out to me was the one dealing with the Subtlety tree. I have to say I agree with the Developers...if they buffed that tree...just about EVERY rogue I know would be Sub spec...I LOVE that tree....until BC that WAS my main spec. As is stated in the question I to think it MOST exemplifies the essence of what a rogue is...sneak around, take them out with ONE SHOT from BEHIND. Assassination is more about the Poisons, Combat the weapons, but Subtlety...it is all about the sneak attacks....man I love that tree....

Q. Players feel Subtlety captures the essence of a rogue with the majority of its abilities revolving around stealth and utility. How do we feel this specialization is performing currently and where do we see it in the future?
A. The damage is behind the other specs in PvE, and due to all the neat utility tools, Subtlety would immediately become the default spec in PvE if the damage were comparable. In the future we’d like to make it competitive, but it’s an interesting balancing act between too good and not good enough. It has a place in PvP, and should be more compelling in the post-3.2 world where survival talents will be more valuable.

Long-term, we’d love to see more of the utility talents from Subtlety core for the rogue class in general, or alternatively, we’d like to see more of the damage boosts from the other trees made passive so that rogues of all trees were choosing utility versus utility when making talent choices instead of utility versus damage.

Another thing I though was interesting is that Blizzard acknowledged a common complaint that I my self deal with, we can do GREAT in raids on damage but in dungeons it is another story, and the reason is all about how we have to manage our cool downs. I have to say I loved the development teams response to this:

A. In dungeons they’re absolutely right -- one of the disadvantages of scaling so well in a raid scenario is that you need to start at a lower baseline. They’re better than they used to be for dungeons due to a mostly reliable Sap, but they’re still not great compared to a caster or melee hybrid. In a raid they’re great, and the problem exists between the chair and the keyboard if they’re not contributing damage effectively in that scenario.

So they are hearing us, and they are responding. They have acknowledged us rogues are a plucky class that keep clamoring to not get forgotten despite how much we are hated for our "selfish ways". We now can announce with glee "HEY! We were DESIGNED this way!" Our job is to stand there and demand buffs, stuffing our faces with buff food then climbing to the top of the damage meters, you all just didn't realize that! At least now with Tricks of the Trade we can KINDA buff...but even with that, when it comes right down to it we would really rather ToT another ROGUE than anyone else...
So what can we say....we are selfish, back stabbing, Swashbucklers with FLAIR!