First of all, i was very glad i got a beta invitation, so i could test and help in the development progress.

But the recent posting from Ghostcrawler stating that Rogues have one of the farthest along trees made me very sad. I thought the reason for silence of the developers was some really new improvements coming along.
I think i'm not the only one who has very big concerns about the rogue class. There are so much new and interesting suggestions to improve the class in the beta and US official forums. But getting not one feedback from the devs is very disheartening.

Here are some thoughts from a player who loves this game, since he played the 10 day trial invitation at the start of TBC.


Assassination Tree:

PvE wise:

If i want to raid as a assassination rogue i have to put 5 points in the first tier. 3 points would be in Lethality an the remaining 2 points i don't know where to put because deadly momentum is as bad as improved eviscerate. Both are in a raiding environment not helpfull. I have to waste 2 points in talents i will never need. Deadly Momentum is for leveling fantastic, but the need for the killing blow is in a raiding environment overkill. It would be nice if the killing blow mechanic would be weakened.
And the assassination tree is the tree with poisons and the main finisher here is envenom. Why should i ever use eviscerate? I know that it is there for subspeccing. But as a assasination rogue we have no choice. We must waste 2 points to get down in the tree. It would be great if Deadly Momentum or Improved Eviscerate could give a benefit for taking it in assassination.

Next point is Cold Blood, it is a boring skill. In the combat or sub tree we get revealing strike and hemorrhage both are new skills which change the playstyle and add something new. Cold blood does nothing, the energy gain is not marginal, it has no "aha experience". It doesn't change any playstyle. Using it feels like wasting it because the hit could have critted anyway. It doesn't feel like it accomplishes something.

Vendetta is like HfB with a 2 minute cooldown. And it's a rogue killer in PvP. It's nothing really new.


PvP Wise:

Elusiveness and Preperation is not reachable, so we have a higher cooldown on every talent usefull for PvP (blind, vanish, cloak and more through glyph). No gap closer and even higher cooldowns, it feels like crippled. How should a assassination rogue compete in a pvp environment againt caster, i have no clue how.

I hoped for some improvements here but nothing incoming?




Combat Tree:

PvE wise:

Revealing Strike and Bandits Guile seem not the be convincing, but we can only estemitate the benefit with concrete numbers. So at the moment no clue how this will change combat playstyle. I hope it doesn't get 4x Sinister Strike 1x Revealing Strike and then 5cp finisher, because that would be as boring as 5x Sinister Strike, 1x finisher. Bandits guile implements a penalty for target switch. The biggest advantage of combat tree against assassination was the relative easy target switch, now this talent contradicts this total.

Restless Blades is a very intereting ability. It changes the playstyle, and makes it more dynamic. Very good job!
Alltogether is the combat tree very balanced and i can't wait to test it in raid environment



PvP wise:

There are some very interesting talents like Improved Sprint, Improved Recuperate, Improved Kick, reinforced Leather and Improved Gouge in this tree. They are all very interesting. But why is reinforced leather so deep in Combat. I thought armor should allover go up, not only for combat. It would be very nice if this could be joined with improved recuperate or made more available for other speccs. It contradicts the statement of improved armor for all.

Killing Spree is too unpredictable for PvP, it can break cc, it would be nice if we could get a glyph which would lower the damage but prevent the targetswitching while killing spree is active. The lack of elusiveness, preperation and a gap closer is very hurting.



Edit: fixed some typos, tried to change the wording and title, it's not my intention to derail this thread in a qq

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Q u o t e:
To be fair, there are blue posts in every other class thread, at some point. As far as I'm aware, there haven't been any blue posts in any Rogue threads. There haven't been any since I've been in the beta, anyway. That kind of inactivity can lead to a real sense of "no one is listening"

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It's not a contest.

Whining about who gets more blue posts than someone else is just going to lead to no blue posts. It's not going to get you the ones you want. :(

Just keep up with the thread. There is some good feedback in here. You don't need me, or any blue poster, to have a good discussion.

We are changing Improved Eviscerate to also affect Envenom, to give Assassination another attractive first tier talent for the endgame player.

Endgame rogues will not be balanced around 100% uptime for Recuperate. We do think rogues will use it however. If mana matters a little more, then keeping yourself alive a little more will matter. We're not fans of the (sadly widespread) belief that keeping the group alive is solely the responsibility of the healers and that dps should do everything in their power solely to maximize their dps, even if that makes things harder on the healers. :)