Before I start I want to make it clear that the play style of our class was much different in the past and has continued to change as the game has evolved. Comparing even burning crusade arena to current arena where I think strategy and control has give way to a much faster paced, split second play style with a growing list of opposition abilities to worry about. The rogue has evolved and the rogue player has evolved. What shocked me, looking back, is how little the class itself has changed in the past years.

Our abilities and PvP damage cycles have been similar for a very long time. The standard cheap shot — > combo ability(ies) –> kidney shot –> combo ability(ies) –> damage finisher has been the foundation of the class for a very long time. The last class shaping abilities that we received were mutilate (which was essentially played the same way as backstab, but let’s forget about that), cloak of shadows, and shadowstep. All of these abilities came before Burning Crusade was even released. You could argue for shiv here as well, but I’ll get to that later.

WOTLK gave us some very lame abilities and class changes. It’s kind of a sad situation when none of our three 51 point talents are used for any high end PvP

other than shadow dance, which is minuscule in comparison to mutilate representation in end game PvP (actually, none of the top 100 rogues in terms of arena rating are anything other than mutilate atm) . Hunger for Blood is irrelevant as far as PvP is concerned. Killing spree is, for lack of a better term, retarded. I really dislike having a 51 point talent that does lots of random damage and ports you without control, for PvP it’s underwhelming at best. Shadow dance, in it’s first iteration as a set of vanishes was cool although it needed some adjusting. This was changed to it’s present form which is, in my opinion, a lot more boring than people realize. Essentially, all dance does is let you use those same stealth moves you’ve had for 4 years out of stealth for a few seconds. It’s somewhat interesting but still lacking in terms of creativity as a 51 point talent in what should be one of our best pvp trees.

Shiv was another one of our new abilities, but deadly brew and the present burst situation has marginalized it greatly. Fan of Knives is the biggest joke of all in PvP; it’s paradoxical to me that the most common PvP use for our big new WOTLK ability is to aoe out other rogues. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?

In Classic WoW, one of the most popular rogue specs was cold blood / prep daggers. To be honest (although play style has of course changed, there are more abilities and burst) the removal of shiv really makes present day prep mutilate feel a lot like cold blood prep. WOTLK gave us some interesting talent choice opportunities but it’s pretty sad when the basics of PvP can be summarized in this flow chart someone linked me which I found pretty amusing. Of course this is an exaggeration, and what differentiates rogues is reaction time and decision making regarding cooldowns and strategy, but is this really that far off?

I want to say first that I don’t think rogues are out of balance. I do not want rogues to be buffed. Actually I think they are right were they should be in terms of balance, and I’ll cite SK once again here which has us right in the middle of high end PvP representation. That doesn’t change what I said above and that doesn’t make the class ideal. I know this all may look like complaining but here’s what the changes I believe would move rogues in a better, fresher, and more interesting direction.

Survivability

The biggest problem limiting rogues now is (more…)