Blizzard, You've Broken Rogues.

#0 - Oct. 29, 2007, 4:29 a.m.

Edit: Thanks again Neth, for the extention past 2000 posts =)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2712981501&sid=1&pageNo=1
We have a secondary discussion here, for those of you who are still interested.

Finally, my account is unbanned! Thanks Neth for the help, hopefully we'll hear back from you soon =)

Original Post with a few additional (in bold) comments:

All right Blizzard,
You need to fix Rogues.

I've been doing arenas since they came out and as time progresses some things become blatantly obvious and it's very demoralizing seeing the horrible patch notes for 2.3.

You're giving healers damage, fine. You're giving warriors their PvP talents in one tree, fine. You're giving Shaman infinite mana, fine.

Fine, fine, I don't really care, those are decent changes, although not desperately required.

What irks me is how you treat us Rogues.

We ask and beg you for ways to improve our mobility, I don't honestly think you have any idea how bad it really is. You don't know how many times I'm forced to mount up in the middle of battle to have a prayer of catching my target -- and most of the player base simply doesn't know how WORTHLESS stealth is in high-level arena play.

STEALTH IS A SNARE TO THE ROGUE. It doesn't help us catch our target. Dear "Stealth lets you choose when you start combat" replies -- guess what, when you enter an arena, stealth's element of surprised is practically gone. When I vanish to get rid of a Snare because I need to catch my target as soon as possible, do you know what happens? I snare myself. 30% decreased movement speed, welcome to stealth. Just in case for some reason vanish didn't break on its own, I have to cancel it myself so I can maybe catch my target.

Sprint is on a 5 minute cooldown. FIVE. MINUTES. You'd be lucky to use it a second time in an arena. This isn't level 60 where one cooldown means the death of a player, this is level 70 where a rogue needs to expend all of his cooldowns to have a remote prayer of being effective. You know what sucks about having to do that? Once you're out of cooldowns, you're [in a heap of trouble]. Got curse of exhaustion? Sucks. Looks like that Freedom'd warlock is getting away for the next 30 seconds. Got hamstrung while trying to kill that priest? Ohh [poodle paws], did you just get feared for 1 second, and the priest got enough distance on you that you can't kill him? Shucks. If only you had intercept.

I find it awesome that Curse of Exhaustion doesn't have a cooldown or diminishing returns. Apparently Blizzard balances ranged snares on Warriors, because Shaman are getting the same thing. What does that mean for Rogues? GL HF in the 1500's bracket.

BLIZZARD REPLIES TO ROGUES! HOLY Cow! SHADOWSTEP IS USEABLE OUT OF STEALTH YESSSSSSSSS
Subtlety sucks. You might get a few people to respec into shadowstep to try it out when the patch comes out, but I can guarantee you that the amount of people speced shadowstep by the end of season 3 will be about as low as it is now. You need to fix Subtlety.

It doesn't need a minimum range. This isn't intercept, hell, it isn't even feral charge.
It doesn't need a long cooldown. It's not that good to begin with.

Shadowstep isn't the answer to the Rogue's mobility issue, and neither is Fleet Footed. FF won't do anything when you're snared, and ShS is in the worst possible tree. I mean, we ask for a Mobility buff by
EITHER
Making shadowstep trainable AND useable out of stealth AND keep its current cooldown AND change the increase damage effect
OR
Sprint on a 20ish second cooldown, 4 second duration.

And you give us a 1/2 ass version of the first one and have accomplished nothing.

By the way, Deadly Throw is being nerfed next patch. Fantastic -- we ask for mobility buffs and we get mobility nerfs.

Did I mention Healers are getting Damage? (Point isn't the damage, point is they're fixing what doesn't need fixing and further breaking what is already broken)

It’s also prudent to note that Sprint and Deadly Throw (and arguably Blind) are our only abilities that actually helps us catch our target. Clos, Trinket, Vanish, remove snares (and one of them slaps a brand new one on us), but they don’t actually do anything for catching our target. If they’ve got distance, they’ve got distance, we can’t cover it easily. Sure, we can Deadly Throw – but if we get re-snared, you’re not catching your target, especially with the “Buff” to Deadly Throw next patch.

The biggest issue with Rogues isn't really mobility, though, if you want to know the truth. It's the fact Rogues are balanced around level 60.
We still have ridiculously long cooldowns and talent trees that expect us to drop a target in a stunlock (Hi sub! Still doing 150 dps?)
We have three viable talent trees for arenas, and all our PvP talents are scattered all over the place. Our talent trees lack Focus.

A pretty easy way to prove this point of cooldowns is the transition from level 60 to level 70 PvP trinkets. 5 minutes to 2 minutes, because everyone knows 5 minutes is ridiculously long for a trinket that is used almost every fight. Same applies to our cooldowns – lower their duration if you have to, but you need to lower their cooldowns, too.

We have a "Dagger" tree, Assassination, that boasts Mutilate, Improved Backstab, Seal Fate, and Lethality, primary dagger talents for a Rogue.
Shop in Combat and you find your +5% dagger crit, increased damage on Backstab, and a talent that favors fast offhands. Daggers are fast yes?
Not to mention Improved Ambush, Opportunity, and Shadowstep just so happen to be in subtlety.

I mean, where's the direction?

Why do we have 12 poison talents again?
Why do we have 12 stealth talents again?

Why do rank 1 spells break stealth again?
Why do I come out from hiding when I'm demoralized or intimidated?

It would also be nice if you looked at deep subtlety talents such as Deadliness and Sinister Calling. If I specced into Deadliness, I'd get a little more than 140 attack power -- Sinister Calling would grant me just under 70 agility. Using the same math you guys do (8 agi = 16 AP), these talents are roughly equal, although one is deeper in the tree than the other. I'd also like to mention that 140 AP is 10 dps, so 1 point in deadliness or sinister calling is quite sad. Look at Murder -- increases your damage by 1% per point, if you're doing 200 dps (which is obviously low) then Murder is as useful as a point in D/SC -- and seeing as Dual Weild spec gives 10 dps PER POINT you should probably look at these talents when wondering where to start Sub tree fixes.
People are much more inclined to spec Hybrid specs with at most 30 points in Sub as opposed to going all sub just because it lacks the sustained damage other specs offer.

You introduce Resilience, which is probably the bane of the Rogue class. You balance arenas to be all about sustained damage and yet you try to get rogues to spec out of the sustained damage tree. How about you put sustained in all of them instead?

WTF is up with Kidney Shot? It's a critical part of many Rogue builds and is a life-saving mechanic many times, and yet it suffers from Resists, Dodges, Parries, Misses, and Blocks. While you have Intercept stun, such a ridiculous move that warriors use it offensively instead of to catch targets (Cuz hey, it'll be up again in 15 seconds) and it only suffers from a resist check.

Where is the balance?
Mortal Strike and the new Aimed Shot guarantee that, with the exception of Immunities, your target will get 50% less healing done.

While a druid is able to completely negate a Rogue's poisons. Completely. I've tried both Vile and Improved poisons. A druid can get a full stack of Wound and a Crippling off in less than 5 seconds. It's ridiculous. How many times have you cleansed Mortal Strike or Spamstring?

By the way, Vile Poisons is bugged. Abolish Poison and Poison Cleansing Totem don't have resist checks. Thanks for leaving this bug in for so long, by the way.

Or is it working as intended, like hunters pets running in a random direction and hitting a stealthed rogue?

While we're on the topic of bugs, Improved Sprint sometimes fails to remove snares if the snare has a % resist dispel effect (Roots, poisons, ect, usually from a talent). It would be nice if you fixed that.

Come on Blizzard. Wake up. This isn't level 60 anymore, fix Rogues. You need to do something about
A) our mobility
B) our Talent Trees
C) our sustained damage in trees other than Combat (Mutilate doesn't have sustained damage, people are forced to go 20 into combat to gain it)
D) Stealth. It's worthless. WORTH LESS. Fix it. And quick.

Hurry up, I want to see something done in 2.3!

Edit: Okay, the thread capped at 500 posts -- thanks for the support and discussion everyone! Here's a link to part 2 to continue our thoughts:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2650558304&sid=1

Edit 2: Yeah, for those of you who don't know, this thread capped out at 500 posts, and so did the second thread. When I posted the third, it got locked, and after a series of reposts and such my account was banned and this thread's capacity was expanded and moved to the Rogue forums from the General forums.

*Please refrain from cussing or avoiding the profanity filter in the future. The capacity of this thread has been extended for discussion. - Nethaera

Nethaera

#507 - Oct. 29, 2007, 10:29 p.m.

Q u o t e:
*Please refrain from cussing or avoiding the profanity filter in the future. The capacity of this thread has been extended for discussion. - Nethaera

Discussion but no action eh Neth?

There is a fine line between giving constructive feedback and demanding immediate action. This is a discussion that better serves its purpose on the Rogue forum than it does in General. Believe it or not, many people don't read outside their class forum and if there is to be a better discussion on class concerns, it should be within this forum.

I can say that the concerns are being read.

Nethaera

#556 - Oct. 29, 2007, 10:57 p.m.

Q u o t e:

You really don't understand then. We've been posting in a constructive manner for MONTHS and YEARS.

I understand. I also know that if you go to pretty much any class forum, you will see the same statement, ie that they have been posting in a constructive manner for months or even years. I will also repeat that we do in fact read the feedback, but that doesn't always mean we agree or even that any change will be immediate or available to discuss. We discuss what we can when we can.

Nethaera

#575 - Oct. 29, 2007, 11:07 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Then why doesn't the Rogue class lead come here and talk to us? Right. There isn't one.

All we ask for is a post like once a month that directly addresses "Yea or Nay" about the hot topics. Tell us WHY you feel a certain change isn't needed or why you are doing the changes you are doing.

Because as of right now, we get silence in return to our advice on what the class really needs. And then we get a bunch of irrelevant changes and nerfs that we have no clue on the thinking process that went into coming up with them.

There is no specific Class lead like people seem to think. We get to what we can as we can. There are just more of you and more posts than us. ;)

I think that rather than spending posts on feedback on getting blue responses, that it would be better spent on discussing the topic at hand. I'm also going to attempt (though it takes some time) to try to prune out any extraneous comments that don't benefit the discussion. Please also refrain from posting /signed. It doesn't add to the discussion nor is it beneficial to the discussion. I can extend the post limit on the thread more, but there is a point at which we risk the forum going kablooey. ;) I don't want to test those limits.

For further comments about community team performance, you can email to wowcmfeedback@blizzard.com I will be deleting any other posts here that don't discuss the topic at hand.

Nethaera

#597 - Oct. 29, 2007, 11:29 p.m.

Just as an FYI, there is another thread that focuses on Arena performance for rogues here- http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2647258783&sid=1

Please also understand that while we are reading and forwarding feedback, I can not guarantee changes or even further response. If there is more we can bring back though, we will.

Nethaera

#606 - Oct. 29, 2007, 11:36 p.m.

Q u o t e:

One question me and other Rogues have asked, with no response, is whether or not the new Dirty Deeds talent will affect non-special damage. Currently it only affects special damage, but the PTR patch notes just says it "affects damage". Is the PTR patch notes a typo, or is the talent not behaving as designed by excluding white damage?

Someone else brought this up recently and I will follow-up with it. I believe it may have been an intentional change in the language however. I'll see if I can get confirmation.

Nethaera

#613 - Oct. 29, 2007, 11:39 p.m.

Q u o t e:

You don't have to guarantee anything, but that will not stop us from voicing our opinion.

Change sprint

Rework our cooldowns

I would hope you would continue to voice opinions/constructive feedback. :) It's not our intention to stop discussion. That would defeat the very purpose of having forums available to the community for such discussion. I try to pop into threads when I can not just to promote some more fun discussion, but also to attempt to prompt more constructive discussion as well where I can. The same goes for all of the Community Team. There is always a method to our madness even if it doesn't seem so.

Nethaera

#623 - Oct. 29, 2007, 11:42 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Looks like popping my forum cooldown was worth it.

Thanks for the attention Neth. ;P

And buff Energy regen, it's killing us in the endgame...

Oh Rizz... .You know sometimes you hurt me the most. :( So little faith.

I don't have any additional insight or personal experience to share on Arena PvP and don't want to be misconstrued. The most I can say is that I have been paying attention to what many many people I respect have been saying from their own experiences and filtering that with what other sources are saying as well to make some matches. That's a part of our jobs after all. :)

Nethaera

#637 - Oct. 29, 2007, 11:48 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Funny how you delete our posts, and refuse to answer us on what you were thinking when you gave -50% threat on shadowstep instead of something worth having. You want discussion? then give answers, the rogue community has been talking to a wall the past months and all we get is retarded changes contrary to the things we actually ASKED for?

Perhaps next time you could post without doing it in all caps. It detracts from any message you might be trying to share. The same goes for anyone else using the same tactics. Refrain from posting in all caps, don't avoid the profanity filter, don't post character assassinations on others (including Blizzard employees) and post in a way that makes your message easily read.