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I agree, I've never noticed a caster dps go OOM in a fight so they get free CC's and we have to spend our energy and lose dps for it? Add in the fact that even if our CC's were free we're still out-DPS'ed a !@#$load. Cmon Blizz.

The problem goes beyond the resource system.

Looking at how the talent/spec system has changed over the expansions we can see that blizzard has shifted its design philosophy from focusing on classes with 3 specs each to focusing on an economy of 33 specs as if they were individual classes. It has allowed them to make major changes to the mechanics of a spec without major disruption to the other 2 within the class.

The problem with rogues is nothing major has been done to Assassination, Combat, or Subtlety. The class is still in an antiquated state making our specs more like an arbitrary load-out than even our talents.

Assassination's Resolve - Vitality - Sinister Calling = Passive damage modifiers.
Venomous Wounds - Combat Potency - Energetic Recovery = Passive energy regen. mechanic.
Vendetta - Adrenaline Rush - Shadow Dance = Burst/DPS CD.

Pretty much every passive mechanism or ability one spec has the other 2 have something categorically similar, which results in nearly identical play styles. I've said it many times now that between specs I literally change 3-4 buttons. The specs CP generator, spec finisher, and the spec cooldown. All the passives do is alter the priority of rupture vs SnD and of secondary stat ratings like haste vs mastery.

I do believe this is very much true! But giving a class like rogues the distinction of say warlocks would require giving us a mana resource system which would streamline the foundation of the class and allow for more interesting meta mechanics that really allow distinction.

Edit: To clarify, a single base resource such as mana allows each spec to "add" distinctive resources such as demonic fury or burning embers that each have their own unique generation and usage instead of every rogue spec being shoe horned into CP's and energy.
This is why I believe mana to be the most flexible resource system in teh game and why specs are so incredibly diverse among casters especially when compared to melee.

I really hope blizz picks up on this point. I CANNOT emphasize this enough, but I feel it will fall on deaf ears.

Rfeann I apologize if you thought i was trolling, I've been playing since early vanilla and rogues have just become more cluttered with abilities that really only multiply the difficulties involved in balancing, updating and using it effectively. We needed a hard reboot in MOP and we got shafted.

I'd have to really sit down and think about it, but I don't think a system like mana is required to add in distinct features to the class.

An example of the differences that could be made would be as follows

Subtlety now has Enveloping shadows instead of CP's

Enveloping shadows builds up like demonic fury and entering the shadows consumes your shadow energy but allows you to enter a wraith mode which makes you impervious to 50% of damage and you gain access to shadow strike, Harbinger's blade, impending doom and wraith strike.

10/05/2012 09:56 AMPosted by Swineflew

I'd have to really sit down and think about it, but I don't think a system like mana is required to add in distinct features to the class.

It may not be necessary, but we will have to get rid of CP's as a baseline secondary resource. Although I still believe that abilities should not be tied to 2 resources. Instead they should be dependent on the primary resource activated.

Yeah I'm noticing i'm near bottom of the totem pole on dps, not all the time, but my energy regen is just horrible and very very slow. It's a lot worse this xpac then ever before.

10/05/2012 09:56 AMPosted by Swineflew

I'd have to really sit down and think about it, but I don't think a system like mana is required to add in distinct features to the class.

Another example for Sin' would be as follow. Each main combat ability puts one point of strife upon your target stacks up to 5 times. At 5 charges you are very familiar with the target and while you retain 5 points of Strife you receive 50% less damage from that target. IF you use one point of strife that finishing move gains 50% additional damage and you now receive 40% less damage from that target. If you use another That attack does 40% more damage and you now receive 30% less damage etc etc.

I've been using Shuriken Toss to gain CPs. Does no damage, but hey. Lets you earn CPs while still being able to keep BoS up so you aren't just sitting in roots the entire bg. :)

An example of the differences that could be made would be as follows

Subtlety now has Enveloping shadows instead of CP's

Enveloping shadows builds up like demonic fury and entering the shadows consumes your shadow energy but allows you to enter a wraith mode which makes you impervious to 50% of damage and you gain access to shadow strike, Harbinger's blade, impending doom and wraith strike.

I think you could use both Enveloping Shadows and CP. Wouldn't be the first time a spec had 3 resources to worry about (unholy DKs and their ghoul charges).

Maybe Assassination could get something like, Poisoned Charge you start out with 3-5 of them and it takes :30sec. - 1min. to recharge each (different timer per charge). Using one charge empowers your next ability Envenom deals double damage, eliminates cast time for poison application, Smoke bomb deals poison damage, Vanish applies poison DoT to all enemies within 5yds.

OT: I was advocating for the removal of energy cost from finishers (and the removal of Relentless Strikes) during Beta. At present Rogues (and by extension Feral Druids) are the only class that has abilities costing multiple resources. DK, Warlock, Monk, and Paladin abilities cost a single resource.

Also I think Kidney Shot should not be a finisher and only cost Energy.... right now it feels unique (and not in a good way) in the Rogue arsenal. It's the only ability that costs both CP and energy while having a cooldown.

OP, you're making a lot of sweeping statements that have little to do with what you claim they do. You started this topic off saying that we're energy starved now not because of haste scaling but because finishers cost energy. Yet finishers have ALWAYS cost energy, yet we were not energy starved last expansion (especially not later in the expansion), which means that your claim is 100% wrong. The thing that changed between then and now is how much haste we have, not how much our finishers cost.

You claim that making finishers free would be a good thing and would solve our energy issues, yet when Relentless Strikes is brought up you say that things like Relentless Strikes are too convoluted, implying they should be removed, yet removing Relentless Strikes and making finishers free would be 2 changes that basically cancel eachother out. It'd do absolutely nothing to make us less energy starved.

Your complaint about RNG is also rather weak. As Rfeann said, RNG is the game, it has to be otherwise there's no game at all, because all outcomes are pre-determined. RNG creates the need for awareness and adaptation. Even if that RNG is merely in the form of whether or not you got an extra cp or not, whether or not Relentless Strikes proc'd, or whether you got an energy gain proc at a given moment or not. These are all little nuances that we need to watch and take into account just as EVERY OTHER CLASS must do.

Also, your complaint about auto-attacks being a large portion of our damage carries little weight for me for 2 big reasons. First is that auto-attacks are a large chunk of all melee classes dps. It's typically always in the top 3 or 4 damage sources, so we're not really *that* far off from everyone else. Second, you (just like everyone else that complains about this) are exaggerating the power of our auto-attacks. Sure auto-attacks and poisons may make up a large chunk of our damage, but they are by no means all of our damage. It's not like we can just /afk and auto-attack to the tops of the charts and we are by no means anywhere close to that being a possibility. Because even if auto-attacks and poisons comprised 50% of our damage that would still mean that the other 50% of our damage is coming from active sources. And that doesn't even factor in the active parts of our rotation that amplify the passive sources. Complaining that auto-attacks and poisons are too much of our damage and that that makes us boring is like complaining that dots are too much of an affl lock's damage and dots are boring, because it's basically the same thing: damage that happens on its own that we just need to maintain/support with other aspects of our rotation.

Overall, you keep complaining about things that have been a part of the class for YEARS, and pointing to them as the reasons for problems that you're seeing now, and claiming that by changing or removing them would somehow magically solve these problems that they obviously did not create.

Spec homogenization has always been something I've seen as a problem.

Spam combo making skill (sinister strike, hemo, mut) keep up rupture and snd, and hit with a finisher (evis, enven)

Of course keeping up rupture used to be gear specific and refreshing snd is removed totally in one specs rotation.

Spec diversity is needed, not for balance, but what the point of 3 specs if they all feel the same?

This thread really got me thinking about ways to seperate the different rogue specs. Assuming that rogue combat is designed to have openers, sustained damage and finishers, I've come up with the beginnings of a rogue spec redesign. I know that Blizzard doesn't intend on making huge changes but it would be interesting to see what ideas everyone could come up with.

In my opinion the following design basics could let players select a designed based on their play style.

Subtlety: High Damage Opener, Low Damage/Utility, Utility/Escape Finishers(CD Resets, etc)

Assassination: Utility Opener(stun, silence, etc), Moderate Damage (Poison Damage), High Damage Finisher

Combat: Preperation Openers (based on situation), high Sustained Damage, Utility Finishers (CD Resets, etc)

I'd like to add that I assumed pvp balance wasn't based on 1V1 and combat tends to be more of a pve spec. Kinda like the old days.

OP, you're making a lot of sweeping statements that have little to do with what you claim they do. You started this topic off saying that we're energy starved now not because of haste scaling but because finishers cost energy. Yet finishers have ALWAYS cost energy, yet we were not energy starved last expansion (especially not later in the expansion), which means that your claim is 100% wrong. The thing that changed between then and now is how much haste we have, not how much our finishers cost.

You claim that making finishers free would be a good thing and would solve our energy issues, yet when Relentless Strikes is brought up you say that things like Relentless Strikes are too convoluted, implying they should be removed, yet removing Relentless Strikes and making finishers free would be 2 changes that basically cancel eachother out. It'd do absolutely nothing to make us less energy starved.

Your complaint about RNG is also rather weak. As Rfeann said, RNG is the game, it has to be otherwise there's no game at all, because all outcomes are pre-determined. RNG creates the need for awareness and adaptation. Even if that RNG is merely in the form of whether or not you got an extra cp or not, whether or not Relentless Strikes proc'd, or whether you got an energy gain proc at a given moment or not. These are all little nuances that we need to watch and take into account just as EVERY OTHER CLASS must do.

Also, your complaint about auto-attacks being a large portion of our damage carries little weight for me for 2 big reasons. First is that auto-attacks are a large chunk of all melee classes dps. It's typically always in the top 3 or 4 damage sources, so we're not really *that* far off from everyone else. Second, you (just like everyone else that complains about this) are exaggerating the power of our auto-attacks. Sure auto-attacks and poisons may make up a large chunk of our damage, but they are by no means all of our damage. It's not like we can just /afk and auto-attack to the tops of the charts and we are by no means anywhere close to that being a possibility. Because even if auto-attacks and poisons comprised 50% of our damage that would still mean that the other 50% of our damage is coming from active sources. And that doesn't even factor in the active parts of our rotation that amplify the passive sources. Complaining that auto-attacks and poisons are too much of our damage and that that makes us boring is like complaining that dots are too much of an affl lock's damage and dots are boring, because it's basically the same thing: damage that happens on its own that we just need to maintain/support with other aspects of our rotation.

Overall, you keep complaining about things that have been a part of the class for YEARS, and pointing to them as the reasons for problems that you're seeing now, and claiming that by changing or removing them would somehow magically solve these problems that they obviously did not create.

I don't even know where to start with this hot mess, mess as in ill-informed.

Well, the issue with relentless strikes is it is clumsy and not very flexible. it punishes rogues for using any ability TWICE if you do not have 5 cps. The first is you do LESS damage with fewer combo points, but to be beat over the head again in the energy department is just pitiful. not to mention getting to five with sin' is never quite a straight forward path to begin with as they tend to come in 2's or if you are lucky and get a dispatch proc.

edit: The bottom line IMO is relentless strikes is unnecessarily clunky and it is blizzard over engineering a solution to a problem that could have been easily fixed.

The reasoning about rogues being ok at the end of the expansion is exactly what I am talking about. If you are ok with the weak start and OP end then more power to you. The bottom line is no other melee class designed by Blizzard since rogues have any of the problems we have today DESPITE having multiple resources. Please name me one ability that DK's or Monks have that consume multiple resources? Each one of those classes combat system is tighter and fluid then rogues have ever been and thats the truth. Rogues have NOT been updated significantly since their inception yet somehow if our system is so good why did blizz not introduce it to the new classes?

Edit: They learned what was wrong with rogues and applied it beautifully to the DK class and it plays flawlessly, monks are also just as tight as DKs

RNG also should not factor in to a class's ability to perform damage, it should only apply to the damage incurred, Dealt and various ability procs. Under no circumstance should a random proc determine whether you can use your main abilities on a predictable and controllable basis...

10/05/2012 11:55 AMPosted by Cloake

Rogues have NOT been updated significantly since their inception yet somehow if our system is so good why did blizz not introduce it to the new classes?

Your touching on the issue.

If they changed rogues so that our combo point abilities didn't require energy, we'd be monks.

Different looks, different animations, but still, at the base we'd be monks with 1 more or fewer chi.

As I've said before, monks got all our good stuff. We haven't even gotten blizzard to make combo points stick on the rogue yet (you think relentless strikes is a convoluted fix? What about giving us an ability we need to click with a 1 minute cooldown, and then forcing us to waste our 90 talent point if we wanted it to have no cooldown). I don't think we're going to get 0 energy finishers.

10/05/2012 12:00 PMPosted by Woran

Rogues have NOT been updated significantly since their inception yet somehow if our system is so good why did blizz not introduce it to the new classes?

Your touching on the issue.

If they changed rogues so that our combo point abilities didn't require energy, we'd be monks.

Different looks, different animations, but still, at the base we'd be monks with 1 more or fewer chi.

As I've said before, monks got all our good stuff. We haven't even gotten blizzard to make combo points stick on the rogue yet (you think relentless strikes is a convoluted fix? What about giving us an ability we need to click with a 1 minute cooldown, and then forcing us to waste our 90 talent point if we wanted it to have no cooldown). I don't think we're going to get 0 energy finishers.

Which is ironic considering mages and priests share the same basic resource :)

Play a ret pally or windwalker monk.

- CP on the player, not the mob
- High actions per minute. I've offset holy prism by some 30 seconds or so because there have been times where I never stop attacking.
- Yellow attacks actually do damage
- Procs clearcast a finisher, rather than 1/5th of a finisher
- Stuns that are resource free

While Blizzard seems to be proud of the energy system, they evidently consider rogues to be a proto-type and are unlikely to make any sweeping changes. When WoW is still going 5 years from now they will still be sustaining SnD and mashing SS.

10/05/2012 12:03 PMPosted by Cloake

Which is ironic considering mages and priests share the same basic resource

Ah yes, but so do all the mana classes. Mana is much less a resource, as it is a limiter for fight duration. I haven't actually seen a mana using class run out of mana anytime recently. Mana is there to punish the class for not doing the rotation right.

To be frank, I fell in love with the hunter resource system, which is ours without combo points, but the thing was whenever they were low on focus they had an ability that did damage to get it back. The feeling of always using an ability is something I enjoy. Even when out of resource, I was actively earning more back instead of waiting for more to form.

Woah, a blue. I didn't think you guys were allowed on the Rogue forum.

10/05/2012 11:55 AMPosted by Cloake

I don't even know where to start with this hot mess, mess as in ill-informed.

Obviously you're not going to start with the over-arching point of my post, you know the one where you keep pointing at long-standing aspects of the class and claim that they're the cause for issues that weren't around until less than 2 weeks ago. Obviously that's not the place to start, probably best off not addressing that at all.

10/05/2012 11:55 AMPosted by Cloake

Well, the issue with relentless strikes is it is clumsy and not very flexible. it punishes rogues for using any ability TWICE if you do not have 5 cps. The first is you do LESS damage with fewer combo points, but to be beat over the head again in the energy department is just pitiful. not to mention getting to five with sin' is never quite a straight forward path to begin with as they tend to come in 2's or if you are lucky and get a dispatch proc.

2 things: First, if you're hitting a finisher twice like that then that is not a problem with the class, it's abilities or it's design; it's a problem with YOU. You literally just complained that screwing up the rotation is bad. It's like complaining that if you accidentally hit Obliterate when you don't have diseases on your target that you get punished twice, because your obliterate did less damage and you lost out on disease ticks. Second, Aniticpation makes getting 5 cps straight forward regardless of spec, you are not dependent on getting a dispatch or seal fate proc in order to get 5cps, you have a buffer allowing you to always use 5cp envenoms.

You also avoiding that little part about how removing Relentless Strikes along with making finishers not cost energy would cancel eachother out and do nothing to fix the energy problem. Good job.

10/05/2012 11:55 AMPosted by Cloake

The reasoning about rogues being ok at the end of the expansion is exactly what I am talking about. If you are ok with the weak start and OP end then more power to you.

We were not only strong at the end of the expansion, we were strong for most of the expansion. And most of our problems were either problems that all melee had in general, or were addressed by specific changes to specs/abilities. But it still remains that you are pointing at new problems and blaming old aspects of the class, which makes absolutely no sense. Maybe you should take a step back and see if I have at any time stated that any of these changes you or others have suggested should or should not be done, because I haven't said anything of the sort. My issue with this topic is that you are using faulty premises to try to validate your views on how the class or specs should be changed as if your suggestions will magically solve these problems, when they're not what caused the problems.

If an aspect of the class or spec pre-dates the problem you're having (by several years) then that aspect of the class/spec is NOT the reason for the problem, which is what you're claiming it is.

RNG also should not factor in to a class's ability to perform damage, it should only apply to the damage incurred, Dealt and various ability procs. Under no circumstance should a random proc determine whether you can use your main abilities on a predictable and controllable basis...

This statement doesn't even make sense. You say that RNG should not affect our performance, but then you state that it should affect the things that make up our performance.

The only thing I can imagine that you could possibly be trying to say here is that RNG should only affect entirely passive things. To which I have 2 responses: First of all you complained about poison procs being RNG before, so...make up your mind. Second is that that's just plain dumb. If rng only affected passive aspects of the class then there might as well be no rng at all because it means we have nothing to respond or react to, our entire rotation could just be put into a /castsequence macro and spammed to our hearts' content because in YOUR OWN WORDS rng will never interfere with using our abilities in a predictable and controlled basis.

RNG affecting the use of abilities or the generation of resources are necessary because they are what creates diversity in the form of individual skill and performance. Our ability to react properly and quickly enough to these forms of RNG is what determines how well we are playing. If you take that RNG away then there is no difference in performance between individual players. And EVERY class has this, including your coveted DK class.