Suggestions for Rogue PvE buffs.

[Matk]

Rogues currently have no niche in most raiding environments. Of the MMO holy trinity of tank, healing, and dps a rogue can now only do one of those...dps. I'm not going to go into my thoughts on rogue tanking since it is fairly known that the Devs do not want rogue tanks anymore. Rogues cannot heal, so that leaves dps. All classes can dps, but what else do they have? Raid buffs, summons, kiting, consumable creation, AOE dmg expertise...plus the ones that can tank and heal on top of previously mentions bonuses. What does a rogue bring to the table? Well, rogues can unlock the suppression room pillars in BWL. Most raid-spec rogues can hit 2 targets at once for a brief time every 2 minutes (assuming the are stacked close together). You can't rely on rogues to be able to vanish and use jumper cables or smelling salt as wipe protection since generally a vanish only keeps you out of combat for a few seconds.

My point is the only thing rogues bring to every raid is damage. Rogues are the ONLY PURE dps class, yet they are not all that good at it. If rogues are the only pure dps class, then by golly they aught to be the undisputed best at it. Rogues are lower priority for windfury totem than warriors and even paladins mostly due to poisons not stacking with windfury and how those other two classes work with windfury currently. Rogues need help in the dps category and I KNOW devs do not want any changes they make to effect the PvP 'balance' that currently exists. With that in mind, I have some suggestions.

1. Rogues generate 50% threat base. Zero pvp impact. This will only help threat capped rogues...which is honestly not very many, but it's a good start.

2. Combat precision talent changed from 5% hit to 10% hit. Very little pvp impact. You need 5% hit to reach soft cap on pvp targets and that talent already provides it. For PvE it will make a large difference. 50-70% of a rogue's damage comes from white hits. Reaching hit cap for white hits is basically impossible, but most raiding rogues settle for somewhere between 12-16% hit. Raising hit will also increase their crit cap or open up other gearing options for people to min/max with more crit or Attack power. Plus more hits theoretically mean more poison procs.

3. Assassination talent Improved Slice and Dice also increase the haste buff by an additional 10%. Very little pvp impact. Most pvp fights don't last long enough for 10% additional haste on rogues to make a difference. However, on a raid boss it would make a large difference. As previously stated, the majority of rogue dmg in a raid comes from white hits. Keeping up slice and dice is basically Rogue Raiding 101 because of how important haste is to our boss damage.

4. Feint skill retool. No PvP impact. Feint is currently very rarily used in raids. I'd suggest giving it a very large threat reduction...perhaps even a threat reset (like vanish) but increase the cooldown to 1 minute or so.

5. New skill: A misdirect of some type. No PvP impact. For 6 seconds all threat caused by rogue damage is transferred to selected target. Talk about a new and useful raid utility! More snap threat for tanks AND more damage for rogues.

6. Increase rogue bonus attack power from agility. This would effect pvp some...potentially a good bit. Currently rogues get 1 AP per 1 Agility. I suggest this be doubled so that 1 agility equates to 2 Attack power. Gut reaction I am sure for most folks is OH MY LORD! High End rogues will instagib people! Well, if you refer to T3 rogues, a large chunk of the T3 gear already adds straight attack power INSTEAD of agility...so the T 2.5 sets might actually be more powerful with this changed, especially after raids buffs. Overall you are looking at 300-500 extra attack power for more rogues in pretty good gear. That is about like it was having world buffs for reference.

7. Make poisons stack with windfury...for the love of all that is holy, make this happen. Like 3/4 of the rogue complaints would disappear immediately if you changed this.

There's more ideas, but I feel like I've thrown enough words out today.

[Jc473]

I agree that if 99% of a rogue's contribution to a raid is damage, they really should be at the top (assuming they are played well). However, can I ask if you would make this post if warrior dps was not as good as it is? In my opinion, warriors should definitely not be allowed to be the best dps & tanks. So, if the devs reduced warrior dps capabilities (i.e. how rage scaling works or the Fury tree) this would allow rogues to.... well... flourish!

The reason why I think this approach is better is because it avoids 'power creep' (i.e. buffing rogues as per your suggestions). I know this isn't as exciting making direct changes to your class but I think it's a far healthier approach to the game balance.

7. Make poisons stack with windfury...for the love of all that is holy, make this happen. Like 3/4 of the rogue complaints would disappear immediately if you changed this.

Irrespective of what I initially wrote, I do think rogue poisons should be buffed to promote class fantasy in a raid setting. I think it's absolutely tragic that, in the context of optimal play, rogues feel forced to remove their poisons to get the windfury buff (assuming their in the appropriate group).

[Gantulga]

1. Rogues generate 50% threat base. Zero pvp impact. This will only help threat capped rogues...which is honestly not very many, but it's a good start.

This really would only help decked out rogues go all out on trash but also limit the rogue's off-tanking capability further. Better solution would be to change Feint (look below).

2. Combat precision talent changed from 5% hit to 10% hit. Very little pvp impact. You need 5% hit to reach soft cap on pvp targets and that talent already provides it. For PvE it will make a large difference. 50-70% of a rogue's damage comes from white hits. Reaching hit cap for white hits is basically impossible, but most raiding rogues settle for somewhere between 12-16% hit. Raising hit will also increase their crit cap or open up other gearing options for people to min/max with more crit or Attack power. Plus more hits theoretically mean more poison procs.

This would do very little for geared rogues as you're looking at 15-17% hit from gear at that point. Humans and goblins can even reach the hit cap already. Crit cap isn't reachable without world buffs anyway.

3. Assassination talent Improved Slice and Dice also increase the haste buff by an additional 10%. Very little pvp impact. Most pvp fights don't last long enough for 10% additional haste on rogues to make a difference. However, on a raid boss it would make a large difference. As previously stated, the majority of rogue dmg in a raid comes from white hits. Keeping up slice and dice is basically Rogue Raiding 101 because of how important haste is to our boss damage.

I'm not a fan of putting all eggs into the same basket. I'd rather see SnD made easier to maintain so the class is free to use offensive finishers consistently (those finishers should be buffed to actually scale though).

4. Feint skill retool. No PvP impact. Feint is currently very rarily used in raids. I'd suggest giving it a very large threat reduction...perhaps even a threat reset (like vanish) but increase the cooldown to 1 minute or so.

Feint could be changed into simply suspending your threat gain for a few seconds. That way rogue would be able to ham right on pull which would help them do competitive trash DPS.

5. New skill: A misdirect of some type. No PvP impact. For 6 seconds all threat caused by rogue damage is transferred to selected target. Talk about a new and useful raid utility! More snap threat for tanks AND more damage for rogues.

If you were to do this, it'd allow all other damage dealers to go ham right away, including warriors, and allow warriors to execute harder, which wouldn't help you on meters. This would actually turn into a warrior buff.

6. Increase rogue bonus attack power from agility. This would effect pvp some...potentially a good bit. Currently rogues get 1 AP per 1 Agility. I suggest this be doubled so that 1 agility equates to 2 Attack power. Gut reaction I am sure for most folks is OH MY LORD! High End rogues will instagib people! Well, if you refer to T3 rogues, a large chunk of the T3 gear already adds straight attack power INSTEAD of agility...so the T 2.5 sets might actually be more powerful with this changed, especially after raids buffs. Overall you are looking at 300-500 extra attack power for more rogues in pretty good gear. That is about like it was having world buffs for reference.

Too much. It'd cause itemization nightmares and create awkward situations where gear from previous tiers of content is better.

7. Make poisons stack with windfury...for the love of all that is holy, make this happen. Like 3/4 of the rogue complaints would disappear immediately if you changed this.

This is a no brainer indeed. For geared rogues this would increase their damage by 5-8% give or take, which could be just enough to push them above warriors on meters.

[Scaryna]

Rogues can also do Improved Expose Armor which is actually very fun to play. A debuffer role also fits rogues lore. Just add something more, like make hemorrhage decrease the target's resists or smth like that. Maybe make an improved kidney shot to still increase all the incoming damage even if the target is immune to stun.

[Gantulga]

Rogues can also do Improved Expose Armor which is actually very fun to play.

It's extremely clunky and often times can't be kept up reliably with how it works. Now if you could refresh EA with any amount of CPs from any rogue, it'd work kinda like sunder.