Fun Stuff > CLIKC
World of Warcraft
PizzaSHARK:
Yep, it's one of the big hurdles they're either facing right now, or will be facing soon. Making it so that your talent choices matters somewhat less as to what your class can do (example, Shield of Righteousness is available to all Paladin specs and comes with a huge bonus threat modifier, which allows both Holy and Ret to produce acceptable TPS, and thus tank) makes classes with more than one role to fill - and that's almost all of them, folks - much more fun to play.
But single-role classes, like Rogues, Hunters, Mages, and Warlocks, are going to start feeling left out. Sure, how you spec changes how you do your DPS (well, kinda), but it doesn't change that you're always gonna be DPS.
Specifically to Rogues, I do think a number of problems they'll be facing is their strength in PvP. You really can't give them too many new tricks or abilities, because they're already extremely powerful in PvP - giving them more tricks would certainly make them overpowered, and they're pretty damn close to that point already (Deadly Brew, anyone?) You could make Sap usable on targets that're in combat, which would make Rogues more desirable for instances (as compared to a Ret pally which can do good DPS, toss some heals, buff the group, and do what amounts to an in-combat Sap), but would make them ludicrously powerful in PvP.
Personally, I think the best solution would be to completely and totally separate the PvP and PvE sides of the game, but that's a mammoth undertaking, and I'm not sure if we'll ever see it; and even if we do, it's probably gonna be a year or two from now, not a few months.
est:
You don't need to do anything that drastic. If they want to add utility to some classes just make the new abilities mob-only.
Alex C:
That runs counter to their design philosophy, however; they want an ability that works against mobs to do the same thing when working against players in order to keep things neat and tidy for the newbs. Frankly, they considered the whole diminishing returns thing to be quite the concession as it is.
Anyway PizzaSHARK, that's exactly what I was driving at earlier when I said that as a PvE rogue I've always been painfully aware of our 1vs1 PvP capabilities (as much as people hate us, most of our strengths start to bleed away the second you get in a fight bigger than 3vs3). For example, here's an ability that would be no big deal in PvE but could have dire consequences in an arena: Letting combo points accrue independently of who you targeted. In PvE, it'd be nice because you could tab to a new target to quickly throw out a gouge on an add or something without having to worry about blowing energy on a finisher first lest you waste your combo points. Sure, it'd let you build up combo points on lesser mobs before engaging with elites, but that's hardly that big of a deal; I hardly doubt it'd be enough to let us solo troublesome mobs as easily as a warlock, druid or hunter can. But in an arena? Such a thing could potentially lead to epic nerd rage. I doubt Blizzard is comfortable with the idea of a couple rogues burning someone down with sustained dps and then immediately moving onto the next target with 2 or 3 combo points each in the chamber. And yet it's a confluence of little things like that which limits our flexibility in PvE. Not to put too fine a point on it, but unless we actually ARE doing more damage than everyone else on an important single target like a boss, the narrow focus of our abilities is as big of a liability as our lack of utility.
PizzaSHARK:
Which is why I don't play a Hunter, Mage, Rogue, or Warlock :)
I'm not sure how to really ensure these classes get raid slots and are made equal with the multi-role classes. Mages already get slots because of their vending machine status, along with some useful buffs and abilities. Warlocks are much in the same boat - healthstones, summons, soulstones, and probably imp totem too. Hunters are a little less varied, but their CC's pretty strong between trapping and pet offtanking. But Rogues don't bring buffs, their only really reliable CC is Sap (which can't be used in combat), and a lot of what makes them so deadly against players (poisons, easy and frequent spell interrupts, the goddamned stun chains) is either of limited useful against mobs, or not useful at all. The only suggestion I can provide is to have faith in Blizzard - a lot of the time you're sitting there wondering what in the fuck they're doing, but then look at how they changed tanking for LK: every tank I know (and, as a healer and former tank myself, I know a lot of tanks) is ecstatic over how much better things are for them.
They've said us healers are next up on the game-changing changes list, and I wouldn't be surprised if DPS was far behind.
Alex C:
Yeah, honestly, I'm not really very worried about it all, contrary to my cranky late night post. Rogues do damage, very, very well, and sometimes raw damage is all you need someone to contribute; I don't play in a hardcore enviroment (anymore), so it is not like becoming truly obsolete is a real worry here. And the last thing I want to see is classes like Paladins get pigeonholed into being healbots again.
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