Rogues are worse than ever before with at least what is visible today

WoW: Forever WoW: Forever General Discussion
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Hi,

As a foreword, this review is intended for mostly rogue players and blizzard employees (in case anyone actually reads forum feedback). Why? I personally think if you don’t play the class you can’t truly offer a subjective OR objective view on it. Rogues are polarizing in every multiplayer game ever made. If you haven’t decided if rogue is for you in Forever or even Forever makes sense for you are a rogue lover, I hope this helps.

A bit about me. I’ve played WOW since vanilla, across iterations and classes. I’ve also played Classic when launched. Done up 2-3 MC runs and quite the game.

I am always a PVP server player. I feel half the game is about faction v faction interaction. Make everything more interesting. I’ve played all classes in PVE and most classes in PVP, up to 2k ratings. I’ve been MOST active during TBC, WotLK, Cata and Legion. I consider Legion to be the last good expansion of retail (sorry.). Despite all this, my generally preferred gaming class is rogue followed my mage/sorc. In my heart, I always remain a rogue and hence ROGUE is what I main, good or bad.

I’ve just concluded my WOW Forever experience, rolling guess what!.. a rogue (first)… and so far I am deeply disappointing by the direction and choices for this class. I understand there might be things that balance this later, but I can only feed back on what is available to me right now.

I will list mostly negatives that are important to me. Are there good things? Sure.
Are they trend setting, innovating or reinventing? Up until now, not really, not for me at least. WOW classic is a great base that will always allow new ideas to flourish.

So here goes, in no particular order:

  • Undead racials - I don’t get the chances. Not compared to classic, but compared to changes to other racials. I simply don;t feels like decisions take in isolation by people that don’t play the race and class combinations. I can’t imagine this can be true, it’s just my perception. Why this matters? For a horde rogue, WotF offered some extra protection against a main counter: the warlock. touch of the grave is nice but not meaningful in play, probably meaningful in statistics.
  • Overall class feel - slow, really poor mobility, boring, underwhelming. Feels more like a worse copy of a warrior than a rogue. More details below to consider as a pack:
  1. Sprint - 5 minute CD
  2. No other gap closer (removed SS) - this to me is absolutely insane… Removing shadow step from PVP for rogue is absolutely impossible to grasp as a design choice. This is to me a layered gimp to PVP with WotF change + stealth speed + no cloak + no shadowstep + basic speed + vanish under reagents AND not removing dots. 100% insane to me.
  • energy and combo point economy is terrible. I can see this being less obvious in later levels + talents and probably gear, but as it stands I can’t imagine every having the time to go to 5 CP and use that for an eviscerate… I can only hope something like envenom exists on the other options making combo point usage, the MAIN THING A ROGUE REVOLVES AROUND AFTER STEALTH AND MOBILITY, interesting, fun, rewarding.
  1. Energy regen… watching grass grow.
  2. Combo points on targets now feels as bad as ever. It mostly leaves you just pressing slice and dice over and over with little else to do. It feels extremely unrewarding and not fun to play.
  3. Poor (nice word) rotations.
  • The individuality of each of the 3 specs is in fact worse now. Not better in any way. You literally had a working model but somehow decided to give it your own twist but it doesn’t look like you are ready for that yet. This is like a Netflix series/movie adaptation…

assassination and sub HAD personality - i feel that was eroded, not to mention immunities.

  • Combat using daggers + still requiring positioning for effectiveness vs full dagger spec. Zero play-style impact.
  • I barely want to or can be in stealth to do something useful. Imagine that. The whole class and any guide you’d read would start with “are you in stealth”… Openers, damage, CC in pve and pvp, al originated there. Now stealth is what? A very very very slow hide button with zero offensive potential and a fully gated defensive potential of DON’T BE IN COMBAT. Kinda crazy to me.
  • Poison charges… that’s what you decide to keep… /facepalm

now add poison immunity to the mix… LOL. Imagine invalidating an entire capstone / spec…

  • Improved distract… sorry but is this serious??? :joy: I genuinely need to know if this was rushed? Done with AI? What is it because this make zero sense, esp since this is not a new game despite us all pretending new content = new game.
  • RAID UTILITY. I feel like rogues always had the main utility of … DPS. There is NOTHING visible today that changed that, but in fact has apparently made it worse.

SAP, disarm trap, disarm skill (only via riposted, situational and reaction based), even lock picking? Mage get to read scroll though…

  • AOE is still under a 21 point talent… And only there. Thanks…
  • Recent tree “tweaks” based on god knows what data?

Recent beta adjustments—such as restricting Mutilate strictly to daggers and removing the anticipated Restless Blades talent after initial previews—have sparked community frustration

  • Stagnant, underwhelming identity, with steps backwards even.

Rogue PvP positioning and identity have barely shifted compared to major reworks given to other classes, and new allied/updated racial abilities heavily counter traditional Rogue play-styles.

Generally, I also do not grasp the point of focusing on lower level content as long as:

  1. there is pvp
  2. there is a max level
  3. zones are level based, not scaled to player (similar to ESO and GW).

Personally, I think there is no forever without zones being scaled not gated to level brackets and imagining a large player based will stick around to pick flowers on alts at level 27 is wishful at best. I love the leveling experience from the perspective of the content and growing my character but you haven’t truly moved the end goal. I am still looking to be maxed out, but hoping you won’t delete my time investment later. This to me is the core of the proposition. You take that away and there is not reason (to me personally of course) to continue investing time here.

If you took classic, added QoL, new zones, and a true horizontal prog, you’d probably strike gold. As it stands it feels like reinventing the wheel but for a worse wheel.

As a closing note, I am not looking for replies or debates. It is my subjective experience and thoughts, with the currently available game experience. I am wholly uninterested in opinions if you have never played the class, but you are free to react to my post as it’s only natural to expect that since you know… I am posting this. Just don’t expect a debate unless you actually have some proof of having something to compare against, with the minimum such as mine, being having played the class at least now if not before.

P.S. found this thread that does better at listing issues I’ve missed: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/rogues-in-wow-forever/2357811

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I don’t have much to contribute but I think its humorous you mentioned Undead racials because of how synonymous with rogues they are

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Agree and immediately went for it out of habit :stuck_out_tongue:
I have a personal history of rolling troll 1000 years ago. That haunted me up to paid racial change… So I kinda stuck with this combo ever since… :man_shrugging:

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TL;DR: This is not my post. This is a shortened version of the post originally made by Draaic. – Used ChatGPT to cut it down for people who don’t want their eyes to bleed

The main argument is that the current Rogue design in WoW Forever feels like a step backwards compared with Classic and other versions of WoW.

The biggest complaints are the loss of Rogue mobility and utility, weaker stealth gameplay, poor energy and combo-point flow, less distinctive specs, limited PvP tools, weak AoE, poison immunities, and questionable talent changes. The author also feels Rogues have lost much of what made the class unique and are now closer to a weaker Warrior in overall gameplay.

They argue that the class needs more meaningful identity, especially in PvP, and question why some Classic Rogue mechanics were removed or changed.

They also criticize the overall focus on lower-level content and argue that Forever needs a stronger long-term endgame and horizontal progression to keep players invested.

Overall, the post is essentially asking Blizzard to reconsider the direction of Rogue before launch, while acknowledging that this is based on the author’s personal experience with the class.

Now my response:-

The thing is, you’ve only played Rogue up to level 20. You haven’t even reached level 60 yet, so you don’t really know how the class is going to feel once you have better gear, more talents, and the full toolkit available. The beta is only allowing us to see a small part of that progression right now.

I understand that you’re disappointed with how Rogue feels at the moment, but a lot of classes can feel pretty rough at lower levels before they unlock more of their abilities and start coming together.

Forever is also deliberately doing its own thing with the classes rather than simply copying Retail or Classic. So some abilities and talent choices are going to feel unfamiliar. That’s the point. Let them try their own design and see how it develops.

By all means, give feedback on how Rogue feels from 1 to 20, but I don’t think you can confidently say the class is terrible overall based on that alone. Once people reach 60, get their gear, complete their talents, and actually compare the classes at endgame, their opinions will be far more meaningful.

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As a long long time rogue main, i can tell you currently the class looks awful in pve. U can check your talents, u can check the spells u get by trainers. The only thing we dont know is how the set bonuses gonna make the gameplay better, which is not something u can rely on every season.
So basically the class looks like this: spam 1 cp generation spell into slice and dice (a dog awful boring spell, which made it to passive on retail cuz of it)->into eviscerate IF u can get enough cp. Not a single interesting cooldown like shadowdance/killing spree which is pretty boring imo. The ambush no stealth looks promising but its still a mid thing.

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I’ve got a feeling that a lot of classes will benefit from gear set bonuses. I think people will be able to get different versions of gear that benefit them in different ways depending on their playstyle.

That’s what I think the developers are going to do because they want people to remain at level 60. A lot of the variation will probably come from set bonuses and combinations of different items that alter how you play. They can only do so much with class balance at level 60, so instead, they may have to focus more on itemization balance.

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You literally never had shadowstep in Vanilla, so how exactly are they taking that away?

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Woah, the ATTITUDE this rogue has! :joy:

What I understand from this lengthy post is that you are simply asking for buffs to your class, so you can 1v1 every class easily in pvp.

My very objective conclusion is that it is time for other classes to shine.

Have you tried undead paladin?

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I agree, every duel video on YT is a rogue smoking every other class.

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@Corblane

You again :smiley:

It seems you play the game for level 60? We like to play it from level 1-60 so if your class is totally underperforming on everything on level 20 that should not. Give me 60 boost then.

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Did you actually read what you typed out? Because none of that makes any sense whatsoever. Are you even reading what you’re typing? Because if you were able to read coherently and respond with something more than the drool hitting your keyboard, you might actually make a point.

Right now, you’ve just embarrassed yourself with whatever that was supposed to be. I think I’d put what you’ve written somewhere around toilet humor, except it’s so deluded that you somehow don’t even seem to realize it.

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Im not gonna bother answering most things but really? Wotf? Bruh it was utterly overpowered in Vanilla, absolutely good riddance, like what are you even whining about? PROPER GAME BALANCE? Also, why do you need more mobility? Shadowstep? Huh? You’re baseline vanilla the strongest pvp class togheter with Locks and Mages, but you somehow need MORE mobility when basically no other class got more mobility? Huh? Bruh what are you even on about?

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Sounds like you want Retail Rogue in Forever. Don’t.

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If your Rogue is ‘visible today’ you’re probably doing it wrong! They can see you!

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I’m sorry but it seems like you don’t really know what rogue was in vanilla. Even though you’ve played wow since vanilla allegedly. What you’re saying proves that you have no knowledge of it.
Lower level in pvp, rogue is only an ambush machine. That’s what it did. So.. subtlety.
You have no talent points yet to form a very clear identity of a spec.
You expect fluid gameplay like retail, when you are level 20.
Obviously you’re not into the classic gameplay and that’s fine.
Rogue is fine.
Rogue’s bane is not the warlock.
They just balanced the combo of class/race you wanted to play and you wanted to cry a bit about it, which again is fine, because you felt it as a downgrade.
But it is more balanced than before and better for the game.
Only bad thing i can see at the moment are the energy ticks.
Cheers.

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Im playing the game also since a while, 90% rog, i loved the pvp on retail until this season, where the sub feels rather gutted due to the crybabies. Since pve was never my interest, and never wanted to quest every 6 month and grind the gear, forever looks like a great solution.

I gave a shot to forever as rog, but i do miss the SS from the sub. But i will see how it goes on 60, just hope they not going to neglect it as on retail.

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feels like he wants cataclysm version rogue and has no idea what rogue was in vanilla. Weird

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I wouldnt change anything about the Rogue other then Energy ticks which are very slow and the Combat tree which “by the looks of it” seems a bit underwhelming, but we will see, its beta

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I think having the combo points linked to the rogue and not the mob would make a massive change (and in my opinion the only one thats needed for rogue to feel good), at the moment energy is very slow and combo points build slow too…when in a dungeon the amount of times im having to sliceNdice just so my combo points dont get wasted (perty killing the mob before i have energy to evis etc)…and sometimes i dont even have the energy for a SnD xD, you cant tab targt at all withou losing alot of your slowly earned cp too.

Just my 2p but if the cp were attatched to the rogue i think that would help make the class feel better in pve anyway. :slight_smile:

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I believe the class “work” regarding rogues is indeed the fruit of either conservatively-instructed-AI or, worse, the fruit of people frustrated with rogues. No actual rogue could have produced talents as bad as the Forever ones currently are.

I’ve been playing since vanilla. I got excited for Forever. Then looked into rogues. I got un-excited faster than almost any extension before. Such sadness.

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