Why is Rogue so unpopular?

Other than the hero talents that are visually and gameplay wise lackluster why is the class so down in the dumps in terms of how many people play it?
I don’t find the specs to be any harder than Shamans or Mage and it’s generally pretty fun.
Assass is preforming really well right now but even considering that the numbers both ingame and on data sites seem really low.

Melee is generally more boring to play in PvE, Rogue isn’t very visual either; I LOVE Rogue for PvP, but it feels cheesy sometimes so for now im rolling WL.
If I don’t like it for PvP I’ll deffo go Assassination regardless of it being meta or not.

Because its just 3 meleespeccs without much flashy animations. Verry boring.

Yesterday i was levelling a new rogue (outlaw) in elwynn forest.
The amount of times i nearly died to murlocs…
His self heal is a cd that costs energy and barely does a thing.
And is my aoe really on a 30 second cd?

Compare that to levelling a monk.
Low health? Just self heal. As much as you want.
Round up big packs, its cool. You have all the aoe in the world.

But imma stick with levelling this rogue because he has a gun. And thats just kinda cool.

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I personally just don’t like builder spender classes.

Back when I was leveling Rogue I found it very pleasant actually to play with Sub. You just burst things before they can react, that being said comparing Monk leveling to any other class is a bit unfair :stuck_out_tongue:

I suppose for similar reason why Blood Elves are so much more numerous than any other race; Either the looks are not good for rogues or people do not identify with it.

Because if you play rogue with the average level of a wow player it’s a boring and squishy class.

For me personally its energy.

I just dont like how it playes for ghe same reason i dont line monk or feral.
If they would give one of the specs something else i would probably play one

Think its a bit too complicated tbh. Very punishing for getting it wrong.

This is exactly what I like haha

I loved Combat rogue, but then it was changed to Outlaw, and then it was made unnecessarily difficult and frustrating to play well.

With the other specs I don’t enjoy the stealth play.

Energy kinda sucks and it’s one of the least fun classes I’ve played

Melees more fun in pve your in the thick of it rather then hiding away at a distance

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I hate the roll the dice mechanic so much. It feels completely out of place

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Same can be said about other specs (Fire, Arcane, Enh etc) but their numbers seem to be way higher than Rogue
I suppose it all comes down to visuals which is understandable

Rogue is unpopular because:

  • Annoying buttons to press that should be passives like Slice and Dice and Roll the Bones, which ruin the gameplay because there are too many things to press at the same.
  • Annoying DPS increasing buttons that are tied to defensives like Vanish or Feint.
  • Boring Hero talents.
  • Boring non-flashy animations.
  • For Assa specifically, Indiscriminate Carnage is a nightmare. Basically if you have no Vanish available and you can’t re-stealth (because of a DoT, tank chainpulling, or whatever) you can’t do AoE damage.
  • Bug everywhere (stealth breaking all the time for no reason :point_up_2:, talents not working, etc etc)
  • Outlaw is AoE capped.
  • Subtlety AoE is undertuned.

Those are just a few reasons.

Rogue is overly complicated to play and its melee meaning you have to proccess a lot of info all the time. It puts a lot of players off playing the class.

I’m not sure about that. I think the way rogue plays currently isn’t all that compatible with how the game is played, especially by melees. Stealth mechanics are fiddly, positioning matters more with rogues, chain pulling prevents re-stealthing between combat outside of CDs, self-healing is comparatively weak.

Rogues also don’t have a group/raid buff, there haven’t been any M+ skips that required a rogue in a while (won’t change as invisibility potions in TWW are now on a separate CD from combat potions), and they don’t have heroism/BL or a battle rez (or even an OOC one). They can’t spec into a dispel, either. If there is no incentive to invite a rogue, people will also be less likely to play one.

I’d be surprised if Enhancement was more popular, though. Even right now where the spec is (still) in a good place, I have rarely seen any Enhancement Shamans in heroics (done about 60 so far). It’s nearly always just Elemental Shamans.

Enhancement is way too button-bloaty and difficult to play well for it to be popular. People usually like the idea of it, put actually playing it in group content seems to appeal only to few.

TWW M+ also doesn’t look melee-friendly to me so far.

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Rogues are my second favourite class fantasy next to Rangers, yet I don’t play mine that often, for a couple of reasons.

  1. Complexity - every rogue spec is fairly demanding, either from a large number of keybinds, or exceptionally high APM in Outlaw.

  2. Punishing - as a result of the Rogue’s complexity, mistakes tend to feel very punishing - things like losing AR uptime on Outlaw, pushing BtE while at the end of your stealth window and the hit only registering after the window fades meaning BtE then goes on cooldown, delaying your next stealth window and reducing your DPS.

  3. Utility - Rogues are less unique than they used to be when it comes to their utility offering. Other classes now have similar levels of mobility, access to kicks and AOE blinds. Shroud is still unique to the Rogue but is of more situational usefulness when M+ requires a certain % of mobs killed anyway.

I will level my Rogue in TWW and might primarily use it in Delves, though.

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I used to love my rogues, but then Blizz decided they needed a bad selfheal instead of some nice ones we had in the past. Also in TWW it seems that Vanish doesn’t really do anything a lot of the times. In Delves it doesn’t work half of the time on accord of Brann. In the City of Threads it’s useless after being spotted by a guard even if you run far away.
Also not much to Pickpocket these days, which imho is a shame. I used to spend hours pickpocketing just for the fun of it. Also Lockpicking, whoever decided it was a fun idea to make that a skill that you don’t have to level yourself anymore, needs a kick in the butt…