Introduction
Rogue is one of the classes available since day one. At some point, it was one of the most - if not the most - played class, alongside warrior and mage. Then hunter rose to the top, then warlocks, paladins, DKs - but rogue still remained strong. Despite sharing gear with feral druids, hunters and even warriors and ret paladins sometimes, rogues didn’t give up. Now, rogue is consistently one of the least played classes in modern WoW, excluding evoker, which was added in 2022. And the trend is getting worse. This isn’t just a matter of flavor-of-the-month specs or seasonal tuning. Rogue representation has been steadily declining across expansions, pointing to deeper issues in design philosophy and class identity.
This is going to be a long post. You might not consider me the most credible source - I’m not famous, and I haven’t achieved R1 or anything like that as a rogue. I’m just a casual player who’s been around since patch 3.1.3 - about 15 years now. But what follows is, for the most part, a collection of facts about how the game works now and how it used to work.
In MoP rogues were robbed of some iconic abilities initially (e.g. Preparation) and the damage was pretty bad - a price they apparently had to pay for being so strong in Cata, especially at the end when Fangs of the Father and Vial of Shadows were added. Rogues were no longer one of the most popular classes, but still quite a lot of people played them. Unfortunately, even when Preparation returned, the situation didn’t improve much. Damage was still not quite there and maybe rogues weren’t ready to forgive so fast?
Then came WoD and with it - another blow - dodge from agility was removed. It seems the train was impossible to stop from there. Even with some damage buffs and the addition of some strong mechanics like Death from Above, the rogue exodus continued. Perhaps, designers didn’t want a “toxic” class to be popular?
In Legion everything was simplified once again but the situation actually improved this time, if we consider that many people switched to a new “hero” DH initially. Why were the numbers better though? I think it’s because the Legion was just a good expansion and it added a lot of extra flair to Rogue, despite the simplification. Combat was changed to Outlaw and even though many people preferred Combat, it was still a pretty interesting change. Artifacts and class hall campaign added to the class identity, it actually felt kind of like a Thieves’ guild. Seems like players were so eager for something like this that it was enough to slow down the fall.
Then came BfA which was a huge downgrade from Legion, and with it came War mode. This day changed WoW forever. Plenty of players weren’t happy with the shift. But even if you agree that WPvP guilds raiding world quest zones was lame, you have to recognize how this change affected solo rogues. World PvP was a huge part of why many people liked to play this class. Besides that, rogues were always able to opt in and out of world PvP because of stealth, it was one of the reasons to play a rogue actually - even if you didn’t want to PvP, you could always just escape. From this day that freedom was given out to everyone. This was a significant blow to the class identity.
Then came Shadowlands, a downgrade even from BfA. Despite rogues doing pretty strong damage with certain legendaries, not everyone made it back from The Maw. And those who did found themselves without one of the few honest ways to express how they felt.
Dragonflight followed, bringing a talent overhaul and a little breath of fresh air. Rogues got Shadow Dance in all three specs and life wasn’t too bad. But the new problem lied and still lies in why they got it. We’ll get to that later when we dive into spec damage in more detail.
In TWW, Shadow Dance was removed from Assassination and Outlaw, but beyond that, nothing really changed. The new hero talent trees for rogues are completely uninspiring and don’t contribute to the class identity in any way, especially compared to something like four horsemen of DKs. Some combinations even interfere with the core gameplay of some specs, e.g. deathstalker breaks the garrote opener of Assassination.
In PvE, rogue doesn’t really bring anything special to the table beyond 3.6% damage reduction poison and Shroud of Concealment, which is barely usable given how many mobs in dungeons see through stealth. On some bosses, rogues can occasionally handle soak-type mechanic better than many classes with a cloak, but that’s about it.
PvE performance alone doesn’t explain rogue’s decline though. After all, it’s rarely at the bottom of the DPS charts. So why are fewer players sticking with it? To answer that, we need to look at PvP - the heart of rogue’s identity. PvP is the most important part because most people decide to play rogue after they saw videos of Grim, Neilyo, Reckful, or other legends, maybe World of Roguecraft or streams of Whaazz, Pikaboo and other great players who still stream retail rogue sometimes. Rogue PoV is definitely the most spectacular and because of that rogue probably has the highest amount of PvP videos ever produced out of all classes. However, nobody even wants to make rogue PvP movies anymore. Some people still make those movies on classic servers though.
So what’s wrong with PvP as a rogue? Most of the problems stem from the way modern PvP is designed overall - not necessarily from rogue design itself. Rogue has always been a class that requires both planning and fast decision-making - miss your window of opportunity, and you probably lose. The high speed of modern PvP acts as a multiplier to the speed inherent to the class. Rogue only truly shines in the hands of players like Whaazz or Pikaboo who have some 20+ R1 titles under their belts, players who can get a glad in a day or two in full honor gear on a spec they’ve never touched before. There are rare exceptions of less experienced rogue players reaching high ratings, but they’re few. Those players can play at such speed - just listen to how quickly Pikaboo calls out his actions on stream. Now imagine he’s thinking and reacting even faster than that. It is not something most players, even above average ones, can realistically do.
That might be manageable on some classes, but for rogue, it’s unnecessarily punishing from a speed and complexity standpoint. And I’m not saying that rogue shouldn’t be hard or even the hardest class, but this level of complexity doesn’t feel quite right. It’s great that we can look up to such players and see even them being challenged occasionally, but it feels like the game is designed for the top 1% (or even less) of players interested in PvP - if it’s even designed for PvP at all. And in PvE, it is similarly tuned for the top 1% of PvE players.
Now, let’s take a look at a rogue’s toolkit.
I. The toolkit
1. Main Crowd Control (CC)
Rogue has five main CC abilities in their toolkit. I don’t mention poisons here, since they are essentially passive effects for the most part. I also don’t mention dismantle since I don’t consider it a main CC, rogues often pick it only against warriors and rogues in arena. Energy cost and cooldown numbers below are based on a popular PvP Subtlety build, but they are similar in other builds as well.
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Cheap shot - melee, requires stealth or shadow dance, costs 32 energy;
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Kidney shot - melee, duration depends on the number of combo points, costs 20 energy and all combo points, shares a DR (diminishing returns) with cheap shot, 30s cooldown;
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Gouge - melee, requires the target to be facing the rogue to be used, costs 25 energy, broken by damage;
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Sap - 10 yd (almost melee), requires stealth or shadow dance as well as the target to be out of combat, costs 28 energy, broken by damage;
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Blind - 15 yd (close to mid range), 5 sec duration, 2 min cooldown, broken by damage.
For abilities broken by damage, even a single tick of any dot or a single autoattack is usually enough to end the effect.
The two stuns - Cheap Shot and Kidney Shot are so weak now that it is honestly ridiculous to even play rogue and not feel disappointed if you know anything about rogues in the first expansions of the game (not sure when exactly it got this bad). It’s a disgrace what rogue stunlock has become - there’s no such thing anymore, it’s just a couple of cheapshots which are what, 3 seconds longer than a single paladin stun if you use 3 DRs? But paladins do 100% damage during that time, don’t need stealth or shadow dance for that, and only use a single DR instead of three.
I’d argue this makes rogue stuns weaker than those of almost any other class in most situations. Maybe on par if you ignore that rogues trade damage for it. But rogues should be the best at this, it’s core to their whole class identity. And by the way - why does every class even have a stun now? Since when did it become a requirement for a class to have some form of stun at all?
Gouge still requires the target to be facing you and it’s melee range. Meanwhile, monks and demon hunters laugh at us doing the same halfway across the arena using just a bit of energy. I’m not saying monks or DH are a problem - sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. But if we just compare basically the same ability across three classes, why is rogue’s version the weakest and at the same time hardest to use? I actually like gouge’s design and would prefer the other classes’ alternatives to be nerfed but that’s another story. If gouge is going to require facing the target and being in melee range, then reduce rogue’s ability cooldown even further, remove cost completely, add a separate DR group or maybe even allow shadow step to the face (though it would have to be a separate button which is not great, but could solve shadow step to death in PvE) - it needs something that makes it stand out if it requires facing the target, besides just a smaller cooldown.
Sap. Sap is good. Nothing wrong with sap. The real issue is with combat not resetting properly. Combat in PvP should end five seconds after taking or dealing damage, but very often it just doesn’t work like that. It felt much smoother in earlier expansions. It is just bugged. It is not uncommon to blind someone, run around some building on BG, without dealing damage, getting damaged and without even getting buffed (all can be seen in combat log), but still remain in combat for more than 10 seconds. It is a problem in PvE as well.
Blind is a 2 minute cooldown that gets broken immediately in BGs unless you’re fighting 1v1. But I don’t think that is necessarily the problem. The problem is that the amount of immunity to blind is too high. Blind, as a two-minute cooldown, should fail only in the most exceptional cases, like paladin’s bubble and maybe shadow priest’s dispersion. Evokers, for example, seem immune to blind for 80% of the fight, which is… very interesting design, I guess. Now, maybe I’m just bad at rogue. I won’t argue with that, but I’d argue that a suspicious number of evokers seem to be very good at evoker then. Also, blind should never have been a talent; it’s one of the most iconic rogue abilities, and you simply shouldn’t be able to play rogue without it on your bars.
The biggest issue is the nerf to Blind’s duration in PvP. It used to last 8 seconds - now it’s only 5. This isn’t just a general nerf; it outright kills one of the most iconic rogue plays in battlegrounds: forcing a trinket from the opponent, then blinding to secure a flag cap. That move was legendary and was used by decent rogues all the time at least in unrated and low-rated BGs where most people play. With blind no longer outlasting the 6 second cap timer, the trick is gone and with it, a way for rogues to make a meaningful impact through skill and timing rather than gear alone. We were fine with it for 20 years, why was it necessary to kill it?
And it doesn’t stop there, this change also guts another classic: Blind → Vanish/SD → Sap. For Sap to land, the target must be out of combat. But Blind lasts 5 seconds and combat lasts 5 seconds - meaning rogues now have to sap precisely right after the Blind ends but before the target enters combat. It was already difficult to execute when Blind lasted 8 seconds. Now it’s borderline impossible.
These were the pinnacle of rogue finesse in high rated arenas. Try pulling it off today. And honestly, it’s worst for the players who mastered these moves - those who spent hours practicing, refining, and landing them in clutch moments. They weren’t just tricks; they were expressions of skill, timing, and creativity. Now they’re gone. And with them, we lose the thrill of PvP movies showcasing those plays - the kind that made you pause, rewind, and watch again with admiration. Nobody even makes rogue PvP movies in retail anymore. What are you gonna showcase anyway? How you do damage and not die by masterfully predicting when to press feint? To be fair, I won’t pretend it’s easy and there are still some impressive things you can do, but it’s not the kind of magic you can see in a lot of Pshero’s videos from Classic, for example.
2. Stealth
Another staple of rogue class identity is, of course, stealth. So here’s the question: why do balance druids automatically apply moonfire on rogues at max range - even when those rogues are in stealth and haven’t entered combat since resurrection? And sometimes, rogues get pulled out of stealth without taking any damage or using any ability. There are probably more stealth-related bugs that are still in the game, if you remember any, feel free to share them in the comments.
Combat and stealth issues interfere with everything: CC, damage and survivability. So let’s talk about survivability.
3. Survivability
Rogues have always had an impressive survivability toolkit - extremely durable during cooldowns, but very squishy outside of them. Before WoD, rogues used to have ~40-50% passive dodge from agility. That’s gone now and nothing was really given back in exchange. Sure, other agility users were affected too, but rogues relied heavily on that dodge for survival. As another form of passive defense, rogues can have the iconic cheat death, but you basically can’t run it in PvP (see below).
Now let’s break down the active defense toolkit:
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Cheat Death - saves you from death by leaving you at 7% HP and reducing incoming damage by 85% for 3 seconds, 6 min cd (cooldown).
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Feint - reduces incoming AoE damage by 40%, 6 seconds duration, 2 charges. Useful against bladestorm kind of abilities and in PvE. With Elusiveness, it also gives -20% reduced incoming damage. With how squishy rogues are, Elusiveness is mandatory in 99% of cases in PvP, but it shares the talent node with Cheat Death, meaning Cheat Death is off the table - another iconic ability lost.
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Evasion - 100% dodge chance, 10 sec duration, 2 min cd. Not comparable to things like shield wall or bubble since it doesn’t give any defense against spells and fails when stunned or attacked from behind. With the Elusiveness talent, it also provides 20% general damage reduction, making it more versatile.
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Cloak of Shadows - magic immunity, full harmful magic dispell, 5 second duration, 2 min cd. Probably the best button in the game, no complaints. Smaller cooldown would be great though, since it’s our main defense against casters. It used to have 1 min cd at some point if I’m not mistaken.
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Crimson Vial - heals 27% HP, 30 sec cd, costs 10 energy. Small heal. Not bad, but not great either. At least it can be used in stealth. Recuperate was stronger. And if we compare Vial to things like warrior’s Second wind - it’s nothing. Only specs with zero self-healing might disagree but do those even exist anymore? Well, maybe a couple of specs. We used to have a talent that healed 3% HP per second in stealth or shadow dance. That was great, especially in the open world and in BGs. Gone. Then we had a small absorb when entering stealth - now it triggers only after vanish and it’s so weak that most rogues prefer a small movement speed buff during the start of stealth instead. Rogues needed that absorb to not get pulled out of stealth from a random 1 damage AoE tick, but that was too much fun to have, apparently.
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Shadow step - blink behind target, 25yd range, 30 sec cd, 2 charges, can be used on friendly targets. Another iconic ability, no complaints, except it doesn’t always work when you want to go up. And in PvE it usually kills you instantly if the target has some death pit behind (lots of bosses and some trash mobs).
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Vanish - enter stealth from combat, 2 min cd, 3 sec of damage not removing you from stealth, 2 charges with talent that you can’t take if you want to do proper damage as sub right now. Another iconic ability, all rogues love this. But those 3 seconds are not enough. And I feel like often it straight up fails and damage during that 3 second window still breaks stealth.
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Sprint - 100% increased movement speed for 12 sec, 1 min cd, 1 charge. Used to be rogue-exclusive. Now everyone has sprint, blinks, or both, some even have multiple charges. Rogues still have just one sprint which is a huge nerf to both offense and defense. Rogues got Burst of Speed in MoP, a short but powerful sprint without cooldown that only costs energy, but it was removed in Legion.
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Shiv - purges enrage effects from an enemy on hit and applies non-lethal poison, 30 sec cd, costs 30 energy. It is now a burst button for assassination rogues, which is a very bad design decision, since the ability to apply non-lethal poison on demand has always been a massive part of rogue’s defensive toolkit and used to have 10 sec cd if I’m not mistaken. This is actually a huge nerf to all rogues in both PvP and PvE, but to sub and outlaw especially, since they don’t even have that as a form of burst.
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Nonlethal poison - usually Crippling in PvP (30% chance for -60% ms for 12 sec). I love it, no complaints except the ones mentioned in shiv section.
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Dismantle - disarm with a 45 sec cd. Only a PvP talent now, but at least the cooldown is smaller now.
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Smoke bomb - mostly used for offense.
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Shadow dance - now exclusive to Subtlety - is still worth mentioning. While primarily an offensive tool, it has defensive utility too: landing Cheap shots in combat, or even sapping someone once in a blue moon can be very strong in arena or BGs. However, if you use Shadow dance to stun multiple targets, you’re burning your second most important damage cooldown for control, sacrificing a burst window. It’s high-risk decision - and in today’s fast-paced PvP, that tradeoff can cost you a match.
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Disarm trap - removed. Why? Who knows. Apparently, it was too strong. Imbalanced. Overpowered. Rogues can disarm traps? Can’t have that. Better nerf rogues. And nerf warlocks while you’re at it.
That’s it. That’s the famous rogue toolkit. There’s nothing too bad about it really, but the thing is - it used to be that rogues had the best toolkit in the game. A good rogue was very hard, sometimes outright impossible, to beat 1v1 if he had all the cooldowns. The whole class identity revolves around having the best toolkit, because without the best toolkit, who is rogue at all?
We don’t have superpowers like most other classes, we are not strong like warriors, we don’t have pets like hunters and we’re melee. Today, rogue is just a guy with daggers or some sword and a dagger. Meanwhile, this guy with glowing green eyes has Azzinoths which he earned in a single timewalk and rogues who farmed BT for months or even years since its release can’t even transmog them. Now, druids and hunters have stealth that is nearly - or completely - as good as ours, and hunters in camo can’t even be sapped sometimes for unknown reasons. And then there’s this naked dragon who stuns entire groups with a wave while being completely immune to CC, then proceeds to one shot half of them with two buttons. Or this pink guy who sprints into battle on a horse, hits wings, finishes one low hp guy with a judgement from 40 yds, hits bop or freedom when CCed, gets dispelled, hits damage reduction, stuns the healer, second wings, oneshots another guy, hits bubble when 10 people finally start doing damage to him, prevents mass dispell with a blind, kills a bunch more dudes and sprints away on 2 charges of a horse. If a rogue gets to him on his single sprint, the paladin has already healed up and has damage reduction and wings again. And stun. Rogue might even kill him, but he’d better have his famous toolkit ready…
(Sorry paladins and evokers, I love playing with you. And I know that DH still needs to farm Azzinoths - that wasn’t the point)
Also, I’m aware that from some specs’ perspective, rogues might have too good of a toolkit right now. And I agree with that. I don’t think rogues should have two Shadow steps, two Vanishes, two Shadow Dances, three Symbols, and three Thistle Teas, for example. I’d rather lose Thistle Tea entirely and have everything else reduced to a single charge but have much higher backstab damage and better energy regen or something. But this isn’t just a rogue issue - almost every class is bloated, every class has too much of everything, or at least too much of something.
II. Damage
Now let’s talk about damage. As one of the four pure damage dealer classes, rogues have to be on top of the charts, right? Well, not really. In terms of damage rogues are usually somewhere in the middle of the pack, maybe above average. In PvP at least one of the specs is usually playable, at least if you know how, but the skill requirements to do damage in competitive PvP as a rogue and, say, a warrior are usually entirely different.
As a melee, rogues need exceptional mobility. That used to be our defining trait. Now? Demon hunters, druids, evokers, mages and even monks and paladins leave us in the dust.
But the elephant in the room is that dealing damage as a rogue is simply not as fun as it used to be. Let’s take a closer look at each spec:
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Assassination relies on bleeds and poisons. Poison-only spec is not viable at all because even fully talented poisons are still much weaker than bleeds. Bleeds can do good damage, but only if used from stealth. That means you can’t really open up with a cheap shot unless you play subterfuge or you have to spend a vanish at the start, leaving you without an option to escape, essentially turning an agile assassin into a glass cannon feral druid without an ability to shapeshift. This is a horrible design and every seasoned assassin will agree.
It was more or less solved with the addition of shadow dance to the spec in Dragonflight, but Assassination doesn’t have SD anymore, which means Vanish has to be used offensively most of the time, leaving rogue without one of the main defensive cooldowns. And once the strong bleeds expire and there’s no way to enter stealth to reapply them, you hit like a wet noodle for a very long time. Also, good luck using stealth in dungeons when the tank is chain pulling (and they always do).
There are at least two simple solutions to this problem: bring Shadow Dance back or remove talents that improve bleed damage when used from stealth, adjusting the out-of-stealth numbers accordingly. Both solutions are not perfect in isolation, but either one would immediately make the spec more enjoyable to play. Removing SD was probably a right decision, but bleed talents weren’t reworked properly, resulting in a much worse spec than in DF. To be honest, I think SD assassination felt rather pleasant to play, but many people will disagree.
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Outlaw - depends heavily on RNG and absolutely requires high uptime on any target, otherwise deals no damage at all. Healers can do more damage than an Outlaw who had to run around too much. Also, requires the highest APM of any other spec in the game, which doesn’t feel good in PvE at all, but in PvP it acts as another multiplier on top of inherent modern PvP speed and inherent class speed. Good outlaw rogue in PvP is such a rare sight because you have to think like a machine to perform on the same level a devoker does with a steering wheel.
There is only one Outlaw build archetype that deals decent damage and it’s Crackshot, which makes Outlaw the most stealth-relying rogue spec out of three, which is absolutely ridiculous. This is so bad I have no idea how this is still in the game. Outlaw and previously Combat has always been a spec that didn’t rely on stealth to do damage at all. A lot of people liked Combat more than Outlaw, but even if reverting back to the roots is out of the question, BfA outlaw was still the best Outlaw so far and it’s not like it’s a totally different spec or anything. Reverting Outlaw back to BfA gameplay is extremely simple, but it seems the designers like a worse sub with a sword in main hand more than a spec that had an identity.
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Sub - does damage in bursts, outside of shadow dance and symbols of death doesn’t deal any damage at all. Backstab used to be one of the most hard hitting abilities in the game. Now it hits even less than an unbuffed Ice lance, but still costs 40 energy. I wish I were kidding. Switching backstab to Gloomblade doesn’t help at all and requires sacrifices on the tree that’s already too tight. Flagellation is almost completely unusable in PvP because it triggers a GCD (global cooldown) - and in modern PvP a single GCD easily costs you the fight.
In both PvP and PvE damage depends heavily on stealth. This is understandable for subtlety, since sub has access to Shadow Dance, but absolutely horrible for two other specs. They are forced to use one of the main defensive cooldowns - Vanish - offensively just to do damage comparable to what most other classes do without such shenanigans.
III. Races
Yes, races matter for the discussion at hand - and they’re a big part of why rogues are in decline. There are two main problems:
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Shadowmeld is too strong in PvP. It basically gives rogues another vanish. For assassination, for example, it also means one more round of application of strong bleeds which can easily win you a game. For that reason, 99% of the assassination rogues in PvP are night elves. Nothing against night elves, but this situation is completely unhealthy. When one racial ability is so strong it dictates spec viability, something’s broken.
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Undead is the most iconic rogue race. I will not accept arguments to the contrary. But the race feels neglected. It feels like they’ve been forsaken (pun intended) - and yet, they don’t even feel Forsaken anymore. They used to be angry, bitter and sometimes even evil. This is not the case anymore. No evilness left.
The new Forsaken rulers even got all friendly with Gilneas, and if you know anything about Warcraft, you know they are the worst enemies of the Forsaken after the Scourge itself. Gilneas didn’t help Lordaeronians during the Scourge invasion. Afterward, they killed Forsaken on sight, treating them no differently than the Scourge. They also happily helped destroy Undercity in BfA. And now Forsaken are helping them retake Gilneas from the Scarlet Crusade? If Gilneas needed help, why would they ask the Forsaken - unless it’s to betray them later? And if Forsaken needed any help (which they did), why not turn to their fellow Horde races.
By the way, what’s going on in Hammerfall, Arathi Highlands? Not a single Forsaken NPC, only Mag’har. Where did Defilers go? Did Mag’har wipe them out? Did I miss something? The whole zone is only Horde dominated because of the Forsaken. Now they are completely gone.
And in the new expansions? Forsaken NPCs are nearly nonexistent. I remember one librarian in Dragonflight and that’s about it. What is going on?
I know that the Forsaken are all about suffering, I just didn’t think the Forsaken fans were supposed to suffer too.
IV. Class Fantasy
Rogues aren’t just another melee. They’re thieves, spies, assassins, pirates. Kill, rob, steal from the rich and leave the money for themselves… maybe steal from the poor too. We are the scumbags of Azeroth. Even if we help save it, it’s because we want to save our skins - or we’re simply not done with some of our dirty deeds.
But what do we see in the game?
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Pick pocket is abandoned since Legion. And even then it wasn’t too useful - one enchant illusion, a couple of masks and a toy maybe. Now completely useless.
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Pick lock was last useful in one or two BfA dungeons. Now useless.
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Disarm trap has always been useful, but it was deleted from the game completely. Never forget.
Why not add a Thieves’ guild with fences, contracts, black market? It shouldn’t be that hard considering the game already has all the needed mechanics. We have cars with nitro boost now, don’t tell me Thieves’ guild is too much.
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We’re not allowed to be pirates, robbers, or anything in between.
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No rogue-specific assassination orders.
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No poison crafting or customization.
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Not even stealth in stealth quests - we’re forced to use quest stealth, which is ridiculous.
There is so much potential, even with just the existing systems. And for rogues it’s all pretty grounded - a rogue isn’t some all-powerful wizard. But this part of the class fantasy is either completely unexplored or straight up abandoned. And that’s a shame.
V. Conclusion
The fast-paced nature of modern gameplay amplifies the already fast-paced rogue playstyle, making rogue unnecessarily hard to play. And with repeated nerfs to survivability, rogues are punished more harshly than most other classes.
We were stripped of our signature tricks with Blind and Sap. Rogue’s signature stunlock was removed from the game. Abilities that once defined rogues have been handed out to other classes. Newer classes got stronger versions of rogue abilities - for no reason other than novelty. The famous rogue toolkit is no longer the best, and without it - the class identity fades.
Our rotations feel awkward and unenjoyable. The damage outside of cooldowns is abysmal. And for some unknown reasons all three specs heavily rely on stealth not only in PvP, but in PvE as well, where two of the three specs don’t even have a proper way to enter stealth in the first place.
Class fantasy is unexplored, unimplemented, and partially abandoned.
The game itself shifts more and more to a casual-friendly squirrel loving playstyle while simultaneously being balanced for a highly competitive endless high-end PvE grind that resets every couple of months. And the designers seem to completely ignore the fact that one of the things that set WoW apart was, among great lore and enjoyable PvE, one of the best PvP experiences of all multiplayer games. The game becomes more and more bloated with every patch and some classes make it harder to keep up. Combined with everything else, there’s simply no motivation to play a rogue. At least until you watch Total Annihilation or Reckful Shadow Dance again.