My experiences with a rogue
So i got to 80, got some gear and played arena (Lordaeron, which is currently in the TOC/relentless era). Now i teamed up with a feral and i was assa. This was the first time i'd ever played rogue in wrath and also in arena, so obviously my performance was gonna be dodgy. Now i know feral/rogue ain't some good comp, specially cos there's a million warpals and dkpals in the 2v2 bracket, but still. We didn't have voice chat and we started at around 4,9k gs for him and 4,7 for me. By today he is 5,1 and i'm 4950 or smth, so decently geared, nothing uber special tho. We reached almost 1,8 k with like 250 games played, with about a 50 % winratio. Got all the relentless offpieces, but had 219 weps from toc5hc. Now i did definately have some fun, but i decided to quit today, cos 1)i just cba with the boring imbalanced arena and 2)there's nothing to do in wow after u get to 80/get proffs maxed n ****. Ye u can do achis, which i did, got myself the bike even since ik how to make gold etc but there's really nothing to do in endgame, whether ur a pver or pvper.
Now comes the more ranty part... which some wouldbe rogue might read and save himself the trouble of playing this class, specially for pvp... cos it's fu*king frustrating as sh*t. Now obviously arena is comp based, imbalanced (specially the 2v2 bracker, hence Blizz nerfing it, so the elite wpes/shoulders/tabard etc were not obtainable from it anymore), gear based etc... but ffs was my experience shi*ty...
First of all, even with 1k res, u die like a little slag. Seriously i pop f*cking evasion and i still die like a slag vs melee. The hp is low, the armor is low, there is no survivability. VS casters, u only have cloak and that's a freaking 1 min cd that only lasts for 5 secs. Can't even reset it with Preparation. Now if i'd play with a discpriest which seems to be the only rogue comp that has any real viability, ofc it would be different, but we don't all play with a disc priest now do we and might no want to either. Getting a sap on anyone, specially as a dual stealth comp was at times pretty much impossible... playing vs priest/hunter = hunter had a skill that prevents sap altogether and even if not, they just spam flare and shoot volley while priest spams mass dispel and holy nova. Trying to sap someone in an arena like dalaran sewers....omfg. Trying to sap in blood's edge arena with that small pillar that is accessable via the rope...omfg. If you play with a partner that ain't a stealther, then atleast he pulls some of the attention of the enemy to himself and u have a better chance, but dual stealth is like... lol.
Also i think we were actually the highest rated feral/rogue team in the top 100 ladder of Lordaeron, so yeah... no wonder it's not played much.
Rogues being dodgy also reflects in the fact that the highest rated rogue in 2v2 is in the 24th ranked team...
Another thing was also mages n shi* shooting spells thorugh the pillars, 1 guy blatantly just casted arcane missiles through the pillar while i was trying to stealth. That kinda stuff has happened many a time and is srsly in need of a fix. I mean that literally ruins arena. That's unacceptable.
With a rogue, as soon as ur cds are popped, ur a training dummy to the enemy, u can't do any srs dam, nor can u survive. The amount of times when u try to go for a sap and the enemy puts a blizzard or shadowfury or death and decay or volley or smth to exactly where you are makes me rage xD. I have to f*ucking spend 3 cds just to get away from my stealth being broken. Cos to avoid being hit by more spells, vanish obviously and f*cking sprint, so that they wouldn't blizzard me again etc. My god how annoying.
Next up the positioning... now at first i played as assa, but that didn't really work out so well cos basically ur own deadly poison means, that u can't gouge, nor blind the target that u have it on... /facepalm. Why does ret palas repentance remove rightous vengenace, but blind/goue can't remove poison? /sigh So i went sub, to also be able to see other stealthed guys better, cos of the talent and also cos if we go vs a rogue team and get sapped first (specially my partner druid who has crappier stealth) then we'd be at a srs disadvantage. Well i must say i don't like sub. I'd rather play assa with a healer and get my stacks up and spam envenom while getting 20% more heals.
What is sub? You basically have 1 burst cd which most of the time u can't even utilize fully cos the enemy has an addon like sound alerter or smth and they obviously pop def cds/cc when they hear me putting it on. Also it only lasts 6 measly secs, 8 with glyph. For defensive cds u have a 5 measly sec duration cloak and evasion which warrs and the like don't seem to give a rats *** about and hit through it like nothing. Disarm ain't nothing special with titanium weapon chains either and you can't even vanish when u have a bleed, which means if ur playing against a warr (every other team has one...) or a rogue or druid, u will prolly have a bleed on and gl with vanishing then.
Another annoying thing with a rogue is the f*cking wait for the energy... i mean omg i have to sit there and just autoattack until i get enough energy to do smth and then you ALSO have to position yourself behind the enemy, if you wanna use your main attack (out of stealth), which is backstab. Dude half of the time (since the camera is zoomed out to get a better view obviously) i can't even see what way the enemy is facing, becasue him, me and my partner (since he's melee) are all standing on the same fu*king spot and ppl that know how to counter rogues just try to turn sideways to them, so they can't backstab NOR gouge. Now even if i do backstab, it's measly damage. Don't even mention melee (which i heard is bugged and is slower than it should be) or hemo, cos they do like 1 damage each. So basically you're doing 0 damage most of the time and even when you're behind it's pretty weak unless your dancing with ambush spam and that is a 1 min cd and you will prolly get stunned/rooted/incapcitated/feared/disamred or whatever anyway during it.
Another thing is when you start an arena and the enemy warrior etc goes into a corner and positions himself so that i can't get behind him to open properly or actually do much at all. My partner ( due to catform's model i guess) could actually stand there and be "behind him" cos the cat's body went into the wall more, but i couldn't since i can't get more into the wall with my back, than the warrior, unless i backpeddled AND jumped at the time time (/shrug) which is annoying as f*ck and your camera angle is fu*ked.
All this combined just makes your head want to explode, but were not done yet. Add to that, the bloody annoyance of tracking combo points... omfg. Also switching targets as a rogue is so fail, because you lose all the generated points on the old target and u start with ZERO on the new one and let's be honest, you prolly don't have much energy either to generate combo points on the new target. It basically sucks, it always feels like you don't have enough energy and you don't have enough combo points to do finishers. Also since most of the ppl in 2v2 are plate dps like warr/dk with a healer (another plate like hpal), you will do crappier damage anyway, cos they have high armor. Now ARP would counter that, but you can't really get high enough ARP to make it viable in the TOC patch, specially with pvp gear. (Why are pvpers forced to raid??? /sigh) I had like 33% or smth.
Now combine the lack of survivability ( i might aswell roll with 0 res, cos it really feels unexistant) as in low hp, low armor and res feeling so weak, with only having 1 burst cd and limited defensive cds, only being able to really do damage from behind, managing combo points and waiting for energy, switching targets being relatively unefficient and having no heals, not being able to vanish bleeds, cloak not being able to be resetted, dependance on pve to get ARP etc... and you get a FUC*ING nnoying arse class to play seriously.
Also rogue feels like, you're never dictating the direction of the fight... it always feels like everything you do, is a rection to what others do... you're just some weak glass cannon (not much of a cannon tbh even) that's just being pushed around and has to react to everything, instead of dictating the fight. Bloody annoying.
Also, in retail you have a a LOT more ppl in arena, due to battlegroups so the ppl you come across vary from total newbs to mediocre, to veterans... but in a private server, it's always the same.
1) You have almost no team variety - like 50% of the teams you come across will be either warpal, dkpal, discdk, huntdisc, magepriest or smth like that, so if your comp is outcomped by those, well you're fu*ked.
2)You come across the same team like 5-10 times a row. When we were at 1,5 k, we came across the rank 1 team in the realm like 6-8 times a row. They were almost 2k at that point. Coming across a 500 more rated team, when u'r at rank 80 with 4,7 and 4,9 k gs guys VS DUAL 5,4k is ******ed.
3)In retail, at 1,8 k you're coming across randoms, ppl with blues and wrong gems/enchants, fun comps and ppl trying to get 10 games in, noobs, mediocre comps etc and never 10 times a row so getting to the ratings that you need, to get gear is doable. Here at since the f*cking getgo, you're coming across DUAL fullbis teams (well maybe not fullbis all the time but you get my point) and those teams are also always the same wotlk FOTM comps like warpal etc and you come across the same team like 5-10 times.
4)Then you have the majority of the arena teams which are like 30-40 % winratio guys that are all sub 1,5 k rating, because all those beforementioned teams are literally blocking them from getting higher rating, which they need to get better gear, to be able to actually compete against those higher teams. Specially because for some reason these uber geared guys always keep making new teams from 0 rating, so you get put against dual full bis guys at 500 rating...
It's harder to get rating in a private server, than in retail. I have played retail btw and arena-ed in there as a paladin.
Also rogues don't even have any cool looking skills, like seriously... it's boring as f*ck to play in pve. You just spam you combo point building move and then the finisher.
Now this read might have been pretty grim, but that's how i honestly feel. I can't be bothered with the arena here and also there's nothing to do in wow at endgame really... i mean you can't arena all the time and raids only take 2 hours... so yeah. Call me a nub or whatever, but i've had 30-1 winratios in retail and tbh i don't give a **** :) Time to play some other game, that's actually fun... Cya
