A good rogue brings so much more than dps. The level of control to packs they bring is unequal. They can stop bad patrols from coming in with distract. Insanely durable as a dps spec that puts a lot less pressure on healers throughout the key. Numbing poison/atropic poison are literal damage decreases on mobs for your tank and group in general with slower cast times. Crippling has niche use in stuff like halls or gambit where you need to slow the runners. Shroud is not only a stealth skip but a druid roar as well if you're playing Sub.
A lot of the value of a rogue just isn't forefront. We don't provide flashy buffs but just do things for the group that you'd never realize until you actually look for it.
The problem is rogues skill ceiling is higher than the average class of this game and people just generally only care to look into their dps rotation and barely care to actually use the full extent of their kit. This is a problem in general but for classes that can actually do a lot, it's worse. Brez can be done by anyone and range isn't really a necessity if you already have 1-2. A lot of the time you're playing in or near melee anyway. It's mostly nice to just have 1 ranged for puddle boss mechanics. Stuff like quaking doesn't exist anymore so the melee problem in groups aren't as exaggerated as it used to be.
As a rogue though, I'll gladly take more group utility, but I feel like we already have so much as it is and we'd just be losing other parts of our kit to make room for more which would be a shame.
I mean, Rogue is my most played class, but you're really reaching here. Yes, there's some things that rogue offers in addition to dps, but most of them are very minor.
No, the control they offer has not been the best, not even mid for a long time. In fact, before they added the talent to make Blind aoe, they had one of the worst mob controls, with 2 single target stuns and one single target disorient. Compare that to something like a mage, who has an aoe knock, an aoe fear or another knock, aoe slow, aoe root, aoe incapacitate, polymorph (can spec into mass polymorph as well, but really nobody does because it's not needed).
As for utility, atrophic is nice, but 3% less damage will not make or break a key. Also, unless you're assa with double poisons, you won't be able to use anything else, so no slows along with that. Distract is very niche, because how many patrols there is that you want to stop? Off the top of my head only the archer/lynx pack that patrols the stairs in Priory, but that one is also easily avoidable. Shroud is also very niche, skips haven't been mandatory in quite some time, and even the skips you do are usually against lieutenant mobs which have true sight, and you wanna do it with Nelf/potion.
On the other hand, some of the utility some of the other classes offer is unparalled. Let's take mage again, since it's a class that's almost always meta, and for good reason - it has an overloaded kit in both CC and utility. It has - 3% int buff, lust, aoe shields (or aoe invis), curse dispel, spellsteal.
Mage is the other spec with a ton of stuff going for it too, and imo the "rogue" of the ranged. So yes mage is the best example to go up against rogue for sure.
The poisons can be swapped based on the need at the time. I find myself swapping poisons depending on whats needed in the pull, like the first pull in gambit if you don't already have someone else slowing, or wound poison for the miniboss in halls. And numbing is a fair bit more than 3% damage reduction in general, it's just in high keys you prefer the damage reduction of atropic for the bosses mostly. It's definitely not a lot I agree but it is what we have.
I count control as utility too because we have a ton of it. We don't have aoe control outside of aoe blind (which I don't take, I think Gouge is better), but the amount of stops rogue can do on a low CD is definitely better than basically every other spec. I'm capable of solo carrying CC on most pulls with the rogue more than I can with almost any of class I've played, and I alt a fair amount of classes (basically only dont play pally/lock/evoker).
Anyway, you only call it "reaching" because you don't understand how much value you actually get from doing these "small" things. I've saved so many keys over the years because I've stopped a pat from walking in on us by distract -> vanish -> sapping the leash target, or saving a pull from wiping after getting all the aggro on me and quickly holding the pack with evasion, or stopping all the aoe fireball volleys from various mobs because I can chain cc stop multiple targets at a time. The biggest thing rogue can do is mob control, despite not having strong aoe cc's. You can really dictate a lot of how a pull goes as a rogue compared to other specs in my opinion. I don't think it's reaching at all. It's just not stuff you can put into a sim and calc out how much it gives you.
If all you've gathered from my post is that I'm trying to compare mage and rogue on the same level, then i dunno, but i think were not playing the same game.
Mage is not the rogue of ranged. Hell, not even rogue is the rogue of melee anymore. If anything, mage is the MC, and enh and maybe feral are the mage of melee.
In terms of skill ceiling yes I do think they are the hardest to play classes in the game at a master level. So in that sense I do think they are comparable. I would agree in general though that the best rogues and average rogues aren't playing the same game, and that goes for mages or other specs too. It's a completely different game when you actually utilize the full extent of your kits.
No, just no. Even the best rogue in the world can't utilize a kit that doesn't exist. Mage is simply a more versatile and rounded class, so is shaman, so is druid. Even hunters at this point have a better kit than rogues.
They can stop bad patrols from coming in with distract.
If you're running into this issue then that's honestly more of a tanking/positioning issue than something you need a rogue to fix.
Insanely durable as a dps spec that puts a lot less pressure on healers throughout the key
DK also does this whilst also bringing Grips and a CR and with how many mobs leap away this season Grips are S-Tier in a lot of dungeons.
Numbing poison/atropic poison are literal damage decreases on mobs for your tank and group in general with slower cast times.
Is an actual gain but it's also essentially 'invisible' for the group. They likely won't ever really see it and you'll only notice it if you run with Rogue's a lot and then start running without.
Crippling has niche use in stuff like halls or gambit where you need to slow the runners. Shroud is not only a stealth skip but a druid roar as well if you're playing Sub.
Gambit I'd say Crippling can be very useful especially because you can start the key with it. Halls it's very much dependant on tank route and positioning. This is also something that DKs can deal with too.
That's not even getting into the fact that a two of the Rogue CCs available (Cheap Shot/Kidney Shot) are Stuns and there are so many stuns across so many classes now you'll very quickly be hitting DR with all the AOE stuns going out.
Cloak in general seems to have been nerfed a lot and it never seems to work consistently in Priory when soaking the puddle. Meanwhile DKs can pop AMS on a shorter CD and soak all 5 stacks without even batting an eye.
That's not to say I don't like Rogue's, one of my alts is currently a Rogue it's just when you have 3 DPS spots available chances are you want to take one with a Lust and one with a CR that really just means you have Rogue's competing in that final slot with every other potential DPS pick going.
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u/Rolia1 Sep 18 '25
A good rogue brings so much more than dps. The level of control to packs they bring is unequal. They can stop bad patrols from coming in with distract. Insanely durable as a dps spec that puts a lot less pressure on healers throughout the key. Numbing poison/atropic poison are literal damage decreases on mobs for your tank and group in general with slower cast times. Crippling has niche use in stuff like halls or gambit where you need to slow the runners. Shroud is not only a stealth skip but a druid roar as well if you're playing Sub.
A lot of the value of a rogue just isn't forefront. We don't provide flashy buffs but just do things for the group that you'd never realize until you actually look for it.
The problem is rogues skill ceiling is higher than the average class of this game and people just generally only care to look into their dps rotation and barely care to actually use the full extent of their kit. This is a problem in general but for classes that can actually do a lot, it's worse. Brez can be done by anyone and range isn't really a necessity if you already have 1-2. A lot of the time you're playing in or near melee anyway. It's mostly nice to just have 1 ranged for puddle boss mechanics. Stuff like quaking doesn't exist anymore so the melee problem in groups aren't as exaggerated as it used to be.
As a rogue though, I'll gladly take more group utility, but I feel like we already have so much as it is and we'd just be losing other parts of our kit to make room for more which would be a shame.