I hate rogues! No, rogues are awesome!
doesn't like rogues. He makes a long post telling us why, and then Karthis from Of Teeth and Claws posts this rebuttal. Then in an utterly shameful display, Mirshalak... concedes that Karthis has a point.
Oh dear. Well, there goes any hope of name calling, hair pulling or other ungentlemanly behavior. (Or unladylike, I don't know the actual gender of the folks involved.) So, then, what can we actually take from all of this? Well, here are my own incredibly long winded 'point/counterpoint' thoughts.
Well, to be completely fair and honest, I have had a lot of the same problems with rogues Mirshalak mentions. While I don't believe that the entire class is sociopathic or full of people who can't work with a group, I have several stories stored up from my time playing WoW of rogues who decided to wipe the group and vanish because they didn't get a drop they wanted (not that someone else did get it, just because the boss did not drop the item, mind you) or rogues deciding to try and train bosses over the hunter who has feigned death to hopefully use his jumper cables to res a few healers in order to help prevent a reset wipe.
While I've met people of every class who have annoyed me, from warriors to shamans to mages to hunters to paladins, of the stories I have to tell about absolute jerkwads, it's usually a rogue. It was one of my guild's leading rogues who liked to tell racist and sexist jokes to my wife, and another of my guild's rogues who managed to offend the entire priest core of our guild to the point where they wouldn't heal him at all. So I can empathize with Mirshalak's position here, and even speculate that there is something inherent in the mechanics of the rogue class which set up and reward lone wolf playstyle in some fashion.
But clearly Karthis is right. You can't judge a whole class by the few jackasses you meet, and everyone has a different personality and is irritated by different things. While aspects of rogue gameplay (their stealth and ability to vanish, their stunlocks) might contribute to your irritation when you're PvPing against them and might leave you cold while dealing with them, these are not aspects that will irritate everyone, merely personal biases.
Rogues absolutely do deliver mana-free, easily regenerated, self-sustaining high DPS that no other class can deliver in the same fashion... no waiting for rage, no watching one's mana... and they also bring the versatility of their particular form of CC, which while requiring some care is hardly shabby. Heck, in my own experience in my horde guild, rogues have saved the day on more than one occasion, and not purely through their DPS either. If you've never seen a rogue totally stun-tank a mob that's gotten loose, it's worth seeing. Rogues offer more than generic DPS, and a good rogue will change how you view the class just like magic.
Mirshalak is entirely reasonable in his follow up post where he admits Karthis has a point and that players of other classes can also be gigantic tools. So we'll just have to agree to... agree, I guess. Rogues are not to be held responsible as a class for the behavior of the jerks among them any more than I am to be held responsible for what that really bigoted white power moron of a warrior said in my Steamvaults run last night. Seriously, that guy? Made me sick to be in the same game with him, much less to have a character of the same class. I could not drop that group fast enough.
