[1.Local]: The battle over Battle.net

Concerned about Battle.net security?
So many comments about Battle.net accounts ... So much account security paranoia ... So little time – and so little focus on what reader jfofla points out is a very smart tool for anyone who wants to protect his or her WoW account.

jfofla: Before endless streams of paranoids post here ... Now is the time to get an Authenticator. No matter what your fears of account security due to using your email address for log in, the Authenticator will give you the ultimate security.

Arthas spoilers (spoiler alert)
Is that a helm I see before me? We think at least one reader has the whole Arthas storyline figured out in advance. (Spoiler alerts for this article – don't click over if you don't want Arthas storyline spoilers.)

Zombiemold: Snape kills Arthas in 3.3!!

To start a new rogue
Rogues – you either love 'em, or you hate 'em.

gryzemuis: If you want to level a rogue just for the fun of leveling, go ahead. Rogues are a great class to solo and to level up. I really enjoyed the leveling, although that was 4.5 years ago. But if you want to level a rogue to have a character to play end-game with, I strongly suggest you should not pick the rogue class. I know, I have played this rogue for 4.5 years.

Pure DPS classes are the stepchildren of WoW. The whole game is about hybrids now. As a pure DPS class, you will always be considered "just a scrub" who should be happy that he is allowed to come to raids. If you don't believe me, check out the top 10 guilds on your server. I bet that most of those guilds have 1-2, maybe 3 of each pure DPS class. But they'll have 4+ druids, shaman, paladins and priests. I bet they even have more warriors and DKs than rogues. Sometimes they run with 6+ paladins and 6+ priests, but only 2 rogues.

Rogues were doing fine DPS in Ulduar, thanks to the buff to our combat talent tree. But in 3.1, something terrible happened. T9.25 gear is hardly an upgrade from T8.25. In fact, getting three or less pieces of T8.25 is a downgrade. So any social rogue will let other classes get their T9.25 first. And our DPS will fall behind. In Ulduar, we had swords, maces, fist and offhand dagger. So after a few weeks, most rogues in a guild would have two new weapons. In ToC, there are only two axes dropping for us. That means that if you are unlucky, all or most of your rogues will run with Ulduar weapons. Then there is the issue of expertise (too much of it), which makes certain items useless to us.

As a result, rogue DPS is not going up as fast as other classes. And when ICC comes, rogues will be doing sub-average DPS. And raid leaders will not bring more than one or two rogues to ICC until the whole instance is on farm. As a rogue, you are a one trick pony. We can't switch roles when we are bored with DPS. And we also can't enjoy the game more by getting off-spec sets. Since 3.2, I have gotten two upgrades, bracers which are worse than crafted ones and a BoE cloak. I bought two items with BoTriumph. I got all these EoT and EoC in my bag and nothing I can buy. If I had been a druid, I could have bought healing gear or boomkin gear. For a rogue, the game is a lot smaller.

Rogues used to be great solo players. Not anymore. In TBC days, I had fun soloing Strat and Scholo in my blue gear (and purple later). I got all T0 sets, just for fun. I soloed recipes. At lvl60, I solo farmed a libram in Dire Maul for an enchant. I soloed GRRP-recipe in LBRS at lvl60. All great fun.

But in WLK, there is nothing to solo. The lvl80 instances drop nothing; everything is reputation-based. And the lvl70 heroic dungeons are not soloable by a rogue. You will see druids and paladins solo ZG bosses. Warriors were soloing MC bosses at lvl70. DKs can solo well, too. But rogues can't solo anything anymore. We can do well for 20-30 seconds, thanks to evasion and maybe stuns. But if a fight lasts longer (and all 70-80 boss fights do), we can't solo anything because we can't heal.

Really, play a hybrid class. The game will be a lot more versatile for you. You can set more goals. You can acquire more loot. You can solo more. You will get a lot more respect.

Rogues might be needed for YS and Anub hard modes. But how many guilds do that ? 100 in the world, maybe? In a regular guild, rogues are a dime a dozen. And if you don't believe that, you should wonder why so many veteran rogues are leaving this game. More so than any other class.

Not everyone agreed with the grim outlook.

KT: Thanks for this! I previously leveled a rogue to about 30 and then had to give it up because I had too many alts and cleaned house. I really liked playing the rogue, but was getting rid of toons of the same race or races that do same zones at early levels.

Now I'm planning on trying again when Cataclysm comes out with a goblin rogue so this is just on time. From what I remember, I had a hard time with the class until about level 20 and then I started having a blast with it. I love the stealth mechanism, it's a whole different way to play the game for me, and I used my alt and plan to use my new rogue to do different things that I don't do with other characters.