Encrypted Text: Rogue bugs that need to be squashed
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.
I've cleared Dragon Soul on my rogue twice since patch 5.0.4 launched, and I'm still not tired of absolutely crushing the DPS meters. My guild is now employing new and interesting heroic strategies due to my newfound DNS. We're cleaving Morchok and his clone Korhcrom, we're getting the Minutes to Midnight achievement on Ultraxion by default, and we just pulled off a 3-lift Spine of Deathwing. If you've got your Fangs of the Father, you have two more weeks to abuse them.
Everything isn't sunshine and rainbows for rogues in patch 5.0.4, though. Any major patch introduces its fair share of bugs and issues, and Cataclysm's final update is no exception. Our new mechanics still need to have some developer oil applied so that they'll stop squeaking. Rogue DPS is obviously working great at the moment, but that doesn't mean that we can't look for areas to improve in.
Fan of Knives and sticky combo points
Fan of Knives recently saw its functionality change from a mindless AoE attack to a combo point generator in an AoE rotation. Unfortunately for us, combo points don't work well in an AoE situation. If you have existing combo points on another target, Fan of Knives won't generate any combo points on your new target. This bug is especially painful since we can have combo points on dead targets.
Fan of Knives should work like any of our other combo point generators. It should generate new combo points on our current target if the target is in range of the FoK. FoK should work like Sinister Strike which works like Mutilate. If there's one thing the rogue class is good at it, it is consistency. The bug is common enough that I run into it a few times per Dragon Soul run, and that's simply way too often.
Swiftblade's Cunning gives away the element of surprise
One of my fellow rogues, Jeaxx, pointed out a serious issue with Swiftblade's Cunning. If you're in a PvP situation and stealthed, enemies can tell that there is a rogue nearby by observing the Swiftblade's Cunning buff on our allies. The elements of stealth and surprise are paramount to a rogue's success in PvP, and our buff is crippling us in those areas. I'm happy to have a raid buff and to provide some utility, but it shouldn't help our enemies too. Jeaxx had a clever solution: the buff would only be active while we're not in stealth.
Blade Flurry is still combat-only
When I heard about the new talent system, I was so sure that the developers had finally found the fix to the Blade Flurry problem. Blade Flurry is simply too good. Rogues are required to play combat on any fight with two targets. I don't know of another class that is so handcuffed to a single ability.
Blade Flurry would make a perfect addition to the existing talent trees. Let rogues play any of our three specs without worrying about holding their raid back. Preparation was taken from subtlety, why can't we open up Blade Flurry to everyone? Or BF could even become a class-wide ability, giving rogues some unique cleaving flavor across the board. Anything is better than today's status quo that forces us into combat for multiple fights per tier.
Cosmetic combat glyphs
Glyph of Disguise was nerfed faster and harder than ret paladins have ever been. For a few precious hours on the beta, we could actually enter combat while disguised. Of course, that would be way too fun to keep around, and the disguises now fade when entering combat. Mages are allowed to copy the appearance of any other raider at any time, boomkins can turn into constellations or something, but rogues can't have anything nice.
Warlocks have fancy orbs that can circle around them and they start glowing purple when their demonic power builds up. Rogues need a visual glyph that is actually useful in combat. Our Glyph of Disguise and the Glyph of Decoy are fun, but I want something that I see a bit more often than that. How about making Stealth change our vision to match being invisible? Shade recommended a glyph that has us leave trails like an ethereal when we're using Sprint. I just want something cool to look at during a raid.
Sneak in every Wednesday for our Molten Front ganking guide, a deep-dive into the world of playing a subtlety rogue -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to the latest rogue gear.
