The Queue: The Rogue Queue

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today.

I got so many rogue question yesterday, thank you guys! I'm calling today the rogue Queue, because there are quite a few rogue questions to be answered -- but I've also mixed it up a little for those of you that have no love for the sneaky sneak stabbing class. I had so many questions there was no way to address them all -- if your question wasn't answered today, check back tomorrow. I may answer more from yesterday's Queue at that point, depending on how many questions come in today. Speaking of questions ... let's get right to them.

C.H. asked:

Do you think the WOD train level will be more like the train level in Goldeneye or Shadows of the Empire?

I'm hoping for the Phantom Train sequence from FF6. It was the best. And I'm not just saying this on the off chance that we'll be able to suplex the train.*

JoshuaBradley asked:

Rogue opinion question. Blizzard has said multiple times the class doesn't truly need much changing and that it's more or less fine as is. What changes or ideas do you have for either making the class more fun or more practical?

Well that's the thing -- the rogue class is pretty much fine as it is. It's not that it isn't fun to play, it's not that the class is inherently broken in any way. It's just that one class that has always been around and has always, for the most part, been dependable (we won't talk about Vanish). It hasn't really needed any major overhauls, because nothing is really broken. But maybe that's part of the reason why the class is underplayed -- it's been a strong and steady workhorse ever since the major revamp it received in Cataclysm, and hasn't had, or warranted, any of the really dramatic changes that other classes seem to get on a regular basis. Because of that, I guess it could be perceived as boring to some. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

I think what bothers me about the fun factor and playability is that it seems like the moment we get something fun -- like the Glyph of Disguise -- that fun thing is nerfed into oblivion. Glyph of Disguise would be far more entertaining if it lasted longer than five minutes. Or lasted in combat. Most of the cool, unique skins that were fun to pick pocket and duplicate were changed so that you could no longer pickpocket them. While I understand this from the point of a non-rogue player having to deal with twenty gargantuan Durn the Hungerers suddenly roaming about Orgrimmar, it kind of stinks when you find a nice, normal sized model with a cool skin that you can't replicate because, for some reason, they do not have pockets.

I don't think there needs to be any "practical" changes, I think rogues are fine from a practical standpoint. They put out decent DPS, stealth is just as useful as it was day one, they have plenty of unique mechanics that other classes don't have. But the fun factor doesn't seem to be there, the bells and whistles and spell effects and cool, flashy things that other classes have in abundance have never really existed for rogues, and I'm not really sure how they could compensate for that.

CaptainCakewalk asked:

Q4tQ: Seeing as I love (I have two of them and my twitter header + icon is a Druid here as well as there!) Druids and Rogue shares this one huge thing with them my question is this: How does the new combo point system feel? I'm not in the Beta and the three friends that are in it are being extremely tight lipped about it, I must know!

It is a very, very strange experience, and you're going to spend the majority of the first few hours of playtime after 6.0 trying to train yourself out of instinctively hitting whatever combo-point saving or transferring technique your class happens to have. It's fluid. Very fluid. There isn't that jerky stop-and-start feel to the DPS you're putting out anymore. It feels like you're putting out DPS that is sustainable and able to be kept ticking.

I think what bothered me most about the current combo point system is that we already have an energy bar that keeps us from spamming attacks and has us trained to make smart decisions about which attacks can and should be used next in a rotation. Having combo points on ourselves on top of that meant that even if we made the smartest choices in the world, those choices felt like wasted opportunities once we saw all those combo points disappear. It's nice to see them sticking from target to target, now.

Elcheeshead asked:

Q question: I really haven't heard anything about scenarios in Warlords. Are scenarios being left behind in Panderia?

The current scenario system that you can queue up for via the dungeons, raids and scenarios panel is going away, yes. Scenarios will still exist in a way -- but they are implemented into the leveling process. There will be points where, while questing or simply wandering around the world, you'll suddenly be put into a scenario situation where the goals and stages are clearly listed, similar to what you see with current scenarios. Garrisons also have a little bit of the scenario system implemented in there -- when enemies attack your garrison, it plays out just like the scenarios we see right now.

There have been interviews where it's been stated that if scenario content seems like a viable thing to introduce in later patches, it may be put in at that point. But for now, Blizzard seems to want to keep the emphasis more on the new dungeons and raids as queue-able content, and less on the scenarios.

Mazuren asked:

QftQ: What planned but ultimately cancelled content would you have loved to have seen or would love to see revisited in the future? Azjol Nerub, The Emerald Dream, The Abyssal Maw, etc. And what content would you have been fine losing instead?

I have heard I don't know how many times about how the Emerald Dream could never contain enough content for an entire expansion, and I think that's a silly assumption. More to the point, I know exactly how they could implement and expand said content into an entire expansion's worth of material. Good material. Fun material. But that's just me.

As far as content I'd be okay with losing ... I wasn't all that big a fan of the Ruby Sanctum in Wrath of the Lich King. It was a nice idea, but the loot wasn't really that much better than what my raid guild at the time was already pulling out of heroic ICC. Because of that, we only did Halion a handful of times before turning our focus back to Icecrown and beating the Lich King on heroic. It seems like they could have added something different there, or at least tied it in to Cataclysm a little more, so it didn't feel quite so random.

fallanger asked:

question for the rogue queue:how is leveling in the beta, you "need" to use a particular spec or all of them are good?, aoe a bunch of mobs works or you need to kill them one by one?, esop ;D

To be honest, I'm leveling as assassination because that is the spec I have used since the aforementioned ICC days. I don't usually dabble too much in the other two specs. That said, if you have some decent gear, stuff is going to melt, and it doesn't matter what spec you happen to be in. I don't AoE, but I mow through individual mobs quickly enough that it almost seems like AoE would take more time in comparison.

By "decent gear" I mean go grab some Raid Finder gear and upgrade it with Valor, maybe some crafted stuff if you can. You won't really run into too much difficulty, and if things get really hairy ... well, there's always Vanish.



*No really, though, I want to suplex the train.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!