#0 - Nov. 17, 2008, 6:27 p.m.
simply put, AOE is dominating in 5-mans. while other classes have had their dps specs tuned to be only slightly lower than rogues on single target, rogue AOE remains virtually non existant unless you are specced for killing spree and blade flurry but even that can only be used maybe once a fight.
the gameplay of 5-mans is simply not friendly to rogues who rely on stability of aggro. evidently hunters and paladins can just volley and divine storm willy nilly, take aggro off the tank and still thrash. at the same time, this creates an environment that is not fun for rogues, having to chase after the stuff that is now going after the hunter or paladin because of the aoe. it makes it that much more difficult to juggle your combos, keep up snd, rupture, hfb, and try and throw in an envenom. even on bosses a rogue will barely set up their rotation.
yesterday i was apparently struggling to keep up with dps from a level 69 BM hunter in greens. he didn't even have go for the throat which if i am not mistaken is essential for pet dps.
now, go ahead and tear up my armory if you like. i know i'm not the best geared, and i don't expect to be doing better dps than someone in high tier gear, but please tell me if there is anything horribly wrong with my spec. call me a bad player etc, but there are other players who are just as bad and dominating everything.
now, i'm not calling for a nerf to classes with good AOE, but what i AM proposing is that you tune rogue AOE to be more viable in five mans.
so lets consider Fan of Knives. why do rogues have to wait until level 80 for this ability? if 80 is supposedly the point where rogue's single target dps will matter, why are we getting fan of knives at 80 when it wont matter, and not during the 70's when it DOES matter? i know some people will say that class balance is tuned not toward five mans but to raiding, but i dont see why this is an issue that can't be addressed.
but even if we did get fan of knives earlier, i don't think it would make much of a difference in its current state. whenever the issue of fan of knives has been brought up to the devs, they seem to be completely opposed to the idea of it being any good at what it is supposed to do. they say they want it to be situational and they don't want it to take over rogue rotations. i could see the problems that would arise if fan of knives were the only move rogues ever used, but why not make it viable for aoe like it is supposedly designed. whats the harm in using it once in a while during a fight?
so here are my proposed changes to fan of knives:
weapon damage isn't going to cut it for the many many dagger rogues. it seems like a bad joke that you would tune a lot of talents toward daggers, but then make fan of knives only do weapon damage. please normalize it?
how to make it usable in aoe but not overtake rogue rotations: keep the 50 energy cost if you must, but make fan of knives restore energy for every enemy it hits. please either remove the cooldown or reduce it drastically to like two or three seconds at most, so you can actually use it before everything is already divine storm'd or volley'd to death.
this way, rogues would ONLY have the energy to use fan of knives in aoe situation. the energy refund could be anywhere from 3 to 5 or something. if fan of knives hits 5 enemies, the rogue will be refunded 15-25 energy. at the same time, if they try to use it when there's only one enemy, they will find themselves out of energy fast.
an alternative to this would be to atleast let energy restoring talents work with the ability. that way combat potency or focused attack procs would help in that regard. that just leaves out subtlety rogues though.
