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I find it hard to criticize a class whose concept is so intriguing, but quite frankly, like the many other incarnations of the thief, Blizzard didn’t quite pull the rogue class off as well as they could have. I’m among the first to say that the idea of sneaking around and killing things is fun, but in practice, making a sneaky, pick-pocketing rapscallion effective is not something game developers have mastered yet. Sure, we have a slew of games where one has to sneak around to win, and where assasination, ideally quietly, is the way to score bonus praise, but how does one incorporate this type of gameplay into a typical fantasy setting, where balance is important between classes? In truth, one can’t, especially not if one is blending the thief concept with the assasin concept, which so many developers lean towards.

There are various interpretations of a thief-like class in the confines of a fantasy setting. My favorite, and the one I always return to when I think of the genre, is the Quest for Glory thief, a class that succeeded by sneaking past enemies, stealing from enemies, and using cool tools likes grappling hooks to get around obstacles. Sierra’s thief class was one that used its wiles to complete objectives, rather than brute killing strength. In more combat-oriented roleplaying games (RPGs), the thief class is modified somewhat; we have a class better suited for quick, dual-handed attacks, whose benefit to a party is their ability to detect traps and unlock treasure chests. In theory, this type of thief becomes necessary in a party setting should traps be in such high quantities, and of such devastating power, that failing to bring a thief along would require a healing class to balance out the damage taken to the group. In practice, traps and locked chests are either not in high enough quantity to make bringing a thief along worthwhile, or the group can easily circumvent those same obstacles without a thief at hand, using some other tool. In effect, the environments in most fantasy RPGs are not consistent with the skills a thief would possess, so to make the thief useful yet not required, the thief’s combat abilities are played up.

Enter the combat-thief, or as Blizzard has named it in World of Warcraft (WoW), the “rogue”. A derivative of Blizzard’s assasin class from Diablo 2, our beloved thief is a martial arts expert, utilizing combos and finishing moves to quickly damage opponents. The class’ role in a group is simple: damage the crap out of your opponent, and “cower” to keep the enemy’s attacks off you and on the group’s “tank”. When you can, unlock the occasional chest. Blizzard, paying homage to D&D thieves, even gave the rogue the ability to detect traps, though in-game, there aren’t any traps to detect, so the ability is all but useless.

During the last WoW beta phase, I rolled my first rogue in the hopes of having a character that could sneak past enemy mobs and reach key objectives, stealthing out of harms way and killing the occasional enemy in bloody assasin-style. The draw to the class, for me, was more in the rogue’s ability to pick the pockets of enemies and players alike, rather than dealing with building up combo-points before one could drop a high-powered finishing move. Frankly, I hated the assasin class in Diablo 2, and wasn’t fond of a rehash.

There was good and bad news to be had, however. The bad news was that pick-pocketing also turns out to be all but useless, since it doesn’t work on player characters (PCs), and non-player characters (NPCs) have “unique” inventories for pick-pocketing purposes. In other words, one can’t steal the same items from NPCs as one could get by killing them. In short, the only thing the rogue shares with “real” thieves is their ability to stealth out of sight, which is almost always used not to get by mobs, but to initiate a new combat sequence, since starting an attack while being stealthed lends itself to more powerful opening attacks.

The good news is that combo points and finishing moved turned out to be much more enjoyable in WoW than they were with the assasin in Diablo 2. The rogue became a damage-per-second (DPS) powerhouse, with the public’s decree that a rogue’s DPS was only rivaled by that of a mage, who is otherwise a weenie cloth-wearing class that relies on mana, while the rogue is a leather-wearing class capable of losing an enemy’s focus (aggro) and, in some situations, vanish from the battlefield if a fight goes bad.

While fun to play, the more time I spent on my post-beta rogue character, the more I realized that the class isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Mages, as it turns out, are not the only classes who can out-damage rogues; shamans, and well-played warriors, can easily out-damage rogues of similar levels, and only one rogue talent-build lends itself to sustained combat; of the three talent trees available to rogues, only the combat-specced rogue has sustainable damage, but this build is horrible in player-versus-player (PvP) combat, where burst damage is ideal. The ambush build, which maximizes a rogue’s burst damage, is great in PvP combat, as well as most other combat, when it works, but one doesn’t always connect on the first hit, and vanishing from sight to try again isn’t something rogues can do consistently, since the abilitie to do so are on a rather long cooldown timer; in any sustained combat scenario, the ambush rogue’s damage after the first strike is abysmal compared to other high-DPS classes. The last build, arguable the most fun in solo-PvP, is the stunlock build, which keeps an opponent stunned for the majority of combat, minimizing damage taken to the rogue, and annoying player opponents to death. Sadly, while great for solo-PvP, this build is horrible for group-PvP or when multiple enemies are afoot, since any damage taken to the stunned opponent, in certain cases, de-stuns them.

It doesn’t help the rogue class any that the majority of players who roll rogues are angst-ridden teens whose one goal in the game is to “gank” other players - killing other players regardless of whether that kill earns them any benefits. Even if this weren’t the case, the rogue’s ability to kill quickly and efficiently is pale in comparison to what other classes have to offer. In the end, though the rogue can dish out a fair amount of DPS, their benefit to a group is clearly outweighed by other classes, who have additional group benefits (mage’s ability to conjure items and use area-of-effect spells, shaman’s ability to buff others and heal, etc).

In an unsurprising failure, Blizzard created a very weak thief class, though to be fair, they did call it a rogue. What they should have done is made the rogue a real support class, and shape the environment to better suit a thief’s skills. Or, they should have made the rogue a hero class for warriors, since the rogue is little more than a fighter class with worse armor and improved attack speed.

In the end, even though Blizzard did a good job of creating a class that solos very well, and is arguably the best class for solo PvP play, the rogue is next to useless in a group setting, even considering a rogue’s crowd control that enables them to sap an opponent and take them out of combat for a good amount of time. The fact remains that in any group, I would take any class on before I took a rogue along, even the crummy Paladin. And let’s be honest - a rogue that doesn’t get the jump on you in PvP won’t last long, and one could easily claim that most classes would dominate if they got the jump on an enemy. In the end, the rogue ranks low on the WoW class scale: [rate 1]

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