
Originally Posted by
Safiras
I have no issues with the rogue as it is in PvE. With the Aimed Shot re-adjusted to around its original power, I can resume my role as a single target DPS fairly well again.
In PvP, 1v1 I'm really lousy at, but I do tend to win vs mages more than I do vs tanks. I will skip the discussion about 1v1 vs a tank at endgame. For a team vs team clash, previous posters brought up the lack of viability of including rogues in clashes, especially if the opposing team is filled with mages and tanks. Why is that?
- rogues cannot overcome a tank stack: rogues do not have a shield that provides invulnerability or a skill that markedly reduces incoming damage. This means that with more mages and tanks on the opposing side, there are less targets with a wide open window of vulnerability
- It is difficult to kill a tank quickly in a clash, no matter what other people may say. With Nekro/Jugg/HoR/feeble there is a very small window where your skills can hit hard enough to bring a tank down. With increasing numbers of tanks in the team the window gets even small because the tanks can cover each other well with enough skill and practice. Rogues cannot overcome this, and will eventually die because they run out of mana or get sucked into multiple axes. And I haven't even talked about the lava proc of the Arc sword.
- Mages can partially counter a tank stack because they have two things: mana heal and a shield that provides invulnerability and potentially absorbs a lot of damage. This also means that they have a small window of weakness, though during this window they are extremely vulnerable and will die very easily. They also have Fireball which on good timing can stun a tank and widen the window of vulnerability of a tank enough to nuke him and bring him down.
In order to bring back the rogue as a relevant member of the party, there must be either an incentive for more rogues to play, or there must be a disincentive for class stacking in teams. There is no incentive for more than one rogue per team at the moment because apart from high damage (which is nowadays easily countered by Jugg/Mage shield/Horn of Renew/feeble skills), rogues bring little else to the table. Buffing rogues in order to provide an incentive would be a huge mistake as it would unbalance PvE which as I have stated above is in a happy equilibrium currently.
So the best option would be disincentivizing stacking of multiple toons of a single class in a team. How would this work? My proposal involves weakening of a specific stat associated with the specific class, if there is more than one toon of that class in a team. I could give examples. For instance:
- more than one rogue in team: crit reduction by 5% per teammate for each additional rogue in the team.
- more than one mage in team: damage reduction of 5% for each additional mage in the team
- more than one tank in team: armor reduction of 5% for each member of the team
Note that these are examples. I have no way of telling you if a 5% damage reduction is as disabling as a 5% armor reduction. However, my idea was to take the most prominent stat of a stackable class, and nerf it across the team such that the entire team would suffer because they chose to stack tanks/mages/rogues. For instance, since tank stacks are notoriously hard to bring down, nerfing the armor of the team would make the whole team die a lot faster and discourage the idea of tank stacking to preserve the team's armor.
This is just one idea I have, and I'm sure it's not perfect, nor will it be universally received. I would like to hear your views as well as alternative suggestions as to how to reduce class stacking in PvP and making it more friendly to rogues.
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