I think poisons are the answer. No other classes get the “feel bad” about big nerfs, and Rogues get more utility. I did a Rogue/Necro box for classic in Mischief and when I could afford it the Slow Poison was amazing. If it lasted a little longer, was stackable, and/or the reagents were made a little bit more available, it would be real nice and I don’t think game breaking. If I wanted to be real crazy I’d say allow Rogues to apply poisons to their ranged weapons. Of course a little boost to Backstab would go a long way as well.
I know it's been brought up before, but boosting rogue poison from classic and on is the low hanging fruit. It would be a very easy, sensical way to add utility and/or dps to rogues... which mainly would bring them more in line with monks who have all the dps and incredible utility. Rogues could easily benefit from DD poisons, but also utility such as ~100% reliable snares or even some sort of mesmerization. The mez could work by something like this... very high proc rate short duration mez (similar to necro) can only proc via an ability, such as intimidate (so they dont constantly proc it via melee) Even from a roleplay perspective it kinda makes sense. But really, the possibilities are endless to add utility to rogues.
Dirty Trick - Throws dirt/sand in your target's eyes, Mesmerize for 3 ticks. Must be facing the target
This silver lining to this problem is classic has gone from 6 months to 3 months and now 1 month on the most recent server. Rogues are by far the worst class in classic but they are average once they get their (incredibly easy) epic. Raid geared rogues in velious are good dps. By pop rogues raid geared rogues completely shred and can always be found near the top of overall damage done for a raid (obv each boss has their own mechanics that favor/impune certain classes). What is consistent with rogue is you will always need raid gear to be any good. Pick up groups will never want you in any era because you provide zero utility and they have no idea if you have good gear or not and the difference between BiS weapons rogue guy and ec/bazaar gear rogue guy is massive. Great class for raiding. Dont play if you want to mainly group. Obviously a bottom tier class for soloing.
Rogues aren't even that bad, it's just that monks are OP. Maybe some small tuning could help but they improve a lot with their epic.
If the rumors are true that they are doing a GoD start, it would be better if looked at silk classes in OoW-PoR.
Tell me you haven't monked without telling me you haven't monked. Pulling is infinitely more fun then a rogue which is the single most boring class in the game. A great puller, such as myself, knows that it is an ART form. It is actual poetry in motion. That being said, rogues aren't as awful as reputation would make them out to be. Just like druids. A good one is always welcome in my groups.
People still care about designated pullers? Just bring a group of mobs and kill them. This isn't 1999. Pulling has been a dead utility for years. Anyone can do it
I support helping rogues in the early eras. Nothing is more annoying than seeing someone post that they played a rogue and could even beat some terrible monks. Great. You had to do 10x the work, put in max effort, and you could only beat the people of a dps class with far more tools at their disposal who couldnt pay attention enough to stand in auto attack range with attack on. Thats not balanced and you should want better.
An 'ok' start would be to boost PoSky drops. Let people get some effing quests done. Rogues ain't in a great place in classic but ain't many seen how Thornstinger shreds at lv 50. But yeah, baseline chaotic stab would be an alright tweak. Not really OP even if it's not "classic". The BIG change I'd like to see is for MotM to not crush backstab as hard as it seems to. Like, it hurts. Hurts real bad.
