A Rogue In The Arena.

How does the Rogue fit into the Arena? It doesn't.. A class like the Warrior quite easily fits the bill both lore wise and in gameplay. No matter the bracket, 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, you will always have pressure on you. This bodes well for a Warrior, you have a constant stream of rage filling your bars, and a constant enemy to go after. With a resource like rage even in drought moments you have plenty of buttons to hit. In moments of overwhelming pressure you have defensive measures at hand almost always to deal with the threat.
A rogue however doesn't have the same tools, and thankfully/rightfully/painfully so. Even lore wise you find that a great deal of the Rogue NPC's you encounter are all about the staples of lore. Secretive, stealthy, lurking in shadows or away from others. Any quests involve popping someone off, or getting information (and usually it behooves someone to gain it with little to no detection from mobs.) A good example is the now defunct poison quest. Where you had to get into a tower and get some info. The more you avoided things the quicker and better it went.

If you stick a class like this into arena you run into issues. When the gates open and the opponents or you see someone missing. You immediately know its either; A rogue, or a druid in stealth. You check the visible member and if there isn't "mark of the wild" you know its a rogue.
Now they know you're somewhere, and measures are taken to possibly get you to unstealth. From Shouts like Demoralizing Shout/Roar, AOE abilities and so on. In most cases you probably avoid these things, but it can be devastating if someone lucks out and plants that AOE right where you are.
90% of the success of a rogue bearing team revolves around the rogue getting a clean opener. By this I mean they get a stealthed move out on someone. Whether it be cheap shot,garrote,whatever. Success is also heightened when you can place a sap on someone and open on another person quickly to force their partner into making a decision of waiting, or using their trinket to help them.

Once in the open that's where the problems will start. In today's current game you're most likely using daggers with Assasination/Prep or Subtlety. If you're playing with any other weapon you're most likely Combat, or in the rare case Hemo/Sub. If you aren't playing a dagger spec than you're easily spotted, and have bad burst.
If you're playing mutilate/prep you have better burst but not outstanding. As your only real damage cooldown is Cold Blood. The trade off is that you can use Mutilate from any position and Envenom for a bit better finisher damage.
If you play Sub/Shadow Dance, you have a great burst utility in Shadow Dance. Multiple Ambushes really put out pressure, while multi cheapshots can keep a healer from moving for quite some time. The trade off with this spec is that you have to use Backstab, which will require you to be behind your target, which can be quite easy or quite difficult depending on your opponent. You also don't have master poisoner so you have to pick your poisons smartly and in some cases carry a third dagger to be at the ready to switch to another poison quickly.

Both these specs however have a downfall in that daggers don't push a lot of damage into plate wearing classes. Pokey Dagger just doesn't hurt them as much as Cleaving axe or sword, or a mace with its bludgeoning. However you do keep poisons up more reliably as a dagger bearing rogue.

Your cooldowns when fighting toe to toe are limited to realistically 3 options. Evasion, which is used on any melee class to help yourself dodge incoming attacks, keeping in mind you can only dodge things you face. Which requires you to react and move smartly to opponents trying to get behind you. Keyboard turning really makes evasion useless, you have to turn quicker via using the mouse.
Cloak Of Shadows protects you shortly from magic damage, it however is sometimes used to rid yourself of snares, and cannot be used while crowd controlled.

The third is to Dismantle someone, it rids them of their weapons and shield if they're using one. It however can be dodged, and when its dodged it's usually at a critical time. Because of this it's almost a requisite to use with when behind someone. One of the greater more impacting times of use is when a Warrior bladestorms. Warriors use it both ofensively and defensively. It's not uncommon for a Warrior to use it when he's being pressured to coax people into running away because of its big damage output. It's almost like Mortal Strike 2.0 The range on it is fairly large for a melee ability as well making Dismantle an important thing to get off.

So, we have listed ability based open combat items. What makes a rogue a hard fit into arenas? Basicly the fact that the rogue isn't meant to stand toe to toe with anyone, even other rogues. Two rogues fighting is like watching to dogs chase each others tail. Both trying to get behind the other. Usually the winner is the person who is forced into the open before the other.

You'll find yourself at almost always under the amount of energy you need to do many things. People will cite rogues as overpowered and taking little skill. However once you get into good rated arenas you find that the Rogue can just about never global someone down to half health. If you got rofl'd by a rogue chances are very likely you weren't kitted in equal pvp gear as they were. "Rogues are overpowerd." is a common statement that's been carried through since prebc. Even after many nerfs/buffs/other classes being buffed apparently we haven't changed? Any time I see a ret, warrior, PRIEST complain about rogues being overpowered I really do face palm. Put in as much work as they did for the gear and you wouldn't have an issue.

A fitting lore wise person for the rogue in the Arena is Valeera Sanguinar. A blood elf that was captured and made to fight in gladiator fights. Although we know little of how she actually did it, we know she was a rogue.
Fighting in arenas takes a whole lot more work, patience and planning than any duel or battleground encounter. It's not until you fight a resto druid by yourself that you really see where the downfalls are. Thank god for arena partners :)

The arena rogue can be very rewarding to play however. with its near limitless tricks and abilities, a 1 on 1 showdown in the end of an arena match will be one of the more exciting things you'll find in this game. I've found it's one of the reasons I've come to love the class, where creativity pays off hugely.
Running from a Warrior and shadowstepping just as he intercepts, ending up behind him is an amazingly rewarding thing. You tricked him into doing something. Blinding/Sapping or bleeding soeone out of a vanish is the same feeling, you caused the other rogue to blow a hugely important cooldown that really put a wrench into the gears his plans. Shadowstepping a totem or pet to get away from someone nuking you. Or shadowstepping as a swap to a different target shifts focus instantly and hopefully at a moment when the person is focused on something else.

A Rogue in the arena has many obstacles but at the same time with a bit of creativity, has many rewarding and exciting elements.