Rogue class still happening?

I was reading the RPS review of Card hunter and noticed some people talking about a possible rogue class for the game... is this still in the works or was it just a rumor?

 

I know that some of the early screenshots of the game feature rogues. Other than that I don't know.

 

Interesting possibility. Common wisdom from 40+ years of this kind of game design usually drives combat towards the so-called "holy trinity" of tank / nuker / healer. Rogue-type classes only come into play in case of either a necessity for overcoming puzzle elements, as a hybrid range/melee tank or a stealth mechanic tank. Since there isn't likely to be any puzzle elements added (they exist in the mission briefings as flavor) - it's likely that the addition of a rogue will add new stealth oriented cards or that it will be part of a set of hybrids that combine elements from the basic trinity. A rogue with stealth, bow attacks and backstab attacks sounds pretty fun!

Fun fact: in the first edition of D&D the thief was not one of the original playable character classes but was added in a later supplement. Card Hunter skews closely to it's inspiration. Huh.

 

I don't have time to dig up any quotes but the devs have talked about the rogue earlier in the beta and have also said they've been keeping some cards away from players for future use.

Notably there's no current items with Steal/Pickpocket or Cowardly Attack in the game and those certainly would fit a rogue class...

 

I don't think Holy Trinity actually exists in Card Hunter, mostly because there is no taunt or aggro system and the game is way too dynamic for it to exist. So far I've found that double warrior + priest is the most powerful setup in singleplayer at least.

Now for a rogue character to work warrior would need a redesign as well, because at the moment warrior in my opinion is so flexible that it can easily be a "rogue" character as well. In the current state of the game I don't really see how rogue could be different enough from a warrior to be a character on it's own without redesigning warrior character itself or major game mechanic changes.

 

Taunt would make a lot of single player fights really trivial - taunt the yellow dragon from long range, then run away while two other characters kill it.

 

In the interview with Jon Chey, he talks about the rogue class in a way that sounds very likely. You can find the interview on this very site.