Spooncraft

A very good question indeed. Right now its pretty much part of the game design that melee classes scale better with gear than casters. It’s not even an issue of melee getting better treatment than it is just how the world works. A mage who is completely naked can fight a warrior who is also completely naked and the mage has just as much potency as he does with his gear on. The only thing that gear adds to a caster is increased survivability through stamina and other stats, but also increased potency through spell damage and healing. However, if you don’t have a melee class’ gear scale well then they lose a very big chunk of their power against increasingly difficult mobs. A rogue and warrior are only as good as their weapons in regards to how hard they hit or if they can even hit at all. Just about every single melee ability that pure melee classes have (including hunters) relies on having a weapon equipped, and if that weapon is significantly underpowered, then the class is moot.

I’m not really sure what kind of answer I can provide or what you are looking for. Will one class/spec scale differently from another class/spec? Unless we all mutate into a green blob with the same skills, this will probably continue to happen to various degrees. Do we have plans to have any specific classes/specs get “phased out” due to scaling issues? No. Are we aware that some things scale better than others? Yes, we are aware of this concern and we continue to make changes as we feel they are needed.  I hope this helps. (src)

We understand that daggers need a bit of improvement and plan to improve them. Currently though there are other options for doing damage for the Rogue so it is not like all options are blocked, but like I said, we are aware of this issue. (src)

We currently don’t have any plans to make big changes to any class before Wrath of the Lich King. (src)