Feedback: Rogues

In Development Guardians of the Dream PTR
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In this thread, please discuss ongoing changes to the Rogue class in the Guardians of the Dream PTR.

In Guardians of the Dream, we’re updating all four Rogue talent trees to bring them up to current standards. A sweeping pass was needed to make significant adjustments to address notable concerns, like: moving the first gate from row 3 to row 4 to match all other classes; improving pathing and increasing interconnectedness on every tree; removing 3-point nodes; and reducing the percentage of minor DPS talents taken in the Class tree to make room for more flavorful and robust utility options.

We also want to use the opportunity where so many things are changing to rework or redesign some talents that needed the update, and also just to make some new talents to experience and (hopefully) enjoy.

Please see our updated development notes for all of the changes to Assassination, Outlaw, and Subtlety.

Assassination

Assassination is known for having strong single target damage, but has two areas of concern we hope to address in Guardians of the Dream. First and foremost, their AoE has been notably weak and left them far behind the pack for M+ and certain raid encounter types. Secondly, Assassination’s damage performance does not improve at a similar rate compared to most specs when players improve their play and coordination to take on bigger challenges, like when moving from Heroic to Mythic level raiding. We hope the changes here will raise the floor of Assassination’s AoE, especially before reaching and needing capstone talents to do so, and that it will feel like a distinct Assassination-like way to deliver AoE damage and not just copy/paste of another spec’s gameplay.

As for the second concern, it’s very important to us that we not completely rewrite the book and threaten to undermine what makes Assassination appealing for so many players from both fantasy and gameplay perspectives. That said, the changes aimed at addressing this issue are more subtle. We intend to create more room for players tackling high-end content to use their resources and encounter knowledge to get improved performance outcomes, while not increasing the number of hoops players at all levels need to jump through to get results similar to the past.

Outlaw

Outlaw’s talent tree has produced some fun gameplay so far in Dragonflight, but it has significant issues with rigidity, lack of pathing options, high tension between early tree DPS and utility nodes, and far above average number of unskippable core skills. Some of those skills have returned to Outlaw baseline, creating room for improved pathing and interconnectedness.

We’ve also reworked or redesigned some existing talents and introduced some new options, with the hope that it will expand the gameplay space and options available to popular Outlaw builds.

Subtlety

Subtlety and its talent tree have been in a similar position as Outlaw. The gameplay outcome has been mostly good during Dragonflight so far, but many talents are underused, and rigid pathing with insufficient connections have restricted talent options. We have changed, redesigned, and added new talents alongside improvements to pathing and interconnectedness that will hopefully add up to feeling like there is more gameplay diversity and flexibility in the tree. And while we noted that gameplay outcomes thus far in Dragonflight have been ‘good’, there have been some negative trends we hope to address.

To start, Subtlety’s Energy and combo point resource economies have been overflowing, which creates a cascade of issues. Uptime for key cooldowns (predominantly Shadow Dance) has also been higher than expected, forcing overall damage tuning to result in a relatively flat damage profile, especially for a spec that is often known for having moments of increased intensity and burst within those frequent cooldown windows.

So, in addition to the more general improvements and additions for talents, there are some changes that affect Subtlety’s Energy and combo point flow that will reduce the floor of their steady downtime rate, and increase the relative value of effects that temporarily offer more resources. It will require tuning and iteration to get to the amounts of total resource generation and damage output in a good state, so any gameplay feedback you would like to share on these topics is welcome.

Let us know what you think!

1 Like
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hello

  • Eviscerate damage increased by 10%.

  • Shadowed Finishers is now a 1-point talent and its effect causes 25% additional damage as Shadow (was 20/40%).

please nerf heavily secret tech and buff evis more ,we are losing %15 additional shadow damage

  • Backstab Energy cost increased to 40 (was 35).
  • Gloomblade Energy cost increased to 40 (was 35).

where is damage buff for them ?

  • Perforated Veins has been redesigned as a 1-point talent – After striking 5 times with Gloomblade, your next attack that generates combo points deals 50% increased damage.

its really bad talent. should we 5x gloomblade then shadowdance and shadowstrike for max damage?
-gloomblade critical damage hits %20 more is better i guess

  • The Rotten has been adjusted:
    • Bonus to damage and critical strike now applies to any attack that generates combo points (was Backstab, Gloomblade, and Shadowstrike).
    • Effect no longer generates combo points.

its not adjustment its killing a talent. why people take this for only %x bonus damage to a “combo generating” skill ?

without shadow dance’s damage buff our combo point generator skills are weak. we are almost nothing without shadow dance.

if you want make gloomblade and backstab useful buff them in first.

and remove or make passive slice and dice .

wow isnt white damage mode anymore. we are using skills especially in pvp its more useless. no one can expect stick to target and autoattack them for whole fight.

Shadow Techniques - make it when combo generator crits trigger it . not auto attack. like “Seal Fate” .

and change slice and dice to %x to something. i would say haste but you make it another talent. even walking speed is better than attack speed. or more crit damage buff.

and you can make pvp talent with shadowstep. like First Steps in torghast. Shadowstep destination suffer an additional x% damage from your next finishing move.

swapping “Stunning Secret” with “Improved Shuriken Storm”
“Shrouded in Darkness” with “Swift Death”
“Lingering Shadow” with " Dark Shadow"
"Perforated Veins " with “Sepsis /Inevitability”
“Subterfuge” with “Stillshroud”
“Improved Wound Poison” with “Numbing/Athropic Poison”
could be better.

3

My suggestions for Assassination:

Indiscirminate Carnage - 30s CD (was 45s)
NOTE: But the proposed change also seems nice

Master Assasin - duration 5s (was 3s)

Blindside - Below 35% of the target’s health, Garrote generates 3 combo potins, and in stealth 6 combo potins.

Shadowblades - available for Assassination
NOTE: May be available in the main class tree instead Echoing Reprimand
Poison Bomb - Evenom has a 15% chance per combo point (was 8%)

NEW Poison Master - Additionally Your Rupture and Crimson Tempest has 15% chance to spent…
NOTE: thanks to this change, we can use Poison Bomb in any situation (single target or aoe).

Exsaguinate - 2 min CD, +100% dmg

Echoing Reprimand - remove it
Reverberation and Resounding Clarity - remove it
NOTE: I don’t feel it right, I feel it’s forced in the rotation.

Thistle Tea - Passively increases mastery by 8%.

4

Please give assa a node or two for mobility/defensive or I’ll die from jealousy looking at the sub ones.

1 Like
5

Some very cool changes, went beyond what i was expecting - hats off to the rogue dev.

Some suggestions based on being a not very good rogue :smiley: (mostly from a pve perspective)

Class Tree

  • Graceful guile could be a choice node that also has an option to increase feint duration
  • Sepsis makes sense to be in the class tree at this point I think, and replace sepsis in the spec trees with a different option

Outlaw

  • Some talent point positioning still seems off to me, Riposte in particular feels like its in a strange location. Its pretty much a dead point in PvE - could probably be swapped positions with pretty much any other talent in the top third, or change how it works
  • Blade flurry’s instant damage doesn’t feel very impactful, I think Deft Manoeuvrers could have something more interesting as an effect instead of 100% damage increase to it
  • Keep It Rolling can feel a little weird in m+ since it has a 7min cd but doesn’t blow stuff out of the water in 5 seconds like a traditional cooldown. If you happen to die shortly after using it (not that I ever did that…) it can feel quite painful. Not sure if anything can be done to address that (skill issue?)
  • I hope tuning takes the target cap into consideration - take for example the current giga pull meta in m+ - outlaw would be soooo far behind uncapped/softcapped dps in those pulls, so it needs to be ahead in 5-8 target settings for it to even out

Subtlety

  • To me, the frequent shadow dance uptime made it have the downsides of a short cooldown and a long cooldown simultaneously - it looks like this is changing to have less frequent but more powerful windows which gets a thumbs up from me
  • Using Gloomblade in Shadow Dance to be optimal feels bad to me personally and I hope it gets changed to not be optimal, but I can understand some people would feel like it adds depth
  • I’m hoping playing without Deepening Shadows is a viable option but doubt it
  • Flagellation being a 1.5m cd might feel kinda awkward to me. Perhaps it could change to 2m but it starts out with max stacks and decays per combo point spent / over time rather than the reverse
  • Danse Macabre working in reverse as well might be interesting and one potential way to fix the ‘gloomblade in dance’ problem
  • Replicating Shadows - would be nice if it applied to unruptured targets automatically rather than positioning

Assassination

  • I don’t play sin much, but to me, in my uneducated first look of the tree, it looks like in most raid settings, there won’t be any option of capstone choices, you’ll pick DTB and KB and that’s it, and the pathing to them will be fairly similar too
  • DTB feels kinda lacklustre as a capstone talent, but its so synergistic with earlier talents that its probably hard to make stronger on its own
  • Being able to dispel Deathmark so easily in PvP seems a bit weird to me, but I don’t PvP so maybe its fine

General Rogue issues I’m hoping are addressed

  • Haste scaling: it would be nice if at least one spec/build gained a lot from haste so it could excel on something like sark, currently any encounter or m+ season etc with a haste related buff seems to make all three rogue specs completely out-scaled, not to mention lust/PI. From looking at the changes there seems to be a general re-appreciation of haste. Not sure how impactful they are but hoping
  • Sustain issues in long rot fights in higher m+ key levels, like second boss VP. I’m hoping the changes to talent pathing help address this. Obviously can’t be completely nullified but would like a bit more agency
  • Dead globals / damage build-up time - this was particularly an outlaw problem, will need to play on PTR a bit to get a feel for if this is still an issue with the changes, feels like it has been addressed somewhat though
  • Inconsistent energy regeneration - particularly on outlaw again, there is a delta between when your energy regeneration is high and regeneration is low and it seems quite RNG. Feels kinda strange when you suddenly don’t even have enough energy for a builder when you were spamming stuff just moments before (even outside of lust, cooldowns etc)
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Please look at Outlaw again. The buffs that have to be maintained is to much and makes the spec very unfun and punishing to play.

-Shadow Dance needs to be replaced with Killing Spree it makes the spec play to much like Sub rogue.

-Ghostly Strike needs to be removed and just bake it in to Adrenaline Rush

-Adrenaline Rush 60% regen. 50% max. 20% attack speed and damage.

-Slice and Dice successful auto attacks increase attack speed by 5% stacking up 10 times for 12 seconds.

-Roll The bones needs to be nerfed to much RNG impact on your damage and add more power in to combo point finishers and builders.

4 Likes
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I’m part happy, part disappointed. Getting Grappling Hook, Blade Flurry, Roll the Bones, and Restless Blades are now baseline abilities is amazing since these are core abilities that makes Outlaw Rogue it’s unique look to stand out of the other specs. Some other changes like Adrenaline Rush talented gives us full combo points and at the end full energy, perfect! Less wasted combo points.

What I don’t like is that they didn’t adres an issue which is that Outlaw is still way too depended on Stealth to get roll the dice/keep it rolling working as best as possible. You are forced to use Shadow Dance/Vanish to get as much Ambush to get more roll the dice to then extend it with keep it rolling to have all the positive rolls. It causes the spec to be convoluted and very prone to errors in which you get harshly punished for it. Combine that with way too many buttons and not enough reward.

Also if they want to look at spec identity it throws us too close to Subtlety (which is also a spec to be very stealth related) Outlaw Rogues (Just like what it used to be as Combat) are Rogues that are direct in approach, The Han Solo of rogues, The “in your face” rogue warriors that use guns, swords and grapple hooks to do their job and is their identity. To make them too much reliable on stealth makes Outlaw have too many buttons to push and macro and can make people lose tracking of their position at certain moments.

So I have a small suggestion:

Make Count the Odds 1 talent point, Remove the increased chance and Duration during stealth and make the percentage a middle ground, let’s say 30% but increase the duration to 10 seconds so people have a better chance to get people hit Keep it rolling more efficiently. And makes Audacity more valuable as a talent.

Increase the damage of Sinister Strik or better yet, give sinister strike a bleeding dot. This helps to compensate being too depended on Ambush during a possible down time.

A damage over time effect on certain abilities through a talent might also help since the problem Outlaw has at the moment is that once they can’t attack their target all their damages drops, they lose Role the dice buffs through count the odds and they have to ramp up again and lose too much time getting back up again.

If others have any other ideas or feedback, I would love to hear it!

3 Likes
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Class tree:

  • Feint doesn’t need 2 charges

  • Thistle Tea and Echoing Reprimand doesn’t fit the rogue fantasy and should be redesigned or deleted

  • Shadow Dance doesn’t belong in class tree and shouldn’t be locked behind 3 useless talent points for assassination rogues (if you want the synergy with the new IC)

  • Leeching Poison still bugged

  • Recuperator should be swapped with Acrobatic Strikes

Overall I’d say it is an improvement though.

Assassination:

  • Indiscriminate Carnage was and still is a weak capstone. Now more useless than ever. You don’t have many options to reset your stealth besides one single vanish charge and especially in keys (chain pulling, spiteful weeks, …) it now takes way more time to apply your dots. How is this an improvement? Nobody want’s Shadow Dance as assassination rogue
    Either revert the change and bring back the old active (8 targets) and reduce its cd to 30s or increase the current passive up to 5 targets.
    But most important: Why is there no smart cast?

  • DTB nerf was totally unnecessary. Overall damage output may be fine but why shift the power away from this capstone?

  • Arterial Precision was a dead talent. Could be a nice change, but it’s still sad that you have to hold your shiv for dispell sometimes

  • SnD should be a passive. CTTC choice node is a joke and you know it

  • Crimson Tempest should work similar like Primal Wrath imo. Let it apply Rupture up to 5 targets. At least there is no more CT spam

  • SBS doesn’t fit rogue fantasy like ER

  • Both versions of Exsanguinate should be redesigned. Way to much energy starving atm even with new 300 energy cap

  • Sudden Demise sounds interesting, but again there is little to no synergy in keys without a proper version of IC.

  • Caustic Spatter may be good for prio damage, but not sure if this will feel good in keys with all the micromanagement

  • 2 set feels okay, nothing special. 4 set underwhelming damage

It may be competitive depending on tuning and numbers, but you literally made the spec less fun in modern m+ environments

6 Likes
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As some have already pointed out, generally speaking Thistle Tea and Echoing Reprimand are awkward to use and dont really fit the rogue theme. The effects of Thistle Tea are nice, increased energy on demand and a strong but awkward mastery buff associated with it. We do need a energy on demand button and a mastery buff is always nice but in combination it is awkward to use.
Echoing Reprimand can without a doubt get removed and replaced with a more fitting talent.

Sub Rogue got a new Talent to have Kidney Shot be a Aoe Stun, which is incredibly good and appreciated in todays M+ meta, but where are the counterparts to that for Assa and Outlaw Rogue? Either place the talent into the general Rogue tree or give the other two specs a similar tool.

Now onto my personal biggest concern:
Assa will still be unplayable in M+ with the “new” iteration of Indiscriminate Carnage.
Assa Rogue always had the insane downside of being extremely weak if unable to re-stealth between pulls which in a lot of M+ weeks is near impossible as a lot of affixes encourage chain pulling or simply force you to stay in fight (Spiteful). Thus the new change makes the Talent EVEN WORSE than it was before.

My suggestion to counter this downside would be the following -

  • Improved Garrote currently increases Garrote Damage when cast from stealth by 50%.
    Change it to “Garrote has 25% increased Damage. These bonuses are doubled when used from stealth and 3 seconds after leaving stealth”

  • Either revert the changes to Indiscriminate Carnage and lower to Cooldown to 25-30 seconds OR increase the target count from 2 to 4 and make it smart (like Feral Dots) while also increasing the time to 6-8 seconds after leaving stealth. The first option would be imo the better choice as Shadow Dance is also awkward to take as Assa Rogue.

With these two simple changes, the reliance of stealth would be lowered while also making the spec feel more fluid in Aoe.

Next up are the Exsanguinate Changes - First of all I appreciate the thought put into the talent, albeit it be a bit late. I personally prefer the active version with a 1min cd as it gives you more control of when you want to burst and assa has always been about managing resources and cooldown to funnel them into small damage windows. BUT the energy cost associated with the talent currently is INSANE. I dont even need to talk about Aoe Scenarios where you are bleed dry in 2 seconds and can just watch ur dots do the work. The damage is good but being unable to cast ANYTHING else as ur sitting there with 0 energy for 10 seconds feels awful. Either remove the energy consumption entirely and lower the duration to 8 seconds or lower the energy consumption to 5-6 per tick with a maximum tick rate of 30-36.

Havent tested much else as my ping and delay on the PTR are insanely high but these things really stood out to me personally and I wish they could be adressed until the final release of the rework.

1 Like
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*as i PVP player i welcome 2x feint

*i hate Echoing Reprimand playstyle since Shadowlands with my Sub Rogue

*yes please remove Shadow Dance from class tree. It belongs Sub rogues.Like Find Weakness

3 Likes
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Imo remove evasion and bring back riposte.

Buff feint wall (with elusiveness talent) back to 30%cause they nerfed it in sl cause it was too strong during bfa but the meta in pvp was slow and now since sl and df you just get clapped in 1 sec by everything.

Make roll the bones either give at least 2 buff all the time or make the buff equal or less useless for some.

Bring back sprint freedom pvp talent or make it a normal talent in talent tree, this spell was really great for all rogue spec and the class fantasy.

Imo also put all poisons baseline like before, having to lose so much just to take a different poison to not overlap the same effect is stupid.

For outlaw give us gouge back baseline (for sub it’s way too broken).

Nerf veil of midnight pvp talent, pressing Cloak and removing disarm is too op and I feel like we don’t need it if you buff feint wall back to 30% like said above.

Thx

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Alright, here we are. Finally substantial stuff to comment on.

General Tree & Changes -

  • Why on earth did you make Shiv a 30 second cooldown? Rogues already lack much of the utility of other classes, so having Shiv as a soothe has always been a boon. Even if Raging isn’t as threatening as it used to be, Shiv is still invaluable on that front, as well as for more standard enrages.
    Shiv needed to have its cooldown reduced, not increased, to bring it more in line with other soothes.
  • Shadowdance needs to go, especially now that Find Weakness has been removed from the tree. It’s overcentralising, especially for Outlaw, and is a piece of Subtleties kit which should never have been allowed to creep into the other specs. Please bin it.
  • Tricks of the Trade being locked behind Shadowstep is gross. I don’t want Shadowstep, I have more than enough movement abilities as Outlaw already. These should be swapped around, IMO.
  • Superior Mixture should have an effect on all forms of non-lethal poison. Who on earth even uses Crippling Poison? Nobody is taking that versus Numbing and Atrophic.
  • Give us more utility for crying out loud! Return Smoke Bomb as a raid-wide defensive! Just something, it’s not hard!

Outlaw Tree & Changes -

  • Ok, the good first; thank you for making so much of our kit baseline. It leaves so much more opportunity for interesting talents to be made.
    However, you have not gone far enough!
    Improved Between the Eyes and Improved Main Gauche should be baseline! They are just bland, boring fillers that lock what these actions were already able to do behind an unnecessary wall.
  • Weaponmaster being removed is an awful decision. It should have been made baseline. Literally nobody is going to want to go back to the lower chance of double strikes, it will make the rotation feel significantly worse, just like the needless change to Fan The Hammer at the expansion’s start.
  • Blade Flurry. Needs. To Be. Soft Capped. There is no world in which doing this would suddenly ‘break’ Outlaw’s output, because we have already been lagging behind other classes even within our cap! It is utterly needless to keep the hard cap on us.
    Give us a soft cap, throw out Dancing Steel, and put something interesting in, like Greed.
  • Loaded Dice and Sleight of Hand have no reason being separate nodes. Make them a choice.
  • Unnerf Count the Odds. It’s pretty much the only talent that makes the RNG of Roll the Bones tolerable. Bump it back up to 20%, or rework Roll the Bones if you want to make Count the Odds less of a mandatory pick.
  • Get Riposte out of that spot. Nobody wants to take that trash to get to Quick Draw. Put Heavy Hitter there instead, or something.
  • Nobody is ever going to take Sepsis. Why is it still here? If you want to have a Covenant ability in the tree, give us something that’s actually useful, like Flagellation.
  • You have made our Energy regeneration problems even worse. Undo your needless nerfs on that front, for crying out loud. There is nothing interesting about forcing it lower, making us all take Thistle Tea in order to deal with it.
  • Killing Spree being a finisher is interesting, I like it, but why remove its Blade Flurry functionality? This was a great opportunity to have a powerful AoE capstone and instead you gutted that part of it? Why?
  • Any talent that has the effect of refunding Combo Points (Ace Up Your Sleeve, for example) needs to fill our combo points, not stuff like ‘generate 5 combo points’ and leave us in the awkward position of needing another generator before we can spend them.
  • Summarily Dispatched needs its duration unnerfed still, there was no reason to cripple it to 8 seconds in the first place.
  • Ghostly Strike is just a dead talent now that its ability to affect item damage has been removed, and trying to make it a cooldown is not changing that. Bin it.
  • Underhanded Upper Hand (change the name please) should be ‘Blade Flurry does not lose duration during Slice and Dice. Slice and Dice does not lose duration during Adrenaline Rush’ and should be a capstone. It’s atrocious to hide the Slice and Dice ‘refresher’ behind AoE.
  • On that note; Grand Melee. This buff is literally only useful in AoE situations after the change and is otherwise even more dead weight than it was before. It needs changing, again, to something useful.

Overall Comments -

  • The general tree continues to be a confusing mess of ill-fitting talents from specs thrown in thoughtlessly, with too many weak ‘flavour’ talents that barely do anything. There needs to be more worthwhile utility in this tree.
  • Outlaw is still too focused on Stealth gameplay, clashing against the identity of the spec. Outlaws are meant to be Rogues who have eschewed the heavy-stealth approach of the other specs in favour of direct, dirty fighting.
  • There are still too few talents focused on improving Outlaw’s actual AoE output, considering it is supposed to be the strongest AoE spec for Rogue.
6 Likes
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Remove the stealth requirement for Assa already - why is there even more buffs from stealth - or better is too move all X buff from stealth to PVP only , has no place in PVE.

4 Likes
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Crippling poison and shadowstep is taken 100% in pvp, even though I think step should have stayed sub/assa cause outlaw got blade rush and grapling.

Crippling is needed in comp you don’t have slow like with sp/boomkin or fire mage for example, and the combo with shiv is extremely strong with the 70% slow.

I understand in pve it’s not useful but for pvp both are really useful and need to be kept (baseline like before imo).

1 Like
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Assassination

“Developers’ note: Assassination is known for having strong single target damage”
It was known for having strong reliable single target damage, reliability being important. That being a result of a straight to the point uncluttered kit.

“First and foremost, their AoE has been notably weak and left them far behind the pack for M+”
But does your expert balance rogue dev know why? We have waited two patches for this expertly crafted update.

“it’s very important to us that we not completely rewrite the book and threaten to undermine what makes Assassination appealing for so many players from both fantasy and gameplay perspectives.”
You allready did several times, im not sure who had the fantasy of an assassin killing their targets slowly and over time. But its not what i think of when Assassin is mentioned.

“while not increasing the number of hoops players at all levels need to jump through to get results similar to the past.”

Well this is a bit awkward, might depend on what you mean by hoops. Like for example, having a scenario where stealth is very important to apply the damage your kit is designed around. But then designing things that prevent stealth from happening.
Then followed up in the improvment patch 10.2 taking the ok bandaid from 10.0 and making it worse for 10.2. It does make me wonder if the expert has ever done an m+ on a spiteful week as assassination.

“Indiscriminate Carnage has been redesigned – Garrote and Rupture apply to 2 additional nearby enemies when used from Stealth and for 3 seconds after breaking Stealth. Passive Talent.”

Is that the best thing that could be figured out? Not only is it worse then current Indiscriminate Carnage in amount of targets, it is clunky too take advantage off.
Indiscriminate carnage now just has too long of a cd, 30 sec would feel a lot better. Because you can still use it out of stealth, and you’re then left with a choice on when to apply garrote and rupture since its coded for next individually.

“New Talent: Sudden Demise (Passive) – Your Bleed damage increased by 10%. Targets below 35% health instantly bleed out and take fatal damage when the remaining Bleed damage you would deal to them exceeds 200% of their remaining health.”

While im not a huge of the damage over time emphasis the spec was forced into, this one does at least ensure damage in m+ on trash.

“New Talent: Caustic Spatter (Passive) – Using Mutilate on a target afflicted by your Rupture and Lethal Poison applies Caustic Spatter for 10 seconds. Caustic Spatter causes 30% of Poison damage dealt to splash onto other nearby enemies, reduced beyond 5 targets. Limit 1.”

30% of low % is low, not thrilled, reduced beyond 5 targets. Did you forget you focused heavily on bleeds over the years, while heavily nerfing poison damage.

“New Talent: Path of Blood (Passive) – Increases max Energy by 100.”
Why?

“Envenom duration reduced by 1 second.”
Why?

“Improved Shiv now increases Nature damage by 30% (was 20%).”

How about we return shiv to what it once was, enrage dispel and poison application. And we take the Damage amplification that was siphoned from other sources and put that damage back into those sources.
Rather then continuing having utility and damage be the same ability.

“Venomous Wounds’ effect now restores 8 Energy (was 7).”

Focused attacks would be better, Venemous wounds too much energy at start of fights opening from stealth. And not enough energy in ongoing combat.

“Flying Daggers now increases Fan of Knives damage by 15%, in addition to its previous effects.”“Thrown Precision has been adjusted:
No longer increases Fan of Knives damage by 15%.
Now increases Fan of Knives critical strike chance by 10% (was 5%).
Now causes Fan of Knives critical strikes to always apply your weapon poisons.”

Maybe if you made both of these talents one talent id consider caring about Thrown precision.

“Crimson Tempest has been adjusted:
No longer has an instant damage component.
Now has an initial damage over time tick on application.
Damage per tick reduced by 25%.
Duration increased by 2 seconds.
Now deals bonus damage when multiple enemies are afflicted, increased by 20% per target, up to 100%.
Now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets (was 8).”

It is a shame Crimson Tempest is still around, some reliable direct damage finisher for aoe would have been so nice.

“Exsanguinate has been redesigned:
Active version: 1 minute cooldown. Garrote, Rupture, and Crimson Tempest consume 10 Energy to duplicate 100% of any damage dealt. Lasts 10 seconds.
Passive version: While above 100 Energy your Garrote, Rupture, and Crimson Tempest consume 8 Energy to duplicate 40% of any damage dealt.
Developers’ note: There are two updated versions of Exsanguinate available to test on PTR, located on the talent tree as a choice node with one being active and one being passive. Based on testing, feedback, and possible iteration, we will likely keep one to continue on for patch release and discard the other.”

So is it possible you can delete both?

“Zoldyck Recipe is now a 2-point talent. Per point values have not changed.”
Id take the old dispatch over this.

“Dashing Scoundrel effect now generates 1/2 Energy (was 1 Energy at both ranks).”
Will not solve the energy issues with the spec.

“Arterial Precision’s effect now increases Bleed damage by 30% (was 20%).”

As long as the talent tree is functional to where i don’t have to play this rubbish talent. It has never felt good.

Such a long wait for plans the spec will see in 10.2, we had to wait for the expert rogue dev to return to work. And then we would see the amazing changes coming.

Season 1 m+ was awful, clearly the spec was flawed. Season 2 managed to be worse then season 1. And judging by these notes season 3 will be garbage, filled with hoops in order to output damage, frustration with lack of stealth. And clueless expert devs that will result too flat % buffs, since they have no clue how the spec works or how it has worked in the past.

Just fix combo points being wasted, fix the energy, lower indiscriminate carnage cd, and reduce the dependancy on damage over time and stealth. And you may want to consider letting a non expert dev work on assassination next time. Because the expert is missing the mark.

1 Like
16

I mean, why does Slice and Dice exist as a combo point spender when it feels absolutely awful to press?

Can we not just have it be a passive? If the strength it gains from the buff is so significant and is at a 99% uptime on any encounter (with relatively 0 skill required to maintain it on any of the specs) then it should just be a passive it feels like.

The decision to also destroy Indiscriminate Carnage is super crazy to me. Going from something that was super fun to press and have, to now relying on spending 3 gcd’s to get LESS out on aoe and then hoping you get to stealth between pulls is crazy to me. However, the Crimson Tempest changes are super cool so that’s something.

Alot of the choices are cool, but I don’t think anyone within the community thinks Assassination plays well or fun with Exsanguinate (any form of it). Like the new forms of the talent read terribly and they dont feel impactful but more of a burden. I’d be more of a proponent to just remove the entire thought of it instead of dragging it along for years hoping there’s a way to either balance it or make it enjoyable.

Kingsbane being playable is super awesome too. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Deathmark is still the same god awful button to press. I wish it wasnt so boring and bland of a 2 minute cooldown that just doesn’t give you the feeling of any impact. At least something like AR or SB gives you that feeling now, Combustion anyone? PI even gives that feeling of impact. For Deathmark you have to track the poisons and think “Neato, I think my cooldown is making a difference to my overall contribution here”…

The 2 and 4 set I can’t for sure think they’re great, but the latest set bonuses have all been at best unimpactful and just fine that the new bonuses will fall in the same category.

Sub actually seems interesting, the 2 and 4 set bonuses seem interesting too. I don’t really have much else to say other than probably it still feels kind of bad outside of shadow dance to play sub, but now it’s also a condition of outside of dance + or when no dance and no shadowblades available. Other than that it felt relatively solid on dummies.

Outlaw seems to have the same issues it had, but it feels more enjoyable. The reliance on RTB is just what does it for me, given you can’t fish as well as you could in BFA so it just feels like you’re hoping you get the good rolls. Though the upperhand underhand talent is super cool, I genuinely enjoyed it on dummies.

I’d rather have seen a real overhaul of the rogue class over this relatively hopeless form of impacting the playstyles without really fixing the underlying issues. The button bloat, the energy abundance into pure starvation, the uptime problem, exsanguinate being a thing, RtB buffs not allowing for consistency, sub feedback loop outside of dance… The list can go on and on, but it feels like whatever outcry we as the community have made falls on deaf ears.

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Yo, some concerns about assa rogue:

  1. I play in PvP, to be honest, after checking the other spec trees I become very jealous about how they got defensive talents but assassination didn’t got anything there, considering is the spec with the worst endurace between all 3 in PvP.

  2. In class tree, we are forced to take Mind Numbing Poison/Athrophic Poison to get improved non-lethal poison talent, considering we are not using anything if DTB isn’t picked anymore.

  3. The 5% more proc chance talent for poisons is a little underwhelming tho.

  4. Have you considered putting blindside a little above in tree? Would be easier to pick and make some builds with that.

  5. DTB feels straight dead if even with the 5% proc chance talent just have a 24% chance to proc every poison.

  6. Indiscriminate carnage. Damn, dead af.

  7. Make DFA baseline, is versatile af to both PvP and PvE.

  8. Tf happened with assa 4set, it just hits by like 1600 baseline, have u missed a 0?

1 Like
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You can now get both DTB and Kingsbane. There are screenshots floating around of Kingsbane reaching 500k-600k ticks on the PTR. Would probably get close or possibly even breaking 1m tick if they hadn’t nerfed DTB.

One of them had to get nerfed if they were to be allowed together. And they probably nerfed the wrong one since the DTB nerf is not only a single target nerf, but an AoE one too.

Although Kingsbane is so strong right now that it might be meta even in M+.

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Indiscriminate Carnage is basically a useless capstone talent in its current form. From a PVE perspective specifically M+ its is fully RNG if you can see stealth outside of the 2 min Vanish CD. Its this very reason i currently dont take iron wire on live. Spiteful weeks or even chain pulling sprees its the Worst RNG of any spec.

I dont know if the rogue dev is smoking crack at work but please remove the stealth component of assa abilities - it was bad enough with Improved garrote but now another ? WTH blizz. It has no place in PVE.
Remove the stealth component from improved garotte damage and balance it accordingly -
eg 30% permanenty.

Caustic splatter needs the mutilate component removed - it wont be used in AoE situations , either bake it in or make it proc from FOK.

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That doesn’t make a ton of sense when they are trying to create an interactive gameplay element with it.

But I agree with you that there aren’t an awful many ways to trigger the effect