Feedback: Rogues

In Development Guardians of the Dream PTR
92

  1. Sudden Demise feels bad - its such a great talent! but 200% is quiet a lot and its not very responsive to those breakponts – even tho you can bump it a lot by going ful bleed - but then you aint dealing any ST damage so thats a turndown not worth taking in any scenario – maybe turn it to 125/150% in PVE content only and keep those 200% in pvp

  2. i think its sad that haste is not a really exciting stat even tho it increases the Bleedfrequency and energy regen - i would love to see a talent like:

"Haste affects bleeds and Poison Dots X % more.

that would incentivize to take more haste and dont just stack crit and mastery without making it too op

but mainly the SD part is offseting as a capstone talent without even 2k dps^^ (without the 10% bleed dmg)

93

What needed Assa?

  • Improved Indiscriminate Carnage, i.e. some reduction from 45s to 30s and when used, your Garrote and Rupture are free to use (i.e. no energy cost and Garrote can be used even though it was previously used and was on the CD).

  • Improved Deathmark , which allows you to use a free Garrote with a stealth effect and increases your energy regeneration for 20s,
    or you can use Garrote and improved Rupture (for 6 combo potins) for free (then Carnage doesn’t have it)

  • Remove Echoing Reprimand, it’s so weak and so boring to use and so not thematic to Assa that I still wonder why it’s still here.

  • Buff live ver. Fan of Knives, Poison Bomb and Crimson Tempest

  • Slice and Dice, should be implemented as a passive skill or as a simple CD that increases attack speed for a while. Remove energy cost and combo points cost.

  • live Exsanguinate, here it was enough to reduce the CD from 3 minutes to 2 minutes, increase 8y to 10y and bleed effect with 80% to 100%.

So why do you complicate the matter and force your skills in a direction that no one wants?
Why are you forcing Shadow Dance for Assa when no one wants it?

Assa needs SIMPLE and good changes.

94

I have feedback about rogue resources:

  • energy can go to 300 for assassination! and can be restored with Thistle tea (100 energy per charge)
  • combo points are generated too quickly for all 3 specs. Although the removal of Marked for Death has alleviated this to some degree, there are still a lot of ways to gain extra combo points

Facts about combo points in 10.2:

  • their maximum number can be extended by talents to 6 or to 7 (as on live)
  • subtlety has these new “stored” combo points (new mechanic)
  • Shadow blades allows each combo point generator to fill up combo points (like Dreadblades used to) (new mechanic)
  • Echoing reprimand has a very similar functionality to the new shadow blades - charges 3 combo points to act like full combo points

As a result, resources for the rogue class have become more meaningless than ever.

Years ago using combo point builders and getting to full combo points felt exciting and meaningful, as you got to execute a strong finisher. Nowadays building combo points “the old way” - by just using builders, feels meaningless and like a “downtime” thing. And during your cooldowns basically your resources cease to exist, because cooldowns bypass your combo point/energy resources completely (shadow blades, echoing reprimand, thistle tea)

Same with energy - having 300 energy trivializes energy regeneration and even requires new mechanics for assassination (energy gets passively depleted for extra damage) because it is so much that you can’t spend it.

Would it be possible to have 100 energy and 5 combo points again, but make executing a finishing move worth it and exciting, giving the player the satisfaction after building up those combo points? Or is this a thing of the past?

I cannot tell, and cannot speak for others of course, but I feel like “bypassing” resources so much could be an indication of design flaw.

Cheers

1 Like
95

Slice and dice passive.

Was not a fan of the seal fate removal from class tree at all.

Unnerf energy regen for outlaw.

With the tier set i guess it’s fine to have 35% double slash baseline, but it won’t be fine when we lose it, bring back weaponmaster, sinster strike proc should be at least 40%, if not 45%.

dreadblades passive, works when you use adrenaline rush, makes you next 4/5 sinister strikes generate full combo point. The removal of dread was a bad idea period. Don’t @ me, you don’t know wtf you are talking about if you disagree on this.

For sub, the tier set should generate shadow tech stacks, not combo points, shadowcraft is awesome, but works badly with shadow blades, during shadow blades make it proc only when you have full combo points stored, so you can finish twice in a row. And waste no cp points.

For now, sub is fun, but, I am not a big fan of the direction that sub is going, it seems that everything is about shadow dance but with lower cdr, meaning that sub may start feeling like a spec where you do a lot of damage inside a small window that you get few times, but not only that, gameplay outside of that small window will be terrible.

If that happens it’s the death of gameplay.

Stiletto staccato was actually awesome with new shadow blades. So it’s removal was not nice at all.

I can already hear people saying, oh but that’s just what sub is!! Doing all of your damage in a small window that you get few times is awful.

I even saw some people say that they should remove the combo point refund from sub tier, in favor of basically even more damage %. Absolutely insane take.

96

I like most of the reworks and loking forward to play some assa for once

But indeed we need some QoL

SnD passive
Sprint should give waterwalking again
And wouldnt mind lots of flavor from the past to make a return

“VERY” important

Let us transmog daggers to swords. If wands can be swords daggers should too

And very unimportant for most

Let us open all Lockboxes at once or in crafting que or somethig.
But opening hundreds of boxes with individual clicks is just painful
and doesn’t need to exist anymore

thank you

97

With the PTR build that went live moments ago:

  • ROGUE
    • Assassination
      • Exsanguinate (Active) has been removed.
      • Exsanguinate (Passive) – Energy threshold changed to 50% of max Energy (was flat 150), Energy consumed reduced to 3 (was 4) and damage duplicated reduced to 20% (was 25%)
      • Sudden Demise’s Bleed damage trigger value reduced to 150% of remaining health (was 200%) and now benefits correctly from Zoldyck Recipe bonus.
      • Indiscriminate Carnage now prioritizes targets without Rupture and Garrote.
    • Outlaw
      • New Talent: Precision Shot – Increases the range of Between the Eyes and Pistol Shot by 10 yards, and Pistol Shot reduces damage you take from the target by 5%.
      • Killing Spree base delay (before Haste) between strikes reduced to 0.3 seconds per combo point (was 0.4 seconds).
    • Subtlety
      • New Talent: Terrifying Pace – Gain 30% increased movement speed for 3 seconds when Shuriken Storm strikes 3 or more targets.
      • New Talent: Exhilarating Execution – Finishing moves heal you for 3% of damage done. Overhealing is converted to shielding, absorbing up to 10% of your maximum health.
      • Shadow Techniques’ Energy generated increased to 4 (was 3)
      • Shadow Techniques tooltip has been updated, no functional changes.
      • Shadowcraft now allows finishing moves to use Shadow Technique stacks only when it will refresh combo points to full.
      • Shadowcraft’s tooltip has been updated, no functional changes.
      • Ephemeral Bond’s bonus for healing received reduced to 8% (was 12%).
98

Very good change for shadowcraft.

Bring back dreadblades. But better.

Overall good.

99

I dislike the Subtlety changes. I think the pathing is awkward and even more PvE oriented than previously. What seems to be the most awkward and unsatisfying aspect of the gameplay Shadow Technique’s impact on combo points. I would either give Shadowcraft a Seal Fate twist baked into it during SoD to give us predictability or have a talent that modifies its function directly, like “Shadow Techniques” now make every third/fifth Eviscerate hit twice or something other creative. Perforated Veins and Lingering Shadows don’t feel good with Backstab/Glooms current weakness and I feel like either you click and forget or you’ll have even more WA’s to track all this. On top of that, I don’t like the feel of Shadow Finishers in that it splits up the damage of such a significant ability. To me it seems easier to either have a clean damage buff to Eviscerate outside of Shadow Dance and during Shadow Dance minor to no increase to damage but only shadow damage, trespassing armor. I dislike the bloat of sources of damage in general.

100

Honestly this talent feels useless (same as night terrors already does). I know its a connecting node to silent storm but that doesn’t change the fact that this talent is just there to waste my talentpoint. Kinda lame ngl

1 Like
101

Every time PTR notes come up I try to keep my hopes up. But I don’t know what Blizzard’s vision is with Outlaw but it’s not the rework that is in line with what the community is wanting. These small changes to increase survivability is nice but it doesn’t change the overarching problems that Outlaw is still facing.

The reason for removing Dreadblades previous ptr build was because it’s causing button bloat. But the button bloat is mostly the cause of forcing us into stealth builds which is not helping easing the gameplay of Outlaw, which is still suffering under very short windows to take action in their stealth through SD and Vanish.

As of these few changes now coming up I’m slowly losing faith in the vision of what Blizzard think is a rework for Outlaw. It’s mostly just making some abilities passive and adding some additions existing abilities. But Outlaw needs a more of a creative way of making new additions to its gameplay.

-Outlaw suffers now from lower Roll the Dice procs due to the nerf of Count the Odds which only makes it proc mostly in a stealth window.
-Our only stealth window is a 6 second Shadow Dance and a one time ambush through Vanish.
-Because Roll the Dice is now baseline you automatically have to take Shadow Dance and put vanish in your action bar (so 2 extra buttons occupied) since to make roll the Dice at least decent you have to proc them off your Stealth window.
-Outlaw is very prone to big errors that can punish a player hard and giving such low procs for extra roll the dice through Count the Odds makes it still very unstable per encounter
-While Assassin and Sub have their poisons and bleeds to keep the DPS rolling even while an encounter prevents you from melee attacking, Outlaw falls flat. Causing a drop in overall dps performance.

I still stick to what I suggest in my previous post with some small changes and additions:

-Remove the Stealth dependency of Outlaw by removing the increase chance in stealth from Count the Odds and make it baseline 30%-35%. (this 10% nerf felt just weird while you made Roll the Bones baseline)
-Add increase Roll the Bone chances or maybe the the duration of RTB process from Ambush through Audacity making pistol shot more valuable in your rotation
-Lower Thistle Tea one tier down, and bring back what Clementine proposed: Death From Above, finishing move that replaces Eviscerate/Dispatch/Envenom, does 10% increased damage, costs 30 energy (5 less than base versions) and plays the animation of DFA if the target is between 5 and 12 yards away (8 and 15 with acrobatic strikes)
-A new talent in the Outlaw tree called Aim for the Head: Every critical strike of pistol shot leaves the target bleeding for 75% of the damage over 10/12 seconds, Stacks 5 times.
-A possible passive to Slice and Dice, make it that if you spend 5 combo points it gives you it based on the % of haste. Blizzard has the will to do it since they also removed Savage Roar for Feral some time ago to ease their gameplay.

It would give Outlaw much more breathing room to make it more enjoyable gameplay.

I keep on hammering here on the forum since I see there is a potential to make Outlaw fun and it’s unique esthetics within Rogues, but it almost feels like it’s falling on deaf ears at Blizzard.

102

Nice to have a means of reaching Quick Draw that feels good to take, though I don’t really have any major feelings on this talent one way or the other.

But it doesn’t really feel like any headway is being made whatsoever on fixing Outlaw’s actual core issues, so I’m going to remain dubious until I see some actual progress on that front.

1 Like
103

While generally speaking I agree in regard of button bloat, I macro stealth and vanish (and cloak) into a single button with a macro:

#showtooltip
/use [mod:alt,stealth]Shroud of Concealment;[combat]Vanish;Stealth

That said, I have way too many macros on rogue for PvE compared to other specs.

2 Likes
104

Still waiting for tuning pass. Hopefully it’s not going to be like the retri rework were the spec is crushing every other spec

105

We only just started mythic testing, tuning is coming.

106

Not impressed with the most recent changes.

First dreadblades removal, then ho nerf.

I guess the addition of sinister strike to count the odds is nice, but the nerf to 8% was unnecessary.

Also, just get rid of the stealth mechanic already, make it 10% 10 seconds, procs from sinister, ambush, dispatch and maybe even pistol shot.

1 Like
107

Aye, but let’s be honest, how many times will that 8% from SS proc? Nerf to HO is a big? I mean we had it at 40% with weaponmaster, and will be 40% again with the 2pc bonus? It’s like entire reworks is based on the tier set.

108

Hey,
i feel like the s1 nerf to rc could be reverted to give 4 anima charged cps again. Should be a minor thing damagewise but could make a big “feel impact” for the non ho outlaw builds with er + rc.
I’m not a big fan of the recent ho nerf to 80%. I know it’s the same it is on live but we lose the option to use vanish/dance as a fallback if we’re out of proc to get back into the loop so i’d rather see the damage nerfed from the second ambush (tbh thats what the change read for me when i first saw it). At least it felt worse than before when hitting some dummies.
For the rest i’m really thankfull for all the changes and excited for 10.2 :slight_smile:

109

So I’ve been keeping a close eye on rogues for S3 since it seems to have a lot of struggles in Dragonflight, all 3 specs having some major downsides and people voicing their feedback here and on the US forums. But it either falls on deaf ears or the devs have a totally different idea on where they want to put the 3 specs in. I myself play Outlaw and haven’t touched the other two specs that much but there is a general issue still going on:

-Button bloat for all 3 specs is still going on, making rogue very hard and very punishing to play with a big chance of losing oversight.
-Very short action windows, mainly stealth windows in which to play. Making errors in these windows very prone to happen.
-Too many options for cooldowns but none of them being able to spread out so DPS is not consistent with a peak and a hard fall after.
-All 3 specs have issues with Slice and Dice, It feels like a filler that has to be used but no real effect that players notice and feels like a button filler.

Devs up to so far have not touched the issues in any way (Only removing certain talent abilities like Dreadblades) making this rework feel like it’s unfinished and will enter the release build still filled with issues. Like I said, my own experience is as an Outlaw Rogue so I would love to hear experience from the other players.

1 Like
110

Button bloat is an overused and mostly worthless word.

The only “button bloat” you should worry about is when an ability doesn’t add anything to the rotation, or makes the rotation worse, in a few cases, or if there is a way to add an ability without adding another keybind. Like haunt, or slice and dice.

Sure rogue has a lot of abilities, so? The resulting gameplay is great so “button bloat” is irrelevant in face of that.

Everyone’s got a different definition for what they consider to be button bloat, same for maintenance buff. The word is so overused and broad that it’s irrelevant.

What actually matters at the end of the day is whether the ability improves the gameplay or not.

111

It is not, and it is very much plaguing rogue, especially outlaw. I cba writing it on the EU forums as well, I’ve already pointed out all the actual issues on the US forums. TL;DR we have more buttons than ever, and about 6 or 7 can easily be removed in various ways, without actually changing much of the spec.