I’ve played wow since vanilla. Used to main rogue… until BfA. I’m leveling Rogue now to get the bloodfang armor, but… I am angry.
Short version:
There are 3 critical eff-ups with the rogue design.
Juggling between stealth abilities and non-stealth abilities in combat. (Shadow Dance)
Lame fantasy/forced fantasy. (pirates+guns)
Unfun choice between AoE and single target dps talents.
Longer version:
Stealth is cool. Shadow Dance is not. It’s annoying stance-dancing that forces you into complex button layouts. There isn’t even a cool effect! Using Macros is not a solution and being forced to rely on add-ons is also not fun.
Shadow Dance needs to be removed from the game completely - it is the epitome of lazy class design.
A lot of races don’t fit the gun shooting fantasy. But there is no other way to wield two handed weapons with rogue without being forced to use guns. Let me at least use a glyph to make it into a weapon throw or shuriken throw. I also hate the gun sound.
Who the hell decided that picking between AoE dps and Single Target dps is a fun choice?? It’s not, it’s a dps optimization choice and not a “fun” choice. It forces you to think about “how-do-I-optimize-for-raids” but you will always be suboptimal for half the situations you will be in. Instead of making you feel good, it makes you feel bad.
What I still dont get is, why they put Stealth synergy in the Outlaw tree.
We are all about NOT having to work around stealth openers/windows, because surprise surprise, thats a assa and sub thing!
They removed Combat, the “simple” rogue spec, just to put in the overly complicated and overengineered mess that was Outlaw, just so Blizzard could say “Oh look, this is totally new and exciting! Melee Hunter, Pirate Rogue! WOOOOOW!”.
I like stealth and the rogue fantasy, but I am admittedly really bad at assa and sub. I dont have the mind to do stealth snapshots… Combat was my main for 3 expansions till it ws removed.
Now they put stealth windows and openers in outlaw. Why? That was always an assa/sub thing, now they want to force that stuff on us…
They designed a spec around having to ensure 100% uptime, so they give it attack range. Fine. But now that they took it away, its really hard to play it, because surprise surprise, we cant ensure 100% uptime anymore.
A few expansions ago they admitted that Rogue had the best combat system.
So they took every cool idea that rogue had and gave it to other classes.
Rogue started looking simple and boring in comparison, so they just added complexity without thinking through the actual systems.
This is a conversation that probably happened:
Class Designer 1: “We need new abilities! What’s unique about rogues?”
Class Designer 2:“Stealth!”
Class Designer 1:“Ye, let’s lean into that. How do we improve the rotation?”
Class Designer 2:“Emmm… Combat stealth?”
Class Designer 1:“Sure, okay.”
Class Designer 2:“But that won’t work… you leave combat?”
Class Designer 1:“Emmm… lets remove the stealth part then.”
Class Designer 2:“So stealth abilities in combat?”
Class Designer 1:“Ye, sure whatever. Make a ticket and send it to the devs.”
Class Designer 1:“What about the Adrenaline Rush fix we’ve been working on?”
Class Designer 2:“Let’s just give it to Demon Hunters, they need more cool abilities.”
Class Designer 1:“What do we call it?”
Class Designer 2:“Blade Dance?”
Class Designer 1:“Hell yeah!”
Give back Death from Above as the Outlaw Trickster finisher instead of Killing Spree. No one likes to loose control of their character, and DoA is at least just a gap closer.
Remove some of our random mechanics that are actually pretty important (looking at you poison vial!)
FINALLY MAKE THE SUB COOLDOWNS WORK WITH ONE ANOTHER! (Seriously 8 cooldowns and nearly none of them work with another, cut all the different cooldowns in half, but instead give more charges of the remaining cooldowns!)