Outlaw nerfed to retirement, but all sparks used. Now what?

Here I sit, ilev 400 after weeks of actually sticking to a main for once. Then bam, one poorly implemented nerf and through no fault of my own I’m now mid to bottom on dps charts, and risk being left out of guild runs.

I never reached the grand heights of whatever the reason was Blizz hit us so hard with the nerf bat, I was about ilev 370 at the time, so not capable of pushing whatever legendary AOE numbers those must have been on mass pulls.

And now, with my ilev 405 sword and fist, here I am unable to even respec without a massive ilev loss because the mats to get new weps are locked behind a low drop % chance. First five used, because I never intended to respec.

So I’m stuck - my car is broken down. It now stalls occasionally and apparently I can’t afford a new one for some time, nor get a mechanic to fix it. Do I have to start over? I’d really rather not. Do I have to roll a whole new rogue since getting two sparks would be easy for an alt? I’d rather not - my rogue has 80+ days played.

We all know blizz don’t read the EU forums. It’s a shame - clearly their class designer for the rogue is clueless or isn’t being listened to. If the AOE damage of outlaw really was as ludicrous as they say - how about, idk, nerfing AOE damage specifically? How about not messing with our combo points so that the whole class is now ruined and frustrating to play?

If people don’t understand why this nerf is bad, understand this - outlaw rogues were never topping the dps charts on boss fights. The nerf has made them mid-to-bottom. The nerf has made their gameplay style horrendous ; I play other classes so can tell you it’d be the same as if fury warrs neeeded 120 rage for a souped-up rampage but now they had to fit in anywhere between 2 to 4 rage gainers (rng!) to get there. Every time. And each time would be unknown, meaning they’re now constantly watching their rage bar and nothing else. Also, their rage gainers spend another resource, which they also have to manage.

Welcome to the new outlaw rogue, where you’ll now hit 6 out of 7 combo points at least 60% of the time and have to overspend and energy starve 100% of the time. Or use 6 point combos and underperform even more on dps.

2 Likes

Outlaw isn’t THAT far behind sub… they both sim at roughly the same damage and Outlaw has better prolonged damage. Sub seems to drop slowly on longer sim durations.

Agreed that the nerf was stupid though.
“rOgUeS wErE oVerPerFoRMinG” …how? …where? The dev team is a clown show. :clown_face:

5 Likes

If I take my rogue and sims it the single target damage is more or less the same (1k less for outlaw) but in AOE there is a big difference (more than 10k), and the ilvl I have with sub is lower that for outlaw. Both spects now are less fun to play, with times where you don’t have energy or cds to use and the only thing you can do is SS (with poor dmg) or autoattaks, it feels more clumsy.

My itemisation for sub is whack and it also sims a little higher. I can’t sustain that much damage on a dummy though. Not even close no matter how much I try.
Not sure if I’m missing something or if the sim is a little inaccurate for sub. It’s almost 100% accurate for outlaw though, so who knows…

Either way, even if the dps was insane, I refuse to play it. Feels garbage.

Once you’ve blown your CDs and waiting for shadow dance it’s just “clunk, clunk, clunk” with auto attacks. Horrid class design.

Outlaw is fine
i main outlaw and really enjoy the spec and that’s the reason why i play it
sub can do better aoe but that’s mostly visible in dungeons like Academy

i think that’s the only dungeon i finish with me at the bottom of the dps meters due to the AOE cap

+20-22 range

No is not, for casual players that only want to have some fun from time to time is fine. But before the last patch it was funnier and better in that aspect. If you want to do high level content, Outlaw is mediocre in all aspects of the game.

  • Without the correct trinkets you have 0 burst damage.
  • Single target damage is one of the worst DPS in the game behind other hybrid classes with more utility like shamans, hunters or mages. If you go to warcraftlogs and check for Terros in raid, tell me how many rogues do you see between the first 300 dps for example? I see only 1, and is assassination…
  • AOE? is the only dps with AOE hardcap, and even with only few objetives is still mediocre. Go to warcraftlogs and check for Primal Council boss and tell me how many rogues you see… and if you see some, they are probably Subtlety.
  • PVP does not have survivality either burst damage or dots, if you go to leaderboards rankings for solo shuffle you will see that outlaw is the worst of 3 rogue specs.
  • If you have bad luck with procs and can only spam Sinister Strike several times then you are going to do less DPS that the tank basically.

And if you go to simulationcraft rogue outlaw is in the top 3 as one of the classes with more APM (the top 1 DPS) for doing mediocre dps…

You can have your own opinion but numbers don’t lie. Outlaw is a mediocre spec and has a bad design and every patch is getting worst for some reason. I wonder what is the kind of job that developers in blizzard do when thinking in balancing the game…

2 Likes

while i do agree that outlaw isn’t great in pvp
I think you should pay less attention to logs and just focus on your game

I do primarly m+ and have no interest in high end raiding
Outlaw is fine, survivability is great
dps is also great especially on tyrannical weeks

i pug my keys, i’ve had all sorts of various classes and specs in my groups and more often than not i’m #1 on boss damage and always competing on #1 overall except in dungeons with massive aoe fights like academy

Yes outlaw needs a boost to burst damage
Yes outlaw can have a boost to aoe cap
but ‘nerfed to retirement’ ? far from it.

I agree but try to explain this to the raid leaders or tryharders xD

2 Likes

A nice mentality but one that won’t get you anything in this game. You have to play the most OP thing of the month or get left out.

The rogue nerfs are really frustrating - I know outlaw and particularly sub are still in a decent spot but I feel like at least some of the nerfs weren’t warranted. What makes it worse is that a tonne of specs have since been buffed to perform better than any rogue spec was doing in their pre-nerf state, and not just in damage but in utility/survivability too. The recent state of warlocks (even post-bugged talent fix) is the latest change to highlight this.

I’ve really noticed it because I am in a non-CE mythic guild that tends to prog raid for most of a tier. It already feels kinda bad if your spec(s) naturally progressively feel weaker comparatively to others as time passes - something all three rogue specs tend to do - which in and of itself isn’t something that is necessarily a problem, but when you know they have nerfed your class and buffed others, this exacerbates the natural weakening and makes it feel really bad.

Yes outlaw was strong on a few raid fights and in m+ at the start of the season, but a big reason for that was smaller pull sizes in dungeons and having longer raid fights (particularly adds being up longer), so outlaw’s weaknesses of target cap and no burst weren’t as big a deal and it’s strength as a sustained cleave spec could shine. But if you have those weaknesses, you should be performing better than specs that don’t have those weaknesses when you are in situations that suit them (e.g. pulls of 8 mobs, longer fights). What is the point of having spec niches if you have to be nerfed because you were doing 10% more damage on a 8-mob pull that lasted 1 minute, but then at the same time you’re 50% behind on a 12+ mob pull or a pack that’s dead in 40 seconds, yet they don’t buff to address the negative situation? I really can’t get my head around that design.

Fast forward to now where raid fights are shorter and adds die almost instantaneously on some fights, and pulls in m+ keys are bigger due to increased tank survivability / healing throughput. Outlaw naturally would have fallen off enough without nerfs to where it was still strong in its niche but wouldn’t be overly strong overall. Plus a certain proportion of damage was due to trinkets/consumes that some players don’t have.

Assassination too was nerfed in a similar vein, being an ST specialist and then nerfed because their ST was judged as being too good when they couldn’t do anything else. Perhaps some cleave fights were lasting long enough back then to spread bleeds but that doesn’t happen now. Their AoE profile is horrific and even their ST is not even that good any more. They’ve been constantly one of the worst performing specs for the past several weeks (worse than other specs that have got buffed massively) but it’s almost like the devs have too much pride to buff a spec they nerfed earlier in the tier.

My plan for next tier to take a break for a few weeks at the start until balance settles down so I don’t get annoyed by a similar situation again and hope I can still raid/m+ when I get back.

4 Likes

They’re busy huffing glue and watching youtube instead of working, hence why they’re getting called back to office.

No seriously, I can’t think of a better explanation.

If they had been slacking off that hard then they wouldn’t have been bothered to put in enough effort to nerf :smiley: I think instead its a community perception of rogues, they are afraid to make the damage strong in certain situations where another class might get away with it because people will moan about it way more than if it was a different spec.

Think it stems from them very often being meta in PvP and M+ (or the perception of them being meta), even if they are not doing best damage. In SL S1 they were not doing a lot of damage compared to e.g. mage/druid but still most key groups were running one. Even in S3 of SL, a lot of groups were running rogues at the start of the season as if it was a de facto requirement for timing a high key and there was no other choice, but then Echo or someone tried out ww monk, the meta changed overnight and rogues and their supposed incredible utility suddenly somehow weren’t required any more.

Even in something mostly irrelevant, like MDI, if it was a rogue pulling DK numbers there’d be an outcry of rogues being OP. I still see random comments on reddit threads and the like about nerfing rogues when there are several classes as good or better.

When all the dev team plays ret, and all the noobs can’t trade a defensive for sub rogue that’s when rogues were overperforming. The devs did the same thibg they did in shadowlands; exactly the same thing. Make ret op, nerf sub to oblivion; it’s like the entire dev team were on coke when they made these changes. And the game was so fun before the patch. Now is trash. @Blizzard developers, guys please play a class before implementing changes, the thing you did with the last patch mad the game a bummer. Stop snorting coke when you come with patch updates.

Actually can’t wait for them to get back to the office now. I’m genuinely starting to wonder if they actually are all just drinking on the job while working from home or something.

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