Returning player; rogues are weird now

[Sasorikishi-anachronos]

When I played, rogues were either:

chunky damage from assassination
sustained damage from combat
control from subtlety

All specs were rooted in physical damage.

Now sub rogues are melee shadow mages with a bunch of magic stuff, shadow blades and gloomstrike and cloak of shadows and all sorts of weird things.

Assassination went down the poison route, which is fine that sort of fits the theme.

I don’t even mind that sub is now shadow mage spec, though I miss the old assassination playstyle in pvp. Nor that rogues for some reason now have a healing ability and AoE.

What really makes me struggle to fall back in love with rogue these days are the multitude of abilities that are far too similar.

I don’t see why theres backstab, mutilate, goremaws bite, echoing reprimand.
Why there’s eviscerate, death from above, and secret technique.
Why there’s shadow dance and shadow blades and symbols of death.

I also don’t understand why backstab now does the damage of a small child in a pillow fight instead of the chunky bits it used to do.

Or why we suddenly need 3 thistle teas and several hundred energy pools.

It feels like they took the actual core rogue and just nailed more and more boards to it as the expansions went just because “we must have new things!”, and then it needed adaptations to the context it lived in among the changes to other classes, so more things were nailed on top of those boards, then layers and layers later theres this weird golem of what used to be a rogue that just feels super skillbloated and quite removed from the simple glass cannon chunkdamage control sneak I fell for originally.

I’m probably just an old man shaking his fist at change, of course.

I just miss the core of the rogue as I picture it, I suppose.

[Damôkles-blackmoore]

Well to answer it in turn:

1. Because Blizzard decided in Legion that every class spec must be its own identity. SO every spec only shares the bare bones of a class and then diverges in totally different direction ability wise. All Rogue share Slice and Dice, Crimson Vial and defensives for example. But none of the damage abilities will be the same between specs.

2. The game got fast REAL quick and we burn through energy like you cant believe. And when all other classes can press an ability/spell every second, then rogues with only 100 energy and MUtilates etc that burn 40-60 of it feel bad.

3. Rogues are a good class for the beginning of every expac, but we dont scale as well as other classes. Which in turn causes Blizzard to nerf us after the first week, buff others at the same time, and then the classes that got damage buffs will run away because of scaling.

I for one dearly miss the old combat rogue and still dont understand how they got “pirate” from combat, and why they thought it was a good idea to give us RNG mechanics like Roll the Bones…

[Sharc-doomhammer]

Sure, I just feel like same spec abilities like dance, blades, and symbols need to be separate things, and not all just either talent variations on vanish or merged together or something like that.
A more simple approach would be far more enjoyable.

I don’t mind sub having backstab as their main builder, combat having SS, and assassination having mutilate. Or that they don’t share a lot of skills.

The energy thing seems like the solution should be more along the lines of “how to make the energy more efficient” not “just add more energy”. Though that’s not really a problem, it’s just what it is.

It feels like rogues would benefit a lot from having a scalpel cut out a LOT of the fat and return to the basics. And by “benefit a lot” I guess I just mean “I would like that”, so that’s worth nothing really.

For every me, I’m sure there’s two who LOVE the current iteration of rogues. And I’m not insane enough to demand the game cater to my personal taste in opposition to anyone else’s enjoyment.

I just felt like popping on here and seeing if I’m mad or if there are more who think rogues feel like they went very left field somewhere as the expansions released and sort of never returned.

(not sure how apparent it is as I’m new to the forums, but I’m the OP btw)

[Damôkles-blackmoore]

I think most rogue players are currently pretty unhappy with our spec tbh.
At least I am unhappy with it. We need to jump through multiple hoops to get less damage than lets say a frost dk or fury warrior.

Some things will get streamlined in the next patch:

• Thistletea will be automatically consumed, if you fall under 30 energy
• slice and dice gets applied instead of refreshed from finishers
• shiv/rollthebones/symbols apply supercharged combo points instead of echoing reprimand

But yeah, they wont change the differences between class specs.
Warriors have some of their big damage cooldowns in their class spec, but they are currently mostly an exception from the rule.

[Sharc-doomhammer]

The thistle tea change sounds horrible. Automating that feels like it removes control, which is a core rogue tenet imo.
Is this a confirmed change with no other changes touching this?

Slice and Dice should just be removed from the game and folded into general damage profile, because by GOD has it always been a boring aspect of the rogue.

I like folding reprimand into existing abilities as well, I hope this is a general direction they want to take for more of the tangential abilities.

[Damôkles-blackmoore]

You will still be able to use it on your own, but it proccs on its own when you fall to 30 energy. Its a nice change for outlaw rogues that did not care for the mastery bonus and only used it for the energy.

[Sharc-doomhammer]

I wish it was a talent choice then on the tea talent node.

So you would either pick automation or an alternative that lets you choose when to tea.

You don’t always want to tea at sub 30 energy.

[Damôkles-blackmoore]

Yeah, i also thought that a choice node would be best for this case. :'D

[Avengerx-steamwheedle-cartel]

Honestly don’t know what the rogue dev(s?) were smoking when they came up with the Thistle Tea change. Oh last mob is dying and you just spent all your energy to squeeze in one more finisher? Let me just use Thistle Tea for you so you don’t have it when you need it next time. Rogues are kind of complicated enough already, we don’t need another thing to keep track of in the middle of combat.