I’ve not been seeing a post about Rogue Reworks in EU posts, thought it’ll be a nice idea to start one.
Hopefully the blues will read this and might some ideas to be great.
Well! here is my hopes, I might be wrong but its not wrong to give some ideas and maybe others have better!
Outlaw:
1- Slice n Dice: Make it a passive, Each Combo Points spent generates a slice and dice duration.
2- Bring Back Cannon Barrage: Make it an AoE stun ability with some damage, idk about you guys but I do wish rogues have AoE stun.
3- Loaded Dice: Make it a CD which guarantees 5 Rolls.
4- Killing Spree: Make it a big damage burst like what it used to be.
6- I personally hated all Shadowlands abilities (Sepsis, Echoing, Flag, Bone Spike) I really wish they could just get rid of them.
7- Blade Flurry: Make it a toggle like what it used to be, make the rotation simple.
Subtlety:
1- I dont know what to say mostly, but for me personally this expansion sub gameplay has been the most boring rotation I’ve ever played. I want this whole spec to be reworked.
Assassination:
1- Just bring back Legion’s assasin gameplay, was fun.
They could rework loaded dice as it was in bfe that you can get adrenaline rush for 3sec from trait,remove aoe cap from blade flurry why this is the only class suffering from this cap,we can’t apply blade flurry in stealth as before making our opener weaker because now it breaks stealth since shadowlands,outlaw had really good tuning at s4 in bfa everything was smooth,but then I was unlucky to see what they have done in shadows lands I was so disappointed in beta in live it was even worse
To be fair, bring back Death from Above in PVE as a Class ability capstone and i’ll come back playing rogue probably as my main reroll character(cause my team still need a tank). This spell is a ton of fun to play around and i play in War mode On only to be able to play with it even tho it has nowhere near the impact it had in Legion.
Remove slice n dice
Remove Echoing reprimand and all of the shadowlands trash abilities that has no place in the rogue fantasy as its extremely awful to use.
Make Deadly poison baseline
Make Smoke bomb baseline
Make Kingsbane baseline or atleast meaningful
Rework Poison bomb into active aoe ability
Remove exsanguinate
Remove Cold Blood
Buff Venomous wounds
Buff Envenom
Make Deathmark Undispellabe
Give poisons dispel protection
Remove Amplyfing poison
Remove target cap from Indiscriminate Carnage and make it 30 sec CD.
Rework Blindside back to MoP version of Dispatch and make it baseline again.
Then I will be happy, maybe. Right now, the rogue dev is absolutely clueless about rogue design, assassination especially… I never felt so disgusted on rogue design as in this xpac.
New mastery. It should at the very least increase the proc chance of Main Gauche, rather than just increasing the damage it does. Anything that makes it genuinely useful. Maybe even affecting how much CDR you get from Restless Blades?
Bring back Greed from the Legion artifact tree. Genuinely no idea why this hasn’t already happened. It’s a perfect fit for the Outlaw talent tree.
Roll the Bones should be able to give a maximum of 6 buffs, instead of 5. Like why the hell is it 5?
Count the Odds should have a choice node including it and a new talent that always gives you 3-4 Roll the Bones buffs, at the cost of being unable to roll every buff at once.
Hard cap on Blade Flurry should be removed in favour of a soft cap at 8, with Precise Cuts getting moved to where Dancing Steel once was. Greed can go where Precise Cuts was.
The ‘Improved X’ talents should be folded into the baseline versions of the relevant abilities, and replaced with actual talents.
Sepsis should be replaced with Bone Spike, Ghostly Strike should be replaced with Flagellation.
More tools to generate energy so we’re not getting energy starved just by doing our rotation. Running out doesn’t add anything interesting to how the spec plays, it’s all about combo point management not energy pooling.
Dreadblades needs to be a 12 second cooldown with a 10% damage increase again, like it was in Legion. The current version is too short by far.
Improved Adrenaline Rush’s functionality should be changed to ‘Makes your next Finisher cast at full strength for free when Adrenaline Rush starts and ends.’
And here’s a couple of fresh talent ideas I’ve had lying around for a while:
Finishing Moves have a 1.5% chance per combo point spent to fully refund combo points. Devalues by .5% per combo point per successive trigger.
Finishing move that increases the chance of your next sinister strike hitting twice by 20% per combo point spent. Replaces Dispatch, and does slightly more damage.
Your damaging finishing moves increase your critical strike damage modifier against your target by 5%, stacking up to 10 times. Using a damaging finisher on another target removes all stacks.
My Wishlist, I’ll focus on the broader strokes, as the details and numbers can be better tuned after seeing the whole picture.
Class and Spec Trees completely overhauled. The Class Tree needs to focus on General Utility, Survivability and Resource Generation. For these purposes, the Shadowlands Covenant Abilities count as Resource Generation.
Talent Pathing needs to be flexible, so that the choice of the Final Talents in the Tree doesn’t effectively lock you into a specific path from level 30.
Talents need to be affordable. No Talent is worth 3 Points, most of them not even worth 2. You can’t pick Utility Talents, if the Pathing is locked in, or if there are too many DPS Talents as their options. Losing situational Utility is affordable, losing Power is not.
Spec Trees should provide the Iconic Spec abilities, things that make them look and feel different. Shadow Dance is iconic to Sub, it should not be a Class Ability.
+% Stat Talents removed and replaced with things, that either change how Spells function, or add some new utility.
Talents, that are pretty much mandatory for the Class and Spec to function should be baseline.
Redundant Effect Stacking reduced. Having multiple Talents and abilities doing the same thing just overcomplicates things, makes it needlessly difficult to balance things. Symbols of Death and Slice and Dice are a good examples of adding complexity for complexity’s sake, not to make the gameplay more fun. Alacrity devalues Haste as a Stat in general, but is so powerful, that you feel like you are handicapping yourself without it. Abilities like these have no place in modern game design.
Less focus on Maintenance Buffs. The Buttons you press need to give some kind of feedback to you, something you can feel through the gameplay, not just by looking at Damage Meters or Logs.
Less CDR effects. They easily devalue CD Abilities, and turn them from the cool and powerful situational thing into just another button in the rotation. Having too much CDR reduces Player Agency by removing choice. For Outlaw, CDR feels thematic and fitting, but less so for Subtlety or Assassination.
What Rogue Class Design has been for years is like hammering nails with a wrench. It gets the job done, but it’s really not the right tool for the job. The general take is, The Class and each Specialization needs a clear vision. Right now, there is seemingly no cohesive plan for how the Class and Specs should work and feel. It’s just a random pile of the Greatest Hits from the Past all lumped together and spread around to fill in the gaps.
The problem with Rogues is that despite all the design flaws, bugs and lack of general direction, it still functions and performs. The individual parts are strong enough to overcome the cobbled up mess of outdated and ill-fitting mechanics, that the Class has never really required a lot of work to just get to a shippable state. However, the game has changed, and what was an acceptable level of design quality a decade ago, it simply isn’t on par with modern standards. When it comes to the quality of Class Design, Rogues are still stuck in Mists of Pandaria. Just because it technically functions, doesn’t mean it’s up to par.
I’m glad that topic has been opened once again, I just hope the EU forums won’t be completely ignored. I play mainly sub and I have to agree that the spec is kinda boring due to the sectec. It needs to go away from pvp. I have been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) some other builds. but it seems that sec tec is the only thing that can kill during a set up.
With that in mind, I’d once again like to suggest few alternative approaches regarding our talent trees. The class tree lacks flexibility and cap stones are boring. I’ve seen few people advocate for flag instead of ER on a capstone, but both abilities need to go away. Cap stones should be exciting, but ER minigame is more infuriating than exciting. Shadowlands abilities need to go away from the class tree. Thistle tea is also a boring talent that should be a dead end branch somewhere up in the tree, not a capstone. Even the temporary mastery buff won’t cut it in PvP. As for a shadowdance capstone, it is mandatory for sub, and pain for assa. Outlaw is forced into it if you play ambush build. but it is mostly an ability stolen from sub rogue and placed into the tree. It has to go away and be replaced with something more exciting.
My suggestions are capstone improvements for our openers. Nowdays, if you are not using shadow dance you mostly press your opener and forget about it later. I think they should be more impactful, for example CS should increase damage received by the target by 20% or something like that (numbers can be adjusted). But to prevent the abuse from shadowdance, buffed openers should only work from stealth. Shadowstrike already teleports you behind target, perhaps bumping its damage would suffice.
We are, in my opinion, missing at least 2 or 3 more opener so make opening non-linear again. We used to have option to apply strong bleed (looking at you garrote) with silence and I think it should be returned to us. Another opener could be some kind of “preparation”, you don’t do damage, instead you apply some buff onto yourself. It can be stronger version of SnD, it can be some movement speed buff, leech buff or something like that. Third opener could be on some way related to poisons. There is a lot of room to discuss here.
Next, cold blood needs to go or be buffed. It is a relic of past. And they need to take a look at the pvp talents. Something like “AoE distract that works in combat” would be really cool.
They should get a new dev before. I gave them so much feedback about Assassination rogue in beta, but they won‘t listen.
Now look what a mess this spec is in m+
NO NO NO . I read your post and i agree with some of it - except for the buffed abilities should be only from stealth - sorry but a big fat NO.
This is the main thing that sux with assa right now ( from a pve perspective) is the stealth requirement ( aka improved garrote) . The difference between spreading 8 x normal garrotes and 8 improved garrotes ( + 50% damage) is huge and extremely annoying.
RNG for other classes is usually - did we get a proc / buff / crit at x time so we could maximise our dps.
For assa rogue its - did the tank let us stealth or instead go on a chain pulling spree or decide to pull the last few stragglers into the boss ( LOL no stealth for you mr rogue so now your entire opener is F$%^$%^).
Ive nothing against utilty being a stealth only part ( like silence etc) but buffed damage from stealth is antiquated and really should be a PVP only component ( which ive no interest in anyway).
Oh, one thing I forgot for Outlaw;
Grand Melee needs changing again. It is awful design to have a RtB buff that is only valuable in AoE situations, especially when every other buff is valuable in all situations, to varying degrees. This is especially true considering Outlaw cannot fish for specific buffs like it could in BfA and Legion.
EDIT: And this is for the general Rogue tree. Give us Smoke Bomb back as a raid-wide defensive cooldown! We have so little utility in raid encounters currently.