Rogue tank phase 4, it feels off and underwhelming in many ways

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Possible ways to make rogue tank feel more viable in different ways.

Problem 1: Viability of daggers in general but also for AOE tanking compared to swords is much higher (the 75% damage on fan of knives is a massive difference)

Suggested fix: Main gauche / Sinister Strike / Riposte / Saber slash / Eviscerate attack power modifiers to be increased while using swords including faster swords. Or make fan of knives work like in retail that it requires throwing weapons and start adding some of those to the game.

Problem 2: Shuriken toss costs 30 energy → Blade dance 25 → Fan of knives 50, that means you need 105 energy to do a larger pull. Fan of knives must be used at least once but preferably 2-3 times in a row to build threat (often there are some casters in the back you didn’t hit with shuriken or fan of knives so you need to get to them too). If you don’t get energy back from your fan of knives+combat potency then you’re basically at the mercy of when your energy ticks back.

Suggested fix: Blade dance from 25 energy to 10 or 15 energy cost.

Problem 3: Low threat all around, shadow priests, warlocks, hunters, all dps classes with tier 1 gear pull aggro off you when playing with the defensive rogue tank set.

Suggested fix: Increase the base threat, I believe it was reduced from 165 to 115 due to the idea of the tank 2 piece set bonus on tier 1 would affect it. But instead reduce the threat bonus on set to 75% and increase base rogue threat from anywhere between 135 to 150 when Just a flesh wound is equipped.

Problem 4: No crits, no energy. No offhand hit procs, no energy. For the lack of crit chance on the defensive tank items for rogue, add an additional effect to unfair advantage.

Suggested fix: Change the Unfair Advantage rune, to strike back at target with BOTH the main and offhand weapon instead, can occur every 2-3 seconds on each target hitting you. Allowing for it to be used with combat potency to increase the amount of possible energy regeneration we get without focussing on the critical hit stat.

How do other rogue tanks feel about the current state of the class? Am I the only one struggling because I didn’t go want to make myself a “it’s a healer problem” by going full rogue DPS gear tank?

4 Likes
2

I hope blizzard read this <3

1 Like
3

How can you use fan of knives to tank? It does hardly any damage, costs half your energy and does not generate any combo points. I tried crimson tempest for a while but finally settled with blunderbuss.

I tanked A LOT of dungeons because, as a rogue, it is really really hard to find any group. In BRD, for example, I was so proud when I was lvl 60 and was able to pull two packs at once (~8 enemies or sth.) and held aggro pretty well. Here and there, I lost aggro, but my group mates dealt with it. It´s basically spamming blunderbuss on cool down and tab switching through all targets, trying to hit each with mutilate, taunting the ones that turn around. Most annoying is, when I loose aggro and I am slowed / netted. I got 5 mobs hitting me, I must keep my front turned to them or I am toast, so I am slowly walking backwards / sideways towards that one mob. Covering the distance takes like forever. To make things worse, I regularly have to cast blade dance. I cannot even attack one mob long enough to generate 5 combo points, so I usually cast it at 2 or 3 combo points, loosing additional energy. Worst case: another player pulls a group mid fight. 5 mobs aggro him. Shuriken toss and blunderbuss are on cool down. I got 30 energy. There is literally NOTHING I can do to prevent the mobs from hitting him. I can try auto attacking each mob to get initial aggro but as soon as he just sneezes, he has aggro again. It takes 4 seconds to generate 40 energy for one mutilate. So it would take me 20 seconds to cast mutilate on each of the targets. That is just weird. And fan of knives would not generate enough aggro in that situation.

I also tanked UBRS and found it quite hard to hold single target aggro. Luckily, I can activate adrenaline rush for each boss. But I don´t think a 5 min cool down should be required per boss to hold aggro (I use mutilate btw.).

Then, I found a group for BRD that already had a tank, so I could go as dps. It was a paladin. He easily pulled 4 packs, running around without any problems and almost never lost aggro. Then I looked at his lvl: 53. Oh wow is this a joke? The sheer effortless he tanked just startled me. Maybe I´m really stupid, but I find tanking a really hard job. Another time we had a warrior who also easily pulled 4 packs, charging through them with such a high mobility, it was really amazing to see.

So I could think of several fixes:
-Increase the base aggro that a rogue generates. It really is not enough. We don´t need to do more damage but we need to generate more threat. If I switch to tank gear, I got a lot less agility and therefore, do a lot less damage and generate less aggro.
-Increase the duration of blade dance. 30 Seconds for 5 combo points is definitely not enough
or
-Change it, so that a rogue tank does not generate combo points per target, but globally. I cannot use the finishing moves properly because I have no time per mob. Because we do not have a proper spammable aoe attack, we need to do single target aggro and switch between the targets. If combo points were generated globally, keeping blade dance up and casting a finishing move like rupture or eviscerate ones in a while would help a lot.
or
-Give us a spammable low energy aoe attack that generates proper aggro. It cannot be, that, if we choose to cast fan of knives, it stops everything else we do, because it costs so much energy that we cannot do any other attacks to generate combo points that we need for blade dance. My favourite idea: “Intimidation: while blade dance is active, 30 % of your (single target) generated threat affects all targets within 8 yards”. This way, rogue can be played as it should be, focusing on a single target and once in a while (after e.g. a finishing move) switching to the next.

2 Likes
4

One step in the right direction would be to make combo points build up on the rogue instead of on the specific target, so we can swap targets when needed without loosing everything when tanking.
Tabbing to taunt and loosing 5 combo points is frustrating.

2 Likes
5

Make Unfair Advantage wrist rune 0internal cd procs on ALL targets in melee range. Like a holy shield, but for rogues. 1sec internal cd works too, like shamans Lightning shield. But would prefer 0internal cd like holy shield joke of ability specially with 6set.

1 Like
6

I gave up rogue tanking. Even though you really maximize your effort there is simply no way you can keep aggro on packs when you constantly have to run around and single target every mob that strays away. You gain no combo points this way.

The cooldown on blunderbuss is a joke.

Rogue tanks are clowns and it’s not worth the effort one bit.

Sad.

1 Like