Slice and Dice is a bad ability

I don’t think thats good, because if our bleeds ticks faster, that means you need to reapply bleeds more often, which also leads to more boring gameplay around only maintaining maintenance buffs, which also leaves little to zero opportunity window for finishers like envenom.

Thats one of the reasons why i personally hate exsanguinate, while it looked interesting during introduction, it didn’t really fit into the playstyle of the spec. Before legion beta comes out, the first prototype of Exsanguinate was a passive 30% chance to spread bleeds aoe around you, which felt much better, something like Feral’s Primal Wrath.

They should focus more on keeping the envenom uptime and add some sort of benefit from keeping it up like it had in WoD for example while envenom was up, you dealt more damage with mutilate and dispatch, or some sort.

Keeping boring attack speed buff up, while maintaining 2 another debuffs is just too much and leaves zero windows for actual damage finisher that should’ve be more impactful on the gameplay.

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Interesting, I didn’t know Exsanguinate was like that when it was first introduced. Slice and Dice would be better with that passive 30% chance to spread bleeds on nearby targets. Maybe we could see some further changes when SL releases.

No ?

Haste makes bleed tic faster, but they keep their duration. You just get more tics for the same duration.

Only Exsanguinate has that behavior.

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I have played 50+ dungeons in the prepatch as an Outlaw Rogue now, and at least for that spec I cannot say that SnD present any interesting decision making in PVE content. Mainly because of the massive number of combo points the spec generates overall. For Outlaw in PVE content, SnD does not impact the spec in any notable way, other than having to waste a GCD on it for the first pull in a Dungeon.

I cannot really speak to have it impacts decision making in PVP content, but if it only really have an impact there then maybe it should just be a PVP talent. I don’t know… I just don’t see SnD bringing any interesting decision making to Outlaw in PVE content. Most of our damage comes from Sinister Strike anyway and we generate 1 million combo points per second.

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Eh, thanks to SnD increasing energy regeneration drastically !

But I do get your point.

Not really. Because the energy generation was overall the same before the prepatch. The extra energy generated by the increased attack speed has just been offset in the base design so we still end up with the same outcome. For outlaw in PVE at least.

Do you mean they purposely lowered the base energy regeneration so that SnD wouldn’t be a gain compared to before ?

I’m asking because I don’t see any mention of that ANYWHERE so I’d appreciate a link to one, as I didn’t think I missed such important stuff.

Or I misunderstood what you meant.

Exactly. That’s at least what it feels like. I played Outlaw Rogue for the entirety of BFA and I don’t feel that we have more energy now than before. To be honest, I have absolutely no scientific evidence for this, but it’s my experience from playing the game.

To me class design is all about how the class feels to play. I’m not really focused too much on how it looks on paper. And I just don’t have anything positive to say about SnD for Outlaw in PVE so far. It might change in Shadowlands… who knows. I hope the extra energy regeneration from SnD rank 2 is going to be notable. Fingers crossed.

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Well, if it’s just a feeling then, I most likely didn’t miss anything. I didn’t see any difference in the base number in the character sheet.

I, on my end, felt like Outlaw was a bit more fluid when it comes to energy. In BfA if Sinister Strike didn’t proc for long enough and you have bad buffs you were really… stuck, slow ! With SnD I feel like this isn’t true anymore, as you will get that slight bit of energy you need to keep going even when RNG is against you.

Of course, if you proc once every two hits and have, say, Broadsides, then of course energy was never an issue, right.

I think this is an Assa only passive, unless they changed it recently. Assa had little gain from SnD so they gave them that, while Sub and Outlaw already have the energy gain through SnD because they get energy from autos and SnD gives you more autos. Sorry to disappoint !

Also, SnD might make mastery a less horrible stat for Outlaw, now that I think of it. Not that this will bring anything amazing in terms of gameplay.

Oh damn. I must have missed that information about SnD rank 2. Well, I guess it’s true that Assa needs it the most.

Also, I think you are right in relation to SnD having a positive effect on the value of Mastery. It had suddenly become a much stronger stat in the prepatch, and I guess SnD is the explanation why. If so, that’s great at least.

I would still love to see them make a more modern version of SnD. But knowing Blizzard they would probably mess it up and break the class completely somehow, so it’s probably best to just keep it simple for now.

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This is my main concern. Outlaw plays very similar to how it played in BFA and Legion, but all the “new” stuff we’ve gotten don’t really mesh with the overall design of the spec. SnD isn’t fun and I would much rather not have it. Poisons aren’t fun. They’re a button you click once an hour and they’re not instant like other class buffs but have a cast time. Nostalgic? Maybe. Fun? No. Good design? Archaic as all hell.

This topic is about SnD but I think our poisons kinda illustrates the problem with the new class redesign. The poisons are not at all intervowen in the overall design of the Outlaw spec – they’re tacked on. The only ability we got that actually has some symmetry with the poisons is Shiv. Which is also a “new” ability that doesn’t really mesh with anything else in the spec.

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Shiv is supposed to be a tech ability.

In PvP you want to use it to drop a powerful slow at a much needed moment.

In m+ you want to use it alongside Mind Numbing to remove a key enrage buff l’est your tank gets slapped (unless they changed that).

Point is, Shiv has its uses. It just happens to be a spell that needs to be used at the right time. It is not something that be included in the spec’s rotation (it will only for Assa), it’s just a tool that you didn’t have before and will now be able to use in very specific situations.

Simply having an ability on your bar doesn’t mean you have to include it in your rotation.

This.

Enrage effects could only be removed by druids and hunters before. You now have this utility on rogue.

Also if used with crippling poison you can slow a target in a kite-type of encounter.

True, but my argument was that poisons doesn’t really interact with anything in the Outlaw toolkit except for Shiv, which is also a new ability*.

Assassination was designed around poisons, with their mastery increasing poison damage, abilities like envenom, poisoned knife and system shock, not to mention the gameplay around venomous wounds. Outlaw wasn’t. There isn’t a single thing in the Outlaw toolkit that interacts with our poisons. They had the chance to change one of the RtB buffs to somehow interact with poisons, but they didn’t.

It’s incongruous design.

*Shiv was a pvp talent before so for those that wanted it for the technical aspect in pvp they could have it.

Shiv was introduced in TBC, it’s hardly new.

Well I think the point got across. Outlaw didn’t have it in its base toolkit in BfA or Legion and now it has made a return so it’s new in that sense.

I’m honestly still confused, it’s like druids crying about having soothe in their kit.

The main problem is that you want to use Shiv on CD as Assassination rogue. Because it increases your poison damage. We won’t be using it to “soothe” enemies.
Shiv in SL(PvE) was changed to a CD that you should be using offensively, not as a tool to slow down/delete enrage on mobs.
Of course there are exceptions, as high m+ key or PvP, but as I wrote above - it’s mainly a bonus button in your rotation if you play Assassination spec.

Imo the choice is simple.

If the mob has a dispellable enrage, and there’s no other spec that can do it, you sacrifice a portion of damage if it’s needed.

If there is no such mechanic, you use it as a damage boost.

Damn, you must’ve been waiting to write that comment!

Edited mine in like 1 minute and still received an answer that was exactly the same as my post above.