I think you’re focusing too much on Shiv. I concede that what I said here:
Was perhaps not all that thought through. Having a dispel for enrage effects is neat. With that said, my point remains: the “new” stuff we got for Outlaw is ultimately boring and doesn’t really mesh with the overall design of Outlaw. If there’s no interplay between abilities you end up with ability bloat.
The flow of the gameplay of SL Outlaw is similar to the gameplay in BfA and Legion – just worse. Because SnD is an unexciting maintenance ability and poisons are tacked on and doesn’t actually do anything unique for our spec. I would much rather not have had these abilities and kept Outlaw as the mid-range swashbuckler specialization that it was before.
Well that’s the thing, they increased the skill cap by having one more ability to watch out for. It’s a short term buff that needs to be maintained OR skipped altogether if the fight doesn’t last long enough to benefit from it.
Realistically speaking there is little that can be added to the game that can make a rotation exciting. If it’s a short term buff, meh, if it’s a low cooldown ability, meh, anything can be seen as “just another thing to do, meh”.
Big numbers and simple rotations were never a rogue thing, either.
In my own wishful thinking, I had hoped that Outlaw would receive a “dot poison” since the spec is extremely punished by downtime. It would be amazing for Outlaw to have a dot that could be spread by Blade Flurry.
I also don’t think that SnD is doing much for Outlaw in terms of overall “gameplay fun”, but at least it increases the value of mastery as Shadenox pointed out. So the positive is that it will possibly make gearing less annoying in Shadowlands.
poisons basically can’t be a negative to the gameplay, they’re either a neutral or a positive. for outlaw and sub instant poison is nothing and crippling is a positive. not having them does not positively impact your rotation whatsoever, so doesn’t really make sense to say the gameplay is worse because of that.
slice makes the rotation more difficult because it gives you 1 more thing to keep track of and it increases apm because of increased energy. that applies to every spec. you can think that’s a negative if you want i guess. i think the increased pace is fun.
I disagree. I think it’s very poor design to introduce abilities that don’t interact with the other abilities in your toolkit. I think poisons are very well utilized for the Assassination spec – because that spec was purpose built around poisons, whereas for Outlaw and Subletly poisons are just tacked on. It’s not that poisons aren’t good, it’s that they aren’t fun. Like you say, they don’t impact the rotation whatsoever, but they’re still something you have to click once an hour, just because nostalgia? Did we really need them back?
Difficulty isn’t the issue, and I don’t think SnD makes the gameplay more challenging. Perhaps in pvp where you must make a choice of planning long-term or go for direct damage, but for pve it’s literally just a button you press when the duration is about to run out. Also:
This is a negative, in my view. The homogenization of the specializations is not a good thing. I thought rogues had it pretty great in Legion and BFA, with very clear archetypes that all had distinct niches. Outlaw was fun and competitive for two expansions without poisons or SnD, so what do these buttons add, really? Whatever it is they add they likely detract from other aspects of the spec.
they’re pretty tacked on for assa as well if you wanna go there. it’s a buff you put on that gives you a decent slow finally and you press it once an hour. is this really worth complaining about? it makes your toolkit larger, because you now have a decent slow, an aoe tank damage reduction, mortal strike, as well as a big slow and enrage remove with shiv.
it has no impact on your basic rotation good or bad, unless you count putting it on once an hour. i don’t see how you can make that a negative. thinking it doesn’t matter, fine, but negative?
game’s all about decisions. making good decisions consistently is what makes you a good player. positioning, rotation, cooldown usage. it’s not just about pressing it when the duration is about to go out, because there’s a decision there. is it worth pressing it in this particular situation? there is also the choice of when you press it, where you’re rewarded by planning ahead so you don’t have it drop during your burst for instance. it’s not just about the difference between average and good either, there’s also bad and average where you could have very low uptime on it for instance.
good players should parse higher as a result of slice existing because they have more room to differentiate themselves.
do not agree with rogues having it pretty great in legion and bfa. we’ve never been as pruned as then precisely because they took our class and sliced it in 3, letting us access only different of what we had before depending on which spec you choose. have you been playing rogue for a long time? maybe this is a boomer vs zoomer issue.
As well as three talents and two pvp talents directly being affected by or having an affect on your poisons. If you do not apply your poisons as Assassin your DPS is going to suffer a hell of a lot, whereas if you don’t apply your poisons on Outlaw it’s going to make a minor difference. Outlaw also has 0 talents affecting poisons.
That’s not what this thread is about, though. This thread is about SnD being an utterly boring ability. I’d call myself a relatively good player, although I don’t have a lot of evidence to back that up. I did a little bit of raiding early BfA and you can check out my profile here: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/ravenholdt/mireia#zone=19&bybracket=1&difficulty=3. Make of it what you will, I’m not a raider nor do I play competitively – but I always strive to play competently.
So while you may have a point in that SnD might make the difference between a good and a bad player more apparent, it doesn’t change the fact that SnD is boring.
This is true. I started maining my rogue in Legion. Historically I’ve mained a priest and a warrior. The priest from TBC and halfway through WLK, and the warrior starting at the end of WLK and until the release of WoD. In Legion I found I couldn’t play either my priest or my warrior because the classes had changed so much from how I remembered them and what it was I liked about them, so I made a new main.
So I understand that it must’ve sucked to go through the ability pruning, but I don’t think that the “unpruning” is the answer. WoW had to do a pruning because ability bloat was getting off the rails. It also allowed them to shape the classes to suit the modern version of the game. While old school survival hunters will cry, I thought it was really cool to see hunters get a proper melee spec, and I was hoping that Outlaw would continue to see more ranged utility added to their toolkit. The “mid-range” playstyle is a thing in other MMOs and Outlaw was a suitable candidate for that type of playstyle in WoW, but instead the opposite happened. The uniqueness of Outlaw diminished because Blizzard decided to appeal to nostalgia.
ah yeah. obviously it matters a lot for assa if you don’t have poisons on, i meant more in a gameplay sense it doesn’t really do that much for assa either. it’s mostly just there, buff you apply once an hour. venomous wounds could just as well work without poisons and it wouldn’t really be all that different. there’s some stuff to it with like double dose in bfa or making sure there’s deadly poison on an offtarget so you get energy returns.
for me, part of what makes it a fun ability is that it makes it more challenging. the other parts are that it speeds up the rotation and that it’s nostalgic. by the way, i didn’t mean that you were a bad player by any means, i’m sorry if it sounded like that.
the most fun iteration of rogue in my opinion was probably mop, and it’s an expansion that often gets brought up from other people as well. it was super “bloated”, which i see more as having a full toolkit.
And then people would complain about the fact that you can’t Gouge targets properly anymore. I know it !
I mean they have an effect besides clicking them. Having access to Cripppling for Sub is very, very ,veeeeeery good. The spec really lacked what Crippling brings.
SnD, to get back on topic, brings stuff to all specs, and, again to stay on topic, to Outlaw as well, even though you don’t see this stuff when you click the spell ever 40-ish seconds. But in the end having it vs not having it would maybe be 25% less energy so less spells used to a more boring, and dull, gameplay, it would also mean more damage, it would also mean less mastery procs so having a new piece of gear with that would feel bad wheb now it can feel okay, example examples, but the point is, it doesn’t do nothing. Maybe you jusg don’t see the implications for what they are and in the end you’re mostly sitting here and thinking “ok I attack faster, boring” but as I tried to explain it goes deeper.
They could. If my memory is correct it used to be a glyph, so that it wouldn’t break to your Rupture, Garrote, or Hemorrhage. So that would simply need to be re implemented.
I was planning to go Sub Rogue for SL and SnD (and instant poison for that matter) feels weird. It’s just like an extra thing that seems counter intuitive. If I’m pooling resources I get this nagging feeling that my SnD is running out and I show be doing something because of it, but I don’t want to use it inside my DPS windows (also because of pre-med you don’t usually have to) so it exists in an odd space where I only use if I have left over combo points kind of thing.
Honestly it annoys the piss out of me. I’d even go so far as to say it significantly reduces my enjoyment of playing the spec.
just want to mention that instant poison works with blade flurry as they stated it in a blue post, so i guess all poisons should work with blade flurry, instant poison works with shuriken storm just the way Deadly poison works with Fan of knives.
After having played around in the pre-patch I think Outlaw is going to continue to be my main spec moving forward, but!
… was the point of the new talent system not to give players more choice? I feel like the new talent system, just like the old one, has become more and more streamlined. The choices we make feel kind of minute. Often the choice is made for us as well. I remember reading in Legion that Vigor was the best third tier talent until you reached a certain amount of haste, at which point you’d want to swap to Deeper Stratagem.
I really wish they’d give us the option to play with SnD or not. I came to the conclusion that Outlaw is still a lot of fun – it’s just that everything we’ve gotten in SL makes the spec less fun. If there was a talent that removed SnD I would probably pick it even if it meant a DPS loss because that’s really how unfun I think SnD is.
was the point of the new talent system not to give players more choice? I feel like the new talent system, just like the old one, has become more and more streamlined. The choices we make feel kind of minute. Often the choice is made for us as well. I remember reading in Legion that Vigor was the best third tier talent until you reached a certain amount of haste, at which point you’d want to swap to Deeper Stratagem.