Bowa's Little Rogue Wishlist

Hey all, after feeling a little underwhelmed by the gauntlet with it basically being a shrine grabbing race, I thought I’d take a break from D4 for the night and put together a little wishlist for the Rogue.

Mostly just food for thought and a bit of fun, but hopefully some of this will be considered too. Let me know what you would like to see for the Rogue.

Skills

  • Barrage: Better, more evenly spread of Barrage arrows to not shoot as many arrows off to the sides as the number of arrows grow.

Currently Barrage with Cunning Stratagem shoots the last 4 arrows off to the sides which have a low chance of hitting anything. This change should make the probability of hitting stuff with the extra arrows higher.

  • Enhanced Smoke Grenade: Reduce the damage bonus to 15% but make it work on bosses and unstoppable enemies for a flat 2 second duration.

This will shift some of the utility of smoke grenade towards bosses to not make it too weighted in usefulness towards trash/elites.

  • Close Quarters Combat: Increase the damage scaling from Damage to Crowd Controlled enemies from 10% to 20%.

The nerf to Close Quarters Combat from the season 3 patch was too heavy handed. This will help bring it back some power and will help melee and non-combo point builds.

  • Victimise: Increase the proc chance from 45% to 60%.

This key passive seems to do less damage than advertised, it’s unclear if this is a bug or not. This change will at least make this key passive more usable with low lucky hit chance skills like rapid fire and barrage. I thought that removing the lucky hit chance requirement would be a good idea, but this might get out of control for skills like Rain of Arrows and Death Trap.

Specialisation

  • Inner Sight: Make marked enemies receive an extra 15% more damage from you. While having unlimited energy, gain 15% more damage.

Combo point builds got a strong buff in season 3 so this is a small buff that will be a global damage multiplier that applies to everything.

Paragon

  • No Witnesses node: Increase the Ultimate Skill Damage bonus from 10% to 25% but only pass on half this bonus for the 8 second buff.

This will make ultimate skills more punchy while retaining the current power of passing on the damage bonus to other skills.

Glyphs

  • Pride: Increase the damage bonus from 13% to 16%.

This should help make no-imbuement builds slightly stronger after imbued skills have gotten some nice buffs for season 3 (resistant assailant, icy alchemist, infusion).

  • Fluidity: Increase the energy regeneration bonus from 9% to 13%.

A buff in the dark here, but does anyone really use this glyph? It would be interesting to know.

Aspects

  • Pestilent Points: Make this work for all Rogue basic skills.

Why Blizzard made this aspect only work with Puncture is honestly beyond me.

New Aspects

  • Aspect of Wrathful Eyes (Offensive)
Inner Sight marks up to 2 targets at once. Killing a marked target grants 
5-10%[x] more damage, up to 20-30%[x] that lasts:
- for 8 seconds or
- until next time Inner Sight's unlimited Energy runs out

Inner Sight is most strongest in isolated boss fights, but falls off very quickly in overall performance when fighting normal monsters. This aspect should improve Inner Sight’s weaknesses in non-boss settings while not making it too much stronger against bosses.

Uniques

  • Windforce: Change ranks to Concussive to Marksman Skills. Change Vulnerable Damage to all stats. Remove the lucky hit chance requirement on the aspect.

  • Eaglehorn: Double the Vulnerable Damage bonus. Change Physical Damage to Dexterity. Make the aspect every 3rd cast instead of every 4th cast.

Both bows above should help them be more competitive inline with Skyhunter. Windforce being the general all rounded option, and Eaglehorn carved around penshot and Victimise.

  • Eyes in the Dark: Keep the damage bonus, but make death trap re-arm itself at a random nearby location when it kills an enemy.

There is no real use case for Eyes in the Dark right now. Either you hit a boss, kill an enemy, or missed completely and have to kite an enemy into the Death Trap. Having Death Trap re-arm at a random location after it kills an enemy has a chance of getting more free kills while fitting with the theme of “Eyes in the Dark”.

New Uniques

  • Witchwild String (Bow):

    • +70% Non-physical damage
    • +70% Imbued skill damage
    • +10% Attack speed
    • +10% all resists.
    • Aspect: Every 3rd cast of an imbueable skill will deal 25-35% more damage and be imbued with a random imbuement at 30-50% increased potency.
  • Buriza-do Kyanon (Crossbow):

    • +156 Dexterity
    • +70% Cold damage
    • +48% Damage vs Crowd Controlled enemies
    • +10% Attack speed
    • Aspect: Your attacks using this weapon are always imbued with Cold Imbuement. Your Cold Imbued attacks deal 10-20% more damage and have 15-30% increased chill effect.
    • Note: Buriza-do Kyanon is currently a type/transmog option for crossbows. It should be repurposed into a unique which can be salvaged for that transmog.

Original thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/D4Rogue/comments/1b8vzg7/bowas_little_rogue_wishlist/

3 Likes

Honestly just pass it on… like Barb has a non conditional Blood Rage so I’ve never understood why this was so low.

I would argue that Blood Rage needs a big nerf more than No Witnesses needs to match it. 25% for No Witnesses seems reasonable though.

Sure but Barb doesnt get nerfed only buffed so can’t expect that to happen. Honestly I think No Witnesses needs a massive buff considering if you take Preparation and Exposure, you have no real way to get good damage multipliers other than No Witnesses. Cant take CCQ, can’t use Combo Points, most aspects favor combo point style etc.

That’s true if you play Exposure. CQC with the damage buff mentioned above would definitely make ultimates - Death Trap and Rain of Arrows - feel more punchy. Exposure on the other hand however significantly buffs the frequency of casting Death Trap and other traps so it’s a trade-off.

That said, I’m not against buffing Death Trap based builds, I just think the buffs should be spread out more evenly between Key Passives and Paragon nodes.

100%, currently think Rogue is the weakest class at the moment due to lack of good damage buffs/multipliers either in passives, aspects or paragon nodes.

1 Like

Added a new aspect for Inner Sight, after using it more in the last couple of days, I feel like Inner Sight badly needs one.

Overall this are good recomendations, i will prefer the unique crossbow aspect to also apply to melee skills to open up it is usability

Great topic as I already told you.

Gladly we got the buff to No Witnesses, as you suggested.
Will this be enough for RoA and WoH?

Edit: my bad, probably my wishes and something that would have been good Ultimate wise, made me remember No Witnesses instead of Exploit Weaknesses. I’ve just realised it on PTR.
Let’s see also how tempering and greater affixes can help.

As we discussed privately and on Discord, WoH is not that impacting as unique, especially being on an amulet.
As an aspect or as an unique in another slot or with a buff to the unique power, it would be better.
Being on amulet and with those affixes, the power is not enough:

  1. no chance to have an increased passive (3 points more in Exploit or Frigid Finesse or Weapon Mastery is really, really impacting),
  2. no chance for defensive options (yes, you can work around that with paragon but other uniques, EG Flickerstep, make all more complicated and an uber like Shako can even become a curse because of armor).
    It would be ok to be squishy for a really strong power, but this is not the case of WoH.

Even not liking at all Gauntlet (better contents like the Pit, Challenge Rifts from D3 or even Fractured Plane from DI), there is also what related to Shrine Buff Duration that imho should not work at all there.
There are several classes with build defining uniques on amulet (Dolmen Stone, WoH, etc.) and also with unique boots really complementary, so no chance to have that affix.
Hopefully new itemization should solve it.

Last but not least, I add something else we discussed.
Inner Sight and Preparation seem half developed compared to Combo Points.
Hopefully the new patch will help.

For sure I have to say that, when I play Druid, it’s really a fresh air, night and day in terms of creativity on uniques, aspects and paragon.
Druid has a lot more build freedom and several useful options to test and play around, especially as aspects, while as rogues we have limited ones with many borderline useless.
It seems also there is a lot less creativity on aspects and uniques that alter - modify a skill or a mechanic. We get often just buffs.
Finally there is something new with this patch (Flurry, Barrage, Rapid Fire) but having something like Boulder druid (Metamorphic Stone, Dolmen Stone, etc.) or the new Fractured Winterglass for sorc would be fun.
Something turning a Basic Skill, a Core one, Smoke Grenade or Caltrops into a sort of Strafe would be fun.

So Imho, in terms of class design, they should hazard and explore more for rogue’s itemization, skills and passive skills.