Hello I’m a lvl 99 rogue have talked to several level 100 rogues tb and pen and have concluded this is the absolute best way to fix the class and make it fun/interesting or at least viable relative to the perma fortified/unstoppable tornado hucking werewolves.
Rogue right now at level 100 pushing high nightmare dungeons has one central problem that causes it to be rather underpowered than other classes especially in melee builds. There are a few hardcore streamers who would say otherwise and that the class is “balanced” though I have yet to see any of them push 75+ rifts or play a melee rogue without dying/concluding the class is not supposed to be melee and that all of it’s melee abilities are somehow balanced although in nm dungeon tier push theyre the most vastly underperforming spec other than summon necro or ww barb.
As of now pen shot rogue is not overpowered and with decent skill can breeze through 85+ tier dungeons. It has a wide range of utility and the “umbrous” legendary aspect enables them to stack an abundance of utility on their action bar. Where as with melee rogue either utilizing flurry or twisting blades with death trap or poison trap or poison imbue immensely struggles with anything past 75+ let alone 70.
I have found two potential fixes to the Rogue to balance the class out. One is simple though much worse the other is a little complex though far greater.
Solution 1: Make the umbrous aspect proc on cutthroat critical hits as opposed to marksman critical hits.
This would balance out rogue in that builds that are already safe at ranged distance will actually have to choose between poison trap or dark shroud as a defensive instead of being enabled to have both unecessaritly consistent uptime on dark shroud while being able to slot 2 other defensive utilites.
It would also give melee rogue an actual chance at actually engaging in melee range in higher tier nm dungeons without the immense/rapid collapsing damage that comes with the quick removal of each dark shroud orb.
However this fix does not fix the underlying issue with the class which is that while not having access to fortify, Rogue mainstat passive defence “dodge chance” just plain sucks as a stat in diablo 4.
Solution 2: Bring a “glancing blow” (poe unrelated) mechanic to dodge chance that works similiarly to how “lucky hit chance” within diablo 4 already performs yet in a defensive way rather than offensive.
Dodge right now gives (with even a large amount of dexterity) a very low chance to negate all damage taken to “dodge” the damage. Buffing dexterity’s scaling with this defensive ability too much will make the class broken or simply a complete diceroll on weather or not you get 1 shot. As it stands, it is just an oversimple poor mechanic.
Instead of something so overly simplistic dodge can be a 2 part system.
It firstly has X% higher chance to cause the attack to be a “glancing blow” which causes the attack to deal X% reduced damage (which could also scale with dex) (leave this to blizzard to figure out the proper numbering/scaling).
Then within a “glancing blow” proc, there is then Y% chance for the Rogue to completely dodge the attack and take no damage at all–working exactly the same as lucky hit performs which also makes sense with the Rogues lore/persona.
This will actually encourage a Rogue-like play style as there is still with the right numerical balancing a high chance to be hit and take full damage from an attack yeat this chance can be negated with dexterous gameplay, instead of how dodge is in its current state which is rather a useless mechanic that surves no other purpose than throwing on our boots sometimes if there is nothing else to put there.
Also other Rogue active skills could also synergize with this dodge mechanic. Instead of dark shroud giving a flat % damage reduction per active orb it could instead give the rogue a 100% or X% higher chance to recieve a “glancing blow” upon taking damage which then would consume an orb per each time damage is taken.
Honestly it would probably take a lot of work to implement such a change to the dodge mechanic in the game though I believe it would actually make the rogue viable without the class being either completely overpowered or forced into ranged play at higher difficulties in the game and would actually make the dodge chance stat in general worth slotting on gear instead of being a completely worthless stat that nobod wants at all.
Let me know your thoughts on this and please comment if you like the idea.