I can’t participate in the PTR at this time, so I am putting some recommendations here based on what I have seen so far from the PTR. Hopefully, the Devs will see some of the feedback especially for some of the damage skill affixes they have removed.
PARAGON NODES
-
No Witnesses; It looks like the Devs have removed “Ultimate Skill Damage” as an affix, which means you can only get it from Gems, Word of Hakan, and Flicker Step. While they did increase the amount of Ultimate Skill Damage you can obtain on gems, its not enough to help the No Witness paragon node. I recommend increasing the damage the Node gives or increasing the amount of “Ultimate Skill Damage” that gear like Word of Hakan gives or adding them to certain gear; see “Eyes in the Dark” in the Uniques section.
-
Leyrana’s Instinct; Unless, I am missing something since I can’t play the PTR myself, but getting “Core Skill Damage” is REALLY hard now. It looks like it is only possible on Windforce and Condemnation. And if you are using Condemnation, then you aren’t using Inner Sight or Leyrana. I would remove the Core Skill Damage and have it provide a regular damage multiplier.
UNIQUES
After looking at the PTR, I have seen some Rogue Uniques that have gotten better and some that have fallen off hard. To start not having the the ability to add at least 1 Temper hurts a lot of Uniques; specifically the Unique weapons as the Temper abilities on weapons are really good. If adding Temper abilities to Uniques will never be a thing, some Uniques may need better skills
-
Eyes in the Dark; The skill has non-conditional Damage Reduction (DR). This is GREAT now that Diablo is making DR harder to obtain. In a build that uses Death Trap, Masterworking for DR could be desired. However, I am not sure if its still worth the slot especially without Tempering. Given that Eyes in the Dark is an Ultimate Skill, I recommend replacing “Damage to Enemies affected by Traps” with “Ultimate Skill Damage”. By doing this, the pants combined with No Witnesses will increase the players damage by 10-15% when fully maxed out. With the rare DR affix, Eyes in the Dark would become a nice Unique to consider for Death Trap builds.
-
Scoundrel’s Leather; Has conditional DR in “Damage Reduction to Enemies affected by Traps”, which is great but needs a bit more defenses if Tempering is not an option. I would replace any of the other affixes with Total Armor. Last time the main ability of this gear was tested, it would only cast 1 trap per Full Inner Sight. IMO, the ability should at least be casting 1 trap every 1.5 seconds that Inner Sight is full. If you look at the traps rogue has, a random Trap cast isn’t that strong unless Death Trap is constantly being spammed.
-
Grasp of Shadow; With Masterworking, the gear on paper could be fine since it has the "Rank to all Core Skills affix. The issue is that Shadow Clone just doesn’t perform well. I don’t know what the root cause of this, whether its animation, sources of damage, server effects, etc, but Shadow Clone is just undesirable to have. If Shadow Clone is fixed, this Unique could be okay to use.
-
Cowl of the Nameless; With the Season 4 changes, this helm may end up being really really nice via its affixes. However, the main ability does nothing against bosses that aren’t staggered. It would be great if it had at least a 5% lucky hit chance against bosses.
-
Word of Hakan; I think the amulet is somewhat solid but needs a few tweaks like increasing Ultimate Skill Damage base from 63% to 100%.
-
Writhing Band of Trickery; love the changes to its main affect, but against a Tempered ring, it does not compete. Increasing the amount of Maximum Life it gives by alot or having an affix that adds ranks to all Subterfuge skills could help it.
Weapon Uniques overall REALLY need Temper effects added to them as its hard to compete with a Tempered weapon, so I will mainly focus on the weapons that would not be great even if Unique weapons could be Tempered
-
Asheara’s Khanjar; Unfortunately, the new world of Diablo 4, made this Unique near useless. There are so many ways to get attack speed. A dagger with the Accelerating Aspect us way better than Asheara. Unfortunately, I think the weapon will need a complete rework and doe something completely different. I think Twisting Blades is the only skill that doesn’t have Unique or two aspects, so maybe make into a Unique for that skill.
-
Eaglehorn; I would take “Physical Damage” affix off as that limits the flexibility of Rogue builds as it doesn’t incentive using Imbuements. Replace it with a regular Damage affix or Attack speed. I would also make it makes Penetrating Shot ALWAYS bounce of walls. However, I would lower the damage from 40-60% it gives to Penetrating Shot to 5-10%.
-
Windforce; Like “Ultimate Skill Damage”, “Core Skill Damage” looks to be harder to obtain in Season 4, so the value of Leyrana’s Instinct is still questionable. Increasing both “Core Skill Damage” and “Vulnerable Damage” by alot could open up Windforce as being a solid option for Inner Sight and/or Victimize builds. That being said, I still recommend the changes I put for Leyrana and replacing "Core Skill Damage with a difference affix.
ULTIMATES
As a whole, Rogues, just don’t care about their Ultimates outside of maybe using Death Trap as a vehicle to reset the cooldown of their skills.
-
Arrow Rain; Even with some of the Tempered affixes that helps this Ultimate, I think reducing the cooldown from 55 to 50 or 52 would help it a lot.
-
Death Trap; This skill is overall great but usually its damage starts to fall off late game. I recommend increasing the damage to 280% or 300%.
-
Shadow Clone; as mentioned when talking about Grasp of Shadow, Shadow Clone doesn’t not perform well. The Devs have stated it takes everything from Rogues but in practice, players have yet to see this in actual performance. Ideally, whatever the issue is, the Devs fix it and resolve it. Otherwise, I recommend just reworking it into a skill that performs similar to Demon Hunter’s Vengeance skill in Diablo 3 or the Tyrael’s Might Uber Unique that was just introduced in season 4 for Diablo 4. Overall, I think many players would rather have 10% extra damage for 15 seconds than whatever the current Shadow Clone is trying to do.
-
Close Quarter’s Combat; Increase the multiplier to 25%.
-
Precision; Increase the multiplier to 20%.
-
Exposure; Increase the grenade damage to 50%.
-
Momentum; Momentum having Damage Reduction does increase its value for Rogues in Season 4; however, the damage loss compared to picking another Ultimate Passive is too huge. Its great that you can survive, but does it matter if you reach the boss and can’t kill it in a timely manner. I think adding an effect like 3-5% damage per stack of Momentum could go a long way for it. It should obviously still be weaker damage-wise than the other Ultimate Passives, but it shouldn’t have a large damage loss cost.
-
Victimize; I would remove the Lucky Hit chance and adjust the 50% chance accordingly. I feel that having the gear for BOTH Vulnerable Damage and Luck Hit Chance is way too limiting in build creativity.