Intro :
Hello, first of all I would like to add that Rogue has been one of the funnyest class to play at release with at that time the fastest paced gameplay, quite simple to play with a correct skill ceiling around the different Core Skills, Traps and Mobility Skills.
I’ve been playing Rogue since the closed Beta and at every season and I’m starting to see a very big gameplay issue coming from the Class Design that will make this class worse and worse at every season regardless of the new Legendary Aspects or Unique items added.
I used to play a lot of Hack’n Slash and what the most part of the community enjoy to do are mainly : Speedfarming and Pushing Harder Content
The purpose of this Thread is to trace back the foundation of the class that have a really bad design and prevent the class from shinning or being fun as the game evolves.
Skills :
First I’d like to define what a good skill design is to me.
Any Skill coming from the Skill Tree should be usable in speedfarming and pushing, it should be able to face groups of Lesser Enemies, Elites and a single Boss aside from the Buffs, Mobility Skills or Defensive Skills.
Let’s start with the category of skills that has the biggest issues : Traps and Imbuements.
Traps :
The issue with Traps are :
-The Traps are not designed for Speedfarming.
-Long Arm Time (Nobody wants to waste a precious Affix on their gear to reduce the arm time just make a base 0.1 second arm time)
-Long Cooldowns and no Charges.
-Small Area of Effects (Nobody want to waste affix on area of effect to fix this either)
Caltrops : This skills has a big design issue, it is both a mobility skill and a trap that function more as a debuff to hinder enemies mobility and boost your damage.
First it’s solely made for Ranged builds which is a horrible design, it does close to no damage at all, it doesn’t feel like a trap, it has absolutely no use in speedfarming where you are 10 kms afar from your caltrops few seconds after landing them.
My Solution : Entirely Rework the skill and move it to the Subterfuge Category or just make an entire “Trap” Category in the Skill Tree, getting inspirations from previous Diablo games it could be a Cold trap that release two rotating Chakrams that instantly Freeze Enemies, activating when they walk on it with 3 Charges and like 5s cooldown.
You could add to it a Legendary Aspect that increase the Charges to 6 and add an additional effect like 4 small chakrams expanding in an X Cross. With some Cooldown reduction on gear it could become a fun skill that can be defensive by Freezing or helping to stagger the boss while doing correct area damage.
Also add a node [ x ] 50% increased damage on Elites/Boss to help the skill shine because you cannot freeze a Boss.
Poison Traps : Poison Traps currently is very bad in every situations, it’s a DoT trap which make it very very bad at speedfarming, it doesn’t do a thing on Boss neither.
My Solution : First Give Poison Traps 4 Charges and 3 seconds base cooldown.
Now when enemies walk on it the Trap make a Poison Nova that instantly deal like 120% Weapon Damage and 480% Poison Damage over 8 seconds. Rework it’s Legendary Aspect to add a cool thing like when the trap explodes it release 4 small poison traps that do 40% of the original damage or something. The skill will be fun in speedfarming and remain strong against Boss too. Also increase the base AoE by 25% please.
Death Trap : This is a very cool trap and the only trap that somehow work for now has been very fun for speedfarming, It mainly suffers from it’s very long cooldown, not having any Legendary Aspect and having a completely useless Unique. It’s very good for pulling enemies together and could be the cornerstone of a Trap build. It also suffers from it’s very low base damage and the fact it doesn’t have “Skill Rank”.
My Solution : Add a Legendary Aspect to make it spammable and increase it’s damage, rework the Unique Pants to make it a good skill at killing Boss like spawning an horrendous monster that hit like a truck for 5x the trap damage only on Boss. Increase the base damage to 1000% weapon damage as it is an ultimate skill to make it viable.
Imbuements :
The issue with Imbuements are :
-Only work for the two next cast of Core Skills, this is so dumb, it’s the worst design I’ve ever seen on any arpg, when you play with like 200% attack speed increase you’re casting 3 Core Skills per second it’s just not viable at all.
-It has an abyssmal long cooldown that doesn’t match the fact it only works for two attacks.
-It doesn’t bring anything to the gameplay at all.
Let’s be honest, alright you’re gonna see enemies poisoned by your attacks, see small poison pools, some shadow explosions or enemies getting frozen but… compared to other class the visual effect is so poor, it’s just en enchantement, it doesn’t feel good to use at all and doesn’t add a fun gameplay.
-Poison Imbuement is good on Boss but is very bad at speedfarming.
-Shadow imbuement is good for speedfarming and pointless on Boss.
-Cold Imbuement doesn’t even have a legendary aspect, it’s just weak and useless.
And most Importantly, make Imbuement a DURATION SKILL instead of the two next attacks, for example all our attacks are imbued for like 5 seconds.
My Solution : Merge all the Imbuements into ONE SINGLE SKILL with the options in the skill tree to have a basic “Physical imbuement with bleeding” and then choose to evolve it in Poison, Cold or Shadow imbuement. This amazing idea would free 2 SKILL SLOTS in the Skill Tree for new gameplay additions to the Rogue !
Basic Skills :
Right now Puncture is just too good, please don’t nerf it, just make the other basic attacks as good and as fun to use 
Examples :
-Bladeshift making you invisible on top of the increased move speed ! (Stealth)
-Energizing Strike needs a complete rework considering Inner Sight, if we have Puncture for Damage, Bladeshift for mobility, we can have another basic skill for buffing like increasing Crit Rate, Attack speed like Heartseeker but Melee.
-Heartseeker just needs a legendary aspect to make it do decent damage and ricochet.
-Forcefull Arrow also needs a legendary aspect why not a row of arrows that knockback ?
Core Skills :
With the recent addition of Legendary Aspects and Unique items, all Core Skills seems viable and fun to play as of the last PTR. Special mention to Flurry which I don’t like the grenade gameplay at all personally.
Mobility Skills :
You guys at Blizzard got it all wrong if you think we ever wanted to have Dash as a Damage dealing ability with the shadow clone Aspect, just make it spammable and we’ll be happy.
The True forgotten Hero here is Shadow Step ! Ever heard about Flicker Strike on PoE ?
That’s what we are looking for, this skill needs change in it’s nodes to reduce the cooldown by 2-3 seconds every time it kills and enemy, it needs a rework on it’s aspect to automatically cast on the neareast ennemy from our Cursor and to automatically recast on kill on the next nearest enemy from the cursor. This would definitely create one of the most fun build to ever exist on the Rogue. It also needs some Aspect to increase it’s damage to make it a great single target burst skill.
Other Skills :
Concealment and Dark Shroud are good defensive tools the issue is Dark Shroud being based on Dodhe which is a horrible mechanic.
Smoke Grenade : This skill has horrible design, poor AoE and doesn’t bring anything, I wouldn’t mind it being replaced by a more appealing skill that really brings somehing to the gameplay.
Shadow Clone : This Skill is clunky and looks like it doesn’t work as intended, the whole shadow clone Aspect Series or Uniques doesn’t feel fun to use, in another way I really love the idea of the shadow clone if it was really working, copying skills exactly like our character do and do similar damage. Either fix it or remove it for something that will work.
Rain of Arrows : This Skill is simply the best Skill of the entire Rogue skill tree, the sound design, the visuals, everything about this skill is amazing. Except it’s damage…
Increase the skill damage to 700% per wave, add a legendary aspect to this skill, entirely rework the unique Amulet Word of Hakan, make it great !
A lot of passive nodes needs a rework, especially the Ultimates Nodes that feels totally unbalanced to each other. Changing the Imbuements or traps would require a rework of the passives nodes anyway.
Stats :
Dexterity and Dodge Rate…
Remove the Dodge Rate mechanic, it is horrible, it never worked on any arpg ever.
Make Dexterity give Armor like Diablo 3 or Damage Reduction if you prefer to make it different. This would help the Rogue survivability.
Legendary Aspects and Rogue Design :
Rogue is the most know class on any game for it’s amazing mobility, fast paced-gameplay and CRITICAL DAMAGE GAMEPLAY BASED !
However every class seems to benefit by the most amazing Legendary Aspects granting them huge boost of 50% Attack Speed like Esu’s Ferocity Aspect or Critical Chance/Damage Aspect like Elementalist Aspect for the Sorcerer, Druids has Natural Balance, CrashStone… Necromancer has Grasping Veins…Barbs have Dire whirlwind… What does the Rogue have ? Nothing.
So just start making decent Aspects, Rogue should be the easyest class with which reach the Attack Speed Cap and the 100% Critical Rate Chance.
Add one Aspect that grant a global 50% attack Speed.
Add several Aspects that grant Critical Chance and Critical Damage.
A lot of Legendary Aspects needs a rework or to be removed and replaced by more interesting Aspects that improve the gameplay here is the list of the aspects that doesn’t bring anything to the Rogue Class to me :
-Artful Initiative (Grenades have poor AoE and are not fun)
-Bursting Venoms (We shouldn’t need an Aspect to do this)
-Cheat’s (It doesn’t work on Boss…)
-Elusive Menace (This is a big joke, weak and based on Dodge)
-Enshrouding (Does standing still look fun in speedfarming ?)
-Escape Artist’s (Long cooldown, Dodge based…)
-Explosive Verve (Useless or make it a mobility aspect and increase move speed to 50%)
-Imitated Imbuement (Clunky Shadow Clones)
-Infiltrator’s (Literally rework this)
-Lethal Dusk (Melee needs damage reduction not sustain they already have)
-Mangler’s (There is literally a Generic Aspect better than this, useless vs Boss…)
-Noxious Ice (Poison is for Boss, Can you chill Boss ? No Freeze Boss ? No…)
-Opportunist’s (Grenades…)
-Quickening Fog (Smoke Grenade…)
-Ravager’s (Literally rework this)
-Ravenous (Pointless)
-Shadowslicer (Shadow Clone, No builds use this)
-Siphoned Victuals (Delete this)
-Snap Frozen (Doesn’t work on Boss)
-Surprise (Grenades…)
-Synergy (It needs a rework and… better Synergy 
)
-Trickshot (Just make Penetrating Shot a Row Skill instead of perpendicular shenanigans)
-Trickster’s (Grenades…)
-Toxic Alchemist’s (Weak and useless for speedfarming and for Boss)
-Icy Alchemist’s (Doesn’t work on Boss)
-Frostbitten (Doesn’t work on Boss)
-Volatile Shadows (Might work on melee for speedfarm but mehh)
-Uncanny Treachery (Needs a rework)
-Unstable Imbuements (Weak, needs a rework)
-Vengeful (Biggest joke ever, weakest aspect of the game, Sorcerer laugh with 80% crit aspect kekw)
As you can see 90% of the Rogue Aspects needs to be deleted, replaced or reworked.
While Im at it the whole Paragon Boards needs it too.
Stop doing nodes that doesn’t work on Boss with damage to chilled, damage reduction from slowed, and legendary nodes that increase damage for each crowd controlled enemies when a Boss is legit alone and can’t be CC’ed.
The +33% Combo Points Legendary Node is really weak.
The Imbuement legendary Node is really weak due to how Imbuement works currently.
Do I have to list the Rogue Unique items that doesn’t feel good to use too ?
Well It will be faster to list the one that works :
-Condemnation is good, it just needs better Affixes on it.
-The new Gauntlet for Rapid Fire is good.
That’s it.
Some ideas to get new gameplay additions :
-Seeking Rockets, Lasers Fire Supports
-Rotating Chakrams
-Sentries Casting Core Skills
-Summoning Flying Beasts
-Vengeance Transformations
-Wings like Shadow Power instead of Dark Shroud
-Shadow Realm to isolate enemies
-Assassinations Skills like Death Blow of the Barbarian with high ST DPS
-Gadget’s Traps, Drones, Big Explosions
-Strafe was a very fun skill too.
-A mechanic similar to Rage of the Berzerk of the barbarian to self buff.
To explain why I feel so much things doesn’t work on the Rogue, my Goal is to be able to speedfarm and push harder content like the new Pit and be able to keep up the powercreep while playing Rogue which if it continues will be unplayable and the worst class as the game gets faster and faster, harder and harder.
It’s clear that a lot of skills and Aspects had a bad design for speedfarming or even pushing hard contents with a timer to do time attacks and leaderboards.
I hope Rogue will be one day as fun to play than the new Frozen Orb Sorcerer that we had on the PTR.
Thank you for reading me and add in the comments any addition or changes you would like to see for the Rogue Class !