Biggest problem I’ve seen with rogue is regarding imbuements and their damage vs uptime in comparison to the rest of your attacks which are physical. Unless you’re full sending intp 3 imbuements, its a fraction of your attack uptime.
I think a simple solution to this is to get rid of the 9% CC% to imbuement passive talent and add an imbuement like “physical attunement” that buffs physical damage and/or marksman/cutthroat damage to smooth out damage spikes and down time.
This’ll also allow for a significant boost to builts that don’t use imbuements which are already competitive with how mediocre rogue is right now in comparison to the rest. As of right now, there’s no way to buff physical damage within the skill tree, which in my opinion, is a huge miss.
Every other stem of the talent tree has an ‘opt out’ option except for imbuements. If Blizzard intended on imbuements being a crucial part of rogue gameplay, then they should be toggles and not use charges. Otherwise, let us buff physical damage to smooth out the damage spiking with the same abilities.
I really REALLY miss Season 1 Malignant Heart that made ALL Imbueable skills to have a chance to be imbued with all three imbuements…
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I don’t see a real problem here to be honest. Imbuements only last for 2 casts and require skill points and slots on the skill bar, there are costs to using imbuements in exchange of getting some extra burst damage power. You could in theory use caltrops or smoke grenade to amplify your physical damage instead, and for the paragon, get chip and pride.
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I have a feeling like you’re misunderstanding how imbuements work. Abilities that can be imbued are physical inherently unless you modify the damage type with an imbuement. That then changes its damage type for however many charges are available. This means that if you stack +physical% damage, it’ll only buff those abilities when not imbued, and vice versa while imbued with cold,poison,shadow respectively.
This is a problem for itemization and gameplay, since imbuements are on a relatively long cooldown relative to the speed of gameplay.
Theres also a problem with dash and shadow step taking imbuement charges that do relatively mediocre damage in comparison to a core ability.
Overall, the charge based system simply makes itemization less impactful and slows down gameplay. The only argument against making it a toggle is an assumption that it would make rogues OP, but I disagree with that based on poison TB’s performance which has an infinite imbuement gameplay loop already.
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I’m not, perhaps I’m just not understanding what this “problem” is if what I said doesn’t really explain it?
Normally you don’t stack +physical damage anyway unless you know you’re going a full physical build where otherwise you would be running Infusion (+imbued skill damage), Efficacy (imbuement potency), eldritch bounty (20% damage bonus, but is a stretch to get to) and for shadow imbuement Nightstalker that refreshes your SI cooldown quite regularly. It’s the calculus of going for more up-front burst damage or more consistent damage.
Mainly against bosses where you can stand still in the bursting venoms pool, but not for speeding through dungeons. Shadow imbuement refreshes quite quickly this season though with resistant assailant. Both require varying degrees of aspects/glyphs/CDR and the correct skill usage rotation to make those work, and are not inherent in the skills.
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You’re still not providing a reason why it shouldn’t be a toggle. The problem being the nature of putting a core gameplay mechanic on a relatively long cooldown and with a short amount of charges, which can also be consumed by your mobility which do substantially less damage.
Still, I ask specifically, why is it not simply a toggle? So you’re either doing purely imbuement (non-physical) damage or physical damage for any imbued ability.
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I don’t see the need to fix something that isn’t really broken. Reasoning already explained above.
Would not mind if they brought the Vile Apothecary as a ring, Sorc got Tals, and the decoy ring isn’t really useful.
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Decoy and also nerfed its internal CD. IIRC, it was 5 seconds in S1 not 12 seconds.
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Aspects of elements basically gives you what you want if you time imbuements around the rotation. And when imbuements go off you get the physical damage ‘imbuement’.
The real problem is despite all of this, CD with Barb shouts are shorter and more powerful than rogue imbuements in current state.
I’d like to see an aspect that switches how imbuements work.
Aspect of Imbuements (name TBD): Imbuements are now toggles and add X (5-10) energy cost per-attack. Multiple imbuements can be toggled, the cost is additive. Each subsequent attack made while toggled on increases that elements damage by 3% stacking up to Y% (15-21, multiplicative dmg)x.
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I wasted much time posting about this when they announced incoming MH items/powers from S1. I asked and asked, reasoned, pleaded and might have even begged.
Fell on deaf dev ears.
Instead we got Trickery with…
It was severely nerfed(though admittedly it was a bit strong in S1).
It was also changed to no longer affect Elites - which iirc I’m pretty sure it did.
Swap Trickery for a Vile Apothecary Ring and make Pestilent Points apply to ALL Basic Skills and I’ll be a happy camper.
Imbuements actually shouldn’t have a up time or down time, just be on or aff like wow rogue poisoning.
That way could just make builds and our damage more balanced around this and potentially free up a slot on the skill bar
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I don’t see a problem with Imbuing, of course if I could have a better cooldown it would be much better, I have 10 seconds at the moment and I attack with shadows and ice, hardly anything survives two rapid fire attacks, only enemies with extra life, then I have to retreat .
To have good reducers you need to have good amulets, which for other classes is not necessary. But nothing in this game makes much sense, so they improved the glyph from 0.5s to 1s. It’s sad. Meanwhile the wizard has infinite teleportation, barbarians use non-stop screams, etc.
From what I tried with elemental damage, physical damage without imbue is what makes my rogue deal the highest numbers simply because there’s a lot of affixes that becomes useless and I can aim but raw, direct damage.
I tested it on every boss, there’s no mistakes, a physical build has a much higher direct damage output.
Now I’m not saying it’s the best build ever, it’s just about numbers related to straight direct damage.
A mechanic such as Bleeding damage with a different approach concerning how a monster is affected, not only a DoT but it could slow the movement speed or attack rate.
Deadly Strike similar to D2 (The D4 Windforce has it) could be implanted.
I’m probably in the minority as a Poison/Flurry rogue, but I too would love to see imbuements incorporated in a more passive way. I spend a good deal of time looking for poison puddles so I can activate a skill that allows me to output what isn’t even a good amount of damage all things considered.
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