Warning: Long and detailed critique covering most problem points for Rogues
Introduction
Right now, when you watch videos from streamers like wudijo or rax, they’d often say Rogues are now the ‘most balanced’ class. Let’s be real – they’re the worst class right now. Who wants to play a ‘balanced’ class. Just looking at the leaderboards right now, and it’s easy to see the popularity of each class, not to mention where the average performance of each class is. Not just looking at the top players, since they’re rightfully there since they did put in a lot of time to get there. But for most average rogue players, trying to get a score of 300k points is not easy at all.
Background
With skyhunter, my rogue has a crit dmg of 800%+, and I still don’t find it that easy to clear a T100 NMV compared to a Necro or Druid. I’m not referring to Barbs or Sorcs cos they are obviously in a different tier altogether. The current power level of Necro and Druid should be the ideal state for all classes. Generally, when you finally get your build online, then you have that satisfaction that ‘ah I can now finally breeze through the T100’. That’s the ultimate achievement you get from grinding and farming to getting the gear you want. For rogues – I just don’t get the same satisfaction. I’ve played rogues every season, and even in the current season, played on hardcore, and completed T100s. But I wouldn’t say it was easy. When I switch to Necro – omg, it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Rogue’s Core Identity
Rogue’s identity was supposed to be the fast lethal assassin type, or a ranger (sniper) type killing enemies from afar. Is rogue the fastest class right now? Nope, its completely displaced by Sorc (infinite teleports) and Barbs (charge with 2 sec cooldowns). Even necros and druids can keep up with rogues rather easily now. How about being a lethal assassin type?
Shadow Step
Well shadow step does little to no damage and its mainly used as an unstoppable mechanic. On controller, shadow step is almost a dead skill since it’s so difficult to aim at the correct target consistently, often teleporting you to the wrong enemy. In open world, it might have some uses as you can shadow step across cliffs, or rooms, but it still requires accurate targeting which is unreliable on controller. Adding ranks to shadow step doesn’t reduce its cooldown. The Ravager’s aspect looks nice, but cos of its low damage, you can’t kill an enemy with shadow step alone – honestly, this doesn’t need to be an aspect, and should be one of the advanced skill tree points.
Concealment
Concealment has a 20 second cooldown, and yes, they have introduced an aspect to reduce its cooldown – but you need to kill an elite to do it, and it does take up a defensive aspect slot, which rogues seriously needs it for other aspects. Anyone who runs concealment likely doesn’t fully upgrade it, and this aspect should have just been one of the skill tree points as well – killing an elite reduces its cooldown. Like guaranteeing crit strike or making it vulnerable – no one uses conceal for that purpose since there are other more consistent ways to do either abilities.
Dash
Dash is a nice mobility skill, but again, its cooldown is too long. There is the aspect (quickening fog) that reduces its cooldown by the number of enemies the smoke grenades hits – but that’s a problem. The smoke grenades only release at the end of Dash. It’s very difficult to estimate where exactly Dash would end, so if you end Dash further along where there aren’t any enemies (often moving passed them), you won’t get the cooldown reduction. It’s also anti-synergistic with the Skill Tree’s Methodical Dash, which requires you to CC enemies first, and then Dash through them. Rogues need a unique similar to the Oculus, to give Dash like 10 Ranks and reduce its cooldown to 2-3 seconds. That’s when Rogues will actually be fun to play. Right now, Metamorphosis feels much more consistent compared to Dash and Shadow step, and it gives 2.5 seconds of unstoppable – CRAZY!!
On a rogue, I find myself using metamorphosis rather than using the Ravager’s aspect for more consistent unstoppable uptime and for more consistent mobility. What’s wrong here??
Range Rogue
When you consider Barrage, Rapid Fire and penetrating shot, do you know what’s the Best Ranged Skill – something that can pierce and have a wide AoE, and doesn’t require so much setup like having shadow imbuements – Bone Spear. Seriously, Bone Spear doesn’t require any setup whatsoever – just cast, it pierces and returns back, which can also pierce (with aspect). Omg, what?? It doesn’t need basic skills to ramp its dmg? Nope. So I know that there’s a new aspect that makes Barrage pierce, and I’m glad for that. But let’s see how the damage is.
Caltrops – I actually think Caltrops is a good skill, just need to increase the size of its base radius. I do use it more for a physical ranged rogue. Just need to improve the cast animation time.
Smoke grenades – its also good, just need to improve the auto-targeting on controller.
Poison trap
Again, the base radius needs to be larger. And please, don’t have stats that say reduce the arm time for Traps by 0.1-0.2 seconds. Maybe in Season 0, when the game was a lot slower, taking 1-2 seconds to arm traps may have been a thing. But now that we are in a state of the game where its all about speed (Gauntlet and the Pit), taking 1.5 sec to arm a trap is just ridiculous.
Dark Shroud
OMG, one of those skills that when you read it, its like so strong – 40% DR. But in reality, it’s a dead skill. The fact that flies, that deal no damage but slows can remove all your dark shrouds in 1-2 seconds, on a skill that has a 20 second cooldown. Is anyone still using this skill? The umbrous aspect was a nice way to gain dark shrouds, but again, do you see any sane person using this skill now? Why? Cos its so easy for the shrouds to be removed. Quite literally, an insect bite will remove a dark shroud. But to get it back, I need a marksman skill to critically strike AND be a lucky hit. They are now buffing the aspect of volatile shadows, but let’s see how that goes.
Imbuements
Most of rogues’ DMG has largely been locked behind imbuements. The issue is that Rogues NEED to use imbuements just to have damage that is comparable to most other classes which simply casts their core skills and are not locked behind long cooldowns. Of course, they came up with this whole gimmick of using the concealment aspect with the Nightstalker glyph. Yeah, so… a lot of prep work, where other classes just Casts. I had a friend, who for the first time, tried to level up a rogue, and he had levelled up a Barb, Sorc and Druid this season alone, but now thinking of giving up on the rogue just cos of how difficult it is to constantly ‘setup’ for kills. So much setup for low payoff – leads to unsatisfying gameplay.
Twisting blades
For a long time, Twisting blades poison imbuement was the dominant build for rogues with the bursting venoms aspect. We knew the blade dancer aspect as well as the bursting venom was bugged, but that did give this build its damage. However, the main issue with this was that it goes against the intended playstyle of twisting blades. Twisting blades was supposed to be a ‘hit and run’ playstyle, which is why, the combo points bonus was to give movement speed. You stab once, and run/dash away, and when the blades return back, it will deal AoE damage. But cos of the bursting venoms aspect, TB became a stand-still-mouse-button-mashing skill. So most players never really played twisting blades optimally to begin with (in the intended way). Rather, cos of the bugs, the optimal way was to simply stand still and mash away.
Fire Imbuement
When you think of arrows, what elements immediately come to mind that would best combine well with Arrows – wouldn’t the obvious choice be FIRE?? Am I wrong here? It’s just weird they went for Shadow, Cold and Poison, and left out the most obvious elemental synergy with arrows. I guess in the world of sanctuary, no one ever thought of using Fiery arrows…?
Infusion Glyph – For a long time, the bonus of this glyph was to reduce the imbuement skill cooldown by a whopping 0.5 seconds. WOW! From 13 seconds to 12.5 seconds. They finally increased it to 1 second. WOW WOW!!
0.5 seconds – only for Rogues. For some reason, Blizzard thinks that Rogues are so fast, that stunning enemies for 0.5 seconds is such a big deal. Again, for the most part, the grenades, as well as the stun from shadow imbuement just gave a stun of 0.5 Seconds! They are finally increasing the stun duration to a whopping 1 second for grenades. This is weird, because for the necros, the baseline is that it stuns for is 1 second from shadow dmg. Even the shadow skeletal mages can stun for 2 whole seconds, same for decrepify.
Attack Speed
You would think the Rogues would implicitly be able to attack faster, but nope. In fact, for most Rogue builds, we are forced to run 2 aspects that boost attack speed. Accelerating and Rapid aspect, and in this way, likely diminishes Rogue’s damage potential since 2 out of the 6/7 offensive aspects is dedicated to attack speed alone. It’s just weird cos for my Bone spear necro, and pulverize druid, I don’t run any attack speed aspects and it works just fine, and performs much better than rogue.
Basic Skills in Endgame builds
Following from above, most Rogue endgame builds still rely on using combo points which requires casting basic skills. When playing with other classes, generally, the endgame builds all transition out of using Basic skills completely. It frees up a skill slot, but more importantly, it increases the DPS cos less time is spent on casting basic skills, which deal little to no dmg, and just on casting the Core skills constantly. Again, this results in a net DPS loss for Rogues. With the changes to Inner Sight and Preparation, I am hoping for Basic-less builds that would yield higher overall DPS.
Most Endgame builds rely on using the Ring of Starless skies, which optimally requires you to just spam core skills or any resource spending skill continuously. If you’re forced to cast basic skills more often, then its difficult to ramp up the dmg to gain the full 40% dmg buff from the ring. The new Hectic aspect does synergize well with the combo point rogue - however, in the endgame right now, the best performing builds overall are those that don’t use basic skills at all.
Ultimate Skills
Simply put, Rogues have the worst set of Ultimate Skills in the entire game. For the other classes, yes, not all the Ultimate skills are of equal value, but there is usually at least one that is quite significant that you would build around it. For Druids, I’ve played with Grizzly rage on my pulverize druid – and yes, its super impactful. It can last between 10 to 20 seconds, giving lots of DR, and with the aspect, up to 200% increased dmg. That’s significant! For Necros, bone storm, again, lasts for 10 seconds, gives 20% CR, 15% DR. And with the aspect, gives an infinite barrier. These are all so impactful. And for Rogues?? A shadow Clone, who for some reason, is deliberately left out of the updated companions scaling, and still does insignificant damage. The Rain of Arrows, which does little to no damage and doesn’t hit the enemies right in front of you. And there’s death trap, which can be useful, for that short duration that its up, but its simply not consistent and sustainable. Only recently have players started using Shadow clone – but wait for it- only because it gives 5 seconds of unstoppable for Tibaults Will.
Rogue Uniques
With the exception of condemnation and now Skyhunter, everything else is just bad. The writhing Band of trickery will finally get its cooldown reduced to 6 seconds from 12, now 10. But the shadow dmg it provides is paltry. Just think about it. A single X’fal proc gives upwards of 40k base dmg. While this ring, which only activates once every 6 seconds, gives up to 14k base dmg. And that’s going to take up a ring slot?? And scoundrel leathers and eyes in the dark, and windforce and eagle horn?? Who designed all these??
In Conclusion – In season 4, I’m looking forward to playing Necro 
The entire Rogue skill tree needs to be reviewed, because its not just about the damage its dealing, but rather its playstyle is too restrictive. Rogue needs to live up to its name. It needs more mobility, more stealth, more implicit attack speed and faster traps. Speed Speed Speed!!! And fix or revamp the ultimates altogether.