Every single time Rogue gets good late game, it doesn’t get gently nerfed, it gets crushed until it’s not meta viable.
Previously:
Pogo Rogue. Not even that great, but bizarrely after they buffed the Pogo and having it see some play even in GM, Vanish went to HOF.
Kingsbane Rogue. A meme for a long time, after Raiding Party made it popular in Rastakhan, Leeching Potion got nerfed overnight without any notice.
Quest Rogue. Nerfed 2 times, and having a key support card nerfed (the Giggling nerf finally killed it in Boomsday), and shooting the dead horse again in Uldum for some reason.
Galakrond. Originally they nerfed Apothecary, which the Rogue Galakrond decks were all using. When that didn’t work, Galakrond itself got sniped.
Why bother creating Rogue late game? If it always has to be violently eliminated; both in cases where it was absurdly strong, or barely above meme status?
5 Likes
Vanish didnt fit with the class identity. rouges weakness is supposed to be good at single target removal (assasinate your target) and bad at dealing with lots of threats at the same time. vanish was a really good card for dealing with large boards.
leeching potion in combination with infinite usage and infinite buffs made it too strong to be a permanent effect.
giggling was really strong on its own. quest rouge was just a really strong deck overall and had to be nerfed.
Apothecary was nerfed because a turn 4 give everything in your hand +3/+3 was too strong.
and are you really gonna complain about 0 mana cards
10 Likes
The “problem” lies in the design. Alot of nerfs are usually based around 2 factors.
Winrate
Players sentiments
When we look at decks that get’s nerf as standalone, it usually does something quite ‘ridiculous’. Only when compared to other similar ‘ridiculous’ decks, does it ‘seems’ ok.
But, this will be how Dev see it and probably won’t change in near future.
These are self imposed restrictions.
-No AOE
-No taunts
-No healing/Armor
How do you win the late game without these if you can’t play massive swing turns?
My point is, why create a design for a class that puts it in that situation? And then work around those restrictions and just throw the towel every single time because of the game play pattern it’s causing.
When are the devs going to learn that they have to give Rogue healing, AOE, and/or taunt in some quantity to create a more healthy gameplay pattern?
5 Likes
because every class has its strength and weaknesses, its all part of their class identities. if every class has everything they wouldnt need different classes.
6 Likes
Because they will always test the water to see (or cater to players that like that style) if the masses like it.
It is the same situation, why hunter get limited designs, and probably DH going forward.
Some class just won’t have the diversity that other classes enjoys.
For some reason blizzard doesn’t want Rogue to have a deck that has a strong trick but is perfectly fine with all other classes having a strong trick.
I’m fairly certain rogue will now completely rotate out of the meta with the nerfs. Warriors and priests galore
5 Likes
I am not asking for Void Lords, Greater Healing Potion, and Psychic Scream.
There’s degrees to which you provide a tool other than fantastic and 0.
And it’s not like Rogue can even do aggro nowadays. Cold Blood nerfed, Leeroy HOFed, and Myra’s went to Wild.
5 Likes
and if you wait 2 weeks you will know the new tricks.
1 Like
I already know them because I’ve been playing with a rogue deck that revolves around toggle more than gala.
But its tier 2 at best
so you know every card in the new expansion? please do share 
1 Like
I found your problem.
You seem to be laboring under the impression that Rogue should be able to contend in the late game.
They shouldn’t. They’re a navigate-around-your-single-taunts tempo class. The rest of their stuff is just jank/filler for people who don’t like playing meta decks.
They should atleast revert Leeching Poison nerf. It’s not too strong for Wild. There’s stronger stuff there (see all Reno decks, Hand Buff Paladin etc).
Oh yeah and make Crimson Vial HS card.
1 Like
And yet they haven’t been able to field a tempo deck since Doom in the Tomb.
By your Standards, the devs have failed the class for 6 months.
2 Likes
Meanwhile in Paladin…
Every time they have had those tricks they have been incredibly frustrating to face because their incredible early game shuts out nearly every class. That is why they have those other weaknesses.
1 Like
That’s actually backwards.
Because Rogue lacks AOE, healing, and taunt, any late game strategy must be able to develop overwhelming board pressure to win the game.
Time and time again the community has expressed displeasure at the game play pattern associated with those types of decks, leading to their destruction before they reach rotation.
The devs should make up their mind. Support those archetypes and gameplay patterns, or realign the Rogue class to support different archetypes and gameplay patterns.
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Every single archetype you just listed were the ones that had polarizing matchups where the rogue was like 80 percent to win vs control, and 20 percent to win vs aggro lol.
The problem with rogue late game, is it’s all based around high roll, crazy reward. Like rogue galakrond which gives you literal free amounts of mana by drawing high impact cards. The caverns below which makes 5/5 chargers and lifestealers so they’ll never die and always have enough reach.
So you are saying Rogue should be realigned to support different late game play patterns?
I’d imagine that’s it exactly. It’s not fun to play against a deck that steals the board early and then smashes your face in promptly come turns 6-8 (looking at you, Apothecary). Damage from hand used to be a decent balance, in the times when it wasn’t 30-0 in a single turn or coming out on Turn 10. But that has it’s own balancing act to perform.
There’s really only two viable late-game patterns though. Either some stupid huge I-Win Combo, or infinite cards to eventually run the opponent out of answers. Although I guess DH found a third option where they just hit you in the face every turn and draw their entire deck by Turn 15 to kill you, not all at once, but still by locking you out forever and you have to kill them or you die because they don’t run out of gas before you run out of health.
All that aside, though, I don’t think that Rogue has a poor amount of control tools atm and they may be getting more in the expansion. The fact that you can come up with like 6 archetypes they’ve made work for Rogue to the point where it was felt they needed to be nerfed by the Devs means they’re trying pretty hard. The balancing act is to make doing it take the right amount of time; either too soon and people complain or too late and you just run out of tools and lose before you can do it.
Compare to the Priest design approach, where they decided to push the class in a new direction by taking stuff out of it and not adding anything of note except improving the removal. Just telling the Priest to bore people to death with random minions from a pool that has poor attack value per cost.
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Yes, stop design their late game patterns around rng and more on otk setup. They are the you know, combo class after all.
1 Like