TLDR:
- I believe rogue is at its most fun when you’re encouraged and enabled to manage your class abilities and resources well
- Rogue tanking currently feels like it works against the class design for resource management, which doesn’t feel good to play
- I included a couple suggested changes to main gauche and blade dance in line with this paradigm:
Blade dance
- Make it a flat parry % and tie only the duration to combo points spent, like SnD (fixes the common issue where you can’t reapply because “a more powerful spell is active”)
- “While the buff is active, you will retain up to 3 unspent combo points when switching targets”
Main gauche
None of the other rogue tanks I’ve talked with use Main gauche. The active mitigation is nice, but the threat and damage benefits offered by saber slash render this rune largely obsolete, even as a tank (until perhaps level 60 when you’re approaching avoidance cap)
Give it a threat or damage bonus (so it can be used as an opener, OH weapon damage hits like a wet noodle)
“While the buff is active, parrying any attack will generate 5 energy”
Just a Flesh Wound
Reduce the passive threat modifier if needed to balance the above changes.
Post ahead
To preface this, I would like to say that I’m incredibly excited about rogue tanking. I think the idea of an avoidance based tank is flavorful and fun, and I love that Blizzard is creating new playstyles for Classic.
Despite my excitement, I think rogue tanks present 3 major issues not present in any other tanking class, and these are issues that I would argue venture beyond healthy weaknesses into unfun anti-synergies with the role of tanking. The first two could presumably be addressed in future phases, while I think there’s an argument for addressing the third during this phase:
1: What to do with 100% avoidance
2: Damage volatility
3: Resource management
100% avoidance:
This is less a weakness and more of a game design challenge. I’m curious how Blizzard handles this, because IMO it won’t be very fun if we’re able to hit a point of sustained 100% avoidance and completely invalidate healers in melee situations. Maybe a hot take on my part.
Damage volatility:
Would you rather have a main tank that requires a decent amount of healing, but can reliably tank the boss if they play their class well? Or would you rather have a single target melee specialist that can get by with very little healing but also has a 2% chance of wiping to an unlucky thrash with no counterplay on their or the healer’s part?
Blizzard has addressed this problem in the past for avoidance tanks (see the Stagger ability for MoP brewmaster). I hope they implement something similar for rogues in later phases.
Resource management:
Other tank class resources (rage/mana) have built in mechanics that allow the tank’s threat output and ability usage to be flexible depending on the size of the pull.
Rage tanks generate extra rage from being attacked more often, and as a result can put out more damage/threat, which results in more rage.
Mana tanks can dump mana when needed, and each mana tanking spec has built in mechanics to allow them to regen mana more effectively while tanking (paladins regen when healed, shamans when blocking, locks get improved life tap).
In contrast, rogues are bottlenecked by their energy regen. Their threat output and flexibility to adapt to different situations is a steady state 20 energy/tick, regardless of what gets thrown at the party.
To make matters worse, they lose CP when changing targets, which otherwise is their only significant mechanism for improving energy efficiency. This will lead to inefficient energy consumption as they will presumably want to dump CP on a finisher before switching targets to maintain threat or to taunt/interrupt (which they will likely not have energy for if they just used a finisher before switching).
I don’t think it’s an issue if rogues have to work harder than other tanks to do the job well on larger pulls. I do think it’s unfun to have a resource system and a role that feel anti-synergistic though.
Less desirable options:
Some people have been suggesting that rogues need an AoE damage ability to handle larger pulls, but I dislike this because it deviates from the rogue playstyle of single target resource management, and also isn’t very fun IMO. It also doesn’t really fit the flavor of a dodging/parrying duelist to be throwing a fan of knives in each direction. I don’t want rogue tank to become TBC prot pally.
They could potentially address this by just slapping a major threat multiplier on rogues, allowing us to maintain threat by just auto attacking, but this also sounds like a major missed opportunity to me. “I mismanaged my combo points, and rarely had enough energy to use abilities, but I still maintained threat because I enabled tank mode” just won’t feel good at all IMO. I imagine people like to play rogue so they can use the tools they have to outplay the opponent, and this would feel like the opposite. A tank’s job is to maintain threat - don’t do that job for them.
My suggestion:
With their high single target damage, lack of AoE, and 1 second GCD, rogues could presumably excel at the tab target tanking style that other tanks employ prior to unlocking AoE abilities. I think this would be a fun and engaging niche for rogue tanks, if their resource management is adjusted to work with this style instead of against it.
As a start in this direction, I think they could address these issues with two changes to existing rogue tank runes that will better synergize the role with rogue resources. Right now, 2 out of 3 rogue tank runes exist just to help rogues survive being top of the threat meter and do nothing to help us stay there. Here are my suggested changes:
Blade dance
- Make it a flat parry % and tie only the duration to combo points spent, like SnD (fixes the common issue where you can’t reapply because “a more powerful spell is active”)
- “While the buff is active, you will retain up to 3 unspent combo points when switching targets”
Main gauche
-
None of the other rogue tanks I’ve talked with use Main gauche. The active mitigation is nice, but the threat and damage benefits offered by saber slash render this rune largely obsolete, even as a tank (until perhaps level 60 when you’re approaching avoidance cap)
-
Give it a threat or damage bonus (so it can be used as an opener, OH weapon damage hits like a wet noodle)
-
“While the buff is active, parrying any attack will generate 5 energy”
Just a Flesh Wound
Reduce the passive threat modifier if needed to balance the above changes.