Hey everyone. While I’m sure I’m just hollering into the wind (We had a thread up a while back that was someone posting details of a car they were planning on selling to basically serve as proof the company doesn’t look at the forums), I’m incredibly frustrated at the state of the rogue class, and like many others am here to vent my frustrations.
I’m going to try to mostly voice my criticisms in a constructive manner, but first, I think most of us here can comfortably say that it’s horrible how Blizzard has been handling communication on class changes and on class design. Rogue is one of the least played classes currently and it’s not hard to see why. The specs are in a horrible spot, where there’s an over-reliance on getting back into stealth in PvE, and perhaps most importantly on being able to always open from stealth.
At first glance that seems fine: a rogue is supposed to attack from stealth. We have Vanish to be able to get back into stealth in an emergency (Avoid death, remove unintended aggro, etc) but that’s also meant to be used as a consistent DPS cooldown, which is I think one of the first signs that Blizzard has lost any sense of direction for the class. In PVP, this trade is acceptable: stealth provides a significant advantage due to how a lot of rogue tools work. But in PVE, it’s not just used as a DPS cooldown (when it should mostly just be used as a defensive tool since having an M+ enemy or a raid trash mob on you can kill you very quickly) but is also necessary to fix a huge problem with how hero-talents and other class features work.
If anyone has done Awakening the Machine and gotten to wave 20, you know what I mean: enemies will sometimes instantly target you and hit you before you can target them at all (as though they’re scripted to immediately target you and know your location at all times, begging the question of what the point of stealth is at all in this scenario. Mind you, they don’t have the stealth-detection feature some elites do: this just happens for no reason). This wouldn’t be an issue if:
- Deathstalker as a hero talent tree didn’t REQUIRE you to OPEN A FIGHT with an Ambush, which is immediately taken off the table when struck before having a chance to even target an enemy, ultimately requiring you to Vanish just to be able to actually open on your enemy. Again, horrendous design: it’s not just a dps tool, or a defensive option, it has to be used to fix the ridiculous targeting and enemy behaviors that exist in this game. This is a huge problem for Assassination in particular because, while Sub can use their opener from Shadow Dance to reapply, sin doesn’t have access to this. Inexplicably, the “apply on a full envenom” was actually a design decision that made it into the game, with the various talents being present that increase what “maximum combo points” is, and the DPS loss of forcing yourself to reach maximum combo points just to reapply a CORE HERO TALENT MECHANIC.
- Garrote from stealth didn’t apply a valuable silence from stealth. This is somewhat managed by the duration of the ability, but again: why am I forced out of stealth when the enemy isn’t using area damage, doesn’t have stealth detection, and just happens to be able to “see me” and hit me immediately. With the timing specific nature of openers for rogues and how combo points work, it’s unacceptable for this to be happening.
Let’s also go into hero talents for rogues and why they’re uninspired and boring. Clearly the hero talent design teams were very separate and not significantly reviewed by any management, since certain classes and specs got actual improvements to their overall kit (DKs are eating good with fun tools like being able to be permanently mounted outdoors, having fun animations for their hero talents with the scythe options, mages having unique visuals tied to their spells [Phoenixes, fire orbs, exploding crystals, an entire new spell to replace fireball/frostbolt] ) and other classes are dealing with almost entirely passive, non-visual options. But since we’re on rogues, let’s focus on what’s bad about rogue hero talents.
First, the abomination that is Fatebound. Where the hell did the “class fantasy” for this come from? The only time I recall any coin flipping occurring was with a silly toy that allowed you to throw a coin to the ground to avoid fall damage. Rogues have never been a “cosmic gambler” (which honestly isn’t even the vibe? It’s just the closest jury rigged description I can think of for this atrocity), but even within the confines of the description of the hero tree "The Fatebound eagerly act as the Hand of Fate [again, no lore description of what this is, it’s never been tied to anything that’s ever existed to my knowledge, but it’s described in a way that’s supposed to imply it did exist or was some big deal], sowing chaos into well-laid plans [how?! There’s no chaos sown into ANYTHING through this tree. Everything in the tree is related to YOUR odds, your “plans”, and you barely have any control over the key mechanic of the tree which are those stupid coins]. Guided by the whims of a flipped Fatebound Coin [A WHAT?!] they deliver the ending their enemies are destined for; the ending they deserve [Good flavor, yup rogues kill things. Now we kill them with uh, a coin I suppose].
I’ve never seen such a concept so bereft of inspiration for a class in this entire game. It’s seriously like someone looked at it and saw that Outlaw rogue had a dice rolling mechanic and went “YEAH LET’S DO A SPIN ON THIS, IT’S WORTHY OF A WHOLE TREE” except it’s nowhere near as reactive as RtB is, and the agency you have over the coin flips is absurd. You can get, I believe, a max of 3 guaranteed coin flips of the same face but (surprise surprise, look what problem is back!) to get two of those, you have to enter and leave stealth, and the other is tied to a major cooldown which you want to get up and out as soon as possible to maximize damage in most cases. So here’s this mechanic meant to be “Once you get close enough, go to stealth and pop deathmark to get the last coins you need to get the capstone buff”, but what it ultimately ends up being if you don’t want to just delegate it to complete passivity is to HOLD OFF ON YOUR COOLDOWNS until you can pray you get close enough to be able to try to get to 7 coin flips (which feels horrible and is insanely clunky), then use them to get the capstone benefit.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about that. What lunatic thought 7 coin flips of the same face are acceptable? Did anyone do any math on how inconsistent this is to obtain? If you get two fatebound coin flips after stealth that are guaranteed to be the same result, that means you need to basically spam envenom with (what I believe is, based off the description of the other talent) a 65% chance to get the same result. If you don’t? There goes your stacks that you were banking on after opening stealth and now it’s ENTIRELY a crap shoot of if you can get close enough to try again (oh and you’re functionally punished for using any finisher other than envenom since it’s less likely to gain the same face result). And what’s tied to getting this 7 same coin flips in a row? A meager /s 7% buff to agility, which is itself a LARGE bonus to damage that is tied to extremely low odds. It disappears after being out of combat for 10 seconds (not an issue for raid bosses but an issue everywhere else: you won’t get to have fun with this in delves, or in M+ for the most part, and you’ll almost never get to enjoy it in the open world) which is itself also very frustrating.
If you have to keep this stupid idea for a hero talent tree, make it less agonizing for players to deal with. Lower the capstone requirement to 4-5 same results (5 AT MOST), give it a 30 second window out of combat, and if you need to lower the agi bonus by a little bit to adjust for the more consistent uptime. Tie the increased odds for a coin flip not to envenom, but to performing finishers with max - 1 (or 2) combo point finishers, and make it a 75% chance. Lower the damage output of getting another “lucky coin” again to make up for the consistency change.
While we’re at it, let’s do a look at the other hero talents for fatebound. Nobody is gonna pick Chosen’s Revelry for a miniscule amount of leech based off (AGAIN) mechanics that players don’t have agency over when tempted fate is RIGHT THERE, offering a flat damage reduction amount scaling to a valuable secondary stat. Same thing with inexorable march: your speed can’t be reduced below 70% while you have two or more of the same face results, which itself isn’t HORRIBLE but competes with being able to freely use shadowstep again shortly after using it.
The other choices in this tree are boring garbage clearly meant to provide adjustments for if your target has no other nearby enemies (Unlikely in PVE, whether delves or M+, somewhat more likely in raids so long as it’s a patchwerk with no other adds). Delivered Doom does NOTHING if there’s an additional enemy nearby, which is just… great. Just fantastic. I like a talent that does nothing.
Now that I’m done ranting about how terrible Fatebound is, I’m going to talk a little bit about Deathstalker. Again, uninspired visuals, but there is more of an ability for players to have control over what is happening with their hero tree. As I mentioned before, it should NOT be tied to needing to ambush as your opener. Ambush is an ability that Sin rogues in particular generally don’t want to press because it’s less time spent throwing up garrote/rupture on enemies (I’m not going to speak to its downsides in PVP since I don’t PVP too much, but I imagine rogues in PVP don’t want to be opening with ambush when they could instead be opening with garrote for a silence/to build up their DOTS on enemies). If it worked with Blindside, I could see this being more tolerable but it explicitly doesn’t, which… why? If it’s only applicable to a single target, who cares if it’s used from blindside or from stealth? Allowing it to apply from blindside would fix a major issue with needing to use vanish to fix this horrid design decision, but blizzard has proven obstinate in making the gameplay flow work well for the class for inexplicable reasons.
Let’s look at Trickster next. I think there’s actually some potential for this tree to work out, but not as they have it set up currently. First, there’s not all that much that’s “tricky” about it, since it mostly revolves around a passive possibly proccing, and then being able to slowly and with almost no player control or input build up to a unique variant of your standard finisher which (inexplicably) locks you out of acting for a period of time after using it, further making the class for unpleasant to play. This part is supposedly fixed on the PTR, but I’m wondering why it wasn’t just hotfixed into the game or how it made it to live anyways. Fazed is, itself, boring and uninspired: here’s a flat damage boost and enemies can’t parry you. Let’s ignore the fact that this pushes against what melee classes are taught from the beginning (Hit your opponent from behind whenever possible) providing a benefit that isn’t all that useful when players are playing how they should and just pretend it provides some sort of boon to the player.
There’s also a weird buff stacking mechanic similar to the coin flip from Fatebound, but with slightly more player agency. Still, it feels unpleasant to play around, and it again gets me wondering what blizzard’s obsession with little gambling/chance mini-games are with this class. If I wanted to play a class that focused on randomness/manipulating odds in that way, I’d play fire mage.
Nobody is picking the distract talent, which is a gigantic waste, and instead people are picking the consistent choice in the damage boost to targets who are fazed.
I’m not sure what SPECIFICALLY to do to fix this tree, to be honest. I think fazed needs to be replaced with something more interesting. Ideas that immediately come to mind are procs instead augmenting finishers in some way, like making your next BtE apply in an area at reduced damage, making your next Eviscerate refund combo points, just… ANYTHING more inspired than a flat damage bonus. Let the proc be INTERESTING for god’s sake.
The last things I’ll touch on are common sore points for the class. First, for some reason it feels like so many things which shouldn’t break you out of stealth do break you out. This can be auras which do no damage to players removing them from stealth, I think some buffs remove you from stealth, and other inexplicable issues the class experiences as a whole due to both being dependent on stealth and blizzard seeming to never take into consideration the actual class design of rogues when making content.
Slice and Dice is boring: you’re inches from just removing it by making Cut to the Chase baseline for everyone and apply regardless of if you have SnD already up. Just kill the ability already or bake it into being a passive. And while you’re at it, fix the “recuperator” talent which has been bugged FOREVER.
Poisons shouldn’t still have a duration of 1hr. Extend that to a day. It’s a pointless, boring thing to need to reapply them in the way that they are to this day.
Stop making things blanket immune to stuns in Delves in particular. Instead make them take the full duration of the first stun (since rogue survivability is balanced around using your cooldowns and crowd control to survive) and then lock out stuns for a period of time after that. Stop punishing players for picking a particular class that has to work around game design decisions YOU made.
Kill echoing reprimand entirely. The ability adds bloat to the class which already has a tremendous amount of buttons to press and again adds an annoying little mini-game to play in a class that already has a huge mental load, particularly for Outlaw.
I’d say I’m not angry and that I’m just disappointed, but no I am angry. I’m angry that Blizzard just doesn’t seem to care or listen to its players at all. I’m angry that they make haphazard balancing changes and then revert them immediately the following week. I’m angry that there’s no updates on class design philosophies (is it really so hard to have a person for each class providing, at least bi-weekly, updates on their thoughts/what they’re seeing for player concerns for each class?).
I’m angry that this class I have loved for so long is so dependent on whether or not Blizzard actually cares to acknowledge and communicate known issues to players.
And judging by the dying player count for the class, I think others are angry too.
