Dark Times Ahead for Rogues

Classes Rogue
21

there’s two discussions to be had here
first one is about gameplay
the second is about damage numbers

IC applying out of stealth would be better for gameplay, yet it may be too strong from a damage perspective
reliance of stealth to do the highest damage also affects gameplay.

Even if IC applies out of stealth, it still can be split into two components and tuned separately. garrote and rupture damage during stealth / garrote and rupture outside of stealth.

Point is, you can have IC apply out of stealth as long as you tune garrote and rupture to do more damage when applied from stealth. Let’s look at how this would affect various scenarios.

  1. in raids, where restealths are dependent of vanish, tuning garrote and rupture to do more damage from stealth helps in the opener or can help during burst phases. burning vanish in ST pve is inconsequential. you rarely rely on it as a defensive.
  2. in M+, not much would change. you would still prefer to get restealths for max damage, but if you don’t, at least your gameplay is improved, and you don’t have to tab target as much. should you need burst, you can vanish.
  3. in pvp, IC itself is either good or useless. in stacked cleave it’s great. against ranged, useless, unless they figure they should stack (which they should not). If garrote and rupture do more damage from stealth, it encourages restealthing, which was a staple of rogue pvp gameplay for years. burning vanish would come with a higher reward.

in essence, IC itself should not be the tuning knob. the damage of rupture and garrote in and out of stealth should be. it’s the way of the rogue.

2 Likes
22

As Rogue we will adapt and the numbers will be tuned. The bigger problem are bugs and the cast time for Coup De grace and how Kspree animates.

Mechanically Rogues are in a design space where they are penalized as if they still have tools from Cata while everyone else has moved into the new era of retail WoW.

The problem right now is that Rogues need a coherent design direction for all three specs. Sub is still way ahead the other two specs as it is in the most healthy space right now.

Assassination and Outlaw though have bigger mechanical issues to address.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

23

Ok but WW got basically a full redesign in the alpha and they are often the competitors with us for least played/popular class.

I think the simpler reality is that as rogues we are just coming off of a rework in 10.2 and as such we werent considered in part of the cycle for major tree revamping in 11.0 Its unfortunate, but I think its probably the reality.

Thankfully at least (and this isn’t to excuse the lack of response to feedback or design for rogue this cycle) this new blizzard is happy to rework specs mid expansion. I think you need to throw all those rules you have about blizzard rarely reworking specs out the window as in DF alone we had a full rogue revamp, a full paladin revamp, a full DH revamp (alongside the rogue one), and several very in depth mini revamps of shadow priest. All this alongside an ENTIRE new spec being released mid expansion.

I think its safe to say it is no longer the case that if you go into a new expansion in a poor state, you will be forced to suffer through that expansion with only minimal changes and tuning until the next one. Reworks mid expansion are fully on the table with this new blizzard direction.

Afaik, following beta closely (and playing it a bit) sub is the most “complete” spec currently going into TWW, both design and damage wise. Not to say too many people are thrilled with the design as it still has several aspects people severely dislike, but trickster works fully for it and the numbers in aoe and ST are solid.

Assassination is a bit messier and behind in output (but all rogue specs are a bit undertuned truthfully, thats just a tuning issue) and its aoe is still an extreme mess which is its main issue.

Outlaw is… just less. It gained effectively one “new” thing for the expansion, double charge vanish over shadowdance, and it adds a singular improvement to the rotation. But everything else about outlaw is less. Less apm, less energy, less ADR uptime, less procs and less RtB buffs (Also the old “roll for specific buffs” rules will likely be back since we are losing 4set). It is simply a lesser spec then it is on live with practically nothing gained, no interactions currently in either hero tree, and a severe problem of animation locking if you choose trickster.

These are the main complaints I’ve seen.

1 Like
24

I am inclined to agree but TWW is supposed to be a mini expansion so I am not sure if they plan on doing another mid expansion rework.

Truthfully if they communicate more there would be clarity about a path forward.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

25

Agreed for sure, the thing is presentation of individuals. People (not you guys) spew things out with zero context other than rEmoVe X bEcUz I nO lIkE it and other childish things of the sorts. Screaming and putting a hashtag in front of things (as seen over reading many of the class forums in the past few days) does jack crap.

I can agree when one can think of how something as potent as IC or X talent when one thinks of

  • The whole of Assass (as you do commonly communicate in a mature way over the past few years we have discussed)
  • Positive feedback Loops and avoiding degeneracy and not sand bagging like certain individuals do for personal gain
  • Broad spectrum versus narrowing choices (if X talent is too solid then that limits one’s choices)

Note:

  • We were told by devs that choices ARE within 2% of each other. The thing is that people will remain in game 2 and then gripe and cuss at the devs when it is the player’s fault. " I wish I could do X or add an effect with Y" , you can bud, you can.

At some point as much as I really hate it, we all need to do our part as rogues and police up this place. The ridiculous ideas and sabotage has to end. Regardless of who / what states some out of left field crud man. We are worse off because of legion and we are slowly breaking free of it all, let’s make sure we keep moving in that direction.

1 Like
26

CDG is DFA

Even the cultists wanted DFA (a rare thing we agree on). So CDG doesn’t make you leap off the ground and die and then blame the devs once again (player’s fault). There isn’t a problem considering DFA had a LONGER GCD. The issues people have are subjective at this point. It isn’t going to do ridiculous damage and nor should it or any single ability that would hijack the kit.

  • No Secret Technique repeated mistakes will ever be done again (devs stated they learned from that so yeah).
  • KS also can hit pretty hard once again especially with flawless form speaking of Outlaw.

Side note:

  • Fatebound received quick reaction double tap step / hook + Deathstalker received much shorter step based on activity by spending points, and CDG for us Trickster focused rogues gained an aggressive charge without leaping off the ground looking like a mook dying to frost bolt or a boss mechanic.

  • Distract having an opportunity to catalyze fazed is also good, people who don’t like cloud cover can pick the CHOICE node that is right there. No scruples is also pretty dang significant especially after recent changes and feels solid regardless of which talent.

1 Like
27

i’m not sure how they calculate this, or what benefit it brings
2% when compared during what? AOE or ST? clearly some talents are stronger in other situations.
say you have 2 pure AOE talents. one is a capstone, the other is in the second gate. should they be within 2% of each other?
perhaps one of those talents have a synergy with another talent, which makes it twice as strong in certain conditions. where’s that 2% balance then?
as an example, take IC. how strong is IC really if you do not take all the other bleed talents, and focus only on poisons? certainly not as strong as if you focused on bleeds.

2 Likes
28

I have zero idea man as there are a lot of wheels and cogs whirring across the board that they likely look at and tune.

  • I would assume between one another and not regarding AOE. AOE is a compounding interest scenario, and I wouldn’t consider that a good thing to measure anything off of as things are favorable / unfavorable for different classes and specializations and should remain so instead of caving in with the “uncap X blizzy!” argument people pull up.

  • Example of the 3% tuning to 5% usually, there is a good reason they choose that instead of something silly and they sit and watch it brew for a while during a season. I dig math but without knowing how / what / why (likely won’t ever or need to know).

  • I can appreciate Asssassination and I am learning what you guys mean by reading and such and how starting off with 3 targets with empowered garrotes (based on talents selected), and other effects can be pretty nasty. There is a reason why that is equated the way it is as well.

  • In theory (if I am understanding what you guys are aiming at and depending on talents selected**) → 1 IC → 3 targets and 4 cb pts (no SF crit activated) which can save 2 GCDs IMMEDIATELY and also assuming the target quickly gets a psn with FoK the rogue immediately starts seeing a return of 7 energy and as the rogue also applies rupture it can be catalyzed further. (the positive feedback loop increases)

I am unsure what “else” an Assassin would do but disregarding the meter maid metrics

  • If one started slower but those mobs lived a very long time, or an event where say there is only 2 targets that rush as a gauntlet style fight then IC could be weaker. I understand what you meant by the knob. The bonuses and other things to close the gap come from additional effects such as crimson tempest / Sanguine Strategem / Deathstalker effects such as corrupt the blood encouraging NOT refreshing asap and may suggest that poison builds amping the plague (nature /shadow damage) may be appealing.

When I did test Assassination,(for congruency only as I am forever and only a Subtlety rogue) I did find the heavy poison builds were a lot of fun on alpha and beta and instead of relying on a bunch of different bleeds, I instead mixed in a lot of nature effects. Envenom with Amplifying poison and the new talents definitely made it pop a lot harder compared to live where people say "envenom doesn’t deal damage). Definitely different and I would hope others look with an unbiased point of view and explore instead of cookie cutter nonsense that is condemning us all.

1 Like
29

Personally my objection to CDG isn’t the animation. Same with Kspree as that isn’t a limitation with how I play.

ST being all or nothing is toxic so that being addressed is a good thing. Which is why Sub is in the best shape of the three specs.

KS still is not going to move the needle for the spec IMO. Outlaw is designed around AR and RTB buffs. When final tuning is done that is probably why HO builds will be the main focus of the spec.

Increased mobility from fatebound and deathstalker while nice for PVP the issue is PVE where you have to stand into mechanics more frequently do deal damage. In PVP that would be dumb to do if you have the CDs to escape.

Distract for me is a nice tool but for some players they don’t care for it. I think it just depends on how people play and what choices they make.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

30

Incoming rogue buffs:

Increase in all assassination damage by 30%
Increase in all outlaw damage by 35%
Increase in subtlety damage by 15%

Congrats rogues, everything fixed.

4 Likes
31

Most talents are always 1-2% from one another but that is in an ideal scenario. The problem is that once you start to go towards the bottom of the tree and the cap stone maintaining 1-2% spread isn’t realistic. Basically talents toward the bottom have to be more powerful to make sense for a talent tree progression.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

32

I personally like echoing reprimand w/ reverberation. I dislike the HO playstyle, if I wanted that I would play sub. I am forever and only an outlaw rogue. I like hard hitting builders and with how fast cp we accumulate, slightly weaker finishers. ER gives a solid whack, especially if you macro ghostly strike to it, GS pops, adds the 15% to ER, for a nice chunk of damage. Fits my playstyle.

3 Likes
33

With this new expansion being solo heavy. Having rogue damage skills based off a stealth that clears our agro is basically a nerf to our solo dps.

And dumb blizzard is going to base everything around our numbers on a dummy or with a tank.

They did this in shadowlands. We are so screwed!

3 Likes
34

Yeah it seems bad but you never know what happens as crazy balance changes do happen weeks out from and even on patch day.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man: