Calling Assas easy to play when Rets , Frost dks, Fury wars and Enh shaman exists in their current state, seems pretty out of touch. In fact I’d say nearly every other melee class is easier except maybe dh’s current design which is only slightly easier IMO
True, no one is asking for a complete redesign of the class in general. The problem is, at least for Outlaw, when you replace complexity for procedural luck you can’t really improve upon it.
The RNG baked into Outlaw is ridiculous. Every ability has a little asterisk when you press it because everything has an additional condition or trigger that begets more conditions and triggers.
That’s how we ended up with the most degenerate gameplay loop in Crackshot, because you can’t improve on a spec that is completely reliant on RNG 75% of the time.
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Outlaw has a focus on sustained damage through constant attacks to keep cooldown uptime.
Sin is a dot based spec. You apply your 2-5 dots and try to maintain/buff them.
Sub is a CD stacking spec that has to line everything up for strong burst windows.
Literally none of the specs play the same. Even Shadow Dance didnt change that. Half the reason the specs suck so bad right now is cause players complained about the implementation of abilities like Shadow Dance. Just look at Shadowdust for Sub. The ability lets you line up cooldowns more frequently and even after it was nerf players complained about it. Blizz has been adding good stuff the few times they iterate rogue. You guys literally just hate it all.
The stuff is so good that Rogue is one of the most popular classes in TWW!
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They’ve also been taking stuff away in ways that feel directionless and leaving many of our abilities in a era of design log since pass.
A great example is Sprint. All it does is increase movement speed. It doesn’t cleanse snares or roots. It doesn’t even apply before or overwrite those effects meaning if you are snared your sprint calculates the buffed movement speed FROM you snared amount making it objectively worse then basically EVERY other classes movement buffs. Especially when you consider its base CD is 2 MINUTES. I have to dump talent points into to get a reasonable CD and ANOTHER to get it from 70% to 100%. speed increase. I don’t even have PvP glyphs to give it a snare cleansing effect. Given the absolute deluge of snares in this game and the ease with which they are dished out this is laughably bad.
Or maybe Evasion? 100% dodge for 10 secs sounds amazing until you consider that you can’t dodge attacks from behind and the game seems to take a pretty expansive view of what is considered behind a target. You can’t dodge range attacks. And methods of trivializing it are abundant. Stormbolt and Shockwave are both undodgeable stuns that every Warrior will have because they are in the base Warrior tree and positioned such that they have little opportunity cost and are on considerably shorter CDs than Evasion is. Evasion only works if you can dodge and narrow strip of meaningful attacks in this game are even dodgeable. Compare this to say Die by the Sword which seems to understand that parrying everything is nice but not enough so it has a baked in 30% damage reduction in case you say get stunned from all the CC liberally flying about that can’t be parried. This way popping a defensive still does something. Or from say a Hunter shooting them at range.
A big part of the discussion in this thread in particular is talking about how unrewarding playing the class can be. That we do good damage or have had some “good stuff” the few times they iterate doesn’t make up for that. That’s kind of the point people want to make here.
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The last time Outlaw felt good was Shadowlands.
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Maybe for Fatebound, but Trickster feels great if you’re willing to put hp with the shenanigans of Killing Spree, Coup, and the BTE bugs.
I also wish Crackshot wasn’t a 20% damage gain over GSW. If GSW hit like it did in SL, the rotation would basically be the same as S2/S3 Shadowlands as a Kyrian player.
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Crackshot is basically a 20% damage gain overall if you don’t take it, which–not going to lie–kind of blows.
Did a Crackshot build with Fatebound in a Delve 7. Damage was superior, but the gameplay felt awful.
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The class is overly convoluted. If it wasnt we wouldnt even be having the discussion. This conversation didnt exist in vanilla or BC.
The game in general is now convulted. It reminds me of a flea market.
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If you’re going to make me play piano then I want some sweet piano dps!
If I roll my face across the keyboard from left to right while drooling slightly I am ok with getting less dps than a Ret Pally.
But if I am in grand piano mode I should not get dps equal to the dps that’s face rolling. That’s just infuriating!
Rogue being harder is ok but……
There’s a sweet spot that has been missed by miles.
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Which is why I refuse to play Fatebound lol. I will take the damage loss to play something half fun, but I don’t mind working around Crackshot. I just wish it didn’t exist in the state it does, as I’d very much prefer a GSW based build again.
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I’ve been enjoying fatebound. I honestly want the RNG in my outlaw build, it’s why I’m playing the build to begin with, to feel like a gambler. Gambling is fun, so long as it has it’s payoffs, on occasion. To me, rogue should absolutely have times when it’s not busy pressing buttons to increase dps… that’s because dps isn’t the only thing rogue should be bringing to the table. This is why I hate what dungeons have become in wow… they’re just a dps-fest and with like 30 dps specs in the game, even if you get like 5 that are “at the top”, you’ll still have 25 of them fighting over scraps. The real problem most dps classes have is that the current dungeon/raid meta just blows. Hopefully Delves will grow and be used to help fix that (giving all the vestigial “utility” abilities a use again.
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Its a valid point. Thats why we now have people that see Shadow Dance and think it only helps for 1 button.
That’s because it does. Outlaw is not built around Shadow Dance like Subtlety is. Imagining that Shadow Dance is some viable, flexible tool for Outlaw is about as daft as thinking a build without Crackshot does more damage than any Crackshot build.
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I don’t agree. I absolutely want a redesign. I don’t think people are choosing rogue because it’s more convoluted. I think people want a cool stealthy character that comes out of hiding to do massive surprise attacks, with or without poisons, or a pirate like character. When I chose my UD rogue in vanilla, It wasn’t because it was somehow harder than other classes. I wasn’t sitting around wondering if I needed a harder character to play.
There are plenty of classes that had changes made to them and they still feel like they belong in that class. I think everything is outdated and convoluted. Being convoluted is not challenging in a good way, it’s challenging in a bad way.
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Tune and design rogues to the moon, Im cool with it, but Sub is kicking butt in pvp
The two highest rated characters on earth for Solo BG are Subtlety rogues. At 1847 CR I’ve been fighting 2100 CR -2450 CR Rogues. I can only control my character for about a second after trinket and die pretty fast in all the other stuns. You can and should want rogue to be better, I always want what I play to be and stay OP, but I already want to play rogue due to its high performance now.
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No matter how you look at it though the amount of effort being put into maintaining a top dps spot in a Mythic+ or Raid boss fight is wild compared to other classes. As said above any mistakes in rotation or downtime due to mechanics sinks a Rogues dps. A rogue will dps at a higher rate in these top 99% sims because the bosses are being killed so fast that theres less room for error and more room for positive uptime. Also as someone who should have personally upgraded my PC a decade ago raids especially are difficult and riddled with Input lagg/skipping especially with 25 men on the ground. Compare that to a smooth FPS experience where every little mechanic is visble and timed right. And the Combo point usage and cooldown timing has a much smoother transition.
Try opening a Sub or Assassination rogue sequence on a boss and have the game slow down to a pause for up to 2 seconds. Its damning. These are all relative experiences…but ya. The reward for having very little mistakes happen and a fast run or fight is just not there. Sure Method or Liquids sub or outlaw rogue can parse 1 mil+ on some fights. But theres many factors. Gear, hardware, skill, rotational intregrity, speed, teamwork. Some of their boss fights are done in like 3 mins if that. Longer fights for some classes just eventually yield minimal to negative results.
Personally I dont want to reroll rogue… I also dont want say "Ohhh Ive rolled rogue since Vanilla, I should be this good… or this bad… The whole spec is night and day with 2 decades in between. But the allure of becoming a War or a Mage that can sneeze millions of dps is kinda nice. Alas Ill stick it out. Half the heroic fights I start off fights at 900k-1mil and 1 minute in my Dps tanks due mechanics, broken rotation (Outlaw BTE bug), lack of energy pooling (Assassination),
Sub seems to be the only balanced spec due to how the gear stats are split up. I tend ending up around 600k dps for the fight. 650kish if Im really doing good. 750kish is where the purple parsing comes for rogues in Heroic beyond fights with more cleave or adds. Mastery/Verse being highest. It has the ability to burst back up the dps after a mechanic and especially with Lust. Outlaw cant recovery effectively once you get sub 500k dps in a raid fight. You’re just stuck there for the remainder of the fight. You cant neccesarily use skill to work yourself back up the ladder. Some classes do so much bursty dps at such a high rate the recovery potential after mistakes or mechanics is just more user friendly. And well if you can skill through it, its a tight window.
Trying to pump out good dps and having little things throw everything out of wack is highly discouraging for the class. It kinda reminds me of Dragoon from FF14. Rotation and Skill weaving 7 diff cooldowns lol. If done right ya the yield is crazy dps. But a Black Mage nuking everything, still numero uno.
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Rogue right now has some of the most complicated and unforgiving specs in the game, with little group utility, and we are being rewarded with being some of the lowest overall parsing melee in the game right now along with feral (who can feel our pain for sure) and to an extent survival.
I’m seriously feeling like I made a mistake picking rogue for TWW. Seriously debating going elemental shaman since our raid is already melee heavy with DK’s and warriors who absolutely crush meters.
The one saving grace from a PvE perspective is that sin is doing well in M+, but I’m primarily a raider so that isn’t much solace for me.
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I was getting beat on meters by one of our BM hunters who is wearing some greens still.
BM strengths are all our weaknesses basically. They have cleave built into their ST. Movement does nothing to penalize them. They don’t have to stick onto a target. Their rotation is mindless. You can never beat a BM hunter at uptime since they are assisted by the CPU. BM is like a training wheels spec.
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Sadly, i rarely ever get invited.
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