This 100%. Every time I try Trickster I just end up back on Fatebound because the animation lock on Coup De Grace is so annoying.
Currently for outlaw, there’s not really much of a choice for me with hero trees because both are fairly passive, but Fatebound adds some very nice QoL to the spec (+5% opportunity proc chance, extra CP on SS, double grappling hook, magic damage for those of us that do pvp) while Trickster instead removes QoL because of the animation lock on Coup De Grace, plus all the unresolved issues with Killing Spree which Trickster heavily emphasizes.
Unless Trickster was massively overtaking Fatebound in damage, I would never choose to take it over Fatebound in its current state because Trickster simply makes outlaw feel worse to play.
It’s not about the energy, but as a pack is dying, each mob with your mark that dies let’s you instantly cast a 7 cp envenom on the next target that’s hopefully close to dying and so on.
I’ve been a huge fan of rogue for several expansions, and it’s been my consistent main ever since I gave it a try post Legion changes.
That being said, I’m really disheartened by rogue and how it’s playing right now in The War Within. I play Outlaw, and I’ve found the hero talents a big let down, especially compared to my alts hero classes.
For Fatebound, without a weak aura I have zero idea what’s going on. I already have to have a weak aura to know what RTB buffs I have, but now you’re introducing yet another RNG buff that requires a weak aura to have any insight into whatsoever. On a less gameplay-related note, the fantasy behind Fatebound isn’t really there for me.
Trickster is a little bit better, but it still feels very passive, and tracking the debuffs and buffs again is really hard without a weakaura or add-on, in addition to the general weakaura bloat I currently have to effectively perform on outlaw. Finally, having two animation locks in killing spree and coup de grace isn’t great.
Outside of hero talents, I’m finding the gameplay just feels a lot worse with the AR changes. I get that the current play style in DF with crackshot isn’t the most accessible to most people, but I feel the changes don’t increase accessibility of the class or spec (and barely reduce button bloat), and feel worse while still being punishing.
I mainly played Deathstalker Sub in raid testing and it is very fun now that it works. Marking big adds during Ulgrax’s add phase, then blasting AoE while mixing in DN Envenoms - peak gameplay.
There’s this unwritten Mark behavior where, if you spend 5+ CP on a single-target attack against an unmarked target, your next builder which hits a marked target will remove 1 Mark stack. I love this, but wanted to discuss a weird consequence with Singular Focus, best explained by example:
I’m fighting 2 stacked enemies A & B. I have bleeds rolling on both and 3 stacks of Mark on A. I must autoattack A to benefit from Hunt them Down. Naturally, I want to Envenom A to remove a stack. Obviously this Envenom won’t cause any Singular Focus damage. If I Envenom B instead, I will still do 1 Envenom worth of damage, still remove 1 Mark (on my next builder) and gain every associated benefit, but now I also do Singular Focus damage. Counterintuitively, Envenoming the unmarked target is more overall damage.
This doesn’t feel right. Attacking my Marked target should be what leads to my highest damage. I think this is why Hunt them Down exists? But currently, peak performance is autoattacking the Marked target while mouseover Rupturing or even Envenoming unmarked targets, depending on the situation.
Please change Hunt them Down and Singular Focus to avoid these weird gameplay incentives. The simplest changes would be to remove Marked/unmarked requirements from both. But I’d be even happier to see complete redesigns, like with Fatal Intent.
Edit: forgot these
Corrupt the Blood should stay at 10 stacks when we refresh Rupture
Echoing Reprimand doesn’t work with Mark or DN
Outlaw
I think Killing Spree is Outlaw’s glaring issue. Since you lose control and basically can’t tell what’s happening mid-KS, the safe spot you started in may no longer be safe.
And by the time you return, your “stagger” is gone and you have no time to react.
It will often turn into “can I get away with hitting KS right now?” Sometimes the answer will be no for an entire boss phase or dungeon pull.
Used killing spree on first boss in dawnbreak… fell through the floor into the middle of ship where there invisable walls everywhere. Could get out till boss casted purple sphere of death.
That’s cause we had none. Of all the classes our rogue thread is the only remaining one afaik with zero blue response after the op templated one.
We keep giving the same feedback for months… No idea if it’s being read, no idea if it’s being taken into account. No idea if anything is being or going to be done. And we are running out of time for changes, in the remote chance there are any, to be tested properly and iterated upon based on feedback, like what happened with most other classes.
I wish I had something else to post about… But nothing’s changed, random tuning and a few bug fixes doesn’t make a class, but that’s all we got, and no words from the devs on intentions or anything of the sort.
At this point I’d rather take a post saying ‘yeah we ain’t doing anything else on the class’, at least we’d know.
But, let’s see what we get this week! Maybe. Perhaps… Well… Maybe…
For now, let’s keep looking forward for good news! Despite my criticism (they are very very uneven about communicating from class to class, it’s just frustrating) we must still remain hopeful that we’ll land somewhere nice for TWW
Its crazy that this far into beta, that the hero talents feel awful to play or are completely passive, that talents like “3% leech while stealthed” even exist, that no blue post has explained the philosophy behind any rogue changes present or future.
We are currently walking into this expac as nerfed versions of live, which is wild. It gives me zero excitement to play my rogue in War Within.
Still hoping for any meaningful changes, or at least communication about rogue, but just reiterating a couple notes:
Class tree needs some help:
Shadowheart is entirely worthless as a talent, on top of being pretty hard to reach (superior mixture on the other side is pretty pointless as well)
It’s too late at this point, but cold blood probably shouldn’t exist; it’s already dull enough, but then it’s just macro’d to auto-cast on other abilities on all three specs. This was a complaint at the start of Dragonflight, it’s a bit confusing how it made it into a hero talent tree.
Subterfuge/Without a trace need reworking as they are nearly pointless talents for two specs. On Subtlety, subterfuge is actively harmful, and only serves as a travel talent to without a trace, which is only useful when talented into shadowdust. For assassination, subterfuge is also pointless, being 6 seconds when the most important stealth effects are already 6 seconds baseline. Without a trace doesn’t help either, since vanish is used on cooldown in all pve content.
Spec Trees are somewhat better, but there are some weird ones:
Twist the knife and Tiny Toxic Blade on Assassination are both strange talents because they’re very obviously weak. Not just number-wise, the design space of them is weird. Twist the knife increasing envenom duration is fine, but if that’s all it does, it’s near useless by definition. Tiny Toxic increasing shiv damage when shiv is tuned to do near 0 damage also makes it strange. 200% of 0 every 30 seconds? This is supposed to compete with blindside?
On Subtlety, it’s just such a mess frankly. SecTec and Dance having cooldown reduction, with flag being 90 seconds, and swift death making a 30 second symbols into 25 seconds. None of these timers line up, and then you throw shadowdust on top. The cooldown gymnastics are just insane.
Why does sepsis still exist on sub?
Talents like the rotten are universally hated and can make already tricky cooldown windows even more difficult. Shadowcraft makes all of it very nebulous as well, forcing a lot of reactions while trying to plan ahead all the cooldowns. All of these complications just keep stacking on top of each other
I like the direction of the outlaw changes personally, but I think ghostly strike and killing spree are very strange. Killing Spree has always been a source of problems, with its channel breaking up the rotation, the forced movement, and now its damage taken delay. Honestly at this point, it just needs a redesign instead of more bandaids.
Hero Talents
Any communication on feedback at all please
Deathstalker now has a capstone and some passives. 20% of the way there I guess. How did we let this tree happen. Auto attack damage? Especially in mythic+ this thing feels horrid. I can’t condense all the nonsense with this tree in one post.
Trickster is almost okay but coup de grace is a spaghetti monster with a 1.2s gcd and all sorts of weird bugs with the unseen blade triggers.
Fatebound is fine, but super duper passive. It’s frankly my favorite at this point purely because it isn’t one of the other two, and doesn’t actively make me upset.
Blizzard, any communication at all would be nice, thanks
Going to echo a lot of what others have said in this post and it is really hard to tell what feedback has been read or taken since we have had no communication so far. In this post I’m just going to highlight some problem areas with the class tree and subtlety spec since this is the spec that has kept me playing this game for a long time.
Class tree problem/dead talents:
Shadowheart: Leech is useless and now with nerfs to tree tertiaries it’s even worse.
Leeching poison: Same issue and not interesting at all.
Cold blooded: Very uninteresting talent that is just macro’d and forgot.
Echoing Reprimand: Can’t speak for everyone and every spec but I HATE this talent. It is not fun or interesting to play around and has only every felt good when it hits hard in pvp scenarios. Trying to land on the empowered node on 2/3 specs of this class is just rough.
Alacrity and deeper stratagem placement: As of current sub wants as little haste as possible so having to sink 2 points into a useless talent to get deeper strat feels rough. I also believe every single build in DF took these three nodes so start could probably be moved up in the class tree.
Class tree might have other issues but I’m sure they have been covered by others here!
Subtlety
My dear loving baby boy and my favorite spec in the entire game that has so
so so much potential but is still missing the mark with a lack of inspiring direction, degenerate builds, MANY dead talents, and lack of COOL choices. The following list are going to be the talents I would consider dead or just useless for pathing:
Shot in the dark (great for pvp but rotationally pve just bleh should be more optional)
Shrouded in darkness: Put this on class tree?
Night terrors/terrifying pace: Just a bad/uninteresting choice node.
Warning signs
Silent Storm
Swift death: Placement issue and nodes you need to take to get it
The Rotten: This is such a lame talent plz delete it
Goremaw’s Bite: New addition that does a lot of damage but idk you just don’t take this button it doesnt fit.
Sepsis
Subtlety also really lacks an identity in aoe and plays around
shuriken tornado which is a weird ability that would just play better if it was off the gcd. That being said you have to FULLY spec into aoe if you want to do damage and you can’t mess anything up. I like that the spec is hard and has a mastery level don’t get me wrong but when the tuning is off and you are going through hoops and bounds to get setup to just get outdpsed by beast cleave. Yeah not a good feeling. I also don’t know if the shadowdust ability cd was actually dropped to the lower amount but if so that will just make nothing line up at all. Having that cdr will also ALWAYS make this build the best. I like it but not being able to press vanish for any other reason is kinda poopy and now offers less choice on the main talent tree since the vanishes are over there now. I’d prefer to see this removed. The haste stat is another problem because if I’m not mistaken I believe we still get a 0% benefit from haste besides energy regen which already isn’t a problem with talent choices and is not fun to play around. This makes us SO useless on any fight with a haste M+ Affix, BLOODLUST, or anything that gives haste and really needs to be addressed somehow. Finally for the cool ninja shadow spec that is hard we really lack cool options to play around. In my opinion dance macabre and shadowcraft were some of the best additions added to this class recently so don’t touch those but all the dead nodes at the bottom of the tree should see some changes.
Sub suggestions: I think there should be a choice to optimize and play around shadow clones more in this spec tree. Some ideas that come to mind are that leggo helmet from sl that (SHOULD HAVE) had a clone do a second shadowstrike for more damage after you SS as well as the recent tier set that had a chance to spawn clones to hit after your attacks with eviscerate or black powder. That tier set had such a great interaction with secret technique clones and should be added to the spec tree permanently. For a REALLY out of pocket idea that might be a bit much but would be sick would be a clone that is almost a pet (BUT NOT HEAR ME OUT) you can leave on a target that is mimicking your abilities (cant summon other clones from attacks) but that you could re-press to snap swap locations with the clone to wherever you were before. Yes very similar to shadow step but could help with the aoe issue potentially. Also some talent that makes clones do that death from above animation and turn into knives that stab down into the boss or enemies would be sick. Final suggestion which may be bad but a choice node with quick decision thats gives you a purple door of shadows ability. Also feel like there could be something really cool done with shurikens floating up and flying at targets similar to wind arrows for hunters. Trickster
Overall a lot better than prior additions but generally you kind of forget you are playing with it which would be FINE if both hero talents weren’t like that. The animations are also a bit weird and makes your rogue feel like they are flailing around a bit. Making distract a cd is sick, big fan of that. Deathstalker
Ohhh man…the hero talent I was the most excited for and most disappointed by.
DEAD/USELESS NODES??? So far clear the witness, hunt them down, and corrupt the blood are all just mainly passive buffs on our least interesting abilities in our spec and serve no gameplay interaction. If you are using shuriken storm you are already full combat points and if not this promotes to use in single target which is giga degenerate. THE OTHERS BUFF PASSIVE MAINTENANCE BUFFS
A node that is only a choice between 2 aoe options…
Plague damage fits I get that but this is the most passive nothing sandwich of a hero talent in general. You just play normally and 100% forget that you have a hero talent tree and that is fine BUT the visuals are whatever. Hand turning purple for sub is cool I guess but so painfully uninspired.
This is not a deathstalker tree put this back in the oven
Suggestions: Singular focus is the one good nodes and the area that I believe
this hero talent tree should be focused on: funnel. I would keep some form of mark but I would apply it though rupture since both specs have access to this and generally put that on main targets anyway. Next add a node that makes the rogue reach to his back and throw a shuriken/poison dagger (doesn’t matter just a projectile) at a nearby target. Have this be on a choice node that causes these daggers to just float around your back like that venthyr visual so they only go into one target for the choice node. Use the same glowing visual deathstalker has for purple and green that follows these knives when they go out. The bottom node of the tree should be an option that changes the icon of shiv (more likely eviscerate at a certain amount of stacks or something else in rotation idk) that causes all knives to be pulled out of targets or fly off your back and hit the main target and popping for however much plague damage they built up. The defensive nodes on this hero talent tree are fine and probably the best part. You can also add an aoe option so your shuriken storm and fan of knives causes the knived targets to build a “blister” or something that is then popped or flared when you hit em with a crimson temp or black powder. Also a node that causes there to only be 4 knives that ricochet or 6 thrown out on different targets. This is just an example but for the love of god anything besides buffing maintenance buffs we already dont like and calling it a day PLEASE.
Finally delves section because I have tested these a lot on most classes: Rogues NEED to be able to have mobs stay in combat with Brann for a few seconds once combat is dropped. Be use vanish for damage, cdr, defensives and cc a lot of the time and this feels ROUGH. Granted the option to just rogue through in stealth and complete delves faster is there but when you have to fight certain mobs there is issues. One of the delves has 4 large enemies that run around that need to be killed and they cannot be cc’d or slowed and just beat our butts. Brann needs to do some tanking and less crappy healing
While all are definitely welcome to their opinion on things saying “we” or “all” is not accurate and people can and will like different things.
A “blister” effect you described is Fatal Intent + corrupt the blood has some good pay offs as well, especially with Assassination’s kit and Our stuff like Finality / Deeper Daggers + Replicating if one CHOOSES to do so.
Rotten , Hard disagree and is a great and a preferred playstyle of having meaningful generators which are sorely missed where many have repeatedly expressed over the years and requested to return. They aren’t going to let us do meaningful shadow strikes /backstabs/ Special Attacks etc for free, it came with a cost to guarantee it and it should stay as a choice. There are many talents one can choose to “simplify” or form “complexity” on their own without imposing on others. They also are not and should never overload a CD or any attack (which they said they wouldn’t do again). I don’t get a jolly out of “finishers” only or the over obsessions with legion forward as a lot of others have expressed. Additionally, while “passive” the trees do not impede on a rogue’s personal choices which are defined by specialization choices which is good. They can expand, refine, and add to later on which is the stated goal as an evergreen feature. Subtlety has been plagued with “dance only” nonsense since legion and the burst donkey war crimes hits us every time as a consequence.
Rotten is a great example of how they provide meaningful interactions as a rogue must invest in doing so and plan appropriately. Much akin to how those who like Flagellation accenting their chosen style of finishers and they should be rewarded accordingly for investing and planning appropriately (as they are).
Tools like Sepsis are good since garrote will only remain in assassination (as it probably should regarding balance concerns now with how things panned out over DF). Sepsis allows for skillful expression and once again can be chosen or not chosen depending on what the rogue wants and should be left up to them to decide.
Stuff like S3/ S4 tier pretty much was shadow reflection but not on an extreme level. The duality we have between physical and shadow is good but one shouldn’t overtake the other or we end up at FW 100% again but permeant due to shadow and then they must nerf it whether people like it or not and then we are a shadow priest with a knife which also sucks butt. If people want more shadow they can but don’t force that stuff. Deeper Daggers route down to Dark Brew has plenty of that already going on. That can be those people’s choice to do so without making the rest of us like that.
Conclusion:
Rogues can choose for themselves how they would like to talent and a “1 size fits all” stifles what we do and styles of mix and match or whatever the rogue chooses can and should solely be up to the rogue instead of forcing X. More lessons of the past as choices instead of over reliance on CDs which has haunted us. We have been nudged in a good direction but aren’t going full swing.
Core abilities shouldn’t ever be forgotten or pushed to the side to make way for gimmicks ever again. Simplicity and Complexity CAN and DO coexist and it is the rogue’s choice to emphasize parts of their kit instead of forsaking them.
Been testing quite a bit of all 3 specs on the beta and one thing really stands out to me. Deathstalker and Fatebound Hero Talents heavily encourage favoring the quantity of finishers rather than the power of those finishers. Since the main component in both these Hero Talents trigger at the same strength regardless of whether you’re using a 5 combo point finisher, or a 7 combo point finisher, naturally 5 combo point finishers will proc the hero talents more often, which means taking Deeper Stratagem and other talents like it is actually anti-synergistic with those hero talents.
I think it would be a lot better if these hero talents procced on every x combo points consumed, that way taking Deeper Stratagem / Sanguine Stratagem etc would not be effectively nerfing the performance of your hero talents.
