Hello. I am the WoWhead guide writer for Outlaw, and I raid in a World 25~ guild and have played various Rogue specs for the past 6-8 years. I want to break down my initial thoughts after playing alpha for about 15~ hours on dummies.
Overall, I think the direction of Rogue is quite promising. More so than any other class in the game, Rogue is loaded with a lot of annoying optimizations that worsen the experience for most of the player base. Thankfully, it appears that Midnight is focused on removing the âannoyingâ and not so much on turning all three specs into a yellow BM Hunter/Ret Paladin in terms of rotational depth.
First, I want to discuss Assassination, which I feel only received direct upgrades to its gameplay overall. For spells being removed, we lost Shiv, which, realistically speaking, didnât add much to the rotation overall (Other than for the purely bleed-focused dungeon builds), and Crimson Tempest, which was replaced with a much more interesting ability. Regarding things being added, we got the rework mentioned above for Crimson Tempest, which removed the need to get restealths in dungeons to make the spec feel good to play. While in one breath this âlowers the complexity of the specâ it just increases the QoL and adds a new dimension of âDo I want to Fan of Knives here, vs Crimson Tempest to spread bleedsâ. Additionally, I think the returned focus on energy pooling is fantastic, as the current way to play Assassination on single-target is incredibly ignorant. The way the pooling is rewarded is also great, as itâs energy that feels good to play with. Good play = more energy = more fun.
Outlaw is in a medium spot overall. I love the return to a more BFA/SL gameplay style rather than the Vanish-centric, Adrenaline Rush-extending playstyle weâve had for TWW. I also think that the rework to Roll the Bones is a fantastic middle ground between keeping the variant playstyle intact, while also making it significantly easier to understand at first glance. I think baking in the Crackshot effect into Ace Up Your Sleeves is a fantastic choice as well; however, this being a two-pointer node, where the additional talent point improves the amount of combo points refunded, leaves us in a situation where we probably only put one talent point into it. The apex talent also feels great to play with, maybe the duration of the buffs could be extended to help in dungeons but thatâs about it negative to say. There are a few issues I have with Outlaw. Firstly, I feel energy is slightly worse than it needs to be. In most gameplay instances, you are fine juggling the energy gains from Adrenaline Rush, Thistle Tea, and Blade Rush; however, when you eventually run out of everything, it does not feel great, even if these moments are few and far between. Second a small amount of agency has been removed from the spec with the removal of Crackshot/UHUH where you can no longer easily move your cooldowns effectively to help with certain points of an encounter. A good example is the last boss of Brackenhide Hollow, where the boss spawns a totem. Originally, Outlaw was terrible at dealing with this, but with Crackshot, the spec could assist when needed. While Outlaw inherently is not a spec tooled to be good at burst damage, I feel something as simple as a talent that reads âYou have an additional charge of Adrenaline Rushâ could help massively. Third is the overall Capstone power level. While obviously this is a very early alpha stage, it feels like the Capstones are playing it a little bit too safe compared to many other classes. Stuff like Keep it Rolling seems hard to justify with how little impact it has without access to Count the Odds and the new Roll the Bones mechanics. Something as simple as âExtend and +1 stageâ could be a good solution. Talents like Hidden Opportunity donât feel as rewarding to take as they may be intended to. Lastly, Takem By Surprise has gotta go. The talent makes no sense with the removal of Vanish from Restless Blades and the overall shift away design-wise from Stealth in general from the spec.
Lastly, to talk about Subtlety Rogue, this spec needs help badly. Again, obviously, this is Alpha, and the spec still doesnât even have its apex talents in place, but the decision to tie CDR to Haste needs to be looked at again. While it is true that Subtlety doesnât like Haste, I feel this problem doesnât even need solving. In addition, this solution doesnât do much to solve the problem beyond making hardline breakpoints. Letâs say you need a Shadow Dance/Symbols for midway through an encounter, the only way to effectively do this is to math out âHow much Haste I need for a specific encounter,â which I feel is the absolute worst way to handle making a stat good for a spec. The spec also feels exceptionally terrible on PTR because the CDR is tuned so low that the entire rotation is âSymbols + Dance + SecTec + Bladesâ then hard AFK through backstabbing with barely enough energy to play, until your next Blades because the CDR is not effective enough.
Overall, I am a big fan of the direction of the Rogue changes; however, Iâm praying we donât get forgotten during alpha/beta, which is all too familiar to longtime Rogue players. I think there is a great foundation here to work off of, but some changes for sure need to still be made to iron out Outlaw/Sub.