I kinda dig feint being a multi tool to build combo points in a different neat way would need to play with it to really test it. Im all for new stuff that makes sense and allows for planning.
Fazed
cool and I dig the interaction with distract to open up some unique interactions.
Surprising attacks
Im a big fan of the generator talent helping stuff like gloomblade / backstab and lingering more useful instead of packing in dance more. This tree is pretty cool on concept and while it is an early view on things I do appreciate inspiration from the past combining into the future is a solid direction. Combing more stuff out of dance with impactful backstabs / gloomblade is always welcome as significant striking from abilities such as that and shadow strike have always been a huge part of subtlety. We donât strike as often but attacks should matter regardless. Noodle damage backstabs / glooms have always been a pain in the behind since legion stripping subtlety to continue with âall dance and nothin elseâ.
Coup de grace
its cool and I donât remember how that talent worked back in the day but its definitely a neat amp to make an impactful finisher. Simultaneously , tea spamming should get a look at as being tuned around that isnât cool where that can hijack the kit along the lines of finality. (Longer cd and less charges)
Theres def a lot to play with here and I really dig the direction on making less used abilities have more interactions and combat usage.
Lots more feedback and ill have to come back and edit as i think of more but I dig this a lot. Not a fan of cd stacking legion forward style stuff, i think this tree adds some flexibility and a slight bump in the opposite direction of better days such as cataclysm via sanguinary vein. Fazed is kinda neat and sorta allows for that.
Non rogues respectfully please leave us be, there are too many times rogue stuff has been hijacked and it isnât appreciated as we donât hop on other classes to return that favor. No class should be created / tuned / designed / or encouraged to fit your specific narrative to be âfairâ to you (every class can beat every class) . Every class should have cool stuff and operate within their own means. The anti rogue propaganda since the beginning is tired, give it a rest and focus on your own class instead of the incessant crusades.
Making Feint into an offensive CD is a big no, that is ripping one of our most unique and useful button away from its purpose.
Additionally, no this tree doesnt divert anything outside of dance, it triple downs into it.
But Iâm with you on some things, there could be some fun ideas coming from the tree, I am not completely against fazed and usage of Distract and whatnot, but not the way its applied here, not at all. For sub, at the very least
IMO the problem with adding offensive utility do a defensive ability is that it just increases the gap between the best players and the average by even more.
The fazed concept isnât bad but needs to be triggered differently IMO.
Feint is a defensive button and has no business generating combo points or offensive buffs. This whole idea is basically dead on arrival just from that point alone, but even more so because Outlaw gets to use Feint way more often than any other spec. This whole thing basically needs to be tied to a new ability with a similar cooldown to Feint that does not get its cooldown reduced for Outlaw.
Mastery is such a terrible stat for Outlaw that Flawless Form basically does nothing unless Outlawâs Mastery gets drastically changed (please? No one likes it)
Some of the other concepts here are sort of interesting, but all of it basically stemming from Feint is just horrendous and kills any value any of it has.
The only really positive thing here is 1-hour Tricks, whichâŚIâm pretty salty about not having access to this as Sin. This seems more like a Rogue thing than just a Trickster thing only two specs get to enjoy.
In regards to feint, I guess this is a vanish moment for the ability. Ages ago, vanish had a small dps increase, and could be used defensively more ofthen than not. You could avoid casts, stop abilities, things like that. Nowadays, its always an offensive ability. Itâs fully rotational in each of the three specs, though in the case of sin and sub you could spec differently, I suppose. I donât think itâs possible with outlaw, though I might be wrong. But regardless, though you can still do those things like stop abilities, you mostly donât because the dps from vanish is so important to you - whether it be from amping the crit on kingsbane, using the cooldown reduction on shadowdust, or opening crackshot windows for outlaw.
It feels bad to do that same thing to feint. Leaves you wondering how long until cloak becomes a dps cooldown, or crimson vial, or whatever.
Its almost like none of you read the entire tree. Nor do you realize tuning is subject to be a big part of how much you actually press Feint (if at all).
Having Thousand Cuts at a 10% proc rate would nearly guarantee permanent Faze uptime during lust windows and other high haste moments. The only change that would be needed is having the Unseen Blade from auto attacked hit all nearby targets the same way Feint would. Or make Faze only apply to the primary target with Kspree and ShadowTech applying to multiple.
Flickerstrike just seems like its for PvP players.
Unseen Blade damage cant be too high or else it would incentivize using Feint over actual builders and thats obviously bad. (Builders have already been worth over 5% of overall damage so youd just be losing out by spamming Feint with current tuning of the damage amp). Not to mention all the other interactions the specs already have built in to incentivize talent usage.
For Devious Distractions im just assuming they are making Killing Spree baseline for Outlaw. That choice makes no sense otherwise (talent into something in order for another talent to have any use?)
The tree looks solid so far with those thoughts in mind. Feint would still be used as a defensive primarily.
I get thematically why they would go with feint- feint being a kind of âtrickâ, but I fully agree here. It would massively change the rotation, and Iâm really not a fan of defensives being assigned such a large DPS value from a gameplay perspective.
In a world where they âtuneâ proc rates for other abilities that it procs Fazed reliably whenever you need it, and the Feint dmg is so low its not worth pressing for it, then what is the point of that node at all? This would also be a bad tree with dead nodes.
If this was only a tuning issue, sure, this is not just a tuning issue. This whole thing adds artificial complexity to optimize, and it uses one of our defensive to do so. Thats what this tree does. Not having to use feint with this design just means that, as the rest of us are saying, it shouldnt involve Feint to begin with.
As for the talent choices; I donât think they will default to making affected talents baseline, specially since the alternative tree might have nothing to do with it. I believe that what they are doing with Warriors is what they will go for with most specs; move the relevant talents up in an accessible location.
Feint is rogues only defensive ability that straight up replaces potential damage and the node gives it some damage benefit. Might not be the best reason, but it is a reason and its one im satisfied with.
My first concern is, what enemy abilities will negate âFazedâ. If everyone, including mobs and bosses, has amped up damage mitigation or immunity, whatâs the point.
Also, whatâs the point in a damage buff when you offset it somewhere else?
At the end of the day, devs will balance around a certain amount of damage throughput. It doesnât matter where it comes from. It could 2 or 3 active abilities or 8-10 with some passives tossed in.
Seems like a lot of time and recourses spent on making the game more complicated - again.
Edit: After reading through the whole thread, I do agree adding a utility ability to the rotation is a step in the wrong direction. Maybe itâs proc based with 10-15 internal CD and activates when you use Eviscerate or some other ability thatâs already a core part of the rotation.
Agreed, everything has a damage budget. Simultaneously, there are 2 other trees and will continue to evolve over time as an evergreen feature as they stated. Im thankful for the early iteration at least which is solid. At least it isnât azerite doing dragonzord laser beams and it is our kits doing the damage instead. I can appreciate that more than anything. Im down for trickster, more to be seen down the road and desthstalker + fatebound are likely to emphasize different stuff which is cool for those that want to dive in on that.
I see what youâre aiming at here dude and I can agree. Same time, Iâm thinking of it as a âdifferent â kinda hemo effect if that makes sense and it might have some neat interactions.
Nimble fingers might see more play here to get those 2 cb pts and roll into something else. While odd because feint has been a defensive all these years, a feint in martial arts and weapon disciplines has been used in faking an attack to gain an advantage fighting people with longer reach or a bigger opponent (feint would have been more appropriate to call slip or dodge ha but its cool in that regard).
If they attached it to shiv then it would be the concern of not being able to wipe enrage effects and Assassins were reasonably not digging that when that happened to them.
I wouldnt be opposed to unseen blade just being a new button as it is essentially working as hemorrhage did (which i dig returning in a way) as it could be a 15sec recharge and still grant the 2 cb pts and cost 20 energy. That way, feint would remain decoupled.
Willing to give this a shot though when beta rolls out and all that jazz at the least.
I feel like this hero talent tree is a complete fail. Nothing redeeming about it. Nothing screams trickster at all and forcing people into using an aoe defensive to optimize damage feels so gross. Iâd say trash it and come up with something that actually feels like a trickster. Put more emphasis on distract since thatâs what tricksters do anyway.
I think Blizz should focus on using the hero trees to change some sort of core functionality - and, maybe make it not required to do content? Which means it should only change functionality, not come with a ton of added buffs that effectively just boil down to ânumber go upâ passives that make them required to do competitive dps with everyone. If the entire tree was just about changing feint into a different type of skill, or a hybrid skill, that would actually be fine - folks could use it or not as they liked for their playstyle.
Currently though, it seems that this sort of thing will be a required use, and if thatâs the case then a lot more thought needs to be into trickster and what it does. I hope all the useless talents (that is, the ones that are just a numbers buff) are removed regardless or just baked in, because thereâs nothing really exciting about getting stacking buff number 23 that just becomes an icon on the buff bar and is forgotten about. Maybe theorycrafters will have fun with it, but your average player will just sim stuff, do their rotation and move on with their life.
Yeah my issue is that this hero tree not only tramples on utility even more (I miss vanish being you know⌠Vanish) - but it will complexity Sub optimization so much more.
I am not against complex specs but there are limits, specs must be accessible to a degree. The sequence of things you have to do in a dance is already ridiculous, on top of Shadowdust (plz delete that node), fazed in this form is just pure bloat at this point.
I donât like that this tree is focused around feint. Giving feint some offensive benefits is okay so that itâs not as much of a dps loss to use the global, but I feel making it the central focus of this tree is basically just making rogues tankier, which is the last thing that needed to happen. Also, outlaw can use feint far more often than sub, so I think feint should be removed from the outlaw CDR talent.
When I think of a trickster, I think of blind, smoke bombs, distract, pick pocket, tricks of the trade I guess too. I would like to see this tree focus more on those type of spells, including bringing smoke bomb back to pve as utility.
Edit: Does anyone remember glyph of Decoy? I feel like this is the perfect talent tree to bring a similar effect back. Whenever you vanish you could leave a decoy behind, and it could proc off shadowstep too. This might actually be a good way to have vanish be useful in solo pve situations too.
The biggest problem in Trickster Rogue is Killing Spree and Feint becomes offensive rotation ability. Killing Spree is completely out of place because it has very little synergy with the current Outlaw toolkit, and it doesnât feel good to press. Killing Spree need to be on drawing board and add some good interactions with the current Outlaw toolkit.
Feint is GCD ability, 35 energy cost and 2 CP. Ghostly Strike had a same problem as Feint in Hero Talent: It doesnât feel good to pressing button to maintain a buff every 6-7 seconds that give 1 CP. Feint is exactly the same but with 2 CP and shorter CDs. That was reason they changed Ghostly Strike to be off GCD. Feint in Hero talent doesnât give any FTH procs, that means it is going to be awkward to use Feint for rotation.
I donât think this is going to work and it should be deleted then the hero talent needs to go back to the drawing board.
I dig this as long as there are some cool cosmetic effects for Unseen Blade. I donât necessarily get a âtricksterâ vibe from this, though. To me tricksters should be more about acting unpredictably and doing things like stealing enemy abilities temporarily.