Rogues used to have about 7 to 10 different finishers; eviscerate, kidney shot, rupture, expose armor, envenom, slice and dice, recuperate, etc etc etc. Now, you have 3; one dmg finisher, 1 stun finisher, and 1 dot/debuff/buff finisher. Sometimes you can talent for a 4th, IE: crimson whirl, which is bad. Rogues currently have about 2-3 CP generators, when they used to have access to about 3-5 at a time.
Suffice to say, rogues were hit hard by pruning. Not as hard as shamans, but rogues were hit where it hurt most- the core of choosing how to build CP and what to spend CP on depending on the context of the fight.
However, how can we deprune rogues without cluttering bars while making CP generation more engaging than it currently is? How do we iterate on what we’ve had over the past 15 years and make it better?
Here’s my proposal.
Give rogues access to more CP generating moves and add a “combo type” to CP generators. Depending on the CP types you have stored up, your finisher is augmented to be similar to historical rogue finishers.
What do I mean?
Let’s say you are an outlaw rogue:
You have 3 builders: Sinister strike (force type), pistol shot (shadow type), and hemorrhage (blood type). All builders give 1 CP and only 1 CP.
You have 3 finishers: Eviscerate, roll the bones, between the eyes.
Outlaw has 6 CP cap with high CP finishers conferring short party buffs, assassin has 3 CP cap (with assassins having +dmg and effect to finishers).
If you stack your eviscerate with force type combo points, it deals physical damage.
If you stack your eviscerate with shadow type, it applies expose armor.
If you stack your eviscerate with blood type, it applies rupture.
If you balance force and shadow type, it gives you slice and dice.
If you balance shadow and blood type, it deals poison damage.
If you balance blood and force type, it gives your recuperate.
Roll the bones would give different party wide buffs depending on your input, IE: Force at 5 or more CP would give +crit chance for 40 seconds. Force and shadow both between 2 and 4 CP would give +haste for 40 seconds. This would encourage party buff weaving- like Bards from Rift.
Between the eyes would not be augmented due to it’s fluid use in PvP.
This way, you are encouraged to mix up your rotation not because you randomly get more or less CP and you have random pistol shot bonus stuff but due to something in YOUR CONTROL. You do different inputs because you want to apply different outcomes.
For example of Sin:
Garrote = blood, mutilate = force, backstab = shadow
Garrote Garrote Garrote finisher = rupture (garrote stacks like deep wounds)
garrote backstab garrote or backstab finisher = envenom
mutilate backstab mutilate or backstab finisher = slice and dice
etc
Talents, mastery, etc enhance different finishers and dmg types, creating different preferences across specs.