I find it funny all these 1400 rogues think one player playing outlaw at 2700 makes it viable.
It’s an exception and just because one person did it doesn’t mean you aren’t handicapping your team.
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Its horrible and unplayable.
I tried out every possible combination of talents and it just tickles people.
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It’s not that great, tosan is a rank 1 player with really good coordination, and is playing a comp with 2 people revolved around supporting the ret with dark arch, pi, tricks, take your cut. Playing it as a more typical dps is very underwhelming.
If they buffed outlaw to have a ridiculous amount of damage where it was the go to spec for pvp it would still be a bad pvp spec. Just an overtuned bad pvp spec. This is where you seem to have a mental block that you need to fix. We do not give a flying **** about any of the specs damage. In fact subs damage is laughable.
When players evaluate a specs ability to function well in a pvp environment as a rogue you look at its ability to
- Reset / peel capability.
- Control to allow short burst opportunities or to deny an opponents goes
- Burst to assist with kills during your go windows.
- Damage profile fitting in with the hit and run playstyle.
So lets dissect these as outlaw;
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Outlaw is kinda okay in this department. It lacks the team wide CC spam that sub and sin bring with dance / subterfuge but it has gouge, which is decent but kinda screws blind / sap combos with a long DR for a small CC. It has a shorter cooldown blind which is handy and it reaches further but that isn’t really a huge issue when the other specs have shadow step or bait the healer in with a smoke bomb first, then blind once in range. Where it fails here is resets really don’t do much for outlaw other than delay the game. There is no huge payoff for it which can be discussed later in the damage profile section.
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Huge fail here. Blind is a shorter cooldown and you have gouge but without subterfuge or dance your abiilty to cross CC the entire team can only happen if blind is off cooldown. With dance / subterfuge + step the other rogue specs can do an entire teamwide cross CC solo to set up for kills literally any time the rogue can reset or has a dance charge; which is freaking often. Outlaw may have the edge on Assassination vs teams with lots of pets that stick on you all game and the mage needs nova for peels and not pets but that is very niche. Outlaw never ever ever EVER comes close to subs ability to cross CC for setups though.
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Burst. You have none. At all. Like healers have more burst than outlaw. Think hard and see if you can find a single class in the game that bursts less than an outlaw rogue. Even an aff lock can burst well if dots are already rolling, which they will be for a ‘go’.
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Overall damage profile. Low variance but high sustain with no bust options. If you are not auto attacking 100% of the time your damage drastically falls. Lets use boomkins and convoke as an example for simplicities sake. A boomkin can literally sit on his hands or just peel / heal 95% of an arena match. The only time their damage is important is during a kill attempt with convoke. So nearly 100% of their useful damage is in a 5% window. This is a very good damage profile for pvp in a deathmatch scenario. Now back to rogues. Subs damage profile is similar to convoke where if you spend 90% of your time surviving / peeling / controlling it is fine because sub only needs to do damage 10% of the game. Sins damage is similar, although it has much more spread damage than sub it still has huge burst opportunities during the small windows when needed. Outlaw has nothing but mediocre damage over a long period. Literally the worst of all worlds. Then we can look at what you gain from a clean reset. Nothing. Sub and sin both gain a crazy amount of burst on each reset or a crazy amount of control. Sin can literally put a 5 second silence on 3 members. What does outlaw get? A single cheap shot. Wow what a gamechanger. Melee + single target mediocre damage + no burst is just the most useless profile you can imagine. Since your damage is so spread out over a long period your attribute little to nothing during small burst windows where people can die and your overall damage can be healed with small hots. BuT wHaT aBOut WaRLoCkS! Warlocks basically have a similar profile to outlaw rogues…but do it to the entire freaking team at the same time and can’t be peeled off and once the dots are up the lock can basically afk and do full damage. Outlaw needs 100% uptime 100% of the time which isn’t going to happen.
So outlaw does have a few things going for it but even though those things are better on the other two choices. More importantly outlaw has a lot of things going against it that are super crippling. Sure if outlaw was buffed so much where it one shot everyone constantly it would do well but that isn’t sustainable. The inner mechanics of a spec and its damage profile is a better way to judge a spec relevance.
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One thing I never quite understand is the logic of giving outlaw gouge over sub. From the previous expansions, gouge was always used to setup backstab for assassin and sub from way back when they both used it. Outlaw (combat) had no need for gouge at all since vanilla. Even now, gouge makes better sense for sub to setup backstabs even tho backstab is trash no matter you use it from front or back.
Gouge is very helpful in M+ as outlaw, don’t try to take it from me pal.
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Yea, but this was before M+. Or the same expansion. Don’t quite remember. They diluted the rogue class so much that at one point, even blind was exclusive to sub. Can you imagine, no blind for assassin and outlaw with the current pvp? 2 of our specs would be almost absolutely unviable. Not to say gouge should be taken away from outlaw, but it should have been baseline for all rogue specs just like blind, kidney shot, cheat shot and evasion. Those are signature skills of rogue.
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Okay, last post for those of you that just don’t get it, or are just plain stubborn.
“Capable of working successfully” is the literal definition of the word “viable.” If it’s played successfully at 2700, it’s viable.
Might not be easy. Might take some skill. But, it’s viable. That’s the whole point. Nobody does it, cause nobody is good enough, or they prefer the easy specs.
Even someone with 0 arena experience could tell you that.
Outlaw is the worst Rogue PvP spec. No argument on that. That’s a tuning issue. Sub has either too much, or others don’t have enough, whichever way you want to look at it.
Moral of the story. Play what you enjoy. It’s a game. If you are good enough, you can succeed.
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It’s solid in BGs if you focus on flags and being annoying. You’ve got increased mobility compared to other specs.
I would argue that, not only is outlaw the worst rogue spec, but probably the worst melee spec. The other melee spec with lower relative representation all have something going for them. UDK has necrotic strikes and better team utilities. Dh can burst really hard. Don’t know much about fury. But now we’re just comparing outlaw to some of the other widely considered weaker specs in the game and that’s not a good thing.
I guess at the end, to make outlaw good in pvp, it needs huge help in ways that may make them too powerful in pve. That likely means Blizzard will not change it. If they make pvp talents cross spec in 9.1, there won’t be a reason to play outlaw other than for style.
Here’s another perspective. Across NA, we got 12 outlaw rogues over 2400. Now look at Arms warriors there are at least a couple of hundreds over 2400, and another hundreds of ret pallies over that rating. So what’s the chance of a new outlaw player going over 2400? Also, to be “viable” you need to have a team willing to work with you. Now let’s ask the question, what’s the likelihood of a serious team who wants to push 2400 be willing to work with the outlaw rogue knowing only 12 outlaws made it over 2400 across all of NA? The point is, the odds are really really stacked against anyone who wants to pvp as outlaw in any competitive matches. Now those odds will change with any buffs or nerfs. But as it stands now, anyone who says “outlaw isn’t that bad” is really fooling themselves. Like I said tho, we are talking about a spec with very few players with even less number of high-rating representation. This isn’t the case of holy priest. Because even tho holy priest has very few players, it has a good number of high-rating representation.
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With better gear Assassination is passing Sub so yes gear matters.
Right Outlaw and Assasination were not great at the start of systemlands expansion. But with better gear they are now good and climbing while Sub is sinking like a rock.
Everyone knows that Ret and Arms are busted. You can’t determine the true state of the game over specs that are completely busted.
You clearly don’t understand how that statement works.
It’s also not just gear. It’s the 18% aura buffs sin got.
Sub’s damage isn’t laughable right now in systemlands. I would argue Sub’s damage is good in PVP. The problem is some specs like Ret and Boomies are busted.
Outlaw’s kit is fine. Just needs a small damage boost.
As higher gear levels showed in BFA Sub PVP could work. Pika showed this as well as Nahj.
Because of higher rated players paving the path they created a new meta and you started to see more Sub Rogues doing PVP in BFA with the right gear set ups.
Tosan has done the same thing. He has shown the way that it is viable with the right gear set up with Outlaw.
As for needing the right teammates and comps that is true for all specs in PVP if talking about arena. Teammates help each other.
The true state of the game is that those specs exist and Blizzard believe they should stay the way they are. Therefore, these are the outlaw’s competitions. I could use enhancement shamans or frost dk and the same thing can be said.
That isn’t true.
BlizZard is going to change things with the patch 9.1 in 1.5 weeks. Accept that some busted specs will be nerfed to the ground. Lets hope Sub isn’t caught up with the nerfing frenzy!
Brolinka nerfs hard and fast when the end of the season is approaching for the new season!
Dude one player making a spec work doesn’t make it viable nor does it change the absolute fact they would push farther by playing one of the other specs.
I’m starting to lose a lot of respect for you.
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And to wrap it all up here is the truth. I love threads like this as it exposes people for what they truly are.
First, players like Tosan, Pika and Najh establish the meta…only players above 2700+. Once the meta is established by these top players in PVE and PVP then other players below them copy what they are doing. In BFA, what happened was Sub and Outlaw had the damage nerfed respectively early on which impacted how they would work in PVP. The kit didn’t change for either one but it really took them down a notch in PVP in early BFA. One of the big reasons why Tosan stopped playing Outlaw in PVP in BFA was the damage nerfs and not the kit being nerfed.
Changing gears we then have players like Pika who love Sub they stuck with it and made it work. And with better and new gear Sub became viable once more in BFA! Gear matters.
So anyone that says damage buffs don’t help is lying. 
I mean look at Assassination…Assassination is rising again because of damage buffs. Assassination has some of the worst PVP talents compared to most specs in WoW and doesn’t have the mobility of Sub or Outlaw.
But Assassination delivering damage is why it was king for Legion, BFA and very soon in systemlands.
The sleeper rises and Assassination is gong to reign supreme once more. King of kings is back in town.
Yes it is. See you kind of backed yourself into a corner and must concede this random outlaw crusade you have going with this one single point.
Why is this so important? Well by saying that subs damage is good, which it is NOT and I have about 2 million logs proving it, you are inadvertently agreeing with me that damage PROFILE is more important than overall damage. Subs overall damage in every single aspect in this game is dog $hit bad. Sub literally only has burst and can abuse this in pvp with resets. Outlaw’s damage profile, however, is low sustained damage with zero burst. If burst is valued so heavily in pvp where you would argue that subs damage is actually good;
Then you must concede that outlaw’s is by comparison, bad.
Had you bothered reading this thread I have been saying Outlaw needs a small damage buff in PVP.
Outlaw kit is fine and just needs a small damage buff.
Keeping it real!
