Here’s a list of different ways in which Rogues can improve their overall Energy efficiency. These are based on what’s shown on Wowhead’s TWW calculator:
Base
- Level 16 (earliest): Nimble Fingers - Energy cost of Feint and Crimson Vial decreased by 10.
- Level 18: Cut to the Chase - Envenom, Dispatch, or Eviscerate extends the duration of Slice and Dice by 3 sec per combo point spent.
- Level 26 (earliest): Rushed Setup - The Energy costs of Kidney Shot, Cheap Shot, Sap, and Distract are reduced by 20%.
- Level 30 (earliest): Tight Spender - Energy cost of finishing moves reduced by 6%.
- Level 52 & 54 (earliest): Vigor - Increases your maximum Energy by (50 / 100) and Energy regeneration by (5% / 10%).
- Level 56 (earliest): Thistle Tea - Restore 100 Energy. Mastery increases by 8% for 6 sec. 3 Charges.
Assassination
- Level 13 (earliest): Venomous Wounds - You regain 7 energy any time your Garrote or Rupture deal Bleed damage to a poisoned target. If an enemy dies while affected by your Rupture, you regain energy based on its remaining duration.
- Level 15: Garrote acquired
- Level 17: Rupture acquired
- Level 13 (earliest): Path of Blood - Increases maximum energy by 100.
- Level 51 (earliest): Dashing Scoundrel - Envenom also increases the critical strike chance of your weapon poisons by 5%, and their critical strikes generate 1 Energy.
Outlaw
- Level 13 (earliest): Adrenaline Rush - Increases your Energy regeneration rate by 50%, your maximum Energy by 50, and your attack speed by 20% for 20 sec.
- Level 15 (earliest): Combat Potency - Increases your Energy regeneration rate by 25%.
- Level 27 (earliest): Fatal Flourish - Your off-hand attacks have a 50% chance to generate 10 Energy.
Subtlety
- Level 27: Shadow Techniques - Your auto attacks have a 28% chance to generate 4 Energy and store 1 combo point, up to 10. Attacks that generate combo points can expend those stored to generate additional combo points, up to your maximum.
- Level 27 (earliest): Improved Shadow Techniques - Shadow Techniques generates 3 additional energy.
- Level 27 (earliest): Relentless Strikes - Your finishing moves generate 5 Energy per combo point spent.
- Level 31 (earliest): Master of Shadows - Gain 25 Energy over 3 sec when you enter Stealth or activate Shadow Dance.
Conflicts with Class Fantasy
When players (new or otherwise) create their very first Rogue character, they’re expecting to play some sort of swift, stealthy character that attacks really fast. What they encounter instead during the early leveling process is a gameplay loop that consists of little more than building combo points to spend on Slice and Dice.
That’s it. Combo Points → Slice and Dice. There isn’t enough energy regeneration at those early levels to really do anything else with the spec.
What’s worse is that many of your auto attacks miss because you’re dual wielding. Up until level 10, new players can’t even access their talent points to at least find some reassurance in “it’ll get better as you level up, we promise”.
From a gameplay design perspective, the first hour of playing a game is a critical period of time to try and persuade and incentive the player to continue investing their time. Early rogue gameplay does NOT do this well.
Here are some other barriers which prevent Rogue players from really diving into their class fantasy as soon as possible:
- Pick Pocket isn’t learned until Level 24. WHY?!
- Stealth isn’t learned until level 3. Why not at level 1?
- Pick Lock isn’t learned until level 14. Why?
- Why is there still a level restriction on various locked items/objects?
- Tol Dagor’s locked doors cannot be unlocked by early game rogues, despite BFA currently being the “go to” expansion for new players.
- Why aren’t there more locked things in the game, and secret shortcuts?
- It would legit be super cool if a locked chest were involved in the Exile’s Reach quests (regular classes need to find a key, Rogues can just open the chest directly after unlocking it).
6 Likes
Ehhh. Yes and no.
Leveling through Exiles reach 1-10 only takes like 30-35 mins on average so not even before an hour it teaches you to balance slice and dice with using combo points into a dps finisher.
You also get access to poisons early on to use in that ogre that the ghost rogue gives you.
Not to mention sprint and cheap shot.
Both staples and what separates rogues apart from everyone else with their own flavor of mobility and a lot of classes don’t get a stun that early either except i think paladins. Not to mention you can choose between ambush or cheap shot out of stealth.
I feel it starts off okay. Could be better but all classes are pretty bare and slow at the beginning.
You got shaman spamming lightning bolt and “primal strike” a spell that won’t exist anymore all through level 1-10 and thats all that rotation is lol.
Or monk doesn’t even have chi spenders and its just tiger palm and blackout kick with no thinking just hitting those 2 buttons. I think maybe spinning crane kick.
New players will take a lot longer, even for players who have been playing WoW longer and pick up rogue for the first time it’s just a terrible experience.
Not a single other class where I dread leveling, rogue is the only one.
1 Like
First of all the pruning hit Rogues the hardest.
Tools like smoke bomb, dismantle and combat readiness used to be available for Rogues during the leveling process.
My bro who never played a Rogue liked at the time that Rogues had Combat Readiness, Evasion, Dismantle and Smoke bomb as he leveled up his new Rogue.
Energy was still slow but at least you could live long enough to complete quest objectives during the leveling process. Biggest reason why he switched to Monk eventually is because they still retain their defensive and utility tool kit from MoP while Rogues have had it stripped away since then.
The only redeeming new tool that Rogues have for survivability is Soothing Darkness for leveling. And it is very situational tool like shadowheart leach. Leaching Poison is tuned way too low and Recuperator is super bugged.
Using Feint often when questing isn’t realistic as it costs too much energy for lowbie Rogues.
3 Likes
crazy that I used to be able to chose to have full refund on my finishers by 15 if i wanted.
Whoever is working on any given class class should be forced to level in grey gear without keybinds to 50 or something to simulate the worst noob possible.
3 Likes
Removing relentless strikes from the other two specs was the biggest mistake they ever did.
The problem persists for Outlaw and Assassination and now the entire class is penalized for all the extra energy talents scattered through the spec and Rogue general tree.
Feels bad that you are forced into energy talents just to have average energy gains. Before Rogues used to have average energy gains and talents like Shadow Focus and Vigor weren’t mandatory but recommended.
4 Likes
I mean, to a point. For example No relentless on Combat rogue in wotlk felt fine for PvE because of how fast OH attacks were & just in general how simple the rotation was. I still prefer playing with it but i could see why the builds dropped it. But I don’t get that same feeling in the modern game because of the noticably higher APM by design. We need every drop of energy we can get lol.
2 Likes
So relentless strikes was still highly recommended for Assassination and Combat but it was easily accessed at the start of the Sub talent tree. Which is why it was eventually made baseline for all three specs for that reason.
The reason why you could get away with not playing relentless strikes in WotLK is because Assassination still had Mutilate that hit hard so pooling energy for Mutilate and Envenom still felt impactful. Combat did most of the damage from auto attacks as a sustain spec but Combat also had Kspree that actually was a true melee nuke for burst. BF was used for cleaving or mini burst and AR was still a major damage CD.
The glyphs allowed you to augment Assassination and Combat to do more damage per global or extend durations.
Without that level of choice and flexibility Rogues are in the modern game forced into narrow choices.
It was easier to make builds back then that did not need to take as many energy talents to be viable. But the modern game has changed because every global matters now for all three specs.
2 Likes
I miss glyphs so bad dude. Playing classic really slapped me in the face when I realized it wasn’t nostalgia and the old energy flow just feels better.
I want to play retail more. But damn if my class doesn’t feel correct in the old iterations.
3 Likes
Removal of glyphs and pruning hurt the Rogue class the most because Rogues lost flexibility and tools in build design.
Rogue design since MoP has gone backwards and not forwards. Shadow Blades used to be part of all three specs but it is now only Sub exclusive and the same with relentless strikes. ???
Combat Readiness has been removed and replaced with a second charge of Feint. Is that improvement? I do not agree. Rather have Feint back to one charge with a longer CD and Combat Readiness over two charges of Feint.
Crimson Vial was lauded as an improvement at the time but now we see it is watered down because of all the other healing talents. Recuperate was vastly better and offered more flex.
Tools like Smoke bomb, Shadowy Duel, Dismantle,etc are all locked away in PVP talents. Why? Dismantle was introduced in WotLK while Smoke bomb was introduced in Cata.
3 Likes
Rogue is the worst class to level and it’s not even remotely close. All three specs of rogue take longer to kill open world mobs than even some healer specs 1-60.
Energy regeneration is a major issue, but the other is damage scaling on special attacks (Survival hunters can one shot mobs and two shot dungeon mobs with raptor strike with no cooldown, sinister strike tickles). Defensive ability is another issue but less important to me.
1 Like
Rogues were never the most efficient leveling compared to other classes because once upon a time if you were not Combat in the open world and you pulled more than 2 mobs you were in trouble without Blade Flurry. That is why back in the day people would use Combat spec for leveling and then switch to Sub or Assassination at level cap. Plus, Combat had better energy along with Blade Flurry.
1 Like
I’m just surprised that Blizzard has the class tuned so weak during the leveling process simply because its resource generation is so tied to talents it doesn’t have access to until later.
If you’re attempting to fight more than one mob at a time and it doesn’t die within moments of your opener from stealth, it feels like a huge struggle, ESPECIALLY if adds wander in mid-fight.
2 Likes
It used to be tied to gear but now through talents. I think that having to pick up the majority of talents to be “average” energy feels bad and limits player choice.
Back in the day with proper gearing you had average energy which is why shadow focus and vigor were not necessary or mandatory unless there was a specific PVE build for min/max.
Currently if you try to NOT take energy talents it simply is bad. I tried in the DF beta and the TWW stacking haste for example and it does not work. It didn’t work back in Cata and it is not going to work now.
1 Like
Leveling through Dragon flight now. With the rogue, it’s actually kind of painful. I’m doing sub. I really commend everyone who has leveled a rogue by questing/dungeons.
If they are going to force me to use thistle tea can they at least let my char dawn a giant Stanley cup and wack my enemies over the head with it.
2 Likes
For Outlaw, at least, it’s the fact that most of our ‘generation’ comes from depending on Roll the Bones, which for some reason is lower in the tree than Adrenaline Rush, which is more-or-less a dead Cool Down.
The problem with Outlaw pre-TWW is that your energy regen is god awful and the passives that are suppose to help alleviate that (quick draw, etc.) don’t proc as often, so when you do eventually get Roll the Bones, you still feel needlessly hamstrung.