it’s removed from the other 2 specs which are more rogue and traiditonal assassin. I want to feel like an actual assassin/theif when playing a rogue. Instead I feel like I’m playing an out of place pirates of the caribbean class.
I’d rather the pirate themed stuff be replaced by traditional ranger themed abilities. pistol shot is instead a crossbow attack or a bow quick draw attack. I get the spec is based on Edwin Vancleef who is basically a pirate. It should’ve been themed differently. I also hate the animation of dispatch, the sidestep stab thing is dumb. It should be an ability that uses both weapons like a double slash attack. The class fantasy appears all over the place. You have stuff like trickster and fatebound, traditional fantasy thief stuff but then like half the base class is all pirate stuff.
I’d rather the pirate themed stuff be replaced by traditional ranger themed abilities. pistol shot is instead a crossbow attack or a bow quick draw attack.
No. That’s a terrible decision. If you want to play a bow-wielding character, there’s this thing called Hunter. Give it a try.
Traditional Combat (at arms) where they specialize in daggers, swords, throwing weapons with a heavy emphasis on Sinister Strike/Ambush game play and armor pen.
Swashbuckler with pirate theme cannon ball barrages, parlays, RTB.
Gunslinger where you focus on finishers and builders from range and group buffs from your ranged finishers. A hybrid bard/gunslinger.
“there’s this thing called Hunter. Give it a try.”
I appreciate the passion for your favorite class, but the condescension isn’t necessary. I’ve been playing since 2005 and am well aware of the Hunter class—I’ve only leveled about 400 of them since Vanilla.
It’s entirely possible to incorporate bow or crossbow-themed attacks while staying true to the Rogue archetype. For some reason, pulling out a pistol seems fine, but swapping that for a crossbow suddenly becomes an issue?
Then there’s the suggestion of a gunslinger spec, which also deviates from the Rogue archetype. That spec would be better suited for an engineer or tinkerer class. It feels like there’s a misunderstanding of what the class should represent. Hunters, for example, should focus on pets and long-range sniping. However, the class has strayed from that, with Survival now emphasizing traps and explosives—elements that would’ve been more fitting for a Combat Rogue.
Diablo 4, on the other hand, nailed the Rogue concept far better.
Combat Rogues should have focused on dual-wielding with traps and explosives integrated into a trickster playstyle. Subtlety should be all about stealth, and Assassination should combine stealth and combat with a heavy emphasis on poison. Instead of a pistol shot, a crossbow bolt could have been used for explosive attacks.
See I’d be inclined to agree entirely if they decided to give Outlaw more of an explosive sort of playstyle and a revamp to match. Pistol Shot is enjoyable and Between The Eyes is also fun at times when it gives me a full bag of combo points to immediately use again. But honestly I’d like them to do away with the poisons and the stealth and just give me a more suited and entertaining bag of tricks to use that doesn’t feel like the red-headed stepchild of the Rogue family that got the hand-me-downs for christmas.
The piratey themed stuff would honestly be better if they doubled down on that and went heavily into it with more abilities centered around the theme, like bombs or nets, heck even something ridiculous like the old cannonball barrage (Seriously, what happened to that?).
In reflection does the idea of crossbows that use a range of different bolts for different encounters like poisons, explosives, stuns, slows etc sound appealing? Sure. Do I want to say goodbye to my Pistol Shot in favor of that? Not especially. There I guess we agree to disagree. I do however agree Outlaw needs to carve out a niche of its own. I’ve been playing it for a while now and I’ll admit I feel like it doesn’t really know what it’s trying to be.
I liked the feel of combat in classic a lot more. Sort of sellsword or blademaster. In regards to pirates, WoW isn’t a pirate game. The weird thing is that rogues are typically a mishmash between rangers and assassins in typical fantasy. I would have to guess players are kind of obsessed with Vancleef so they just made the whole spec pirate theme. Maybe I should stop using the word assassin. Cause I don’t really mean someone going around in stealth 1 shotting people. More of an agile weapon master slicing and dicing people.
Looking at the official class page the class doesn’t seem to have any real set fantasy. The description appears to be “they are basically any theme you want” which likely explains why half the classes in this game have no identity.
“It’s ok to have one that tests the boundaries of what that class traditionally delivers.”
Tell that to the devs who are against Demon Hunters having a ranged spec fully centered around throwing warglaives.
I wish they never would have pigeon-holed combat rogue into outlaw. If you wanted to be a pirate, there was ALWAYS transmog options for it, and if you go back far enough, you could even have a gun equipped. Combat played nice (I’m partial to the Cata version myself), and it wasn’t stuck as any one thing. Rogues have a lot of different ways to be played up, people who clutch their pearls over Outlaw are baffling to me.
I love RTB. It’s like playing a mini game within the spec and that’s part of one of a few reasons why I continue to stay engaged rather than fall asleep like most other classes/specs.
Outlaw is explicitly not a fair or traditional fighter. Thematically they’re an opportunistic duelist, and they generally play to that, minus things like Roll the Bones/Fatebound.
Attaching ranger-themed abilities to a scrappy duelist makes very little sense from a thematic standpoint.
The base class as in Rogue, or the basis of Outlaw? Outlaw has generally leaned away from strictly pirate-based themes and leaned into duelist/scrapper themes with pirate technically fitting under that umbrella.
I think Blizzard should/will take the Rogue class in a similar direction to what they’ve done with Hunter, where each spec feels truly unique in terms of its mechanics and fantasy. A “fantasy forward” rework, if you will.
“Outlaw” (or whatever it’s called in a future iteration) should be the Rogue option that mimics more of a “duelist”, “combat specialist”, “scoundrel”, “swashbuckler”, etc. Zero reliance on stealth whatsoever, and no talents to even play into a stealth gameplay style.
Both Assassination and Subtlety would be served REALLY well if they were instead combined into a singular, perfected spec. The reason they only introduced 2 specs for Demon Hunter is because they didn’t want the DPS spec to feel “watered down”. Assassination and Subtlety are effectively alternate watered-down versions of a stealth-focused spec.
“Warden” (think the Warcraft III unit) would make a perfect 3rd spec for Rogue, particularly since most of the Warden’s toolkit from Warcraft III made it in as an ability for Rogues in WoW at some point in some fashion. It could even lore-wise work as a tank spec too, offering a new option that wasn’t previously available for Rogues. A stealth sniper option would be cool, but it would thematically clash far too much with Hunter MM (particularly with the direction Blizzard is taking it). “Warden” makes more sense.
I think the issue there is that Legion led to a real split between the two, and they got enough negative feedback towards Subtlety’s changes that some of them were reverted and pushed back to sharing abilities with Assassination. Legion Subtlety put building blocks in place to create a large distinction between the two, and in that regard it has been regressing.
