In the end this all comes down to numbers.
How big are they and how many hoops do we have to jump thru to earn them? What does the flow feel like?
The flow is ok.
the numbers are far below where they should be.
Way too many hoops. Those hoops are attached to stuff we can’t do when soloing.
Whoever passed this design thru needs new glasses.
Especially considering the other classes that are doing much more are able to achieve their numbers by doing 1/2 or less of the interactions that Rogues do. I just sat on my Ele Sham on live and, with me never having played Elemental and the Sham being 489, I was able to make a chain lightning spam meme build that was able to keep up in damage with this toon while I was basically watching YouTube.
Granted, we haven’t gotten the PTR buffs on live nor the hero trees, but this is an issue that’s existed for a long time for the class. And it’s why the class has such a low play rate.
Most people would rather play Warrior or Frost DK, which can be learned in 20 minutes, instead of figuring out the nuance of CP building and when to spend CP, plus buff upkeep and vanish weaving.
It seems simple as people who have played the class, but for most people who play the game, Hunter and Pally are “nuanced and difficult”.
Back in the day Mutilate had a positional requirement but it hit hard. Same with backstab. Hemo was used in precise situations while Envenom was all about maximizing those windows.
Rogues used to be rewarded for max combo point finishers and combo point builders meeting certain criteria to reward player investment and skill.
That is lost because Rogues even with energy and combo point investment you are spinning multiple plates for average gains. Which makes no sense in that other classes do less maintenance and they have above average/great gains.
Right now lining up multiple CDs for mediocre gains isn’t not mathing as Dave Ramsey would say but it also feels wrong from a game play point of view.
Outlaw I think suffers the most followed by Assassination and Sub. While Sub had a lot of CDs that are scattered you can patchwork together a game plan for how to approach all types of content. Assassination is a bit better for playing with a consistent plan and pay off but it requires a lot more attention to detail IMO. But Outlaw requires you go through multiple CDs for average gains due to CDR. CDR in Combat meant you were ahead of the curve and had above average to great gains in terms of DPS. You were always having a CD ready to go for when needed. Now? You feel behind with regard when you need a CD. Especially AR which is now mandatory to try to keep the spec afloat.
Outlaw Rogue had one of these in BFA with SnD and Snake Eyes. They broke it as fast as possible. I always wonder why.
“Difficult to play, slightly less difficult to master,” has not been a better model.
Snake eyes build was fun and it is a shame they broke SND builds to prop up RTB builds.
Ahh RTB they will go to their grave trying to make that skill work. It’s a matter of principle now. 
I think a lot of the problem is that they don’t have anyone with ideas on how to actually go about replacing it in a way that isn’t just leaving a hole in the spec.
Like, they’re so obsessed with making the spec work because they can’t figure out anything better to do with it. So, they maintain the barest of “pirate” themed abilities to keep the Outlaw ruse going, when it has just been a massive pain to balance because of all the RNG that we don’t really want anyway.
Honestly, I’m more concerned with them making more than just one build reasonable to use. Kinda getting tired of builds being 40%+ worse than the one they want you to play just because they undertune the talents or develop tier sets and hero talents that make choosing those builds functionally impossible.
RtB doesn’t work because the player can’t control the timing of a good roll. I get great rolls on trash and dumpster rolls on bosses. There is no way to line up anything with a cooldown or with a hero. Keep it rolling is worthless because of this as well.
However a “perfect roll” that has everything at double potency may work as a three minute cooldown skill to press when needed. We could pop that with a hero for nice dps when needed.
I think this too.
From what I can sense (wild guess), there is some note floating around headquarters that says “Create greater value for Stealth without making play miserable in PvP for other players.” Well, there’s seemingly no way to do that unless you add Stealth into the combat system and pull all the numbers down, generally. Combat and Stealth were originally engineered as Oil and Water, so it is a design challenge (Sisyphean or Herculean is sight unseen). That said, every time we’ve seen it cross the wall, it overwhelms the core design. True with Sub, true with class-wide Shadow Dance, and seemingly true again with rotating Vanish.
I’m still waiting for the “Sike!” that 10.2 wasn’t the promised Rogue rework, just bricklaying for it.
One thing that always bounced around in my brain is. The chance to have higher numbers does not equal higher numbers.
They have me rolling on the chance to have a chance at better dps. That doesn’t mean I will have more dps.
I think they need to add some certainty in those rolls.
Very simply put, they blew it. The possibilities were endless.
It’s about the averages, since our damage profile was usually a solid line when you look at a fight from a bird’s eye view. It’s a lot of what drew me to the class, as you could always rely on my damage to be +/- 10% of the usual performance in raid and keys alike. At least, before the Crackshot implementation it was.
It still levels out, given enough time, but the amount that the Crackshot damage can vary based on both RTB and procs means you can nearly double the damage done in the window just based on luck alone, which doesn’t feel amazing.
Either we need some certainty or we need to wipe the skill and get the core rolls as passives. I’d much prefer a talent node replacing all the RTB skills that gave me 30% of the power of the bonuses but at 100% uptime. Or 100% uptime and power during stealth windows or something. Basically anything except the current lottery system.
In a system where players have to prove their worth thru dps in order to ensure groups to play in. I think having a hit or miss system such as this is a recipe to punish players.
Also Vanish cannot be used when soloing delve bosses so attaching our cooldowns to vanish is also unnecessary punishment.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately, how terrible all three rogue specs are going to be in delves, but especially Outlaw.
So what if Crackshot was tied to Adrenaline Rush instead of Vanish? Wouldn’t work in a vacuum of course. AR uptime would need to come down a lot, but that should probably happen anyways. Having near 100% uptime on AR is kinda terrible for the overall health of the spec.
Say AR had half the cooldown and somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 the duration of live AR, and was no longer paused during Subterfuge? Would give you a 7-10 sec Crackshot window every ~30 seconds or so.
Energy regen outside of AR could also be tuned up a bit and AR itself could also be made into a stronger cooldown if it didn’t have such high uptime.
Just make Sinister Strike builds more appealing by increasing the energy regen and the proc for Sinister Strike and Triple Threat. I would honestly like to see a Mastery re-work, but that’s just me.
Mastery can be better if they increase amount of rating per point and increase the damage again because it needs it.
Makes no sense for the spec that is known for extra attacks to do low damage when MG procs and it is hard to build for as a mastery stat.
I remember someone mentioning that our Mastery was the only thing they didn’t seem to apply the aura buff to, almost intentionally it seems. They buffed everything by their spell ID, and just entirely missed the mastery for the class, basically reverting that ~20% buff it got in the process.
They just do not want our mastery to be a substantial piece of our damage profile.
Mastery has to always be an integral part of any spec. Not necessarily the dominant aspect of a damage profile but still important enough like for Sub and Assassination.
Without the damage buff and changes to rating per point increases mastery for Outlaw is just not going to move the needle. Until they can rework mastery for Outlaw it needs to do more damage for the spec.