Now that we’ve had a few weeks to let some data pour in from the raids and personal play, I’d love to yell into the abyss that is the devs of this class about how the RNG of this spec is becoming a massive issue, and needs to be addressed/normalized.
I apologize for the massive post, but the amount of RNG systems stacked together finally annoyed me enough to call it out extensively. There’s a TLDR at the bottom, for anyone not insane enough to read all this.
Currently, we have a number of RNG layers, at least looking at the standard crackshot build.
- Our mastery is historically bad, but this is becoming a problem as we are just flat not scaling with stats. To the point that most of our valid trinket options end up being the immediate damage stuff that every other spec shuns, as their stat scales are actually good. The fact our mastery is a flat 30% RNG, and that percent proc chance still doesn’t increase with mastery in 2025 is just insane to me. Ret has basically the same mastery, but it scales up with their mastery amount. Pair in that haste gives us almost zero damage increase after hitting cap requirements, and that just leaves Vers and Crit giving us pretty low gains at the end of the day, causing most of our power to be front loaded into tier sets and main stat/Vers. Not gaining noticeable power from 30 ilvls in a patch, whether due to the high variance and RNG or lack of scaling, feels horrid and needs fixed.
- Opportunity has its baseline 35% second hit chance, buffed barely by skull and crossbones up to a 60% chance if you get that roll. While this seems fine, the amount of times I have (and I’m sure anyone who has played the spec has) ran into the situation where you have to SS 5 times in a row for a spender is just too often. SS does no damage, and there’s almost no reason I can see to not buff this up to 65%/90% respectively. I don’t mind the occasional bad luck, but it’s happening more often than any other class has to deal with.
- Hidden Opportunity being 80% of the chance that Opportunity has is fine I guess, but honestly Ambush also doesn’t do enough damage to not justify this just being 100% of that chance. At current values, and reliance on Crackshot resets, an Enhance shaman is doing more damage with their windfury procs than this is doing.
- Crackshot as a whole is a problem and our damage around it needs to be fixed. I’m sorry, I don’t hate the rotation, but this ability should probably not be near double the damage of the next ability in line in most fights. Factor in the amount of RNG in the resets due to the scaling 5-35% chance of resets, and the fact that it relies on Broadsides being up to fully use the window, it just leaves you with this massive feast/famine cycle. Some days, I can get great damage, other days I will sit there and get zero resets, and then no procs on ambush, and waste half the window. Crackshot resets just need to be more consistent. This spec used to be entirely built on a consistent damage profile, and has been knocked down to a massive slot machine with this talent being on such a low reset rate.
- Ruthlessness adds a nail in the coffin to all of the above, creating random 20% variance in a few combo points here and there. This seems inconsequential, but on a spec that heavily relies on optimizing every global to exist, this just worsens the problem that much more when it decides to go on a loss-streak.
- Audacity also adds a functionally unnecessary layer of RNG by also giving you a moment to avoid hitting SS, but only after two 35% chance procs back to back. Why this isn’t just a 100% chance is beyond my understanding.
- RTB rolls, while not actively a lot of damage, create the entire platform on which the resets for Adrenaline Rush are built. I will grant, numerically these are entirely unimpactful, but rotationally, it’s ridiculous how much the rolls have on your resets. I will go in depth on this further down.
- Our tier set, while a flat damage increase, stacks on an RNG element, has a chance to overstack if you use RTB over 5 stacks, instead of just giving the stacks, and resets on a chance. So, our tier set is layered with 3 levels of RNG. It’s thematic some might say, but I’d counter that with this. Ret pally has a set that stacks and resets on RNG. That’s it. In fact, most of the other tier sets are “stack and reset” with no 3rd variance, and they get their full 10 stack buff passively. And their 4 set just gives them free resources, and lets them spam Holy Power abilities. That’s the equivalent of us just spamming dispatch/BTE for 4 seconds any time it reset. So, they just got their own mini Crackshot, but their spenders aren’t generally terrible.
Now, to go into the argument for RTB being a problem, since I know detractors will say “RTB is low damage impact”.
At best, ADR is up for about 45 seconds. 30 second base cast, the opening stealth window, and 3 vanish weaves. That means we get a grand total of about 54 globals to reset ADR before that 45 seconds is up. That’s 54 globals to manage to reset a 3 minute cooldown. Broadsides gives 6 CP instead of 5 on a Crackshot reset which paired with Ruthlessness gives 7 CP, and True Bearing tops that off with an additional .5 seconds of reduction per CP. This seems inconsequential right? 2 combo points and .5 seconds reduction, whatever.
I’m dead tired on this and doing this math off the top of my head, so forgive me if the math is off, but the difference between a bad roll/proc set and godly procs/rolls should look something like this:
-A worst-case scenario proc set with no resets would require you to hit Sinister Strike upwards of 30 times, only hit BTE about 10 times, and having to hit ambush four times per Subterfuge window. This amounts to roughly 67 seconds of resets, and with the ADR uptime, that’s less than 2 minutes of the ADR cooldown refunded. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have ran into this more than once, albeit extremely rarely. Maybe twice in 5 years.
-A best-case scenario with would allow for BTE to be used 8 times in a row at max reset, resulting in a full reset of Adrenaline Rush in just the opener and first vanish window. A grand total of 18 inputs and under 20 seconds. 16 BTEs refunding 168 seconds, Vanish one time between BTE casts, and Killing Spree capping off with the last BTE reset after Crackshot ends. A ludicrous thought, but statistically not impossible, and I have experienced a few instances of nearly this exact RNG.
Now, realistically, you’re going to fall between these two scenarios. The problem is that these realities both exist, and have been experienced, or nearly experienced, by players of the spec long term. The difference in good RNG and bad RNG with these things should not amount to a massive difference in reset times, as it’s removing so much player agency from the rotation and procs can literally break your damage in a pull by repeatedly throwing you into energy deficits and huge windows of no ADR.
Compare this to something like Fire Mage, which has a similar proc system, and the issues become staggeringly apparent. Combust guarantees procs for them during its window, basically guaranteeing the equivalent of 100% Opportunity procs during its uptime. With their Hot Streak also having resets in that window, and an off GCD button that helps fill the window, they basically get to hit a ton of full CP BTEs in a row, guaranteed, and have control on how and when that window functions. They also have a chance to gain their equivalent to Adrenaline Rush, for free, randomly, for 5 seconds. They have our old Celerity legendary built into their kit, in fact, all mages do.
So, they have deterministic procs, a proper damage cooldown, free procs of said cooldown, and ways to manipulate their procs to make them work for them. Opposed to Outlaw, which is 18 layers of RNG deep at any given moment, has zero deterministic systems, and has zero player control on manipulating the procs to fix dead windows.
I understand that the changes would create a massive damage increase, and abilities would need to be adjusted to compensate. Fine. Make those changes and do your job to actually make the spec feel good. I genuinely would prefer my hits do something consistent and hit a bit less hard, but feel better to execute and without ridiculous skill-ignoring dead spots in the rotation. Punish people for bad play, sure, but someone doing a good rotation at 100 APM shouldn’t have to dead stop because RNG said it was time to stop hitting buttons.
All this being said, Outlaw just needs a massive rework to pull ADR away from an upkeep spell, and return it to an actual damage cooldown. The spec has the highest variance of any spec’s damage profile thanks to the new tier, according to the raid data we’re seeing, and I think it’s gone on long enough. I want to return to the days of being able to guarantee a mid-line of decent damage that you can rely on. This random burst window stuff with an unstable proc refund controlling your output is just not fun design. We should be rewarding players for being good by increasing their performance. Their performance should not be dangled on the thread of 6 procs all working in a row every time we hit a spender.
TLDR for those not looking to read a novel: 17 layers of RNG is extremely bad design and creates a ton of variance in a kit that historically used to be designed around consistent flow, and Outlaw just needs a severe rework to pull us back to reality. Other specs similar to ours all have deterministic procs and design built in, but for some reason everything we do is based on or activates some ridiculous percentage proc chance.
Thanks for listening to my TED talk, and I’m sure not a single dev will actually read it.
