P4 - Rogue Changes - Ideas and Feedback for Devs

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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Given the delay to P4 and intended class re-design and changes, here are some thoughts on the Rogue. This will not deal with performance, and instead focus on fun, class fantasy and options.

In summary - Rogue often feels like less of a Rogue and more of a flimsy warrior given the toe-to-toe chugging of Mutilate and lack of CD rotations (so many slots are all passive). Below are suggested options for runes to be removed, merged, moved, changed and added:

Removed/Merged:
Shiv - Make this baseline
Between the Eyes - Stun proliferation is bad for the game. Remove this rune.
Shuriken Toss - Hasn’t worked. Remove and replace with Poison Grenade (see below).
Quick Draw - Put the slow (albeit reduced) into Poisoned Knife and remove this rune.
Blade Dance - Put Blade Dance ability into Just a Flesh Wound and remove this rune. (Do any other runes require a second rune to work like this pair currently?)

Moved:
Focused Attacks/Combat Potency - Two energy regens on the same slot means one will always outshine the other. Suggest move Focused attacks to (Gloves).
Carnage - Moved to (Chest). For a bleed focused build. (replaces removed Quick Draw)
Main Gauche - Moved to (Legs). Overshadowed in the glove slot currently.

Changed:
Shadowstep - Remove the GCD.
Slaughter from the Shadows - Include 20 energy reduction for Garrotte and Ghostly Strike.
Shadowstrike - Can also be used whilst under the effects of Ghostly Strike (the 7 second dodge bonus) or Shadow Dance.
Poisoned Knife - Inherits a default 25% slow from Quick Draw + whatever your poison is.
Just a Flesh Wound - Also teaches you Blade Dance.
Carnage - Bleed ticks also restore 2 energy.

New Runes - Existing Slots:
Legs: Replacing removed Between the Eyes and Blade Dance.
Recuperate (Legs) - Finishing move that consumes combo points on any nearby target to restore 3% of maximum health every 3 sec. Lasts longer per combo point: (6, 12, 18, 24, 30).
Roll the Bones (Legs) - Finishing move that rolls the dice of fate, providing a random combat enhancement. Lasts longer per combo point: (6, 12, 18, 24, 30).

Waist: Replacing removed Shuriken Toss.
Poison Grenade (Waist) - 1.5 sec cast. Throw a grenade at an area. All enemies take X damage and are inflicted with one stack of your off-hand poison. Subsequent throws are instant cast (lasts 6 seconds).

Head: Replacing moved Focused Attacks
Combat Readiness (Head) - 2min CD. Enter a state of heightened defensive awareness. Each successive weapon attack will deal 10% less damage, stacking 5 times. Lasts 15 sec or until not attacked with weapons for 10 sec.

Wrist: Replacing moved Carnage
Restless Blades (Wrist) - Finishing moves reduce the remaining cooldown of many Rogue skills by 3 sec per combo point spent. (Includes Premeditation, Preparation, Cold Blood, Adrenaline Rush, Sprint, Evasion, Vanish, Blind).

New Runes - New Slots:
Shoulder:

Master Assassin (Shoulder) - Increases maximum energy by 10 and energy regeneration by 20% while Slice and Dice is active.
Shadow Dance (Shoulder) - 1 min CD. Enter the Shadow Dance for 6 sec, allowing the use of Sap, Garrote, Ambush, Cheap Shot, Premeditation, Pickpocket and Disarm Trap regardless of being stealthed.
Cheat Death (Shoulder) - You have a 100% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead reduce you to 10% of your maximum health. In addition, all damage taken will be reduced by up to 90% for 3 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

Back:
Cloak of Shadows (Back) - 1min CD, TBC Version
Flexweave Underlay (Back) - 1.5m CD, Removes all bleeds and reduces physical damage taken by 20% for 6 seconds.
Blur (Back) - Evasion and Sprint now have 2 charges and you are immune to fall damage.

Recognise this is a lot of text. Would welcome thoughts that aren’t toxic dribble as usually associated on these forums.

It should provide more interesting rune choices across Bleed, Poison, Tank and Sub playstyles.

3 Likes
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God no. Constantly spamming a ground target effect, miss me with that. Just make it deal damage around our current target.

As for the rest, it is hard for me to get a clear mental picture of what this will feel like as you’re shuffling a lot of stuff around at the same time.

This would be amazing though. It feels bad sitting on evade yet at the same time if you just spend it willy-nilly you won’t have it when you need it. Being able to spend an evade charge to get it on CD but still have one in your pocket for emergencies sounds amazing.

I do think Blizzard is going to need to do a “Sunwell Radiance” type effect later in SoD though at this rate. Mitigation through evasion feels so juiced since it just gets better the more you have.

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wish that rogue tanking could get better aoe cause single target is nice but a pain to micro manage

1 Like
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Remove Nightmare Incursions. Apologize to the community.

4 Likes
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oh no what am i to do without my nightmare incursion said no one ever. but would be nice tho

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Some solid ideas. Not a huge fan of the Poison Grenade though.

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they should either remove the cooldown from quickdraw entirely or remove its energy cost. its insane that rogues get a rune that lets them use their ranged auto attack while moving and it has a cooldown and costs energy.

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Some good, some bad changes in this, which makes me think you’re focusing on too narrow a scope. Changes need to make sense for level 60 characters, not level 50, because that’s ultimately where all balance should be at.

  • Shiv - It’s in a weird state because there’s no reason to even use it with Mutilate being so heavily dominant, but making it baseline seems too strong. I think a better idea would be to make it a passive instead of active rune ability, 6 second cooldown, and linked to Backstab, SS, Unfair Advantage (no CD when procced this way), Ghostly Strike, and Riposte.

  • BTE - this replaces Kidney Shot and shares runes with Envenom already so I don’t see a reason to remove it.

  • Shuriken Toss - Pass. Replace with Fan of Knives and be large threat generator for tanking.

  • Quick Draw - It’s a rune for non-dagger PvP, it’s fine as-is.

  • Blade Dance - 100% agreed.

Proposed ‘Moved’ Runes:

  • Focused Attacks/Combat Potency - Disagree. FA is meant for high-crit and fast weapons, Combat Potency is better for low-crit and slow weapons. CP should auto-proc off Mace Stun and Sword-Spec procs with half-benefit (for balance reasons).

  • Carnage - I see what your thought process is here, but that puts 5 runes on the Chest. It would require some solid testing, but I think this could be a good move provided it also increases the damage of Hemo (both baseline and bonus damage) and allows Garrote to be cast out of stealth.

  • Main Gauche - Disagree - I think it needs an additional 10% buff and successful Parries reduce cooldown by 4 seconds and grant 30% attack speed for 2 seconds.

Proposed ‘Changed’ Runes:

  • Shadowstep - 100%

  • Slaughter - 100%

  • Shadowstrike - Disagree. Shadowstrike really needs a major overhaul because the rune is functionally useless past level 10. I made a thread somewhat recently about proposed changes to Shadowstrike that you should check. Even making it useable with Ghostly is a DPS loss compared to literally any of our other abilities.

  • Poisoned Knife - Leave as-is.

  • Flesh Wound - Yes.

  • Carnage - Yes, but only if Garrote remains as-is. If Garrote can be applied out of stealth then 1 energy.

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Thanks for the feedback. Admittedly it was quite a brain dump to try and raise a few ideas and highlight a few areas I’d like to see changes, especially where some runes just don’t work or feel very lacklustre.

Priorities would be to get - Cloak of Shadows, Recuperate and Restless Blades in. It feels like these would help the rogue in a variety of different ways, be it PvP, tanking, or unlocking your long (old Vanilla style) CDs a bit more frequently.

Was also keen to get a bleed build in for those not wanting to go down the poison route. I think it could work, but needs tweaking.

Agree on Poison Grenade. As you say, Fan of Knives would be great, but it takes away the pulling aspect a bit. Making it AoE from the target (rather than the rogue) would be a good fix.

Disagree on Shiv being too powerful if made baseline. It’s quite a niche ability that literally no-one picks at present. Given it was a baseline 70 ability I think it’s fine to be brought back for those able to use it to its effect.

Welcome more views though!

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Idk who this guy’s main is but I’ll bet he sucks at tanking

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Your insight is a valuable contribution to this thread. I hope you post regularly with such helpful thoughts.

You are clearly, as successful in life, as I am at tanking.

1 Like
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I like a lot of these ideas, I don’t think they’ll do cloak of shadows since they hinted that as a tanking t1 set bonus whenever you vanish iirc. I like the overgoal to make runes for bleed, poison and something for sub and tank builds. Leaning more into that ninja kind of class fantasy.

I prefer sub tree being more bleed focused instead of making something like assassination the bleed AND poison build. Something that could refresh garrote or rupture or enhance either one with your eviscerates could be interesting, as well as a ranged bleed ability. I really don’t like roll the bones personally, though I get the swashbuckler pirate rogue class fantasy (outlaw), I just think the ability is annoying. Combat and swords/mace/fist rogues do need some love though.

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Couple notes…

  • I can’t imagine people will pick FA for gloves if it means you can’t get mut or SSL. Nobody wants to press SS.
  • Baseline shiv is a good change.
  • BTE and quick draw suck, retail BTE (with the chance to refresh) would be cool. 20% crit is way too good though so it would need to be 10% or something.
  • Recuperate would just end up being another boring finisher that doesn’t feel fun to press.
  • The carnage suggestion is sick. It would also be cool if we could make hemo viable with a bleed build.
  • Poison grenade having a cast time gives me brain cancer.
  • Restless blades is fun in retail, but there are less buttons in classic so I don’t think it would be very good.
  • Shoulder runes all sound great.
  • Combat readiness doesn’t seem that good if we’re never actually getting hit (tank rogue problems).
  • Cloak of shadows is probably too powerful for classic.

I think having bleed builds, poison builds, and just straight up combat swords as viable play styles sounds really cool.

Edit:
Apparently you are not who I thought you were. I’m sure you’re a wonderful rogue tank lol.

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Cheers, but don’t you worry, I’m a lousy tank (main DPS).

Recuperate has the benefit of being on the same slot as Main Gauche (post move suggestion) - giving tanks the option of whether to help with health recovery, or focus on mitigation instead. It also gives people soloing content another option which SoD is all about.

Thanks for the feedback. Seems broad support for Carnage/bleed build to be the 4th slot on Chest. Would be cool if that could be set up with Saber Slash as a viable alternate to dagger mut spam.

Think Cloak of Shadows is basically mandatory for rogues to have any staying power in PvP between faerie fire, hunter’s mark and the plethora of long dots. But agree a full 5 seconds immunity probably too strong. Drop to 2 or 3 seconds and the ability to reset a fight is basically done.

1 Like
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Never add cheat death or cloak. Way too op for classic.

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I’ve stopped trying to theorycraft/wishlist classes. It’s just a waste of time. I just play what they implement and stop wasting brain cycles on speculation.