With SnD, we basically always have one roll guaranteed ( grand melee ), then using RtB as a 45s CD buff to add to that is a good thing.
Depending on what that last talent is on the 2nd to last row is, Loaded Dice seems like a good option.
Remember that in shadowlands, we no longer have Wits stacks to worry about in AOE, so the value of Skull and Crossbones is no longer zero. So being able to guarantee a “Three” roll when using Adrenaline Rush is a big deal.
And while you piteously wait for the right roll, other DPS are slaying away or you’re getting your face smashed in.
I could understand if Roll the Bones complimented good, sustained damage, but Outlaw sustained is so under-the-bar low its lucky there’s corruption to spackle the gigantic cleft.
But it’s dynamic game play! - No it really isn’t. Roll the bones has been massive negative influence on outlaw in BFA. In order to make the spec work you have been playing the same talents since launch. The only variation is for M+ changing to dancing steel. Talents like weapon master ghostly strike, loaded dice, slice and dice have been dead since launch. with killing spree making one or two appearances. Most abilities, passives and talents are geared toward minimizing the negative outcomes of bad rolls. When you look at the sheer amount of dead talents and abilities sacrificed to make RTB work it’s a dead end
It’s skill based - Yes and no realistically learning the buffs and what to keep and what to drop isn’t hard. What is hard however is realizing that your outcome is much the same as corruptions like Infinite stars and twilight dev are for the community now. Getting a five roll massively changes your outcome and you had nothing to do with it. Looking at parses for outlaw and seeing multiple five roll procs in a fight leading the way when your dealing an endless stream of buried treasure and true bearings is awful. it is as much a reflection of skill as Infinite stars procs and twilight dev.
It’s about cooldown management . What cooldowns? until Blood of the enemy we had no dps cooldown. Adrenaline rush is easy to line up with mob packs in m+ but on boss fights you will be cashing it in to keep from running out of energy because of dead rolls and trying to keep restless blades bringing your cd’s (lol) back faster AR isn’t a real cd like wings on a pally it’s mostly just part of the rotation.
The sad truth is while the fun of a five roll is great the truth is the most of that feeling is really on account of the general malaise experienced outside of a five roll. Imagine what it’s like to finally get a five roll just as a boss moves into an RP phase … awful.
Outlaw should be about weaving in ghostly strike and other pruned combat abilities into a fight. In it’s current state it’s fixed with no choice or variation anything that can vary it from the RTB spec and open up other doors has been nerfed to irrelevance.
If RTB becomes an actual cd that still just as bad because it’s lottery and no skill involved. In the end it was fun flavor for a time that occasionally lead to some rare amazing moments but over all it’s impact on outlaw has been degenerative if anything needs to be pruned it’s rtb.
Can’t comment on how it feels at 120, but I dusted off my Rogue for the first time since Wrath. Really, really enjoyed the concept of Outlaw; the play so far is… eh? It’s frantic button mashing and which order of buttons changes based on buff, but it’s both too dramatic for an RNG effect and not dramatic enough (short of a 5 roll) to really feel meaningful and equivalent to a cooldown.
Seems like it should be more like a stance dance you can only swap out at certain intervals.
Just as Survival should come back to hunter as ranged, I’d love to see combat return in feel. Certain spec like Outlaw veered way wrong in direction and should be allowed to return.
“Just get better RNG lol”
Roll the Bones is why I stopped playing Rogue. I always played Combat and RtB having such a huge disparity on what I’m capable of without anyway to influence it other than just spending more combo points and hoping that I get a better buff / more buffs made me drop the class.
Pure RNG dictating how well I’m allowed to do is not fun.
Yes, this! Combo points ought to be a tactical investment, not a lottery machine. SOME rng in moderation is fine - but RtB just straight out takes it too far. Crits, dodges, chance for extra CP here and there… That’s the type of RNG that is healthy. I’m a rogue - not a gambler. Pirates should never have been brought into our class fantasy. I played Combat rogue because I enjoyed that I could be a rogue and do classic rogue things, while also being able to go toe to toe with other classes in a faster paced play style. Not to mention the awesome swords…
The fact that no one’s talking about Combat/Outlaw rogues in Shadowlands deeply saddens me. I understand most people here probably are old sub players wanting their spec back, but I wish to see my spec return to its roots and thrive as well. I definitely think there’s been SOME changes in the right direction, but Outlaw is still a far cry from what a rogue ought to be.
Roll the bones only proc’s well during trash packs. Much like good corruption effects. When you want them, they are not there…when you don’t need them, they are all up in that!
RNG is good in gameplay in small frequent randomized intervals. However RNG is NO good in LARGE over powered and spaced out intervals like RTB 5 proc’s.
It can be overwritten, which encourages “fishing” for good buffs (this is true even of the Shadowlands iteration, since Restless Bones can easily reduce the cooldown below the duration.)
The buffs vary wildly in potency and benefit.
The number of buffs is random, causing massive swings in damage.
The above idea proposed by Lunareste fixes that issue handily. You always get one major and one minor buff, so no more 5-buff huge damage swings. The buffs would, in theory, be balanced against each other (or they should be). Removing it from Restless Blades (and ideally removing the energy cost as well) solves the fishing issue, as the cooldown would be longer than the duration (though tbh, I wouldn’t be opposed to the CD dropping to 30s in that case, so we’d always have it up, just RNG rotating through the buffs). It ticks all 3 boxes for me.
I ran a mythic+ the other day, and the rogue spent the first minute or so of the last boss rerolling because his rolls were bad. He said he rerolled 10 times
Idk how much of a dps loss that is, but I’m sure it’s substantial. I also don’t play a rogue so idk the specifics, but that just sounds so unfun.
Even as a mage, if I go 6+ fireball casts without a crit I get annoyed. It’s just not fun, and gets irritating at a certain point. You feel like you’re not contributing
Can’t imagine building combo points and rerolling 10 times just to try and get a decent dps buff
Ya, but Fire also has Enhanced Pyrotechnics, making it impossible to go more than about 7-8 Fireball casts (depending on your base crit chance) without critting. Roll the Bones has no such protection. You could spend the entire fight getting Buried Treasure or True Bearing over and over again. There’s just too much RNG swing to the ability, even with the shift to it being a cooldown. Random buffs are fine, but rerolling to fish for better procs needs to die (and SL isn’t removing that, just reducing the pace of it), and the buffs need much better balance. I’d also prefer they strengthen each individual buff (along with balancing them), and then remove the ability to get more than one (or do the 1 major 1 minor setup above), to avoid the RNG swing in the other direction.
Yeah, I was just pointing out that even as a spec with bad RNG protection built in, it’s still annoying. I have a weakaura that tracks my crit, and there have been times I got to 90%+ before I got a crit. Outlaw having no RNG protection is so much worse.
I played outlaw briefly in BFA, and Roll the Bones was the one thing that killed it for me. I could have a perfect opener, and rotation, but RNG tanked my damage completely out of my control
Or I killed a squirrel in the city and rolled the bones just cuz, and hit all 5 buffs. It’s so random it’s sucks the fun out of the spec for me.
It made me feel like I had no control over my performance. As the player your performance should be on you playing properly, with maybe some RNG aspects. But having your entire performance hinge on it is gross
This. RNG should augment player skill, not replace it. Reacting to RNG procs and effects makes a rotation fun, and increases the skill ceiling. Having your DPS depend on RNG is not even slightly fun. The DPS spread that RtB can cause is massive, and that really kills the spec for me.
If you predictably got one buff (or the major/minor pair above), and it was just RNG which buff it was (and they were all reasonably balanced), that would be a lot of fun in my book. You’d be constantly changing up your rotation as the dice willed. But I hate standing there rerolling 3-5 times in a row because the game thinks I really really want Skull and Crossbones or something.