And assassins, and ninjas, the point is that from a visual and flavor perspective, a highwayman has absolutely nothing to offer from the outlaw fantasy that the subtlety and assassination don’t already cover, or the hero spec trickster for that matter.
A pirate lord with the dreadblades is iconic and singular, with visual flair by comparison. Perfect for the Fatebound hero tree.
a highwayman is the literal opposite of Subtlety. a highwayman comes at you head-on, holds you at gunpoint, and demands your possessions. no stealth involved at all, aside from the initial ambush.
Same applies to subtlety. There is nothing subtle about combat.
What we’re talking about here are the visuals and animations.
A guy being upfront is not exactly a visual fantasy any distinct from a warrior or demonhunter.
You need more than that, and “dirty tricks” is one visual dead end.
To be fair, Outlaws are pretty notorious for being terrible at a lot of things. Only in media are they romanticized to the point where that flaw is completely erased.
Pirates were also pretty terrible at everything; that’s why they’re pirates and not navy men sailing their country’s flag.
I would prefer Sell Sword, Mercenary, Bounty Hunter, Free Sword–the independent, enterprising killer-for-hire that actually has a repertoire of being fantastic since the before the Roman Empire.
But nah, Outlaws are totally respectable on the same level of ninjas and assassins, for real guys…
I know this was brought up in the Df beta but it needs to be repeated again.
Too many of the Rogue energy/energy saving talents come too late in the talent tree. Plus, having Thistle Tea gated by Vigor by 2 pointis not good.
if Thistle Tea was not gated by Vigor more people would use Thistle Tea for its energy gains IMO.
Honestly a lot of builds that pick up Vigor and a myriad of energy/energy saving talents at that point don’t need thistle tea for the energy but only for the mastery.
Like I said before Thistle Tea should not be a cap stone IMVHO.
Yeah people would totally take the 100 energy replenishment before taking the talent thst increases their energy bar past 100 
I could not agree MORE on Deathstalker’s mark needing more ways to be applied. I would love to see Garrote added to the application list! As it stands I often do NOT have hero talents because I miss the application.
garrote is a horrifyingly bad idea. you think you want it, but you don’t.
any kind of tab targeting will be dead, you’d keep re-applying marks before consuming all of them to different targets.
ambush and mutilate are the answer.
at worst, shiv, grossly overloaded as it is, the bloated abomination of what was once a utility button
I know I’m dispatching a dead horse here, but any updates on when we can get some actual Hero Talents? You know if you renamed “Fatebound” to just be “Bounty Hunter”, I bet a lot more people would love it (and if you made it anything other than a passive RNG fest)
I don’t know about that bud, I personally just hate the Coin with a passion, it is a dumb gimmick~
Either way right now the changes are great and all but as we can clearly see in the thread they are not enough.
Shadowheart is a node that still exists : this is a symptom of a greater issue ongoing!
Yeah I would still hate it for being nothing but passive RNG, like literally the least interesting thing possible. Beyond that, I have no idea why they messed with ER, made it cost an extra talent point, and still haven’t given us a viable alternative build to Vanish-Dancing
Wait actually of all the names people have given for Rogue hero spec this is like top 2
The main point is that applying the mark isn’t tied to stealth really. Mut/ambush/backstab/SS I think is perfectly fine. I do also thing blizz, for whatever reason, will want some sort of “friction” with application (which I do think is silly because you want to use darkest night to apply as much as you can). Shiv is an idea but I do not think the best, the next ST builder as you suggest is better.
I do not think garrote is as restrictive as you portray though. Outside improved garrote windows, where I would hazard a guess and the average player just casts it on the same target and lets smart targeting work, assassin does not really multidot with it. Rupture has far more tied to it from a multidot perspective (corrupt the blood, scent of blood, bone spike if talented) that it is far more important to the multidot scenario than garrote is on average. Both give the same venomous wounds returns on tick, but garrote costs more than a rupture. Hard to quantify CP returns on garrote since its 45 energy for 3, and fok gives 1+1 per crit for 35 energy. Rupture costs CP yes, but it is only 25 energy.
Something like it will not refresh stacks on ST should be enough for garrote to work. This does not have to be garrote, tying it to a ST builder like caustic is, or even shiv, I think is FAR FAR better than tying it to stealth.
The without a trace line is far far better than it is on live, but that should not be an excuse to force deathstalker down the line. Fatebound has a talent for cold blood, but it ALSO has an optional talent (tuning lacking yes) to avoid cold blood. If fatebound can have an option to avoid a capstone, deathstalker should not seemingly rely on one for the core mechanic IMO
Fixing this would make the patch just so much better for assassin. With the changes so far, if they fix deathstalker’s mark for assassin, it would just be so so amazing.
Relentless Strikes should be baseline for all three specs again. Then rebalanced all the energy talents in all the Rogue trees and there you have it more consistent energy from actually doing finishers while still having energy talents as OPTIONAL way to change up game play flow and not mandatory.
You mentioned CDR like 25 times in your post but not once did you explain what CDR
GFDD
You’re right. Unfortunately the wowhead class leads love this design so expect blizzard to double down on it instead of making the class enjoyable
I figured out why the new Acrobatic Strikes is annoying to use. The speed bonus is hard to time and it is difficult to gauge your positioning with the added speed bonus that comes out of nowhere.
That is why when the speed bonus frequently goes off you end up being too close to melee targets hit boxes or too far way.
When you hit sprint you know you are going to move forward or back faster and you can account for that closing distances from playing enough with sprint.
Also since I have time a lot of the Rogue PVP talents are in need of review:
Control is King PVP talent needs an update since SND now is basically a passive from finishers. in patch 11.0.5
Dagger in the Dark should not longer telegraph your presence as it takes forever to build up stacks.
Dismantle should not cost energy as it is used more for defensive purposes.
Maneuverability without any slow protection is worthless.
Creeping Venom Stacks way too long to build.
Boarding Party radius is to short.
Drink up Me Hearties breaks stealth when Crimson Vial is used. The talent needs to be redesigned.
Enduring Brawller takes too long to stack in PVP environments with lots of CC.
Turn the Tables should give a damage bonus from all long CC not just stun.
Gonna be honest, I understand removing the extra 3 yards from melee in pvp for obvious reasons, but in PvE it has been an atrocious decision.
i agree, they should nerf caster range as well by an equivalent amount, say, 15 yards.
Play evoker.