Hello everyone, just wanted to make a thread about some of the rogue changes we would like to see in 9.1 and future patches.
Personally I main sub rogue so sorry if I don’t mention assassination or outlaw as much.
First up is the revamp of many pvp talents.
With blizzard announcing they are going to take a look at many of the pvp talents and see which ones are not taken and hopefully add some new interesting ones.
A few dead pvp talents that sub rogues have are:
A. Veil of Midnight
B. Honor among thieves
C. Silhouette
These 3 talents need to be removed and replaced with something that gives us some competitive options. I’d really like to see dismantle come back as an option for sub and assassination. I also think we need to make smoke bomb baseline for all 3 rogue specs so that we could actually have some type of raid utility, I think death from above needs a bigger damage increase than 10% Bc the animation takes way too long and the only time it’s taken now is for a gap closer or to try and avoid cc. And on a personal note I would really like to see Cold Blood reverted to its classic form, where it makes our next eviscerate 100% crit chance, this in combination with a buff to DFA could make for some awesome crits.
Aside from changes to pvp talents I wish we could go back to old sub rogue a bit, give us gouge, hemo, garrote back and delete enveloping shadows and shadowy duel. Give rogues our sustain pressure back in the form of maintaining slice and dice and our bleeds via rupture and garrote. I would also like to see shadowstrike reverted to ambush, crimson vial change to recuperate, revert Cheapshot to give us 2 CPs once again(dumbest change I’ve ever seen). And lastly I’d like to see sub no longer be required to have a dagger in the main hand, I always loved having two one handed swords as a rogue but I hate the play style of outlaw.
Let me know what you think of some of my changes and stuff you guys would like to see in future patches.
no, these are like the only things making us somewhat viable and gouge isn’t going to replace these. With how often we get dance sapping mid fight isn’t difficult and gouge would just DR it. I mean I’d like to have gouge back but not at the expense of those.
It’s simple, blizzard can’t give us reliable sustain pressure if we have 2 dances and duel. It’s either we are CC bots that do no dmg or we have less cc.
And idk what brackets ur playing in but 99% of the time any good players are going to be in combat the entire arena game
Rework to actually 1 dance with no deepening shadows cooldown reduction on finishers and with find weakness massively buffed.
Find weakness 10 second duration down from 18 seconds and no longer procs from backstab crits.
Enveloping shadows reworked to movespeed during dance or a different type of deeping shadows cooldown reduction such as finishers lowering the cooldown of shadow blades instead.
2 Charges of vanish 3min each up from 2min instead of a preparation vanish between dances model.
Backstab now costs 60 energy, has a positional requirements and hits significantly harder like old expansions.
Backstab/gloomblade automatically turn into shadowstrike to address barlag similar to how blade dance becomes death sweep for DH based on form.
Shadowey duel and cold blood removed, Outlaw dismantle/tricks honor talents made avail to all 3 specs in addition to new honor talents coming hopefully in 9.1.
Gouge given to all 3 specs, but 30sec cd and 15more energy cost for sub/assa.
Garrote given to all 3 specs, but only usable in stealth for sub/outlaw and a 10sec cd for non assassination.
Crit legendary lowered to 30% against players in pvp. Impossible to balance without making the class useless outside of these windows. Still might be an issue even at 30% like the old phantom assassin honor talent if you’re able to get crit really high with the korayn soulbind for openers + planned execution conduit.
Maneuverability freedom sprint now removes intial roots (old improved sprint) in addition to its normal effect.
Remove Cloaked in Shadows restealth conduit restealthing with dots and add some new conduit improving feint in it’s place like feint giving a HoT effect, or tie the shield to vanish rather than restealths.
Soothing darkness talent now has a heal over time buff with a duration when entering stealth to address healing to full, even though it’s just an issue in double dps 2s.
Kidney shot once again no longer benefits from the 6th combo point provided by deeper stratagem.
Shadowstrike teleport from stealth removed.
Shadowblades unnerfed in pvp combat.
Cheap shot now grants 2 combo points again.
Night Fae sepsis being changed to a bleed from poison and shortened duration to 6 seconds. Change utility provided from the effect finishing from 1 stealth ability to cooldown reduction or letting you vanish without incurring cd instead of how it auto vanished back in beta.
Kyrian blue point provided by echoing reprimand easier to hit by making it a 2 combo point window, as well as allowing it to refresh snd, and allowing it to max combo point kidney.
Premeditation and Shot in the Dark bug fixed and now persist when opening with different abilities / or are aoed out and in subterfuge.
Fix sepsis bug pulling you out of stealth/vanish when the effect expires. Bug only happens with subterfuge and doesn’t occur when playing nightstalker.
Wound poison now stacks up to 5 times for all 3 specs and is 24% at max stacks in pvp combat and no longer effected by Assassination master poisoner talent. Proc rate lowered to increase ramp up time?
Assassination crippling poison applied from shiv capped at 70% in pvp combat to prevent master poisoner making shiv a 84% snare
Shiv enrage removal added to crippling poison. Shiving with mind numbing still applies an improved crippling poison.
Other systems
Warrior intervene now only lasts for 1 ability like old intervene or reworked to just 1 second.
All forms of CC reduction no longer stack with each other. Orc, Relentless, Sephuz, Kyrian clamp soulbind.
Kyrian clamp is now 15% down from 30%, Orc hardiness racial and relentless lowered to 15% down from 20%.
Necrolord Marileth soulbind Ooz’s frictionless coating shield lowered in pvp combat from 15% shield every 30 seconds to 10% every 1 minute.
Venthir General draven soulbind service in stone lowered in pvp combat from 10% damage reduction below 40% hp to 5% damage reduction below 30% hp.
Kyrian Mikanikos soulbind sparkling driftglobe core stun duration lowered to 2 seconds down from 3 seconds. Cooldown raised from 45 seconds to 1 minute.
Venthir Nadjia soulbind Familar predicaments no longer reduces the duration of interrupts.
Night Fae Dreamweaver soulbind Soothing Voice now properly immuned by all freedom effects and snare removals. Possibly decaying slightly less fast over 1 second rather than 2 sec duration.
Gladiator’s on use stat pvp badge of ferocitity trinkets now provide versatility instead of crit/haste. Now a 2min cooldown with twice the amount of stats provided.
Gladiator’s emblem (battlemaster) trinket either removed or lowered amount of health provided with a 10sec or 15sec duration down from 20 seconds.
Greater fade honor talent removed in upcoming honor talent pass in 9.1. Cooldown is too short and has too much synergy with other defensives to rotate and too potent at avoiding CC especially when combined with holy ward/death. Upcoming newer honor talents should be more interactive and less purely reactive. Spectral guising to avoid cross CC would be much more fun with the potential to be aoed out.
Venthir Door of shadows castable while rooted, but still only removes roots with the theotar soulbind.
Night Fae soulshape flicker (blink) no longer usable while silenced, but still usable while rooted.
Holy Priest / Shadow Priest mindgames nerfed by 30% to match the templated nerf already in place with mindgames on disc priest.
Cross specialization legendaries disabled for unintended specs. Ele shamans wearing rsham earth shield legendary, hpal/ret pal wearing reign of endless kings prot pal legendary.
Misc. Notes:
Even at 10% reduction for example just sephuz, the rogue rotation is completely changed in terms of when they are able to eviscerate without stun gapping on re stuns is still impacted. So an orc/relent/clamp nerf still would be insanely strong.
Preventing shadowmeld from dropping combat would be cool if it wouldn’t just default every rogue into playing passively overpowered human/orc like everyone else. Would especeially help with rdruids drinking if rdruid buffs made them meta. I like the idea of shadowmeld immuning airbourne spells/abilities, but there’s just so much frontloaded value tied to the classes performance in being able to cleanly shadowmeld restealth with shield conduit into a big opener buffed by the crit legendary.
It’s really hard to visualize how to make spriests feel like a viable kill target without making them squishy. Fade/disperse/1min healer cds feels so easy to rotate and spriests don’t really die in kicks anymore with the passive interruption reduction provided by venthir soulbinds.
I really hope sub frost makes a comeback like the old RM i played for so many years and ice form off gcd might help frost a lot. I really hope it gets deep freeze or something in the htalent pass in order to help with cross CC since game has been so played around dragon’s breath the last few years. The stun immunity on ice form might be really annoying though when used defensively on that short of a cooldown.
The line between rogue viability and rogue being fun to play when there is so much passively disruptive stuff or overly available options to trade is beyond extremely frustrating to play even in situations where you do win.
Would be really cool if weapon chain disarm reduction enchants would make a comeback. Would be fun to have multiple weapons to swap between again. Maybe sell it as a honor/conquest point enchant since disarms are htalents and not in PvE anymore.
Sang vein modifier from having rupture up incentivizing pressing rupture more than just situationally would be nice to promote a 3 finisher rotation and spread out opening burst rotations if stun reductions weren’t so disruptive.
Mid expansion reworks are extremely rare, but sub got one in legion and it’s just as poorly designed right now.
Dance isn’t the “CC the rogue or he’ll bloody murder you,” button that it used to be. In fact Dance is one of the least dangerous burst cooldowns in pvp; it’s ONLY dangerous when used directly out of stealth because of MA.
Outside of that specific circumstance (which requires stealth / a 2 minute cooldown), most other dps have tons more kill pressure than rogues.
The only pvp viability sub has enjoyed prior to Cata was as an off-tree for another spec. Hemo maces back in TBC was the most notorious. A build which functioned because it had AR, Prep, and Mace Spec. Which got all of its pressure from combining a rogue’s slew of single target CC (CS, KS, Gouge, Kick) with Mace Spec to prevent healers from ever casting. It dealt weak damage - and never used bloods due to needing to be able to gouge / blind - but a single rogue could indefinitely prevent a healer from hard-casting, which meant they’d inevitably die. This was incredibly dangerous when combined with a frost mage, who brought yet more control and some actual damage.
Other honorable mention goes out to the various hemo builds in vanilla; which could get pretty cheesy due to weapon speed silliness, but still didn’t go more than 23 or 24 points into Sub.
Outside of that, pure sub wasn’t a viable spec until Cata. There was admittedly a SINGLE comp in WotLK which could run a deep sub rogue, but something like 2 rogues in the world ran it and actually got somewhere with it.
Back on topic, main-spec-sub wasn’t a thing until cata and the redesign of talents (particularly no more trees). And before then sub wasn’t picked for “sustained pressure”, it was picked for utility (CD resets, stealth detection / power, and CC access / potency).
Sub being a bleed-based sustained pressure build is a misnomer. It was the utility tree which gutted rogue damage (outside of vanilla silliness with weapon speeds) but gave them lethal amounts of utility and control. Currently muti fills this niche (sustained damage and control), and it’s not as powerful as sub because “How fast do you kill them?” is the name of the game.
Wrath sub in private server environments became much more popular as people got better at the game and eventually overtook the popularity of assassination for that expansion.
If wrath classic came out at same time as tbc classic more people would be playing sub in it now than back then.
I have some really good news - my connections at Blizzard have confirmed that they’re interested in many of Nahj’s suggested changes. Obviously details could change but so far it sounds like they’re in on:
Rogue specific:
Rework to actually 1 dance with no deepening shadows cooldown reduction on finishers.
Find weakness 10 second duration down from 18 seconds and no longer procs from backstab crits.
vanish 3min up from 2min
Backstab now costs 60 energy, has a positional requirements
Shadowey duel and cold blood removed.
Crit legendary lowered to 30% against players in pvp.
Remove Cloaked in Shadows restealth conduit
Kidney shot once again no longer benefits from the 6th combo point provided by deeper stratagem.
i hope to god that’s not true, this sounds horrible lmao.
Sub Needs
Some kind of ST buff
Smoke bomb - Reduce physical Damage by 15% (like the old days)
Tricks of the Trade - to give the player And you 15% damage in increase (like the old days)
this will give us the edge we need to become viable in raids and dungeons again.
you guys are only thinking about the pvp side this will kill us in pve
What. Aside from vanilla which was notorious for specs not completing full trees full sub was always represented and good. In BC arena was literally dominated by rogues in half pve gear with shadowstep and cheat death. In wrath I used to compete in duel tournaments on the tournament realms for money and used a full sub build. What on earth are you smoking?
Having:
dance being 1 charge/bursty again
gouge returned for all 3 specs
tricks/disarm as pvp talent
hemo return
backstab high energy cost / positional requirement / decent dmg
would go such a long way in making Sub feel fun again
I am on board with all of this, current rogue is so stale and boring compared to its former glory, and I always enjoyed sub being the spec that was tougher to learn, difficult to master, but having a very satisfying payoff to learn.
I can only hope that this message makes it to the eyes at Blizzard, because thusfar it has really felt like they don’t care when stuff like MC bugs have continued to plague arena for months now.
Its like someone has a beef with rogue in blizz in general.
Poorly designed encounter mechanic that let you ignore it with Smoke Bomb?
Delete Smoke Bomb from PVE
Outlaw doing exceptional in EN?
Nerf it to the ground even though we just promised we wouldent do that because of the time it takes to farm out ap for a weapon. Shadow Priest can be blatantly OP and we wont care.
Badly designed raid that has an obscene amount of soak mechanics?
Rogue class that deals with soaking mechanics really well shines?
Nerf Feint and CoS
Sub excels on one niche fight in Uldiir that lets it pump alot of damage into the boss because of all the adds?
Nerf sub into irrelevancy for the rest of the expansion in PVE and for good measure well make sure it isnt viable in pvp either
I mained Combat/Outlaw from the Molten Core (I still remember getting my very first epic- Brutality Blade!) days back in vanilla all the way through learning Uldir early in BfA before finally making the switch to DH, and it’s because of one ability: RtB
If I could change anything about rogue, it would be to get rid of this trash ability. RtB adds in way too much rng into outlaw. Getting the right rolls makes the rogue fairly strong, but for the other 7 times out of 10, gameplay feels like absolute crap. In its current iteration, it gives outlaw 2 maintenance buffs to keep track of. I’m glad outlaw got SnD back baseline. Now they need to take that final step and finally get rid of RtB.
I started a week after BC launch and I was a combat rogue. I really liked it back then but its current form I find completely unenjoyable. I miss rupture being baseline but most of all I completely agree with RtB. Worst ability ever designed and until they do a redesign that includes removing it - I wont ever play that spec again. Also probably why I enjoy assassination. It is very similar to BC era combat.
Counterplay peeling is a tinier window. 6 seconds is far too long and goes both ways. If I had dismantle and was disarming a warriors avatar it goes both ways.
Making sure people use it at the right time rather than just shoving it on cd incorrectly and still getting value is good. Especially if you have multiple diff weps for different matchups.