Rogue has a real problem, and it’s sad Blizzard hasn’t addressed it as it would if it were any other class. Rogue is the most buggiest, least played, and most antithetical to modern game play out of any other class. It lacks utility, damage, and identity, and for the people saying they can do damage, lets be honest you have to exert five times the effort of any other class.
Rogue needs a complete break down and rebuild, it’s that simple. Let’s start with stealth, whats the point of it these days? You enter it once before combat and then it barely has relevance outside vanish which is one ability use before leaving stealth once again. On top of that in M+ random environmental damage pulls you out of stealth randomly even if you aren’t the target. Not to note that true sight is now given to almost every other mob making shroud useless as mind soothe is just better in general.
Utility? Nonexistent. In raid and in M+ we bring the LEAST to the table, to the point in raid we were only taken to two fights in the race to the world first. One being a meme because it dropped an agility dagger and the other because we provided 4 interrupts which is the first time that’s happened in a raid tier. In M+ Trick is as much as a liability (So tricky) as it is a boon. If the tank dies and you don’t hit your cancel macro fast enough it’s over Mobs will snap to the tank and farm them on re-spawn. Our poisons? Well Atrophic poison is pitiful as it doesn’t affect environmental damage like paladin aura, and its on a choice node that would be helpful in other scenarios but we can only have 1 non-leathal poison applied if we aren’t assassination. Name one other class that has their utility as gated as Rogue, I’ll wait.
Now for damage, there is something to be said. Some tier’s one of our specs make it but only in raid, but it’s a coin flip. For being a triple DPS spec the amount of times we aren’t meta because of our low damage is insane. Certainly because we don’t provide any utility.
Bugs, oh boy, bugs. Don’t play rogue unless you’re entomologist because you’ll be plagued with them. Let’s just look at the fact I believe Sin (Assassination) finished season 3 TWW with 15 outstanding bugs and a broken 4 piece on their tier set? Not to mention they currently can’t track their apex talent. Stealth? Bugged. Talent interactions? Bugged. Damage? Bugged. Utility? Bugged. Why would any person who has managed to stick it out with this class suggest a new player play rogue.
Now I forgot to mention this last point I wanted to make in my intro, but physical injury and pain. I will say this season one of midnight has been a lot less stressful on a players hand mainly because of the purge they did to abilities. However, lets be honest. How crazy is it that I need to mention the amount of wrist and or hand pain someone playing rogue has to go through just to eek out damage a mage or hunter can easily put out with the same ill affect. This point is likely the least talked about, but is a very common sentiment when the class is talked about.
So with that ranting done, how do we fix this? It’s easy, not in terms of work but in terms of ideas. Complete tear down and rework of the whole class and an addition of a fourth spec that solves another problem currently plaguing WoWs class balance.
Outlaw gets redesigned and becomes a tank spec, this allows more tanks to enter the player base and with the drought we already have this can only benefit not just the class but the community as a whole.
Assassination, mostly stays the same but remove the resilience on stealth all together, that way they aren’t a completely red headed step child to pugging M+ that are constantly nerfed in damage because they already used vanish on the last chain pull and now don’t have anything.
Subtly, make it become a mid ranged spec like the new Demon Hunter spec devouerer. Gear it more towards the fantasy of psi blade or arcane trickster from DND. For anyone that needs a reference for the idea look up the Dota 2 hero Templar assassin who attacks from range as a stealthy character and her auto attacks jump to other targets behind the main target.
Lastly, add Bard. Bard by itself would be a weird thing to add to the game as a pure class. I believe it does a better job given to rogue as a support spec then needing to come up with three or two other specs that would likely already be filled out by other classes niches. This also solves the whole issue surrounding Augmentation Evoker. It allows Blizzard to finally have a second support class to help balance Aug and when Aug becomes meta theoretically so wouldn’t bard. As the game play and fantasy would be around the same ball park.
With the specs out of the way the final thing I’d like to touch on is utility. Atrophic poison needs to be redesigned. It should be a poison that is baseline to all specs mentioned about and either offer increased critical damage / strike chance or haste. On top of redesigning our current ‘raid buff’ I believe it’s time to give another class Hero. Rogue has some good options already. With Outlaw becoming a tank spec a redesigned Adrenaline Rush could easily become the classes hero ability. If that doesn’t do it for you come up with a new ability call it Ruthless Assault, or Press the Advantage. Who care’s what it’s called the simple fact is that it would also help rogue in general be taken to groups outside of raid which it desperately needs.
I honestly don’t know how to end this as I wrote it while trying to que for 17 keys and am on my 200th decline in 3 hours. However these are my ideas to fix the population of rogue and the situation which is desperately needed. If anything it can start another conversation for blizzard to have eyes on (hopefully) and have them finally address the abysmal state that my favorite class is in.
