ignoring all the discussion on “borrowed power” going into shadowlands , if we look at rogue’s base toolkit, it works. Rogue plays smoothly and the changes to all three specs haven’t made any new glaring issues and that’s fantastic. kudos to developers.
HOWEVER
We aren’t going into an expansion where that’s all that matters. this borrowed power whether we like it or not, is coming with us. conduits, legendaries, soulbinds, covenants. They’re all new and interesting systems being added to our characters, which will all heavily effect our gameplay in one way or another, making how the base toolkit feels without these systems only matter for the first 10 minutes of shadowlands.
In the past three months, we’ve seen much needed changes to classes like shadow priests, fire mages, and warlocks which they were in desperate need of. While this was happening, all classes but rogue were still getting their much needed small tweaks here and there, whether it was with their covenant abilities, their anima powers, or just some small toolkit changes. Rogue may not have been IGNORED, but they weren’t given any updates on any front as to what the (still) two missing talents in sub and outlaw which, being in the row they’re in will (hopefully) be heavily impactful to their gameplay, any more anima powers rogue will be using in torghast (shamans have over ~70 and rogues have ~30), or how the covenant class abilities will be changed to actually be a viable choice in any content (sepsis has no use in solo content, slaughter has zero viability outside of pvp and even in pvp is not appealing). So while the much needed changes to classes whose base toolkit needed extra attention and polish (whether you agree with those changes or not), it cant be seen as anything but unfair to see rogue get absolutely no information in such a long time. So while I agree that when the toolkits of each class/spec were being tweaked and changed, rogue needed very little attention at all. But blizzard you cant seriously be putting this much faith into these new systems of power in shadowlands and expect rogues not to start losing hair over how little information of any of these systems we’ve gotten.
In BFA we saw what happened with its borrowed power systems. they were implemented with little to no community testing whatsoever days before the expansion released LIVE, which resulted in blizzard having to play catchup for 2 whole years trying to patch the holes in their progression systems while only adding more every patch.
Coming back to shadowlands blizzard has done absolutely smashing in most regards to showing off the systems of borrowed power for many of us. almost all classes have legendaries to test and more than half the classes have conduits to toy with or have had their conduits datamined. except rogue. rogues have no legendaries. rogues have no conduits. rogues have the least amount of torghast powers than anyone else (for real get creative like you did with mage and DH, something like making actual shadow clones after you shadowstep, or allowing a cannon barrage for outlaw again wtf). And rogues are still missing two key talent choices. If rogues don’t get anything to test much longer, the entire rogue community will have little to no time to have ACTUAL back and forth with developers and just sit on our hands and knees and pray to the big Chris Metzen in the sky that Blizz just gets it right. just one shots all of rogue gameplay in one beta build. they make conduits feel strong for all three specs, legendaries influence strong playstyles for multiple forms of content, our covenants actually do something positive for us, and that the talents being implemented into both sub and outlaw will enrich their playstyles and builds instead of being dead talents like ghostly strike or venom rush. We just have to hope?
I cant help but feel like rogue is being punished for being strong during BFA, when every expac come out, every class has to roll the dice on how strong they will be and where they will be strong. Why does it feel like rogues performance this expac is effecting the development of it going into shadowlands? as if the strength of BFA rogue will carry over to shadowlands and the developers think that we’ll obviously be fine and no work needs to be done.
Please Blizzard, if you don’t put more resources into rogue soon, you’re going to have this class community jump ship when the legendaries are blander than any other class, the conduits do nothing interesting, and our covenants just feel like a chore to use for more dmg. I want to use my covenant ability inside my classes toolkit, not feel like I’m forcing it into my rotation to do more damage. This expac is shaping up to be even better than legion, you’re so close to having the community crash back in like a tsunami, don’t just drop the ball on an entire class like you did shammy for BFA.
