Hello, I’m Saeyon, the primary author of The Rogue Tank Compendium, a 50+ page guide on all things rogue tank related. I am currently the #1 ranked tank on Wild Growth NA, and I have been playing rogue tank since the beginning. I thought I would provide some feedback on the new tier 2 set bonuses on the PTR.
2 Piece
The 2 piece set bonus is more of a QOL feature and isn’t particularly exciting on its own. This bonus means we don’t necessarily need to evasion on pull, and we will not lose stacks on fights where we are not the primary tank for an extended period of time. Compared to the 2pc bonus from T1, this is incredibly underwhelming.
4 Piece
Another buff for rolling with the punches, this bonus actually decreases in value the more gear we get. Armor is not a stat that rogue tanks want, nor do we need it. We are already approaching 80+% avoidance next phase and over 100% with full world buffs. This bonus seems to have anti-synergy with our kit and should be redesigned.
6 Piece
The 6 piece bonus is my favorite of the 3. While main gauche will never be as competitive as saber slash for damage, this at least makes that play style much more fun and slightly more competitive for more casual players who aren’t as concerned about damage output.
How would I fix it?
The 2pc and 4pc bonuses should be merged together. Honestly the 4pc could be scrapped entirely. 100% extra armor is something like 10-15% damage reduction. When you avoid 80% of the time, this results in a 2-3% reduction in DTPS, and significantly less with better gear. Maybe 2% magic damage reduction per stack would be a better option.
For the 4pc bonus, I would like to see the +5 energy on parry concept from the phase 4 PTR return. This would be beneficial for all tank builds, and especially beneficial for main gauche builds. If the 6pc bonus is going to exclusively benefit main gauche, the 4pc set bonus should enhance that as well.
6 Likes
Big agree. The 6 piece bonus needs some form of synergy to support it. Rogues are already going to reach full avoidance, so there’s little advantage to Main Gauche defensively.
Offensively it also does far less damage than Saber Slash? Maybe the set bonus could make Main Gauche have us sinister strike with both weapons? idk, it just needs something.
1 Like
Main Gauche needs to not exist.
In the current world, your design is doing one of two things:
1.) Players are unintentionally guided to use tier that gives them -33% DPS and TPS for zero benefit.
2.) Players are intentionally given a trap to perform worse.
From a design perspective, giving players “choices” is great, but Main Gauche and Rogue Tier 2 are not “choices”, you “choose” to have a bagel for breakfast, you don’t “choose” to accidentally eat the moldy bread, it’s an accident. Main Gauche is indefensibly terrible, and has been since inception.
We do not want this ability.
We have not used this ability.
Stop trying to make people take this ability.
Scrap it, change the tier, provide players with actual agency instead of a tier designed around one of the worst performing Runes in all of SOD that equipping actively causes you to be worse at your role.
2 Likes
-Dodge is ABOVE parry on the attack table, meaning we can only parry if we don’t dodge.
-Rogues can hit extremely high levels of dodge in BWL, effectively nullifying the ‘100% parry’ portion of main gauche.
-In main gauche specs, main gauche and sinister strike add up to only 7% of total dps done on the boss, whereas saber slash is pushing 20-25% total dps.
Please keep these two points in mind blizzard, when designing tier bonuses and the main gauche rune
1 Like
OK brah, I love Main Gauche. Slow your roll. 
However, yes, the2 and 4 set bonuses need some assistance. If you’re trying to push Main Gauche as the desired tanking rune, let the 4 set allow for a damage increase on Sinister Strike. Or something of that nature.
But yeah, I do have to agree. When I saw the T2 set bonuses, the first thing I thought was “ehh, the 2 and 4 set are pretty underwhelming, to be honest”. They’re not terrible, but definitely not great. The increase in armor seems negligible in regards to where our avoidance % will be at.
Again, the 2 and 4 set are just a bit…underwhelming.
Rogue tanks are cool as hell and its weird to see that tier 2 is kind of a mess for rogues
Ultimately, I think rogue tanks are in a good spot. We don’t have many options for spell damage mitigation. But other than that, we’re doing ok.
Main Gauche sucks, just adds more complexity for a decrease in performance.
Rogue mitigation sucks. Ask healers. Yeah try to avoid Ony cleave when feared.
Main Gauche is getting massively buffed in phase 5. Still not quite as good as Saber Slash, but decent enough to use. I use Main Gauche in MC right now, and it’s perfectly fine.
As for rogue tank avoidance(I think the word you’re looking for), I take almost no damage in MC. I was main-tanking Majordomo and he didn’t hit me for a full 14 seconds. And in phase 5, our avoidance is going to hit cap.
Anyone who tells you rogue tanking is bad, does not know the spec. Healers barely have to try to heal me during MC or world bosses. Trust me, I’ve asked my healers. They say healing me is easy. Our avoidance is fine. And it’s going to be more than fine next phase. Simonize actually tested the tanking on Testwerk on the PTR and took 4636 damage within the entirety of the fight. That’s like…what…1-2 hits? We’re fine, lol.
I cannot even begin to explain accurately the rollercoaster of emotions i had when a raider told me tank set was black bloodfang, then I click over to it and I see these awful set bonuses.
Main Gauche has never been used, why are we forcing it?
Armor? Armor for what? I’m getting hit 70-80% less than my paladin co-tank.
Why in gods name does MG reset when my target dodges or parries?
This is just terrible.
The QOL bonuses aren’t even great.
Make it so Blade dance doesn’t need to be reactivated in combat, or give us the cut to the chase rune IN a bonus. That’ll increase our overall dps + threat by allowing us to simply hit eviscerate more often.
The dissapointment that I have to still buy red bloodfang gear is immeasurable.
Knowing full well i’ll likely be done with my tier set when they decide to update this set is going to piss me off all the more.
Main Gauche should just be baked into Just a Flesh Wound. At the current state, theres no reason to take MG over Saber Slash.