Rogue Tanking looks fatally flawed

This looks like a mess and needs an overhaul ASAP before it’s even attempted.

Just a flesh wound requires blade dance to be active, to activate blade dance you need to spend combo points. I order to spend combo points you need to use energy - main gauche helps with this due to its lower cost, however the biggest problem comes in that we have a taunt but if we target swap we lose combo points - if at any point we lose blade dance we get clapped.

Warriors go into defensive stance, shamans apply rock biter, paladins surely do something easy and rogues don’t get their tanking buff until we’ve spent combo points.

For reference sake if I was level appropriate there is a chance I could tag the last boss of WC and he would most likely 1 shot me before the blade dance buff could get up.

For the love of god roll blade dance into just a flesh wound and give us a rune to make combo points stick to the rogue instead of the target.

Just to paint a picture of what this might look like; you pull 5 mobs, the first 3 seconds are used to set up blade dance so you actually turn into a tank.
This will require 85 energy, after that we will have to pool energy to use taunt, kick and riposte as well as MG to generate more combo points.
This leaves a window of around 10 seconds where you are going to be locked to two targets until you can spend combo points again. So it looks like you’re going to end up having to spam 1 combo point finishers in order to keep up the buff.
In theory this should actually be good at bosses though, we should end up having like 60%+ avoidance if everything is going right.

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You have to keep in mind what impact any change will have in pvp.

How much stamina do you have? Can you get out of instant kill range with either gear or a priest buff? Do you have a hunter or warlock pet to soak the first hit or two, so you can get your plates spinning? What about using the single druid pull before the boss to prebuff and make sure your group understands the pivot is coming? Are you level appropriate for the boss or the first half of the dungeon?

What strategic or tactical adjustments have you made to overcome the challenge, instead of first calling for changes?

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As far as I have noticed and seen, rogues are mainly designed to be single target tanks.

Their design feels a bit like Demon hunter with the demon spike maintenance.

i HATE that phrase, pvp should be disconnected from normal gameplay, the moment you at attacking another player your abilities should subtly do something different, balancing the classes/specs to be viable in both pvp and pve simultaneously has been a bad design choice from day 1 vanilla until today, and its a disgrace that blizzard haven’t moved away from it yet.

FF14 literally changes how abilities work in pvp modes for players to create fairness, its janky but very viable.

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I said if I was level appropriate and it seems insane to me that it’s going to require hunter/lock for pet distractions as well as a required priest to prebubble me and make sure I have fort on as well.

Which other tank has those requirements to avoid a 1 shot from the first hit whilst levelling.

Also I expect rogue tanks to be a meme in PvP and will get actually destroyed by anything that casts

Yeah it’s pretty poorly designed.

At a minimum they need some sort of AOE threat, e.g. make blade dance a form of blade flurry that makes you hit nearby mobs with lower damage but also a lower cooldown. Add a mechanic that does reflect damage on parry. Also get rid of the combo point requirement for blade dance and make it just a static skill you cast. Combo points don’t work for tanking when you need to be tab targeting constantly.

They also need a stagger mechanic for hits that go through the avoidance.

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I think it would be dope if expose armour could be turned into an AoE around you and do high threat on everything.

Something like that would be neat

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Rogue tanks shouldnt need to generate combo points off critters just to enable the functionality going into a pull.

I think this will be a tough issue to solve since reworking rogue combo points to be on the rogue is a large technical change that I dont think they can slap on a rune.

My best idea is for a 20-30 second CD rune ability that cleaves and generates 1cp per target hit and grants increased dodge chance, reduced for each target hit, for 1 second + 1 per target hit. This gives rogue a medium length CD ability that they can use on a pull to quickly generate a lot of CP on a trash pull to get Blade Dance up or for use on a boss pull to give them boost to dodge chance on a single target pull to give them time to generate CP for Blade Dance.

Right now though, rogues cannot function as a tank until their issues with on-pull squishiness and multi target situations are addressed.

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Currently as it stands if it’s decent it’ll be a really good off tank for a single target boss fight and that’s about it which will make it the most niche thing in the games.

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I don’t think rogues are intended to tank dungeons, or multiple mobs. Just the way their mitigation works wouldn’t allow them to tank large groups. They rely on avoidance, and can’t push crushing blows off the table. This means you either don’t get hit, or get wrecked. Every mob you add on increases the chance you will get hit. Against a boss you can go long periods without ever being hit. Against 5 mobs you will be taking constant hits, and rogues aren’t built to take constant hits.

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It should be, but it is not atm. And rogue was the most oppressive class in OG vanila. Atleast it was squishy in mass pvp. With tank runes being pushed this season, it might be possible that his only weakness will be gone. So it has to be clunky to use in pvp in order to be balanced.
Blizzard won’t be sweating to implement pvp templates on your spells in a for fun side project for an old game.

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You have it backwards, avoidance is better for tanking lots of mobs, because you can survive hits that go through and the avoidance can provide higher total damage reduction even though individual non-avoided hits will hit harder. It’s worse for raiding or things with big hits where if 2-3 hits go through you just die. People that play HC POE a lot think about this all the time, because you can build around armor or evasion/block, and the latter is better for big packs because you avoid a ton of hits and your regen overpowers the damage that does go through, and the former give you bigger max hits for heavy hitters.

The problem with rogues is that they have no aoe threat generation, combo points don’t work for multi-mob packs where you need to be tab targeting, and their tanking style (avoidance) doesn’t fit with their kit for tanking dungeons.

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Rogue Tanks need some kinda +1 combo point every 3 seconds passive to even begin to be viable.

It doesn’t change the fact that rogues can’t take hits. You wear leather, only 20% damage reduction, and no shield to block crushing blows. What you have is high avoidance.

When tanking a boss, you will be able to go long periods of time without being hit. Priest shields will probably be a must but healing should be much less stressful. You get hit, healer tops you off, then waits for the next hit.

When tanking multiple mobs, your avoidance is the same, but you are multiplying it by multiple mobs. Attacks will get through, and as said before, rogues don’t have the armor/health to be taking hits too often.

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Wait you’re telling me that a pure DPS class has flaws at tanking? Im shocked. Whats the next news?

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That’s the intended flavor for the class mechanic. Think about it. Use your RPG brain. Like the Mountain VS the Viper (roguish character). If at any point the Viper makes a mistake fighting the Mountain he’s done. He’s nimble and quick, and the Mountain is huge and brutish. You have to stop thinking about Classic with a retail brain. Classic is an actual RPG.

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I tanked on my rogue in retail out of boredom or the healer wanted a real challenge
I don’t want to tank as one
I really thought they would let us do weird in SoD like a rogue healer

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cool, says you, but that is still not a reason to gimp a class. Pvp issues is never a reason to make pve changes. Its bad game design.

This is actually a sick suggestion.

Why not make Blade Dance rune also alter Expose Armor to do this and replace the negative armor debuff with a debuff that boosts the damage party members do. Maybe increasing the chance the enemies take a critical strike by 5% or something.

Instead of doing sick damage themselves the rogue could be frustrating and making enemies vulnerable for his teammates as he parries and dances around attacks.

Something like

Blade Dance (Legs)
Grants several improvements to Expose Armor and unlocks the Blade Dance finisher, which grants 5% Parry (+1% per combo point) for 10 seconds (+4 per combo point).

Expose Armor no longer reduces armor but now instead applies Mockery on up to 4 nearby targets for 10 seconds and extends Blade Dance by 1 second per combo point.

Mockery applies a large amount of threat and increases the chance they are critically struck by 5%.

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