In several recent cases in class and specialization redesign, Blizzard has made some pretty good strides to try and simplify complexity and make game flow more intuitive without incentivizing the use of addons to improve performance. Buttons–and cooldowns in particular–should feel impactful to press and not require a PhD in TryHard to utilize properly.
Roll the Bones, in its current form, is antithesis to all of this.
I understand the desired class fantasy this ability is trying to offer. It’s unique. If it were taken away from Outlaw, the class fantasy of the spec would feel pretty hollow. I believe that’s the reason it’s stuck around so long despite the egregious balance complications its RNG design introduces. It’s benefits are either so weak they’re negligible/ignorable, or so powerful that you’re either the weakest DPS in the game without the right buffs or the most powerful DPS in the game with the right buffs.
The closest gameplay equivalent that’s ever existed in the game was Survival Hunter’s Wildfire Infusion (pre-TWW), where the flavor of bomb you threw genuinely affected what buttons you pressed leading up to and following the bomb throw… but even that ability was removed/reworked because it was too complex for players for Blizzard’s liking.
I get the allure of playing a character like Kaito/Kite from Hunter x Hunter (see video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7h1MGdfuHA) or Sevika from Arcane (see video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fqLlnlcFFw), but few things feel worse than losing to a player (in DPS, PvP, or otherwise) because you got a “bad roll” or they got a “good roll”. Luck moves the pendulum away from skill, and not many players will continue hitting the slot machine if they feel like they’re “losing” a majority of the time.
Roll the Bones doesn’t even tell you what the possible results are in its tooltip. Players have to learn them through trial and error or online research outside of the game. The only one whose purpose is “intuitively” shown is the one that causes you to generate additional combo points… everything else is a mystery unless the players decides to hover over the tooltip (easier to do when the personal bar and buffs are on, but only if players know to do that in their options menu).
There have been loads of suggestions on the forums for how to reimagine (or replace) this ability. Personally, I believe the only way to keep it thematically intact (RNG and all) without causing balancing issues is to make it passive (similar to what’s been done with Slice and Dice via Cut to the Chase) and make its benefits relatively negligible for the overall DPS performance of the spec. But, that doesn’t seem fun or engaging. Following the route of the old “Wildfire Infusion” design would be significantly more interesting, but would inevitably control how the rest of the spec is (re)designed.
Blizzard, it’s time to reroll Roll the Bones.
