Yep. Slice & Dice / Bursty Dance / Poisons / Shiv - bringing all these back are amazing. We’re so close to having Sub be at the level of fun that it once was.
I’d love to see them return Prem, Gouge, Garrote, and hell even Tricks of the Trade again.
Also hoping they return Energetic Recovery for Slice & Dice. Having Slice back is amazing but ER would make it even better.
I feel like we have complained since WoD that they went too far. If anyone can summarize why we need certain spells back class wise, that’d be mint. I am terrible with words and analogies, but I will try my best.
We are the supposed kings of CC, burst and utility, but I feel we have been sorely powercrept on over the years as other classes have had upgrades to their toolkits, while the constant pruning has left us with some weird mechanics.
These days it is hard to stay in range of the target, and I don’t think the blinking ambush from sub or blinking evisc from outlaw is the right way to go (sorry the names escape me, I have not played in a long time). Rogues are supposed to be melee fighters, once we get a hold of you, you die. Or at least almost die. That’s the trade off from having poor movement, whilst other classes can easily run away. High control instead, and burst that is balanced because it requires skill to set up. That’s at least what I loved about being a rogue.
So, since we are all about the openers, everyone needs to have Garrote, Ambush and Cheap Shot. It is iconic. I’m even fine with CS generating only 1 CP, because the stun is powerful enough and this offers more choice - do I want more cps with ambush, or does he need to be stunned or silenced. Some in these forums argue having a silence is too strong, but… it’s what we always had. Guess what, we don’t spend much time in Stealth, that’s the balancing factor.
Because of how much utility other classes have, and entertaining the idea of rogues not having teleport built into certain abilities, this is why Preperation would be nice to get back. A mage for example has multiple blinks and ice barriers, shields, a wide range of slows and stuns and insane damage. So the idea of me having a double vanish just doesn’t seem so strange in comparison. Sorry that’s the best I got on this one.
Dismantle is another cool lost utility. Sure it’s a pvp talent now, but it’s actually useful in more instances than PvP. It only affects certain classes which makes this niche = good. More niche abilities are needed and creates more situations in PvP = greater the fun. Less abilities in PvP = less content for us PvPers. Hence, the unpruning. And this is one of those abilities I think would be healthy to have back in the game for all 3 specs.
Rupture… Yes, it’s a DoT. Nothing special. But you ever considered a rogue other than assassin would be able to cause a bleed? It’s nice to have more spenders, as I have argued in other threads, and being able “mark” stealthers with Rupture so they can’t run away is something that feels extremely crippling that I no longer can do.
Disarm traps also felt very crippling when it was pruned in WoD. I could still see hunter traps, but not being able to do anything about them just felt… stupid? It can’t hardly be considered an ability bloat and it was something rogues had to offer that was unique to us, along with pick lock.
I’ve typed so much I don’t even know if I forgot a spell. So I’m just going to head right on to speaking about Outlaw now. Anyone got better criticism to give than me go right ahead and fill in what I’ve missed.
OUTLAW:
RtB on a cooldown = good improvement. But this ability was supposed to offer us diverse gameplay, something which it has never been able to deliver. All it’s done is cause grief as players try to min/max. Make the rolls actually impact how you play, or leave well enough alone.
Don’t make them flat out buffs because those buffs can likely never be equal to one another. I suggest you only get ONE buff at all times, and the whole roll is just more of an RP thing. Or, the roll impacts how strong it is or how many combo points you must spend to gain whatever perk you gained.
Or it could work like this for example: You roll nr 4. Maybe using a non-damaging spender also did damage = 4 spent combo points used on Eviscerate. This seems fair to me, I think… Or it could flat out give me 4 combo points. Having a random combo generator on a long cd does not seem too OP to me, at least. Especially considering it would be extremely random from 1-5 cps, and it would be more like a nice little extra thing instead of you worrying about what buffs you’re gonna get. But what do I know.
If more spenders would come back baseline, then I’d honestly say Outlaw might be looking quite nice, however… There’s one thing lacking, though. The burst damage.
Back in MoP when I still had fun, our burst was Shadow Blades, AR and Killing Spree. These had quite long cooldowns and was nowhere near the burst of sub rogues, but it was enough to make me feel powerful and to hold my ground so that I could go toe to toe with other classes.
Evasion coming back is a huge win to return to this playstyle. Without shadow blades though, AR on its own never did so much damage. It was more good for pumping out more attacks in pve. And now i see AR has been gimped as well, and forget killing spree - that stuff died in WoD (to me, anyway). Perhaps it’s just time that Outlaw got another burst button altogether? Or simply empower AR to be more of what it was back in “the good days”.
Lastly, the talents… What the heck are those?? I don’t think I’ve heard a single person say those are good choices of talents. None of them feel fun or inspiring. Alacrity is the most yawn thing I’ve ever seen in my life… Surely there’s plenty of fun things that you can give us other than that? I’m feeling quite beat so I won’t be giving any ideas, so that’s pretty much it. Sorry to anyone who read all this xD
Energetic Recovery is back on the alpha
You should create your own thread and copy paste this honestly, it’s well written and it also coincides with what the rogue community has been asking for.
The only thing that I think would never happen again is prep though, because our cds are dramatically shorter than they used to be. Also mage shimmer got nerfed to 1 blink in Alpha, also arcane lost displacement.
I think nerfing mobility is good, but they need to do it for all classes. All the other suggestions you’ve stated resonate with me a lot though. Great post!
Wait, is this true?! If so that’s awesome!
Right, so I may have missed SnD and Gauge.
SnD = More energy, more attacks/white dmg (which used to be a big chunk of dmg for us - idk how it works these days, but heard a streamer say it works differently now) and ofc more poison applications. Especially important for us combat rogues with our clunky swords, that poison application was helpful. Sure it’s “boring upkeep” but as many have explained it’s a good ability to set up for a kill and it’s good choice for a spender.
Gauge = Iconic ability we always had, everyone should have it. Nuff said really.
Oh neat, thanks =) I thought it fit well here since the thread is about lost spells and class fantasy, don’t wanna spam the forums with the same threads
Agree 100%, also agree with what you posted above.
How are you sure? Do you have alpha or watched a stream that confirmed it? Genuine question.
Saw it on a stream, but if you want proof it’s also in Wowhead’s database.
https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/talent-calc/rogue/subtlety
Click on Class Abilities on the top right and go to Subtlety, it’s at the top.
What stream?
I ask because I had already went to that wowhead database site before and saw it there, however I was informed that ER is in the game files (which is why it appears on wowhead database) but not actually in game. I also checked out Pikaboo & Xaryu playing Rogue yesterday or day before and don’t believe ER was there.
If you say you saw it on a stream today then maybe they just added it in.
I posted it in the blue thread at least, y’all should do the same!
This is live’s spells and it’s there too but not in game either.
And here is someone going through the whole spell book for sub on alpha guess what isn’t there.
youtu.be/_60PyKsxIMo?t=1100
I hope they really do add it back at some point.
Yeah, I thought I saw it on someone’s stream, but I was misremembering. Hopefully it not being there is just a bug?
They need to go back to TBC and Wrath for our base kit, I want my abilities back, this new thing they call a rogue plays like and feels like I am playing a gimp wind walker that has a slightly sneaky design. There is zero unique about the rogue in bfa from any other class, its like they made combo point spending building core class and then added graphical animations kits and a couple core abilities like Stealth and called them different names because thats kinda what this game is right now.
??? When did you unlearn TotT? It’s macro’d to my Blade Flurry/FoK/Shuriken Storm.
It used to provide a damage buff to the target in PvP. It doesn’t any more, so there is no longer any reason for a PvPer to ever press it. So PvPers consider it “pruned”.
In a premade you would just macro it to whatever teammate does the best burst, but it was particularly fun and rewarding to use in randoms where you would choose a target for it based on who’s rolling up to ninja that node with you, or who just used big CDs in the teamfight.
Oh okay you’re talking about that bit, gotcha. If you want to go further back though, it used to be a 10% damage buff even out of PvP, and I wasn’t even a Rogue back then.
It was always as 10% damage buff in all forms of content, it was never PvP only.
“It provided a 10% damage buff in PvP” does not mean it also didn’t work out of PvP. I’m just explaining that from a PvP perspective, the damage buff was the entire be-all end-all of the ability.
I might be remembering wrong, but it used to be 15% damage once. Regardless, they seem to be moving the right direction for now.
My fondest memory of Tricks was running 3 Rogues in our raid. One was a jerk with a power complex. The other Rogue and I would swap Tricks on each other to buff our damage while swapping threat and always come out on top of the third guy. Drove him nuts.
Yeah actually I just repeated 10% because it’s what the other guy said and the actual number wasn’t relevant to the point I was making, but you are right.