After playing rogue tank in phase 1 and rogue tank in phase 2 so far, these are some ideas I had to make rogue tank feel better/smoother to play. I have a feeling that mutilate will get nerfed and right now we’re heavily reliant on spamming that to maintain threat and such. In phase 1 it was saber slash instead of muti and nothing was done to address this. Many tier lists are rating rogues as the worse tank. Sometimes worse than druid or at the same level. This is mainly because of our major weaknesses
- Very weak aoe threat management
- No snap threat (redirect is on a 1 min cooldown)
- no aoe taunt
- Threat punishment for switching targets
- No team utility
- One defensive cooldown
- Resource constraints
- Lack of itemization
- Lack of defenses against ranged physical damage and major with magic damage
Now that’s not to say you can’t do content with a rouge tank. You can, but its tough. And its a significantly rougher experience than with some of the easier tanks.
The core “idea” I’m trying to keep when doing these suggestions is the class identity of a rogue tank. A tank that relies upon dodging and parry. Now I’m NOT saying all of these need to be implemented. Here is just a list of things that should be judged on a case by case basis.
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Shuriken Throw (one or multiple of the following suggestions)
1a. Benefits from sinister strike talents
1b. Benefits from eviscerate talents
1c. Benefits from both sinister strike and eviscerate talents
1d. Lower energy cost
1e. increase damage
1f. Put in an interaction with poisons
1g. Increase threat multiplier -
Blade Dance (One or more of the following)
2a. While blade dance is active, dodging an attack increases threat on the target that you dodged
2b. Blade dance no longer costs combo points/energy and is instead on a cooldown (15sec or 20 sec) with a duration of 10 sec. This allows us to keep up our defenses and focus our energy on maintaining threat.
2c. A skill wide threat increase while blade dance is active -
Sleight of hand trait when 2/2 will cause “tease” taunt to be AoE instead of single target
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Main gauche - A big negative with this one is that you’re replacing some of the highest threat generation abilities of a rogue with an ability that only provides an increase in parry chance. Its not at all worth it in the current state of the game and in phase 1. (One or more of the following).
4a. Main gauche no longer costs energy, instead on a cooldown. So we can dedicate our energy to sinister strikes to establish threat
4b. While main gauche is active, parrying an attack causes you to “counter attack” against the target immediately. Possible increase threat multiplier on these attacks
4c. Energy regeneration is increased while main gauche is active (everything else in this rune slot is a large damage increase. An increase in damage with main gauche via energy could put it on the same level as the rest).
4d. While main gauche is active, you can parry ranged attacks (magic and physical). Perhaps make it with magic attacks the parry is reduced damage and not a full negate. I’m sorta effy on this suggestion cause I suspect they’re going to give us more tools in later phases to deal with magic damage. But at the same time, the game is providing quite a bit of magic pressure now. -
Heavily reduce redirect cooldown. Perhaps make it so that “Just a flesh wound” rune has an added effect of decreasing Redirect’s cooldown to 5 seconds instead of 1 minute.
I reiterate, I’m not saying ALL of these need to be implemented. Just an assortment of ideas I had that should be looked at as individual changes.
Right now rogue tanks are basically combat dps rogues with 5% increase dodge, %% increase to parry, and increased threat generation. With stam gear. There’s not really that much that actually feels like a tank. Some of the above suggestions could make tanking runes actually, you know useful for tanking?