It’s time. This class has been gutted over and over and it’s archaic and convoluted busy work is showing its long teeth. But the devs cant do anything because you have rogues who somehow still enjoy the riveting gameplay of slice and dice and will die on that hill fighting against changes that would make the class fun.
I’m not abandoning the rogue class as much as I am the community that has held it back from any meaningful changes. Just look at the attention other classes get.
It really is pathetic and blizzards massive buffs next patch are clear indicators of outdated and sad state of the class.
SnD is like not even the top ten problems with the class right now.
Energy talents scattered across talent trees are suffocating build diversity. Starting with MoP energy saving talents were not mandatory (eg Shadow Focus used to be 100% energy savings from stealth openers). Even if we go back to pre MoP Relentless Strikes (starting in WotLK) was easily accessed in the Sub tree in the first row early in your leveling process and was five talents point in total.
Speaking of build diversity Outlaw and Assassination are also throttled with build diversity with how the talents are oriented at the bottom of the respective trees in terms of cost and positioning. The current opportunity costs are too high as a result. A talent system is supposed to be about opportunity costs but right now it is too punitive which also restricts build diversity.
Assassination does not have a true dedicated defensive talent in its own spec tree like all other melee and range DPS specs have in the game.
Outlaw needs a buff to Mastery damage and also increase per point per rating like Assassination and Sub have with their respective masteries.
Sub could use Dark Brew flipped to be on the same side as Gloomblade to promote build diversity. Or, flip Gloomblade to be on the same side as Dark Brew. For whatever reason BlizZard doesn’t want Sub to have access to many out of stealth tools in a build.
i hate multiplying damage. danse macabre finality talents.
sure you can make talents for damage bonus. but demanding talents are disgusting.
danse macabre is unnatural for sub rogue theme. sin rogue can use different abilities like mutilate shiv garrote cheap shot . sub rogue uses cheap shot and shadowstrike while bursting. forcing use to other abilities are unnecessary. and with deathstalker talent subs will use only cheap shot i guess. because dont want much marks.
and finality. why only next finishing ability? that means our first evis is just for activate other talents. ( finality and deeper daggers) its really bad .
you need to arrange that talents to shadowstrike or backstab(gloomblade) and not just for next use. at least make it active for 5-10 seconds.
Devil’s advocate: When talent trees were originally pitched, the class trees were supposed to focus on your utility and off-spec versatility, and the spec tree was supposed to focus on your role and theme. So if anything, Sin might be the only spec in the game that gets that equation right. Spec-specific defensives really ought to be baseline.
I love that even with all the issues with the specs somehow, someway, this forum always manages to think SnD is the problem of all things. It’s actually insane
Personally, i see snd as synonymous with the bad design philosophy of rogues during DF. Its a mandatory matantance buff that’s not fun to press, that also it feels like a waste of energy and combo points. In Tww every spec has a way to extend it, so why not make it a passive? Turning it into a passive would only have upsides.
Because CTTC is now baseline for all three specs making SND 100% passive is a very minimal QoL upgrade.
Rogues need more than QoL upgrades to fix the base talent trees and hero talent trees.
Bug fixes and mechanical changes are more important now than a few QoL upgrades.
If BlizZard makes it a priority for a few QoL upgrades for Rogues and do not fix the bugs, and major mechanical problems with specs, talent trees and hero talent trees then that is a huge waste of time.
At the same time SnD is part of the Death by a Thousand Cuts (the metaphor, not the skill). An easy scapegoat for sure but it’s only one of the straws. Think about how many spinning plates there are, and even combo points outside of windows are a sort of tollgate for damage delivery. High ceilings and long ramps should have greater payouts, but they never do because balance teams only understand the game in segmentation. It’s up to design to address the bigger picture.
Hold on for Delve performance metrics to come out, and Rogue will either be given tools to bypass and correct (best RPG solution) or they will have the buff of a lifetime (best MMO solution).
Specific to SnD, it should be rolled into redesigned Acro Strikes. But please make stacks decay and not reset if that’s the path forward!
Putting SND into Acro makes Acro worse and I don’t like the current version of Acro because BlizZard will rebalanced the budget of the talent and nerf the other aspects to squeeze in SND as a potential passive.
Also by making SND passive Rogues will need a way to be able to do finishers when off target. Rogues are primarily a pure DPS leather wearing melee.
Removal of old Acrobatic strikes just makes it harder for all Rogue specs to have better uptime. Especially Outlaw.
The real answer is Outlaw rework but we know how the last three have gone…
Like you said, going from practically passive to actually passive is a near zero QoL shift. Rolling SnD and acro together create a synergy loop in underlying trees, and can partition then to their own AA segment.
Sin and Sub generally don’t need it. It should be like taking the bonus poison damage class talent on anything besides Sin…
Seems like people got caught up on me mentioning SnD. There are far more factors thats just the most glaring and obvious sign of a class that has been neglected.
Playing a dev evoker feels buttery smooth for good performance. Playing a rogue feels like spinning 9 plates while doing somersaults with knives in my teeth and juggling torches.
No other class can bottom out on DPS like a rogue by missing key buttons in a rotation. The rogue has the absolute lowest floor of any class in the game by a significant margin. Other classes can press buttons 1-6 in LFR and do tank dps. Rogues are REAL BAD in this regard.
They also scale like trash and suck to play until theyre literally raid geared.
Energy is just such an awful thing to ADD ON to abilities that already have cooldowns.
The outlaw spec needs a fundamental rework that removes the busy work and makes its inner gameplay loops actually fun. Playing around Subterfuge is fun - having to maintain RtB, BF, AR, and SnD - with their different cooldowns and durations and some being reduced by finishing moves- is not. It’s mentally exhausting after less than an hour of play. The biggest recent slap in the face was the removal of acrobatics forcing us to sit inside hit boxes again.
Its just a miserable experience to play a melee at all, much less a rogue.
The proc-based playstyle and damage ability centered window is fun.
The rapid fire reset from Restless Blades is rewarding.
Tethering it to Vanish is not.
Choking out the rest of the spec is not.
Given how much power comes from the branch, it either needs redesign or baseline.
I separately look at Torghast powers like Unceasing Chain Link, and wonder if any inspiration can be pulled there? (But even Torghast on Rogue compared to other classes felt to be light on ideas/flavor.)
I 100% agree with you… i mean… the FIRST talent point we get in the sub tree is find weakness?? TF really?? Not to mention it feels like it has no effect, take that talent out of the game and we still do same damage. The whole class especially sub rogue needs a rework entirely.
Subtlety is one click away, friend. I’d prefer Outlaw to have strong builders in Sinister Strike and strong finishers with Summarily Dispatched.
The problem is that Ambush is the superior combo point builder. It does more damage. It gives you more combo points per use. All the while Sinister Strike rots on the vine being too expensive to use when nothing procs in a row.
incorrect, Im not playing rogue because they made haste mandatory. As outlaw, I used SnD like once a dungeon, it wasnt that bad before prepatch at all. If a rogue was using SnD multiple times in a M+ run, that is a skill issue on the rogue and/or the skill of the rest of the group.
