Blue post regarding rogues class fantasy and future potential changes.

[Juggsa]

"Outlaw
The pirate theme is clear, and clearly contentious. I think it would be accurate to say there are many players who like the fantasy of the spec and many who don't. As a class with 3 specs of the same role, this is probably an okay place to be in."

No no and no. This is not an ok place to be. I don't want to be a stupid pirate like I'm 5 years old. How is that ok, theres no other 1 hand spec execpt daggers. I used to Love combat now i really hate it.

Give us talents to opt out of pistol shot and other piratety things. Give us kidney shot back. Snd baseline and killing spree.

[shaunika123]

"Outlaw
The pirate theme is clear, and clearly contentious. I think it would be accurate to say there are many players who like the fantasy of the spec and many who don't. As a class with 3 specs of the same role, this is probably an okay place to be in."

No no and no. This is not an ok place to be. I don't want to be a stupid pirate like I'm 5 years old. How is that ok, theres no other 1 hand spec execpt daggers. I used to Love combat now i really hate it.

Give us talents to opt out of pistol shot and other piratety things. Give us kidney shot back. Snd baseline and killing spree.

i used to hate combat now i love outlaw

see how that works out?:P

[Deleted]

Don't like the ideas for Sub, except perhaps the improvement to ST dmg in AE situation. I can live with not being top dog in AE but removal of shadowstrike and less shadow dance is not a good design decision imo, i know i wont like it

[Deleted]

Glad to hear they are not satisfied with AP. They essentially removed 5xDP stacking because it 'had problems' and then reintroduced it with a similar design and guess what - similar problems. I wonder why they didn't say a word about VW though. The 100 tier has been the same single talent for ages now.

[Deleted]

Talking about SIN:
I think we are in a good spot right now. Even more with the Poison Bomb changes. I can beat a DH with the same iLvL in M+ Trash DMG. And in raids we are doing fine too (ST DMG). I am not a fan of Exsang, so I always prefered AP (in terms of playstyle). So I (personally) am not very glad they are going to remove it.

For me it sounds more like: "Casuals dont know they need to apply Deadly Poison for Trash packs and AP for ST - we need to make it easy for the casuals". I am just a bit concerned, that they rework SIN now and we underperform afterwards and it will take ages to get balanced back in line. We are doing good now - why not keep it this way. Now we are facing new experiments again - and we dont know the output (yet).

Just my feelings.

[Kortiah]

Talking about SIN:
I think we are in a good spot right now. Even more with the Poison Bomb changes. I can beat a DH with the same iLvL in M+ Trash DMG. And in raids we are doing fine too (ST DMG). I am not a fan of Exsang, so I always prefered AP (in terms of playstyle). So I (personally) am not very glad they are going to remove it.

For me it sounds more like: "Casuals dont know they need to apply Deadly Poison for Trash packs and AP for ST - we need to make it easy for the casuals". I am just a bit concerned, that they rework SIN now and we underperform afterwards and it will take ages to get balanced back in line. We are doing good now - why not keep it this way. Now we are facing new experiments again - and we dont know the output (yet).

Just my feelings.

If you're beating a DH on trash damage he's either bad or you had insane luck on PB procs. Rupture procc'ing PB is great, but it doesn't solve the random aspect of our AoE.

What they're saying is they want to make Sin's AoE less RNG, and that's exactly what this spec needs since Legion launch. Poison bomb being something like a 10sec 70 energy spell would be great. It'd let us control our AoE and not fluctuate from 600k DPS to 4M DPS depending on RNG.

[Valentyn]

Sounds like the developers have no idea what they want.

All of the Sub issues were addressed in feedback back in Alpha and Beta for 7.0; yet they blatantly ignored everything brought up; and the only response we got was Celestalon stating that ShadowDance not activating the Stealth bar was a fantastic idea they're sticking with( that turned out well ).

They also stated they'd never change mechanics and major gameplay during the expansion; and yet here we are.

Most of what I'm reading about Sub looks like they're going to gut it even more; unless they plan on drastically buffing it's damage outside of ShadowDance.
Let's face it, outside of ShD we're useless limp noodles, Backstab and Gloomdblade are useless.

Why not fix Shadowstrike if it needs to be fixed, (I have no issue with it) instead of adding in more button bloat. Another thing they stated they don't want.

Ambush + Shadowstrike + Shadowstep seems pointless. Only two are needed at most.

What's this rubbish about adding poisons back now suddenly? So much for class fantasy eh? Just give us a proper snare/slow that's shadow themed; how darn hard is that?

I don't see the issue with Nightblade, it's not been my main DPS output since early Emerald Nightmare really; although I like the idea of buffing out Evis damage through Shuriken Storm.

What about Symbols of Crap? It's a boring button pressed every once in a while that adds nothing really to the gameplay. So much so the entire next Tier set revolves around making it less of a pain.

They have a lot to do to balance and make the spec better; instead of trying to funnel people in Assa.

I honestly can't see them pulling off what they want successfully. The entire bluepost is full of "If, buts, and maybes". They don't even know what they want, and the entire Subtlety post reads as if it's from an early Alpha build; where they're trying to figure out what they want to do with the specs.

[Deleted]

Opinion as a Sub Player:

Glad that they are going to remove blink from ShadowStrike. Got me killed a few times in Trilliax. I can live with a CD ShadowStrike and Shadowstep. I guess SS is going to be a very high damaging skill now, like Goremaw?

On the Shadow Dance uptime: If Blizzard is going to gut SD uptime, we need way more damage outside SD or way more damage inside Dance. Putting damage inside of Dance is problematic since the more gear we get, SD uptime will get higher -> broken damage.

Still, I dont believe that this changes will make Subtlety popular unless it has like 20% more single target damage than Assa. Even Survival! has more popularity in raids (looking at number of parses on warcraftlogs). Knowing Blizzard and since Subtlety is only a minority, I guess giving feedback to them is useless, so get used to strategical use of Shadow Dance from now on (Aka use it every 30 seconds to proc a ShadowStrike ).

[Skayaq]

I can scarcely believe this, a blue post in the rogue forum.
This caught my eye:

Agonizing Poison: We don't really like Agonizing Poison for many reasons. It replaces Deadly Poison (which feels core to Assassination Rogue) with an extremely passive, mostly invisible, and currently very strong Poison debuff that makes target-swapping and AOE more difficult. It's got a lot of things going wrong with it and is on the chopping block for the next patch. Ideas for replacements include a short-cooldown AOE Poison damage button that costs high energy or something that deals Poison damage in a rotationally-interesting way.

HOORAY! I'm so glad they are considering removing this, though it is baffling that it took them 6+ months to realize this talent have the exact same flaws deadly poison did back in tbc.

[Valentyn]

Oso get used to strategical use of Shadow Dance from now on (Aka use it every 30 seconds to proc a ShadowStrike ).

I don't see how their changes are going to make us less reliant on ShD. Without significantly buffing our damage outside, and within we're essentially going to be doing the exact same damage; with that new talent that increases some ShD.

If the new talent increases our damage in ShD by 50%, then we're essentially doing the same with 2 ShD, as if we had 3. We're just inside ShD less. That's a pointless change.

They're also nerfing Deepening Shadows by over 50%, so unless they drastically buff out damage outside of ShD, we're super wet noodles.

Will the talent that buffs damage during ShD even affect normal stealth? Is Flickering Shadows and Vanish doing to be worse thsn ShD now?

Ugh, their entire post reads as if it's from March 2016 for Alpha 7.0 instead of halfway through an expansion. They're just spit balling it seems, with no direct solutions or ideas.

[Nupss]

I quite like the things they are saying in this post, these are things the 3 specs need imo. I'm not saying these things shouldn't have been done earlier, but at least they have the guts to admit there are problems mid expansion instead of leaving things to fester until the next expansion.

AP is a problem talent that forces Assa into a spec that is valued for its consistent ST damage, but is terrible at anything but tunneling the boss. Throughout the entirety of Mythic NH progression I haven't done anything but tunnel bosses and leave all other mechanics to be done by classes that are way more efficient at executing them. That's terrible gameplay.
Outlaw rerolling and sporadic energy gain is definitely the worst part of the spec so I'm happy they realise that. I don't think they will fully succeed in discouraging rerolling, but let's see what they come up with first.
Shadow Dance becoming more bursty is a definite plus. I like the positive feedback loop getting consistent good SD's provides, but anytime you are out of SD you are doing nothing at all. Giving Sub its burst back while upping damage outside of SD should feel good right?

[Juggsa]

i used to hate combat now i love outlaw

see how that works out?:P

Yes I know. Current wow is for the noobs and not the veterans . True though, sure it's nice for new players coming in.

[shaunika123]

Yes I know. Current wow is for the noobs and not the veterans . True though, sure it's nice for new players coming in.

outlaw's skillcap (however low it might be) is way higher than combat's ever was

also ive been playing since vanilla release, but nice try

[Deleted]

Rebalancing RtB is a good news

Removing one buff seams a good way to go in my opinion...
and to be honest, if the real goal is balance, True Bearing should be the one removed from RtB (and find some conpensation for this powerfull buff... essential to our actual DPS)
I would prefer roll always 2 buffs rolls than 80% 1 19% 2 1% 6
With only 1 buff the spec is... slow.
Potentially getting 6 (or 5) buffs means that some ridiculously high numbers will be still appear and will lead to a lower "normal conditions" DPS

Wait & See

<= combat since vanilla : prefer outlaw as a spec & hate Pirate theme ^^

[VeNomXz]

If you're beating a DH on trash damage he's either bad or you had insane luck on PB procs. Rupture procc'ing PB is great, but it doesn't solve the random aspect of our AoE.

What they're saying is they want to make Sin's AoE less RNG, and that's exactly what this spec needs since Legion launch. Poison bomb being something like a 10sec 70 energy spell would be great. It'd let us control our AoE and not fluctuate from 600k DPS to 4M DPS depending on RNG.

Well I dont currently see the major problem about AP, if we look at the class as a single target designed, but if ur saying that , whats the point of the design then, wasnit it designed to be single target anyway? Trust me I play that spec for couple of years now aspecially in legion there is enough AoE in this spec not talking about RNG, they added RNG because maybe it was supposed to be designed that way and now they want to change it in the middle of expasnion? Well they better give something in return that covers all of this AP bonus dmg we get for single target if they want us to wear Deadly posion in single and aoe situations.. and about the 600k to 4mil, this is a joke 600k maybe a boosted fresh 110 can do on aoe? with out bombs u easly can sit on 1-1.5mil on big amount of adds like dungeons with deadly posion.... so yea

[Halobob87]

Thanks god they are removing that shitty talent know as AP.
But at the same time i'm a bit worried, couse the only reason we're actually decent is AP itself.

[DakonBlackblade]

Cutting AP is their best idea since introducing it. Im also curious to see how they gonna compensate its op damage. Replacing it with a good poison on demand aoe seems kinda fun, I have kinda high hopes now. I just pray we dont have to go full butcher again (bleed build).

Imo they should make the entire tier an AoE tier. Buff our baseline ST damage to compensare for AP removal and just give us 3 good AoE options on that line.

[Toogoodman]

Personally i find the changes to Sub to be quite refreshing
-Giving ambush back in place of shadow strike is a great idea
-making Shadow Dance a more bursty DPS cool down instead of a normalized rotation item, much like pre 7.0 sub (which was an amazing spec)

Assassination changes also seem to be a decent idea
-Target switching as an AP rogue is a joke, making a decent "poison based" AOE dps button would be a great change
-I personally loved Hemo/Exang at the beginning of the Xpac, it was one of the most fun rotations as a rogue ive ever had, it was dynamic and decently skill capped

Outlaw is a PoS as always, just a shit spec for PvE, the Devs seem to be trying to capture the casual audience with this spec
-The other rogues in my guild and i spoke about this, and this spec seems to be a way for the Devs to attracted casuals back to the class, make it a fun idea but not practical for raiding, which is sad considering how amazing combat used to be.
-Unfortunately raiders, and us mythic raiders in specific, make up such a small % of the WoW population, that appealing every DPS spec to us is just never going to happen

Hitt <Keep Calm>

[Deleted]

Sooo.....they're just gonna nerf RtB? That's cool. I guess. Uhmm.....yeah...*scratches neck*

And since they confirmed the Pirate theme of the class, where's all my goddamn pirate shit at? They didn't even bother on this front of the class fantasy. There's the optional cannonball barrage that takes a backseat to Alacrity and the baseline pistol shot. They didn't even give us a pirate set or any cool transmogs. Bruh...

You'd think Blizz would have actually cared and made a real concise effort on what was their hyped up brand-spanking new spec, but they just left it to die. Like Survival hunters.

And for god's sakes, just remove True Bearing. It shouldn't exist.

[Valentyn]

Personally i find the changes to Sub to be quite refreshing
-Giving ambush back in place of shadow strike is a great idea
-making Shadow Dance a more bursty DPS cool down instead of a normalized rotation item, much like pre 7.0 sub (which was an amazing spec)
>

Removing the teleport from Shadow Strike means Sub needs another way to have High Uptime on bosses, or players in PvP. Assa has Dots, we had mobility.
Taking that away is going to hurt in PvE, and PvP, especially since Ambush is 100% ShadowStrike minus the blink. So what's really the point?
They're only bringing back "Ambush" to appease some people, and it's only because of the name.

Making Shadow Dance more bursty..unless each charge now does over 50% increased damage via that new talent, it'll do as much damage as blowing all 3 charges currently.

What do you do outside of Burst then? Backstab? Sure, like in WoD. Great for raids, useless for all other PvE content compared to Assa and Outlaw.
Not going to go down well with Artifacts and Legendaries; as we're already wet noodles outside of dance.

I enjoyed Sub in WoD, was the 2nd best rogue on my realm in Mythic. Although I'd never play it outside of HFC. Are they going to bring that back? Literally only a raid spec?