Spicing up the rogue

[Deleted]

This is not a discussion about damage or balance or whatever, just some fun stuff I was thinking about for the rogue specs. Most of this stuff has PvE in mind as well. Numbers is also made up on the spot, so don't take them too seriously either.

TOK'S ROGUE PATCH NOTES

Rogue in general:
- SnD is now removed from the game. It isn't interesting, has never been interesting and will never be interesting. The increased attack speed is now instead passive for all rogue specs.

- Rogues get a new ability, "Energy Drink", which instantly gives the rogue 50 energy when used on 2-minute CD.

- New ability: Rogue Squad. 50 energy cost, 3 minute cooldown. Different effect depending on spec:
Subtlety: An extra rogue of the opposing faction's equalivent comes to help you out for 15 seconds (see Orb of Deception. Yes, that means gnome rogues will have a tauren rogue come and help them out). Your helper will use Ambush on the opponent, giving you the combo points. If the target casts a spell, the assistant will interrupt it. When the effect expires, the assistant will jump up and stab the target in the head, dealing 40k damage.
Assassination: 3 mafia gnomes will rush in to your assistance, shooting the target with their shotguns for 15 seconds. If your opponent dies while the gnome mafia helps you out, you get money depending on the mob's level (if it's level 10 the mafia will give you 1 silver, whereas if the mob is level 90 the mafia will give you 1 gold).
Combat: 5 berserkers of the same race as you rush in and copies every move you make for 30 seconds, though one of the berserkers will go completely insane after 25 seconds, and do a weaker version of Killing Spree on the target.

- Restless Blades is now for all rogues, and not just Combat-only. This ability now affects Energy Drink, Rogue Squad and Vendetta (as well as Disarm Trap during Shadow Dance) as well.

- Rupture damage increased by 300%.

- Shuriken Toss is now baseline.

Subtlety:
- Energy Drink has a 30-second CD when Subtlety, and when used also gives you 8 energy every 2 seconds for 8 seconds.

- Hemorrhage's DoT now deals an additional 450% of the direct attack's damage over 24 seconds.

- Mastery now increases the length of Energy Drink's energy over time-effect.

- Shadow Dance is now an on-toggle ability with a 10-second CD. Stealth-only abilities do 25% less damage during Shadow Dance, and abilities that can be used out of stealth cannot be used during Shadow Dance, with the exception of Vanish. Some abilities change when in Shadow Dance:
Ambush: Can be used when facing the target as well.

Pick Pocket: Pick Pocket during Shadow Dance can get loot from the opponent more than once. When used during Shadow Dance Pick Pocket also does 80% weapon damage that ignores armor, and gives you one combat point. Pick Pocket has a 35 energy cost during Shadow Dance.

Cheap Shot: Has a 8 second cooldown during Shadow Dance, and instead of stunning the target when used, the target gets interrupted. 150% weapon damage and ignores armor. It was a cheap shot though, so you don't get any combo points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Distract: When Distract is thrown, it's usually just a distraction. However, during Shadow Dance, Distract becomes a burning Molotov! Now, when thrown, it burns the ground it lands on and does damage every 3 seconds, and also adds a fire-damage DoT to the enemies standing in it. Costs 40 energy.

Garrote: During Shadow Dance, can now be disspelled by healing over 30k and does not silence the target anymore, however, it's damage ramps up rapidly over time, and for every tick it also gives a free combo point. Also ignores armor.

Disarm Trap: Has a 10 second CD and now disarms the target's SOOOOOOUUUUUUUL. Using Disarm Trap on a target makes your next damaging ability on the target to give you an extra combo point, as well as doing Shadow damage.

Find Weakness: The effect can only be triggered every 1 minute during Shadow Dance.

Vanish: Enters DOUBLE STEALTH MODE HOOOO, your next damaging ability does 750% increased damage, though Vanish's cooldown is increased to 6 minutes when doing this. Can be cancelled by right-clicking the buff in case you don't want the increased cooldown.

- Ghostly Strike is back! Dodge buff now stacks with Evasion.

Combat:
- Bandit Guile's removed.

- Can now equip shields.

- New ability: Berserker, on-toggle ability that increases your damage by 100%, but your energy cannot be regenerated while it's active.

- New ability: Weapon Swap. Weapon Swap swaps places between your MH and OH weapon, so if you have a sword in MH and a dagger in OH, using Weapon Swap now puts your dagger in the MH and your sword in the OH. No energy cost, 30 second cooldown. Doesn't work with shields.

- New ability: [Weapon] Strike. Has a 50% chance to be triggered by your Sinister Strike. Depending on what weapon you have in OH, [Weapon] Strike has a different effect:
Sword Strike: Slashes with the sword five times, dealing the equalivent damage of 5 white hits in 1 second. After that, your next damaging ability's damage is doubled and grants an extra combo point.

Dagger Strike: Does 150% OH weapon damage and adds the debuff "Riposte" to target, decreasing the target's attack speed by 20% for 30 seconds.

Mace Strike: Interrupts casting, also does 120% weapon damage. If Mace Strike is activated 3 times without using it once, Super Mace Strike is activated, bonking your enemy into the ground, stunning them and taking increased damage from all physical sources for 5 seconds.

Axe Strike: Does 110% weapon damage to up to three targets that are in front of you. Adds a DoT to the targets for 10 seconds.

Fist Strike: (fist weapons/unarmed) 1 second cast time. Does 150% weapon damage and knocks back the target 10 yards. Your damage is decreased by 100%, but your damage taken is also decreased by 90%. You're immune to all movement-impairing effects and your movement speed is increased by 50%. When used, also drops the flag. When used on targets immune to knockback, the same effects apply, but you obviously don't knock the target back.

Shield Strike: Knocks the target, dealing 3900-4400 damage and generating 30 energy.

- New ability: Blacksmither. An assistant of the same race as you comes in, and can transmogrify your weapons for free. Yes, the transmogrified weapon will count as the weapon type it's transmogrified as, so if you transmogrify a mace to an axe, you get the axe effects. 5 minute cooldown.

- Your MH passive attacks have a chance to trigger a specific effect depending on MH weapon:
Sword: 1% to decrease the target's damage by 50% for 3 seconds.
Dagger: 1% to trigger a free Ambush that can be used when standing in front of a mob.
Mace: 1% to stun the target for 4 seconds.
Axe: 1% to put a bleed debuff on the target, dealing 130% weapon damage over 5 seconds.
Fist: 1% to make you crit with your 2 next damaging abilities.


Sorry, no assassination, I have never really played with assassination so I couldn't really come up with anything.

[-Raer-]

- Rogues get a new ability, "Energy Drink", which instantly gives the rogue 50 energy when used on 2-minute CD.

Monks are the brewing class, there's also Thistle Tea

- New ability: Rogue Squad. 50 energy cost, 3 minute cooldown. Different effect depending on spec:

Interesting, but not very Rogueish.

- Restless Blades is now for all rogues, and not just Combat-only. This ability now affects Energy Drink, Rogue Squad and Vendetta (as well as Disarm Trap during Shadow Dance) as well.

You'd have to buff something for Combat to keep it on par with the other specs doing this.

- Rupture damage increased by 300%.

Quite a large buff, would like to see this done in some fashion for maybe Subtlety, turning the spec into a more DoT reliant spec.

- Shuriken Toss is now baseline.

No arguments here.

- Energy Drink has a 30-second CD when Subtlety, and when used also gives you 8 energy every 2 seconds for 8 seconds.

- Hemorrhage's DoT now deals an additional 450% of the direct attack's damage over 24 seconds.

- Mastery now increases the length of Energy Drink's energy over time-effect.

I'm not a fan of giving Rogues something that Monks already have in the drinking/brewing shenanigans. I would like to see the mastery for Sub reworked and for the spec to be a bit more about DoTs as I've mentioned before.

Shadow Dance

While this would be interesting, I think these would suit minor glyphs more than changing a staple ability to be only for cosmetics/shenanigans.

- Ghostly Strike is back! Dodge buff now stacks with Evasion.

Seems interesting, could work it into a talent like altering Elusiveness to make it strike an enemy so it's not a complete dps loss to use Feint.

Combat:

All of these seem to literally transform the Rogue into a Warrior type class which I am not a fan of at all.


All in all some very wild suggestions, but it's a step in the right direction! Change is good.

[Deleted]

Some critique the top of my head...

In general:

- Removing SnD would reduce passive damage. Making the 40% attack speed baseline counteracts that change... The 40% additional attack speed itself needs to disappear for Slice to disappear. Making it baseline means we'll just have Slice passively. It's less tedious but solves nothing.

- On-demand energy regeneration cooldowns do not seem interesting to me. I'd rather be without them.

- The Rogue Squad idea seems interesting. It'll therefore never see the light of day...

- Restless Blades is bad!!! Do not be fooled by the concept of getting your cooldowns back quicker. You're balanced around a certain amount of cooldown usage/min. Restless Blades is there to assist you in sticking to that that cd/min number. However, this also means that whenever you can't use finishers effectively, you lose cooldown uptime/usage. Currently, the only spec with this issue is Combat. I sure as hell wouldn't want that spread across the other two specs as well.

- Increasing Rupture damage would potentially make Rupture worth using for the sake of using it and not just for some secondary shit. I'm for it.

- Which Shuriken Toss...? The current or the upcoming one?

Subtlety:

- Prefer the steady energy returns of Energetic Recovery, myself.

- The concept of Shadow Dance being an on-toggle mechanic is an interesting one. Could be amusing to play around with.

- Double stealth sounds... Overpowered... :P

Combat:

- Bandit's Guile deserves to be put down... And so does its maker. Uninteresting and useless ramp-up mechanic.

- The whole [WEAPON] Strike business is WAY too convoluted and confusing. Theorycrafters will have the optimal MH/OH figured out in a day for PvE, wasting the whole concept, and we'd need to stack shitloads of random weapons to counter any PvP scenario we can think of. It's just too much variation for one spec, I'd say.

[Deleted]

- Double stealth sounds... Overpowered... :P

But but... it's double stealth! It's like you're invisible, but two times!

But yeah, a lot of these ideas were something I came up with from the top of my head, it's mostly the Shadow Dance idea that I've had for some time, and the weapon specialization of combat that I wanted to come back in some form. I added Energy Drink because I wanted Shadow Dance to have some kind of downside and not just be a powerhouse of ambush ambush ambush. I'm still not sure what to do with finishers for subtlety either, going out of Shadow Dance just for a finisher seems silly, especially with a 10 sec cooldown.

[Ger9nG]

I agree with a few points. Some of the abilities are a bit over the top, but the basic idea is change. I'm all for it.
I don't have any really specific ideas myself, but I know what needs to be done with a few things.

SnD, a signature move, but a boring one at that. It could be worked into different abilities, that refreshes it around balanced numbers. For instance around builders or finishers. Would still be a bit boring, so getting rid of it is also an option.

Bandit's Guile the sole reason why I hate combat. Why would you want to play something balanced around cycling ramp up damage. It's not a good design at all. It adds RNG in a bad way. Get rid of it and make combat around something a bit more stable in terms of output.

Do something about the slow playstyle that doesn't involve us capping energy. Warriors got the rage mechanic turned around a bit, there's no reason why we can't have something done with how the energy works. I personally don't need a lot of change here, but something in order to make rogues appeal a bit more would be nice.

[Deleted]

I read this thinking it was a joke and was laughing a lot, but all of the comments seem to think it was serious and also you answered as if you meant what you wrote. Not sure anymore, but it was a fun read non the less

[Battlebeard]

Didn't know anyone actually used Shuriken Toss, since anticipation is crazy much superior, rather get rid of that ability then encourage it, feels unnecessary.

Rogue with shield? Trolling?

Remove Slice and Dice? Why dumb down the rotation to less abilities :S Rather remove rupture if you want to drop something.

[Deleted]

Didn't know anyone actually used Shuriken Toss, since anticipation is crazy much superior, rather get rid of that ability then encourage it, feels unnecessary.

Rogue with shield? Trolling?

Remove Slice and Dice? Why dumb down the rotation to less abilities :S Rather remove rupture if you want to drop something.

I read this thinking it was a joke and was laughing a lot, but all of the comments seem to think it was serious and also you answered as if you meant what you wrote. Not sure anymore, but it was a fun read non the less

This is not a discussion about damage or balance or whatever, just some fun stuff I was thinking about for the rogue specs. Most of this stuff has PvE in mind as well. Numbers is also made up on the spot, so don't take them too seriously either.

Again, these are not serious suggestions rather than just me throwing around silly ideas.

The rogues with shields stuff comes from alpha-WoW when rogues and hunters were originally able to equip shields.

[eijin]

I think he was serious. i was going to respond but inceneration covered most of my thoughts. I posted my "how i would do it" a while back but noone commented

[Deleted]

Though, isn't there anyone here that likes the idea of rogues having Molotovs?

[Evi1Toad]

Though, isn't there anyone here that likes the idea of rogues having Molotovs?

I love the idea, sounds awesome and fun. Would make for one hell of a distraction as well.

[eijin]

I could see it doing an AoE fire DoT from range. thinking more of a CD or a finisher?

I would like to see maybe some sort of poison bomb for mut, CT for combat, and molotov for sub.

[Demeia]

There's just no way they are going to do a rogue rework until 6.0--when I feel fairly confident they will break down and do a "warlock-style" shift for rogues.

What they are really looking for, I think, would be flashy spectacular powers that make people say, "I want to do that!"

A realistic change would be Killing Spree changed to "Seeing Double" where a rogue's shadow randomly teleports (as per killing spree) while the rogue themselves continues to do damage normally might at least look interesting to outsiders (that rogue is sure moving around--no, wait, he's banging on me!) and save us the random loss of control that is KS. I have a real bias against KS and the stupid ways I've fallen through the ground using it. If something is going to fall through the ground, I'd rather it be an image of me than the real me.

I rather like the idea that there's an Ambush power that replaces Ambush/shadowstep you behind and above a target, causing you to drop down on him and do a rather serious amount of damage. Perhaps that is what they intend with the new talent but I definitely think getting rogues above their targets is worth thinking about. All the powers we should have--roll, heroic leap--were given to other classes. That's why I growl that ShS should be baseline: it's a fairly cool power that might actually seem cool to non-rogues.

Oil slick would be fun, a power that drops a batch of oil on the ground and causes people to stumble out of control for a few seconds. Because if there's one thing this game needs, is more crowd control! (sarcasm alert) Very surprised an "ice patch" kind of power from City of Heroes never made it into the game in any incarnation, though.

I rather like "kiss of the rogue" which would probably be another CC ability which we don't need. Still, having the rogue smooch another character would be rather fun, however impractical.

And I still like disguise kits, which would let us don different disguises more or less long term (hour a day kind of thing). If rogues could always look like Pirates or Ninja or Victorian Ladies/Gentlemen, they would probably be more popular.

There's a lot to be said for trying to give us more black&red armor (see t2).

[CakeomgCake]

Bandit's guile is probably the main reason why rogues are fun i pve. Instead of just plain buttonsmashing in provides logically n stratigically which makes pushing dps in different ways viable, which also is the sole reason why i play rogue in the first place.

Also, nerfing find weakness is ridiculous since keeping it up in the only reason why sublety is even remotely intresting.

The rest of your ideas are honestly, just painfully bad. You're clearly playing the wrong class. Go roll unholy dk with sneaky ninja-ish xmog, cause thats clearly what you're into.

[Deleted]

Bandit's guile is probably the main reason why rogues are fun i pve. Instead of just plain buttonsmashing in provides logically n stratigically which makes pushing dps in different ways viable, which also is the sole reason why i play rogue in the first place.

...I'm sorry, but you have got to be fucking joking?! "Reading into sarcasm" can be slightly difficult on the net, so please do tell me that I'm a retard for entertaining the idea of Bandit's Guile being remotely interesting?!

[Deleted]

Vanish: Enters DOUBLE STEALTH MODE HOOOO, your next damaging ability does 750% increased damage, though Vanish's cooldown is increased to 6 minutes when doing this. Can be cancelled by right-clicking the buff in case you don't want the increased cooldown.

Kinda reminds of rogues in 10-19 bracket in patch 4.1 or so.

[eijin]

...I'm sorry, but you have got to be fucking joking?! "Reading into sarcasm" can be slightly difficult on the net, so please do tell me that I'm a retard for entertaining the idea of Bandit's Guile being remotely interesting?!

eh, id put it as moderately interesting, compaired to our class in its current form. The idea is to use anticipation to make (ideally) most of your offensive finishers in deep insight and if possible none of them in no insight. this could change your rotation slightly (for a very slight dps increase)

[Deleted]

eh, id put it as moderately interesting, compaired to our class in its current form. The idea is to use anticipation to make (ideally) most of your offensive finishers in deep insight and if possible none of them in no insight. this could change your rotation slightly (for a very slight dps increase)

It's a pathetic excuse for a mechanic. The artificial "game-changer" that is Anticipation isn't meant to change rotations at all; neither is Bandit's Guile. It just so happens to be a way to increase dps, ever so slightly. Fact is, Bandit's Guile is just "there". It's not something you specifically have to pay any mind to, and going out of your way to actually do so doesn't reward you with any significant benefits; even if you maximize finisher-in-red output and somehow always manage to fire off a Killing Spree during red as well, the pay-off is minimal.

Bandit's Guile doesn't add depth to the Combat rotation. Pretending that to be the case is simple lunacy. Bandit's Guile is ramp-up. Nothing else. It's just there to maintain steady dps-output, without allowing burst to go out of control. It deserves to be removed as much as Slice and Dice.

EDIT: If Bandit's Guile would work somewhat similarly to the Eclipse mechanic of Boomkin's you'd have a point. I.e. depending on the insight level, you'd have to manage different rotations/abilities. But that's not how it works; you literally don't have to care about it and just do your thing. That's why it's a shallow and worthless mechanic.

[Deleted]

Also, nerfing find weakness is ridiculous since keeping it up in the only reason why sublety is even remotely intresting.

It was nerfed because having it up 100% of the time is just ridiculous.

Still, what kind of abilites would you like to see? Some abilities were a bit over the top, obviously (like Rogue Squad, still, gnome mafia is still a sweet idea by itself), whereas I really like the idea of Shadow Dance as an on-toggle ability, or at least making Shadow Dance a bigger part of Subtlety than just a CD.

[eijin]

Bandit's Guile doesn't add depth to the Combat rotation. Pretending that to be the case is simple lunacy.

It's all we have! ;.;

I do have to admit, anticipation adds a lot of fun factor to mutilate for me (percentage wise, its less impressive number-wise, as the fun factor is still quite low). Rogues need a total revamping :-/