Rogue 6.0 patch notes

[Hitei]

Why change though? We're fine the way we are. Why change and possibly break something that is already well established and doing very good? Look at all the other classes being given stuff and then taken away in the next or even the same patch that it was introduced. Let's not ask for something that might later bite us in the ass.

Because we aren't fine the way we are?

We have three specs that play with extremely similar rotations, with very, very little individual spec identity (Assassin who kills people with melee weapons, assassin who kills people with poisoned melee weapons, assassin who kills people with melee weapons that make them bleed). We're one of the few classes that still operates on old, out of date mechanics (Energy and CP to use our primary stun which is already on a CD)--We've had all of our iconic abilities from over the years, stealth/vanish, sprint, stuns, shadowstep, combo points, auto-applied slows handed out to the other classes to make them more interesting, while we've gotten extremely little in return.We've lost more and more of our class identity as the years go by, poisons changed to act like shaman's magical weapon enhancements, stealth becoming less and less effective as the amount, size and variety of AoE in the game has increased and damage from stealth/uniqueness of stuns or silences has diminished.

Then there's our talent trees, which I think I can honestly say are probably the least interesting of all the classes. Most of our talents are either:
A) Completely required because they are clearly superior in the vast majority of situations (BoS, Anticipation)
B) Nearly useless because they are weak or one of the A talents is on that tier (Leeching poison, a talent that doesn't stack with our regular utility poison, forcing you to abandon utility for extremely low healing, Cloak and Dagger)
C) Hot fixes to class problems that rogues have been bringing up for years (Redirect)
D) Something that should be baseline (Night Stalker, Deadly Throw, Shadowstep, Leeching poison)

I believe we are also one of the classes with the most talents derived from talents we already had (i.e. we're one of the ones who got the fewest new talents) and I don't think it's merely opinion to say that most of the other classes got far more interesting talents both mechanically and in flavor. And the exact same is true of WoD, a passive energy increase, an awkward version of Dancing Rune Weapon, and DfA the one interesting choice. Really hard to be happy about those when other classes are getting things like Gladiator Stance, Ignite Weapons, Ravager, Permanent Doomguards/Infernals, Lava spewing and storm elemental Totems, Prismatic Crystal and the Meteor/Comet spells, Hurricane Strike, Direct Damage Shadow priests, Petless hunters and Exotic ammo (WHICH BY THE WAY IS BASICALLY JUST A MORE INTERESTING POISON MECHANIC), Death Knight Lich King talents.


We aren't fine the way we are.
We were fine the way we are, six to eight years ago, when all other classes were about the same, but we've been passed over every single expansion and major patch while other classes were updated and given new life; So that we are now left far, far behind the other classes in terms of interest, identity, and mechanics--And our steadily dropping population numbers show this quite well.

[Bullettime]

Why change though? We're fine the way we are. Why change and possibly break something that is already well established and doing very good? Look at all the other classes being given stuff and then taken away in the next or even the same patch that it was introduced. Let's not ask for something that might later bite us in the ass.

Sub needs changes from what it currently is on the beta, unless you like the idea of playing Addons: The Game but as a Rogue instead of a Warlock. With any reasonable level of Multistrike, DoT snapshotting will be returning for Sub and it's much more awkward to do when you're Energy and CP limited and just not mana and cast time limited.

Otherwise, the main change needs to be talents. Rogues even beat Death Knights in the "blandest talents" contest and there's very little choice at all. Every tier can be broken down into PvP talent, extremely situational or useless talent, and PvE talent. There's no choice at all.

[scrable]

-snip-

I largely agree with your arguments. I'm on the fence about the rogue class feeling good or bad; which one of those it is I don't really know. Playing the class on live currently doesn't bore me to death unless I'm playing Assassination. All of the specs play pretty much the same way.

Do I want rogue changes? Yes. However, I feel that most of the changes can be done through the talent selection tree rather than how the class functions. Granted, if the talent tree was actually to change, the class would probably function differently to a small degree, but changes like these would be good for the class as a whole. The changes could possibly create some sort of dynamic gameplay. I hate being forced to take talents because they are clearly better than their alternatives. I don't know what these changes would be, but at this point, I just want some sort of change in the talent tree.

I'm jealous of other classes revamps. Oh, and of mages getting another updated mastery model for icicles.

[Dextar]

Newest build still has Ruthlessness broken. *sigh*

[Leih]

I'd just be careful with wishing for change for the sake of change. My other main class is my Warrior, and both DPS specs were utterly gutted for WoD despite working quite fine or (in the case of Fury) being in a really good place.

Definitely, Rogue talents are boring and a few other tweaks could be nice, but I'd rather play my rogue with it being the same as ever, with added bonus of rogue-bound combo points than have it be changed for the sake of change, and risk ending up like my warrior.

If they gave Rogues the same kind of makeover they did with Arms spec, they'd take away Sinister Strike/Backstab/Mut and make combo points be generated once every 1.5 seconds automatically, so we just have to press our finisher every 7.5 seconds, and leave the rest of our GCDs empty save CDs.

That said, I think if something needs changed it's definitely a few of the talent tiers. Anticipation should probably be baseline by now so we can free up that talent tier for an actual choice.

[Bullettime]

Especially when CP on the Rogue was an even larger nerf to Marked for Death in PvE. Competition in that tier was near nonexistent this xpac anyways. Now, there's officially zero.

[Leih]

That's the thing, "weak" talents that are just little bonuses/tweaks aren't so bad really provided you actually get the option to use them. If you have 3 weakish talents in a tier, at least you get to pick one as a little "bonus" for encounters. Imagine if you only had to choose whether you wanted Shuriken Toss or Marked for Death. Neither of them are going to make a huge difference, but you sort of get to think "Hmm, are there adds in this fight? MfD could be a small boost." Or "Are there portions where the boss is going to be out of range? Shurikens would be a little boost in that phase!" At least it's SOMETHING to think about even if the difference is minor.

But when you have something like Anticipation sitting there in the same tier, suddenly those weaker ones become laughable and almost downright infuriating. They will pretty much never see use in PVE as it stands.

[Feali]

Newest build still has Ruthlessness broken. *sigh*

It's like they're not even trying.

[Ninepenny]

Why change though? We're fine the way we are. Why change and possibly break something that is already well established and doing very good?

Fury warriors in wrath: Why change though? We're fine the way we are. Why change and possibly break something that is already well established and doing very good? I like my BT/WW rotation very much. Plx, Blizz.

[Artorius]

It's like they're not even trying.

I'm certainly sure they aren't... You know right? haste will fix it!

[Hitei]

Played around with some dream talents and talent changes.
Obviously numbers are just there to have numbers and aren't particularly balanced.

Still not sure why we, a pure DPS class, have two talent tiers devoted to defensive abilities.

Click here for larger version.

I also considered replacing persistent assault with the following:

Legacy of Moroes
Passive
Increases the damage of your garrote
by 50% and extends the duration of
its bleed effect to 1.5 minutes.

[Luko]

[IMG]http://puu.sh/arjxF/db90766cd3.jpg[IMG]

Played around with some dream talents and talent changes.
Obviously numbers are just there to have numbers and aren't particularly balanced.

Still not sure why we, a pure DPS class, have two talent tiers devoted to defensive abilities.

Click here for larger version.

I also considered replacing persistent assault with the following:

Legacy of Moroes
Passive
Increases the damage of your garrote
by 50% and extends the duration of
its bleed effect to 1.5 minutes.

Its sad that I got legitimately hyped while reading these, not because "yay! changes!" but because these are things that I would absolutely love to see in my game. The Swashbuckler's Waltz caught me with a huge smile on my face as I found myself mentally applying each feature in game.

Unfortunately I'm even more so annoyed at the current theme of rogue neglect now.

[Skarzog]

Played around with some dream talents and talent changes.
Obviously numbers are just there to have numbers and aren't particularly balanced.

Still not sure why we, a pure DPS class, have two talent tiers devoted to defensive abilities.

Click here for larger version.

I also considered replacing persistent assault with the following:

Legacy of Moroes
Passive
Increases the damage of your garrote
by 50% and extends the duration of
its bleed effect to 1.5 minutes.

Sorry but that is way too creative for Rogues. Its not secret when it comes to Rogues, Blizzard's imagination is less than inspiring. I don't know if that is because none of the developers really have a passion for the Rogue archetype. Or its because they just felt they did a real good job with the Rogue when the game came out (which they did), so if it ain't broke don't fix it... or do much of anything to it... for 10 years... Ever... Don't touch it is what I'm saying, just leave it be.

[Mafic]

Newest build still has Ruthlessness broken. *sigh*

At this point call it a feature and be happy lol.

[Hitei]

Its sad that I got legitimately hyped while reading these, not because "yay! changes!" but because these are things that I would absolutely love to see in my game. The Swashbuckler's Waltz caught me with a huge smile on my face as I found myself mentally applying each feature in game.

Unfortunately I'm even more so annoyed at the current theme of rogue neglect now.

I remember having similar feelings when someone on the official forums came up with a really neat idea for rogues being able to deploy caltrops back around Wrath. The unfortunate part about imagining what could be is that eventually you have to return to the reality of what is.

[Deleted]

Played around with some dream talents and talent changes.
Obviously numbers are just there to have numbers and aren't particularly balanced.

Still not sure why we, a pure DPS class, have two talent tiers devoted to defensive abilities.

Click here for larger version.

I also considered replacing persistent assault with the following:

Legacy of Moroes
Passive
Increases the damage of your garrote
by 50% and extends the duration of
its bleed effect to 1.5 minutes.

While obviously not being perfectly balanced I really like the ideas here especially the choice of removing stealth if you really desire to do so, which would not really be missed in PvE anyways. But like somebody here said: way too creative for blizz. I wonder if they had fun when they had to come up with our 100 Talents. Because I can see them having fun coming up with crazy stuff for other classes and then I see them barely coming up with 3 ideas for rogues.

[Ninepenny]

Swank Duelist is something combat should have at lvl 10 baseline.

This spec had more identity in wrath that it has right now.

[Mathris]

I'd just be careful with wishing for change for the sake of change. My other main class is my Warrior, and both DPS specs were utterly gutted for WoD despite working quite fine or (in the case of Fury) being in a really good place.

Honestly at this point, even if it meant gutting a few things, I wouldn't care. Rogues have evolved so very little compared to every other class over the course of the expansions. From Vanilla -> Wrath we didn't really *need* to because we were so far ahead of the others in design at launch. But from late wrath to current the lack of evolution has become a big glare on the class as a whole. It still uses the same outdated mechanics with some minor QoL improvements or band aid talents to fix them. We actually needed a warlock level retool to make the specs feel different, and we're not getting it.
Prepare to keep chanting the mantra I've been chanting since Cataclysm.
Rogues are functional, not fun.
We get to work, we get to mindlessly push our buttons in our rotations and DPS Bot. That's it. No flash, no flare, just function. Which is fine for some, but for others like myself is getting really old really fast.

Disclaimer: I am a PvP oriented rogue, have been since vanilla. There were some times the functional but not fun factor did not apply due to imbalances. See 4.3 sub rogues with legendaries. That was super fun, because it was OP.

[Koji2k11]

i told you months ago nothing will change and here we go again the same old song over and over. every rogue in this game should quit this game to make a statement

[Hitei]

i told you months ago nothing will change and here we go again the same old song over and over. every rogue in this game should quit this game to make a statement

No need to quit, can just reroll and the class population will keep dropping.
At some point Blizzard will be forced to implement real revamps to bring rogue population back in line.