Devs answer to Outlaw

[Sonics12]

So basically what they're doing is, buffing Slice and Dice slightly, so our damage doesn't change, but hey, at least it's more consistent, right?

So basically what they're doing is, buffing Slice and Dice slightly, so our damage doesn't change, but hey, at least it's more consistent, right?

They can never ever buff Slice and Dice to match RTB. Even if slice came "CLOSE" to RTB, no one would use RTB. Ever.

Their only option is to buff it a tiny bit, but it can never be a real contender for the reasons above.

The devs need to just buff Outlaw DMG, if our damage doesnt suck then people would play it even tho RTB is the most fraustrating spell in wow atm. Right now there is no point playing outlaw when Assass does MORE dmg and you dont have to roll Grand Melee 6 times in a row.

[Deleted]

Currently, SnD is in the wrong slot either way. You have the option between 2 new abilities, providing more damage OR replace an ability, which does even less damage than RtB.

For an SnD Spec your stat weights differs a lot, so compare both builds with rotb optimized gear isnt much accurate.

[ymirsson]

practise? before you are able to program a sim you need to determine some data by yourself and put all the things in the right sequence.

what? 5 mins on a dummy is not "doing a caculation". I honestly don't know what you mean.

[Deleted]

5min oO. I c you have no idea how theorycrafting works before we get the luxus of sims or real good spreadsheets.

[ymirsson]

5min oO. I c you have no idea how theorycrafting works before we get the luxus of sims or real good spreadsheets.

i was just randomly using a number, since you haven't specified your method of "real calcs".

[Xanatu]

Why does anyone want SND to be viable? It's a boring as fuck ability from a spec they removed from the game. It's got about as much class fantasy as paint drying on a wall. If Outlaw did good damage again, no one would be whining about RTB. It's just crippling right now because we do virtually no damage outside of great RTB rolls; if we actually did damage the entire time and spiked on good rolls, no one would want SND back. It's such a thoughtless ability.

[Fenderxx]

I hope they make SnD a Glyph and that talent with something new ... maybe a good Single Target talent? That way Mark for Death still has a place and we get some more choice. A little buff to our damage would not hurt either, and Outlaw will be in a good place.

[Notter]

Secondly, I don't think the "no ETA yet" statement neccessarily means that any and all changes are a long way off.

nor does it means that it's coming soon...
what we can gather from "no ETA" is that it's still something that they have not even started working on.

[Eazy]

Now let's see:

Roll the Bones is a spec-defining ability for Outlaw Rogues, and there’s a lot of depth to the gameplay of reacting to the various buffs that the Bones can provide, as they alter the flow and pace of combat. We’re happy with how it’s played out, and there are very few class mechanics that can rival the excitement of getting that elusive 6-buff at just the right time.

Like what? The 6 roll buff is a compensate to 5 single buffs.

That said, we recognize that that playstyle might not sit well for everyone, which is why we created Slice and Dice as an alternative to opt-out of the Roll the Bones playstyle. Marked for Death and Death From Above take a little more effort to use effectively, and need to give enough of a benefit to reward that effort, but we’re going to take another look at Slice and Dice to make sure it’s living up to expectations. If it isn’t, we’ll look into making some improvements.

Good luck with SnD which is even more garbage than RtB and if you choose it you don't hame MfD, which is mandatory talent for M+ and overall the best in that specifical talent row.

Separately from Roll the Bones, we do feel that Outlaw’s DPS has ended up a little lower than we’d like it to be, and are looking into some options to bring it up a bit. We don’t have an ETA just yet on when that might happen, but it’s on our to-do list.

Good conclusion - nerfing the spec to the ground and making it probably worst melee spec in the game after people spent tons of AP on it and got specific relics.

Personally - that's not an answer I wanted to get. For me the first thing what they should do is change RtB and balance buffs, because it's probably most afflicted by RNG spec in the game. Which is not "fun".

Does rtb really bring that much depth? It seems to be "did I get a decent roll? If yes continue regular rotation. If no re roll.'

For me it doesn't give any depth, you just reroll unless you get 2 or +2 buffs. You use the same CDs, same abilities etc.
The only "depth" is probably when you are using AR/Cotd at start, then you don't want to have rolls which are giving you bonus CPs.

[ehxy]

Does rtb really bring that much depth? It seems to be "did I get a decent roll? If yes continue regular rotation. If no re roll.'

No they are basically trump campaigning it by saying buzzwords and hoping people think it has depth. It's the equivalent of the 50 cent break open gambling tickets you can get at a store. You watch people just sit there opening them over and over looking for 3 cherries or 3 lemons etc.. By the way this is a system that is designed for you to fail the majority of the time as the saying goes "The house always wins".

I think it's a failure in the mechanics department. They could have simply implemented a single roll buff to have 100% amount, double rolled buffs to have 80% of the effectiveness, 3 rolled buffs 70% if they were THAT worried that getting the full house would be overwhelmingly unbalanced if they were to add an incremental for each roll guarnteeing a new buff stack. Of course that would kinda take away from hitting the jackpot but what do you expect with a mechanic designed like this that would be the least amount of work to change without an overhaul.

[Kyzr]

Are there ppls around which are doing some real calcs (not only sim calcs) with SnD for a better avg dps than rotb? I think there should be a real viable SnD build which performs more constant than rotb builds.

I figured out some specs for sin as well and a full mastery/haste build with MP/Alacrity can reach a real high dps as well (not as high as EP/AP but totally viable for the current mythic content) and this is something no one has an eye on it.

Problem is that for SnD to be viable it has to compete with not just RtB but MfD too. This is the problem with a "replace" talent, because it's not just a 1:1 ratio.

And that's ignoring the core issue anyway. They're refusing to change RtB because it's a "core mechanic of the class". Like they're somehow protecting the legacy of the spec. It's brand freaking new! They should be ashamed that their rework has gone so poorly.

The ability is cool as hell in concept, but that's where it should have died. People were complaining about the spec's unreliable damage in Alpha, back when the 25% buffs were 40%. The problem is that they did 0 balance on smoothing out it's probability. They lazily just through what an actual 6d6 would do and called it a day. It might be, balance wise, one of the laziest things they've ever done.

For any CP-based class, you should never properly use a finisher and feel like you just wasted it. Not only does that happen on Outlaw, but it's the statistical majority outcome. It's just not a "fun" ability to use, and they would know that if they logged off their Fire Mages long enough to actually playtest it.

[Xanatu]

I hope they make SnD a Glyph and that talent with something new ... maybe a good Single Target talent? That way Mark for Death still has a place and we get some more choice. A little buff to our damage would not hurt either, and Outlaw will be in a good place.

SND being viable is not a DPS increase. If you make SND as strong as RTB, congratulations, we now do the exact same damage (the same worst-in-the-game damage), we just do it more consistently. If they buff SND to make it stronger than RTB, it would have to be a massive DPS increase because dropping MFD, which is worth about 20 runthroughs a fight (~12 million damage) on single target encounters, is almost impossible. Unless SND is far and away the strongest talent on our entire tree, it will never be useful. They should get rid of it and never talk about it again. MFD synergizes so well with outlaw/true bearing, even in ST, anything else on that tier is almost untakeable.

[ymirsson]

and they would know that if they logged off their Fire Mages long enough to actually playtest it.

You're asking for the impossible. That would be akin to making frost the best spec, can't happen after all theses people invested so heavily, time and AP and lifeblood and firstborn and all that, it would be a sacrilege to shake up the order of things.
/sarcasm

[Eazy]

You're asking for the impossible. That would be akin to making frost the best spec, can't happen after all theses people invested so heavily, time and AP and lifeblood and firstborn and all that, it would be a sacrilege to shake up the order of things.
/sarcasm

That would be funny... if people didn't invest in Outlaw as much.

If the most optimal way to play Outlaw is to keep 2 or +2 buffs, then they should've made it as a CD, which gives you random 2 buffs for 42 second with 40 sec CD. That would make it slighty less RNG.

Or fuse buffs and make it 3 buffs only.

[Coldkil]

RtB is a fun ability to me. But it cannot be a concept working in a scenario when you need consistency.

Either it needs to be less RNG, or SnD becomes a viable competitor - slightly below the supposed median dps RtB provides. I am completely fine with SnD becoming the "safe option" when you need consistency and reliable performance, but the spec becomes boring for me and much less interesting.

Having a random buff array the baseline for Outlaw performance is flawed imho. SnD is boring though.

[Fenderxx]

SND being viable is not a DPS increase. If you make SND as strong as RTB, congratulations, we now do the exact same damage (the same worst-in-the-game damage), we just do it more consistently. If they buff SND to make it stronger than RTB, it would have to be a massive DPS increase because dropping MFD, which is worth about 20 runthroughs a fight (~12 million damage) on single target encounters, is almost impossible. Unless SND is far and away the strongest talent on our entire tree, it will never be useful. They should get rid of it and never talk about it again. MFD synergizes so well with outlaw/true bearing, even in ST, anything else on that tier is almost untakeable.

I agree, I don't think they should buff SnD at all.. but I have seen a few posts on the forum of people who enjoy the spec using SnD, so yes it would be a DPS loss.. so maybe make it a Glyph? That is my thinking anyway as it is a dead talent. MFD is really strong, but I don't know why you couldn't come up with another strong talent to at least compete with it? I could easily see a talent that could be completive for long single target fights when you can't reset MFD. Just my thoughts though.

[Xanatu]

I agree, I don't think they should buff SnD at all.. but I have seen a few posts on the forum of people who enjoy the spec using SnD, so yes it would be a DPS loss.. so maybe make it a Glyph? That is my thinking anyway as it is a dead talent. MFD is really strong, but I don't know why you couldn't come up with another strong talent to at least compete with it? I could easily see a talent that could be completive for long single target fights when you can't reset MFD. Just my thoughts though.

So napkin math here. What if we replace SND with a guaranteed 2-buff roll, with a CD as long as the duration (roughly). On average we roll 3 times to get a buff we like (2/3/6). So every minute this saves us about 3ish rolls (duration of like 40 seconds; very rough figures), so that's 3 extra run throughs per minute, since we're not using that CP to roll. That probably generates more saved run-throughs than MFD with true-bearing (I think my last log I looked at was an M cenarius where I got like 18 MFD over 7 minutes?) Now to balance, if they cap it at 2 and don't allow for a 3/6 (which has a 5% chance of happening), that's the math I can't do by hand. IDK. This seems like what people actually want. I think this would be at least DPS neutral with less frustration?

[Kyzr]

The fix I liked most from the General Forums was that the buffs shouldn't go away when you reroll, and single duplicate rolls should be able to stack to 2. That way after two rolls you will always have a good enough buff to start using Run Through, but still keeps the ability as a literal 6d6 (which is just a dumb position to start from, but hey, Blizzard lul).

[ehxy]

I agree, I don't think they should buff SnD at all.. but I have seen a few posts on the forum of people who enjoy the spec using SnD, so yes it would be a DPS loss.. so maybe make it a Glyph? That is my thinking anyway as it is a dead talent. MFD is really strong, but I don't know why you couldn't come up with another strong talent to at least compete with it? I could easily see a talent that could be completive for long single target fights when you can't reset MFD. Just my thoughts though.

Glyphs are for the most part vanity at this point.

I have a sinking feeling they might take the safe route and just buff SnD so the spec is basically combat rogue again. A lot of people like that spec.

[Fenderxx]

So napkin math here. What if we replace SND with a guaranteed 2-buff roll, with a CD as long as the duration (roughly). On average we roll 3 times to get a buff we like (2/3/6). So every minute this saves us about 3ish rolls (duration of like 40 seconds; very rough figures), so that's 3 extra run throughs per minute, since we're not using that CP to roll. That probably generates more saved run-throughs than MFD with true-bearing (I think my last log I looked at was an M cenarius where I got like 18 MFD over 7 minutes?) Now to balance, if they cap it at 2 and don't allow for a 3/6 (which has a 5% chance of happening), that's the math I can't do by hand. IDK. This seems like what people actually want. I think this would be at least DPS neutral with less frustration?

I like this idea, or at least something that can off-set the RNG a bit during straight single target fights. Of course MFD will still be strong when you have adds and can get a good number of resets. It would create an interesting talent choice and I think that is what Blizzard wants as well. I was trying to save SnD in some way... but it doesn't have to be a glyph.. maybe replace Swordmaster with it? so it's higher on the tier? You still have the same issues.. but at least your not wasting a 100 tier talent on a DPS loss...