Post-nerf Outlaw retune needed

[Xanatu]

So after stepping into heroic and mythic after our nerf Tuesday, it's painfully clear that the outlaw nerfs went way too far. I completely understand why they targeted those relic traits because it was leading to total degenerate relic choices like 805s beating 860s, but it went too far. There should've been a slight buff to other traits to make up some of the damage lost.

The vast majority of competitive raiding rogues went all in on Outlaw because it was the best spec the entire time on live and for months at the end of beta. Blizzard basically did exactly what they promised they wouldn't and sent our spec from first to worst. Everyone with Outlaw legendaries and Outlaw artifacts is now going to be re-speccing over to sub, not by choice, but by necessity.

I firmly believe there was nothing wrong with the DPS levels of Outlaw pre-nerf. The targeted nerfs to the relic traits were smart but without any compensatory buffs, our overall DPS took too big of a hit in my opinion. Melee (other than ret, lolololol) are getting wrecked by range on every fight because we took the brunt of the nerfs between DH and outlaw. This targeted nerf made sense, but the overall hit to our DPS without anything other buffs is too much considering the investment the rogue community made in this spec.

[enragedgorilla]

While I agree a bit of tuning is needed for Outlaw I think you are OVERSTATING /Dramatizing it a ...bit more than a wee bit.

Outlaw is NOT the worst spec, not by a long shot(based off charts/logs etc. I have seen posted here and on twitter more than a few times) it is a little above mid pack now, with Sin being the BDDPS of rogues for the moment, fight depending

Sub is our "bottom" spec for now, in case you were wondering , and even that is competitive depending on the fight(s)

I would like to see Outlaw tweaked a bit to bring it in the top 10 specs, I do not think making big ,false drama claims will help the argument,esp. when FACTs show otherwise.

[Xanatu]

Don't think it's dramatic at all. Outlaw is now the bottom rogue spec by a solid margin and will stay that way without a re-tune. Everyone is planning to re-spec to sub based on the sims since it's going to be dunking the other specs by 15-20% in the near future.

Here's yesterday's 90th % Outlaw on Ursoc.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...841&dataset=90

Here's dragons:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...854&dataset=90

Cenarius:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...877&dataset=90

These are 90% as well, for a spec that a lot of people consider to be rng/luck based, so these are ostensibly "lucky" pulls as well.

[SSJones]

While I agree a bit of tuning is needed for Outlaw I think you are OVERSTATING /Dramatizing it a ...bit more than a wee bit.

Outlaw is NOT the worst spec, not by a long shot(based off charts/logs etc. I have seen posted here and on twitter more than a few times) it is a little above mid pack now, with Sin being the BDDPS of rogues for the moment, fight depending

Sub is our "bottom" spec for now, in case you were wondering , and even that is competitive depending on the fight(s)

I would like to see Outlaw tweaked a bit to bring it in the top 10 specs, I do not think making big ,false drama claims will help the argument,esp. when FACTs show otherwise.

Most recent sims, and parses from Tuesday onwards in Heroic/Mythic disagree with you.
Sub is competitive with Assassination on single target, and ahead of Outlaw. Outlaw is now our worst single target spec.
Sub has also passed outlaw in AoE on sims at Heroic+ gear levels, meaning Outlaw is not the best AoE spec.

Blizzard very literally did what they said they wouldn't. They took the top dog, pushed it to the bottom, and took the bottom spec and pushed it to the top. I have 23 points in outlaw, and started bringing up my sub artifact this week. I agree with Xanatu. Some change to encourage better relic choices would have been nice, but there was no reason to push Outlaw's damage down. It wasn't blowing away every other class, and had reasonable top-half of the meters DPS.

[Xanatu]

Blizzard very literally did what they said they wouldn't. They took the top dog, pushed it to the bottom, and took the bottom spec and pushed it to the top.

This is the whole thing right here, for me. They did exactly what they said they wouldn't. They fucked us on a solid month of progression of this spec; there's no longer any reason to play it other than investment if they don't re-tune. It's worse on ST, cleave, and AOE fights.

[PessimiStick]

Honestly, given that they've always been garbage at balancing, the best solution is to just make the reset NPC refund you an item with all of your AP in it. You pay the (hefty) reset cost, but then you can respec, or transfer to a different artifact. This solves almost all the problems pures have, and makes it similar to previous expansions, where rebalancing was annoying (different stat weights, possibly different weapons), but allows you to correct your course with a little effort, rather than the massive "fuck you" that the current implementation of ArP provides.

[kevincuomo]

They need to fix RTB as well.. Nothing should be so fucking random. It's too much RNG all the time and i would rather have it be a set #of buffs everytime than this crap. It's also hard to get a good fix on Outlaw DPS because it is so random with rolling the bones all the time.. i dont like it and have been putting points into Assassination because it seems Outlaw was worth the bad RTB mechanic but now they lost dps and its not worth it anymore.

[Xanatu]

Like the idea Ippon. I'd pay 80k to repsec but I can't stomach the idea of putting together 300k in another weapon again with so many moving pieces as far as tuning goes. The real RNG is guessing which spec to play at the right time. I disagree that RTB is "too random"; it's frustrating at times but it's the feel of the class. I usually only have 1 or 2 pulls a night where I'm faceslamming my desk about it.

[kevincuomo]

Honestly, given that they've always been garbage at balancing, the best solution is to just make the reset NPC refund you an item with all of your AP in it. You pay the (hefty) reset cost, but then you can respec, or transfer to a different artifact. This solves almost all the problems pures have, and makes it similar to previous expansions, where rebalancing was annoying (different stat weights, possibly different weapons), but allows you to correct your course with a little effort, rather than the massive "fuck you" that the current implementation of ArP provides.

I agree.. Making us spend all this time putting AK into a spec and then have them nerf it to the ground is actually making me insane... I put 14 points into Elemental Shaman so you can see why i am not having fun right now. Wish i could take it all out and put it into my Resto spec so i can be viable. It's honestly such a bad system.

[SSJones]

Honestly, given that they've always been garbage at balancing, the best solution is to just make the reset NPC refund you an item with all of your AP in it. You pay the (hefty) reset cost, but then you can respec, or transfer to a different artifact.

I would seriously pay like a $5 microtransaction for this at the moment, as much as I would still be angry about it. They need to make this a possibility, or they just need to accept game balance the way it is now and leave it be.

[lolpve]

Outlaw ST is where it should be. If I were blizzard I would buff the blade flurry coefficient just enough to put it ahead in AoE and call it a day.

[Deleted]

Most recent sims, and parses from Tuesday onwards in Heroic/Mythic disagree with you.
Sub is competitive with Assassination on single target, and ahead of Outlaw. Outlaw is now our worst single target spec.
Sub has also passed outlaw in AoE on sims at Heroic+ gear levels, meaning Outlaw is not the best AoE spec.

Blizzard very literally did what they said they wouldn't. They took the top dog, pushed it to the bottom, and took the bottom spec and pushed it to the top. I have 23 points in outlaw, and started bringing up my sub artifact this week. I agree with Xanatu. Some change to encourage better relic choices would have been nice, but there was no reason to push Outlaw's damage down. It wasn't blowing away every other class, and had reasonable top-half of the meters DPS.

You should write down such a good Critic in the us blizz rogue forum.

[Xanatu]

I've cross-posted this to blizz forums in both general and rogue if you want to bump it over there. This was really exactly what they said it wouldn't be.

[shaunika123]

Most recent sims, and parses from Tuesday onwards in Heroic/Mythic disagree with you.
Sub is competitive with Assassination on single target, and ahead of Outlaw. Outlaw is now our worst single target spec.
Sub has also passed outlaw in AoE on sims at Heroic+ gear levels, meaning Outlaw is not the best AoE spec.

Blizzard very literally did what they said they wouldn't. They took the top dog, pushed it to the bottom, and took the bottom spec and pushed it to the top. I have 23 points in outlaw, and started bringing up my sub artifact this week. I agree with Xanatu. Some change to encourage better relic choices would have been nice, but there was no reason to push Outlaw's damage down. It wasn't blowing away every other class, and had reasonable top-half of the meters DPS.

then again, outlaw isnt the weakest now cos it got nerfed, it just that the other 2 specs got buffed over it :P

the nerf itself was very minimal

[Celfydd]

What your warcraftlogs stats show (inasmuch as they show anything given such a small number of data points - 138 sub rogue parses, seriously, how can you draw any statistics from that?) is that Blizzard did a fine job of rebalancing - all specs are within 8% of each other. Outlaw is bottom only on one of the bosses, and is ahead of sub on all the fights that involve adds. Even on that Ursoc fight it's only behind sub by a tiny percentage, less than 1%. So your claim that it's now on the bottom by a solid margin is clearly false.

Some spec has to be bottom. Arguably it makes more sense for outlaw to be bottom on ST since it will be slightly ahead on AoE. Which is where we are now.

[Xanatu]

What your warcraftlogs stats show (inasmuch as they show anything given such a small number of data points - 138 sub rogue parses, seriously, how can you draw any statistics from that?) is that Blizzard did a fine job of rebalancing - all specs are within 8% of each other. Outlaw is bottom only on one of the bosses, and is ahead of sub on all the fights that involve adds. Even on that Ursoc fight it's only behind sub by a tiny percentage, less than 1%. So your claim that it's now on the bottom by a solid margin is clearly false.

Some spec has to be bottom. Arguably it makes more sense for outlaw to be bottom on ST since it will be slightly ahead on AoE. Which is where we are now.

It's fine if it was "on the bottom" as we all started the expac and geared up but it wasn't. Also, it is NOT the best AOE rogue spec. We were told that we could basically safely commit to a spec and not have it go from best to worst. I don't mind buffs for assass/sub but we lost about 8% of our DPS. That is NOT a small nerf. Every spec being within 10% of each other is not particularly close either, that can be 30k+ DPs, or 10 million damage over the course of a fight.

[PessimiStick]

Sub is the best scaling of the 3 specs, and is already winning some fights in those 90th percentile parses. That makes Outlaw pretty much dead in the water. Any continued investment is just hurting yourself later, since Sub actually has a better artifact tree than Outlaw as well.

[Rixxis]

What your warcraftlogs stats show (inasmuch as they show anything given such a small number of data points - 138 sub rogue parses, seriously, how can you draw any statistics from that?) is that Blizzard did a fine job of rebalancing - all specs are within 8% of each other. Outlaw is bottom only on one of the bosses, and is ahead of sub on all the fights that involve adds. Even on that Ursoc fight it's only behind sub by a tiny percentage, less than 1%. So your claim that it's now on the bottom by a solid margin is clearly false.

Some spec has to be bottom. Arguably it makes more sense for outlaw to be bottom on ST since it will be slightly ahead on AoE. Which is where we are now.

If you looked at the logs you'd see the only fight Outlaw's ahead in now is when we get to cheese an aoe burst, where essentially we're competing with who gets to cheese a few milliseconds quicker. Additionally Blizzard quite clearly stated they weren't going to neuter specs, which they did with Outlaw. It feels worse to play, it's not just a numbers thing...The reduced energy reduction on RT makes the spec feel way slower.

Why would I play Outlaw if the only situation I can be better than the other specs is if we have to kill super low health adds quickly? It's heavily RNG dependent, has an awful artifact tree, and does the worst DPS of all three specs except in 1 niche situation. They didn't do a fine job at all.

[Xanatu]

If you looked at the logs you'd see the only fight Outlaw's ahead in now is when we get to cheese an aoe burst, where essentially we're competing with who gets to cheese a few milliseconds quicker. Additionally Blizzard quite clearly stated they weren't going to neuter specs, which they did with Outlaw. It feels worse to play, it's not just a numbers thing...The reduced energy reduction on RT makes the spec feel way slower.

I think it's worth tweeting @Warcraftdevs about this (politely and concisely) to try to make it as public as possible. Anything along the lines of "Outlaw went first to last, were promised specs were safe from this, any retune thoughts?"

[Zabatakis]

I don't think they promised you would not go from first to last, just that they would focus on buffing the bottoms more than nerfing the tops (giggity). I could be wrong cus I don't have the quote on hand but that was what I took from it.