Outlaw - Balanced on a pin

[Powerogue]

With Legion, I thoroughly enjoyed the rogue class changes and the new "outlaw" spec instead of combat. Yet when BFA came out, things were shuffled around in such a way that, even though the M+ AoE dps was still solid, the gameplay of it was atrocious.

1) I lost Curse of the Dreadblades, so there goes one of my best burst DPS cooldowns as a rogue.
2) Combo point generation with SS more frequently instead, combined with losing my legiondary ring effect, left me cripplingly energy starved, forcing me to take the Vigor talent.
3) But what's this, the Vigor talent means I also lose Marked for Death, ANOTHER critical DPS cooldown.
4) shuffling talents around meant Killing Spree is viable to pick back up but has been so nerfed since I last used it I might as well be slapping single targets with a wet fish. It's totally worthless outside of AoE burst with blade flurry, same goes for Blade Rush. As if I needed more mobility as an outlaw. Point being, where's my single target burst? Where's ANY cooldowns that have any punch to them?! How am I supposed to kill anyone in War Mode!? It was so horrible I quit my rogue entirely and went WW monk for most of the expansion.

Then comes 8.2.

1) I pick up the second adrenaline rush essence with random energy saving proc. Holy crap, my energy is saved! And I have another significant cooldown!
2) Meaning I can chuck Vigor and get back my Marked for Death, giving me back another significant cooldown!

And suddenly I was having fun again. The whole mess just made me realize though that, with essences going away next expansion, are they just going to leave Outlaw to break again? I don't want to pray for a miracle every expansion that fixes the holes they've torn in my main character.

[Foolicious]

And suddenly I was having fun again. The whole mess just made me realize though that, with essences going away next expansion, are they just going to leave Outlaw to break again? I don't want to pray for a miracle every expansion that fixes the holes they've torn in my main character.

We will see at blizzcon which way blizzard will go with classes. Its atrocious that classes have to be carried by secondary expansion features.
If they announce something similar to the features they introduced with legion and bfa, then you have to pray.
If they announce a major class overhaul then chances are a bit better.

Another thing to keep in mind is that class design was basically abandoned during bfa's beta. Essences and azerite are here to cover up the major misssteps and replace balancing and reworking talents.
Its hard to tell what we can expect. They have been telling us for years they want to improve their work on classes and keep pushing them in the dumpster.

[Powerogue]

We're coming up to 1,337 views with only a single post. What do other people think? Looking at things like Icyveins seems to imply I'm not even using the best essence. Am I valuing the gameplay too much over the sustained AoE DPS which was apparently fine, if even downright OP for M+ for the majority of the expansion? How much should Blizzard value one or the other?

Say something, dangit!

[Big Thanks]

I quit rogue entirely because of everything you said.
I feel/felt the exact same things as you.

[Varolyn]

Outlaw does lack ST burst but it does so due to how ridiculous it's AoE is. And outlaw is just trash in any sort of pvp, you're better off just going either assassin or sub. So in a way, outlaw is sort of a niche spec, but it covers that niche so well with so little sacrifice in terms of gearing/ST damage that the spec is just ridiculous in M+, but mediocre in progression raiding. And I really don't know what blizz is gonna do to change outlaw that much. In fact, many of the outlaw rogues in the Ravenholdt discord appear to be pretty satisfied with both it's damage and gameplay for the most part.

[Critical92]

Outlaws base damage is relative high. You have no st burst but more sustained dps. Add the gamble to it and outlaw can sometimes be a heavy hitter. You also don't have the downside of burst specs: barely doing something between burst.
Once aoe is involved outlaw can show its real side. Doing aoe without sacrificing any st dmg. Also outlaw is easy to gear.

[Monoxide]

I think this has a lot to do with classes losing a lot of their identity. I think a huge problem with Rogue balance is the fact that it has good AoE.

I remember a short while back, the thread about Outlaw's AoE being nerfed, and people in threads here on MMO-C complaining that a "core" part of their class was being nerfed.

Rogues were never meant to have good AoE. They were a strong single target class, but since every class needs to be able to do everything, it's impossible to balance. You can't have every class be strong at every aspect, and keep it all balanced, and keep it all interesting.

I wish Blizzard would go in a more Classic design, where classes had niches. I originally made my Rogue in TBC and I remember it as a time when things like Rogue AoE didn't exist, Holy Paladin AoE didn't exist, every healing class didn't have HoTs, that was just Druids. Every DPS class didn't have strong single target and strong AoE. etc etc


It just seems like we've gotten to a point where none of the classes can actually shine in any kind of way, no classes can have their niche. Every class needs to have everything, and it's made it so that everything is pretty boring.

[Polarthief]

I despise Slice and Dice, but at least it's consistent.

Just want to point out that literally not picking a talent and never rerolling the dice sims better than taking SnD.

OT: TBH this is nearly every spec. BfA has had more players reroll over the loss of nearly everything class design-wise. Won't be surprised if 9.0 goes heavy into class/spec design.

[Micronetic]

Just want to point out that literally not picking a talent and never rerolling the dice sims better than taking SnD.

This reminds me of the first talent row as Affliction lol

[Tic Tacs]

I'm not a rogue main but I do have a rogue alt, from my experience so far the rogue class feels like single spec aoe class, other two trees are complete garbage from my experience. In comparison to my main which is DH, I have only 2 specs but both are viable, one for tanking even though DH tank are somewhat bottom tier right now and another is damage spec. Generally, I wish I had some kind of options on my rogue besides Outlaw to spice things up but I'm not complaining, rogues are pretty fun class to play even with a single spec.

I would recommend you guys try DH, the class is on average superior to rogue class, you can tank so easier to find +10s and if you want to go all out DH is great in M+ and competitive in raiding. Also, DH is amazing in rated BGs, so yeah... may as well try something new this expansion all considered.

[Varolyn]

I'm not a rogue main but I do have a rogue alt, from my experience so far the rogue class feels like single spec aoe class, other two trees are complete garbage from my experience. In comparison to my main which is DH, I have only 2 specs but both are viable, one for tanking even though DH tank are somewhat bottom tier right now and another is damage spec. Generally, I wish I had some kind of options on my rogue besides Outlaw to spice things up but I'm not complaining, rogues are pretty fun class to play even with a single spec.

I would recommend you guys try DH, the class is on average superior to rogue class, you can tank so easier to find +10s and if you want to go all out DH is great in M+ and competitive in raiding. Also, DH is amazing in rated BGs, so yeah... may as well try something new this expansion all considered.

Assassination is one of the best Single target specs in the game and is really strong for progression raiding. And you can do M+ as assassination but you need a different gear setup and outlaw is usually better for M+ anyway. So really only sub is bad for rogues. And minus the magic debuff, rogues are better than DH's in almost every way in M+.

[gioderpington]

I wouldn't be so worried about outlaw next expac, atm it feels natural to have outlaws extreme cleave and assassin's insane ST. I agree we are balanced on a pin right now and
I fear our ST capabilities will vanish come next tier (something I noticed fading since heroic BoD ilvl rolled around), but we may just have to accept double speccing until next expac and hope we arent a forgotten spec like guardian, survival, subtly, and arcane this expac. Hopefully they just give us a ST option for our final talent next expac, that'd help a lot.
But for next tier, with the added minor and corrupted slot, we may see some benefits to outlaw ST that overall balances the spec.

[Tic Tacs]

Assassination is one of the best Single target specs in the game and is really strong for progression raiding. And you can do M+ as assassination but you need a different gear setup and outlaw is usually better for M+ anyway. So really only sub is bad for rogues. And minus the magic debuff, rogues are better than DH's in almost every way in M+.

I didn't play assassination much since I do mostly M+ but whenever I had assassination rogues in my M+ group they did far worse not just in terms of aoe but single target as well, the only classes I really compete with are boomies and mages. Granted, I played with maybe 3-4 assassination rogues since most go outlaw, you are most likely correct if we are talking pure single target damage.

[Aldo Hawk]

Outlaw rogue has inflated numbers, and I believe this is due to the spec itself being poorly made when it comes to mechanics.

Literally, you rely on RNG, and not only on the dices, but to simply deal damage.

You can start a fight and last from 6 to 8 seconds building combo points after every spender, even more.

Then you can have instances where you don't get double hits with sinister strike after using it 9 times or even 13, tried by myself during hours on dummies, and the talent that increases the chance by 10% not only doesn't fix this (however it feels smoother) but it's worse in every way possible to the other talent (and basically the only one, since ghostly strike is garbage).

Between the eyes is not only our CC, but also our biggest damage income, and we have to force diminishing returns to do so, this is garbage in PvP and in some cases in PvE. And if we take into account that it's damage is garbage unless it does a crit... Yeah, it may even out in a mildly long fight, but it's kinda bonkers to rely on having to fight for long periods of time for the RNG to get even out...

Roll the bones is not the only RNG problem the spec has.

And the mastery... It only exists for it to proc other things, seriously...

[valky94]

the only issue i have rn with outlaw is that you can get fucked by RNG during CDs because of bad rolls, but thats easily fixable by making Loaded Dice baseline like it was in legion, that way you would always get 2 rolls on pull after AR

[Pandragon]

It looks like they gravitated Outlaw to a sustained damage spec rather than a X min burst spec,like other class, which I enjoy cause thats how Windwalker used to be. My biggest issue with Outlaw is how clunky the abilities are. It's a 1 sec GCD class that feels like a 1.5 sec GCD for some reason.

I wish they would make some QoL changes. Like making Acrobatic Strikes baseline, change the Retractable Hook to be Dual-Hooks, giving Grappling Hook 2 charges.

[Feali]

Remove Roll the Bones. It’s impossible to balance a class around 1 buff vs 2 buffs vs 5 buffs.

Just another slot machine

[spalernTJ]

Feral druid says "Hi."

[Ange]

I get it when a spec gets dramatically changed and veteran players are not happy.

But COMBAT was allways the default spec with zero depth if you wanted it really easy and meaningless. OUTLAW still got no depth just the RNG stuff every other spec in the game got too.

Yes you can work around bad RNG with specs that got choices (ramp-up, situational cooldowns, pooling) but you would not play OUTLAW if you wanted anything else but a spam spec?

Really hard to understand the OUTLAW criticism, when its about the basic RNG every other spec in game got too to deal with.