The Worst Self Sustain Class - Solutions

[Powerogue]

You're looking a bit rough! Take a wee rest...

I've struggled with rogue for the last few expansions, mainly focusing on Outlaw. Animacharged combo points are an unfun whack-a-mole among constant procs and random combo point generation that should be replaced by Dreadblades again, the grapple was changed at some point to fail any time there's any sort of incline, and it's always felt like more time is spent maintaining three separate buffs than actually dpsing. And if you try the stealth build, vanish resets the target's aggro!

But my worst experience has been delves. Because unlike all my other alts like an enhance shaman, ww monk, or ret paladin so far, we have no sustained self-heal. You roll a warrior, you kill something, get a free 30% health back, and you charge straight to the next one. With my rogue, it feels like I'm going to have to resort to going back to carrying around stacks of bandages!

So I've brainstormed some ideas, and would be curious of any more. In no particular order:

Crimson Vial brainstorming:

-Inspired by the new item from kobolds, pickpocketing would very commonly yield an item that, combined with a 3 second cast "replenish crimson vial" would reset the vial's cooldown.

-Killing a target would have a chance of instantly resetting Crimson Vial's cooldown and making the next cast cost 0 energy

-buff vial back from 25% to 40% and/or give it a maximum of 2 charges

Recuperate brainstorming:

-returning Recuperate as a finishing move

-returning Recuperate as a "bandage" ability, costing energy over the channel. Interruptible by stuns/interrupts/ccs but not attacks.

Other:

-Inspired from delves, returning Bribe with a reduced 5 minute cooldown that is not consumed on failed cast, and works as a Tricks of the Trade target.

-Replacing Bribe with Hire Mercenary. Same basic premise, but consistently usable without needing a nearby nonelite humanoid. A tanky lad mainly useful for TOTT soloing over being a DPS cooldown.

[Hotmail]

I'm still leveling a fresh Rogue, is delving as a Rogue that bad? I mean it was pretty rough for Torghast, but I was hoping the devs gave us some ways to sustain a bit better in TWW.

[Symphonic]

I'm still leveling a fresh Rogue, is delving as a Rogue that bad? I mean it was pretty rough for Torghast, but I was hoping the devs gave us some ways to sustain a bit better in TWW.

doing T8 solo as a rogue, i lost 4 lives on one of the final bosses. Just major damage happening even with using evasion and stuff. Finally got it on the last life. But yeah, self-healing or improvement to leech for rogues would be great.

[LordVargK]

doing T8 solo as a rogue, i lost 4 lives on one of the final bosses. Just major damage happening even with using evasion and stuff. Finally got it on the last life. But yeah, self-healing or improvement to leech for rogues would be great.

Did you have brann heal you? Because he's pretty efficient at that. Then again, he doesn't do enough dmg to hold threat.

[Powerogue]

I found one culprit: The recuperate talent doesn't actually work. It doesn't heal past its original duration when you refresh it with things like finishing moves. Bug reported and we'll see how that goes. I still think even factoring that in rogues need a self healing boost.

[fazaim]

I'd rather self sustain be reduced across the board for all classes and solo content tuned to that.

[agentsi]

sorry, you're a rogue. That's the tradeoff for the insane amount of CC/Control/DPS you have. You get no way to heal yourself. Working as intended imo.

[Mysterymask]

I mean as a Rogue we've always been the selfish class. It's practically been since Vanilla that other classes basically existed to buff and help us over the other way around. Yeah for Delves I'll whole heartedly admit the self sustain thing is a definite hurt but between healer Brann, our multiple ways of CC, Feint, our rather LARGE amount of damage we are pretty ok. Hell don't forget we literally have the ability to skip a lot of encounters just because we're a damned Rogue.

Yeah we're hard mode in the solo department but that's a price I'm more than ok paying.

[Raidoser]

I'm still leveling a fresh Rogue, is delving as a Rogue that bad? I mean it was pretty rough for Torghast, but I was hoping the devs gave us some ways to sustain a bit better in TWW.

If it's like during thorghast it must be exaggerated, i remember during shadowland hearing Mythic+ Rogue complaining how torghast couldn't be soloed as rogue because the class lacked sustain/tankiness and that thorghast talents were bad (they weren't) so out of curiosity i leveled a rogue and with minimal gear i cleaned thorghast with no problem (Assa and subtlety dependant of my mood) and noticed that the truth was most rogue are so used to have a pocket healer (or they never pvp) so they don't know how to survive alone or they are too greedy and only talent into dps talent or they think they're playing a warrior...

Rogue has a lot of good defensive/poison to go with crimson vial, Health potion/healthstone or bandage (Shadowcloak, evasion, blind allow the use of bandage without the risk of interruption if correctly used)

[SinR]

I leveled a rogue I had abandoned after Legion to 70. Just feels... meh.

[dak1]

I just run with Bran as a healer and use Tricks of the Trade on him. I almost never die on a Tier 8 delve. He does sometimes pull mobs I don't want yet or run them into really awkward places, though.

My biggest annoyances though are everything in a delve evading on my opening Cheap Shot, enemy health bars disappearing (those illusion mobs almost always do this), and not being able to hit things underwater without jumping when they position themselves slightly too high in the water.

I did switch to damage Bran for Zek'vir on Tier ? (Tier ?? still feels impossible to me).

[Hitei]

I mean as a Rogue we've always been the selfish class. It's practically been since Vanilla that other classes basically existed to buff and help us over the other way around. Yeah for Delves I'll whole heartedly admit the self sustain thing is a definite hurt but between healer Brann, our multiple ways of CC, Feint, our rather LARGE amount of damage we are pretty ok. Hell don't forget we literally have the ability to skip a lot of encounters just because we're a damned Rogue.

Yeah we're hard mode in the solo department but that's a price I'm more than ok paying.

I don't agree with this mindset. It's not Vanilla. You know who else can skip pretty much everything a rogue can? Guardian druids, while soloing nearly anything in existence. I skip huge chunks of delves on my BM hunter with camo, the same BM hunter that has been casually soloing T8s with faceroll ease since it first hit 80 in low level greens.

There was a time where what a rogue brought was a reasonable tradeoff for what it lakced. From ~MoP onwards, when rogue's major kit tools started being handed out to everyone else, there has really not been a justification for its post-recup awkward amounts of self-sustain and struggle in solo content. What is a rogue bringing to a delve that a hunter isn't? It has stealth, it has CC that can be used from ranged in delves that have movement aspects rather than wasting candles (and that can be used in combat and with 1/4 the CD of blind), it can effortlessly tank things with pets, it can drop combat more often that rogue, self-cleanse poison, kite while doing full damage, completely ignore the most deadly mechanics (Read: frontal cones) by just standing far away from a mob, purge without having to use a utility/DPS cooldown on it.

I'd give you AOE blind, feint and baby leech, only those things don't even fractionally make up for a hunter or druids ability to just let casts go off or stand away from dangerous things to begin with. The CC a rogue brings to awakening the machine (not that this is difficult or anything, but it is a good example of solo class testing sandbox) is a joke to the convenience of something like a hunter. What value are you getting out of having gouge, kidney, kick and blind, when by the time you've run across the entire room to get into melee to use 3 of those 4, the hunter has just stood in the middle and thrown out a counter-shot, freezing trap, explosive trap and intimidation, all with 90% uptime on DPS and their infinitely healed pet tanking mobs? The burst ability is nice, but in most situations it's either overkill (i.e. wasted value) or it's not enough to put a big elite/boss down, in which case you're now very weak against something other classes can just steadily continue to kill.


Ranting at this point, but there's a reason rogue numbers have been absolutely struggling for ~10 years, despite them frequently being very strong throughput. They have no idea how to properly translate the original identity spaces of the class into modern infrastructure. How do you make rogues the ambushy stealth class when them opening out of stealth is less damage than many spec's upfront AoE burst capability, we no longer exist in a game design space where an ability like Ambush is allowed to delete mobs for one button press, and there are three other classes with reliable stealth? How do you make them the thief class in an economic state so inflated that mining one node is 150-4000g and you're terrified of hard locking M+ comps by doing things like locked doors in dungeons? How do you keep them the mobile class when nearly every spec in the game has a sprint and several classes have already adopted high mobility as their niche? Or make them the CC class in a meta that has long prized damage-proof AoE control, not singular mob lockdown?

There are deep-rooted design space issues that the class has been dragging along for a very long time. Being gatekept out of significant self-sustain is one of those issues, a price that isn't really paying for anything worth the debt incurred imo.

[Mysterymask]

-snip-

Funny enough rogues are actually kinda busted in delves....found this one trick and it's ridiculously easy to solo

Step 1:Go outlaw or Subelty and pick Trickster
Step 2: make sure your specced into hour long tricks of the trade
Step 3: Brann needs to be a healer
Step 4: Tricks Brann
Step 5: congratulations the delve is now a non issue


Doesn't work to well on Xekvir though still one shots Brann

[Aurrora]

sorry, you're a rogue. That's the tradeoff for the insane amount of CC/Control/DPS you have. You get no way to heal yourself. Working as intended imo.

Let's just ignore all the classes that can also CC and heal themselves, and the recent nerfs to CDs on Rogue's control.

[Kyux]

Ranting at this point, but there's a reason rogue numbers have been absolutely struggling for ~10 years, despite them frequently being very strong throughput. They have no idea how to properly translate the original identity spaces of the class into modern infrastructure. How do you make rogues the ambushy stealth class when them opening out of stealth is less damage than many spec's upfront AoE burst capability, we no longer exist in a game design space where an ability like Ambush is allowed to delete mobs for one button press, and there are three other classes with reliable stealth? How do you make them the thief class in an economic state so inflated that mining one node is 150-4000g and you're terrified of hard locking M+ comps by doing things like locked doors in dungeons? How do you keep them the mobile class when nearly every spec in the game has a sprint and several classes have already adopted high mobility as their niche? Or make them the CC class in a meta that has long prized damage-proof AoE control, not singular mob lockdown?

There are deep-rooted design space issues that the class has been dragging along for a very long time. Being gatekept out of significant self-sustain is one of those issues, a price that isn't really paying for anything worth the debt incurred imo.

This ^^ the game has designed for balance and fairness to the point it has cost individuality. Maybe that's OK for the overall health of the game.

But I also believe there must be a way where classes can go back to their niches and we remove some of the homogeneity. I, personally, am OK if a certain class is less popular in certain content. I know the min-maxers won't but they don't seem to like having fun anyway.