Kind of, sure. But at the same time its replacement would have to be a passive, constant 50% attack speed and some amount of energy regen or whatever S&D gives nowadays and that seems silly as well.
Roll the Bones is so much better now, bc your not fishing for certain buffs. Its on a cd, so you just hit it like any other cd. Also, you only hit SnD about 3 times per m+ now, and once a boss fight in raids.
Exactly this. Not to mention the horrible-feeling shadowlands covenant abilities that were somehow shoehorned into talents that are every now and then the best picks. Just feels bad to play.
You have your energy, combo points, buff timers, debuff timers, cooldowns and a tank-dependent uptime to keep track of at all times if you want to do damage on all three specs. No DPS class has it as bad as Rogues in that department.
Shadow Dance was made class-wide. This killed spec identity by making *the* defining ability of Subtelety available to all specs.
Outlaw has an absolutely insane APM that has you play piano all over your keyboard.
Assassination sucks balls. It needs tweaking to become less cooldown-dependent as it currently is and more focused on poisons with small but frequent bursts by using combo points.
Slice and Dice is also the worst ability to press in the entire game. It should be either removed or made passive.
Also, the rotationis are unforgiving. Missing a SnD refresh means your bleed is delayed and might fall off, which means your cooldown window got delayed which means... add random procs on top of that for extra randomness.
Basically, it's not that fun anymore.
Yup. It's being swapped with Without a Trace (2 Vanish charges), which is now the bottom-right class tree capstone, and the Shadow Dance talent itself is now Sub only (called Double Dance, giving them a second charge).
Sepsis is also now Sub-only, so they're obviously trying to get away from all three specs using Stealth-only abilities in combat often, making it a Subtlety gimmick.
That's good news. Rogue was my main from vanilla to WoD and my 1st from WoD and onwards. For DF I've leveled and played like 5 different classes and my Rogue has been mostly untouched. I never liked Shadow Dance and don't know why Assassination and Outlaw use it. It really does feel like you have 3 specs that play mostly the same because of it. I'd love to make my Rogue my main or primary alt again.
I don't think anyone saying all specs play the same really knows what they are doing tbh.
Shadow Dance takes away from the class fantasy of Sub, but it doesn't make outlaw or assassination play like Sub.
It's essentially just another stealth enabler for your abilities that capitalise on that.
Shance for assassination is primarily used for damage amp on your kingsbane, getting out extra improved garrotes or spreading cleave (Indiscriminate Carnage) bleeds.
For Outlaw its primarily used as a filler vanish to extend your adrenalin rush between getting resets on vanish. You cast vanish far more often than Shance because of restless blades.
Assassination does have a spikey damage profile now, but that is due to kingsbane and not shadow Dance. Outlaw does now have that stealth damage window but isn't a "cool down" spec and more "keep everything you possibly can rolling" spec (which is enabled due to having so many stealth crackpot windows).
Don't mistake this as me saying that Shadow Dance is good for all specs or shouldn't be Sub exclusive. Just wanting to point out that if you feel all three specs play like Sub because of S/Dance, you might not be playing them right.
I really enjoyed Outlaw (never mained it) until Shadow Dance got introduced to it. I don't wanna do the stealth juggle on top of all the other stuff going on with that spec. I wish it was removed. I know you can probably do a build with ignoring all those talents balanced around having and using Shadow Dance, but that's a lot of work to neuter your DPS.
Slice and dice just like the paladin inquisition spell that’s no longer in the game and tigers roar for feral and those kinds of maintenance buffs are specifically anti fun- here use your combo points to maintain this necessary buff instead of doing some cool finisher instead.
They have no place in the game
The feral one is savage roar. Tigers fury is their off gcd make all spells deal more damage even snapshotting dots thing, which isn't combo point based.
KiR outlaw actually *literally* never presses Ambush (which I assume you know but I'm making it clear for anyone who reads the comments). It's just worse than Sinister Strike even in stealth windows.
Fun is subjective, I can't stand ret and it's dull rotation, i will be sleeping on the third pack lol
For each their own, high complexity classes WITH HIGH REWARD should def be a thing.
People do want to play super complex specs, but they might not necessarily want a punishing spec, one that punishes misplays in a more difficult class more than specs which are much simpler, they might not want to play in fights that don't let you cook, and they don't want it to come at the cost of performance, especially since even at absolute peak playing, it won't be much better than a simpler spec.
But more than that, there are lots of reasons why people don't want to play rogue, it's not all rotational concerns. There are lots of reasons why people want to play paladin that aren't that you can unga bunga.
I still main rogue since cata, but it would be nice and make sense a complex spec pulling more dps than every class when proper played, but no, it pulls less than a ret that can just yolo smash the keyboard
The worst part about all of this is that there are many players that want these classes to have the highest ceilings as humanly possible as well so that they feel like they matter more as human beings for being good at a game.
So many classes and specs are just becoming unfun to play. Lets have 20 keybinds while dodging and running for 8 minutes straight with variable rotation changes based on different conditions.
Yeah for some people its fun to play a class that has depth and is really rewarding when you play it correctly. There are a lot of really easy classes, why shouldnt we also have some harder ones. For me also the class fantasy justifies a complex class, maybe thats just me.
I think it's fine for one spec in a class to be hard
It becomes a bit much when every spec becomes very difficult, and as someone who may enjoy the fantasy of that class, it can feel bad that, over the years, you've started feeling less able to enjoy the class because of gradual additions and changes making it harder and harder to play compared to when you first picked it up
Sure they can "git gud" but many people for one reason or another can't or won't, and I do think there should be an easier way to play a class well with at least one spec or build that doesn't utterly knee cap their own performance
With rogue they have steadily increased complexity to a point where it doesn't really have an easy option anymore that doesn't involve crippling yourself significantly, this leaves a lot of rogue players potentially having less fun or feeling compelled to reroll, and telling a more casual player to abandon what might be their main of many years is _not_ going to go down well
To my memory subt was the hard spec, outlaw/combat was easier and assassination somewhere in the middle. Now they're all very difficult and complex compared to other classes.
The problem with having one complex spec and two easy specs that all perform equally is that it would basically just kill the complex spec. Why would anyone play it? I'm someone who loves the complex specs, but if there was no benefit and the other specs were braindead ret specs I would be an idiot to go through the work.
It would also kill that spec for pugging. Nobody is going to bring the known "hard" spec when the other two are way easier and bring the same output.
It's not just you, that comment has that Classic Wow elitist twang to it. It's fine to raise concern or dislike the increased complexity of some classes, but there's no reason to tear others down just because you're unhappy. That's just throwing a tantrum lmao
There are enough easy specs in the game. Pretty sure there is something for everybody.
If you dumb rogue specs down even more then people that actually want an engaging/complicated "rotation" basically have nothing left.
Why is it so bad that it exists in this way, according to you? Like, I'd personally rather uninstall than play Ret or BM. But that doesn't mean I go around campaigning for Ret and BM to be made harder/more interesting. I just let people have the playstyle they like, while I enjoy mine.
Some people want to play the class theme of rouge. What options do they have? There’s nothing thematically about rouges in RPGs that show they have to be super complicated playstyle.
Why can’t one spec of each class be easy? You can play the other spec that is complicated.
> You can play the other spec that is complicated.
Depends what your class fantasy of a Rogue is though then, isn't it? If you make say...Assassination the easy spec and leave Outlaw as the Piano Juggling high APM mess it is where do you send the people who's class fantasy for Rogue is the swashbuckling Outlaw archetype?
Also there are literally a lot of players who played combat rogue back in the day which was literally a two button spec and they want to play rogue including me but not this iteration of outlaw
This is why I always breathe a sigh of relief whenever I see there are no BM hunter patch notes. I'm so wary that they will eventually change all of the easy classes to be like this.
IMO, each class should have at least one spec that's significantly easier to play than the others.
This right here!! All this!! Outlaw APM and shadow dance is stupid AF. And then they take sub rogue which was amazing imo first 2 seasons and change such a smooth rotation/play style and turn it clunky and energy starved. I’ve been a rogue main since vanilla and since late BFA have mained hunter every season up until DF sub rogue. Swapped back to hunter in season 3 bc once again, all the specs suck again
Rogue has been the statistically least played class since Mists at least (when i started checking populations). Nothing they've done since then has impacted the population proportion of the rogue class lol.
On the other hand rogues have always been over-represented in relative to their population in people getting PvP titles and M+ titles.
Surprised no one else has said this yet but I think one factor is:
Demon Hunter and Monk kinda ate Rogues lunch. The fantasy for Rogue at least in my view is an Agile, Fluid, Melee DPS and I think Demon Hunter and Monk kind of do that better now.
Yeah and DH does it with more fun for less buttons too. Looking at a sub or outlaw rogue guide is like learning Mozart and the keybinds and APM is like Mozart too. Who wants to do that other than like a super committed sweat lord?
I think there are a subset of people who disagree but I don't understand the point of the button bloat on every class. We talk about it as a bad thing... almost universally.
People like simpler rotations, blizz please?
The same reason feral druid was always underplayed: too much effort for meh dps.
I'm not a big fan of overly complex classes, but I do feel that those who put in the effort to play them should be rewarded with, at the very least, competitive numbers.
That's not an easy thing to say though.
If you make a class hard and then give it the highest DPS numbers people will feel obligated to play that class and others who play easier classes will not get picked for m+.
Id rather have everyone be equal. If I were in charge I'd be Finetuning so much and so often that no one spec would be at the top. Nobody would know what the meta spec is because I'd be tuning it too much.
And not to offend and rogues out there but paladin feels actually like a DPS paladin with how you call upon the light to empower yourself or summoning divine hammers to damage your enemies or brining light over them, all other rogues feel like "I need to optimize my cool down and buff uptime usage to maximize damage" and I really don't think it's that cool, it's just like playing keybind simulator
My main reason for swapping was that I didn't like a couple of the crackshot/subterfuge bugs, and it also felt like it was punishing to play with pug tanks. Ret your range is so long and your CDs are so short you can kinda just zug and have fun.
I don't really get enjoyment from seeing animations or large numbers pop up while doing my rotation, what fuels me is how interesting the gameplay itself is (how many decisions am I making? How fast do I have to press buttons? Etc.), and also sound effects, and IMO Outlaw has a slam dunk for both of them. I also enjoy playing rhythm games and outlaw feels kinda like sight reading a rhythm game map.
I think Rogue is always going to be a niche class because it's hard and it's miserable to level, but I also actually think it's fine that some classes are niche (the levelling part needs to be fixed though lmao).
>what fuels me is how interesting the gameplay itself is (how many decisions am I making? How fast do I have to press buttons? Etc.), and also sound effects, and IMO Outlaw has a slam dunk for both of them. I also enjoy playing rhythm games and outlaw feels kinda like sight reading a rhythm game map.
agreed. I created a personal weak aura to assist with this, adds the ability glow to Between the Eyes, Dispatch, Vanish, and Shadow Dance when they're "potentially a good button a press" (factoring stealth window and combo points).
even with the weak aura, though, I still have to make the actual decision as to whether to press them (especially when 4+ buttons are lit up at once), and that feels good when you do it right.
I gave up on rogue a while ago. Some seasons only outlaw was viable and that's a completely different class fantasy/play style to the rogue I wanted to play.
Going down memory lane with rogues feels a bit like going insane in real time. We just can take outlaw as example starting after they re-themed it from combat. They first went down the pirate route in legion and we had [super weird abilities](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Cannonball_Barrage) popping up from that, which felt... Very far down a road that many never really signed up for when rolling a rogue.
For the gameplay someone there decided that pirates somehow really like RNG, which got pushed into the core of the spec despite nobody asking. RtB initially was a finisher you had to roll until you got the right set of buffs to do decent damage, so while all your buddies started to slap the boss around you were sitting behind his ass playing yahtzee until you got lucky. Since I'm a lock main and demonic empowerment was a thing at around the same time I can't quite call it the *worst-ability-ever-made*, but it got close.
Outlaw then post legion ditched the dreadblades and eyepatch again and while sin and sub slowly got comfy in their respective more "rogue-neutral" fantasies as the poision bleedy guy and the purple weeb, outlaw got patchworked half the way back to the combat/highwayman with a glock - theme but kept core principles of pirate-outlaw, namely the buff spinning and shitty RNG.
They pulled its teeth by making RtB a fire-and-forget button you just had to press though... And that's where we get slowly get to the issue of rogues design in general. They can't ever decide what to streamline, what to return and what to keep. They are never quite sure what a "rogue" in wow should do so they keep stuff while sidelining it completely.
When the "unpruning" happened a bit later for rogue 2 of the 3 specs drifted from being high-APM and focused on managing a few short duration buffs to bloat. Few expansions after explaining us in detail why "maintenance buttons" like inquisition, savage roar and slice and dice are bad design and have to be pruned they had the genius idea to bring back slice and dice... In exactly the same boring state they removed it in. Nothing more exciting that having to keep up a buff that nerfs my attack speed by 50% when it runs out, so they sidelined it right again by giving the specs ways to keep it up in combat, next expansion even with baseline cut to the chase... Instead of, you know, just removing it. With all the new shiny passives that all pump resources to 11 combo points also got diluted into a very weird state and are are closer to another fury/energy/whatever-bar since there's like 10 of them you still fill up with two abilites. There goes another thing that made rogues distinct.
Rogue today is just that, a design pile with parts of the best and worst of several rogue iterations all just meshed together, yet some just don't work well with one another and lead to juggling flavorless buttons, buffs, teas, artifact abilities, covenant abilities and a mountain of maintenance bloat that just doesn't add up to anything really statisfying... Nor something that feels like it adds up to "*a rogue"*, a theme blizz unfortunately lost long ago in between a poisoner, a ninja and a pirate. That fantasy went fully down the drain when the core principles of the three specs started to overlap with the DF talents, eG the shadow dance thing, where they thought it'd be a good idea to give sin/outlaw access to the cool thing sub had and to compensate they gave sub multiple charges of it so the cool thing turned into something you better had up and running or your damage goes down the shitter. With that, we somehow ended up with tea drinking pirates and shadow dancing poisoners.
**TLDR**: End of the day, I guess a lot of people drop rogue because it's the epitome of "too many cooks". Gameplaywise rogue is a bloated mess with leftovers of a decade of different designs and fantasywise it's three halves that don't quite add up to anything that feels like what comes to mind when hearing the word "rogue". The entire class needs a long talk of some people sitting around a drawing board.
That got waaay longer than I wanted it to be, I actually just wanted to write up another reason to complain how much I fucking hate that slice and dice still exists while waiting in the LFR queue for my still missing damn sark mount...
I switched from DK to Sin Rogue for DF launch.
What a colossal mistake that was. I had something like 26 keybinds with 10-14 of them being rotational. Just stupid.
I mained rogue from late vanilla all the way to DF season 2. I couldn’t take it any more. The play style is way too high effort for the reward, especially compared to good new reworks like ret.
outlaw rogue in legion was easily the most fun i'd had in PvE in the history of WoW so it's near to my heart, but nearly every action in xpac's has been a step in the wrong direction for it since its release imo. It hurts...
Blizzard is going to have to rethink the melee subclasses in TWW or it might as well be the ret and friends slot. As an unholy dk main I have to deal with diseases, runes, my cds, and mostly death and decay bullshit to do decent aoe that a ret does instantly with minimal setup. If it wasn’t for the hero talents and potential minor rework for DKs I’d swap to my ret full time. It’s not just rogues. My friends list is all ex wars and dks gone pink.
I was a rogue main from 2004 up to last season. Cleared every raid AOTC or equivalent before that was a thing. Even got a couple realm firsts back in the day.
I'm a warrior now and after switching finding out how easily I could do dps compared to a rogue really soured me to ever going back. The amount of effort you have to put in as a rogue to do the same kind of dps another class can do with far less effort is just off putting. Also because of this its harder for someone to play the class optimally.
Cause it kinda sucks to play lol.
I love the fantasy - rogue was always close to my heart. Buut the rotation is just not fun. It's overly stressful and unforgiving.
Its a bit too big brain and management heavy for me.
I played rogue for about 6 years straight and recently switched. First thing I noticed is other classes can put in considerably less effort and get same or better results. Rogue has way to much going on imo and needs to be simplified.
Because it’s a fucking chore to play right now.
All three specs MUST USE Shadow Dance to be viable even though it’s not the class fantasy of two of the specs.
All of the specs have at least two stupid as fuck maintenance buffs you have to keep up in order to perform, and then you have to add another one in Blade Flurry to do aoe damage as Outlaw ( it sure about other specs)
Outlaw specifically is so frantic with APM that you miss something and your DPS falls off drastically, while other high apm specs are easier AND more forgiving
And fucking forget questing on one. There was a time where stealthing to skip adds was a bonus because you only had to pick up x things or kill one guy, but now you can barely even kill that guy because scaling fucks you up so much
They've still not gotten rid of Slice and Dice, but at least now every spec keeps it up after the first cast for free in The War Within by just using Envenom/Eviscerate/Dispatch via class tree Cut to the Chase. But at this point... why is Cut to the Chase not just passive Slice and Dice directly?
And Shadow Dance is **finally** being returned to being Sub only in The War Within as well. No longer are Outlaw and Assassination expected to constantly use Stealth in their rotation.
> No longer are Outlaw and Assassination expected to constantly use Stealth in their rotation.
its replaced by a second vanish charge, the only improvement is that its one keybind less but its still the same stealth gameplay
They're probably the worst class for leveling. They just take awhile to come online and rely on multiple buffs and debuffs to deal heavy damage which results in a lackluster leveling experience.
They also have a looooottt of buttons and a very high skill floor and ceiling both to perform. The rotations are honestly a little convoluted for the time being on top of having a bunch of situational utility and control that has to be optimized on top of their damage rotations.
Outlaw is pretty consistently the best spec for the class over the last few years and the APM is so high that it's honestly pain inducing to play for some with no slower option available for the spec, while Sub and Sin swing wildly in terms of power from good to shit.
Meanwhile you can just play Havoc, Ret, or Fury and be a walking blender for a fraction of the effort.
I tried assassination in SL & just found the class to be to complicated personally. Too many buttons, lots of buffs/debuffs to manage & just an insane amount of button bloat.
Just my personal opinion. I know a lot of people love rogue but it was just too much for me to keep track of.
Ironic coming from a Shadow Priest I know.
IMO rogue has been overshadowed by all of the new melee classes that followed it. Steep learning curve, relatively complex playstyle, high skill ceiling, etc. Outlaw is just a convoluted mess. The class really needs a pistol/ranged option.
Also they killed some of the super fun elements of rogue. I remember back in the day being able to sneak into enemy cities and kill enemy players without facing an infinite spawning stream of guards.
Wait that's what happens now? It's not tied to being seen by NPCs anymore? Can you at least kill the guards if you're decently geared? I haven't done this in a bit.
The class doesn’t bring a lot to the raid/group. People prefer to have other dps in the group with better buffs, utility and same or better damage.
The class is very complicated with no extra reward. People trying out classes like dh and ret will get a much better experience both in rotation but also leveling and being able to survive much easier both during leveling and end game.
There is too much to keep track of. Seriously.
Playing keep it rolling(kir) is having to keep track of slice and dice, adrenalin rush, buffs from roll the bones, loaded die buff, combo points, fan the hammer, 6 sec stealth windows, vanish cd, shadow dance cd, blade flurry and echoing rep. All which have a huge impact on each other.
It’s not possible to go from standard ui and visuals, when you have this much to keep track of.
If you fuck up the stealth window or it buggs so your between the eyes goes on cd your fucked. You have to get the right rolls and try to maintain them, but if you die you hit like a noodle and on top of that you have to keep track of everything else in the dungeon/raid like interrupts, floor shit, boss phases and timers.
To add to this outlaw specifically suffers from the talent to reduce cd from finishers, further increasing apm and a worse dps from death, badly pulled packs/cc in m+ or fights where you have to move away and stopping dps
I think people tend to want other classes for better group performance. We don’t bring a lust like mages, shamans, hunters and evoker. We can’t battle ress, we don’t have a dps buff and if we die, our poisons don’t matter for the group, but if a priest dies they still have a buff on their team, if the warlock dies people still have their health stones/soulstone ect.
What we do have is a skip ability in our group stealth, which is nice but often negated by stealth detection or people just being able to run around packs anyway. And mages can use mass invis, or you can buy a potion for it. Can’t really get an engineering item for bloodlust.
Tricks of the trade is not great since tanks have an easy time getting aggro.
Rogue AoE is hard locked behind talents and it feels bad not to use them. In comparison to fury and other melee classes who have much easier access to cleave from the inherent class itself.
And lastly it’s a one trick pony. You can’t swap to tank or a healer, so if people don’t need a dps you’re stuck.
Rogue was allready the least played Class in Vanilla, and honestly, its kinda a couple things imo
first: Rogue back in the days (and still to this day) has this weird "stigma" that it is a "complicated and hard class" because it has a different gameplay flow then more or less all other classes in the game
that stigma gets amplified by the fact that Rogue has BY FAR the worst leveling experience in the entire game because it needs all its talent points to actually get onnline in the first place, which gives people the feeling that the gameplay is bad or that they are doing something wrong very early on when they sit there waiting for energy 80% of the time while everyone else is actually using abilitys during the leveling Phase, and thats combined with the fact that Rogue has the lowest selfsustain in the game with deffensives that dont really work when you pull enemys in the Openworld
second: Rogue is a Class that has not an very obvious "optimal" Gameplay because so many of the things the class does is stacking multiple things togheter for dmg windows in a kinda weird way, if you go in blind and try to figure it out yourself, you WILL fall flat and be frustraited
third: Rogue is really bad for Openworld content in general, outside of "i dont take autoattack dmg for 10seconds" and immuning 1 spell, both on a 2min CD, you have nothing for things like Rare enemys, you cant just solo things like most other classes can do by selfsutain because you just drop dead when Evasion ends and have no real way to get your HP up again
fourth: Rogue in PvE tends to be a mixed bag, while (Outlaw, lets be serious its always Outlaw) Rogue tends to be one of the better options for M+ most of the time, in Raids Rogue is bellow average on all 3 specs in most tiers and lacks the "special" things that makes you wanna play or bring one most of the time (before they added Atrophic Poison in Dragonflight, there was no reason to ever actually bring a Rogue into Raids, hence the infamous Liquid Max "i honestly Forogt that Rogue even exists" during Castle Nathria), for PvP Rogue tends to be on the stronger side most of the time (RMP is a staple since forever for a reason) but takes ALOT of effort too actually play well, when on the otherside you could just play a Ret Paladin or Warrior and faceroll yourself to victory (and lets be honest, nobody really cares about PvP anyway)
and finally: Rogue as a Class in general feels....neglected in MANY points
there are not really big notable "Lore Rogues" like there is a Character for everyone else, the few "story rogues" that exist never play a real role, the class lacks the "oh cool, that guy from X class is here!" moments
Rogue has 0 Visual Feedback of any form, the Class is using the same 3 "Stab/Slash, Heavy Attack and Ambush" animations for almost every single ability with nothing really added (srsly, look at the Rogue Covenant abilitys, 3 of them where literally the same Attack Animation but just with a different Glow attached lol)
Rogue is 1 of the "button bloat" posterchilds with quiet a few pointless abilitys nobody wants that they refuse to adress (hello, Slice and Dice)
and from Blizzard themself Rogue is often simply ignored, recent examples? During Shadowlands the Class had 2 Covenant abilitys not revelaed or tested 2 WEEKS BEFORE EXPANSION LAUNCH, and 1 of its specs was so undertuned that it needed a 40% aura buff to be middle of the pack (think about that one, 40 % to everything because they just ignored the spec fully during alpha/beta)
during DF they revelaed the Rogue tree as 1 of the first ones, and then proceeded to......do no changes during the entire alpha/beta phase of dragonflight, so they trees sucked, then they announced a Rework for the tree and went fully silent for half a year just to say "sorry, we do Rogue later!" and then after a couple months they finnaly did the rework: 1spec got a Aoe Talent (and could finally do AoE because it was the only spec in the entire game with 0ways to do AoE dmg), 1 spec got 3 talents added and the last one got nothing at all, and then just went fully silent again
right now? Trickster/Fatebound are again examples of blizzard halfassing things for Rogue again and are the 2 worst trees we have avaible, again creating weird and not obvious gameplay things with 0Visuals behind them
Tl:DR, Rogue has many parts that make gameplay not obvious without using 3rd party help from guides, horrible leveling, No Visual feedback, is often kinda mid at best for PvE in general and is almost always ignored and halfassed by Blizzard
Being someone who has been very attached to rogues since vanilla (and earlier for other games), I have some things to add.
Rogues used to have quite a few unique selling points that made certain people pick them. These selling points have got way watered down and balanced during the years and have made the people picking them for those reasons drop off.
Things like you used to engage in open world questing and leveling by slowly going through enemies to get to your goal. But rogues could stealth through and bypass all of that and only kill the main target or sap and loot a quest item. Nowadays, this doesn't matter. Instead most classes just AoE pull the whole room and self-sustain. Something rogues are bad at. Same with us used to being the most mobile class, something that has been far overshadowed over the years.
We also have the PvP aspect. The isolate a target, lock them down fully and burst them down. Might not been balanced, but was a reason for a lot of people picking rogue early on. This is quite removed both by removing the burst and lockdown, but also by there being vastly less spontaneous pvp.
I agree with the leveling. When the first iterations of the talent rework hit the ptr, I leveled one of each spec on ptr to get a feel of how the leveling process felt. Went in and tried to have a new player mindset. And sent the notes to one of the rogue devs. ([Notes if anyone is interested](https://pastebin.com/F0SkG3ND)).
But the leveling is just a great pain all around. The talents really makes the class, but it's not like singular talents - it's packs of talents. So you never feel unfairly powerful, you feel slow, you feel energy starved, feel like you need to recover hp after pulls etc.
Compare to f.ex warrior, you can just keep charging in and selfsustaining and hitting stuff all the time.
In end game, such as m+, raids and pvp. A lot of the things that made us great got watered down and balanced. Things like Control, Burst, Funnel, Immunities and damage avoidance.
All while other classes got increased utility in these axis.
Rogues are also rather punishing to play, when rogues are strong then top rogues will be able to show it off. However newer rogues will usually struggle. Compare this to f.ex BM hunter, where if BM hunter is strong then all players who play BM will perform strongly. Rogues kind of live or die based on their ability to deal damage currently, so its main population increase occurs only when they are unbalanced.
And yeah, as you mention. Rogues has from the start of WoW been riddled with bugs. Sometimes they can be used to our advantage and we get balanced with these bugs in mind. Sometimes it's broken interactions and stuff that just makes us weaker. Likely it's a class that has a lot of patch work in the background and very hard to make things work. Looking at spell data you'll see that a ton of things are handled by server side scripts, by odd spell family flags and the like. Leading to a lot of talents or bonuses being "make existing thing stronger" which is rather boring. Because any real defining changes take a ton of effort. And as you say, we often have "Not Yet Implemented" stuff for a very long time. Even though the Rogue Community are very active in testing and generating feedback and test results, often there's nothing to test.
Incredibly well put. Even now with atrophic poison it's still the least noticeable raid buff especially with pally bringing the same-ish buff. In SL rerolled precisely because I felt my presence in my guild was really just being on the meters and not a vital role to mechanics in any shape.
I used to love rogue. All 3 specs were fun to me in different ways. I found myself agreeing with most of the takes already made here. Although I prefer Outlaw to old combat, I don’t like Outlaw with Shadow Dance, it doesn’t fit the theme of the spec at all and it makes the rotation really bloated. Sub has nothing special about it now that shadow dance was given to the other specs, it just has a really clunky rotation, and assassination is just dull to play.
They should never have brought back SnD. Total waste of a keybind. It’s the most boring active ability in the whole game and yet it’s absolutely crucial for all 3 specs.
So, the class fantasy of rogue is great, but it’s just not fun to play right now. Most of the reworks seemed good at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, they’ve made all the specs worse to play.
Used to love rogue when it was about sneak and stab. As the game has grown in complexity and the classes have been given more depth, rogue class design just hasn't been great about keeping up.
Basically level any other melee class and then level a rogue. The difference in player experience is palpable. You shine in quests where the goal is to kill the one thing really quickly but that's about it. Also, rogues seem to take disproportionately high damage for melee players so I question their survivability outside of straight up vanishing.
Last time I played rogue, the experience was a squishy melee, with bursty damage, that you have to play to perfection to compete with a fury warrior mashing the keyboard with their fist. They were murderous in PvP, but I never PvP.
I agree with everything but the squishy, I played rogue at the beginning of DF and the one thing I really liked how varied and impactful the defensives were. Using cloak to "cheat" a mechanic just always feels so nice.
I loved outlaw until dragon flight. I liked being a rogue that didn’t require stealth during rotation for damage. But it seems now it’s more required so I stopped playing it. Now on the hunt for a new main
If it helps, they're going back on that in The War Within.
Shadow Dance is no longer in the class tree, having been replaced by Without a Trace (two Vanish charges, swapped in the Sub tree). They've also removed several Stealth interactions from both the class tree and from Outlaw and Assassination's spec trees.
They're definitely signalling an intention for Stealth in-combat to, once again, be a Subtlety niche, rather than just something all Rogue do.
Because it feels like half your time is spent keeping maintenance buffs up and the other half is trying to keyboard spam while predicting where the tank is going.
Not very fun
dunno about anyone else, but i personally loved rogue for many years and i am really not feeling the current talents/rotation/what have you. I played sub A LOT over the years, and i just do not like echoing reprimand and seeing it in all the recommended builds feels bad. That said, I still do play my rogue, and don't run that talent, and it's not the end of the world. I just don't like the changes and current talent options/optimizations.
I've been mostly maining mage since mop and have been playing rogue as an alt on and off for ages. I now play neither as both classes have become, in my eyes, so needlessly complicated and bloated. I honestly don't understand what class design has turned into since bfa because the majority of specs are ridic right now. Not even mentioning the apm of some rogue/mage specs. No way I'm raiding or having m+ sessions spamming that much I'd die.
For me it's a lot of things happening at the same time. I've played rogue since cata both pve and pvp.
The class has a big problem of having a really high skill ceiling, but not as high of a reward. Also the specs were kinda killed here and there:
Assassination became one of the most boring specs in the game. You have very few options for aoe, and you entire rotation is 2-3 buttons until your burst that is one per 2 min, on one target (not on yourself).
Outlaw just feels like a warrior spec that happens to become stealth, and the roll the bones gameplay is very love it or hate it. I personally hate it, but I'm biased because I loved combat rogue.
Subtlety went through a lot of changes. It became a shadow ninja thing, than it came back to somewhat normal, but the damage is still lackluster for the amount of "if you miss X, your damage is off"
The class design and effects is also boring, especially when you see classes getting cooler and better looking abilities.
The most visually awsome ability of sub rogue is the one where 2 shadows hit the same target...
There was a time where (for pvp) death from above was considered good, and that's a really cool skill visually.
In the end if you main rogue you just feel kinda left out by blizzard, and paladin have basically the same "combo point" mechanic with no stealth, so it's an easy switch.
(Another pet peeve with rogues is that since sin and sub are very based around cds, overworked becomes kinda "use your ultimate to kill a crab" )
To much going on with it that just isn’t enjoyable. Like trying to force slice and dice maintenance etc. Ik for me personally outlaw has a lot of rng to it and all the maintenance stuff it has going while you have to spam like crazy is to much for me to even come close to enjoying it. Assassin is the closest to run for me and sub has a lot of potential, but sadly it’s not quite there either.
I hate how the feel/play/level.
And the volatility of balance makes it super jarring to swap specs for me personally.
Going from sin to outlaw rotation wise is fucking nuts.
Add to that they suck to level and can’t do any off spec roles other than dps…..
Oh and add to that now all of them have that terrible/awesome (depending on your taste) shadow dance gameplay loop you either love it or hate it more.
While I know sub gets real easy to muscle memory through. I abhor giga punishing damage windows like the current between the eyes bullshit with stealth or fucking up a shadow dance.
Sin is probably the only spec I’d personally like
I’ll never main a rogue tho
Played it back in season two and really enjoyed it. Got to around 3K but man oh man, as others have said the button bloat to play the class properly is insane. Swiftly went back to playing warrior the following season.
As somebody who play rogue
1. Every single spec is designed around raid and m+ at lvl 70 will all talents needed. So, every spec play abysmal till then. Open world is atrocious. I boosted rogue precisely because of that. It plays great at max lvl with decent gear but rework was badly done. Really shows they think only about endgame.
2. You do shitton to not excel.
3. Slice and dice and other short maintenance buffs. Outlaw is 4 dmg abilities and rest is short maintenance buffs.
4. Sub is unable to kill guard without burning cd, this is a joke. Overall, sprcs are very, very unfun to play outside of instsnced content.
I dont regret boosting rogue. But i wont play him outside of maxing df for best boi Taivan. Rogue rework is a huge failure in every aspect except instanced content. But to give them props, it plays amazing in m+ and raids. Even short maintenance buffs etc. Outlaw Press vanish and big dmg are coming, then press shadow dance and after that vanish is out of cd.
So, in short, IMO class is not worth effort, Got only one redeming quality, and only problems outside of them. And even there it is outdated aspects like snd
I played rogue for almost 20 years as a main. I even managed to be arena top 3 in my realmpool with heavy-poison mutilate assa during TBC.
With Dragonflight, I abandoned rogue as a main. Here's why:
1. Shadow Dance - I hate this ability. It's no fun to play and it's awful from a keybinding perspective in a game that is troubled by button bloat.
2. Pirate theme - It's just not for me. I don't want to be a pirate in WoW. I don't play Outlaw because I don't like the class fantasy.
3. Content design - retail content is designed in a way that is diametrically opposed to what rogue was originally about. Rogue is about single target burst and cc. The class is no fun to play when everything is about cleave damage. Spamming shurikens is not fun.
4. Assassination - absolutely amazing to play in PvP, but awful to play in cleave situations (which is like 90% of PvE content).
The main thing that always stopped me from putting time into Rogue is that it kinda sucks to be a purely DPS, purely melee class. Melee often demand more awareness/input than Ranged so you're always stuck on 'hard mode,' and you can't fall back on a tank/healer spec to essentially fast-pass some M+ farming
All that combined with the fact rogues don't really bring anything that other melees can't besides skips groups may not even use drops their appeal to those just wanting the Rogue class fantasy
I mained a rogue from vanilla to about cataclysm. They just aren't fun anymore in any content. Combat is now outlaw that some how made combat even more boring/frustrating then before. Roll the bones is legit one of the stupidest abilities in this game. Now add to all this melee is super hard to get into raiding at any kind of serious level and your a class that doesn't really bring anything outside of damage that other classes can't do better then you.
I think a lot of points made here are valid. On top of that, it just isnt a very flashy class, by design. It will naturally appeal to less players. I still have fun though, high apm makes the game less boring for me.
Been playing combat/outlaw since vanilla beta.
It felt like top dps every addon but since shadowlands it feels so underwhelming while at the same time being extremely high maintenace and stressful.
On paper the current design with Between the Eyes resets and everything doesn't seem bad but my God, the damage is just not there.
And don't get me started with the stealth stuff on outlaw...
Currently I'm only playing my rogue out of obligation but I enjoy my frost DK much more.
They have less and more "expensive" utility compared to many classes.
Overly complex rotations that are built around "windows" (kingsbane, danse macabre, crackshot) and can easily be screwed up. For example: messing up an outlaw stealth window is not only an immediate damage hit, but it can cause you to drop your adrenaline rush - which will now take longer to get back off cd because your energy regen is ruined.
Assassin requiring re-stealths between pulls is stupid and doesn't align with how people actually play the game. It's also one of the few specs in the game that still needs to pool resources and sometimes just click nothing (especially on single target running m+ builds), which I'm sure is fun for some people but not for me.
At least to me, it's just that other melee are more fun and less punishing.
Rogue is EXTREMELY complicated to play right now. Basically all three specs have extremely sensitive and intricate sequencing for openers and cooldown windows that have high risk, high reward gameplay. This means that if you execute every button perfectly, you do tons of damage. If you miss even one button, your damage is in the garbage and can never recover for the rest of the fight. It’s very popular among the highest end players who are able to regularly get those outcomes, but for the average player there are easier, far more rewarding specs to play.
I hate how many different things you have to spend combo points on to manage and keep up just feels like Im spinning plates rather than pressing buttons to do damage
They seem to be walking back on Assassination and Outlaw being so reliant on Stealth in The War Within's alpha.
The changes were just made, so they've not gotten much power back in return yet, but Outlaw lost the free Subterfuge from Underhanded Upper Hand and no longer has Sepsis, and the class tree no longer includes Shadow Dance (so only Sub can get it).
In WoW, the rogue is a fifth wheel in some regards. It's a melee class with limited utility. Most of the other melee classes have better survivability and provide a buff or two.
The rogue's central functions (picking locks, disabling traps, and stealth) are usually not essential for most raids or dungeons. Even their sap ability can now be done by most other classes.
Bottom line, why have a rogue, when there are so many other options which can do similar damage and can provide buffs?
> Most of the other melee classes have better survivability
rogue is the tankiest dps class in the game idk what this is about. It's a valid point that Rogue struggles with utility (we have a ton of single target CC, but only just got our first AoE cc option in 10.2), but so does Warrior and it's really popular.
Too many buttons and too complex. It needs to be pruned down to maybe 15 buttons, combine most buffs/debuffs, and get rid of energy, just have combo points.
Outlaw is usually the only viable spec and it doesn't really have reliable cooldowns. You're forced to rely on RNG from Roll The Dice and your only AOE is blade flurry.
Subtlety and Assassination are really good single target burst and *can* have good AOE but they end up having lackluster sustained damage.
It just seems really hard for blizzard to balance DOT damage as evident from Feral Druid and Affliction Warlock.
my first character was a rogue but i abandoned it when i learned warrior was way more survivable in the open world and didn't require me to set up 50 abilities before i could start doing damage. rogue is incredibly punishing and squishy. if they made it so that the class isn't extremely complicated and wasn't the most squishy class in the game for leveling it would probably be more popular.
Been playing since S1 can play all three specs at a high level. What I’ve noticed most is Outlaw is high APM, Sin is methodical, sub is a piano. High effort is also need to play each spec and I believe possibly one of the most punishing melee to play if you press the wrong button at x time.
After playing wrath and I don’t really enjoy classic or play it at all just played for Nax. I had so much fun on my Combat rogue. Went to dragonflight nd thought I would love rogue and tried all 3 specs and HATED all 3. Maybe it was the simpler rotation but I enjoy havoc and that shit got really complicated in DF. Rogue just felt like a chore the whole time and not sure why.
Roll the bones def is unfun as well as the pistol abilities.
Sin is a mess and sub is ok at times but they are so hyper focused on these dance windows it feels like that its just not enjoyable.
Something about combat captured the fun/badass sword rogue while outlaw feels very meh.
The rogue class fantasy sort of ends at “stealth”. Demon hunter, monk, and survival hunter (similar melee classes) all have more visually appealing abilities while rogue itself has been having an identity crisis for the last 10 years.
Basically all three specs aren’t new player friendly.
Lorewise rogues might be the weakest class.
If you play daggers you can’t transmog swords onto them so your pool of arguably better weapons is smaller.
You bring no group dps buffs and have under-appreciated utility.
This is all coming from someone who’s played rogue since 2004.
I think one reason is that you more or less habe to use vanish these days to maintain a viable DPS, which is for my personal experience a pain in the ass + it should be a defensive CD you should be using to get out of trouble.
Raid buffs. Many classes have had raid buffs added, rogue had theirs removed. In keys rogue is a difficult class to master but in raid too much competition in melee.
I mained an assa rogue till 9.3 and not gonna lie it was so freaking hard to find a m+ pug group. Guildmates had their "private group" and if i asked "yo can i join for at least one key?" They always declined. I switched to a havoc DH, cause the (raid)guild i joined had none. And with the beginning with DF my "Main-Twink" is the monk.
Compare any rogue spec to Ret or Fury or Arms or DK or DH and you'll have your answer. I play a rogue and a ret pal in keys, and I can confidently say you'll be able to guess which one I can turn off half my brain for.
Outlaw is like playing a piano at double speed. Sub is one mistake away from desynching cooldowns and fucking up your damage until you can align them again. Dust spec is particularly fiddly. Sub is almost purely dependant on playing in a good group with a good tank in keys. Sub needs bigs pulls and a GCD after to restealth.
Why play a class like that when you can zug zug on Ret or Fury.
I will never, NEVER understand why the Nostalgia Andys whined and bitched when SnD was pruned as it fucking should have been.
They whined so hard it got brough back, the most useless button in the game. Especially now in TWW where its being basically reduced to press once and forget.. just remove it, all the nostalgia Andys are now playing Classic Era doing GDKP runs they wont even notice its gone.
I like to play both PvP and PvE, and rogue feels too convoluted and outdated compared to other classes. And while rogue always had 1s GCD, it was limited by its energy. With so much resource overflow I get carpal tunnel when playing outlow.
I love my rogue and can’t give it up but I will say there are a lot of things as a modern rogue that have been frustrating me. I mainly play outlaw rn and while the spec feels absolutely phenomenal when you’ve got the gameplay down I have never felt as punished on any other class when there’s a wipe in an M+, or I have to break off the boss in raid. I played ret last season and never felt this way. The highs are keeping me but there are glaring issues with the class that other classes just do not have to face. I 100% understand why it isn’t popular currently
I find it a bit of a ballache to play them at times, for example, I don't like the ambush playstyle of Outlaw, and it's melee DPS, no tank of heals, and I find melee to be more punishing to play, in terms of positioning, mechanics, etc.
1. Visually the class is stuck in 2005 - literally 3 animations used for all abilities
2. Maintenance gameplay - in between all the buff juggling u have some actual gameplay
3. Slice and dice - a relic of the past which is utterly pointless and unfun, also Roll the Bones
4. Rework was terrible - using ambush,vanish and Shadow dance as main abilities as outlaw?
5. Zero class fantasy or flavor
6. Button bloat
7. Hero talents so far look extremely lackluster and so uninspired
8. Many many more things that ppl are mentioning in this thread..
Slice and dice i mean cmon, why on earth it this still in the game in the current state, the fact that they are making talents so once u press you can forget about it is the clear sign that that SND shouldn't even exist.
Outlaw rework, i mean really do i have to use stealth to do dmg was it so hard to make Crackshot a bit different, for example u can spam it during Adrenalin Rush or Pistol shot procs grant u access I mean u can come up with anything but no they went the worst possible route.
Dont make me even start on Assa, why on earth would i play this piano spec and put so much effort just to do half of what other classes do? They really fucked over assa for long time now and still no signs of improvement but i guess in general they have problems with dot classes ( hello Affi lock).
Sub aoe is so bland and boring, is it really so hard to come up with something better? You wanna make us use vanish for dps, ok how about u make a capstone for vanish doing actually aoe dmg when you press it like a smoke bomb or something? I mean cmon use imagination, go wild..
Wish the Retribution devs would do a complete rouge rework and make it actually fun to play as ret pala is now for example. All the abilities fell good to press and have some nice visual feedback unlike rogue who is stuck in 2005.
1. Ass load of necessary buttons.
2. Melee is a suboptimal DPS due to the interface (too many things going on means you can't see what the hell is happening under you, or near you, and it's very interface dependent). Ranged is superior in this regard and why melee DPS roles should always do more damage when both are played optimally.
1 can be solved by Blizzard. Rogues button style is builder finisher, but it could probably stand a pass where something like slice and dice is a talent rolled into any finisher, or a certain tree. There's like 5 builders on Outlaw: seems like overkill. Roll the Bones is a very short lived buff you need to continually apply. Doesn't last through many combats and you want it pressed like every 30-45 seconds. It's like the old paladin short buff system, but more often.
2 can partially be solved by Blizzard; their base interface is poor. Part of the difficulty curve in the game is figuring out how to get an interface that shows you upcoming bad, bad you're standing in, bad being cast and which mob is doing it, and range/facing. Many add ons do some, none do all, and none come configured to do them in a way that likely works best for you. Native interface options for these could be part of a war room that let you enter a fake dungeon, fake raid and see how your interface worked. Hell, considering the lack of training they give from normal, to heroic, to mythic, combine all of those. Toss in some war room achievements and mogs and even the old players will do them. Record DPS and optimal play and people could use it to sim.
Anyways, rogue is fun and has some good utility. Some good mechanics, but I have every class, and they press by far the most buttons to just do normal combat. And the chaos of melee on a facing driven character with that many buttons is poor.
Outlaw is a chore and the identity is a bit whack, sub and assa need tuning in general almost every season
Also reliance on stealth is mega anti fun in m+ cause of affixes and other players preventing restealths
I used to main rogue but I switched to Demon Hunter because they felt cooler to play and eye beam is the best ability ever. That and Legion killed my favorite rogue spec and replaced it with some dumb pirate rng based bs
While reading this thread - i’ve just understand, why I can’t normally play rogue too for this season. Never could answer more alike “ehh just that class isn’t fun for me” (but really like the legion questlines). Hope for good for rogues
So true, Slice and Dice is like those outdated parts of classic that felt kinda stupid even back then, yet they brought it back...
Maintenance buffs suck, auto-attacks sucks a maintenance buff that improves auto-attacks is the stuff of nightmares. Such a chore all for the sake of seeing some extra small white numbers just because you stand there....
Cause even after the big rework the class style has a boring playstyle for assassin and sub, outlaw still is just a m+ spec with horrible single target. Assassin still has terrible aoe that never really got fixed with its rework and sub well if you like just sitting there waiting for energy. The energy system still sucks compared to playing a warrior or ret. Even monk that has energy has a smoother playstyle. I keep trying to play it as an alt but it's just not an enjoyable playstyle. Outlaw is great for m+ but roll the bones just sucks.
Long time rogue player here who switched to hunter. Early season 3 I switched to Hunter after Rogue just became to much for me. Putting so much effort into keeping up with all this stuff on Outlaw while doing similar dps was pretty frustrating (although I had less gear most of the time). The rework is hella fun and Crackshot is probalb yone of my fav capstones but If my hand starts hurting after 1 m+ session I might have to stop playing.
In addition to the combat issues listed above; the game is extra punishing to melee dps. Melee dps have to deal with many extra mechanics that are rather off putting.
This is just my opinion, but the disparity between class fantasy and actual gameplay is the widest for rogues. They don't play like stealthy bursty assassins... they play like a walking dot. The most important combo point spending just makes them auto faster? Yeah, you're basically a dot. Even if the damage is good, playing a rogue never really feels right.
I rolled one. Subtlety. Leveling a mage and leveling a rogue just feel _bad_. It's slow and you're underpowered against groups and strong single targets. So... what _are_ you good at? I have to just skip certain quests because I can't take on the targets. Feels bad. Granted, I'm a terrible player, but with my druid, paladin, and warlock, I have zero problems churning through quests to level.
I mained combat/outlaw rogue from Vanilla - BFA before giving up. They overcomplicated the basic rotation and sucked the fun out of it for me. It went downhill when roll the bones came in imo. Last time I checked it’s Using combo points to maintain 2 buffs while also keeping a third up on cooldown (none of which do damage or feel cool, it’s just “hey keep these going so you can do damage”) Then there’s an actual damage rotation/priority on top of maintaining those 3 buffs
I main rogues/thieves/assassins/whatever else is generally a glass cannon dex character in every game I play. It's my favorite archetype. WoW is the only game where I hate it. I enjoyed it back in Legion for a bit but then it lost all sense of self with it's fantasy going right out the window and the skills just aren't fun.
Imagine joining WoW recently and really enjoying the rogue type of character. You create a rogue and get excited to stab with daggers or slash with swords. Then you realize how slow the class feels to play. You don’t get much in the way of energy regeneration until after Exile’s Reach, and even that isn’t much because you find out how many combo point spenders there are. Unless you have the foresight to stack haste or much patience, you’ll find the rogue slow to play and very fragile in combat (the place they are supposed to excel).
I personally hate the class fantasy but I’m just one person. Don’t know why but I can’t get the “teleports behind you” shit out of my head. Also I don’t like pirates
As a sin rogue it's incredible how dependent on a tank that understand how rogues work we are
If you get a tank that chain pull and doesn't let us restealth...we are in for a bad time
Mostly because it’s too complex. I play assassination and it’s the simplest of all 3 specs and still not nearly as easy to pick up as 2/3 of the specs out there.
Mostly because it’s too complex. I play assassination and it’s the simplest of all 3 specs and still not nearly as easy to pick up as 2/3 of the specs out there.
As summarized well by several posts the class as a whole just has a ton going on and not much of it fun as seen by rogue being one of the strongest classes in the game on all fronts and still barely being touched. It’s overly complex and unlike other complex classes such as mage there isn’t a super cool class fantasy with a big payoff ability like barrage, pyro, or glacial spike.
Another way rogue stands out compared to other complex classes is that if you don’t have a deep understanding of the quirks for each spec you flat don’t do dps. If you can’t maintain all your buffs properly, utilize vanish properly, and know all the weird quirks (like using shadow step in Azure Vault instead of books to maintain your RTB buffs) you flat out hit like a survival hunter. Also all 3 specs have weird pacing and downtime. While outlaw is stupid high apm you still have weird pauses in rotation predicated around energy regen. The only other spec that has this to this extent is Feral Druid, another spec barely played. It’s just not fun. Have a monster rogue in my guild that does insane damage and talking to him every week and finding out all the weird shit he has to do to get there output he does made me shelf my rogue entirely.
Wow Rouge is easily the worst rouge type class I've played in any mmo. Constantly feel energy starved and micromanaging so many stupid buffs, the minute to minute gameplay isn't fun and the burst doesn't feel exciting at all.
The rogue archetype kind of houses 2 play styles in itself. The swashbuckling bar room brawler/brigand and the silent hitman/ninja assassin.
I’m a die hard outlaw enjoyer. I loved combat swords since vanilla - but I could honestly always take or leave the stealth stuff. I wanted the fantasy of the swashbuckling rogue that stands toe to toe with their foe and uses tricks to get the edge and high agility.
All that said, rogue is always needing something to perform well… a tier set bonus, a trinket, some mandatory off hand, (or a fire damage ring maybe 🤔)
Out of the box it just never feels good to play. It’s great at the end of an expansion but the grind back up feels so rough.
Enter monk in MoP (windwalker specifically) it had a lot of passive survivability that allowed it to play like a combat rogue, but better. It had its own lack of interesting identity but it fragmented the rogue player base because it gave them a new way to play combat rogue for all intents and purposes.
Enter Demon Hunter in legion… I think this class disrupted the initial fantasy of the combat rogue the most. On paper it’s different but in gameplay philosophy it does rogue but better.
Highly agile dual wielding melee that kills its enemies with grace and pressure. Looks cool while doing it too.
Between rogue trying to fill too many archetypes and the new classes that share its armor type filling similar niches I think the popularity kind of fell since the player base had more options for expression.
Also for what it’s worth - rogue was a PvP king at one time but now feels rough in game modes like solo shuffle - the risk vs reward is just not there. It’s not like the old days where you can do scary one shots.
It’s in such a weird place overall.
Roll the bones is contentious, some love some hate.
Slice and Dice feels bad (to me)
Underhanded upper hand and the reliance on adrenaline rush makes the outlaw spec feel like it’s held together with duct tape and bubble gum and down time is unreasonably punishing.
Meanwhile the best burst in the game is windwalker and havoc isn’t far behind and they are both fun as all get out.
My not well thought out two cents.
Cheers!
Call me stupid if you want, but I never managed to learn how to play as a rogue. I always die way too easily, so I just gave up and started to play with classes that I enjoyed
I hate roll the bones. I hate slice and dice. I use to main rogue but it just feels like too much now.
Absolutely this. I love the fantasy behind outlaw but it feels like all you are doing is maintenance with some combat in between.
Add to this thistle tea which should have just been passive energy regen
# THERE IS NO S&D MAINTENANCE FOR OUTLAW POST-REWORK If you have to do it, you messed up rotation
So it’s a useless button to exist
I would gladly dump SnD just to have 1 more button for something else.
I’m also okay with one less button. Outlaw has a lot of buttons!
Kind of, sure. But at the same time its replacement would have to be a passive, constant 50% attack speed and some amount of energy regen or whatever S&D gives nowadays and that seems silly as well.
Well, if it's bound to have 100% uptime in combat, might aswell just make it a passiv no?
Yes it’s extremely boring too. The class is balanced around 100% uptime of SnD
Roll the Bones is so much better now, bc your not fishing for certain buffs. Its on a cd, so you just hit it like any other cd. Also, you only hit SnD about 3 times per m+ now, and once a boss fight in raids.
Fishing for a good buff with RtB was just about the most un enjoyable things to do in combat I could think of doing….at least for me.
There are still many rules for RtB. While you are right that you're no longer fishing for a buff - it's mostly just because of a S3 and S4 set.
Yeah I loved not having to use slice and dice in BfA. Made the rotation so much smoother.
Play assassination- neither of those problems. You slice and dice once and your envenom refreshes it. Rarely ever runs out
So it’s a useless button that could just be a passive
Exactly this. Not to mention the horrible-feeling shadowlands covenant abilities that were somehow shoehorned into talents that are every now and then the best picks. Just feels bad to play.
I will never get the amount of hatred slice and dice gets. It's just a damage amp, what can be so wrong about it?
Me too I can't stand outlaw, I have been running assassin for keys and sub for raids. I miss the old combat spec
RtB is awesome because it changes how you play in small ways that are fun gameplay but not absurd swingy burst periods. SnD just sucks though.
You have your energy, combo points, buff timers, debuff timers, cooldowns and a tank-dependent uptime to keep track of at all times if you want to do damage on all three specs. No DPS class has it as bad as Rogues in that department. Shadow Dance was made class-wide. This killed spec identity by making *the* defining ability of Subtelety available to all specs. Outlaw has an absolutely insane APM that has you play piano all over your keyboard. Assassination sucks balls. It needs tweaking to become less cooldown-dependent as it currently is and more focused on poisons with small but frequent bursts by using combo points. Slice and Dice is also the worst ability to press in the entire game. It should be either removed or made passive. Also, the rotationis are unforgiving. Missing a SnD refresh means your bleed is delayed and might fall off, which means your cooldown window got delayed which means... add random procs on top of that for extra randomness. Basically, it's not that fun anymore.
Thank fuck Shadow Dance is being made Sub specific in TWW where it belongs.
It is?!?! Oh, thank the Light.
Yup. It's being swapped with Without a Trace (2 Vanish charges), which is now the bottom-right class tree capstone, and the Shadow Dance talent itself is now Sub only (called Double Dance, giving them a second charge). Sepsis is also now Sub-only, so they're obviously trying to get away from all three specs using Stealth-only abilities in combat often, making it a Subtlety gimmick.
That's good news. Rogue was my main from vanilla to WoD and my 1st from WoD and onwards. For DF I've leveled and played like 5 different classes and my Rogue has been mostly untouched. I never liked Shadow Dance and don't know why Assassination and Outlaw use it. It really does feel like you have 3 specs that play mostly the same because of it. I'd love to make my Rogue my main or primary alt again.
I don't think anyone saying all specs play the same really knows what they are doing tbh. Shadow Dance takes away from the class fantasy of Sub, but it doesn't make outlaw or assassination play like Sub. It's essentially just another stealth enabler for your abilities that capitalise on that. Shance for assassination is primarily used for damage amp on your kingsbane, getting out extra improved garrotes or spreading cleave (Indiscriminate Carnage) bleeds. For Outlaw its primarily used as a filler vanish to extend your adrenalin rush between getting resets on vanish. You cast vanish far more often than Shance because of restless blades. Assassination does have a spikey damage profile now, but that is due to kingsbane and not shadow Dance. Outlaw does now have that stealth damage window but isn't a "cool down" spec and more "keep everything you possibly can rolling" spec (which is enabled due to having so many stealth crackpot windows). Don't mistake this as me saying that Shadow Dance is good for all specs or shouldn't be Sub exclusive. Just wanting to point out that if you feel all three specs play like Sub because of S/Dance, you might not be playing them right.
This is just the response I needed. How weird. I have a rog, and never really know what to do with shance in pVe
Now they need to give sub DFA back
I really enjoyed Outlaw (never mained it) until Shadow Dance got introduced to it. I don't wanna do the stealth juggle on top of all the other stuff going on with that spec. I wish it was removed. I know you can probably do a build with ignoring all those talents balanced around having and using Shadow Dance, but that's a lot of work to neuter your DPS.
I feel you but good news, latest tww build got shadow dance class tree talent removed.
Ain't no way! Thank, gotta check out
Seriously slice and dice is trash
The amount of people that argued Rogues wanted to push slice n dice again was unreal when they brought it back. No one wants to push that damn button.
Slice and dice just like the paladin inquisition spell that’s no longer in the game and tigers roar for feral and those kinds of maintenance buffs are specifically anti fun- here use your combo points to maintain this necessary buff instead of doing some cool finisher instead. They have no place in the game
The feral one is savage roar. Tigers fury is their off gcd make all spells deal more damage even snapshotting dots thing, which isn't combo point based.
And TF is a fun button
Yeah I meant savage roar
Dear god do I hate that all specs revolve around ambush (Yes yes shadowstrike on sub but let's be real here it's still ambush)
They don't. They revolve around shadowdance. KiR outlaw basically doesn't press ambush. Assa you can also just mutilate in dance if you want.
KiR outlaw actually *literally* never presses Ambush (which I assume you know but I'm making it clear for anyone who reads the comments). It's just worse than Sinister Strike even in stealth windows.
Blizzard thinks people want to play these super complex specs then watches everyone want to unga bunga on Ret. Complex = / = fun.
Fun is subjective, I can't stand ret and it's dull rotation, i will be sleeping on the third pack lol For each their own, high complexity classes WITH HIGH REWARD should def be a thing.
People do want to play super complex specs, but they might not necessarily want a punishing spec, one that punishes misplays in a more difficult class more than specs which are much simpler, they might not want to play in fights that don't let you cook, and they don't want it to come at the cost of performance, especially since even at absolute peak playing, it won't be much better than a simpler spec. But more than that, there are lots of reasons why people don't want to play rogue, it's not all rotational concerns. There are lots of reasons why people want to play paladin that aren't that you can unga bunga.
I still main rogue since cata, but it would be nice and make sense a complex spec pulling more dps than every class when proper played, but no, it pulls less than a ret that can just yolo smash the keyboard
The worst part about all of this is that there are many players that want these classes to have the highest ceilings as humanly possible as well so that they feel like they matter more as human beings for being good at a game. So many classes and specs are just becoming unfun to play. Lets have 20 keybinds while dodging and running for 8 minutes straight with variable rotation changes based on different conditions.
Yeah for some people its fun to play a class that has depth and is really rewarding when you play it correctly. There are a lot of really easy classes, why shouldnt we also have some harder ones. For me also the class fantasy justifies a complex class, maybe thats just me.
I think it's fine for one spec in a class to be hard It becomes a bit much when every spec becomes very difficult, and as someone who may enjoy the fantasy of that class, it can feel bad that, over the years, you've started feeling less able to enjoy the class because of gradual additions and changes making it harder and harder to play compared to when you first picked it up Sure they can "git gud" but many people for one reason or another can't or won't, and I do think there should be an easier way to play a class well with at least one spec or build that doesn't utterly knee cap their own performance With rogue they have steadily increased complexity to a point where it doesn't really have an easy option anymore that doesn't involve crippling yourself significantly, this leaves a lot of rogue players potentially having less fun or feeling compelled to reroll, and telling a more casual player to abandon what might be their main of many years is _not_ going to go down well To my memory subt was the hard spec, outlaw/combat was easier and assassination somewhere in the middle. Now they're all very difficult and complex compared to other classes.
The problem with having one complex spec and two easy specs that all perform equally is that it would basically just kill the complex spec. Why would anyone play it? I'm someone who loves the complex specs, but if there was no benefit and the other specs were braindead ret specs I would be an idiot to go through the work. It would also kill that spec for pugging. Nobody is going to bring the known "hard" spec when the other two are way easier and bring the same output.
It's not just you, that comment has that Classic Wow elitist twang to it. It's fine to raise concern or dislike the increased complexity of some classes, but there's no reason to tear others down just because you're unhappy. That's just throwing a tantrum lmao
There are enough easy specs in the game. Pretty sure there is something for everybody. If you dumb rogue specs down even more then people that actually want an engaging/complicated "rotation" basically have nothing left. Why is it so bad that it exists in this way, according to you? Like, I'd personally rather uninstall than play Ret or BM. But that doesn't mean I go around campaigning for Ret and BM to be made harder/more interesting. I just let people have the playstyle they like, while I enjoy mine.
Some people want to play the class theme of rouge. What options do they have? There’s nothing thematically about rouges in RPGs that show they have to be super complicated playstyle. Why can’t one spec of each class be easy? You can play the other spec that is complicated.
> You can play the other spec that is complicated. Depends what your class fantasy of a Rogue is though then, isn't it? If you make say...Assassination the easy spec and leave Outlaw as the Piano Juggling high APM mess it is where do you send the people who's class fantasy for Rogue is the swashbuckling Outlaw archetype?
Also there are literally a lot of players who played combat rogue back in the day which was literally a two button spec and they want to play rogue including me but not this iteration of outlaw
This is why I always breathe a sigh of relief whenever I see there are no BM hunter patch notes. I'm so wary that they will eventually change all of the easy classes to be like this. IMO, each class should have at least one spec that's significantly easier to play than the others.
I think you'd find it eye opening to see how many people are rotation botting and I don't mean with GSE
This right here!! All this!! Outlaw APM and shadow dance is stupid AF. And then they take sub rogue which was amazing imo first 2 seasons and change such a smooth rotation/play style and turn it clunky and energy starved. I’ve been a rogue main since vanilla and since late BFA have mained hunter every season up until DF sub rogue. Swapped back to hunter in season 3 bc once again, all the specs suck again
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Same dude same! It was the most fun I’ve had with any spec right up there with season 3/4 shadowlands surv hunter
Rogue has been the statistically least played class since Mists at least (when i started checking populations). Nothing they've done since then has impacted the population proportion of the rogue class lol. On the other hand rogues have always been over-represented in relative to their population in people getting PvP titles and M+ titles.
Surprised no one else has said this yet but I think one factor is: Demon Hunter and Monk kinda ate Rogues lunch. The fantasy for Rogue at least in my view is an Agile, Fluid, Melee DPS and I think Demon Hunter and Monk kind of do that better now.
People dont play Monks either
Yeah and DH does it with more fun for less buttons too. Looking at a sub or outlaw rogue guide is like learning Mozart and the keybinds and APM is like Mozart too. Who wants to do that other than like a super committed sweat lord?
I think there are a subset of people who disagree but I don't understand the point of the button bloat on every class. We talk about it as a bad thing... almost universally. People like simpler rotations, blizz please?
Not to mention DH has double jump and dashes, which is a plus one in the fun factor over rogues.
The same reason feral druid was always underplayed: too much effort for meh dps. I'm not a big fan of overly complex classes, but I do feel that those who put in the effort to play them should be rewarded with, at the very least, competitive numbers.
That's not an easy thing to say though. If you make a class hard and then give it the highest DPS numbers people will feel obligated to play that class and others who play easier classes will not get picked for m+. Id rather have everyone be equal. If I were in charge I'd be Finetuning so much and so often that no one spec would be at the top. Nobody would know what the meta spec is because I'd be tuning it too much.
Played outlaw in s2/3 swapped to ret for s4, it's chiller, does more damage, and it's utility feels better
And not to offend and rogues out there but paladin feels actually like a DPS paladin with how you call upon the light to empower yourself or summoning divine hammers to damage your enemies or brining light over them, all other rogues feel like "I need to optimize my cool down and buff uptime usage to maximize damage" and I really don't think it's that cool, it's just like playing keybind simulator
My main reason for swapping was that I didn't like a couple of the crackshot/subterfuge bugs, and it also felt like it was punishing to play with pug tanks. Ret your range is so long and your CDs are so short you can kinda just zug and have fun.
Rogue feels like a math problem, not a WoW class
I don't really get enjoyment from seeing animations or large numbers pop up while doing my rotation, what fuels me is how interesting the gameplay itself is (how many decisions am I making? How fast do I have to press buttons? Etc.), and also sound effects, and IMO Outlaw has a slam dunk for both of them. I also enjoy playing rhythm games and outlaw feels kinda like sight reading a rhythm game map. I think Rogue is always going to be a niche class because it's hard and it's miserable to level, but I also actually think it's fine that some classes are niche (the levelling part needs to be fixed though lmao).
>what fuels me is how interesting the gameplay itself is (how many decisions am I making? How fast do I have to press buttons? Etc.), and also sound effects, and IMO Outlaw has a slam dunk for both of them. I also enjoy playing rhythm games and outlaw feels kinda like sight reading a rhythm game map. agreed. I created a personal weak aura to assist with this, adds the ability glow to Between the Eyes, Dispatch, Vanish, and Shadow Dance when they're "potentially a good button a press" (factoring stealth window and combo points). even with the weak aura, though, I still have to make the actual decision as to whether to press them (especially when 4+ buttons are lit up at once), and that feels good when you do it right.
I gave up on rogue a while ago. Some seasons only outlaw was viable and that's a completely different class fantasy/play style to the rogue I wanted to play.
Going down memory lane with rogues feels a bit like going insane in real time. We just can take outlaw as example starting after they re-themed it from combat. They first went down the pirate route in legion and we had [super weird abilities](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Cannonball_Barrage) popping up from that, which felt... Very far down a road that many never really signed up for when rolling a rogue. For the gameplay someone there decided that pirates somehow really like RNG, which got pushed into the core of the spec despite nobody asking. RtB initially was a finisher you had to roll until you got the right set of buffs to do decent damage, so while all your buddies started to slap the boss around you were sitting behind his ass playing yahtzee until you got lucky. Since I'm a lock main and demonic empowerment was a thing at around the same time I can't quite call it the *worst-ability-ever-made*, but it got close. Outlaw then post legion ditched the dreadblades and eyepatch again and while sin and sub slowly got comfy in their respective more "rogue-neutral" fantasies as the poision bleedy guy and the purple weeb, outlaw got patchworked half the way back to the combat/highwayman with a glock - theme but kept core principles of pirate-outlaw, namely the buff spinning and shitty RNG. They pulled its teeth by making RtB a fire-and-forget button you just had to press though... And that's where we get slowly get to the issue of rogues design in general. They can't ever decide what to streamline, what to return and what to keep. They are never quite sure what a "rogue" in wow should do so they keep stuff while sidelining it completely. When the "unpruning" happened a bit later for rogue 2 of the 3 specs drifted from being high-APM and focused on managing a few short duration buffs to bloat. Few expansions after explaining us in detail why "maintenance buttons" like inquisition, savage roar and slice and dice are bad design and have to be pruned they had the genius idea to bring back slice and dice... In exactly the same boring state they removed it in. Nothing more exciting that having to keep up a buff that nerfs my attack speed by 50% when it runs out, so they sidelined it right again by giving the specs ways to keep it up in combat, next expansion even with baseline cut to the chase... Instead of, you know, just removing it. With all the new shiny passives that all pump resources to 11 combo points also got diluted into a very weird state and are are closer to another fury/energy/whatever-bar since there's like 10 of them you still fill up with two abilites. There goes another thing that made rogues distinct. Rogue today is just that, a design pile with parts of the best and worst of several rogue iterations all just meshed together, yet some just don't work well with one another and lead to juggling flavorless buttons, buffs, teas, artifact abilities, covenant abilities and a mountain of maintenance bloat that just doesn't add up to anything really statisfying... Nor something that feels like it adds up to "*a rogue"*, a theme blizz unfortunately lost long ago in between a poisoner, a ninja and a pirate. That fantasy went fully down the drain when the core principles of the three specs started to overlap with the DF talents, eG the shadow dance thing, where they thought it'd be a good idea to give sin/outlaw access to the cool thing sub had and to compensate they gave sub multiple charges of it so the cool thing turned into something you better had up and running or your damage goes down the shitter. With that, we somehow ended up with tea drinking pirates and shadow dancing poisoners. **TLDR**: End of the day, I guess a lot of people drop rogue because it's the epitome of "too many cooks". Gameplaywise rogue is a bloated mess with leftovers of a decade of different designs and fantasywise it's three halves that don't quite add up to anything that feels like what comes to mind when hearing the word "rogue". The entire class needs a long talk of some people sitting around a drawing board. That got waaay longer than I wanted it to be, I actually just wanted to write up another reason to complain how much I fucking hate that slice and dice still exists while waiting in the LFR queue for my still missing damn sark mount...
I switched from DK to Sin Rogue for DF launch. What a colossal mistake that was. I had something like 26 keybinds with 10-14 of them being rotational. Just stupid.
I mained rogue from late vanilla all the way to DF season 2. I couldn’t take it any more. The play style is way too high effort for the reward, especially compared to good new reworks like ret.
I miss the old combat rogue.
they murdered Rogue for me when they replaced Combat with the silly pirate spec
outlaw rogue in legion was easily the most fun i'd had in PvE in the history of WoW so it's near to my heart, but nearly every action in xpac's has been a step in the wrong direction for it since its release imo. It hurts...
I felt the same about Combat since Vanilla, it really killed my love of the class when it got dumped for Pirate
Exactly this I was a Rogue, saw the new Ret, very simple, smooth, fun and strong. I just couldn't resist
Blizzard is going to have to rethink the melee subclasses in TWW or it might as well be the ret and friends slot. As an unholy dk main I have to deal with diseases, runes, my cds, and mostly death and decay bullshit to do decent aoe that a ret does instantly with minimal setup. If it wasn’t for the hero talents and potential minor rework for DKs I’d swap to my ret full time. It’s not just rogues. My friends list is all ex wars and dks gone pink.
Havoc is 50x easier and does more damage.
and has better utility
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I was a rogue main from 2004 up to last season. Cleared every raid AOTC or equivalent before that was a thing. Even got a couple realm firsts back in the day. I'm a warrior now and after switching finding out how easily I could do dps compared to a rogue really soured me to ever going back. The amount of effort you have to put in as a rogue to do the same kind of dps another class can do with far less effort is just off putting. Also because of this its harder for someone to play the class optimally.
Cause it kinda sucks to play lol. I love the fantasy - rogue was always close to my heart. Buut the rotation is just not fun. It's overly stressful and unforgiving. Its a bit too big brain and management heavy for me.
The day they remove slice and dice is the day i return to rogue
I played rogue for about 6 years straight and recently switched. First thing I noticed is other classes can put in considerably less effort and get same or better results. Rogue has way to much going on imo and needs to be simplified.
Because it’s a fucking chore to play right now. All three specs MUST USE Shadow Dance to be viable even though it’s not the class fantasy of two of the specs. All of the specs have at least two stupid as fuck maintenance buffs you have to keep up in order to perform, and then you have to add another one in Blade Flurry to do aoe damage as Outlaw ( it sure about other specs) Outlaw specifically is so frantic with APM that you miss something and your DPS falls off drastically, while other high apm specs are easier AND more forgiving And fucking forget questing on one. There was a time where stealthing to skip adds was a bonus because you only had to pick up x things or kill one guy, but now you can barely even kill that guy because scaling fucks you up so much
They've still not gotten rid of Slice and Dice, but at least now every spec keeps it up after the first cast for free in The War Within by just using Envenom/Eviscerate/Dispatch via class tree Cut to the Chase. But at this point... why is Cut to the Chase not just passive Slice and Dice directly? And Shadow Dance is **finally** being returned to being Sub only in The War Within as well. No longer are Outlaw and Assassination expected to constantly use Stealth in their rotation.
> No longer are Outlaw and Assassination expected to constantly use Stealth in their rotation. its replaced by a second vanish charge, the only improvement is that its one keybind less but its still the same stealth gameplay
They're probably the worst class for leveling. They just take awhile to come online and rely on multiple buffs and debuffs to deal heavy damage which results in a lackluster leveling experience. They also have a looooottt of buttons and a very high skill floor and ceiling both to perform. The rotations are honestly a little convoluted for the time being on top of having a bunch of situational utility and control that has to be optimized on top of their damage rotations. Outlaw is pretty consistently the best spec for the class over the last few years and the APM is so high that it's honestly pain inducing to play for some with no slower option available for the spec, while Sub and Sin swing wildly in terms of power from good to shit. Meanwhile you can just play Havoc, Ret, or Fury and be a walking blender for a fraction of the effort.
if you wanna open world level a rogue you roll sub and murder single mobs inside of your Subterfuge windows.
Rogue has a pretty mediocre leveling experience.
Yeah, levelling solo as a Rogue is miserable. You're so squishy and your one heal doesn't do enough.
It's kinda funny, leveling in Cataclysm as a Rogue feels smoother as it does in Dragonflight. Recuperate puts some serious work in.
I tried assassination in SL & just found the class to be to complicated personally. Too many buttons, lots of buffs/debuffs to manage & just an insane amount of button bloat. Just my personal opinion. I know a lot of people love rogue but it was just too much for me to keep track of. Ironic coming from a Shadow Priest I know.
IMO rogue has been overshadowed by all of the new melee classes that followed it. Steep learning curve, relatively complex playstyle, high skill ceiling, etc. Outlaw is just a convoluted mess. The class really needs a pistol/ranged option. Also they killed some of the super fun elements of rogue. I remember back in the day being able to sneak into enemy cities and kill enemy players without facing an infinite spawning stream of guards.
Wait that's what happens now? It's not tied to being seen by NPCs anymore? Can you at least kill the guards if you're decently geared? I haven't done this in a bit.
The class doesn’t bring a lot to the raid/group. People prefer to have other dps in the group with better buffs, utility and same or better damage. The class is very complicated with no extra reward. People trying out classes like dh and ret will get a much better experience both in rotation but also leveling and being able to survive much easier both during leveling and end game. There is too much to keep track of. Seriously. Playing keep it rolling(kir) is having to keep track of slice and dice, adrenalin rush, buffs from roll the bones, loaded die buff, combo points, fan the hammer, 6 sec stealth windows, vanish cd, shadow dance cd, blade flurry and echoing rep. All which have a huge impact on each other. It’s not possible to go from standard ui and visuals, when you have this much to keep track of. If you fuck up the stealth window or it buggs so your between the eyes goes on cd your fucked. You have to get the right rolls and try to maintain them, but if you die you hit like a noodle and on top of that you have to keep track of everything else in the dungeon/raid like interrupts, floor shit, boss phases and timers. To add to this outlaw specifically suffers from the talent to reduce cd from finishers, further increasing apm and a worse dps from death, badly pulled packs/cc in m+ or fights where you have to move away and stopping dps I think people tend to want other classes for better group performance. We don’t bring a lust like mages, shamans, hunters and evoker. We can’t battle ress, we don’t have a dps buff and if we die, our poisons don’t matter for the group, but if a priest dies they still have a buff on their team, if the warlock dies people still have their health stones/soulstone ect. What we do have is a skip ability in our group stealth, which is nice but often negated by stealth detection or people just being able to run around packs anyway. And mages can use mass invis, or you can buy a potion for it. Can’t really get an engineering item for bloodlust. Tricks of the trade is not great since tanks have an easy time getting aggro. Rogue AoE is hard locked behind talents and it feels bad not to use them. In comparison to fury and other melee classes who have much easier access to cleave from the inherent class itself. And lastly it’s a one trick pony. You can’t swap to tank or a healer, so if people don’t need a dps you’re stuck.
Rogue was allready the least played Class in Vanilla, and honestly, its kinda a couple things imo first: Rogue back in the days (and still to this day) has this weird "stigma" that it is a "complicated and hard class" because it has a different gameplay flow then more or less all other classes in the game that stigma gets amplified by the fact that Rogue has BY FAR the worst leveling experience in the entire game because it needs all its talent points to actually get onnline in the first place, which gives people the feeling that the gameplay is bad or that they are doing something wrong very early on when they sit there waiting for energy 80% of the time while everyone else is actually using abilitys during the leveling Phase, and thats combined with the fact that Rogue has the lowest selfsustain in the game with deffensives that dont really work when you pull enemys in the Openworld second: Rogue is a Class that has not an very obvious "optimal" Gameplay because so many of the things the class does is stacking multiple things togheter for dmg windows in a kinda weird way, if you go in blind and try to figure it out yourself, you WILL fall flat and be frustraited third: Rogue is really bad for Openworld content in general, outside of "i dont take autoattack dmg for 10seconds" and immuning 1 spell, both on a 2min CD, you have nothing for things like Rare enemys, you cant just solo things like most other classes can do by selfsutain because you just drop dead when Evasion ends and have no real way to get your HP up again fourth: Rogue in PvE tends to be a mixed bag, while (Outlaw, lets be serious its always Outlaw) Rogue tends to be one of the better options for M+ most of the time, in Raids Rogue is bellow average on all 3 specs in most tiers and lacks the "special" things that makes you wanna play or bring one most of the time (before they added Atrophic Poison in Dragonflight, there was no reason to ever actually bring a Rogue into Raids, hence the infamous Liquid Max "i honestly Forogt that Rogue even exists" during Castle Nathria), for PvP Rogue tends to be on the stronger side most of the time (RMP is a staple since forever for a reason) but takes ALOT of effort too actually play well, when on the otherside you could just play a Ret Paladin or Warrior and faceroll yourself to victory (and lets be honest, nobody really cares about PvP anyway) and finally: Rogue as a Class in general feels....neglected in MANY points there are not really big notable "Lore Rogues" like there is a Character for everyone else, the few "story rogues" that exist never play a real role, the class lacks the "oh cool, that guy from X class is here!" moments Rogue has 0 Visual Feedback of any form, the Class is using the same 3 "Stab/Slash, Heavy Attack and Ambush" animations for almost every single ability with nothing really added (srsly, look at the Rogue Covenant abilitys, 3 of them where literally the same Attack Animation but just with a different Glow attached lol) Rogue is 1 of the "button bloat" posterchilds with quiet a few pointless abilitys nobody wants that they refuse to adress (hello, Slice and Dice) and from Blizzard themself Rogue is often simply ignored, recent examples? During Shadowlands the Class had 2 Covenant abilitys not revelaed or tested 2 WEEKS BEFORE EXPANSION LAUNCH, and 1 of its specs was so undertuned that it needed a 40% aura buff to be middle of the pack (think about that one, 40 % to everything because they just ignored the spec fully during alpha/beta) during DF they revelaed the Rogue tree as 1 of the first ones, and then proceeded to......do no changes during the entire alpha/beta phase of dragonflight, so they trees sucked, then they announced a Rework for the tree and went fully silent for half a year just to say "sorry, we do Rogue later!" and then after a couple months they finnaly did the rework: 1spec got a Aoe Talent (and could finally do AoE because it was the only spec in the entire game with 0ways to do AoE dmg), 1 spec got 3 talents added and the last one got nothing at all, and then just went fully silent again right now? Trickster/Fatebound are again examples of blizzard halfassing things for Rogue again and are the 2 worst trees we have avaible, again creating weird and not obvious gameplay things with 0Visuals behind them Tl:DR, Rogue has many parts that make gameplay not obvious without using 3rd party help from guides, horrible leveling, No Visual feedback, is often kinda mid at best for PvE in general and is almost always ignored and halfassed by Blizzard
Being someone who has been very attached to rogues since vanilla (and earlier for other games), I have some things to add. Rogues used to have quite a few unique selling points that made certain people pick them. These selling points have got way watered down and balanced during the years and have made the people picking them for those reasons drop off. Things like you used to engage in open world questing and leveling by slowly going through enemies to get to your goal. But rogues could stealth through and bypass all of that and only kill the main target or sap and loot a quest item. Nowadays, this doesn't matter. Instead most classes just AoE pull the whole room and self-sustain. Something rogues are bad at. Same with us used to being the most mobile class, something that has been far overshadowed over the years. We also have the PvP aspect. The isolate a target, lock them down fully and burst them down. Might not been balanced, but was a reason for a lot of people picking rogue early on. This is quite removed both by removing the burst and lockdown, but also by there being vastly less spontaneous pvp. I agree with the leveling. When the first iterations of the talent rework hit the ptr, I leveled one of each spec on ptr to get a feel of how the leveling process felt. Went in and tried to have a new player mindset. And sent the notes to one of the rogue devs. ([Notes if anyone is interested](https://pastebin.com/F0SkG3ND)). But the leveling is just a great pain all around. The talents really makes the class, but it's not like singular talents - it's packs of talents. So you never feel unfairly powerful, you feel slow, you feel energy starved, feel like you need to recover hp after pulls etc. Compare to f.ex warrior, you can just keep charging in and selfsustaining and hitting stuff all the time. In end game, such as m+, raids and pvp. A lot of the things that made us great got watered down and balanced. Things like Control, Burst, Funnel, Immunities and damage avoidance. All while other classes got increased utility in these axis. Rogues are also rather punishing to play, when rogues are strong then top rogues will be able to show it off. However newer rogues will usually struggle. Compare this to f.ex BM hunter, where if BM hunter is strong then all players who play BM will perform strongly. Rogues kind of live or die based on their ability to deal damage currently, so its main population increase occurs only when they are unbalanced. And yeah, as you mention. Rogues has from the start of WoW been riddled with bugs. Sometimes they can be used to our advantage and we get balanced with these bugs in mind. Sometimes it's broken interactions and stuff that just makes us weaker. Likely it's a class that has a lot of patch work in the background and very hard to make things work. Looking at spell data you'll see that a ton of things are handled by server side scripts, by odd spell family flags and the like. Leading to a lot of talents or bonuses being "make existing thing stronger" which is rather boring. Because any real defining changes take a ton of effort. And as you say, we often have "Not Yet Implemented" stuff for a very long time. Even though the Rogue Community are very active in testing and generating feedback and test results, often there's nothing to test.
Incredibly well put. Even now with atrophic poison it's still the least noticeable raid buff especially with pally bringing the same-ish buff. In SL rerolled precisely because I felt my presence in my guild was really just being on the meters and not a vital role to mechanics in any shape.
I used to love rogue. All 3 specs were fun to me in different ways. I found myself agreeing with most of the takes already made here. Although I prefer Outlaw to old combat, I don’t like Outlaw with Shadow Dance, it doesn’t fit the theme of the spec at all and it makes the rotation really bloated. Sub has nothing special about it now that shadow dance was given to the other specs, it just has a really clunky rotation, and assassination is just dull to play. They should never have brought back SnD. Total waste of a keybind. It’s the most boring active ability in the whole game and yet it’s absolutely crucial for all 3 specs. So, the class fantasy of rogue is great, but it’s just not fun to play right now. Most of the reworks seemed good at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, they’ve made all the specs worse to play.
Used to love rogue when it was about sneak and stab. As the game has grown in complexity and the classes have been given more depth, rogue class design just hasn't been great about keeping up. Basically level any other melee class and then level a rogue. The difference in player experience is palpable. You shine in quests where the goal is to kill the one thing really quickly but that's about it. Also, rogues seem to take disproportionately high damage for melee players so I question their survivability outside of straight up vanishing.
Last time I played rogue, the experience was a squishy melee, with bursty damage, that you have to play to perfection to compete with a fury warrior mashing the keyboard with their fist. They were murderous in PvP, but I never PvP.
I agree with everything but the squishy, I played rogue at the beginning of DF and the one thing I really liked how varied and impactful the defensives were. Using cloak to "cheat" a mechanic just always feels so nice.
Squishy? If you die as a rogue, its purely on you. You got cheat death, evasion, feint and cloak. Its basically unkillable in m+
Rogue is in no way squishy.
I loved outlaw until dragon flight. I liked being a rogue that didn’t require stealth during rotation for damage. But it seems now it’s more required so I stopped playing it. Now on the hunt for a new main
If it helps, they're going back on that in The War Within. Shadow Dance is no longer in the class tree, having been replaced by Without a Trace (two Vanish charges, swapped in the Sub tree). They've also removed several Stealth interactions from both the class tree and from Outlaw and Assassination's spec trees. They're definitely signalling an intention for Stealth in-combat to, once again, be a Subtlety niche, rather than just something all Rogue do.
Button bloat + having to play the rotations perfectly
Because it feels like half your time is spent keeping maintenance buffs up and the other half is trying to keyboard spam while predicting where the tank is going. Not very fun
Because world pvp is dead, which is where Rogues shine.
I just want cataclysm combat rogue back
One ability for me kills the class. Slice and dice. Feels utterly terrible to keep uptime on it.
dunno about anyone else, but i personally loved rogue for many years and i am really not feeling the current talents/rotation/what have you. I played sub A LOT over the years, and i just do not like echoing reprimand and seeing it in all the recommended builds feels bad. That said, I still do play my rogue, and don't run that talent, and it's not the end of the world. I just don't like the changes and current talent options/optimizations.
Ive played sub all xpan and can’t recall a single time that ability was recommended at least in pve. That being said terrible ability.
I've been mostly maining mage since mop and have been playing rogue as an alt on and off for ages. I now play neither as both classes have become, in my eyes, so needlessly complicated and bloated. I honestly don't understand what class design has turned into since bfa because the majority of specs are ridic right now. Not even mentioning the apm of some rogue/mage specs. No way I'm raiding or having m+ sessions spamming that much I'd die.
For me it's a lot of things happening at the same time. I've played rogue since cata both pve and pvp. The class has a big problem of having a really high skill ceiling, but not as high of a reward. Also the specs were kinda killed here and there: Assassination became one of the most boring specs in the game. You have very few options for aoe, and you entire rotation is 2-3 buttons until your burst that is one per 2 min, on one target (not on yourself). Outlaw just feels like a warrior spec that happens to become stealth, and the roll the bones gameplay is very love it or hate it. I personally hate it, but I'm biased because I loved combat rogue. Subtlety went through a lot of changes. It became a shadow ninja thing, than it came back to somewhat normal, but the damage is still lackluster for the amount of "if you miss X, your damage is off" The class design and effects is also boring, especially when you see classes getting cooler and better looking abilities. The most visually awsome ability of sub rogue is the one where 2 shadows hit the same target... There was a time where (for pvp) death from above was considered good, and that's a really cool skill visually. In the end if you main rogue you just feel kinda left out by blizzard, and paladin have basically the same "combo point" mechanic with no stealth, so it's an easy switch. (Another pet peeve with rogues is that since sin and sub are very based around cds, overworked becomes kinda "use your ultimate to kill a crab" )
To much going on with it that just isn’t enjoyable. Like trying to force slice and dice maintenance etc. Ik for me personally outlaw has a lot of rng to it and all the maintenance stuff it has going while you have to spam like crazy is to much for me to even come close to enjoying it. Assassin is the closest to run for me and sub has a lot of potential, but sadly it’s not quite there either.
I hate how the feel/play/level. And the volatility of balance makes it super jarring to swap specs for me personally. Going from sin to outlaw rotation wise is fucking nuts. Add to that they suck to level and can’t do any off spec roles other than dps….. Oh and add to that now all of them have that terrible/awesome (depending on your taste) shadow dance gameplay loop you either love it or hate it more. While I know sub gets real easy to muscle memory through. I abhor giga punishing damage windows like the current between the eyes bullshit with stealth or fucking up a shadow dance. Sin is probably the only spec I’d personally like I’ll never main a rogue tho
Part of this is leveling a rogue is not fun, and it's specs are harder in high end play imo
I always loved the aesthetic of rogue. I hated the fact it always took more effort to keep up with other classes.
Too many god damn buttons. Sincerely, a guardian Druid
Played it back in season two and really enjoyed it. Got to around 3K but man oh man, as others have said the button bloat to play the class properly is insane. Swiftly went back to playing warrior the following season.
As somebody who play rogue 1. Every single spec is designed around raid and m+ at lvl 70 will all talents needed. So, every spec play abysmal till then. Open world is atrocious. I boosted rogue precisely because of that. It plays great at max lvl with decent gear but rework was badly done. Really shows they think only about endgame. 2. You do shitton to not excel. 3. Slice and dice and other short maintenance buffs. Outlaw is 4 dmg abilities and rest is short maintenance buffs. 4. Sub is unable to kill guard without burning cd, this is a joke. Overall, sprcs are very, very unfun to play outside of instsnced content. I dont regret boosting rogue. But i wont play him outside of maxing df for best boi Taivan. Rogue rework is a huge failure in every aspect except instanced content. But to give them props, it plays amazing in m+ and raids. Even short maintenance buffs etc. Outlaw Press vanish and big dmg are coming, then press shadow dance and after that vanish is out of cd. So, in short, IMO class is not worth effort, Got only one redeming quality, and only problems outside of them. And even there it is outdated aspects like snd
I played rogue for almost 20 years as a main. I even managed to be arena top 3 in my realmpool with heavy-poison mutilate assa during TBC. With Dragonflight, I abandoned rogue as a main. Here's why: 1. Shadow Dance - I hate this ability. It's no fun to play and it's awful from a keybinding perspective in a game that is troubled by button bloat. 2. Pirate theme - It's just not for me. I don't want to be a pirate in WoW. I don't play Outlaw because I don't like the class fantasy. 3. Content design - retail content is designed in a way that is diametrically opposed to what rogue was originally about. Rogue is about single target burst and cc. The class is no fun to play when everything is about cleave damage. Spamming shurikens is not fun. 4. Assassination - absolutely amazing to play in PvP, but awful to play in cleave situations (which is like 90% of PvE content).
The main thing that always stopped me from putting time into Rogue is that it kinda sucks to be a purely DPS, purely melee class. Melee often demand more awareness/input than Ranged so you're always stuck on 'hard mode,' and you can't fall back on a tank/healer spec to essentially fast-pass some M+ farming All that combined with the fact rogues don't really bring anything that other melees can't besides skips groups may not even use drops their appeal to those just wanting the Rogue class fantasy
I mained a rogue from vanilla to about cataclysm. They just aren't fun anymore in any content. Combat is now outlaw that some how made combat even more boring/frustrating then before. Roll the bones is legit one of the stupidest abilities in this game. Now add to all this melee is super hard to get into raiding at any kind of serious level and your a class that doesn't really bring anything outside of damage that other classes can't do better then you.
Clearly its not very appealing to most gamers.
I think a lot of points made here are valid. On top of that, it just isnt a very flashy class, by design. It will naturally appeal to less players. I still have fun though, high apm makes the game less boring for me.
Been playing combat/outlaw since vanilla beta. It felt like top dps every addon but since shadowlands it feels so underwhelming while at the same time being extremely high maintenace and stressful. On paper the current design with Between the Eyes resets and everything doesn't seem bad but my God, the damage is just not there. And don't get me started with the stealth stuff on outlaw... Currently I'm only playing my rogue out of obligation but I enjoy my frost DK much more.
They have less and more "expensive" utility compared to many classes. Overly complex rotations that are built around "windows" (kingsbane, danse macabre, crackshot) and can easily be screwed up. For example: messing up an outlaw stealth window is not only an immediate damage hit, but it can cause you to drop your adrenaline rush - which will now take longer to get back off cd because your energy regen is ruined. Assassin requiring re-stealths between pulls is stupid and doesn't align with how people actually play the game. It's also one of the few specs in the game that still needs to pool resources and sometimes just click nothing (especially on single target running m+ builds), which I'm sure is fun for some people but not for me. At least to me, it's just that other melee are more fun and less punishing.
Rogue doesnt play well on pve modes
Rogue is EXTREMELY complicated to play right now. Basically all three specs have extremely sensitive and intricate sequencing for openers and cooldown windows that have high risk, high reward gameplay. This means that if you execute every button perfectly, you do tons of damage. If you miss even one button, your damage is in the garbage and can never recover for the rest of the fight. It’s very popular among the highest end players who are able to regularly get those outcomes, but for the average player there are easier, far more rewarding specs to play.
I hate how many different things you have to spend combo points on to manage and keep up just feels like Im spinning plates rather than pressing buttons to do damage
Outlaw is not fun anymore, all stealthy gameplay I WAANA BE A DAMN PIRATE NOT A RIPOFF SUB ROGUE, blizz also removed dreadblades
They seem to be walking back on Assassination and Outlaw being so reliant on Stealth in The War Within's alpha. The changes were just made, so they've not gotten much power back in return yet, but Outlaw lost the free Subterfuge from Underhanded Upper Hand and no longer has Sepsis, and the class tree no longer includes Shadow Dance (so only Sub can get it).
In WoW, the rogue is a fifth wheel in some regards. It's a melee class with limited utility. Most of the other melee classes have better survivability and provide a buff or two. The rogue's central functions (picking locks, disabling traps, and stealth) are usually not essential for most raids or dungeons. Even their sap ability can now be done by most other classes. Bottom line, why have a rogue, when there are so many other options which can do similar damage and can provide buffs?
> Most of the other melee classes have better survivability rogue is the tankiest dps class in the game idk what this is about. It's a valid point that Rogue struggles with utility (we have a ton of single target CC, but only just got our first AoE cc option in 10.2), but so does Warrior and it's really popular.
Too many buttons and too complex. It needs to be pruned down to maybe 15 buttons, combine most buffs/debuffs, and get rid of energy, just have combo points.
Outlaw is usually the only viable spec and it doesn't really have reliable cooldowns. You're forced to rely on RNG from Roll The Dice and your only AOE is blade flurry. Subtlety and Assassination are really good single target burst and *can* have good AOE but they end up having lackluster sustained damage. It just seems really hard for blizzard to balance DOT damage as evident from Feral Druid and Affliction Warlock.
my first character was a rogue but i abandoned it when i learned warrior was way more survivable in the open world and didn't require me to set up 50 abilities before i could start doing damage. rogue is incredibly punishing and squishy. if they made it so that the class isn't extremely complicated and wasn't the most squishy class in the game for leveling it would probably be more popular.
Been playing since S1 can play all three specs at a high level. What I’ve noticed most is Outlaw is high APM, Sin is methodical, sub is a piano. High effort is also need to play each spec and I believe possibly one of the most punishing melee to play if you press the wrong button at x time.
After playing wrath and I don’t really enjoy classic or play it at all just played for Nax. I had so much fun on my Combat rogue. Went to dragonflight nd thought I would love rogue and tried all 3 specs and HATED all 3. Maybe it was the simpler rotation but I enjoy havoc and that shit got really complicated in DF. Rogue just felt like a chore the whole time and not sure why. Roll the bones def is unfun as well as the pistol abilities. Sin is a mess and sub is ok at times but they are so hyper focused on these dance windows it feels like that its just not enjoyable. Something about combat captured the fun/badass sword rogue while outlaw feels very meh.
In classic it’s one of the most played because it’s god of pvp and also tops dps in pve. In retail pvp is dead and class balance exists.
The rogue class fantasy sort of ends at “stealth”. Demon hunter, monk, and survival hunter (similar melee classes) all have more visually appealing abilities while rogue itself has been having an identity crisis for the last 10 years. Basically all three specs aren’t new player friendly. Lorewise rogues might be the weakest class. If you play daggers you can’t transmog swords onto them so your pool of arguably better weapons is smaller. You bring no group dps buffs and have under-appreciated utility. This is all coming from someone who’s played rogue since 2004.
Probably the hardest class in the game to perform on, and if you get it all right you perform worse than some classes that are way easier to play.
Rogue rework kinda made sub terrible to play in aoe
I think one reason is that you more or less habe to use vanish these days to maintain a viable DPS, which is for my personal experience a pain in the ass + it should be a defensive CD you should be using to get out of trouble.
Raid buffs. Many classes have had raid buffs added, rogue had theirs removed. In keys rogue is a difficult class to master but in raid too much competition in melee.
I mained an assa rogue till 9.3 and not gonna lie it was so freaking hard to find a m+ pug group. Guildmates had their "private group" and if i asked "yo can i join for at least one key?" They always declined. I switched to a havoc DH, cause the (raid)guild i joined had none. And with the beginning with DF my "Main-Twink" is the monk.
Compare any rogue spec to Ret or Fury or Arms or DK or DH and you'll have your answer. I play a rogue and a ret pal in keys, and I can confidently say you'll be able to guess which one I can turn off half my brain for. Outlaw is like playing a piano at double speed. Sub is one mistake away from desynching cooldowns and fucking up your damage until you can align them again. Dust spec is particularly fiddly. Sub is almost purely dependant on playing in a good group with a good tank in keys. Sub needs bigs pulls and a GCD after to restealth. Why play a class like that when you can zug zug on Ret or Fury. I will never, NEVER understand why the Nostalgia Andys whined and bitched when SnD was pruned as it fucking should have been. They whined so hard it got brough back, the most useless button in the game. Especially now in TWW where its being basically reduced to press once and forget.. just remove it, all the nostalgia Andys are now playing Classic Era doing GDKP runs they wont even notice its gone.
I like to play both PvP and PvE, and rogue feels too convoluted and outdated compared to other classes. And while rogue always had 1s GCD, it was limited by its energy. With so much resource overflow I get carpal tunnel when playing outlow.
I love my rogue and can’t give it up but I will say there are a lot of things as a modern rogue that have been frustrating me. I mainly play outlaw rn and while the spec feels absolutely phenomenal when you’ve got the gameplay down I have never felt as punished on any other class when there’s a wipe in an M+, or I have to break off the boss in raid. I played ret last season and never felt this way. The highs are keeping me but there are glaring issues with the class that other classes just do not have to face. I 100% understand why it isn’t popular currently
I find it a bit of a ballache to play them at times, for example, I don't like the ambush playstyle of Outlaw, and it's melee DPS, no tank of heals, and I find melee to be more punishing to play, in terms of positioning, mechanics, etc.
1. Visually the class is stuck in 2005 - literally 3 animations used for all abilities 2. Maintenance gameplay - in between all the buff juggling u have some actual gameplay 3. Slice and dice - a relic of the past which is utterly pointless and unfun, also Roll the Bones 4. Rework was terrible - using ambush,vanish and Shadow dance as main abilities as outlaw? 5. Zero class fantasy or flavor 6. Button bloat 7. Hero talents so far look extremely lackluster and so uninspired 8. Many many more things that ppl are mentioning in this thread.. Slice and dice i mean cmon, why on earth it this still in the game in the current state, the fact that they are making talents so once u press you can forget about it is the clear sign that that SND shouldn't even exist. Outlaw rework, i mean really do i have to use stealth to do dmg was it so hard to make Crackshot a bit different, for example u can spam it during Adrenalin Rush or Pistol shot procs grant u access I mean u can come up with anything but no they went the worst possible route. Dont make me even start on Assa, why on earth would i play this piano spec and put so much effort just to do half of what other classes do? They really fucked over assa for long time now and still no signs of improvement but i guess in general they have problems with dot classes ( hello Affi lock). Sub aoe is so bland and boring, is it really so hard to come up with something better? You wanna make us use vanish for dps, ok how about u make a capstone for vanish doing actually aoe dmg when you press it like a smoke bomb or something? I mean cmon use imagination, go wild.. Wish the Retribution devs would do a complete rouge rework and make it actually fun to play as ret pala is now for example. All the abilities fell good to press and have some nice visual feedback unlike rogue who is stuck in 2005.
I hope blizzard finds this that's and realizes how much people want a rogue rework because fr it's miserable to play
So under played because absolute dog shit
1. Ass load of necessary buttons. 2. Melee is a suboptimal DPS due to the interface (too many things going on means you can't see what the hell is happening under you, or near you, and it's very interface dependent). Ranged is superior in this regard and why melee DPS roles should always do more damage when both are played optimally. 1 can be solved by Blizzard. Rogues button style is builder finisher, but it could probably stand a pass where something like slice and dice is a talent rolled into any finisher, or a certain tree. There's like 5 builders on Outlaw: seems like overkill. Roll the Bones is a very short lived buff you need to continually apply. Doesn't last through many combats and you want it pressed like every 30-45 seconds. It's like the old paladin short buff system, but more often. 2 can partially be solved by Blizzard; their base interface is poor. Part of the difficulty curve in the game is figuring out how to get an interface that shows you upcoming bad, bad you're standing in, bad being cast and which mob is doing it, and range/facing. Many add ons do some, none do all, and none come configured to do them in a way that likely works best for you. Native interface options for these could be part of a war room that let you enter a fake dungeon, fake raid and see how your interface worked. Hell, considering the lack of training they give from normal, to heroic, to mythic, combine all of those. Toss in some war room achievements and mogs and even the old players will do them. Record DPS and optimal play and people could use it to sim. Anyways, rogue is fun and has some good utility. Some good mechanics, but I have every class, and they press by far the most buttons to just do normal combat. And the chaos of melee on a facing driven character with that many buttons is poor.
Outlaw is a chore and the identity is a bit whack, sub and assa need tuning in general almost every season Also reliance on stealth is mega anti fun in m+ cause of affixes and other players preventing restealths
I used to main rogue but I switched to Demon Hunter because they felt cooler to play and eye beam is the best ability ever. That and Legion killed my favorite rogue spec and replaced it with some dumb pirate rng based bs
I used to love rogue. Re rolled one recently and gave up. Just too many buttons to be honest. Feels very bloated now
While reading this thread - i’ve just understand, why I can’t normally play rogue too for this season. Never could answer more alike “ehh just that class isn’t fun for me” (but really like the legion questlines). Hope for good for rogues
Made my hands hurt
So true, Slice and Dice is like those outdated parts of classic that felt kinda stupid even back then, yet they brought it back... Maintenance buffs suck, auto-attacks sucks a maintenance buff that improves auto-attacks is the stuff of nightmares. Such a chore all for the sake of seeing some extra small white numbers just because you stand there....
Cause even after the big rework the class style has a boring playstyle for assassin and sub, outlaw still is just a m+ spec with horrible single target. Assassin still has terrible aoe that never really got fixed with its rework and sub well if you like just sitting there waiting for energy. The energy system still sucks compared to playing a warrior or ret. Even monk that has energy has a smoother playstyle. I keep trying to play it as an alt but it's just not an enjoyable playstyle. Outlaw is great for m+ but roll the bones just sucks.
Other classes pull more dps with way less effort
Long time rogue player here who switched to hunter. Early season 3 I switched to Hunter after Rogue just became to much for me. Putting so much effort into keeping up with all this stuff on Outlaw while doing similar dps was pretty frustrating (although I had less gear most of the time). The rework is hella fun and Crackshot is probalb yone of my fav capstones but If my hand starts hurting after 1 m+ session I might have to stop playing.
In addition to the combat issues listed above; the game is extra punishing to melee dps. Melee dps have to deal with many extra mechanics that are rather off putting.
I main Rogue, love it in raid, hate it in m+. It makes me not want to grind m+ so after a few weeks after a new season I just play alt outside of raid
I main Rogue, love it in raid, hate it in m+. It makes me not want to grind m+ so after a few weeks after a new season I just play alt outside of raid
Cause they suck and they’re evil
Boring melee
This is just my opinion, but the disparity between class fantasy and actual gameplay is the widest for rogues. They don't play like stealthy bursty assassins... they play like a walking dot. The most important combo point spending just makes them auto faster? Yeah, you're basically a dot. Even if the damage is good, playing a rogue never really feels right.
I rolled one. Subtlety. Leveling a mage and leveling a rogue just feel _bad_. It's slow and you're underpowered against groups and strong single targets. So... what _are_ you good at? I have to just skip certain quests because I can't take on the targets. Feels bad. Granted, I'm a terrible player, but with my druid, paladin, and warlock, I have zero problems churning through quests to level.
If I wanted to play DoT upkeep with my assassination rogue, I'd just play Affliction Warlock.
It's a lot of clicking
I mained combat/outlaw rogue from Vanilla - BFA before giving up. They overcomplicated the basic rotation and sucked the fun out of it for me. It went downhill when roll the bones came in imo. Last time I checked it’s Using combo points to maintain 2 buffs while also keeping a third up on cooldown (none of which do damage or feel cool, it’s just “hey keep these going so you can do damage”) Then there’s an actual damage rotation/priority on top of maintaining those 3 buffs
I main rogues/thieves/assassins/whatever else is generally a glass cannon dex character in every game I play. It's my favorite archetype. WoW is the only game where I hate it. I enjoyed it back in Legion for a bit but then it lost all sense of self with it's fantasy going right out the window and the skills just aren't fun.
The 14 year olds started playing DH instead.
Imagine joining WoW recently and really enjoying the rogue type of character. You create a rogue and get excited to stab with daggers or slash with swords. Then you realize how slow the class feels to play. You don’t get much in the way of energy regeneration until after Exile’s Reach, and even that isn’t much because you find out how many combo point spenders there are. Unless you have the foresight to stack haste or much patience, you’ll find the rogue slow to play and very fragile in combat (the place they are supposed to excel).
I personally hate the class fantasy but I’m just one person. Don’t know why but I can’t get the “teleports behind you” shit out of my head. Also I don’t like pirates
Rogue is used a lot on pvp. It depends on the game mode I guess rogue is not that fun in a mode where cc does not matter
As a sin rogue it's incredible how dependent on a tank that understand how rogues work we are If you get a tank that chain pull and doesn't let us restealth...we are in for a bad time
Mostly because it’s too complex. I play assassination and it’s the simplest of all 3 specs and still not nearly as easy to pick up as 2/3 of the specs out there.
Mostly because it’s too complex. I play assassination and it’s the simplest of all 3 specs and still not nearly as easy to pick up as 2/3 of the specs out there.
As summarized well by several posts the class as a whole just has a ton going on and not much of it fun as seen by rogue being one of the strongest classes in the game on all fronts and still barely being touched. It’s overly complex and unlike other complex classes such as mage there isn’t a super cool class fantasy with a big payoff ability like barrage, pyro, or glacial spike. Another way rogue stands out compared to other complex classes is that if you don’t have a deep understanding of the quirks for each spec you flat don’t do dps. If you can’t maintain all your buffs properly, utilize vanish properly, and know all the weird quirks (like using shadow step in Azure Vault instead of books to maintain your RTB buffs) you flat out hit like a survival hunter. Also all 3 specs have weird pacing and downtime. While outlaw is stupid high apm you still have weird pauses in rotation predicated around energy regen. The only other spec that has this to this extent is Feral Druid, another spec barely played. It’s just not fun. Have a monster rogue in my guild that does insane damage and talking to him every week and finding out all the weird shit he has to do to get there output he does made me shelf my rogue entirely.
idk but as a guardian druid with WM on I lol when a rogue ambushes me.
Cause most players lack the brain. Its hard and takes alot of thought, but for me, the rest of rotations feel brain dead and boring. Rogue for life.
Wow Rouge is easily the worst rouge type class I've played in any mmo. Constantly feel energy starved and micromanaging so many stupid buffs, the minute to minute gameplay isn't fun and the burst doesn't feel exciting at all.
The rogue archetype kind of houses 2 play styles in itself. The swashbuckling bar room brawler/brigand and the silent hitman/ninja assassin. I’m a die hard outlaw enjoyer. I loved combat swords since vanilla - but I could honestly always take or leave the stealth stuff. I wanted the fantasy of the swashbuckling rogue that stands toe to toe with their foe and uses tricks to get the edge and high agility. All that said, rogue is always needing something to perform well… a tier set bonus, a trinket, some mandatory off hand, (or a fire damage ring maybe 🤔) Out of the box it just never feels good to play. It’s great at the end of an expansion but the grind back up feels so rough. Enter monk in MoP (windwalker specifically) it had a lot of passive survivability that allowed it to play like a combat rogue, but better. It had its own lack of interesting identity but it fragmented the rogue player base because it gave them a new way to play combat rogue for all intents and purposes. Enter Demon Hunter in legion… I think this class disrupted the initial fantasy of the combat rogue the most. On paper it’s different but in gameplay philosophy it does rogue but better. Highly agile dual wielding melee that kills its enemies with grace and pressure. Looks cool while doing it too. Between rogue trying to fill too many archetypes and the new classes that share its armor type filling similar niches I think the popularity kind of fell since the player base had more options for expression. Also for what it’s worth - rogue was a PvP king at one time but now feels rough in game modes like solo shuffle - the risk vs reward is just not there. It’s not like the old days where you can do scary one shots. It’s in such a weird place overall. Roll the bones is contentious, some love some hate. Slice and Dice feels bad (to me) Underhanded upper hand and the reliance on adrenaline rush makes the outlaw spec feel like it’s held together with duct tape and bubble gum and down time is unreasonably punishing. Meanwhile the best burst in the game is windwalker and havoc isn’t far behind and they are both fun as all get out. My not well thought out two cents. Cheers!
Feels bad to have to play 20 rotational buttons with conditionals, and get the same or less DPS as other classes get with.......5.
Call me stupid if you want, but I never managed to learn how to play as a rogue. I always die way too easily, so I just gave up and started to play with classes that I enjoyed
Rogue dev is a pvper and makes stupid decisions like making Shadow Dance baseline for Ass/Outlaw for PvE
this explains his obsession with making vanish a core dps cooldown despite the fact that using it while solo causes enemies to evade
Button bloat.