Feedback: Rogues

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Community Manager
#1 - Sept. 7, 2023, 7:26 p.m.
Blizzard Post

In this thread, please discuss ongoing changes to the Rogue class in the Guardians of the Dream PTR.

In Guardians of the Dream, we’re updating all four Rogue talent trees to bring them up to current standards. A sweeping pass was needed to make significant adjustments to address notable concerns, like: moving the first gate from row 3 to row 4 to match all other classes; improving pathing and increasing interconnectedness on every tree; removing 3-point nodes; and reducing the percentage of minor DPS talents taken in the Class tree to make room for more flavorful and robust utility options.

We also want to use the opportunity where so many things are changing to rework or redesign some talents that needed the update, and also just to make some new talents to experience and (hopefully) enjoy.

Please see our updated development notes for all of the changes to Assassination, Outlaw, and Subtlety.

Assassination

Assassination is known for having strong single target damage, but has two areas of concern we hope to address in Guardians of the Dream. First and foremost, their AoE has been notably weak and left them far behind the pack for M+ and certain raid encounter types. Secondly, Assassination’s damage performance does not improve at a similar rate compared to most specs when players improve their play and coordination to take on bigger challenges, like when moving from Heroic to Mythic level raiding. We hope the changes here will raise the floor of Assassination’s AoE, especially before reaching and needing capstone talents to do so, and that it will feel like a distinct Assassination-like way to deliver AoE damage and not just copy/paste of another spec’s gameplay.

As for the second concern, it’s very important to us that we not completely rewrite the book and threaten to undermine what makes Assassination appealing for so many players from both fantasy and gameplay perspectives. That said, the changes aimed at addressing this issue are more subtle. We intend to create more room for players tackling high-end content to use their resources and encounter knowledge to get improved performance outcomes, while not increasing the number of hoops players at all levels need to jump through to get results similar to the past.

Outlaw

Outlaw’s talent tree has produced some fun gameplay so far in Dragonflight, but it has significant issues with rigidity, lack of pathing options, high tension between early tree DPS and utility nodes, and far above average number of unskippable core skills. Some of those skills have returned to Outlaw baseline, creating room for improved pathing and interconnectedness.

We’ve also reworked or redesigned some existing talents and introduced some new options, with the hope that it will expand the gameplay space and options available to popular Outlaw builds.

Subtlety

Subtlety and its talent tree have been in a similar position as Outlaw. The gameplay outcome has been mostly good during Dragonflight so far, but many talents are underused, and rigid pathing with insufficient connections have restricted talent options. We have changed, redesigned, and added new talents alongside improvements to pathing and interconnectedness that will hopefully add up to feeling like there is more gameplay diversity and flexibility in the tree. And while we noted that gameplay outcomes thus far in Dragonflight have been ‘good’, there have been some negative trends we hope to address.

To start, Subtlety’s Energy and combo point resource economies have been overflowing, which creates a cascade of issues. Uptime for key cooldowns (predominantly Shadow Dance) has also been higher than expected, forcing overall damage tuning to result in a relatively flat damage profile, especially for a spec that is often known for having moments of increased intensity and burst within those frequent cooldown windows.

So, in addition to the more general improvements and additions for talents, there are some changes that affect Subtlety’s Energy and combo point flow that will reduce the floor of their steady downtime rate, and increase the relative value of effects that temporarily offer more resources. It will require tuning and iteration to get to the amounts of total resource generation and damage output in a good state, so any gameplay feedback you would like to share on these topics is welcome.

Let us know what you think!

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WoW Developer
#70 - Sept. 9, 2023, 8:09 p.m.
Blizzard Post

True! Infinity would be a lot!

And you’re right, as funny as that would be, it can’t be that way. We set it up so that it counts 30 seconds worth of SBS dot damage. Good question.

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WoW Developer
#71 - Sept. 9, 2023, 8:16 p.m.
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We would like the effect to remain contained to a limited window, and being associated with the ‘opener’ has been a good place for that window.

That said, from what we’ve seen it looks like the updated version isn’t hitting a perfect stride, and we’re looking into ways to make the effect slightly more powerful and slightly more forgiving to navigate.

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WoW Developer
#72 - Sept. 9, 2023, 8:19 p.m.
Blizzard Post

Yeah, the base values aren’t very realistic for PvP, so PvP values will need to be much more restrictive and the mults for that will be added in a future PTR build.

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WoW Developer
#75 - Sept. 9, 2023, 8:21 p.m.
Blizzard Post

This was an oversight and I appreciate you pointing these out. We will be doing a pass to clean up these and any similar circumstances before patch release.

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WoW Developer
#78 - Sept. 9, 2023, 9:20 p.m.
Blizzard Post

Reducing button count was not initially one of the goals of these talent updates, but it’s always in the back of our minds and the feedback we’ve received so far has given us some reason to reconsider whether or not there are some adjustments we can make. Maybe not huge sweeping changes, but we’re looking for small changes that can maybe nudge in the right direction enough to make a difference.

Thank you for the post.

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WoW Developer
#107 - Sept. 10, 2023, 4:48 a.m.
Blizzard Post

It’s worth noting that Killing Spree is currently bugged on the PTR and has a reduced time delay between each strike, dealing up to 38% more damage than intended when used with 7 combo points. This is fixed internally and should make its way to PTR in a future build update. Keep the bug reports coming!

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WoW Developer
#387 - Sept. 14, 2023, 4:41 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Thanks for the heads up - this is now fixed internally and will make its way to PTR in a future update.

For now you can save Cloak for the debuff, or try to avoid using Killing Spree during Dreadblades.

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WoW Developer
#439 - Sept. 15, 2023, 1:58 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Yeah, true.

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WoW Developer
#449 - Sept. 15, 2023, 2:50 a.m.
Blizzard Post

For those who have mentioned dissatisfaction with the current version of Grand Melee (the buff from Roll the Bones), we agree it is not yet hitting a perfect stride. We like that there now exists a buff associated directly with Blade Flurry, but recognizing the presence of the buff and subsequently being unintuitively forced to use Blade Flurry in single target situations has not been ideal. For that reason, adjustments have been made to Grand Melee which will be included in a future PTR build:

Damage increased by 5%.

Blade Flurry deals 10% additional damage to nearby enemies.

This results in slightly lower single target value from the effect (while no longer requiring Blade Flurry to extract that value) and slightly higher multi-target value at any target count above two.

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WoW Developer
#452 - Sept. 15, 2023, 3:41 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Rogue’s damage only (abilities and melee auto-attack).

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Community Manager
#991 - Sept. 27, 2023, 10:18 p.m.
Blizzard Post

With the PTR build that went live moments ago:

  • ROGUE
    • Assassination
      • Exsanguinate (Active) has been removed.
      • Exsanguinate (Passive) – Energy threshold changed to 50% of max Energy (was flat 150), Energy consumed reduced to 3 (was 4) and damage duplicated reduced to 20% (was 25%)
      • Sudden Demise’s Bleed damage trigger value reduced to 150% of remaining health (was 200%) and now benefits correctly from Zoldyck Recipe bonus.
      • Indiscriminate Carnage now prioritizes targets without Rupture and Garrote.
    • Outlaw
      • New Talent: Precision Shot – Increases the range of Between the Eyes and Pistol Shot by 10 yards, and Pistol Shot reduces damage you take from the target by 5%.
      • Killing Spree base delay (before Haste) between strikes reduced to 0.3 seconds per combo point (was 0.4 seconds).
    • Subtlety
      • New Talent: Terrifying Pace – Gain 30% increased movement speed for 3 seconds when Shuriken Storm strikes 3 or more targets.
      • New Talent: Exhilarating Execution – Finishing moves heal you for 3% of damage done. Overhealing is converted to shielding, absorbing up to 10% of your maximum health.
      • Shadow Techniques’ Energy generated increased to 4 (was 3)
      • Shadow Techniques tooltip has been updated, no functional changes.
      • Shadowcraft now allows finishing moves to use Shadow Technique stacks only when it will refresh combo points to full.
      • Shadowcraft’s tooltip has been updated, no functional changes.
      • Ephemeral Bond’s bonus for healing received reduced to 8% (was 12%).