OctoWow - Forums

Hello!

There were some good changes to rogue in 1.18 like Blade flurry going from 20%>30% Energy regeneration, but also some very bad ones that completely erased the raid viability of the Assassination spec. Specifically the changes to poisons.

Prior to 1.18 poisons were in a great spot. In raid environments with few exceptions, Dissolvent poison was the go-to poison for Assassination and Deadly and Corrosive poisons were the go-to for Combat, and all was good. The changes to poisons in 1.18 with Corrosive and Dissolvent poisons only being effective on certain mob types brought really nothing but arbitrary tedium to playing the class. It resulted in constantly having to swap between poisons for certain mob types or bosses, and in certain circumstances (like the ghost and spider pulls in Kara10 for example) where Rogues' output would be severely limited due to having pulls with multiple mob types that do not align with poisons and having to choose to swap poisons mid fight or just do bad damage. It was very poorly received in the twow discord for the tedium of all the swapping and also the extra bag space that the poisons would take up. With all the swapping Rogues had to carry far more poisons in their bags than they normally would have and began to negatively affect overall enjoyment of playing.

Speedrunning Rogues also absolutely abhorred the change because it left them in the very un-enviable position of slowing down the raid with poison swapping when they are expected to have some of the highest uptime.

These changes also nerfed any hope of Assassination being a viable raid spec right into the ground, which to me was by far the greatest loss in the class change. Playing Assassination well in a high end raid like Aq40 or Naxx required a huge commitment from Rogues. 4pc Darkmantle was absolutely required, along with a high level of understanding of gearing, combat game mechanics and rotation execution. On top of all that, to add insult to injury, the best weapon an Assassination Rogue could get, the Ornate Bloodstone Dagger
(https://database.turtlecraft.gg/?item=65004)
was nerfed to disallow its effects to work on melee strikes and left Assassination Rogues with no viable replacement in terms of damage. Using this Dagger required gearing using spellstrike pieces that ranged from difficult to farm like the Incendosaur set, to absolutely insane to acquire like the Flamestring Bow or the neckpiece off Kazzak.
The point I'm trying to make is that it was not simply easily gainable power that just anybody could wield. You had to be a very highly committed and knowledgeable Rogue to make it work, and it was a huge stab in the back to the very small handful of Rogues that used the build.

Honestly if it's at all possible please just leave Rogues where they were prior to the most recent class changes. I'm confident that the vast majority of us would be very grateful for it.

thank you for the information, this is very great information for improving the game.

I support these notes. Rogue gearing at a high level takes serious amounts of game knowledge, a ludicrous amount of time, and lots of luck.

I think what's incredibly important to highlight here is that the changes in question aren't value based but mechanical in nature. Changing how a high level item operates, after a serious amounts of effort went into making it work.

A dagger that historically was otherwise kinda useless. Due to its cost requirements, namely, the PvP associated materials. It was a novelty item at best in most other situations and builds and something fun you could do on the side.

I think it's also important to note how many people were actually able to make this build viable. Raiding at this level there's maybe only one or two rogues per end game clearing guilds that are going to bother putting in that much effort. On Twow there were maybe 10 guilds that could clear all of Naxx, even less that could do K40 and Timbermaw Hold. That's 10-20 rogues across the entire server at any given time. Give and take some that would come and go as their availability allowed them to play.

Could the build warp a niche part of the economy, yeah maybe Could rogues dominate the DPS charts, also possible. I think the solution in those cases is to adjust game play numbers not mechanics when it comes to things like this.

One point of contention that I do have is that Darkmantle set bonuses need to be adjusted. It's really only the 4pc that needs to be addressed. But that's WHOLE other discussion.

1.3 speed daggers rogues was completly broken on Twow.
I hope we won't have it here on Octo.
Green rogue out-dps every other epic geared class was sick.
Rogue killing everyone on stunlock with poisons was just stupid.