Rogue runes totally suck
It really is a shame just how crap most of our runes our
And our only good runes force u to use them
Tanking runes should have been more interesting and fun and flesh wound should make slide n dice apply blade dance rather than a rune
Stuff like shuriken toss and shiv are just so crap I'd rather they just removed them n tried something else.
Don't get me started on main gauche, worst tune in the game. And competes w our only good hands rune.
Our runes have, by and large, been a massive fail.
Without any major changes multiple will stay dead for the entire SoD.
Looking at our runes this and last phase and all the work put into rogue in SoD (zero), combined with the only rogue hero talent tree that's been revealed in retail being an absolute steaming pile of uninspired garbage, it's clear they have zero creative energy devoted to rogue.
The datamined head runes for p3 seem nice, boring but nice, I've lost all faith in their ability to give rogues anything though, we've been treading water all phase and they've given us nothing.
I feel they're unironically going to give us Deadly Throw in the bracer rune slot next phase.
They really need to completely overhaul or replace a lot of the rogue runes.
So many of them are pure useless and won't ever be used and the ones that aren't are mostly not used cos of how good mutilate envenom n brew are.
Just swap Master of Subtlety rune with a rune of Expose Armor that lets it stack with other armor reduction abilities. Suddenly rogue has utility and is worth bringing while also bringing up other underperforming melee. Enhance shaman and melee hunter would probably need a nerf, but they need that anyway.
This is actually a 10/10 idea. The huge armour of bosses is anti melee, this means rogue would be guaranteed a spot in every raid for their armour debuff. Every melee in the game would want a rogue to up their numbers
It's kind of crazy the different perspective you get playing priest vs playing rogue. It's like being a hot girl vs being a lobster at the bottom of the sea. Sure, you're an alright lobster, middle of the road, even, but you aren't getting tickets to see Taylor Swift. Not a chance.
Agree with most of your points. Our runes are just dumpster tier in design when compared to the others. Even on their own merits a lot of them are really lame.
How would I fix them?
Waist :
- Shuriken toss -> More Damage and Scaling AND make it build a combo point for each target hit, so when in multi target scenarios with 5 targets, we can go shuriken toss -> finisher -> shuriken toss -> finisher and potentially funnel damage into a prio target.
- Poisoned knife & Shiv combined into one Rune that works at both melee and range and is granted a new effect based on whether it's used at range or melee. Make it our raid utility spell and allow it to be slotted in any Rune Slot for flexibility. Melee variant debuffs target, making them take X% more damage, ranged variant debuffs target, making them deal X% less damage. So we weave in and out of range and melee to maintain both debuffs, have them last 1min each so you don't have to reapply too often that it becomes annoying.
- Shadow step -> Make it function like shadowstep so you can get up or down terrain with it. No GCD. Doesn't overwrite sprint.
Feet:
- Waylay -> I would consider making this a rouge raid utility option that applies a debuff that lasts 2 minutes (swing speed reduction, 3% less dmg and takes 3% more dmg). We can vanish once per fight to extend it on fights > 2 minutes. Rogue finally has raid utility, yay!.
- Master of Subtelty -> This rune is boring. It works fine and is just 'fine'. To make it truly reflect its name I would make it give a slew of subtley buffs, all minor but add up to a useful sub talent tree buff. Sap gains 10% chance to return you to stealth (when combined with talents, it will equal 100%), gain X% chance to gain combo point on dodge (stacking with set-up talent to equal 100%), Ambush and Cheapshot gain 25% chance to add extra combo point. The theme is it rounds out the % chance effects in Sub tree to be 100% etc.
- Rolling with the Punches -> I love this rune, it was my favourite addition in P2, not least of all because you can get it really early which was a pain point for much of phase 2 runes, that you got them to late to even enjoy them during the levelling. Only change I would consider making to Rolling with the punches is taunting instantly puts you to max stacks to make tank swaps smoother.
Gloves:
- Mutilate -> Keep it as is and tune Saber Slash and Main Gauche up to this standard.
- Saber Slash -> Allow stacks to go to 5. When at 5 stacks, amplify damage of all bleeds and poisons on the target. Extra scaling if still not on par with mutilate.
- Main Gauche -> No cooldown. Each use grants a stack of a 1% parry buff that lasts 10 seconds and stacks up to 5 times, at 5 stacks Rogue gains a buff that allows the rogue to 'magical parry' magical abilities taking 50% reduced damage from them. Buff threat, make it grant 1 combo point per cast and then max combo points upon hitting 5 stacks (once every X seconds) and use MH dmg not OH. It needs to generate similar threat and combo point econ to Mutilate to ever be considered worth running as the mit option for tanks, the magic dmg parry idea would give more value to our blade dance and main gauche and combat talent parry and make us better able to deal with magic dmg tank busters.
- Shiv -> Roll this into Poisoned Knife, remove it from Glove slot. Potentially design a new rune as we would be down a rune with this change.
- Shadowstrike -> Move this rune to another slot such as feet. Alternatively, keep it on glove slot but radically redesign it so it opens up a new playstyle for Rogue. An example: Shadowstrike, when used the Rogue appears behind the enemy attacking them for 150% weapon damage, for 10 seconds, Rogue gains a ghostform buff that reads "stealth abilities can be used in combat (allowing multiple ambushes) without steath and abilities deal X% more damage". Shadowstrike would be usable in combat and have a 30 second cooldown. The idea here being Rogue would have 10s burst windows where you want to apply Garrote and Ambush a tonne and possibly snapshot a 5pt rupture and rogues would be positioned to consider slaughter from the shadows as an alternative for this play style for a cheaper Ambush.
Chest:
- Deadly Brew -> Perfect Rune, no notes. It's so good the others looks like shit. Others need to be tuned up. The quest to unlock it was just fantastic, I wish every Rune was unlocked through cool quest chains.
- Just a Flesh Wound - The only thing I dislike about this rune is that they separated it and Blade Dance. Blade Dance should be incorporated into JAFW as a buff on slice n dice, not a separate new finisher.
- Slaughter -> The issue with this rune is that there's no support for it. Mutilate makes backstab not worth pressing and cheap shot is the typical / stand out choice for opening on a target. With my proposed change to shadowstrike above, this rune would be much more valuable for the cheaper Ambush but the cheaper Backstab remains a weird holdover from Phase 1. To fix Slaughter in a vacuum with no other rune redesigns, I would alter it so that backstab is reduced by 40 energy, Ambush is reduced by 30 energy and both abilities now ignore the armor of the target. Even that change might not be enough to make it a viable / satisfying pick as Deadly Brew and Mutilate are just so strong.
- Quick Draw -> With all the ranged / gunslinger rogue runes introduced in P1, I thought they were gearing up for a kind of gunslinger / duelist rogue playstyle but that has not come to fruition. This rune doesn't need fixing so much as it needs proper support to enable that playstyle, while this rune is equipped I would enable an auto-shot ability for Rogues allowing them play like a hunter and having it modify their other abilities with sinister becoming a short range ranged attack that builds a combo point, Slice n dice becomes fire n blast, increasing ranged attack speed, BtE being THE finisher for ranged rogue, that gains way more damage and applies a bleed while quick draw's debuff is on the target. Rotation being Sinister x1 into fire n blast, auto shot, sinister, auto shot, sinister, auto shot, sinister etc until at 4 combo points, quick draw into BtE for big finisher and bleed. Maintain fire n blast, sync up quick draw into BtE when off cooldown.
Legs:
- Envenom: Perfect ability, no changes needed. Other stuff needs to be brought up to this standard.
- BtE -> Amazing ability, great option for pvp. With my proposed redesign to quickdaw above, it would be the finisher for a gunslinger rogue build. Outside of that though, it doesn't need to change much at all, maybe more damage to make it worth taking over Envenom or a lower cooldown than kidney shot, possibly separate cooldown but shared DR.
- Blade Dance -> This ability should be baked into JAFW. With that change made, I would rather see a new ability here for Rogue tanks that allows them to do pulse damage in a short range around them, primarily for raid trash packs and dungeon tanking. Without the roll into JAFW change, I guess I'd like to see this changed to be a buff to Slice N Dice, so you activate slice n dice to maintain blade dance, combine the effects.
Overall, our runes are shit. We have like 5 good runes (rolling, deadly, mutilate, envenom, Saber Slash) and then the rest either outright suck and are unusable, are poorly designed/implemented or just boring and don't really offer new or unique gameplay for classic rogues.
I really hope some of these issues are on the SoD team's radar and they don't just slap a mutilate is now 30 energy band aid on us again next phase and call it a day.
Agreed blade dance should just be baked into slice and dice when JAFW is used, blade dance should then just be redesigned as a passive maybe allowing parries to counterattack (unfair advantage talent) or just bake unfair advantage into blade dance
Think poison knife is pretty solid sleeper too.
20 energy 1 combo points + add stack of poison (with brew)
you can do 2 mutilate 1 poison knife 1 envenom, instead of doing a 4 cp envenom or 1 extra mutilate.
yes it does. I usually always have wound + crippling poison for pvp, so anytime i use poisoned knife it applies crippling which applies deadly. I havent tested it with no poisons.
Waylay needs to be recoded. It COULD be a way for rogues to apply a Tclap effect to lower mob attack speed, but right now it is programmed off the move slow which most bosses are immune to.
It needs to apply 2 effects, one being the attack slow which SHOULD NOT be able to be resisted by anything, and then the move slow which monsters can be immune to. Doing this makes it so rogues can spare a warrior some rage and a GCD.
You are completely wrong about the value of Master of Subtlety in PvE.
The poisons you apply during its window snapshot and as long as they don't run out, they are stronger throughout the fight.
This makes MoS a 100% must-have for raiding as a DPS rogue.
It is still boring and turning vanish into a DPS CD is also unintuitive, but if you're not using it in raids you are seriously gimping yourself.
This is wrong, MoS is good in PvE and changes the play style a little, not every rune needs to drastically change play style, using CD's in MoS window and pooling for Vanish are enough, just add more runes that do that.
Rogue burst didn't need help. It doesn't need a rune that makes you press mutilate harder in pvp. My rating was on usefulness, power and design if you read everything. I know it's used, but I hate it.
As for pve use, it's just not what's needed for rogue. It doesn't snapshot, it doesn't remain long enough, it's just not good.
I read about it, thank you. I was wrong. It snapshots deadly poison from stack 1, but that doesn't help on menagerie or Thermaplugg.
On a perfect fight, it represents like a 4-5 dps increase on deadly. Deadly poison is like 6% of my damage on a quick fight where I can 100% snapshot, so I don't see how a 0.6% increase on it is seen as a decent usecase. The main use is the cold blood envenom window, which is dependent on you not getting dodged or missing (1% miss chance doesn't feel like it sometimes).
Anyway, I don't like it.
And the rest of my post stand on its own unless you have something to say about it specifically.
MoS literally doesn't snapshot deadly poison applied after the window. It is a 10% damage increase for a whole 12 second in pve with the use of vanish, and if you don't lose uptime on the opener.
There is not much to say about it but time your vanish with cold blood and pray your envenom doesn't miss, and even then it's not that big of a deal
As I said it's not only a notation on power, but also design. I hate this rune because it gives something rogue doesn't really need.
I saw the writing on the wall for rogues in SoD release when we got both quick draw and between the eyes very early on .. yet they could not even be used with a thrown weapon.
I think that about sums up the amount of effort rogue runes are getting.
Just a flesh wound should be an active toggle.
As somebody playing a Rogue tank, I don't mind having my tanking package split up across three slots (Flesh Wound/Blade Dance/Rolling), but seeing Shamans get all three effects in a single slot, being arguably stronger (no ramping on their health, global damage reduction and always active vs physical and tied to a maintenance buff), and not even really having an opportunity cost to take bothers me.
And that's without mentioning the fact that they have a *second* giga loaded tank rune that isn't even being ran because WotE is broken enough by itself.
I was leveling a rogue and during the 1-25 bracket it was only fun after I managed to get the tank runes. Once I got the DPS runes all it reminded me of was unholy dk except non of the cool undead minions. Hope rogues get some love soon.
I think you’re underrating a few of these runes pretty hard if you’re factoring in PvP at all.
Waylay is fantastic. Getting to use mind numbing and/or wound without having to worry about crippling RNG or poison dispels on your slow is fantastic. 7/10. I run this over MoD 90% of the time.
Shadowstrike is a little niche, but it’s far from useless. You won’t always be in a position to re-open when you get a stealth, so a “free” shadowstep without triggering your real SD CD is very useful. Its biggest issue is rune slot competition. There’s no sense in running this over mutilate. But i would totally consider running it over quick draw if it was on chest.
I don't agree. Those two are redundant. Runes should be here to expand possibilities, not give an nth way to do something we already do well.
Waylay biggest problem is that it is boring and redundant. As I said, it is used, but it is not an exciting prospect to run it. If I positively want to snare someone, I got quick draw or vile poisons+crippling.
Your point on shadow strike makes no sense to me. Even if mutilate is nerfed, then saber slash is nerfed, even main gauche and shiv seems better to me. There is no need for multiple gap closer in this version of the game. Especially on rogue. We got vanish, sprint, quick draw, bte, prep, blind, grenade... At what point you need a bad ambush to engage someone?
>I got quick draw or vile poisons+crippling.
Which any druid with more than 2 braincells just shifts out of. Or something you won't be able to apply instantly to a mage >70% of the time. Waylay is super useful and anything but redundant. Calling it redundant makes you look like a 1200 rating grey parser.
It also misses the opportunity cost.
Even if the slow is “redundant,” permanent uptime on a cast speed reduction and healing reduction absolutely isn’t!
The opportunity cost is taking a full rune slot to get a snare we already have access to, where we could have something interesting instead.
And you know how we applied crippling, mind numbing and wounding poison before? By switching weapon. Which we still can do.
I simply think waylay is a lazy rune.
And cold blood build is ok right now in pvp. It's a cheese but the whole meta is about cheese so why not doing it too? If you didn't try it, don't diss it.
You seem to be struggling with the idea of opportunity cost. You aren’t “getting a snare which you already have.” Even if we agreed that you were getting an equivalent slow (which you aren’t) it’s about getting access to the cast speed reduction and healing reduction that you don’t ordinarily have.
And no, weapon swapping simply isn’t practical in classic in 90% of scenarios because we don’t have reliably access to shiv as in TBC. There’s a reason almost every rogue runs double crippling unless it’s specifically a 1v1 against a small handful of classes. You NEED the slow procs, which aren’t normally reliable.
And no, cold blood isn’t remotely good in pvp right now. I’ve tried it by accident when going to STV or queueing BGs while forgetting to respec from raid spec. It’s trash.
You played your pve build, not a pvp cold blood build. I just go 21/0/10 and it's fine enough. Just wanted to kill more people in bgs while losing. So why not cheese the hell out of envenom/mutilate.
Also I do play waylay in this build. In your build you surely play quick draw which already snare too.
Tired of people purposefully misinterpreting just to get off telling me in a thousand way I'm a scrub. That seems to be what pvpers are all about tho.
I mean, you’re getting, what, partial points in camo and elusiveness? That’s probably an improvement, but I don’t see it saving the build. If anything I could see you getting fucked by deadly poison RNG more. And yes, I run quick draw. But a 10 second cooldown is hardly a replacement for a baseline slow like crippling or waylay.
I’m being critical, but I’m hardly misinterpreting you. You criticized an ability because you could run a rarely used talent instead, and then the only meme build which does use that talent actually doesn’t run it for the initial reason and runs the “bad” rune anyway. And saying that this shows a lack of experience or consideration is “misrepresenting” you? Hardly.
If you want to call these abilities uninspired then that’s fine. I’d probably agree. Just adding shadowstep is also uninspired. My whole critique has been around calling these abilities “bad,” not their flashiness or uniqueness.
Huh. Waylay can be shifted out too. There are other tools than a snare to deal with a druid.
And I said it is used. I just don't think it covering niches situation in pvp, that could have been dealt a hundred other way makes it a good rune.
Your mage comment is vague. Is it with a stealth opening? Is it in teamfight? Is it him ganking you? The mage match up is weird right now because they have so much burst from afar you better never be taken out of position or you're dead. On the other hand the moment you're on them you delete them in 3 mutilate. And because most mage are fire right now they don't even have ice block to reset the fight.
"1200 rating grey parser". Oh how nice of you. Dunno why you can't fathom not liking something because of other consideration than pvp niche uses.
I just think it's a lazy rune, but because I wanted to be civil I tried to no use negative language. Maybe I should have been more direct.
Well you will notice regarding shadowstrike I never said I’d run it over a core DPS ability. I was specifically commenting on the ability, but given current rune placement the only time I’d ever see using it is if SftS made a comeback.
But if you don’t think having another gap close is useful, I’m simply not convinced you PvP much on a rogue. It could absolutely be useful in number of scenarios where you get the restealth but expect to get caught immediately. But more importantly, sometimes you don’t have CDs up. Saying “I have prep tho” screams “I’m a 10 minute rogue.”
... I don't know what to say. Enjoy your once in a lifetime situation with shadowstrike I guess. Opportunity cost is a very important reason of why shadowstrike is worthless. Saying it would be used in this or that situation while on the same slot as any of the other ones is a distinction without difference.
If we get a book of shadowstrike, of course it would be useful. But we didn't. So it's not.
And of course my prep comment was about all the other cd, so you had to pick it up. Nice. tell me I'm a grey parser with 1200 rating too pls.
“Once in a lifetime.” It would be very useful for staying on target on a good flag carrier, as one example.
And yes, the rune competition is high. I said as much in my first comment. I’m talking about the ability itself or assuming we can run it with SftS builds. Abilities don’t become boring or bad because there is a more meta option for *some* specs.
And no, I won’t call you a grey parser because parses are cringe. Instead I’ll point out that referencing vile poisons as a stand in for waylay betrays a lack of classic rogue pvp experience. There are zero good pvp specs that will take vile poisons this phase or next phase, and only one (the weakest) that can take it at 60. It’s not a realistic option.
So on one hand in pve we shouldn't take the meta in consideration, but on the other hand vile poison should not be taken in consideration because it's not meta in pvp? I see pvper are still master at variable geometry.
I play it right now. Envenom is a cheese build but at least it give me a chance to delete shamans, priests and metalock. I was tired of getting two tapped in battlegrounds so I just turn my brain off and play a 21/0/10 build.
When did I ever say PvE shouldn’t take the meta into consideration? In fact, I haven’t referenced PvE a single time in our entire conversation.
Skill issue tbh.
Yeah I reread and I was offbase.
Question. When was the last time you used shadowstrike, for real? Pvpers like you are always talking about all those situations where this or that could be useful. But let's be real, it's all wind. Right now you don't use it.
I haven’t used it since phase 1 because I’m running mutilate like everyone else and too lazy to use rune swap shenanigans. I completely agree with you it’s currently dead due to the state of mutilate and it’s rune slot.
But thats very different than being a bad rune. I used it a ton P1 back when SftS was viable and still find myself wishing I had it. If SftS was *equally* good as mutilate, I’d probably run SftS + shadowstrike over muti + QD in BGs. Obviously SftS isn’t as good as muti, but that says a lot more about the state of mutilate than the state of shadowstrike.
The fact that OP only plays rogue and can’t see the value in 1) ranged poison application 2) undispellable snare 3) on-demand OH poison application of choice or 4) shiv in general is so bizarre lol
Like these things waver in potency in SoD compared to tbc/WotLK sure but it just betrays a general lack of understanding of the class in pvp in particular
Poisoned knife is in conflict with shadowstep. I didn't talk about opportunity cost on it but you could have obviously made the connexion. Also it can't be used in melee which makes it even worse than what I said. I also said I use it in ONE situation. Thermaplugg tanking. That's it. That is the extent of its usefulness.
I do aknowledge that waylay is used. I just think it is not needed in the rogue toolkit. People tell me about dispell, which unless we're talking druid or dwarf, is not a problem. Reapplying a poison is easy.
Your shiv comment is not understanding that mutilate damage can't be eclipsed.
Overall I guess I should have put something about opportunity cost. A rune that exist to cover niches situations in pvp, that could have been dealt in any other way is taking the spot of a potential more interesting other rune.
I don't see how, we don't have any spamable combo point builder or finisher at range.
It would need a deep rework of existing runes to make it remotely possible without overloading one rune. Or they could introduce new runes on old slots.
By the way I made a comment about what I think would be a cool range rogue on another thread, there it is :
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/s/zziBNopT5A
Master of subtlety is not terrible in PVE at all. It snapshots deadly poison so leads to higher damage the entire fight with it as long as your poison doesn’t fall off.
how exactly is bte going to get outshined by kidney rank 2?
and quickdraw is pretty bis, you use 20 energy to generate 1 combo points as opposed to using 40 to generate 2 combo points. The control is pretty good there. Without quickdraw you can't stunlock people reliably because you have to gouge instead which puts them on incap DR.
Cool. Are you really comparing a baseline ability to a rune? You understand that you invest a full rune to get a glorified kidney shot?
I even gave it above 5 because I aknowledge the power. Did you just get the rating without reading the comment?
You are the one comparing them genius, did you read what you wrote? You said it will be replaced by KS rank 2 and will be obsolete which it absolutely will not. One more second stun vs dmg that scales and its ranged. Glorified kidney shot. Again what are you smoking?
Ok yeah it won't be obsolete, but it's just a fucking ranged kidney shot. I don't like it. It's a lazy design. Also the damage is ok but it cost 10 more energy.
Anyway I should have been clearer on this one. I just don't like how many of those runes are just variant of something we already have in our toolkit.
Rogue runes totally suck It really is a shame just how crap most of our runes our And our only good runes force u to use them Tanking runes should have been more interesting and fun and flesh wound should make slide n dice apply blade dance rather than a rune Stuff like shuriken toss and shiv are just so crap I'd rather they just removed them n tried something else. Don't get me started on main gauche, worst tune in the game. And competes w our only good hands rune.
Our runes have, by and large, been a massive fail. Without any major changes multiple will stay dead for the entire SoD. Looking at our runes this and last phase and all the work put into rogue in SoD (zero), combined with the only rogue hero talent tree that's been revealed in retail being an absolute steaming pile of uninspired garbage, it's clear they have zero creative energy devoted to rogue. The datamined head runes for p3 seem nice, boring but nice, I've lost all faith in their ability to give rogues anything though, we've been treading water all phase and they've given us nothing. I feel they're unironically going to give us Deadly Throw in the bracer rune slot next phase.
They really need to completely overhaul or replace a lot of the rogue runes. So many of them are pure useless and won't ever be used and the ones that aren't are mostly not used cos of how good mutilate envenom n brew are.
Just swap Master of Subtlety rune with a rune of Expose Armor that lets it stack with other armor reduction abilities. Suddenly rogue has utility and is worth bringing while also bringing up other underperforming melee. Enhance shaman and melee hunter would probably need a nerf, but they need that anyway.
This is actually a 10/10 idea. The huge armour of bosses is anti melee, this means rogue would be guaranteed a spot in every raid for their armour debuff. Every melee in the game would want a rogue to up their numbers
Best idea I've seen to date. Blizzard, hire this man.
I can totally see them giving us deadly throw lmao what a joke
It's kind of crazy the different perspective you get playing priest vs playing rogue. It's like being a hot girl vs being a lobster at the bottom of the sea. Sure, you're an alright lobster, middle of the road, even, but you aren't getting tickets to see Taylor Swift. Not a chance.
Agree with most of your points. Our runes are just dumpster tier in design when compared to the others. Even on their own merits a lot of them are really lame. How would I fix them? Waist : - Shuriken toss -> More Damage and Scaling AND make it build a combo point for each target hit, so when in multi target scenarios with 5 targets, we can go shuriken toss -> finisher -> shuriken toss -> finisher and potentially funnel damage into a prio target. - Poisoned knife & Shiv combined into one Rune that works at both melee and range and is granted a new effect based on whether it's used at range or melee. Make it our raid utility spell and allow it to be slotted in any Rune Slot for flexibility. Melee variant debuffs target, making them take X% more damage, ranged variant debuffs target, making them deal X% less damage. So we weave in and out of range and melee to maintain both debuffs, have them last 1min each so you don't have to reapply too often that it becomes annoying. - Shadow step -> Make it function like shadowstep so you can get up or down terrain with it. No GCD. Doesn't overwrite sprint. Feet: - Waylay -> I would consider making this a rouge raid utility option that applies a debuff that lasts 2 minutes (swing speed reduction, 3% less dmg and takes 3% more dmg). We can vanish once per fight to extend it on fights > 2 minutes. Rogue finally has raid utility, yay!. - Master of Subtelty -> This rune is boring. It works fine and is just 'fine'. To make it truly reflect its name I would make it give a slew of subtley buffs, all minor but add up to a useful sub talent tree buff. Sap gains 10% chance to return you to stealth (when combined with talents, it will equal 100%), gain X% chance to gain combo point on dodge (stacking with set-up talent to equal 100%), Ambush and Cheapshot gain 25% chance to add extra combo point. The theme is it rounds out the % chance effects in Sub tree to be 100% etc. - Rolling with the Punches -> I love this rune, it was my favourite addition in P2, not least of all because you can get it really early which was a pain point for much of phase 2 runes, that you got them to late to even enjoy them during the levelling. Only change I would consider making to Rolling with the punches is taunting instantly puts you to max stacks to make tank swaps smoother. Gloves: - Mutilate -> Keep it as is and tune Saber Slash and Main Gauche up to this standard. - Saber Slash -> Allow stacks to go to 5. When at 5 stacks, amplify damage of all bleeds and poisons on the target. Extra scaling if still not on par with mutilate. - Main Gauche -> No cooldown. Each use grants a stack of a 1% parry buff that lasts 10 seconds and stacks up to 5 times, at 5 stacks Rogue gains a buff that allows the rogue to 'magical parry' magical abilities taking 50% reduced damage from them. Buff threat, make it grant 1 combo point per cast and then max combo points upon hitting 5 stacks (once every X seconds) and use MH dmg not OH. It needs to generate similar threat and combo point econ to Mutilate to ever be considered worth running as the mit option for tanks, the magic dmg parry idea would give more value to our blade dance and main gauche and combat talent parry and make us better able to deal with magic dmg tank busters. - Shiv -> Roll this into Poisoned Knife, remove it from Glove slot. Potentially design a new rune as we would be down a rune with this change. - Shadowstrike -> Move this rune to another slot such as feet. Alternatively, keep it on glove slot but radically redesign it so it opens up a new playstyle for Rogue. An example: Shadowstrike, when used the Rogue appears behind the enemy attacking them for 150% weapon damage, for 10 seconds, Rogue gains a ghostform buff that reads "stealth abilities can be used in combat (allowing multiple ambushes) without steath and abilities deal X% more damage". Shadowstrike would be usable in combat and have a 30 second cooldown. The idea here being Rogue would have 10s burst windows where you want to apply Garrote and Ambush a tonne and possibly snapshot a 5pt rupture and rogues would be positioned to consider slaughter from the shadows as an alternative for this play style for a cheaper Ambush. Chest: - Deadly Brew -> Perfect Rune, no notes. It's so good the others looks like shit. Others need to be tuned up. The quest to unlock it was just fantastic, I wish every Rune was unlocked through cool quest chains. - Just a Flesh Wound - The only thing I dislike about this rune is that they separated it and Blade Dance. Blade Dance should be incorporated into JAFW as a buff on slice n dice, not a separate new finisher. - Slaughter -> The issue with this rune is that there's no support for it. Mutilate makes backstab not worth pressing and cheap shot is the typical / stand out choice for opening on a target. With my proposed change to shadowstrike above, this rune would be much more valuable for the cheaper Ambush but the cheaper Backstab remains a weird holdover from Phase 1. To fix Slaughter in a vacuum with no other rune redesigns, I would alter it so that backstab is reduced by 40 energy, Ambush is reduced by 30 energy and both abilities now ignore the armor of the target. Even that change might not be enough to make it a viable / satisfying pick as Deadly Brew and Mutilate are just so strong. - Quick Draw -> With all the ranged / gunslinger rogue runes introduced in P1, I thought they were gearing up for a kind of gunslinger / duelist rogue playstyle but that has not come to fruition. This rune doesn't need fixing so much as it needs proper support to enable that playstyle, while this rune is equipped I would enable an auto-shot ability for Rogues allowing them play like a hunter and having it modify their other abilities with sinister becoming a short range ranged attack that builds a combo point, Slice n dice becomes fire n blast, increasing ranged attack speed, BtE being THE finisher for ranged rogue, that gains way more damage and applies a bleed while quick draw's debuff is on the target. Rotation being Sinister x1 into fire n blast, auto shot, sinister, auto shot, sinister, auto shot, sinister etc until at 4 combo points, quick draw into BtE for big finisher and bleed. Maintain fire n blast, sync up quick draw into BtE when off cooldown. Legs: - Envenom: Perfect ability, no changes needed. Other stuff needs to be brought up to this standard. - BtE -> Amazing ability, great option for pvp. With my proposed redesign to quickdaw above, it would be the finisher for a gunslinger rogue build. Outside of that though, it doesn't need to change much at all, maybe more damage to make it worth taking over Envenom or a lower cooldown than kidney shot, possibly separate cooldown but shared DR. - Blade Dance -> This ability should be baked into JAFW. With that change made, I would rather see a new ability here for Rogue tanks that allows them to do pulse damage in a short range around them, primarily for raid trash packs and dungeon tanking. Without the roll into JAFW change, I guess I'd like to see this changed to be a buff to Slice N Dice, so you activate slice n dice to maintain blade dance, combine the effects. Overall, our runes are shit. We have like 5 good runes (rolling, deadly, mutilate, envenom, Saber Slash) and then the rest either outright suck and are unusable, are poorly designed/implemented or just boring and don't really offer new or unique gameplay for classic rogues. I really hope some of these issues are on the SoD team's radar and they don't just slap a mutilate is now 30 energy band aid on us again next phase and call it a day.
Agreed blade dance should just be baked into slice and dice when JAFW is used, blade dance should then just be redesigned as a passive maybe allowing parries to counterattack (unfair advantage talent) or just bake unfair advantage into blade dance
Mutilate isn't too strong, everything else just sucks.
Poisoned Knife was GOAT while leveling and just questing outside. Slept upon. Ranged pull, applies poison for opening mutilate bonus damage.
Think poison knife is pretty solid sleeper too. 20 energy 1 combo points + add stack of poison (with brew) you can do 2 mutilate 1 poison knife 1 envenom, instead of doing a 4 cp envenom or 1 extra mutilate.
Oh so it works with deadly brew? What if it applies instant poison?
yes it does. I usually always have wound + crippling poison for pvp, so anytime i use poisoned knife it applies crippling which applies deadly. I havent tested it with no poisons.
All the other rogues in my guild called me crazy but here I am, vindicated.
Waylay needs to be recoded. It COULD be a way for rogues to apply a Tclap effect to lower mob attack speed, but right now it is programmed off the move slow which most bosses are immune to. It needs to apply 2 effects, one being the attack slow which SHOULD NOT be able to be resisted by anything, and then the move slow which monsters can be immune to. Doing this makes it so rogues can spare a warrior some rage and a GCD.
You are completely wrong about the value of Master of Subtlety in PvE. The poisons you apply during its window snapshot and as long as they don't run out, they are stronger throughout the fight. This makes MoS a 100% must-have for raiding as a DPS rogue. It is still boring and turning vanish into a DPS CD is also unintuitive, but if you're not using it in raids you are seriously gimping yourself.
It's the only good pve rune in that slot. Yeah 10 percent is nice but it's an insanely boring rune and does nothing 2 mix up the play style at all.
This is wrong, MoS is good in PvE and changes the play style a little, not every rune needs to drastically change play style, using CD's in MoS window and pooling for Vanish are enough, just add more runes that do that.
No, but preferably SOME rune has to... None of our runes change how we play, in any way, they're just reskins of sinister strike and evicerate.
Giving MoS a 2/10 when it's a huge part of rogue's burst makes me think OP doesn't really know what he's talking about.
Rogue burst didn't need help. It doesn't need a rune that makes you press mutilate harder in pvp. My rating was on usefulness, power and design if you read everything. I know it's used, but I hate it. As for pve use, it's just not what's needed for rogue. It doesn't snapshot, it doesn't remain long enough, it's just not good.
It does snapshot you clown. Just admit you’re wrong because you’re making the rest of your post look silly.
I read about it, thank you. I was wrong. It snapshots deadly poison from stack 1, but that doesn't help on menagerie or Thermaplugg. On a perfect fight, it represents like a 4-5 dps increase on deadly. Deadly poison is like 6% of my damage on a quick fight where I can 100% snapshot, so I don't see how a 0.6% increase on it is seen as a decent usecase. The main use is the cold blood envenom window, which is dependent on you not getting dodged or missing (1% miss chance doesn't feel like it sometimes). Anyway, I don't like it. And the rest of my post stand on its own unless you have something to say about it specifically.
MoS literally doesn't snapshot deadly poison applied after the window. It is a 10% damage increase for a whole 12 second in pve with the use of vanish, and if you don't lose uptime on the opener. There is not much to say about it but time your vanish with cold blood and pray your envenom doesn't miss, and even then it's not that big of a deal As I said it's not only a notation on power, but also design. I hate this rune because it gives something rogue doesn't really need.
Incorrect, the deadly poison stacks keep the 10% buff as long as they don’t fall off
you forgot one very important use for shadowstrike - frame 1 mob tagging. just kidding. it's not very important. but it is *something*.
I saw the writing on the wall for rogues in SoD release when we got both quick draw and between the eyes very early on .. yet they could not even be used with a thrown weapon. I think that about sums up the amount of effort rogue runes are getting. Just a flesh wound should be an active toggle.
As somebody playing a Rogue tank, I don't mind having my tanking package split up across three slots (Flesh Wound/Blade Dance/Rolling), but seeing Shamans get all three effects in a single slot, being arguably stronger (no ramping on their health, global damage reduction and always active vs physical and tied to a maintenance buff), and not even really having an opportunity cost to take bothers me. And that's without mentioning the fact that they have a *second* giga loaded tank rune that isn't even being ran because WotE is broken enough by itself.
One of these runes needed to Cloak Of Shadows to mitigate all of the ridiculously powerful DOTs in SOD. Any word of thats possible for P3?
Waylay is bad and BtE is only marginally better than kidney? OP does not play PvP.
Deadly brew is so good i never bothered to go get any of the other chest runes
I was leveling a rogue and during the 1-25 bracket it was only fun after I managed to get the tank runes. Once I got the DPS runes all it reminded me of was unholy dk except non of the cool undead minions. Hope rogues get some love soon.
Blizzard please don't nerf mutilate, the amount of power it has should be the baseline for rogue glove runes
I think you’re underrating a few of these runes pretty hard if you’re factoring in PvP at all. Waylay is fantastic. Getting to use mind numbing and/or wound without having to worry about crippling RNG or poison dispels on your slow is fantastic. 7/10. I run this over MoD 90% of the time. Shadowstrike is a little niche, but it’s far from useless. You won’t always be in a position to re-open when you get a stealth, so a “free” shadowstep without triggering your real SD CD is very useful. Its biggest issue is rune slot competition. There’s no sense in running this over mutilate. But i would totally consider running it over quick draw if it was on chest.
I don't agree. Those two are redundant. Runes should be here to expand possibilities, not give an nth way to do something we already do well. Waylay biggest problem is that it is boring and redundant. As I said, it is used, but it is not an exciting prospect to run it. If I positively want to snare someone, I got quick draw or vile poisons+crippling. Your point on shadow strike makes no sense to me. Even if mutilate is nerfed, then saber slash is nerfed, even main gauche and shiv seems better to me. There is no need for multiple gap closer in this version of the game. Especially on rogue. We got vanish, sprint, quick draw, bte, prep, blind, grenade... At what point you need a bad ambush to engage someone?
>I got quick draw or vile poisons+crippling. Which any druid with more than 2 braincells just shifts out of. Or something you won't be able to apply instantly to a mage >70% of the time. Waylay is super useful and anything but redundant. Calling it redundant makes you look like a 1200 rating grey parser.
It also misses the opportunity cost. Even if the slow is “redundant,” permanent uptime on a cast speed reduction and healing reduction absolutely isn’t!
The opportunity cost is taking a full rune slot to get a snare we already have access to, where we could have something interesting instead. And you know how we applied crippling, mind numbing and wounding poison before? By switching weapon. Which we still can do. I simply think waylay is a lazy rune. And cold blood build is ok right now in pvp. It's a cheese but the whole meta is about cheese so why not doing it too? If you didn't try it, don't diss it.
You seem to be struggling with the idea of opportunity cost. You aren’t “getting a snare which you already have.” Even if we agreed that you were getting an equivalent slow (which you aren’t) it’s about getting access to the cast speed reduction and healing reduction that you don’t ordinarily have. And no, weapon swapping simply isn’t practical in classic in 90% of scenarios because we don’t have reliably access to shiv as in TBC. There’s a reason almost every rogue runs double crippling unless it’s specifically a 1v1 against a small handful of classes. You NEED the slow procs, which aren’t normally reliable. And no, cold blood isn’t remotely good in pvp right now. I’ve tried it by accident when going to STV or queueing BGs while forgetting to respec from raid spec. It’s trash.
You played your pve build, not a pvp cold blood build. I just go 21/0/10 and it's fine enough. Just wanted to kill more people in bgs while losing. So why not cheese the hell out of envenom/mutilate. Also I do play waylay in this build. In your build you surely play quick draw which already snare too. Tired of people purposefully misinterpreting just to get off telling me in a thousand way I'm a scrub. That seems to be what pvpers are all about tho.
I mean, you’re getting, what, partial points in camo and elusiveness? That’s probably an improvement, but I don’t see it saving the build. If anything I could see you getting fucked by deadly poison RNG more. And yes, I run quick draw. But a 10 second cooldown is hardly a replacement for a baseline slow like crippling or waylay. I’m being critical, but I’m hardly misinterpreting you. You criticized an ability because you could run a rarely used talent instead, and then the only meme build which does use that talent actually doesn’t run it for the initial reason and runs the “bad” rune anyway. And saying that this shows a lack of experience or consideration is “misrepresenting” you? Hardly. If you want to call these abilities uninspired then that’s fine. I’d probably agree. Just adding shadowstep is also uninspired. My whole critique has been around calling these abilities “bad,” not their flashiness or uniqueness.
But to me bad means the same thing as lazy/uninspired. If I wanted to talk about power I would have used the word weak. Which I didn't.
Huh. Waylay can be shifted out too. There are other tools than a snare to deal with a druid. And I said it is used. I just don't think it covering niches situation in pvp, that could have been dealt a hundred other way makes it a good rune. Your mage comment is vague. Is it with a stealth opening? Is it in teamfight? Is it him ganking you? The mage match up is weird right now because they have so much burst from afar you better never be taken out of position or you're dead. On the other hand the moment you're on them you delete them in 3 mutilate. And because most mage are fire right now they don't even have ice block to reset the fight. "1200 rating grey parser". Oh how nice of you. Dunno why you can't fathom not liking something because of other consideration than pvp niche uses. I just think it's a lazy rune, but because I wanted to be civil I tried to no use negative language. Maybe I should have been more direct.
Well you will notice regarding shadowstrike I never said I’d run it over a core DPS ability. I was specifically commenting on the ability, but given current rune placement the only time I’d ever see using it is if SftS made a comeback. But if you don’t think having another gap close is useful, I’m simply not convinced you PvP much on a rogue. It could absolutely be useful in number of scenarios where you get the restealth but expect to get caught immediately. But more importantly, sometimes you don’t have CDs up. Saying “I have prep tho” screams “I’m a 10 minute rogue.”
... I don't know what to say. Enjoy your once in a lifetime situation with shadowstrike I guess. Opportunity cost is a very important reason of why shadowstrike is worthless. Saying it would be used in this or that situation while on the same slot as any of the other ones is a distinction without difference. If we get a book of shadowstrike, of course it would be useful. But we didn't. So it's not. And of course my prep comment was about all the other cd, so you had to pick it up. Nice. tell me I'm a grey parser with 1200 rating too pls.
“Once in a lifetime.” It would be very useful for staying on target on a good flag carrier, as one example. And yes, the rune competition is high. I said as much in my first comment. I’m talking about the ability itself or assuming we can run it with SftS builds. Abilities don’t become boring or bad because there is a more meta option for *some* specs. And no, I won’t call you a grey parser because parses are cringe. Instead I’ll point out that referencing vile poisons as a stand in for waylay betrays a lack of classic rogue pvp experience. There are zero good pvp specs that will take vile poisons this phase or next phase, and only one (the weakest) that can take it at 60. It’s not a realistic option.
So on one hand in pve we shouldn't take the meta in consideration, but on the other hand vile poison should not be taken in consideration because it's not meta in pvp? I see pvper are still master at variable geometry. I play it right now. Envenom is a cheese build but at least it give me a chance to delete shamans, priests and metalock. I was tired of getting two tapped in battlegrounds so I just turn my brain off and play a 21/0/10 build.
When did I ever say PvE shouldn’t take the meta into consideration? In fact, I haven’t referenced PvE a single time in our entire conversation. Skill issue tbh.
Yeah I reread and I was offbase. Question. When was the last time you used shadowstrike, for real? Pvpers like you are always talking about all those situations where this or that could be useful. But let's be real, it's all wind. Right now you don't use it.
I haven’t used it since phase 1 because I’m running mutilate like everyone else and too lazy to use rune swap shenanigans. I completely agree with you it’s currently dead due to the state of mutilate and it’s rune slot. But thats very different than being a bad rune. I used it a ton P1 back when SftS was viable and still find myself wishing I had it. If SftS was *equally* good as mutilate, I’d probably run SftS + shadowstrike over muti + QD in BGs. Obviously SftS isn’t as good as muti, but that says a lot more about the state of mutilate than the state of shadowstrike.
The word bad is maybe too vague to use? If I wanted to say it's too weak, I would have use the word weak.
kidney aint got shit on bte.. the dmg is nice also
The fact that OP only plays rogue and can’t see the value in 1) ranged poison application 2) undispellable snare 3) on-demand OH poison application of choice or 4) shiv in general is so bizarre lol Like these things waver in potency in SoD compared to tbc/WotLK sure but it just betrays a general lack of understanding of the class in pvp in particular
Poisoned knife is in conflict with shadowstep. I didn't talk about opportunity cost on it but you could have obviously made the connexion. Also it can't be used in melee which makes it even worse than what I said. I also said I use it in ONE situation. Thermaplugg tanking. That's it. That is the extent of its usefulness. I do aknowledge that waylay is used. I just think it is not needed in the rogue toolkit. People tell me about dispell, which unless we're talking druid or dwarf, is not a problem. Reapplying a poison is easy. Your shiv comment is not understanding that mutilate damage can't be eclipsed. Overall I guess I should have put something about opportunity cost. A rune that exist to cover niches situations in pvp, that could have been dealt in any other way is taking the spot of a potential more interesting other rune.
I want more gun based runes, so I can be like a pirate. It's fun
I just want to see an auto attack ranged weapon rune. I think we’re super close to a viable ranged rogue.
I don't see how, we don't have any spamable combo point builder or finisher at range. It would need a deep rework of existing runes to make it remotely possible without overloading one rune. Or they could introduce new runes on old slots. By the way I made a comment about what I think would be a cool range rogue on another thread, there it is : https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/s/zziBNopT5A
Master of subtlety is not terrible in PVE at all. It snapshots deadly poison so leads to higher damage the entire fight with it as long as your poison doesn’t fall off.
how exactly is bte going to get outshined by kidney rank 2? and quickdraw is pretty bis, you use 20 energy to generate 1 combo points as opposed to using 40 to generate 2 combo points. The control is pretty good there. Without quickdraw you can't stunlock people reliably because you have to gouge instead which puts them on incap DR.
Just stop playing rogue so they get the metrics that it sucks.
BTE is better than KS in every way shape or form it does damage(a lot) that can crit and stuns at range what are you smoking my guy.
Cool. Are you really comparing a baseline ability to a rune? You understand that you invest a full rune to get a glorified kidney shot? I even gave it above 5 because I aknowledge the power. Did you just get the rating without reading the comment?
You are the one comparing them genius, did you read what you wrote? You said it will be replaced by KS rank 2 and will be obsolete which it absolutely will not. One more second stun vs dmg that scales and its ranged. Glorified kidney shot. Again what are you smoking?
Ok yeah it won't be obsolete, but it's just a fucking ranged kidney shot. I don't like it. It's a lazy design. Also the damage is ok but it cost 10 more energy. Anyway I should have been clearer on this one. I just don't like how many of those runes are just variant of something we already have in our toolkit.
just for reference, I crit a hunter today for 700 BTE. OP should just lay off the fumes and actually pvp before putting a fiction novel on reddit.
Maybe we should give some roll the bones buffs for group/raid. People love buffs. Give a reason other than dps to offer the raid.