Smoke Bomb. Cast 0.5 Duration 6 cd 21.1s Is it possible to increase the duration of the action to at least 7-8 seconds? Well, too little effect. I have people from Asia Russia and Europe in the guild, and because of the simple ping we lose 0.5-1s.Or add the characteristic Strength of control that would extend the duration.
It looks like the class is perfect and only one thing was fixed in patch. Nobody complains. Only 3 pages when other classes have 15-20. Or did people give up all hopes as a result of harsh treatment in MOD15?
Very short feedback is welcome or just agree or disagree with someone that already put comment.
I can only ADD that i Agree with the Stealth. I feel that it was our main mechanic that we could use: ATACKS that give 100% crit chance and additional bonus. Our core mechanic was also self-power-gain that was put into VOID.
The result is also visible to eye - we are getting close to lvl 80 villager class.
It's more that people have given up. HAMSTER doesn't work and damage is bad. Synergy is non-existent. The core class mechanic does nothing. The theme, feel, and fun of a roguelike class have been flayed, gutted, hanged, and burned. Experience has taught that's what it's going to be. Feedback is neither welcome nor regarded. Why bother continuing to fight a battle we've already been losing for years, and this complete rewrite, the best chance to make it better, resulted in even worse? Even if they do bother fixing magnitudes and cooldowns so we aren't relegated to villagers, without a class mechanic that does something, anything useful but preferably roguey, why play it? It'll just be a not-as-good-barbie.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
As kythelion has said, most people have given up. only I am not 100% on the damage comment as other than the pitiful at will damage my main encounters seemed okay (I have personally done very little testing though). They have already posted what their thoughts are on the class and what they view is not working and unlike the other class threads that have 15-20 pages we don't have any devs giving us any type of return feedback. it has been 19 days since anybody from Cryptic has bothered to post anything here. Why continue to post in a thread when for all intents an purposes it looks like the devs don't care what we say or are ignoring us?
The encounters are fine for solo play as long as you aren't undergeared, but honestly I had an easier time running through undermountain on my DC which I have continue to focus on. I like how it's turning out to be. Both specs were easier than rogue. My ranger, even though it's sitting in the same dark corner as rogue, will also be better once the damage table is fixed. At least its class feature still works. As for the at-wills, well, I mean I started just standing there waiting between encounters and it didn't really make a difference.
The problems here are more than just at-will or encounter damage. The class has no purpose or identity. If you want to be melee Barbie or ranger can do it better. If you want to be ranged Warlock, wizard do it WAY better. Since the only thing that differentiated rogue was stealth and that's now useless, rogue is sitting in the third row seat of the van. The paragons don't provide meaningful choice. Assassin, imo, is a clear cut choice simply because it's not as bad as wk. The feats that were split between them don't make sense and don't add up in any meaningful way to make the paragon better. It honestly just looks like the choices were made to split up the combinations we had that worked rather than in any attempt to make either paragon good. If they really hate so much what we had that worked, then they need to wipe it blank and start over. We got punished for having excellent ST and being the assassin. Repeatedly. Punished. Well, that's the role we were given. If we're not going to be that, then they need to make us into something else. Give us AoE and poison DoTs as a build or something. That's a roguey thing. Honestly, I don't even know what the solution is because it's just been repeatedly and thoroughly gutted to the point where there's nothing left except stab. Stab until stuff dies. And there are better ways to stab.
And the AP gain is abysmal. I know one poster said his was fine, but mine is so bad I soloed ESoT three times and had my daily twice by the the end of each. I guess they reached the benchmark of strategic use if the idea of strategic use is once per dungeon. Which means all those class features and weapon enchantments that proc on daily use are also once a dungeon. There's probably better gain than I'm getting somehow, but even if it's three times in a dungeon that's still a pretty sad thing when so much is gated behind daily use. What's the point of having class features at all when I literally get a few seconds of something three times in a dungeon? I wouldn't suffer at all to not have them ... because I effectively don't have them.
Post edited by kythelion#3210 on
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lordseth1985Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 319Arc User
Could you or other devs explain to us why those changes? Our class suffered a lot on past years and this so called "rework and balance" could bring us to glory alongside other dps classes.
My main class in any game I played was always rogue-like, thiefs, assassins and similars, but now you are making us abandon the rogue and change to another class without any explanation.
Avestruz.Q.T.Seduz - Rogue, natural born assassin.
This is part 1 out of a series of posts, this one is my general feedback/overview of the rogue class. The rest of the posts are right below this one:
Assassin Path General Overview:
When I tried playing assassin, I found that the playstyle plays more similarly to how PVP scoundrel plays but the flavor of the build feels more like its namesake, assassin. These 2 things go together surprisingly well and this playstyle is a result of the powers this build was assigned. As my favorite examples, the synergy dazing strike has with assassinate is really nice. Granting this build access to deft strike and making hateful knives a shared power were also good decisions.
The feats on the otherhand are a different story, most of them don't contribute much to this build's playstyle and feel unexciting. I will complement scullcracker's inclusion since it goes well with this path.
The flaws with this build are mostly general complaints all classes have right now, like feats being boring and weak, at will dps being too low, and cooldowns for powers being excessively long. However, the severity of these issues cannot be overstated. Excessively long encounter cooldowns ruin most of this build's flow and makes an otherwise fun build feel dull and disjointed in longer fights, switching powers didn't seem to help. This is compounded by the frustratingly low at will damage.
The assassin path overall is better in both PVP and PVE than whisperknife is. This is because assassin's powers are stronger than WK's powers and their feats are moderately useful for both PVE and PVP.
Whisperknife Path General Overview:
This path is underpreforming at almost everything in both PVE and PVP and is weaker than assassin is. Most of WK's powers are weaker than assassin's powers and its feat tree is next to useless in PVE content.
In order to make WK competitive with assassin, it needs the following 2 things the most: #1) Most of of its powers need to be buffed. #2) Rogue's stealth mechanic either needs to be made more relevant in PVE or WK needs another way to play besides stealthy sneaky.
The only thing WK pulls ahead of assassin on is its stealth restoring and cooldown reducing feats and powers. The feats WK has combined with its stealth oriented powers make it able to stay in stealth for prolonged periods of time. These feats are powerful in PVP but this is currently WK's only strength and this isn't enough to counterbalance the issues WK has right now in PVP or PVE.
Mod 16 WK's playstyle plays in a very similar way to oldschool permastealth sabotuer builds, who were built around remaining in stealth for as long as possible. This is very different from how sabotuers on live currently play. The sabotuer playstyle on live is more active and built around entering and exiting stealth as often as possible; it also spends more time out in the open than the revamped mod 16 WK does.
The revamped mod 16 WK is set up to be a multi target specialist, unfortunately, some of the powers and feats it got don't suit this playstyle. The aforementioned issues with WK above combined with these inconsistencies make assassin better even at clearing mobs. The one exception I know of is due to a bug, killing storm does a lot of damage when combined with razor action.Once this is patched, WK in its current state will probably lose its ability to clear mobs better than assassin can.
Stealth Mechanic:
As far as I can tell so far, the only change made to stealth was removing the 100% chance to crit. Unfortunately, this has made stealth next to useless in PVE content. Its only real uses now are a survival aid for undergeared or solo players and the extra effects it grants to your encounter powers.
The combat advantage from stealth is important in PVP but not in PVE since its very easy to get combat advantage in PVE without stealth.
Stealth needs to be updated and top priority for that should be making it more useful in PVE content.
Rogue Combat Flow/Cooldown Issues:
On preview, many encounter power cooldowns are too high and virtually everyone I've spoken to or witnessed talking about this is saying the same thing, their builds feel clunky and the combat is very dull when we have to spend 10+ seconds spamming low damage at wills and spamming our dodges constantly. The flow of rotations is bad right now too.
NW's fast paced combat system is where a massive amount of its appeal lies and straying too far from it is going to decrease the quality of this game rather than improve it.
While I understand why recovery was taken out and most AP gain sources were nerfed, mod 16 threw the baby out with the bathwater. High amounts of recovery and AP gain were what was problematic, low amounts of recovery like 4k or 6k wasn't responsible for the daily spam issues we are seeing on live. You'd probably see much better combat flow without the daily spam if our encounter power cooldowns were more similar to the ones characters with 4k or 6k recovery have on live.
Several encounter powers also need to have their cooldowns readjusted to sync up with eachother better, some encounter powers got big cooldown increases on top of recovery being removed and this is adding to the flow issues.
Update on Rogue Cooldown Issues 3/21/19:
Some rogue encounter cooldowns on preview are much better now. Assassinate and lashing blade being 2 of these encounters.
3 encounter powers still have insanely long cooldown times that aren't justified by their effects. These are impossible to catch, bait and switch, and smokebomb.
A few other encounter powers have more mild cooldown lengths but these still need tweaking or these power's effects need to be made stronger. More on that in my feedback post on powers.
At Will Damage:
At will damage gamewide is too low, if we are going to spend 10+ seconds using at wills, they need to be more than just a timewaster. The low at will damage feeds into the issue with power cooldowns being too long and also needs adjusting.
So far, duelist's flurry and cloud of steel are the best at wills on preview but still very underwhelming.
Gloaming cut has higher dps than cloud of steel but feels way worse to use, it simply doesn't have enough dps to justify its slow activation time anymore.
The whisperknife at wills and sly flourish are awful right now, their dps is the lowest out of any of them and shuriken toss's animation could really use some work.
Passives:
Right now, many formerly good passives no longer flow well with the reworked mod 16 rogue and need to be looked at. Any passive that triggers on daily use should have their triggers rethought or their uptime extended since dailies take a long time to get back now.
Post edited by trgluestickz on
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
Here is specific feedback for all rogue powers. This is part 2 out of a series of posts, the rest of the posts are right below and above this one:
Assassin At Wills:
Duelist's Flurry: This at will does the best dps out of all rogue at wills on preview. The tooltip for this at will on preview is the wrong version, its the old tooltip from mod 14. It says: "attacks from the flurry each have a chance to add a bleed effect". This at will no longer has a "chance" to add a bleed effect as of mod 15. This is still the case in mod 16. There appears to have been a minor tweak made to this at will on preview though, instead of stacking 6 bleeds per flurry you now stack 5 bleeds per flurry.
Gloaming Cut: This at will is the 3rd best rogue at will on preview. It does less dps than duelist's flurry and more damage than cloud of steel. However, this power's animation is slow and it no longer deals enough dps to justify the slow animation. It feels bad to use because of this. This power is bugged and doesn't restore any of your stealth bar upon killing a target. Its supposed to restore 20% of your stealth bar.
Whisperknife At Wills:
Disheartening Strike: This at will does garbage dps, its meant to be a ranged version of duelist's flurry but oh man does it fall short. Please buff this at will's dps a lot, it should be just as good as duelist's flurry. I like the animation this at will got on preview, its animation is slow though and in order to justify this, it needs to deal good damage.
Shuriken Toss: This at will's dps falls short of cloud of steel's damage and the 3 target thing doesn't salvage it. Its not quite as bad as disheartening strike's damage but that's not saying much. I dislike the animation for this at will, its clunky and doesn't quite look right. The slow motion animation speed makes it feel floaty and your cloak does some weird things. Update: This at will's animation has improved slightly with a recent patch, sadly it still feels floaty and off. This is due to the speed of this at will, its way too slow and would both feel better to use and look much better if it was sped up.
Shared At Wills:
Cloud of Steel: This at will is the 2nd best rogue at will, while it does do less dps than gloaming cut, its also much faster than gloaming cut and feels much better to use. Its also better than shuriken toss. Cloud of steel's animation is bugged on preview, its very spazzy looking and one of my weapons repeatedly jabs me in the rib cage.
Sly Flourish: This at will's dps is terrible, please buff.
Assassin Encounters:
Assassinate: I love this power so far. It combines the best elements of dazing strike and lashing blade into one power. It even manages to do this without discouraging me from using dazing strike or lashing blade. This power has a fast cast time like dazing strike, fast enough to successfully make use of its interrupt effect and abruptly stop incoming attacks. It also does enough damage to put a massive grin on my face XD. Currently the cooldown speed for this power is fine on preview, it was too long initially but the change to 13 -14 seconds is manageable.
Dazing Strike: This was and still is one of the most versatile encounter powers in the game. Its got a fast cast time, low cooldown, and decently strong daze. My only complaints are that its damage seems to have dropped too much on preview and it could use an extra second shaved off of its cooldown time. I suggest changing this power to a 400 magnitude with an 8 second base cooldown. Right now its a 300 magnitude and 9+ second cooldown. Also, a good idea would be to change this power's status to a shared encounter power instead of making it an assassin exclusive. Both rogue paths should have access to this power. As for which encounter power to change to assassin only, I would suggest making lashing blade an assassin exclusive.
Deft Strike: I like the damage buff this power got, it successfully made this power relevant in PVE content and it will be among the best encounter powers for PVP. My only suggestion would be to change it's stealthed effect. Currently, if you use it from stealth, it can be used to teleport to friendly targets. This is annoying far more often than it is helpful and I'm not the only player that feels this way about it.
Wicked Reminder: This power deals good damage and increases the target's damage taken by 10%, this fullfills a popular request to give this power a desirable party buff. The stealthed effect for this power needs to be replaced though, reducing enemy critical avoidance isn't appealing and tempts nobody. This power's cooldown is too long, I would suggest giving it the same cooldown speed as assassinate.
Impossible to Catch: This power is still clunky in mod 16 and its cooldown is excessively long. It also got a big nerf to its deflection chance. Please put this power on a much shorter cooldown, the increase to 20 seconds completely killed this power. My suggestion would be 14 seconds base cooldown or less. Also get rid of the 1 to 2 second animation delay, its no longer needed and makes this power clunky. Critically Important Bug: ITC currently has a very powerful bug with it that allows you to get your daily back in roughly 10 seconds. If you activate this power in combat and then dodge before it takes effect, you gain this power's action points without it going on cooldown. You can dodge repeatedly to completely fill your AP gage way faster than intended. This bug has already gotten the attention of several rogue players in PVP and is likely to see widespread abuse in mod 16. Please patch this ASAP!
Whisperknife Encounters:
Vengeance's Pursuit: This power is good in PVP but is terrible in PVE. It deals low damage and is mostly a utility power. The cooldown for it is good at least.
Impact Shot: This power needs a big damage increase in PVE, its too weak to be viable in PVE. It does good damage in PVP though. This power's cooldown is good so far.
Blitz: This power is okish but also needs its damage buffed, its cooldown is also too long for what it does. I would suggest changing this power's cooldown to 10 seconds or less. Its stealthed effect is also too weak, I would suggest changing it to a 2 second cooldown reduction when used from stealth, either that or change its stealthed effect to something else altogether. A possible alternative would be to give this power 3 charges.
Shadow Strike: This power is of little use in PVE, its good in PVP though. It could use a slight cooldown reduction but I'm not sure how to fix it beyond that.
Shadowy Disappearance: This power is bad in both PVE and PVP, the dps for it is too low to be useful and its mostly a utility power. Even if you buffed the dps for it, it still wouldn't see much use since its a clunky two step power that no PVE player is going to want to fool with. Shadowy disappearance is good for parkouring and basically nothing else. My suggestion would be to rework this power entirely or just replace it already. Both rogue paths already have multiple powers that allow them to teleport to a target such as vengeance's pursuit, hateful knives, courage breaker, lurker's assault, and deft strike.
To Be Continued...
Post edited by trgluestickz on
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
This is the other half of the post I put directly above it on specific powers feedback:
Shared Encounters:
Lashing Blade: This power is good in both PVP and PVE now. Its reasonably fast and does good damage. I would suggest changing its stealthed effect though, its unreliable and probably won't get used from stealth much in its current state. This power's cooldown is currently good on preview.
Blade Flurry: This power went from being one of the best powers on live to being one of the worst on preview. This power does garbage damage and needs to be buffed a lot.
Path of the Blade: This power has done the impossible, it somehow managed to become even more useless on preview than it is on live. It needs its damage buffed a lot. On live, the only thing this power excelled at was having the highest AP gain out of all rogue encounter powers; this is no longer the case on preview. Please consider reestablishing this power as the best for AP gain. Also, while you are at it, consider improving this power's animation and sound effect, several players I've heard mention it over the years hate it with a passion. I even heard someone compare it to Chinese water torture once. I don't "hate" its animation and sound effect but I don't like it either; it looks cheep and is a little bit irritating to listen to.
Smokebomb: This power currently has very poor rotation flow with other encounter powers used with it. This is because its cooldown got a massive increase to 20 seconds. Please drop this power's cooldown to 14 or 13 base seconds.
Bait and Switch: This power is good in PVP, especially for whisperknives now. Its garbage in PVE and probably always will be. On the downside, this power has an absurdly long cooldown of 22+ seconds, please drop this to 16 seconds base or less.
Assassin Dailies:
Shocking Execution: This power has successfully been made relevant for both PVE and PVP content. I have no complaints about this power.
Bloodbath: This power should be a shared power between both paragon paths, it doesn't make sense as an assassin exclusive. I would suggest moving lurker's assault to the assassin path instead and making whirlwind of blades a whisperknife exclusive. This power probably still isn't good in PVE. It is still good in PVP though.
Whisperknife Dailies:
Lurker's Assault: This daily power is out of place, it should be on the assassin path. Its a single target oriented power and both thematically and logically would be a better fit for assassin. Whirlwind of blades is used in place of this power for multi target fights. I would suggest moving lurker's assault to the assassin path instead and making whirlwind of blades a whisperknife exclusive. Bloodbath should be a shared daily power. Also, this power still prevents you from gaining AP from your attacks while it is active. This AP block needs to be removed now that recovery is gone and most AP gain sources are nerfed.
Killing Storm: This power shouldn't exist, its completely redundant and I'd suggest replacing it altogether before mod 16 goes live. It looks like the devs tried to create a different version of bloodbath just for WK. In a way this power's existence is actually reducing the quality of the rogue class rework since it probably meant whoever worked on the rework felt like they should separate bloodbath and this power from eachother so it wouldn't be as redundant. This is a bad priority and should be ignored in favor of moving bloodbath, lurkers assault, and whirlwind of blades into more sensible locations.
Shared Dailies:
Hateful Knives: This power is excellent now, its good in both PVP and PVE and very rewarding to use. PVEers may still dump this power in favor of shocking execution since shocking execution just barely manages to edge out its damage. In PVP, this will probably be among the best powers now and should see widespread use. The decision to make this power a shared daily seemed odd at first since has a very Whisperknife sounding name. But honestly, this was the right decision since this power suits assassin's playstyle better than the reworked WK's and WK still keeps access to it.
Courage Breaker: This power had a damage upgrade and due to its other powerful effects, will remain a strong option in PVP. In PVE it will still be lackluster compared to other dailies but this seems to have been intentional.
Whirlwind of Blades: This daily has remained the best multi target daily power in PVE and is the AOE counterpart to lurker's assault. Its damage does seem disproportionately low compared to other dailies though, its magnitude should be increased some. If courage breaker is to deal decent damage now, I see no reason why whirlwind of blades shouldn't also deal more damage.
Post edited by trgluestickz on
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
This is my in depth feedback on feats. This is part 3 out of a series of posts, the rest of the posts are right below and above this one:
Feats Feedback Overview:
When I read the blog announcement talking about the class overhauls, I read this line in the feats section: "With this change we can offer more unique choices that have a distinct impact in play instead of sprawling feat trees where the majority of the feats have no real impact on how you play your character." And I gotta say, what I'm seeing on preview seems to have done the exact opposite of making feats have "a greater impact on how we play our characters". The new mod has made it so your build/playstyle/damage is mostly determined by your powers and stats. Your feats now take a backseat. Overall, the feats are weaker, simpler, and feel less rewarding than the ones we have on live right now. The mod 16 feat rework, like most other major system reworks in mod 16, traded its heart and soul for bland simplicity.
All mod 16 rogue feats suffer from 1 or more of the 6 following issues: #1) Can't compete with the other feat options offered. #2) Has no effect on your playstyle and/or boring. #3) Is good in one gamemode but bad in the other (PVP or PVE) #4) Don't complement the path they were assigned to or don't flow well with mod 16 rogue in general. #5) Are too weak. #6) Are bugged.
Below, I have provided feedback on each feat on a case by case basis and some more general feedback on both feat trees:
Assassin Feats Feedback:
There are 4 feats I do like in assassin but all of them still suffer from issues on my list to varying degrees. My favorites are scullcracker, back alley tactics, shadow's flurry, and toxic blades. Scullcracker has the fewest issues with it and is easily the best out of the feats I like.
Assassin's feats are much better for PVE content than Whisperknife's feats are. They are mostly damage buffs and this is easily better than WK's stealth enhancing feats in a PVE setting. Namely because stealth isn't of much help in a PVE setting right now.
In PVP, Whisperknife's feats are better than Assassin's feats. Assassin's feats do provide some use in PVP but WK's stealth and cooldown reduction feats are still better here.
Assassin's Target: Assassin's target builds its stacks fast when you are using at wills so you will usually have max stacks for 1 out of every 3 encounters you cast. Its alright for bosses but kinda works against mob rotations that begin with smokebomb or other low dps encounters. This feat currently can have stacks up against multiple targets at a time but unsure how useful this will be yet. I don't have much of an opinion on this feat, I wouldn't miss it if it was replaced with something more interesting but its not bad either.
Toxic Blades: I liked the concept of this feat and it is somewhat useful. On the downside, this feat is very simple and will have no impact on how you play your character. It is only valuable as mindless bonus dps with a cool name. My guess is it is here as a substitute for shadowborn's DOT effect. This feat has a small bug with its icon, the 5th DOT stack isn't displayed on the debuff bar.
Master of Shadows: This feat is clearly bugged, it says it is supposed to reduce how fast your stealth passively drains by 50% at the cost of increasing your stealth recharge time by 50%. Instead, it reduces your stealth recharge time by a lot and has no effect whatsoever on your passive stealth drain. (Update: The passive stealth drain part now works but the stealth recharge part is still bugged). In its bugged state, this feat is very good but once the bug with it is fixed, this feat will be reduced to pure garbage. This is because rogues don't tend to linger in stealth for very long since your attacks quickly use up your stealth. Your stealth recharge speed is simply more important than how long you can remain in stealth. Even in a PVP setting where you sometimes linger in stealth for self defense, this feat still sucks since not being able to get back in stealth for extended periods of time is much more dangerous than leaving stealth sooner. In a nutshell, this is the only rogue feat that makes you lose some to gain some and what you lose simply isn't worth the gain.
Knife's Edge: Knife's edge was a good feat but doesn't synergize well with the reworked rogue class anymore. The super long encounter cooldowns and long daily power buildup means this feat is of very limited use and doesn't really contribute much. This feat needs to be replaced.
Scullcracker: This feat has a well designed mechanic that complements the assassin path surprisingly well and I'm happy this feat was kept around. It also is one of the few feats in this path that actually impacts how you play your character. In PVP, scullcracker changes the way you use cloud of steel and gives you a stronger incentive to pursue a single target until they die. The daze is also very useful when used to help you land CC powers and big single target damage powers. In PVE, scullcracker's impact on gameplay is less pronounced but it is good as a boss oriented dps feat.
Duelist's Expertise: This feat is a decent damage boost but has some flaws with it that make its mechanic flow questionably well with rogue rotations. So far in my tests, this feat tends to reach max stacks when your encounter powers are all on cooldown, this means the full 15% damage boost is usually only spent on your at will hits and occasionally a dazing strike hit if you are using dazing strike. The buildup for it is long but at least it gives you some amount of damage buff 24/7 in combat. For clearing mobs in PVE, this feat beats out scullcracker so it should see some use. This feat isn't useless but I'd rather see something else here that flows better, this mechanic just seems off.
Back Alley Tactics: This feat is currently bugged, some of the time, it decreases your damage by huge amounts instead of increasing your damage.This feat will be good once it is fixed though. It was a popular feat on live for PVE players and also fit well with my scoundrel PVP build, which used this feat to deal big encounter damage hits while my AP was low.
Hastily Sharpened Blades: This feat is kinda meh and probably won't see much use after back alley tactics gets fixed. Its a small randomized increase to your critical chance, which nobody in PVE is going to want and I doubt PVPers would want it either. Its also boring. A better possible option would be something that gives you more dps for attacking from behind, would be very assassin-like and useful too. Gutterborn's touch used to work like this but doesn't anymore, it was also moved to WK and nerfed into the ground.
Execution: This feat is also bad, it only has a 5% chance to proc and can only trigger when your foe is under 20% health. The damage it deals is 200% of weapon damage, underwhelming for those proc odds and prerequisites. I don't even think I'd take this feat if it instakilled foes it procced on. Replace this feat for sure.
Shadow's Flurry: Shadow's flurry pretty much wins by default when choosing between it and execution, its always better. Sadly this isn't because this feat is particularly good, its got a cool theme but its mostly a gimmick since the shadowy figure has low odds to proc. Still, when it does proc, it is helpful since it helps you build your duelists flurry bleed stacks faster than normal and provides a little bit of extra damage. It could be made more useful by upping the % chance to spawn the figure by a lot, I'd suggest 20%. This feat currently has a visual bug with it. Instead of spawning a "shadowy figure" it spawns a clone of your character.
To Be Continued...
Post edited by trgluestickz on
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
This is the other half of the post I put directly above it on feats feedback:
Whisperknife Feats Feedback:
Whisperknife feats mostly share the same stealthy sneaky theme.
In PVE, they sadly are more gimmicky than they are useful for the most part. They do make WK generate stealth/reduce cooldowns better than assassin does but that's a very low bar. In order to make WK's feats good in PVE, you either need to make our stealth mechanic more useful in PVE content or you need to provide an alternative to the stealthy sneaky playstyle so there is more than one way to play WK.
In PVP, the stealth gain from these feats combined with stealth regaining powers is quite powerful but in a cheesy sort of way. WKs can currently stay in stealth for so long that the WK I dueled on preview often left combat mode unintentionally, which got him killed many times when he tried to use his mount combat power, only to mount up instead.
Shady Preparations: This feat is decent but isn't of much help in PVE, its good in PVP though.
Last Moments: I don't have much of an opinion on this feat at this time.
Hidden Attacks: This feat is working now. Unlike its assassin counterpart master of shadows, this feat doesn't come with a crippling penalty for taking it. Because of this difference, this feat does have some uses. Its passive stealth drain reduction is very strong in PVP. This feat as a whole is bad in PVE though. The part that reduces stealth lost from using at wills is nearly useless in both settings. Also, when given a choice between hidden attacks and the other choice from this tier (dark reimbursement), hidden attacks is better in all scenarios.
Dark Reimbursement: This feat is bad in both PVE and PVP. It only grants 15% of your stealth bar and you don't gain stealth back fast enough to make much use of it. It also can't compete with the hidden attacks feat.
Return to Shadows: This feat is good in PVP but close to useless in PVE. For PVP, I'm not sure if its better or worse than the other option (one with the shadows). For PVE, this feat can't compete with one with the shadows.
One With The Shadows: This feat is also good in PVP. Its okish in PVE but only because it has a 5% damage boost that lasts 10 seconds. The 20 second cooldown for this feat seems excessive though, it should be dropped to 15 seconds like it is on live.
Shadowy Opportunity: This feat has a good mechanic but its damage is abysmal, you only get around 1k damage per attack from this feat. This feat's duration is also only 5 seconds, which worked great on the live server but is too short to be useful in mod 16. This feat needs its damage buffed a lot and should be changed to last 8 or 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds. This feat also has another problem in that it can't compete with the other option (shadow of demise). Shadowy opportunity also works against the hidden attacks feat a little bit, which isn't a huge deal but should be pointed out nonetheless. Hidden attacks makes you stay in stealth for longer, which encourages you to play like oldschool permastealth sabotuers. Shadowy opportunity encourages you to enter and exit stealth as often as possible, which is how modern sabotuers on live play. These are 2 very different playstyles.
Shadow of Demise: Shadow of demise doesn't complement Whisperknife very well since this feat is oriented towards single target battles. Shadow of demise can only be applied to one target at a time and the powers WK has are mostly AOE/utility rather than single target/dps; this makes shadow of demise more difficult for them to control and they have trouble focusing on 1 target at a time to power this feat up. The best course of action would be to move shadow of demise to assassin as a replacement for the execution feat and then create a new feat for WK. Another viable option would be to make it so this feat can proc on multiple targets like it could in the past.
Gutterborn's Touch: This feat has been nerfed so badly that its trash now. This feat grants you 5k accuracy, its really easy to stack all the accuracy you need without this feat and nobody will want it.
Ambusher's Haste: This is a decent damage buff, its nothing special but at least its useful in all settings. This feat is easily better than the other option (gutterborn's touch).
Post edited by trgluestickz on
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
This is the last post out of this series, you can find all the others above this one:
General feedback on the state of Rogue powers in PVP:
I have done some PVP duels on preview with another rogue and these are my power related observations so far, my character is well geared and my opponent was similarly well geared.
Dailies and several encounter powers are dealing insanely high damage. When fighting another rogue, whoever can land one or two hits first wins.
I'd read that daily powers were going to get a universal damage suppressor in PVP so I won't discuss those much here.
For encounter powers, only some rogue encounter powers are over-preforming so far, hopefully turning global tenacity back on helps with this. The 4 encounter powers I saw doing high damage are assassinate, lashing blade, deft strike, and shadow strike. While it makes sense for the dps for these to be high, the damage you take is usually most of your health gage or a one shot kill for these encounter powers, if you are lucky, it will only be half of your total health gage.
A few encounters were underpreforming in PVP. Unexpectedly, Dazing strike was doing low damage, 40k at best.
The uber high dps coming from dailies and encounter powers has made it questionably worth using at wills at all in PVP. Fights end very quickly right now and mostly all you do is stealth for a long time and then try to hit with encounters and dailies before the other person hits you with them.
Occasionally, one of us would get nuked by mysterious reflect damage, we aren't really sure what causes it yet but it might be boons.
Artifacts also do crazy high dps right now but this is also known already so I won't go into detail here.
Post edited by trgluestickz on
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
Thank you for your great review of the changes for the rogue class! I think you greatly pointed out that on one hand part of the changes are well done and follow a plan, but on the other hand some of the decisions don't fit with the overall idea of the class itself or its paths.
I couldn't agree more with your thoughts and think you offer a lot responsible approach to balance things out better. Especially the change of powers/feats between the two paths (like Dazing Strike for everybody, moving Shadow of Demise to Assassin) assist to distinguish the two paths more logical.
I'm looking forward to a developer feedback to this post, because for this mod the work with feedback is remarkable more productive than in the past mods. (Big “thumbs up” for this btw !)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, but its too damn long xD. Also thanks other people for explaining the situaction.
If feel like in the dev team there is no longer a person who can say NO to those changes that make class unpopular. Maybe just people involved are much greedy and make sure that this class wont beat their favorites ones and as result 'all the good ideas' are those that make this class being forgotten. I dont if its true or not. I'm guessing because we lack communication with them.
Critically Important Bug: ITC currently has a very powerful bug with it that allows you to get your daily back in roughly 10 seconds. If you activate this power in combat and then dodge before it takes effect, you gain this power's action points without it going on cooldown. You can dodge repeatedly to completely fill your AP gage way faster than intended. This bug has already gotten the attention of several rogue players in PVP and is likely to see widespread abuse in mod 16. Please patch this ASAP!
Update On The Impossible to Catch/AP Gain Bug:
I just checked the impossible to catch/AP gain bug again to make sure its still there this week; it appears it got a fix attempt last preview patch but didn't get announced in the patch notes. This fix did make it much harder to exploit but it still occationally occurs. I don't think it will be as appealing to try and abuse but I'll get back to you if someone finds a way to use it again.
Post edited by trgluestickz on
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
UPDATE TO MY UPDATE: Spoke too soon, it just occurred to me to check using double tap to dodge instead of shift to dodge, Impossible to Catch/AP gain bug still works when used with double tap. Still needs to be fixed.
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
I really think Dazing Strike should be a core encounter, I think its one of the more defining encounters for Rogue, it hit pretty decent, was fast and it dazes. Felt really out of place when I leveling up the Rogue on preview without it.
Shady preparations needs to go in assasin paragon (wka~was known as) Master Infliltrator. I don't understand why everything is messed up?! The feats, powers, and perhaps some encounters are switched. At least of what I've seen from preview gameplay videos. I'm not sure if Lurkers Assault is supposed to be in Whisperstrike? Does mod 15 Rogue have Lurkers Assault in both paragons? All I know Master Infliltrator has Lurkers Assault and personally I'm not happy that's in Whisperstrike! A lot of people aren't happy about it, so please correct these things! Do I really need to show my setup on Rogue? It's because for some reason a lot of people, including me feel like we are being forced to play a different paragon. Please understand we want to play the same as mod 15, but with slight improvements for better balance. Thank you.
I’m growing very concerned that the dev teams consider the rogue class to be ‘done’, as in ready to ship/go live. We have seen only very very few changes with the last 3 patches, primarily fixing bugs. And no communication here. Compare to other classes where there was a lot more discussion between devs and the community, and have been continuously been seeing improvements with each patch. I see a lot of community comments (and I agree) to the effect one rogue paragon needs a complete rework, and the other still needs some work particularly in feats.
1) Encounters really need a cooldown decrease; 2) AoE encounters need a damage boost as for at-will powers; 3) Make stealth useful. At the current state it is useless!
I’m growing very concerned that the dev teams consider the rogue class to be ‘done’, as in ready to ship/go live. We have seen only very very few changes with the last 3 patches, primarily fixing bugs. And no communication here. Compare to other classes where there was a lot more discussion between devs and the community, and have been continuously been seeing improvements with each patch. I see a lot of community comments (and I agree) to the effect one rogue paragon needs a complete rework, and the other still needs some work particularly in feats.
Yep, so it seems. It is considered done and ready for delivery while actually, the class is in a terrible state. We have been trying to get through for 8 mods(at least) already and for 8 mods our suggestion have fallen on deaf ears. You can see, based on feedback, that people gave up on suggestions. We have always been the class with most feedback, by far and now we are the class with least feedback, by far. The state of the class how the devs see it is not aligning to expectations that players have of the class. The players have been suggesting one thing while devs have always gone in a different direction.
Please correct the Feats, Daily Powers, Encounters! Put them in the right paragon! Otherwise the game connections won't work effectively! We want to play the same! I used smoke bomb, lashing blade, impact shot (Encounters). (Daily Powers) Whirlwind Of Blades and Lurkers Assault. (At-Wills) Duelist Flurry and Cloud Of Steel.
Shady Preparations Feat was in Master Infiltrator, which is in Whisperstrike now. Master Infiltrator is now called Assassin, that's cool and fine, but a lot is put in the the wrong spots and has no connection! A lot of the classes need to be looked over carefully and setup correct!
Even some new feats don't make any sense for connection! Some do help because of the lost of recovery, however so far Mod 16 is a mess! Just what I see is making me upset.
The absence of the developer @noworries#8859 in this discussion can mean two things: 1- Everything is changing (unlikely) 2- The developer is not interested in the Rouge (very likely)
Yet this discussion is not offensive or disrespectful, there are many clear and specific feedbacks, then I ask myself: - Why is there no dev participation as on other class posts? - Why in the Preview the other classes change a lot, instead the rogue from the launch has changed little or nothing? - Why don't they realize that the TRs have disappeared? A clear proof is that in this discussion there are 4 pages, in the other classes there are 15/20 pages.
Despite my questions, I trust @noworries#8859, I am sure that it will give new life to a dead class.
The absence of the developer @noworries#8859 in this discussion can mean two things: 1- Everything is changing (unlikely) 2- The developer is not interested in the Rouge (very likely)
Yet this discussion is not offensive or disrespectful, there are many clear and specific feedbacks, then I ask myself: - Why is there no dev participation as on other class posts? - Why in the Preview the other classes change a lot, instead the rogue from the launch has changed little or nothing? - Why don't they realize that the TRs have disappeared? A clear proof is that in this discussion there are 4 pages, in the other classes there are 15/20 pages.
Despite my questions, I trust @noworries#8859, I am sure that it will give new life to a dead class.
(sorry my english but i'm an italian player)
Your English is better than most people I work with... who are all English...
Everything IS Changing... Check out the Stats and Mechanics thread for details. Tomorrow's patch on Preview will effectively press a reset button, and everything will need to be measured against the new standards of Opposing Stat mechanic, and all combat will need to be measured against the new Enc/Daily Damage vs new Monster Hit Points.
(At Will damage is remaining the same, Enc and Daily damage is being reduced, and Monster Hit Points are being reduced by 30%. this will make At Wills a LOT more effective.)
More experience rogue already noticed it. There is a game-breaking bug with TR, but nobody is reporting it, probably because there will be no response and "Thank you for your hard work". Other reason is the bug make the game more playable/enjoyable for rogue. (Making the Rogue At the top of the food chain). That probably a good thing, but it won't probably last long, but it has potential to last until the next MOD 17 . DEV should not waste time investigating it and focus on the other systems that request more focus.
Comments
It looks like the class is perfect and only one thing was fixed in patch. Nobody complains.
Only 3 pages when other classes have 15-20.
Or did people give up all hopes as a result of harsh treatment in MOD15?
Very short feedback is welcome or just agree or disagree with someone that already put comment.
I can only ADD that i Agree with the Stealth. I feel that it was our main mechanic that we could use: ATACKS that give 100% crit chance and additional bonus. Our core mechanic was also self-power-gain that was put into VOID.
The result is also visible to eye - we are getting close to lvl 80 villager class.
Regards!
Find another class? Find another game?
The problems here are more than just at-will or encounter damage. The class has no purpose or identity. If you want to be melee Barbie or ranger can do it better. If you want to be ranged Warlock, wizard do it WAY better. Since the only thing that differentiated rogue was stealth and that's now useless, rogue is sitting in the third row seat of the van. The paragons don't provide meaningful choice. Assassin, imo, is a clear cut choice simply because it's not as bad as wk. The feats that were split between them don't make sense and don't add up in any meaningful way to make the paragon better. It honestly just looks like the choices were made to split up the combinations we had that worked rather than in any attempt to make either paragon good. If they really hate so much what we had that worked, then they need to wipe it blank and start over. We got punished for having excellent ST and being the assassin. Repeatedly. Punished. Well, that's the role we were given. If we're not going to be that, then they need to make us into something else. Give us AoE and poison DoTs as a build or something. That's a roguey thing. Honestly, I don't even know what the solution is because it's just been repeatedly and thoroughly gutted to the point where there's nothing left except stab. Stab until stuff dies. And there are better ways to stab.
And the AP gain is abysmal. I know one poster said his was fine, but mine is so bad I soloed ESoT three times and had my daily twice by the the end of each. I guess they reached the benchmark of strategic use if the idea of strategic use is once per dungeon. Which means all those class features and weapon enchantments that proc on daily use are also once a dungeon. There's probably better gain than I'm getting somehow, but even if it's three times in a dungeon that's still a pretty sad thing when so much is gated behind daily use. What's the point of having class features at all when I literally get a few seconds of something three times in a dungeon? I wouldn't suffer at all to not have them ... because I effectively don't have them.
Could you or other devs explain to us why those changes? Our class suffered a lot on past years and this so called "rework and balance" could bring us to glory alongside other dps classes.
My main class in any game I played was always rogue-like, thiefs, assassins and similars, but now you are making us abandon the rogue and change to another class without any explanation.
Assassin Path General Overview:
When I tried playing assassin, I found that the playstyle plays more similarly to how PVP scoundrel plays but the flavor of the build feels more like its namesake, assassin. These 2 things go together surprisingly well and this playstyle is a result of the powers this build was assigned. As my favorite examples, the synergy dazing strike has with assassinate is really nice. Granting this build access to deft strike and making hateful knives a shared power were also good decisions.
The feats on the otherhand are a different story, most of them don't contribute much to this build's playstyle and feel unexciting. I will complement scullcracker's inclusion since it goes well with this path.
The flaws with this build are mostly general complaints all classes have right now, like feats being boring and weak, at will dps being too low, and cooldowns for powers being excessively long. However, the severity of these issues cannot be overstated. Excessively long encounter cooldowns ruin most of this build's flow and makes an otherwise fun build feel dull and disjointed in longer fights, switching powers didn't seem to help. This is compounded by the frustratingly low at will damage.
The assassin path overall is better in both PVP and PVE than whisperknife is. This is because assassin's powers are stronger than WK's powers and their feats are moderately useful for both PVE and PVP.
Whisperknife Path General Overview:
This path is underpreforming at almost everything in both PVE and PVP and is weaker than assassin is. Most of WK's powers are weaker than assassin's powers and its feat tree is next to useless in PVE content.
In order to make WK competitive with assassin, it needs the following 2 things the most:
#1) Most of of its powers need to be buffed.
#2) Rogue's stealth mechanic either needs to be made more relevant in PVE or WK needs another way to play besides stealthy sneaky.
The only thing WK pulls ahead of assassin on is its stealth restoring and cooldown reducing feats and powers. The feats WK has combined with its stealth oriented powers make it able to stay in stealth for prolonged periods of time. These feats are powerful in PVP but this is currently WK's only strength and this isn't enough to counterbalance the issues WK has right now in PVP or PVE.
Mod 16 WK's playstyle plays in a very similar way to oldschool permastealth sabotuer builds, who were built around remaining in stealth for as long as possible. This is very different from how sabotuers on live currently play. The sabotuer playstyle on live is more active and built around entering and exiting stealth as often as possible; it also spends more time out in the open than the revamped mod 16 WK does.
The revamped mod 16 WK is set up to be a multi target specialist, unfortunately, some of the powers and feats it got don't suit this playstyle. The aforementioned issues with WK above combined with these inconsistencies make assassin better even at clearing mobs.
The one exception I know of is due to a bug, killing storm does a lot of damage when combined with razor action. Once this is patched, WK in its current state will probably lose its ability to clear mobs better than assassin can.
Stealth Mechanic:
As far as I can tell so far, the only change made to stealth was removing the 100% chance to crit. Unfortunately, this has made stealth next to useless in PVE content. Its only real uses now are a survival aid for undergeared or solo players and the extra effects it grants to your encounter powers.
The combat advantage from stealth is important in PVP but not in PVE since its very easy to get combat advantage in PVE without stealth.
Stealth needs to be updated and top priority for that should be making it more useful in PVE content.
Rogue Combat Flow/Cooldown Issues:
On preview, many encounter power cooldowns are too high and virtually everyone I've spoken to or witnessed talking about this is saying the same thing, their builds feel clunky and the combat is very dull when we have to spend 10+ seconds spamming low damage at wills and spamming our dodges constantly. The flow of rotations is bad right now too.
NW's fast paced combat system is where a massive amount of its appeal lies and straying too far from it is going to decrease the quality of this game rather than improve it.
While I understand why recovery was taken out and most AP gain sources were nerfed, mod 16 threw the baby out with the bathwater.
High amounts of recovery and AP gain were what was problematic, low amounts of recovery like 4k or 6k wasn't responsible for the daily spam issues we are seeing on live. You'd probably see much better combat flow without the daily spam if our encounter power cooldowns were more similar to the ones characters with 4k or 6k recovery have on live.
Several encounter powers also need to have their cooldowns readjusted to sync up with eachother better, some encounter powers got big cooldown increases on top of recovery being removed and this is adding to the flow issues.
Update on Rogue Cooldown Issues 3/21/19:
Some rogue encounter cooldowns on preview are much better now. Assassinate and lashing blade being 2 of these encounters.
3 encounter powers still have insanely long cooldown times that aren't justified by their effects. These are impossible to catch, bait and switch, and smokebomb.
A few other encounter powers have more mild cooldown lengths but these still need tweaking or these power's effects need to be made stronger. More on that in my feedback post on powers.
At Will Damage:
At will damage gamewide is too low, if we are going to spend 10+ seconds using at wills, they need to be more than just a timewaster. The low at will damage feeds into the issue with power cooldowns being too long and also needs adjusting.
So far, duelist's flurry and cloud of steel are the best at wills on preview but still very underwhelming.
Gloaming cut has higher dps than cloud of steel but feels way worse to use, it simply doesn't have enough dps to justify its slow activation time anymore.
The whisperknife at wills and sly flourish are awful right now, their dps is the lowest out of any of them and shuriken toss's animation could really use some work.
Passives:
Right now, many formerly good passives no longer flow well with the reworked mod 16 rogue and need to be looked at. Any passive that triggers on daily use should have their triggers rethought or their uptime extended since dailies take a long time to get back now.
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
Assassin At Wills:
Duelist's Flurry:
This at will does the best dps out of all rogue at wills on preview.
The tooltip for this at will on preview is the wrong version, its the old tooltip from mod 14. It says: "attacks from the flurry each have a chance to add a bleed effect".
This at will no longer has a "chance" to add a bleed effect as of mod 15. This is still the case in mod 16. There appears to have been a minor tweak made to this at will on preview though, instead of stacking 6 bleeds per flurry you now stack 5 bleeds per flurry.
Gloaming Cut:
This at will is the 3rd best rogue at will on preview. It does less dps than duelist's flurry and more damage than cloud of steel. However, this power's animation is slow and it no longer deals enough dps to justify the slow animation. It feels bad to use because of this.
This power is bugged and doesn't restore any of your stealth bar upon killing a target. Its supposed to restore 20% of your stealth bar.
Whisperknife At Wills:
Disheartening Strike:
This at will does garbage dps, its meant to be a ranged version of duelist's flurry but oh man does it fall short. Please buff this at will's dps a lot, it should be just as good as duelist's flurry.
I like the animation this at will got on preview, its animation is slow though and in order to justify this, it needs to deal good damage.
Shuriken Toss:
This at will's dps falls short of cloud of steel's damage and the 3 target thing doesn't salvage it. Its not quite as bad as disheartening strike's damage but that's not saying much.
I dislike the animation for this at will, its clunky and doesn't quite look right. The slow motion animation speed makes it feel floaty and your cloak does some weird things.
Update: This at will's animation has improved slightly with a recent patch, sadly it still feels floaty and off. This is due to the speed of this at will, its way too slow and would both feel better to use and look much better if it was sped up.
Shared At Wills:
Cloud of Steel:
This at will is the 2nd best rogue at will, while it does do less dps than gloaming cut, its also much faster than gloaming cut and feels much better to use. Its also better than shuriken toss.
Cloud of steel's animation is bugged on preview, its very spazzy looking and one of my weapons repeatedly jabs me in the rib cage.
Sly Flourish:
This at will's dps is terrible, please buff.
Assassin Encounters:
Assassinate:
I love this power so far. It combines the best elements of dazing strike and lashing blade into one power. It even manages to do this without discouraging me from using dazing strike or lashing blade.
This power has a fast cast time like dazing strike, fast enough to successfully make use of its interrupt effect and abruptly stop incoming attacks. It also does enough damage to put a massive grin on my face XD.
Currently the cooldown speed for this power is fine on preview, it was too long initially but the change to 13 -14 seconds is manageable.
Dazing Strike:
This was and still is one of the most versatile encounter powers in the game. Its got a fast cast time, low cooldown, and decently strong daze.
My only complaints are that its damage seems to have dropped too much on preview and it could use an extra second shaved off of its cooldown time. I suggest changing this power to a 400 magnitude with an 8 second base cooldown. Right now its a 300 magnitude and 9+ second cooldown.
Also, a good idea would be to change this power's status to a shared encounter power instead of making it an assassin exclusive. Both rogue paths should have access to this power.
As for which encounter power to change to assassin only, I would suggest making lashing blade an assassin exclusive.
Deft Strike:
I like the damage buff this power got, it successfully made this power relevant in PVE content and it will be among the best encounter powers for PVP.
My only suggestion would be to change it's stealthed effect. Currently, if you use it from stealth, it can be used to teleport to friendly targets. This is annoying far more often than it is helpful and I'm not the only player that feels this way about it.
Wicked Reminder:
This power deals good damage and increases the target's damage taken by 10%, this fullfills a popular request to give this power a desirable party buff.
The stealthed effect for this power needs to be replaced though, reducing enemy critical avoidance isn't appealing and tempts nobody.
This power's cooldown is too long, I would suggest giving it the same cooldown speed as assassinate.
Impossible to Catch:
This power is still clunky in mod 16 and its cooldown is excessively long. It also got a big nerf to its deflection chance. Please put this power on a much shorter cooldown, the increase to 20 seconds completely killed this power. My suggestion would be 14 seconds base cooldown or less. Also get rid of the 1 to 2 second animation delay, its no longer needed and makes this power clunky.
Critically Important Bug: ITC currently has a very powerful bug with it that allows you to get your daily back in roughly 10 seconds. If you activate this power in combat and then dodge before it takes effect, you gain this power's action points without it going on cooldown. You can dodge repeatedly to completely fill your AP gage way faster than intended. This bug has already gotten the attention of several rogue players in PVP and is likely to see widespread abuse in mod 16. Please patch this ASAP!
Whisperknife Encounters:
Vengeance's Pursuit:
This power is good in PVP but is terrible in PVE. It deals low damage and is mostly a utility power. The cooldown for it is good at least.
Impact Shot:
This power needs a big damage increase in PVE, its too weak to be viable in PVE. It does good damage in PVP though.
This power's cooldown is good so far.
Blitz:
This power is okish but also needs its damage buffed, its cooldown is also too long for what it does. I would suggest changing this power's cooldown to 10 seconds or less.
Its stealthed effect is also too weak, I would suggest changing it to a 2 second cooldown reduction when used from stealth, either that or change its stealthed effect to something else altogether.
A possible alternative would be to give this power 3 charges.
Shadow Strike:
This power is of little use in PVE, its good in PVP though. It could use a slight cooldown reduction but I'm not sure how to fix it beyond that.
Shadowy Disappearance:
This power is bad in both PVE and PVP, the dps for it is too low to be useful and its mostly a utility power.
Even if you buffed the dps for it, it still wouldn't see much use since its a clunky two step power that no PVE player is going to want to fool with. Shadowy disappearance is good for parkouring and basically nothing else.
My suggestion would be to rework this power entirely or just replace it already. Both rogue paths already have multiple powers that allow them to teleport to a target such as vengeance's pursuit, hateful knives, courage breaker, lurker's assault, and deft strike.
To Be Continued...
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
Shared Encounters:
Lashing Blade:
This power is good in both PVP and PVE now. Its reasonably fast and does good damage.
I would suggest changing its stealthed effect though, its unreliable and probably won't get used from stealth much in its current state.
This power's cooldown is currently good on preview.
Blade Flurry:
This power went from being one of the best powers on live to being one of the worst on preview. This power does garbage damage and needs to be buffed a lot.
Path of the Blade:
This power has done the impossible, it somehow managed to become even more useless on preview than it is on live. It needs its damage buffed a lot.
On live, the only thing this power excelled at was having the highest AP gain out of all rogue encounter powers; this is no longer the case on preview. Please consider reestablishing this power as the best for AP gain.
Also, while you are at it, consider improving this power's animation and sound effect, several players I've heard mention it over the years hate it with a passion. I even heard someone compare it to Chinese water torture once.
I don't "hate" its animation and sound effect but I don't like it either; it looks cheep and is a little bit irritating to listen to.
Smokebomb:
This power currently has very poor rotation flow with other encounter powers used with it. This is because its cooldown got a massive increase to 20 seconds. Please drop this power's cooldown to 14 or 13 base seconds.
Bait and Switch:
This power is good in PVP, especially for whisperknives now. Its garbage in PVE and probably always will be.
On the downside, this power has an absurdly long cooldown of 22+ seconds, please drop this to 16 seconds base or less.
Assassin Dailies:
Shocking Execution:
This power has successfully been made relevant for both PVE and PVP content. I have no complaints about this power.
Bloodbath:
This power should be a shared power between both paragon paths, it doesn't make sense as an assassin exclusive. I would suggest moving lurker's assault to the assassin path instead and making whirlwind of blades a whisperknife exclusive.
This power probably still isn't good in PVE. It is still good in PVP though.
Whisperknife Dailies:
Lurker's Assault:
This daily power is out of place, it should be on the assassin path. Its a single target oriented power and both thematically and logically would be a better fit for assassin. Whirlwind of blades is used in place of this power for multi target fights.
I would suggest moving lurker's assault to the assassin path instead and making whirlwind of blades a whisperknife exclusive. Bloodbath should be a shared daily power.
Also, this power still prevents you from gaining AP from your attacks while it is active. This AP block needs to be removed now that recovery is gone and most AP gain sources are nerfed.
Killing Storm:
This power shouldn't exist, its completely redundant and I'd suggest replacing it altogether before mod 16 goes live.
It looks like the devs tried to create a different version of bloodbath just for WK. In a way this power's existence is actually reducing the quality of the rogue class rework since it probably meant whoever worked on the rework felt like they should separate bloodbath and this power from eachother so it wouldn't be as redundant. This is a bad priority and should be ignored in favor of moving bloodbath, lurkers assault, and whirlwind of blades into more sensible locations.
Shared Dailies:
Hateful Knives:
This power is excellent now, its good in both PVP and PVE and very rewarding to use.
PVEers may still dump this power in favor of shocking execution since shocking execution just barely manages to edge out its damage.
In PVP, this will probably be among the best powers now and should see widespread use.
The decision to make this power a shared daily seemed odd at first since has a very Whisperknife sounding name. But honestly, this was the right decision since this power suits assassin's playstyle better than the reworked WK's and WK still keeps access to it.
Courage Breaker:
This power had a damage upgrade and due to its other powerful effects, will remain a strong option in PVP.
In PVE it will still be lackluster compared to other dailies but this seems to have been intentional.
Whirlwind of Blades:
This daily has remained the best multi target daily power in PVE and is the AOE counterpart to lurker's assault. Its damage does seem disproportionately low compared to other dailies though, its magnitude should be increased some. If courage breaker is to deal decent damage now, I see no reason why whirlwind of blades shouldn't also deal more damage.
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
Feats Feedback Overview:
When I read the blog announcement talking about the class overhauls, I read this line in the feats section:
"With this change we can offer more unique choices that have a distinct impact in play instead of sprawling feat trees where the majority of the feats have no real impact on how you play your character."
And I gotta say, what I'm seeing on preview seems to have done the exact opposite of making feats have "a greater impact on how we play our characters". The new mod has made it so your build/playstyle/damage is mostly determined by your powers and stats. Your feats now take a backseat. Overall, the feats are weaker, simpler, and feel less rewarding than the ones we have on live right now. The mod 16 feat rework, like most other major system reworks in mod 16, traded its heart and soul for bland simplicity.
All mod 16 rogue feats suffer from 1 or more of the 6 following issues:
#1) Can't compete with the other feat options offered.
#2) Has no effect on your playstyle and/or boring.
#3) Is good in one gamemode but bad in the other (PVP or PVE)
#4) Don't complement the path they were assigned to or don't flow well with mod 16 rogue in general.
#5) Are too weak.
#6) Are bugged.
Below, I have provided feedback on each feat on a case by case basis and some more general feedback on both feat trees:
Assassin Feats Feedback:
There are 4 feats I do like in assassin but all of them still suffer from issues on my list to varying degrees. My favorites are scullcracker, back alley tactics, shadow's flurry, and toxic blades. Scullcracker has the fewest issues with it and is easily the best out of the feats I like.
Assassin's feats are much better for PVE content than Whisperknife's feats are. They are mostly damage buffs and this is easily better than WK's stealth enhancing feats in a PVE setting. Namely because stealth isn't of much help in a PVE setting right now.
In PVP, Whisperknife's feats are better than Assassin's feats. Assassin's feats do provide some use in PVP but WK's stealth and cooldown reduction feats are still better here.
Assassin's Target:
Assassin's target builds its stacks fast when you are using at wills so you will usually have max stacks for 1 out of every 3 encounters you cast. Its alright for bosses but kinda works against mob rotations that begin with smokebomb or other low dps encounters. This feat currently can have stacks up against multiple targets at a time but unsure how useful this will be yet. I don't have much of an opinion on this feat, I wouldn't miss it if it was replaced with something more interesting but its not bad either.
Toxic Blades:
I liked the concept of this feat and it is somewhat useful. On the downside, this feat is very simple and will have no impact on how you play your character. It is only valuable as mindless bonus dps with a cool name. My guess is it is here as a substitute for shadowborn's DOT effect.
This feat has a small bug with its icon, the 5th DOT stack isn't displayed on the debuff bar.
Master of Shadows:
This feat is clearly bugged, it says it is supposed to reduce how fast your stealth passively drains by 50% at the cost of increasing your stealth recharge time by 50%. Instead, it reduces your stealth recharge time by a lot and has no effect whatsoever on your passive stealth drain. (Update: The passive stealth drain part now works but the stealth recharge part is still bugged).
In its bugged state, this feat is very good but once the bug with it is fixed, this feat will be reduced to pure garbage. This is because rogues don't tend to linger in stealth for very long since your attacks quickly use up your stealth. Your stealth recharge speed is simply more important than how long you can remain in stealth. Even in a PVP setting where you sometimes linger in stealth for self defense, this feat still sucks since not being able to get back in stealth for extended periods of time is much more dangerous than leaving stealth sooner. In a nutshell, this is the only rogue feat that makes you lose some to gain some and what you lose simply isn't worth the gain.
Knife's Edge:
Knife's edge was a good feat but doesn't synergize well with the reworked rogue class anymore. The super long encounter cooldowns and long daily power buildup means this feat is of very limited use and doesn't really contribute much. This feat needs to be replaced.
Scullcracker:
This feat has a well designed mechanic that complements the assassin path surprisingly well and I'm happy this feat was kept around. It also is one of the few feats in this path that actually impacts how you play your character. In PVP, scullcracker changes the way you use cloud of steel and gives you a stronger incentive to pursue a single target until they die. The daze is also very useful when used to help you land CC powers and big single target damage powers.
In PVE, scullcracker's impact on gameplay is less pronounced but it is good as a boss oriented dps feat.
Duelist's Expertise:
This feat is a decent damage boost but has some flaws with it that make its mechanic flow questionably well with rogue rotations. So far in my tests, this feat tends to reach max stacks when your encounter powers are all on cooldown, this means the full 15% damage boost is usually only spent on your at will hits and occasionally a dazing strike hit if you are using dazing strike. The buildup for it is long but at least it gives you some amount of damage buff 24/7 in combat. For clearing mobs in PVE, this feat beats out scullcracker so it should see some use.
This feat isn't useless but I'd rather see something else here that flows better, this mechanic just seems off.
Back Alley Tactics:
This feat is currently bugged, some of the time, it decreases your damage by huge amounts instead of increasing your damage. This feat will be good once it is fixed though. It was a popular feat on live for PVE players and also fit well with my scoundrel PVP build, which used this feat to deal big encounter damage hits while my AP was low.
Hastily Sharpened Blades:
This feat is kinda meh and probably won't see much use after back alley tactics gets fixed. Its a small randomized increase to your critical chance, which nobody in PVE is going to want and I doubt PVPers would want it either. Its also boring.
A better possible option would be something that gives you more dps for attacking from behind, would be very assassin-like and useful too. Gutterborn's touch used to work like this but doesn't anymore, it was also moved to WK and nerfed into the ground.
Execution:
This feat is also bad, it only has a 5% chance to proc and can only trigger when your foe is under 20% health. The damage it deals is 200% of weapon damage, underwhelming for those proc odds and prerequisites. I don't even think I'd take this feat if it instakilled foes it procced on. Replace this feat for sure.
Shadow's Flurry:
Shadow's flurry pretty much wins by default when choosing between it and execution, its always better. Sadly this isn't because this feat is particularly good, its got a cool theme but its mostly a gimmick since the shadowy figure has low odds to proc. Still, when it does proc, it is helpful since it helps you build your duelists flurry bleed stacks faster than normal and provides a little bit of extra damage. It could be made more useful by upping the % chance to spawn the figure by a lot, I'd suggest 20%.
This feat currently has a visual bug with it. Instead of spawning a "shadowy figure" it spawns a clone of your character.
To Be Continued...
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
Whisperknife Feats Feedback:
Whisperknife feats mostly share the same stealthy sneaky theme.
In PVE, they sadly are more gimmicky than they are useful for the most part. They do make WK generate stealth/reduce cooldowns better than assassin does but that's a very low bar. In order to make WK's feats good in PVE, you either need to make our stealth mechanic more useful in PVE content or you need to provide an alternative to the stealthy sneaky playstyle so there is more than one way to play WK.
In PVP, the stealth gain from these feats combined with stealth regaining powers is quite powerful but in a cheesy sort of way. WKs can currently stay in stealth for so long that the WK I dueled on preview often left combat mode unintentionally, which got him killed many times when he tried to use his mount combat power, only to mount up instead.
Shady Preparations:
This feat is decent but isn't of much help in PVE, its good in PVP though.
Last Moments:
I don't have much of an opinion on this feat at this time.
Hidden Attacks:
This feat is working now.
Unlike its assassin counterpart master of shadows, this feat doesn't come with a crippling penalty for taking it. Because of this difference, this feat does have some uses. Its passive stealth drain reduction is very strong in PVP. This feat as a whole is bad in PVE though. The part that reduces stealth lost from using at wills is nearly useless in both settings.
Also, when given a choice between hidden attacks and the other choice from this tier (dark reimbursement), hidden attacks is better in all scenarios.
Dark Reimbursement:
This feat is bad in both PVE and PVP. It only grants 15% of your stealth bar and you don't gain stealth back fast enough to make much use of it. It also can't compete with the hidden attacks feat.
Return to Shadows:
This feat is good in PVP but close to useless in PVE.
For PVP, I'm not sure if its better or worse than the other option (one with the shadows).
For PVE, this feat can't compete with one with the shadows.
One With The Shadows:
This feat is also good in PVP. Its okish in PVE but only because it has a 5% damage boost that lasts 10 seconds. The 20 second cooldown for this feat seems excessive though, it should be dropped to 15 seconds like it is on live.
Shadowy Opportunity:
This feat has a good mechanic but its damage is abysmal, you only get around 1k damage per attack from this feat. This feat's duration is also only 5 seconds, which worked great on the live server but is too short to be useful in mod 16. This feat needs its damage buffed a lot and should be changed to last 8 or 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds.
This feat also has another problem in that it can't compete with the other option (shadow of demise).
Shadowy opportunity also works against the hidden attacks feat a little bit, which isn't a huge deal but should be pointed out nonetheless. Hidden attacks makes you stay in stealth for longer, which encourages you to play like oldschool permastealth sabotuers. Shadowy opportunity encourages you to enter and exit stealth as often as possible, which is how modern sabotuers on live play. These are 2 very different playstyles.
Shadow of Demise:
Shadow of demise doesn't complement Whisperknife very well since this feat is oriented towards single target battles. Shadow of demise can only be applied to one target at a time and the powers WK has are mostly AOE/utility rather than single target/dps; this makes shadow of demise more difficult for them to control and they have trouble focusing on 1 target at a time to power this feat up.
The best course of action would be to move shadow of demise to assassin as a replacement for the execution feat and then create a new feat for WK. Another viable option would be to make it so this feat can proc on multiple targets like it could in the past.
Gutterborn's Touch:
This feat has been nerfed so badly that its trash now. This feat grants you 5k accuracy, its really easy to stack all the accuracy you need without this feat and nobody will want it.
Ambusher's Haste:
This is a decent damage buff, its nothing special but at least its useful in all settings. This feat is easily better than the other option (gutterborn's touch).
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
General feedback on the state of Rogue powers in PVP:
I have done some PVP duels on preview with another rogue and these are my power related observations so far, my character is well geared and my opponent was similarly well geared.
Dailies and several encounter powers are dealing insanely high damage. When fighting another rogue, whoever can land one or two hits first wins.
I'd read that daily powers were going to get a universal damage suppressor in PVP so I won't discuss those much here.
For encounter powers, only some rogue encounter powers are over-preforming so far, hopefully turning global tenacity back on helps with this. The 4 encounter powers I saw doing high damage are assassinate, lashing blade, deft strike, and shadow strike. While it makes sense for the dps for these to be high, the damage you take is usually most of your health gage or a one shot kill for these encounter powers, if you are lucky, it will only be half of your total health gage.
A few encounters were underpreforming in PVP. Unexpectedly, Dazing strike was doing low damage, 40k at best.
The uber high dps coming from dailies and encounter powers has made it questionably worth using at wills at all in PVP. Fights end very quickly right now and mostly all you do is stealth for a long time and then try to hit with encounters and dailies before the other person hits you with them.
Occasionally, one of us would get nuked by mysterious reflect damage, we aren't really sure what causes it yet but it might be boons.
Artifacts also do crazy high dps right now but this is also known already so I won't go into detail here.
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
Thank you for your great review of the changes for the rogue class!
I think you greatly pointed out that on one hand part of the changes are well done and follow a plan, but on the other hand some of the decisions don't fit with the overall idea of the class itself or its paths.
I couldn't agree more with your thoughts and think you offer a lot responsible approach to balance things out better. Especially the change of powers/feats between the two paths (like Dazing Strike for everybody, moving Shadow of Demise to Assassin) assist to distinguish the two paths more logical.
I'm looking forward to a developer feedback to this post, because for this mod the work with feedback is remarkable more productive than in the past mods. (Big “thumbs up” for this btw !)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, but its too damn long xD. Also thanks other people for explaining the situaction.
If feel like in the dev team there is no longer a person who can say NO to those changes that make class unpopular.
Maybe just people involved are much greedy and make sure that this class wont beat their favorites ones and as result 'all the good ideas' are those that make this class being forgotten. I dont if its true or not. I'm guessing because we lack communication with them.
I just checked the impossible to catch/AP gain bug again to make sure its still there this week; it appears it got a fix attempt last preview patch but didn't get announced in the patch notes. This fix did make it much harder to exploit but it still occationally occurs. I don't think it will be as appealing to try and abuse but I'll get back to you if someone finds a way to use it again.
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
2) AoE encounters need a damage boost as for at-will powers;
3) Make stealth useful. At the current state it is useless!
Thanks
The state of the class how the devs see it is not aligning to expectations that players have of the class. The players have been suggesting one thing while devs have always gone in a different direction.
Shady Preparations Feat was in Master Infiltrator, which is in Whisperstrike now. Master Infiltrator is now called Assassin, that's cool and fine, but a lot is put in the the wrong spots and has no connection! A lot of the classes need to be looked over carefully and setup correct!
Even some new feats don't make any sense for connection! Some do help because of the lost of recovery, however so far Mod 16 is a mess! Just what I see is making me upset.
1- Everything is changing (unlikely)
2- The developer is not interested in the Rouge (very likely)
Yet this discussion is not offensive or disrespectful, there are many clear and specific feedbacks, then I ask myself:
- Why is there no dev participation as on other class posts?
- Why in the Preview the other classes change a lot, instead the rogue from the launch has changed little or nothing?
- Why don't they realize that the TRs have disappeared? A clear proof is that in this discussion there are 4 pages, in the other classes there are 15/20 pages.
Despite my questions, I trust @noworries#8859, I am sure that it will give new life to a dead class.
(sorry my english but i'm an italian player)
Everything IS Changing...
Check out the Stats and Mechanics thread for details.
Tomorrow's patch on Preview will effectively press a reset button, and everything will need to be measured against the new standards of Opposing Stat mechanic, and all combat will need to be measured against the new Enc/Daily Damage vs new Monster Hit Points.
(At Will damage is remaining the same, Enc and Daily damage is being reduced, and Monster Hit Points are being reduced by 30%. this will make At Wills a LOT more effective.)