Class Wishlists for Midnight
Death Knight Wishlist
Demon Hunter Wishlist
Druid Wishlist
Evoker Wishlist
Hunter Wishlist
Mage Wishlist
Monk Wishlist
Paladin Wishlist
Rogue Wishlist
Shaman Wishlist
Warlock Wishlist
Warrior Wishlist
For a brief breakdown of the changes coming to each specialization in Midnight, check out our Midnight Class Survival Guide.
Midnight Class Survival Guide
Rogue Wishlists for Midnight
Our Rogue Writers, Whispyr (Assassination), JustGuy (Outlaw), and Fuu1 (Subtlety), discuss the most significant issues plaguing their specs as well as the must-have changes they'd like to see prior to Midnight's launch in just a few short months.
Assassination Rogue Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
AoE Crowd Control
2.
Better Self-Sustain
3.
Raid Buff Considerations
4.
Deathstalker's Gameplay
Utility and Crowd Control
Rogues, in general, have always been in a weird spot regarding utility. In the early days of Mythic+, shroud skips were mandatory for any reasonable level of pushing, making rogues mandatory in a lot of routes. Since then, mages have gained mass invisibility, and changes to mob count requirements have often made large-scale skips unnecessary.
In place of this, Mythic+ has leaned a lot more into crowd control and handling caster packs, but Rogue utility has not kept up with the game. Airborne Irritant was added to at least make Blind AoE. For The War Within, this was... fine. Disorients break immediately on damage, and as the only AoE CC option for rogues, this was more of a glorified interrupt than an actual CC. Not only that, this is now removed in Midnight. Rogues not having a single AoE crowd control available to them, even as a talent, is simply unacceptable to me. Even outside of Mythic+, Delves can be very difficult and tedious without AoE CC. Rogues don't bring unique utility anymore, have no access to bloodlust, and now the only crowd control we have access to is single-target stuns, which overlap with AoE stuns like Leg Sweep and can eat precious diminishing returns on mobs. This is by far the number one issue facing rogues going into midnight, with current viability in any group setting being abysmal.
Raid Buffs and Defenses
I want to start by saying I love Feint, but if we take inventory of Rogue's "raid buff" and defensive spells:
Atrophic Poison - our token "raid buff" that no one actually cares about. While the damage reduction is nice, it's simply not competitive with other melee that bring, for example, Rallying Cry or Death Grip. Bringing another Death Knight for access to another Grip or Anti-Magic Zone, or any other melee for that matter, is just a no-brainer over a little bit of passive damage reduction.
Numbing Poison - the budget Curse of Weakness. It's not awful, it's not great, it's just fine, and it shares a talent node with Atrophic poison, so you have to choose which mediocre raid buff you want to use.
Evasion - completely useless most of the time and incredibly inconsistent as it's not a physical immunity, it's dodge chance
Cloak of Shadows - confusing magic immunity with two parts. "A moment of magic immunity" is the first second, a true immunity, followed by 4 seconds of "sometimes works on stuff".
Feint - Simply the greatest defensive in the game, but Elusiveness is a choice with Cheat Death.
Crimson Vial - a healing spell that most of the time is more cosmetic than functional.
It is bleak. Again, pointing mainly at Mythic+ and Delves, how is a Rogue supposed to deal with any Damage over Time effect? If it cannot be Cloaked, then it must be Feinted with Elusiveness talented, so no Cheat Death. If we are talented into Cheat Death, then the only answer is a measly 20% heal and begging the healer. With the rise of solo content and the prevalence of consistent damage effects such as bleeds, Rogue's defensive kits just aren't designed with the current game in mind.
Deathstalker's Prison
I do not want to keep complaining about Deathstalker's Mark, but since it was first revealed in June of 2024, this Hero Talent has been nothing but headaches for Rogue players, and frankly, I'm getting sick of having to bring it up all the time. From the very beginning, the Mark had countless issues that Blizzard had to patch over repeatedly, edge cases and situations that made playing Deathstalker unbearably annoying (anyone who tried to play Deathstalker on Forgeweaver Araz in Season 3 would understand).
And even now, we still struggle to move the mark. Even swapping targets with garrote's cooldown instead of applying bleeds with the new Crimson Tempest serves as a built-in restriction to apply the mark to a different target. And yet, rogues have to move the mark with Darkest Night, because the limitation was now added that if any target is marked, you cannot apply a new mark. Needing to swap targets is incredibly common in all PvE content; it happens every patch in every raid and multiple times in mythic+ dungeons. Sadly, that is just the pain of Assassination. Target swapping is hard enough as a spec with damage over time effects and single-target cooldowns/cleave, but Deathstalker makes it actually unbearable. Deathstalker issues aren't even unique to Assassination either; Subtlety has its own whole host of issues with the Mark/Darkest Night gameplay, which are entirely separate. The Hero Talent is problematic for both specs it applies to in multiple different ways.
Blizzard, I do not understand why we need to quintuple down on something so universally hated. I'm sure you have heard countless complaints regarding Deathstalker; you're probably getting as tired of hearing them as I am of writing them, but none of the complaints about the Hero Talent are new. The issues with Deathstalker are one of the few things that the Rogue community as a whole unanimously agrees on. There must be a better way to execute on the Deathstalker theme without this incredibly jarring rotational roadblock.
Assassination Rogue Guide
Outlaw Rogue Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
More Energy
2.
Further Talent Tree Adjustments
3.
Tuning That Carves Out a Niche
4.
Improved Defensives
5.
More Raid Utility
Enhanced Energy
When a spec is GCD locked as Outlaw Rogue gets changed, the first question on everybody's mind is "How does energy feel?" With Adrenaline Rush uptime going down compared to The War WIthin, we have become more reliant on tools such as Blade Rush, and Thistle Tea to solve energy. The latter, however, does run into issues in dungeons and longer encounters where you just run out of Thistle Tea charges, leaving you out to dry on energy, causing sections of gameplay where you cannot press a button. Something should be buffed baseline, or add even more energy into Blade Rush to directly reward playing the spec well.
Tangled Talents
There are a few issues I have with the talents that sadly haven't been addressed. Heavy Hitter and Ace Up Your Sleeve being 2 pointer talents in the middle of the tree makes pathing awkward. Ace up your Sleeve has the added issue of having a really weak second point, meaning that Between the Eyes only ever refunds 2 combo points. This doesn't feel great, no matter which way you cut it. Another issue is how flaccid many of our capstones look just from a vibes perspective. Fast Action seems quite effective, but is really missing an additional effect to make it feel really awesome to talent into. This feeling extends into Hidden Opportunity and Keep It Rolling as well. Preparation as a returning talent also feels a bit overdesigned. I feel as though that just giving everyone of the spells listed in the refund a second charge would play significantly better.
Nebulous Niche
Now, while it's a given that being a top-tier DPS in both Raid and Mythic+ could be put on everybody's wishlist, I think it's especially worth highlighting for Outlaw. When a spec like Outlaw has to compete against both Assassination and Subtlety for a spot in a group, it needs something to justify its existence, especially when it's missing a high-impact burst cooldown. I think DPS specs that lack a meaningful cooldown, such as Outlaw should be tuned a little higher to compensate as cooldowns are so powerful in this game at a baseline.
Outlaw Rogue Guide
Subtlety Rogue Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Better haste integration.
2.
Fixing talent design problems.
3.
Bugfixes
4.
More gameplay depth.
5.
Deathstalkers Mark changes.
Talents and Design
Many talents lead to either bad gameplay or don't synergize well with the updated design.
Talents
Problems
Deathstalker's MarkIs difficult to handle in multi target situations or when switching targets because it can't be applied again while active.
Darkest NightDoes not work with Black Powder, means we potentially ignore it in multi-target situations.
Secret TechniqueDoes not line up naturally with Shadow Dance which either leads to always holding one spell for the other or certain haste requirements to solve.
Deepening ShadowsIs punishing. It is easy to lose the extra benefit when only increasing your Shadow Dance duration by 0.2-0.6 seconds.
Ancient Arts (Apex 1)Only works on Secret Technique's initial damage, which means you want to avoid using Secret Technique with Apex 3 active.
And there are a lot of talents outside of the ones mentioned, which haven't seen play for a long time, like Gloomblade, Goremaw's Bite, and Lingering Shadow. Also, some talents feel like they have restrictions that are not needed anymore, one example is the 6 seconds out of combat requirement of The First Dance. Most of the mentioned problems are consequences of the drastic changes introduced in Midnight, which hopefully get more attention and iteration before release.
Let's Talk Bugs
There are over 30 bugs currently on beta, many of them are based on secondary trigger actions like shadow clone attacks, not interacting in the assumed way. I created a short list to highlight impactful ones:
Shadow Blades - Does not increase Combo Point generation currently.
Ancient Arts (Apex 2) - Increases shadow clone damage instead of all shadow damage, does not trigger from Secret Technique's Clone attacks and does not get increased from the Shadowcraft bonus.
Coup de Grace - Causes a 1.2-second Global Cooldown instead of 1 second.
Deathstalker's Mark - Can bug out on certain encounter mechanics, losing the mark while preventing new applications.
The bugs listed above impact rotational flow and need to be fixed to evaluate gameplay reasonably well. The majority of the bugs not mentioned don't affect gameplay to the same degree or only change the final damage output. It would still be nice to visit them at some point in the future.
Gameplay Direction
Midnight greatly simplifies Subtlety; it removes multiple buttons from your action bars and reworks or removes most of the talent options with dynamic impact on your rotation. A lot of the decision-making process moved from combat to talents or gear while trying to keep key elements intact. One example is the change to Nimble Flurry. This talent previously gave players the option to keep using their single-target rotation for increased damage on the main target or start using AoE spells to increase overall damage output. Talent changes remove this decision, but allow the increase to the output of AoE spells to keep a high amount of priority target damage.
The reworks introduced complications. The addition of haste scaling to Secret Technique's cooldown makes it difficult to plan around the alignment with other cooldowns. A talent option giving a free use every Shadow Dance, similar to Shot in the Dark, would solve this problem, while allowing for a higher baseline cooldown of Secret Technique. Deathstalker's Mark's application limit is currently extremely punishing when switching targets. I personally would prefer a return to the old implementation, which allowed Subtlety to move it freely by the use of Shadowstrike. Adding Black Powder to Darkest Night would be a simple solution to keep the hero talent relevant in AoE.
The current beta iteration is, for me, a great baseline to build on, but not a complete experience. A simple and focused rotation can be appealing, but part of what makes Subtlety unique is having additional agency. So, maybe there is a chance to get more iterations, because the current version, while fun, might become boring in a few weeks.
Subtlety Rogue Guide
