Outlaw Rogue Overview
Some of our class writers have written up their first impressions of the 12.1 class changes and tier set reviews. We've listed all of them below.
Blood DKUnholy DK
Devourer DHVengeance DH
Balance Druid
Aug EvokerDevastation EvokerPreservation Evoker
Survival Hunter
Fire Mage
Mistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk
Shadow Priest
Outlaw RogueSubtlety Rogue
Restoration Shaman
Frost DKHavoc DHFeral DruidGuardian DruidRestoration DruidBM HunterMM Hunter
Arcane MageFrost MageBrewmaster MonkHoly PaladinProtection Paladin
Retribution PaladinDiscipline PriestHoly PriestAssassination RogueElemental ShamanEnhance ShamanAffliction WarlockDemo WarlockDestro Warlock
Arms WarriorFury Warrior
Protection Warrior
Outlaw Rogue Talent Changes
First, before talking about the changes themselves, I feel it's important to look at the changes and what the developers' goals are when going into 12.1
Developers’ notes: The changes to Outlaw in Curse of Ula’tek are intended to improve talent build diversity and flexibility. We’ve increased the power of some underperforming talents and pulled back some that could feel “locked in”. Killing Spree’s damage has been increased significantly because the damage it did wasn’t sufficiently stronger than using other abilities during its channel would have been. The talent should now increase your overall damage about as much as other comparable talents.
Improved Between the Eyes has been updated – Causes Between the Eyes critical strikes to deal 2.5 times normal damage (was 3 times).
Fast Action has been updated – Now reduces the cooldown of Between the Eyes by 8 seconds (was 5 seconds) and increases the damage bonus from each Between the Eyes stack by 1%.
Killing Spree damage increased by 60%.
Heavy Hitter increases the damage of attacks that generate combo points by 15%/30% (was 10%/20%).
Zero In value per stack reduced to 2% (was 3%).
Developers’ notes: We don’t want players to feel obligated to use off-hand daggers to maximize the value of this talent. Zero In now has a 30% chance to not proc if triggered by a weapon with 1.8 Speed, giving it the same proc rate when attacking with daggers vs. other one-handed weapons.
Hidden Opportunity’s chance for Ambush to grant Opportunity increased to 100% (was 80%) of the chance for Sinister Strike to grant Opportunity.
New connectors have been added between Ruthlessness and Find an Opening, and between the Flickering Steel choice node and Grand Melee.
The main focus of these changes, as stated by the developer notes, is a focus on slightly nerfing the strong talents and buffing the weaker options. Many of these changes are fairly small potatoes in the big picture. The Killing Spree buff is welcome, as despite Trickster being the go-to hero talent in Season 1, it hasn't felt great to press due to how low its damage is. This buff will likely lock in Trickster as the default talent choice for Season 2 as well. The changes to both Improved Between the Eyes and Heavy Hitter don't really change much, as it just makes both options slightly better/worse.
There are some more impactful changes in here as well, mainly the buff to Fast Action. This talent before didn't do enough to justify a talent point, but with an additional -3 seconds on the cooldown, and increasing the stacking damage buff makes it a core talent that most builds will want. Another good change is the added connectors that I've highlighted below. The one from Ruthlessness to Find an Opening makes it a potentially good 1-pointer to grab without having to grab Heavy Hitter.
The last thing I want to go over is the changes that don't exactly hit the mark. First is the change to Zero In. To quote the developers, "We don’t want players to feel obligated to use off-hand daggers to maximize the value of this talent." However, this talent isn't the only reason we use off-hand daggers. While this talent exacerbated the issue, Instant Poison still procs more often when you use a dagger in the offhand, so if the goal was to stop feeling forced to use a dagger, that issue still exists post-change. The other issue is the change to Hidden Opportunity. In a world where Vanish isn't on Restless Blades, there needs to be more standalone payoffs for pressing Ambush. Consider making Hidden Opportunity also increase the damage of Ambush, and put some of that power into Audacity to avoid the spec feeling tied to stealth in the same way it did throughout the DF-TWW era.
Season 2 Outlaw Rogue Tier Set
A new season means a new tier set, and the goal of many of the Season 2 tier sets is to be more directly impactful with the rotation.
2-Set Bonus: Dispatch damage increased by 15%.
4-Set Bonus: Sinister Strike and Ambush have a 12% chance to cause your next Dispatch to be free and deal damage as if you spent the maximum combo points.
While the 2-set obviously does very little, the 4-piece bonus is incredible. To many people who have played Outlaw before, this version can feel as though it's missing something, and this set bonus adds an extra rotational quirk to track and react to. In addition to the gameplay implications, this also helps with overall energy income as well, which has been a pain point for many of us throughout Season 1 when you lowroll on all of our resource generation.
The only issues this set has on the PTR right now are the bugs. The free Dispatch that the tier set provides doesn't trigger a few of the spec's effects related to finishers at the moment; the ones identified as of now are Gravedigger (Apex 2), the coins from Fatebound's hero talent Hand of Fate, and the spec talent Ruthlessness. The potential DPS lost from each of these varies; I'm hoping these issues get resolved sooner, rather than later.
Overall Season 2 Vibe Check
Overall, I think these changes are fantastic. The baseline changes to the spec improve the overall flow and cooldown economy, while the new tier set adds another fold to the spec's rotation, simultaneously addressing both CDR and energy issues.
However, whenever a new Season rolls around, it's always tempting to focus on and point out nagging issues that still plague the spec, and without retreading old ground of issues related to Killing Spree's random targeting, or why does Deft Maneuvers have an energy cost stapled onto it, or is the spec maybe getting a little too high variance, I instead want to focus on an issue that hurts ALL 3 Rogue specs' viability in raid, but especially Outlaw.
Back during TWW, Outlaw Rogue had a talent called Precise Cuts, which was an extremely important talent for the spec's ability to excel in raid cleave, if the encounter asked for that damage profile. With that talent gone, and talents like Deft Maneuvers feeling extra expensive on lower targets, this spec has transformed from an absolute monster on 2-4 target cleave, to borderline unplayable on any encounter that has 2-4 targets. Outlaw used to eat fights like Soul Hunters for lunch, and now it's one of the worst specs in the game when it comes to Paladins this tier.
Now, to make it crystal clear, when I highlight this fact, I'm not saying "My spec needs to be the best at X content forever, because it was really good at it on season Y." What I am saying is that if we look at the upcoming raid tier and notice that there are multiple 2-3 target fights, and nothing has been done to address this fact, it's going to be another struggle season for Outlaw and Rogue in general.
