Setting the Stage
In the upcoming patch 10.2, Rogue has finally received their talent tree rework which is largely focused on using what they have learned during Dragonflight to make a talent tree enjoyable to play with. One of the largest pain points for the Rogue community during Dragonflight has been the overall lack of options when it comes to utility talents. The previous structure of the tree where a majority of the damage talents are stuck at the bottom means that many of the iconic rogue utility spells earned over expansions are just not obtainable while also doing maximum damage. Talents such as
Improved Sprint,
, and even
Grappling Hook are in awkward spots due to constantly competing with premium damage talents. It always felt as though you picked damage first, and just ended up with what utility happened to be within it's path which never felt great.
Other more Outlaw Rogue-specific issues are overall smaller scale. Due to the change to
Between the Eyes back in Shadowlands and with
Find Weakness being in the class tree, the spec that used to be the best at swapping targets easily slowly became the worst and most cumbersome.
Thankfully the rework has fixed most of the issues above and then some. Target swapping has become easy again, many bland DPS talents have been removed to help make pathing on the tree much less constrictive, better utility options have been given to us, and even some brand new talents have been made which have large implications on how we end up playing.
The Class Tree
First I want to focus on the changes to the class tree. One of the great changes has not only been the increased pathing, but the new and much stronger utility talents. Not only is
Improved Sprint easy to grab now, but the new talent
Featherfoot is also incredible. With both talents
Sprint turns into a 1-minute cooldown, 100% movement speed increase, that lasts for 12 seconds. Throw in
Restless Blades in there as well and you can almost keep this up with 100% uptime.
Rogue also should be much better against DoT effects since once again, the better pathing allows us to grab
Nimble Fingers and
Iron Stomach.
Graceful Guile is the other new defensive talent added now while it might sound insane due to how strong a defensive tool
Feint can be, although due to it's already short cooldown you tend to always have it up whenever you need it. One interesting implication with this talent though is if we ever end up having an extreme rot fight again similar to
Anduin Wrynn,
Float Like a Butterfly can be taken in tandem with
Elusiveness to cover one of Rogues historical largest weaknesses defensively.
The last three talents I would say are much more focused on giving Rogue an expanded toolkit into M+.
Superior Mixture is a bit of a sleeper talent, when you combine all the ways to scale your poison effect by grabbing
Master Poisoner,
Crippling Poison becomes a whopping 72% slow making this the highest slow in the game that can be consistently applied. The opportunity cost exists as you have to decide if this slow is stronger than the effective damage reduction that
Numbing Poison or
Atrophic Poison provides.
Airborne Irritant is a new talent that finally gives Rogues an AoE stop to help with packs in M+. Pairing this with
Blinding Powder lowers the cooldown down to 48 seconds, add in
Blackjack, and suddenly you have a pretty spammable, highly effective stop. Something to note though is that the added range of
Blinding Powder only applies to the initial cast and not the ones replicated from
Airborne Irritant. The last part of the improved M+ toolkit is
Stillshroud. A pretty simple talent overall that might sound stronger than it ends up being on paper. Blizzard has over the years proceeded to make
Shroud of Concealment worse in dungeons by giving all the worst packs true sight and at the end of the day you still need count to complete the dungeon. Even for people who just pug dungeons, this should help make sure you have shroud back up after you wipe on the 2nd pack after a shroud skip.
When it comes to issues I don't have many. I'd say overall, there are a few talents that feel a bit awkward in their positioning still. A fairly contentious one is still the positioning of
. With the stated goal of making utility in less competition with DPS talents, many people take issue with it's placement still forcing you to miss out on damage to grab this unless you are pathing towards
Echoing Reprimand. I would argue that
is an insanely strong talent that I will always grab because the value it provides is something you cannot put a DPS number on, but can easily equate to more damage than an actual DPS talent.
Gouge was already a fairly niche spell for Rogues to take for dungeons even before the rework. Now that talent competes with
Airborne Irritant and the synergy talents that go with it. On the topic of
Blind,
Blackjack is an incredibly strong talent with the synergy package of
Airborne Irritant and
Blinding Powder but it has one super large issue; it's a choice node with
Tricks of the Trade which I'd argue is an essential talent when it comes to M+. This could be intentional as this
Blind package of talents is incredibly strong and
Blackjack might push it over the edge. Lastly, talents such as
Unbreakable Stride and
Rushed Setup already felt pretty underwhelming with increased competition amongst choices and synergy packages it's hard to see these getting played even in niche scenarios.
Below is an image of how I imagine a majority of the trees will look when built for raiding. Many of the damage talents you are used to from before are still going to be essential for damage.
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The Spec Tree
When the Rogue rework was announced, I wasn't expecting large changes to the Outlaw tree specifically because it felt very feature-complete to me. However, they managed to do what they did to all the other spec trees, which greatly improved the ability to move around the tree which is huge for both utility and damage-related pathing.
Grappling Hook has been made baseline as with the currently existing build, it competes with a DPS talent which means we forgo that talent and rely solely on
Shadowstep for mobility which didn't feel great.
Ghostly Strike has been reworked in a few different ways. Firstly it's been given a much larger cooldown. From 45 seconds to 1.5 minutes. It was also taken off of the GCD which makes it much less intrusive to the rotation overall. This new cooldown pairs well with another reworked talent in
Killing Spree which has been changed from a normal ability to a finisher with a 1.5 minute cooldown rather than the original 2 minutes. Both of these talents benefit from
Restless Blades which means you can potentially sync these together for large damage windows. One of the largest issues plaguing
Killing Spree has always been the animation lock which can lead to your untimely demise but this has been fixed in two different ways. One, Haste now scales the duration of the channel, and Two, all damage taken during the channel is converted into a damage over time effect for 8 seconds. This debuff can be nullified with
Cloak of Shadows which is great. The last reworked talent is much smaller overall.
Swift Slasher used to provide attack speed per combo point spent on
Slice and Dice but between this talent and the fact
Killing Spree now scales with Haste could mean that Haste is a much more appealing stat overall for the spec.
Lastly, to talk about the new talents, there aren't a lot of brand new talents but the ones that are added are quite strong and worth building around.
Underhanded Upper Hand is a brand-new passive skill that reads quite strongly. The strongest part of it is that Stealth now causes
Adrenaline Rush to extend its duration. This works with both
Vanish and stacks with
Subterfuge which gives you 6-second
Vanish windows which gives you around 70-90% uptime of
Adrenaline Rush over an encounter. The other big talent here is
Crackshot, a fairly simple talent all things considered but is incredibly powerful. Thanks to
Ace Up Your Sleeve and
Improved Between the Eyes Between the Eyes becomes a very potent spell, and being able to chain cast it within your Stealth windows is a massive damage increase. It's not uncommon during a
Shadow Dance window you will cast
Between the Eyes 6 times in a row.
Below is the concept for a build focused on
Hidden Opportunity and leveraging stealth windows to take advantage of all of the stealth-related talent synergies the spec has now.
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Closing Thoughts
When it comes to what I was expecting from a Rogue rework, I was honestly expecting some small-scale changes. Maybe opening up a few talent pathways, and removing some small-scale issues people have with the class, but this rework is much larger than that. Pretty much every issue I had with the spec in previous patches, even some of the more nit-picky stuff has been resolved. There are more and much more interesting utility talents that are worth considering, there are strong talents that have powerful synergies worth building around and altering your rotation to abuse, all the while keeping the Rogue fantasy at a high.
To highlight the remaining issues I have, I would say that
Ghostly Strike still feels a bit awkward off of the GCD making it an extremely expensive talent energy-wise now. Recently
Grand Melee was changed to no longer make it so you cast
Blade Flurry on single target, but due to
Underhanded Upper Hand you are likely going to continue to do so at least 1-4 times over a 5 minute encounter. Talents such as
Sepsis,
Gouge, and
Blackjack exist on very hard-to-justify choice nodes overall which might limit their ability to see play. Lastly, some talents feel a bit weak numerically.
Sleight of Hand is already a hard to justify talent, which gets even worse with increased
Adrenaline Rush uptime due to
Loaded Dice being even easier to proc. I'm also unsure if the changes to
Killing Spree and
Swift Slasher at current numbers make haste a strong enough stat to justify stacking it. My final issue is in regards to
. While personally I think it's an interesting choice in which you sacrifice a small amount of sheet DPS for one of the best quality of life talents in the game, I don't think it's fair that Feral, or Ret Paladin has similar talents in
Astral Influence and
Crusader's Reprieve don't have this similar level of opportunity cost.
I would say my praise of the talent tree overall outweighs my remaining nitpicky issues, a lot of which are just related to tuning. From a feels standpoint, the spec feels the best it's been since launch before they nerfed
Fan the Hammer. If there has ever been a time to join the hype train and play Rogue, now would be the time with all 3 specs looking fantastic with a fresh coat of paint.
