What’s Best About Rogues in Season 9
The one constant that Rogues can rely on is having one of the best, if not the best leveling build, Dance of Knives. They easily get through the leveling process into early endgame without ever slowing down. However, nowadays leveling only makes up a small part of every Season and once you get far enough into endgame it means going back to the same old builds we have been playing for the better part of two years. Flurry got some love with the addition of Deathmask of Nirmitruq, but lags far behind other builds like Penetrating Shot Azurewrath, Twisting Blades, and Death Trap. We wish there were more positive things to say here, but as it stands, the Rogue class desperately needs a major overhaul to open up design space.
The Biggest Problem Rogues Are Facing Currently
The direction in which the Rogue class is heading seems uncertain. New Aspects and Uniques added over the last few Seasons were very hit or miss. The added Stun Grenades, Poison Trap, and Flurry support didn’t amount to anything groundbreaking aside from already existing builds taking advantage of some of the synergies these items provided. Many of the Rogue’s class-specific Aspects are underperforming, leading to Rogue builds resorting to generic Aspects to round out their setups because of the lack of other viable options.
Rogues lost a core part of their identity with the removal of CC from their arsenal in Season 8. Blizzard’s original vision for the Rogue being a melee and ranged hybrid never panned out. It sounds cool in theory, but it turns out that pure melee or pure ranged builds perform strictly better than any hybrid variant. Another big problem right now is that all Rogue builds are too similar, aside from their main damaging ability. The majority of endgame builds rely on the same synergies, including Passives (e.g. Exploit, Malice), Skills (e.g. Dash, Smoke Grenade), Paragon Nodes (e.g. Danse Macabre, Eldritch Bounty, Class Specialization (Preparation), and Aspects (e.g. Vehement Brawler’s Aspect, Umbrous Aspect).
As we’ve mentioned before, the Rogue’s Class Specialization system needs some kind of rebalancing or rework. Most endgame builds currently use Preparation and both Inner Sight and Combo Points see no use at all.
The #1 Hope for the Future of Rogues
New build-defining Uniques, reworking underperforming Aspects and Uniques, and updates to the Rogue’s skill tree and their Class Specialization system have the potential to drastically shake things up and revitalize the class. Blizzard released a teaser not too long ago, saying that major updates to the Skill Trees and Aspects were indeed in the works. All we can do is remain hopeful that these upcoming changes will breathe fresh air into the Rogue class.
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