We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Outlaw Rogue in Patch 10.1 and even throw in a few reasons of why you might not. From all the changes since launch to the new tier set bonuses coming in 10.1, join us as we explore Dragonflight Season 2 Outlaw Rogue!
Why You Should Play a Spec in Dragonflight Season 2 Series
Blood DK
Havoc DH
Feral Druid
Guardian Druid
Preservation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Mistweaver Monk
Retribution Paladin
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Shadow Priest
Assassination Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Affliction Warlock
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Dragonflight Season 2 Rogue Tier Set
Why You Should Play Outlaw Rogue in Dragonflight Season 2 (and Why You Shouldn’t)
Outaw Rogue has continued to be a popular spec, despite the repeated nerfs it received during Dragonflight Season 1, and Sub Rogue on it’s heels numerically it has remained a fairly popular spec with a devoted fan base. Moving into Dragonflight Season 2 nothing at all changes for the spec. The playstyle, the talent tree, the rotation, if you’ve played it since the nerf to Fan the Hammer you can pick the spec up again and be ready to go. The main gameplay loop consists of building and spending Combo Points while Energy remains a secondary limiter. In addition, the high APM gameplay with lots of low and high duration cooldowns made even shorter thanks to Restless Blades.
Since the spec has received zero changes, the talent tree continues to be loaded with powerful build enabling talents such as Keep It Rolling, and spins on old fan favourites such as Fan the Hammer. Below is a small table with a quick summary on why you should, or shouldn’t play Outlaw Rogue in Dragonflight Season 2
| Why You Should | Why You Shouldn’t |
Why You Should Play Outlaw Rogue in Dragonflight Season 2
Outlaw Rogue Utility for Dragonflight
Starting with what hasn’t changed. Rogue has always been a selfish class when it comes to utility, mainly focused on personal survivability over buffs or cooldowns. Some of these spells include:
There really isn’t too much to say in regards to Rogues utility toolkit that isn’t said above. Unlike most classes, we didn’t really get much new in terms of group utility or even personal utility going into Dragonflight. The one new piece of utility that is worth talking about though is Atrophic Poison.
Atrophic Poison doesn’t sound very impactful, but in reality this is another copy of Devotion Aura for your raid. In tandem with the talent Master Poisoner this increases it to 3.6% reduced damage from the target. Having double Rogue in a raid comp can be something guilds might aim for as each rogue can go a different poison meaning you can get the benefit of Numbing Poison and Atrophic Poison at the same time.
Why Bring a Rogue?
One of the most powerful aspects of Rogue when it comes to all forms of PvE is it’s absurd defensive toolkit. Thanks to Cheat Death, Feint and Cloak of Shadows Rogue is easily the most durable class in the game. A short cooldown spammable 40% DR against a majority of dangerous mechanics in the game is strong especially in a progression setting where the HP pools are small, and the HPS is limited.
Now when it comes to raiding, that’s about it for Rogues usefulness but for Mythic+ it has one of the best tools for optimizing routes in the game; Shroud of Concealment. Many of the most optimal routes when it comes to pushing keys is going to be off the back of this ability. Being able to skip certain packs is a huge boon that the spec provides even when it isn’t numerically the highest tuned spec. In addition being able to control packs with ease by cycling Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, Blind takes a massive load off your group and allows them to DPS much easier.
Jack of all Trades, Master of None
Outlaw Rogue is a spec that is quite good at everything, but the best at nothing. If you take a look over at Warcraftlogs for Vault, you will see that Outlaw Rogue looks like its one of the best specs in the raid! But if you take a more granular look at each of the fights the spec usually sits around middle of the pack for most of the encounters. This does mean that in the new raid, whether your raid comp requires you to go a more single target focused build, or an AoE focused build with a few talent points shuffled around you can easily fill in the gaps and fill the role your raid needs.
Adapting Playstyle to the Nerfs
Back during 10.0.5, Outlaw Rogue received a pretty big nerf to it’s playstyle even though numerically the change effectively did nothing. Fan the Hammer went from generating 6 total combo points to 4, this meant that before the nerf every time you would consume Opportunity you would immediately go into a finisher, now that you generate 4 you have to be more reactive to what global you press next. As mentioned previously this nerf was more of a playstyle nerf than numerical one due to the fact that requiring an additional generator before your finisher means that talents such as Count the Odds gain increased value. Count the Odds is a great addition to the spec as it helps find key Roll the Bones buffs such as Skull and Crossbones and Buried Treasure.
Why You Shouldn’t Play Outlaw Rogue in Dragonflight Season 2
While there is a lot to love when it comes to the specs fundamentals there are a handful of red flags going into the next tier. Between poor tuning, being fairly buggy, a tier set that doesn’t do much to change up the rotation, and the lack of changes to the spec going from Season 1 to 2 leaves a lot to be desired.
The Tier Set
Rogue Outlaw 10.1 Class Set 2pc is the two piece set bonus which applies a debuff that deals 5% of all damage you deal over 8 seconds. Rogue Outlaw 10.1 Class Set 4pc is the four piece set bonus which causes your Between the Eyes to consume the remaining DoT from the two piece and also grants 5% agility. Despite the fact that this tier set is incredibly simple and passive, both the two piece and the four piece come with their own host of bugs.
The two piece is the buggier of the bunch. It currently does not work with critical hits as it only checks the base damage of the skill when calculating the damage of the DoT. The damage calculation is equally messy when it comes to Find Weakness without any real consistency to be found. The two set also works with some trinkets and not others although it probably shouldn’t. Lastly it doesn’t even work with all Rogue abilities such as Instant Poison. All these bugs combine cause the two set to be much weaker than it should.
The four piece while not as bugged it just does not do what it says on the tooltip. The tooltip claims to deal 200% of the remaining damage of the two piece, although all it’s really doing is taking the most recent tick of damage of the two piece damage and multiplying it by 16. Similarly this bug just causes the tier set to deal even less damage than intended.
Overall maybe this tier set is a 6% damage increase in total which leaves a lot to be desired when the baseline of the spec is pretty low to begin with.
Issues with the Talent Tree
The talent tree has mostly remained the same since launch. The only change was to Cheat Death as it was moved right up to the second row of the tree which makes it impossible to miss. This is a great change overall but there are still issues to discuss regarding the talent tree.
Not only is the tier set for us bugged but also the talents. Nightstalker as a talent fully does nothing. This talent since launch has been a MUST PICK talent that you are required to path through and actively does nothing. This means every Outlaw and Subtlety rogue plays with -2 talent points straight up. Triple Threat is another bugged talent that doesn’t even work with talent right below it, Hidden Opportunity. This is another 2 pointer talent that in a raid will do 0.0% of your damage overall which gives us a grand total of -4 talent points that Rogue plays with.
Other issues with the tree mainly revolve around how rigid the class tree is. Due to the class tree being so loaded with damage talents it effectively blocks off all of the utility nodes on the tree as every point spent on talents like Gouge, or Nimble Fingers prevent you from taking crucial damage talents such as Deeper Stratagem or Shadow Dance.
The Final Verdict
With alts being easier than ever in Dragonflight rerolling to FOTM is as easy as ever. This means that final tuning matters a lot. During most of the raid testing, the two piece was bugged in a different way where it was dealing 6x the intended damage. This made Outlaw overall look quite competitive with many of the strong specs during testing. Since the bug has been fixed and the tier set being nerfed from 7% > 5% agility Outlaws place in the meta seems grim. Obviously things can change with just a few aura buffs, some exemptions from certain especially punishing mechanics and the outlook on the spec could be much brighter but for the time being I would proceed with caution.
About the Author
| Hey my name is ForeverGuy or just Guy, I’m the current guide writer for Outlaw Rogue. I raid mythic on Mal’Ganis but a lot of my time is spent in the Rogue Discord helping people out with their rotation, and general theory crafting and just talking with regulars. I’ve worked on previous guides in the past and I’ve helped optimize Outlaw for Simulationcraft in both the gear, talents, and APL. Feel free to message me about any questions you have about rogue, I’m usually around for anything just find me in Ravenholdt, my discord is guy#4019. I stream progression whenever the raid comes out, so feel free to give me a follow on Twitch, or follow me on Twitter if you like the guides. |
For more information on playing Outlaw Rogue, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight:
Outlaw Rogue Guide
