Hello, I made a thread like this for Warpath and Vengeance not too long ago, and since I played a fair bit of Rogue I decided to do another one.
I will exclusively talk about gameplay feeling of the 10 basic Rogue skills.
“Gameplay feeling” will encompass visual FX design, hit/cast/throw feedback, impact feedback, sound design and animation design of these skills.
I won’t talk about numbers and skill power/balancing - it’s already obvious enough which skills still need more love and which are really strong and meta.
It is worth remembering that the actual strength of the skill is a part of it feeling good as well - no amount of good animations and effects is going to fix a inherently bad skill.
This thread will sound negative because I’ll mostly be focusing on the bad aspects of these skills, but my only intention is to provide what I think is constructive criticism.
The skills:
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Flurry (when using a bow)
-Has a very stiff animation - compare the movement and position of the rogue’s body when using Flurry in comparison to Puncture (which has much more exaggerated, natural and fluid body movements when shooting and after the shot);
-I also don’t like the “whistle” sound effect, which is fitting considering the speed of the movement, but lacks any real punch or satisfaction. -
Flurry (when using melee weapons)
-Has good sound design, but I find the weapon trail to be a bit too much (I much more like the transparent-like trail Rive has for example - looks cleaner and emphasizes speed more imo);
-When wielding a weapon in only one hand the rogue’s unused hand looks stiff and flails around weirdly - it looks kind of… dumb;
-When dual wielding there’s still too much flailing around of the weapons, instead of the flurry of strikes looking like concise, precise and lethal strikes that are expected of an assassin. -
Cinder Strike (when using a bow)
-It actually looks nice, visual and sound effects wise, especially the third arrow which looks meaty;
-Although, the first two shots’ animation looks like the rogue is struggling to actually shoot - definitely not a good animation to have on an ability. -
Cinder Strike (when using melee weapons)
-Has a nice animation with a well timed and satisfying flip animation for both single and dual wield variants;
-The sound effect between the 2nd & 3rd strike sounds like there’s another slash, when it should actually sound like armor since the Rogue is getting ready to jump. -
Puncture (when using a bow)
-Looks good animation-wise and has fine sound design;
-The projectile itself looks weird - it appears out of nowhere and it’s comically huge. I recommend it being a “shadow magic” projectile that actually materializes from nowhere with shadow magic or just scaling down the ridiculous size of it since the actual visual effect of the projectile looks rather nice honestly. -
Puncture (when using melee weapons)
-Has a goofy animation when not dual wielding - it’s possibly too stiff, but I can’t put my finger on why it’s so weird. It looks more normal when the Rogue has a shield;
-The dual wield animation is very good - it’s snappy, punchy, dynamic and satisfying for a bleed skill. -
Shift - Feels nice and quick, looks good with tasteful effects and has an okay sound effect.
-
Smoke Bomb
-Its animation feels stiff in the legs - it feels as if the Rogue’s legs should at least bend a little bit or do anything just to follow the movement of the throw so the momentum and impact of the bomb gets emphasized more;
-The visual effect of the smoke itself is good, but the little “smoke explosion” that expands in the beginning and quickly fades looks more like a shockwave than a cloud of smoke. -
Shurikens - This skill is pretty bad honestly - it has bad sound design, awful and stiff animation, ugly trails behind shurikens and weak impact.
It doesn’t feel like a precise and lethal throw of an assassin that’s meant to kill, it feels like she’s throwing a bunch of pebbles.
Not only that but the shurikens appear randomly out of nowhere in front of the Rogue and they appear in random distances from the Ranger.
The skill doesn’t feel like a throw, of a lethal weapon it feels like letting go of a bunch of stuff. -
Decoy - It looks nice, but the throw sound effect sounds weak and quiet for some reason compared to everything else.
-
Ballista - The only thing it’s missing is an actual spawning/arming animation - I expected it would be like decoy (thrown and then quickly arms up), but instead it just appears out of nowhere with some pathetic dirt effect to make it look like it’s getting unearthed (first of all how would a Rogue do that and second of all it’s not a convincing effect at all).
-
Umbral Blades
-They sound nice and the trail looks okay, but the trail is so glitchy on slopes and rocky surfaces that it randomly disappears and flickers on some terrain;
-The animation of the throw is just bad, the same as the shurikens - it’s a gesture to come get a hug, not a throw of shadowy blades;
-The recall animation is nice, snappy and in sync with the return of the blades. -
Now this is not a thing almost anyone would actually notice and it’s not a problem limited to rogue, but having a sceptre equiped for example still sounds like blades when using skills (for example when using Flurry) - this is a problem in general with the game - there’s no dynamic sounds for different weapons - this is most noticeable on the Sentinel who can actually use maces, scepters and swords/axes on the same builds, but most skills still use the basic slash sound effect.
That’s it, I know a lot of my points are subjective, because really what isn’t :p.
But I still hope that there’s something people can agree with in this feedback, I tried being concise while still going into details where needed.
These skills are important because they’re the first skills new players will use and experiment with while on the road to their mastery class.
Thank you for reading.