By now, it's no secret that WoW's Rogues have received the short end of the shiv when it comes to hero talents—not necessarily in terms of mechanics (although the Trickster's capstone locking you out of your other abilities is an interesting choice). Rather, it's the flavour that just isn't spicy enough.
For context, my main character is an Outlaw rogue—it's my favourite spec by far. It's twitchy and fast, reactive in every sense of the word, and has precious little to manage in terms of cooldowns. Instead, I often feel like I'm behind the wheel of a car with no brakes and a whack-a-mole machine in place of a steering wheel, cramming as many Between the Eyes as I can into my Vanish windows.
In The War Within, I've actually had very few problems with the core experience of my class. The dopamine hit of landing three consecutive maxed-out gunshots thanks to some lucky procs rivals the most heart-stopping energy drink. When it comes to my chosen Hero talent tree, the Fatebound, however—you barely notice it.
While PC Gamer's own Fraser Brown has been having a blast on his death knight, stomping about on his charger and summoning a legion of horsemen, I've been relegated to flipping a coin. The Fatebound's core mechanic is that, every time you execute a finishing move, your character goes gambling.
Coming up heads gives you a damage buff, while tails does a burst of damage—both of which stack with consecutive flips. For example, heads nets you a 10% damage buff, plus an additional 2% every time you flip heads after that. These stacking bonuses reset when your coin comes up on the other side.
This is entirely passive and, considering how busy Outlaw is already, I don't actually mind that. Unless you're squinting at your buffs, though, you aren't actually going to be able to tell what's going on under the hood. The animations for the coin flips see your rogue cough up cash like Sonic the Hedgehog stubbing his toe, but the results mostly blend into the flurry of gunpowder, blades, and swirlies in your average dungeon run.
Which is a shame, because now that I've got this silly little Weakaura (a highly-programmable custom interface mod that can do almost anything with a little tinker) set up, I'm actually having a good time. Introducing the Coin-o-Meter, my ugliest child:
Don't worry about the pirate flag, I'll explain that in a moment.
What my duct-tape Weakaura does is give me a clear, visual indicator of how many coin stacks I have, what I've landed on and—not pictured above—a number showing either my heads' damage boosts or my tails flip's explosion damage (ripped directly from the combat log). The higher my stack, the luckier I know I'm getting.
The pirate flag appears whenever I hit seven coin tosses in a row and enter my "lucky coin" state—a 7% boost to my agility or, if I already have it, an explosion. I've set up Weakauras to do a little 'tah-dah' noise whenever this happens which, as I'm writing this, feels a little like putting candles in your own birthday cake because no one came to the party. Cue the saddest pirate yaargh ever.
This has massively improved my enjoyment of my rogue's Hero talents. In terms of mechanics, the Fatebound's steady ramp is actually quite noticeable. When you've got a stack of seven tails and a lucky coin in your pocket, you start pumping out some truly silly numbers—which works extremely well with the Outlaw spec's frantic and bursty vibes.
The fact, however, that I'm only noticing this after scraping this offence to modern UI design together? It feels like a bullseye on the Fatebound rogue's core design issue: Feedback. The moment you clearly and concisely tell the player just how fortunate they're getting, it works marvellously. The issue lies in the presentation more than the core chassis.
It also has me thinking a lot about FF14's job gauges—bespoke UI elements that keep track of everything from attack speed buffs to combos. While it's neat that WoW is modular enough to let players cobble their own ones together, I can't help but wonder if that's a system Blizzard could stand to support on their own, rather than relying on modders to do it.
Anyway—it's an otherwise minor gripe for an expansion launch I'm otherwise having a great time with. I'll be returning to my reflex-testing serotonin rotation with a pocket full of cash feeling frustrated, but otherwise I'm still having a ball.
