Outlaw Rogue Patch 9.2 Changes Analysis and Tier Set Thoughts

Patch 9.2, Eternity's End, will be the final content-patch for the Shadowlands Expansion, and will have major effects on how you play your Outlaw Rogue, as it will allow for using two Legendaries and hails the return of set bonuses for each Specialization. This page will not only detail the changes and improvements made to the Spec, but also go into detail about how these changes affect our choices when it comes to picking our Covenants, Legendaries, or affecting our rotational gameplay.

If you are interested in a more comprehensive list of changes for Rogue or the game in general, you can check out our 9.2 Overview Pages as well.

Outlaw Rogues have received some significant changes with 9.2.5 and leading up to the patch. This has made the spec much more viable in both Raid and Mythic+ encounters and it is now a competitive alternative to the Assassination and Subtlety specializations.

These changes have opened up a variety of build options for Raid and Mythic+, and depending on your Covenant your talent choice might be altered. Make sure to check out our Talent section to see which talents are the best for which Covenant.

The new raid, Sepulcher of the First Ones, will finally see a return of class and specialization based set bonuses. These are 5 pieces of equipment you can acquire, which will grant additional bonuses once you wear at least 2 of them at the same time. For Outlaw Rogue, these bonuses currently are:

• Outlaw Rogue 2-Piece — Your Main Gauche has a 25% chance to to fire a Pistol Shot.
• Outlaw Rogue 4-Piece — Pistol Shot has a 100% Chance to load a hidden Bullet from your sleeves, up to 6 times. After loading 6 bullets, your next Pistol Shot also fires Between the Eyes as though 6 Combo Points were spent.

Both bonuses focus on the core class fantasy of Outlaw Rogue as a gun-slinging spec, further boosting damage dealt by abilities that can be cast from range. As Outlaw is already a very fast-paced spec that requires the player to quickly change rotational priorities based on procs and rolls from your Roll the Bones, these proc-based set bonuses will further increase the challenge and reward of mastering the Outlaw Rogue rotation.

It is important to note that the Pistol Shot procs of the 2-piece bonus will generate extra Combo Points without using up potential Opportunity procs or buffs granted by some of our Legendary Powers. Dealing with these procs will be quite awkward at first, as you might be spell-queuing another ability already right as you gain another Combo Point from the set bonus. This might lead to unwanted overcapping of Combo Points, which could be somewhat frustrating whenever it happens. The DPS implications of the 2-set are very powerful, however, so it is easy to forget about these short moments of frustration as the increased amount of Combo Points works very well with the already high amount of CP generated that we can use to reduce all of our abilities cooldowns through Restless Blades.

The 4-piece bonus, besides just dealing damage whenever it happens, will further improve our ability to reduce our cooldowns as the 6-Combo Point Between the Eyes works just like a self-cast one. This increases the usefulness of some of our Legendaries, in particular Greenskin's Wickers, but ultimately Celerity is still stronger in most cases. It will also further boost the uptime of your Between the Eyes debuff on your main-target, but since it is already very high the benefit from the added uptime is very minor.

As it stands, both bonuses are fairly mediocre, each providing around 5-6% extra DPS. While it does not stand out as one of the most powerful set bonuses, the more recent buffs to the spec have made it a viable choice for both raiding and Mythic+.

There have been no Covenant Changes for Outlaw Rogues. Due to both the set bonuses as well as the ability to run two Legendaries, with one of them needing to be the one affecting your Covenant ability, we have gained another Covenant Choice with Venthyr.

While Conduits will be unlocking their final few ranks, this will not alter gameplay in any substantial way.

In Patch 9.1 every class received a new Legendary that altered or improved the functionality of the class-specific Covenant abilities in some way. The individual benefits of each of them is outlined on our Legendary Page:

In Patch 9.2, Eternity's End, you will be able to equip your Covenant-specific Legendary as well as another Legendary of your choosing. Combining this benefit with the set bonuses might lead to a shift in how we pick and choose our Legendaries and Covenant.

This change to our gearing choices comes at a cost, however, in particular for Necrolord Rogues. As the Deathspike Legendary Power has almost no benefit at all on single-target, it is unlikely it will be viable for that encounter-type in its current state. So far, all Covenants were very close to each other in raw performance on single-target for most of Shadowlands, due to the weakness of Deathspike, Necrolord will be almost unplayable in any pure single-target environment. With Night Fae already being very far behind Kyrian and Venthyr, this will add another "unplayable" Covenant to the list.

With the release of Patch 9.2, we have now have 3 viable Covenant choices: Venthyr, Necrolord, and Kyrian. While Venthyr are the strongest on pure single-target, and Necrolord on cleave and AoE, Kyrian is a close second and offers the most flexibility for different types of content.

Kyrian will be running Invigorating Shadowdust as their second Legendary on single-target and Greenskin's Wickers for Mythic+.

Venthyr Outlaw Rogues will be opting to play Concealed Blunderbuss for single-target and Greenskin's Wickers for Mythic+. Venthyr/Blunderbuss offers the highest overall DPS on pure single-target.

Necrolord players will be playing the same Legendaries as Venthyr Rogues, with Concealed Blunderbuss being the best choice for single-target and Greenskin's Wickers being the best choice for AoE/Mythic+. Necrolord still offers the highest output on cleave and multi-target situations.