#Otl - Intro

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Welcome to Midnight! outlaw Outlaw has changed heavily. A lot of the rotational complexity of previous expansions has been taken out, including all stealth Stealth interactions like crackshot Crackshot and huh Underhanded Upper Hand. We no longer have to maintain adr Adrenaline Rush permanently, not do we rely on AR being active to feel useful at all. vanish Vanish is no longer on restless_blades Restless Blades and is not part of the rotation.

outlaw Outlaw is a fast paced spec with minimal burst, where every global matters for energy efficiency and momentum of your buff uptime. You are constantly building and spending combo points to reduce your cooldowns through restless_blades Restless Blades, and utilizing your toolkit to maintain high uptime of the upper rtb Roll the Bones stages.

rtb Roll the Bones has been reworked to be more approachable and consistent with gameplay RNG:

  • When you press Roll the Bones, you roll randomly among 4 different "stages":
    • rtb_oneofakind One of a Kind (Stage 1): Sinister Strike has a 20% increased chance to strike twice and grant Opportunity.
    • rtb_doubletrouble Double Trouble (Stage 2): Sinister Strike and Ambush generate 1 additional combo points and deal 15% increased damage.
    • rtb_triplethreat Triple Threat (Stage 3): Restless Blades cooldown reduction increased by 30%.
    • rtb_jackpot Jackpot (Stage 4): Critical strike chance increased by 10%.

Each "stage" contains its new buff and includes the buffs of the lower stages. So if you roll stage 4 "Jackpot", you are getting increased crit chance and all the other buffs at the same time.

Stage 1 "One of a Kind" is not very good on its own and will quickly drain your energy if you are stuck with it for very long. Fortunately, Outlaw uses the talent loaded_dice Loaded Dice to guarantee at least Stage 2 most of the time and kir Keep it Rolling to extend the uptime on the higher stages.

The probability of rolling each stage appears to be 55% / 30% / 10% / 5%.

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Almost all of Outlaw's AoE damage is done through passively cleaving via bf Blade Flurry which must be maintained at all times in AoE.

Our "builders" are bf Blade Flurry (in AoE), ps Pistol Shot (with the Opportunity proc), and ss Sinister Strike. Our "finishers" are bte Between the Eyes, ksnew Killing Spree (if taken), dispatch Dispatch, and snd Slice and Dice. SnD is automatically casted by Dispatch so you typically only have to cast it once at the start of a key and never again.

bte Between the Eyes is our priority finisher that deals our highest damage-per-cast and also applies a damage buff. Repeatedly using BtE will cause the damage buffs to overlap though not refresh in duration. BtE will constantly reset its own cooldown via ace Ace Up Your Sleeve so it is imperative that you react to the proc.

adr Adrenaline Rush is our "cooldown" though it is not a burst ability you save for opportune moments, rather you mostly use it on cooldown as a necessary part of Outlaw's momentum. It generates loaded_dice Loaded Dice and makes your rotation faster, if skipped it then you quickly lose cooldown reduction on it. With standard gameplay it should have about 40% uptime. adr AR has the undocumented effect of lowering your GCD based on your haste, down to 0.8s with 25% haste.

vigor Energy is a major bottleneck for Outlaw this expansion, especially with the trickster Trickster hero tree . We take nearly every energy talent possible and need to approach 25% haste to feel energy saturated. We rely on thistle_tea Thistle Tea for energy; playing poorly or simply getting unlucky can drain Tea too fast and you will stall on energy later. Longer fights where Tea naturally runs out can cause Outlaw to struggle with energy if you get below average RNG.

We lost float Float Like a Butterfly and no longer stack Versatility so our defensive power is noticeably weaker than previous expansions. ability_feint Feint still costs energy which can sometimes be a hindrance with our current energy economy.

acro Auto-attacks are a large portion of our damage (like 15%) which makes buffs_bloodlust Bloodlust a little more valuable than previous expansions.

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Notable Talent Rundown

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The strongest talents in our class tree are loaded_dice Loaded Dice, ff Fatal Flourish, deeper Deeper Stratagem, ps Fan the Hammer,ruthlessness Ruthlessness, ace Ace Up Your Sleeve, crackshot Zero In, and talent_bladerush Blade Rush.

loaded_dice Loaded Dice -> after using adr Adrenaline Rush, your next rtb RTB roll will be elevated 1 stage higher from whatever it was going to be. This effectively turns the RTB stage chances to 0% / 55% / 30% / 15% while Loaded Dice is active, guaranteeing at least stage 2.

ff Fatal Flourish -> your offhand attacks and ps Pistol Shots have a 25% chance to generate 8 energy. This includes our mastery maingauche Main Gauche which is activated by almost all of our skills. So playing Outlaw well and being faster through adr AR uptime feeds into itself to generate more energy from our attacks.

deeper Deeper Stratagem gives us up to 7 total combo points and ruthlessness Ruthlessness causes finishers to naturally refund 1 or 2 CPs.

ps Fan the Hammer -> with 2 points, causes ps Opportunity to generate 3 stacks per proc, and stack up to 6 times. This allows us to be flexible with ps Pistol Shot when at 3 stacks and ideally consume it based on remaining combo points.

ace Ace Up Your Sleeve (with 2 points) -> causes bte BtE to have up to a 36-60% chance to reset its own cooldown on use and put you at 5 or 6 CPs (stacking with ruthlessness Ruthlessness). However we do not use BtE at 5 CPs so if the reset lands you at 5 you still have to use a builder before the next BtE.

crackshot Zero In causes auto-attack crits to generate a stacking buff that is consumed by the next bte BtE, giving it increased damage and crit chance. An interesting thing here is that because it gives both crit and damage, these stats scale with each other so it is "better" to consume it at high stacks compared to low stacks. So far this does not influence gameplay but it does seem to influence the value of other bte BtE related talents, such as talents_fastaction Fast Action.

talent_bladerush Blade Rush is an active energy talent that deals solid damage and is also a softcapped source of AoE decoupled from bf Blade Flurry. It is also part of our tier set bonus, giving us a brief 5% damage buff on use. It is important to not delay BR as it becomes available to help maintain energy and the tier buff.

rtb Sleight of Hand is a talent we can sometimes take and it increases the base odds of the rtb RTB stages. After many trials it is thought to cause a stage 1 or stage 2 roll to have a 20% chance to be elevated by +1 stage, while it cannot bump stage 3 into stage 4. However it applies before loaded_dice Loaded Dice which still results in a greater chance to get rtb_jackpot Jackpot when active.

talents_heightenedrush Heightened Rush / talents_menacingrush Menacing Rush is a choice node that either increases AR duration or increases your builder/finisher damage during it. Menacing Rush is preferred choice, and tuning aside it also helps give AR some power in vulnerability or priority damage moments.

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rtb Dragon-Bone Dice simply enhances the effect of each RTB stage. Most if its power is actually loaded into Stage 4 rtb_jackpot Jackpot, as +15% crit is essentially +15% dps.

kir Keep it Rolling is an active 6-minute cooldown that extends the current RTB stage by +30 seconds. If you remember from previous expansions, all the old weirdness with the "container buff" and weakaura reliance is gone. It is simply used to extend the upper RTB stages when available.

ks Deadly Pursuit is new talent that causes your cooldowns to recharge a bit faster when we have downtime. It's an attempt to help our issue with downtime though its impact is pretty minimal. It only competes with utility talents, lately the consensus is that 5% stamina is better than what Deadly Pursuit provides.

talent_preparation Preparation is an active 4-minute cooldown that resets most of our cooldowns, namely adr Adrenaline Rush. It should be used in the raid and is an option in keys. Its main strength is letting you get a second, free adr AR whenever you want it, though with a bit of awkwardness. It is not on restless_blades Restless Blades so you have some agency when you can press it. In a vacuum you slam it on pull/nearly on cooldown but you should flex its usage based on when vulnerability/downtime/priority add moments will happen as that's where the AR reset will be most useful.

ksnew Killing Spree is a finisher that is a channel and is required by trickster Trickster. Its damage is not impressive and it has random targeting; it has lower priority than bte BtE and is fairly awkward in general as a channeled spell that eats into adr AR globals.

acro Deft Maneuvers causes bf Blade Flurry to be a builder in AoE at the cost of 45 energy. In 3+ targets it causes BF to be the priority builder when available. Currently it is worth to use in any 2+ targets despite the energy cost.

supercharger Supercharger (in the class tree) causes adr Adrenaline Rush to "supercharge" your next 2 finishers, adding +3 combo points to whatever CPs they were used at. So if you finish at 7 CPs they are treated as 10 CPs instead. In game, Supercharger causes your 1 and 2 combo points to glow blue when active, but this is just a visual representation that your next finisher will consume one. You still use finishers at the normal rules whether Supercharger is active or not.

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Apex talents and Hero Trees

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Our apex talent is talents_gravedigger_apex Gravedigger. The first 3 talents are simply damage bonuses, while the last talent is an effect that causes dispatch Dispatch to build stacks of talent_gravedigger_palmedbullet Palmed Bullets, up to 10 stacks. At 6 stacks, your next bte BtE will consume 6 stacks to reset itself similar to ace Ace and give +6 CPs. So the only added gameplay by this talent is reacting to the proc. The proc does have a travel time, which is usually near instant but on the larger raid bosses there is about a half-second delay. On bosses like Vorasius and the Dragon duo you should track talent_gravedigger_palmedbullet Palmed Bullets to see when BtE will reset.

Our two hero trees are fatebound Fatebound and trickster Trickster. Gameplay wise, they are both relatively low impact and don't change the rotation significantly.

fatebound Fatebound causes your finishers to flip between Heads or Tails coins which are essentially just damage bonuses. Fatebound also gets extra CPs, energy, and ps Opportunity proc chance which is nice for consistency. You do not need to track the Coin buffs, they do not influence decision making.

trickster Trickster causes your attacks to periodically proc talents_fazed Unseen Blade which applies the talents_fazed Fazed debuff, causing your targets to take more damage and prevent parrying. It causes ksnew Killing Spree to generate 2 free uses of Unseen Blade to be consumed by your next 2 builders so that is why KS is required by the tree. It also generates a finisher bonus through trickster_flawlessform Flawless Form and causes Dispatch to transform into coupdegrace Coup de Grace after 4 Unseen Blades, though you do not need to track either of these things, for Outlaw they just happen when they happen and don't influence decisions.

As of 12.0.5, trickster Trickster has a reworked talent talent_trickster_cloudcover Cloud Cover, which causes adr AR to place a smokescreen that enhances the talents_fazed Fazed debuff for 6s, and lingers for another 6s when you exit the smoke. Currently this talent is bugged and you don't need to worry about standing inside the smoke-- the Cloud Cover buff will refresh on you when the smoke expires whether you are in the smoke or not.

Thetrickster Trickster tree is mildly ahead in all content by about 1-5% so it is recommended. fatebound Fatebound is more comfortable with resources and when thistle_tea Thistle Tea runs out in keys, so it is perfectly acceptable to play it.