It's been a long time since Kenji's rogue update, which was honestly a godsend. The class was in a really bad condition and we really needed something. But after many months of playing rogues I've come to the conclusion that the rogue is still decidedly weaker than almost any other class in terms of deep investment.
I want to split this up between positive and negative post-update feedback.
The Negative
1) Rogues still don't feel like they have a "capstone" ability, or a real reason to invest many levels with the closest exception being flashbangs at 24. You could possibly include maximum grenade DCs as a sort of "capstone" at rogue 30, but rogue 30 is regarded as a joke. Of course not all classes have or particularly need a capstone ability, but is sure helps when you're dealing with a class that is struggling. Rogue 30 is not useful and rogue 24/25 is underwhelming.
2) Deep rogues still struggle against similar rogue adjacent classes. Shadowdancers have much better defensive tricks and almost don't care about the loss of grenade progression with their awesome shadow gaze. Assasins outdamage rogues horribly, and don't care about the loss of grenades because their sneak attacks can paralyze opponents.
3) Rogues are easy to kill. Obviously, so are assassins. But assassins do ridiculous damage and can lock an opponent down before they have a chance to strike back.
4) The most useful dirty fighting option (blinding) is impossible with two weapon fighting. In other words, probably most rogues.
5) My next point could probably be a thread in and of itself: the new rogue feats seemed to be the dev team's answer to an old question: If these other rogue-like classes outshine the rogue in so many ways, why play a rogue? The answer is now "Feats. Lots of feats. New feats". In my opinion this was a pretty wise approach that had a lot of potential, but experience playing the class isn't producing the best results. Things like signature weapon, gruesome technique, epic skill focus, etc. are flavorful and useful. They've made the class a bit more mechanically powerful. But only a bit. In my opinion these feats would have to be stronger, or we would just need even MORE of them to be anything close to competitive.
-To illustrate this point, pretend that all level 30 rogues without assassin levels on the server suddenly got five more rogue feats and spent them all on improved sneak attack. Deep rogues would all be rocking 17-18d6 sneak attack damage at least. This would probably put them basically on par with most assassins in terms of raw damage, but they still wouldn't be paralyzing their opponents as a non-action. The gap in power would still be there. Rogues have not feated their way out of the power disparity. This may be because the feats aren't strong enough, or it might be because we don't have enough of them. We already get quite a few, but quantity has a quality all its own.
6) The vigilante at times feels like a bit of a middle finger to rogues. Vigis still gain access to rogue grenades = character level and thus outdo us in one of our only redeeming gimmicks. They do this with full BaB. I don't have a problem with vigilantes being able to do this, but any deep rogue should be able to pay for an option like full grenade use without giving up a fourth attack per round.
7) Grenades and traps generally feel fairly weak, especially with a class that vaporizes after a single attempt at making an enemy fail his save. Modest DC increases would change the general quality of life for playing a rogue.
8) We are generally a gearing nightmare. Most of our signature gearing options don't have discipline, will save or unisave. This is especially scary as a usually low strength/wisdom class. Throwing us a bone here and there on some of our standard equipment (fine elven boots, rogue leathers, displacer beast cloaks, rings of hiding, etc.) would be huge. Actually, this would make things easier for assassins/Invisible blades/shadowdancers too.
9) Many of our most important tricks eat up a round's worth of activity, and we only have a round's worth of staying power.
The Positive
1) I do enjoy the rogue's new niche of "has more feats than shadowdancers and assasins". This is a very fun, customizable, granular approach. I've made it clear that these feats aren't making the impact they could be due to their quality and/or quantity, but I think it was the right approach philosophically to distinguish us from similar classes.
2) Having a billion skill ranks and an amazing selection of skills is still a lot of fun.
3) Dirty fighting was a free goodie, and it's fun. I still take issue with the best option (blinding) not being available to two weapon rogues, but all of the variants seem somewhat useful. We needed a trick that didn't rely on beating 80 discipline.
4) People with a few rogue levels are better off. I've talked to a few people who said that 4-5 rogue for dirty fighting, some sneak dice and a tumble dump is an excellent deal. People who took the minimum number of rogue levels needed to get epic dodge are making off with at least one more feat than they had pre-update.
5) It's cool that Kenji gave us some new stuff, and as I've said playing a rogue is a bit less painful than it was before. It feels good that the team is listening.
Those were just my thoughts/ramblings on the current state of rogues.
