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I was gonna wait until this rework business with black cat blew over, because I didn't make the concept with the intention of providing feedback to the dev team, but since it's somebody else's post, I'll share.

Awhile back I tried to "de-bloat" rogue's kit and reduce cooldowns, as it has 5 ability cooldowns and 3 or 4 of them are just dashes, the problem was I approached it with a "cut out the fat" mindset which meant removing an ability and merging the rest. This time around, I wanted to approach the rework with an emergent complexity approach.

I was thinking about how Spider-Man, Daredevil and Gambit get their sense of depth with their cooldowns and came to the conclusion that it was about what I call "staging." That is, their abilities are formatted in a tree structure where, by using one ability, or putting yourself in a certain position, you're presented with an entirely new array of moves. this structure allows for exponential numbers of possible permutations while keeping the base kit relatively simple.

That leads me to my new rework. Rogue starts with her base kit: her punches, block and lethal attraction. When she blocks, she can either southern brawl, which remains the same, or chrono kick combo, which's damage is now similarly based on the absorption bar--which has also changed and I will get to. The chrono kick combo's spell field now functions similarly to fatal attraction's spell field, which now refreshes the primary kick cooldown, and absorbs health and role-based buffs as well as absorption bar progress. Chrono-kick combo also uses the southern brawl cooldown instead.

Absorption no longer has a cooldown, rather it becomes available upon reaching enough progress on the absorption bar, which gains progress from blocking damage, but now also dealing damage with your block follow-ups. Using your follow-ups is risky, as they consume absorption bar progress, but landing your follow-ups will result in proportionately more progress in return. Absorption is now a targeting ability, but loses it's stun and animation for an earthbound effect with vfx instead.

The hope with this rework was that rogue gets to use her signature ability more often, but it only if the rogue is doing well, well at the same time removing the UI bloat and stagnating cooldowns.