Here's my take on why Rogue Exiles should be removed

One of the most common things I read on the forums is that rogue exiles, talismans, and ghosts should be removed from the game.

Talismans should be deleted: without the mechanics of the league they came from they are 99.999% useless bloat.

Ghosts I personally like. They should be removed if sentinel ever goes core since they are essentially the exact same mechanic.

But Rogues...I haven't found a satisfactory explanation from others as to why these should be removed. So I'll put forth my own:

1) Rogue Exiles were originally designed to be surprise "bosses" while playing/mapping. They were few and far between, they had interesting attacks, and they dropped significantly more loot than any other enemy.

2) Due to years of bloat and overtuned league content, the LOOT from rogues became nothing, and their difficulty also became comparable to normal magic/rare monsters from other leagues. So Loot + Intent are already dwindling.

3) NOW with Archnemesis supermonsters flooding the screen, THEY are the surprise bosses. Rogue exiles original design has been outdone by NORMAL rares.

4) The game itself has stripped Rogues of their reward, intent, and identity. They serve no purpose and offer nothing to the game. Prophecy and Perandus were removed already for lackluster use, so its clear GGG DOES want to remove bloat. Well as it stands, rogues are just pure bloat.

I'll end by saying: if an old league mechanic offers no meaningful addition to the game (keyword: MEANINGFUL), then it should be removed in favor of a less complicated, more streamlined endgame. Talismans add NOTHING to the game, except uniques which can just be kept in the drop pool as uniques. Ghosts will eventually be just a worse version of sentinel once sentinel is added so they can go. Rogue Exiles are just sooooo old and 100% unnecessary at this time.

3.20 patch -
GGG: We've added 6 archnemesis modifiers to every rogue exile in the game. The ones that spawn in campaign can only have a maximum of 4.

5) rogue exiles could not find loot to attack you with.

exiles are fun, they can stay imo.

^I've seen that response before in other threads.

THat's perfectly fine and all, I really don't want to judge your fun vs. my fun

BUT

I would put to you (and others that have fun with exiles): are you having fun specifically BECAUSE they are exiles, or are you having fun because you have fun doing everything you already do in the game and exiles just happen to be just another mob? Because in my experience, I run into most of my exiles when i open a strongbox with the exile mod, and I basically don't even notice the exile or its name/skill/mtx.

Wild metamorphs act in very much the same way as rogue exiles to me except for 2 very important differences: they are less frequent and more impactful to fight, and they have dedicated loot. Exiles on the other hand have no dedicated loot table, have no unique currency or drop tied to them, and simply act the same as just a magic or rare monster encounter.

At the very least, they need a revamp and a rework if they were to stay in the game. Give them a similar itemization treatment as AN monsters: have each rogue exile perhaps drop items related to the skills they use. Rogue exile uses cyclone? Have it drop items with the same tagged mods as cyclone tags rather than total random drops.

I ran into a rogue exile in Act 1 during league start this league. That full set of gear he dropped was immensely helpful haha...

Hear me out: Rogue Exile mods. Kinda like betrayal signature unveils, occasionally a rogue exile will drop an item with a mod exclusive to them.

-Infinite to removal
+unknown amount to change

Rogue exiles add a lot to the game and i often feel so much more immersed seeing them especially the ones from the old days, they are among the most exciting monsters and if anything i'd say we need MORE, i want to slog through a whole map of them.

ghosts are a nice mechanic that should not be removed and if anything they need to be updated to remain relevant if people are questioning their deletion, there are farming methods that will dissapear forever if they are to be removed, have you ever fought a boss posessed by like 3-4+ of these ? fun stuff

talismans are also a nice mechanic but from what i have been told (since i missed this league) there are a few changes like bringing back the altar that would be required to make talisman relvant, I don't use talismans at all currently or in recent history.

Personally I think talismans (aside from uniques) should become a Jorgin specific thing (and thus, a Betrayal specific thing). Would make his stuff a bit more "special". Plus it's still better to talismanify an uninfluenced amulet than vaal orb one, since the implicits are way better than standard corrupted implicits.