Wait. if oil rogue was tier 3, why the hell it got demolished?
Kingsbane is already a problem by itself. still i dont see that "design space" weapon that destroyed blade flurry.
Lets go back then, when Hearthstone was still very successful and there was no crappy Standard/Wild format diversion:
To know what happened back then it's quite easy: Simply because of Aggro: Oil Rogue had too much burst for the time back then: It was a very aggressive deck that really shaped the meta. The issue was not that it was too strong, but that many other decks simply had no chance against it: while it totally lost against some decks, against others it was nearly unbeatable. So yes; people were angry about it (but back then oil rogue was never just tier 3, it was more tier 1-2). Don't forget that back then, oil rogue also had azure drake for more card draw and extra point of damage (and yes, blade flurry is affected by spell damage).
So people wanted a nerf to Blade Flurry, but a thoughtful one. Nearly everyone agreed that the face-damage was too much with oil. So what people wanted was a nerf to Blade Flurry not to affect face.
So blizzard did nerf Blade Flurry this way; sadly they also nerfed the mana cost from 2 to 5; and absolutely no one who i knew back then did agree to it; everyone didn't understand why this was necessary; especially since Blade flurry still destroyed the weapon. If they removed this effect, then OK, but so it was unplayable.
People wanted a nerf to it, blizzard destroyed it, that's what actually happened.
Mage is bad only now, HoF and nerfs kill the class, before that mage have a classic set good as rogue or even better.
All Hearthstone World Champions had among their decks a Rogue deck... so, no
Zoo has never dropped below tier 2. The hero power makes that deck eternally viable.
B2T: Yes, Rogue has been bad at times.
/thread
Lets go back then, when Hearthstone was still very successful and there was no crappy Standard/Wild format diversion:
To know what happened back then it's quite easy: Simply because of Aggro: Oil Rogue had too much burst for the time back then: It was a very aggressive deck that really shaped the meta. The issue was not that it was too strong, but that many other decks simply had no chance against it: while it totally lost against some decks, against others it was nearly unbeatable. So yes; people were angry about it (but back then oil rogue was never just tier 3, it was more tier 1-2). Don't forget that back then, oil rogue also had azure drake for more card draw and extra point of damage (and yes, blade flurry is affected by spell damage).
So people wanted a nerf to Blade Flurry, but a thoughtful one. Nearly everyone agreed that the face-damage was too much with oil. So what people wanted was a nerf to Blade Flurry not to affect face.
So blizzard did nerf Blade Flurry this way; sadly they also nerfed the mana cost from 2 to 5; and absolutely no one who i knew back then did agree to it; everyone didn't understand why this was necessary; especially since Blade flurry still destroyed the weapon. If they removed this effect, then OK, but so it was unplayable.
People wanted a nerf to it, blizzard destroyed it, that's what actually happened.
Rogue was in a quite bad shape when midrange shaman dominated in the late 2016 meta.
So it was more the meta that gave it hard times than the cards.