What drives a poor reputation for the Rogue class?

[Skrum]

It's always been my hang up with the barbarian. it's looks relatively straightforward on paper but it actually takes a good eye to toggle your rage and RA to get the most out of it and not get nuked in a single round if you get it wrong.

I see what you're saying but do we need a literal faceroll character? I like the idea of simpler and more complex character options, does barb have to be even more straightforward to qualify?

In any case, my feeling is the "complexity" of barb, such as it is, comes back to their janky character design. Decisions for a barb revolve around some rather gross deficiencies, like being essentially useless if they not raging (and rage only activating on their turn AND being annoyingly easy to drop). If barb didn't live and die by rage, they'd have less glaring weaknesses and thus the player wouldn't have to sweat every use of rage or reckless attack in the same way.

It's also why I consider alert or increasing your Dex modifier low key one of the best things you can do on a barbarian. Going first pulls double duty in getting someplace to be annoying and getting your primary ability online before they eat into you.

Totally agree; an easy way to vastly improve barb would be to give them extra ASI's. They are feat AND attribute starved relative to fighter and even paladin.

Can you point me to where the Rogue has any rule that is more selfish than any other class? I've already noted several specific abilities the Rogue has that are explicitly the opposite, geared specifically toward team play. So far, the only evidence that the Rogue is selfish I've seen is based on individual playstyle (which is a player issue, not a class one) or baseless expectation.

I only contest the claim because it is obviously part of the Rogues poor reputation, but I've yet to be convinced it's based on anything but stereotypes rather than rules.

It's not a rule, it's about what they bring to the party. Can they cast bless? Can they cast healing word? Can they cast silvery barbs? What about faerie fire? Can they use runic shield? Ancestral guardians? Aura of protection? Thunder gauntlets? Twilight Sanctuary? Balm of Peace? Web? Darkness? Plant Growth? Hold person? Bardic inspiration? Flash of insight? Can they run up to a pack of enemies and just soak hits for the team? Etc etc etc

Do they act as a force multiplier, or are they just kinda doing their thing? That's what I mean by selfish.

Not to say they have NO abilities like this, but not very many, and not very good ones.

EDIT: arcane trickster gets some of the spell goodies, so I'll admit that what I said doesn't apply to that particular subclass very well. But, ranger isn't a good class just because gloom stalker exists. Rogue isn't a good class just because arcane trickster exists.