What drives a poor reputation for the Rogue class?

[LudicSavant]

This has actually come up in this thread at least a few times. See "4. These examples require the caster being at 100%" on p23 and "RE: Spell slots are limited" on p24.

IME this idea that resource-less-ness characters are good defaults or good once casters are out of slots? It's more theory than practice. In 5e land, the flexible, resource-laden characters rarely run out of resources before everyone needs to rest for other reasons (like the quest being complete, or the frontliners are on the edge of death). As ludic wrote in a discord server a few months ago: "by the time the (well piloted) wizards run dry, the resourceless guys would have died if they werent there".

The flexible classes more frequently can just have it all. They can spend a slot on PWT while still having several for heat metal and hold person later, they can play striker, midfield, and defense for as long as it matters. For examples, I'd point to CMCC's Gauntlet, including Ludic's own monk run: multiple encounters with extremely intensive resource costs, run back to back, running even high-level casters out of spell slots. And despite this, the classes that do the best are the ones with resources. Being resource-less is far less of an asset than theorycrafting would have you believe.

Indeed!

So a common assumption that some folks have is that so-called 'resourceless' characters will, by virtue of not spending slots, enable a party to go longer without needing to rest. But this isn't actually true, as anyone who actually plays endurance-style challenges will be able to tell you! If you replace a Rune Knight with a Champion, odds are you're going to go fewer encounters before the party needs to rest or die, rather than going more.

This is because being slotless does not exempt you from attrition. You may not be spending spell slots, but you are spending action economy, windows of opportunity, hit points, the resources of your party members, or quite possibly lives.

Basically, even if you're 'resourceless,' you still need to do resource efficiency math, you cannot simply assume that you're more resource-efficient. Something like giving the Mind Flayer an extra round to act, for instance, costs me resources. Sometimes a metric @#$% of them.

Indeed, counterintuitive as it may seem, the purpose of burst (at least, for tactical players) is not like, to show off, it's to save resources, because the player anticipates that it will cost them more to not solve that problem.