12.1 Subtlety Rogue Class Changes and Class Set Feedback

In Development Midnight: Curse of Ula'tek Public Test Realm
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I have been maining Rogue for a while now, so I feel very strongly about the recently announced changes to Subtlety Rogue in 12.1.

Class Changes

While this is a positive change, I don’t think it’s enough. Atrophic Poison still does not apply to any environmental damage; which is damage that is not directly sourced from a targetable enemy. For instance, in the Forgeweaver Araz encounter, only a single ability was sourced from Araz, the rest of the abilities would not be affected by Atrophic Poison.

At its core, Atrophic Poison does not make the raid “stronger” but makes one aspect of encounters easier. This means that any time the outgoing damage from a fight is not of high concern, bringing a Rogue is entirely optional, possibly even optimal. This was seen on almost every fight from the current raid season. Currently, all three Rogue specializations are very bad at burst damage and low-target cleave. On Belo’ren, when burst damage was important, no Rogue was brought to the world first kill. On Vaelgor & Ezzorak and Lightblinded Vanguard, when low-target cleave was important, no Rogue was brought to the world first kills. If burst damage or low-target cleave are important in The Venomous Abyss, it is likely that Rogue is not brought to some encounters.

Spec Changes

These changes seriously hinder Subtlety’s ability to sustain its energy inside of Shadow Dance. Additionally, they make it largely impossible to proc the combo point refund from part three of Ancient Arts. These changes would make more since if the nerfs from Midnight to Shadow Blades or Improved Ambushed were reverted.

What makes these changes especially frustrating is that due to the rework in Midnight to Deepening Shadows, waiting for energy between casts for even a tiny instant can mean losing a cast inside of Shadow Dance. This is because you go from a flat 8 seconds of Shadow Dance giving you ~1000 ms of leeway, to gearing around a 7.2-7.4 second Shadow Dance, giving you only ~200-400 ms of leeway, depending on latency.

Due to the nerfs to Shadowcraft, it is possible that this change encourages pooling of Shadow Techniques outside of Shadow Dance: that is, not casting any finishers for an extended period of time. Overall, I think that the gameplay from Ancient Arts and the rework to Shadowcraft in Midnight has resulted in extremely unintuitive and unfun gameplay for Subtlety, and I was hoping that they would be reverted instead of being doubled-down on.

Thank God.

Class Set Bonus

This might be the worst class set bonus I have ever seen. What makes this bonus bad is that it only buffs your damage outside of your Shadow Dance. In raid, only about 15% of Subtlety’s damage happens outside of Shadow Dance. Backstab’s damage only accounts for 1.5% of your total damage; even outside of Shadow Dance, Backtsab only accounts for 10% of your damage. So from numbers alone, the bonuses look to be exceedingly weak at first glance.

The main issue with these bonuses however is not their impotency, but rather the effect they have on Subtlety’s damage profile. Subtlety already struggles to find a damage niche, since burst and cooldown flexibility were stripped from Subtlety with the release of Midnight. Other specializations like Frost Death Knight or Marksman Hunter offer significantly higher burst damage, while Balance Druid and Devourer Demon Hunter offer more flexibility in their damage. This bonus, the loss of the Midnight Season 1 bonus, the changes to the specialization previously discussed, and the changes to talent selection as a result of all of the above, will result in Subtlety having a nearly flat damage profile, this significantly hurts Subtlety’s viability in raid.

Overall Opinion

These changes are the opposite of what I wanted to see for Subtlety. I am extremely disappointed and I know that the gameplay resulting from these changes will be extremely rigid, unintuitive, and more than anything boring. What Subtlety needed was a reversal of the changes in Midnight, not doubling down.

Subtlety really needs changes in three areas. Firstly, the strength of Shadow Blades needs to be significantly improved. Secondly, there must be more flexibility in the use of Shadow Dance and Secret Technique. Lastly, Subtlety cannot do meaningful damage in low target cleave, compared to every other specialization in the game, without possessing any advantage in return.

It is hard to emphasize just how bad Subtlety’s design is, especially after these changes. What is Subtlety’s usefulness in raid or mythic+? What does Subtlety excel at that other specializations do not? What is the identity of Subtlety? The current design of Subtlety offers one answer: nothing.

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If these changes were to go live right now I suspect there would be a mass exodus of sub players. It’s already been happening in S1 where die hard rogues have been swapping to DK/warrior because they’re far more useful.

PLEASE do something about this.

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Making the tier set revolve around a talent point no one uses is a pisstake and feels like we’re actively being pushed from sub. The 4 set also not buffing Secret Tech is a cherry on top of this trash. Truely baffled by these changes.

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I 100% agree. These changes completely miss the mark and detract from subelty’s core identity of the high on-demand burst window. I get that the intent with 12.1 is to flatten damage profiles, but even so sub has historically been the all-or-nothing high burst spec. Detracting from one of the few niche’s we have is disappointing.

Losing our niche, coupled with a pittance buff to one of the least useful raidbuffs (paladins have a 3% DR and also have a brez, also they can tank AND heal) feels super bad. Shroud will also continue to be largely useless as a utility buff due to the prevalence of truesight in most M+ dungeons in the last few years. Without some additional changes I foresee the popularity of rogues continuing to decline.

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Fire Mage is worse because half of Fire players hate Pyroclasm and will be forced into a playstyle they hate.

But ya the Sub Set needs to be changed, and at the very least add Shadowstrike to the 2-set.

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All sub rogues hate Lingering Shadow and it forces a terrible playstyle as well, and both 2 and 4pc completely undermine the core of the spec

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I was on the fence with these changes and I am willing to test it out. But anytime they make a tier set around backstab it always involves problems aka low overall damage.

The change to relentless strikes isn’t a big deal, but the change to Shadowcraft is a big deal. Given how Sub is built in Midnight they might need to revisit this.

In summary my concern of Legion Sub Rogue design aka flat damage profile is coming to fruition with the Midnight Sub Rogue changes. When I heard about increased frequency of shadow dance for Midnight I suspected sooner or later they would flatten Sub’s damage profile.

The truth is that It took until the second patch of Legion for Sub Rogue to have a damage profile that was not flat again and I hope that isn’t a repeat of history.

Sub isn’t a flat damage profile spec and honestly it can not compete against specs that do it better and now spec with burstier profiles will theoretically outshine Sub with burst too in PVE environments.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

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I’ve been playing this class since vanilla. Sub seemingly has always been a struggle to be given an identity by blizzard, while it’s quite clear the player base since WoD enjoys big burst windows and outside of that some small maintenance tasks. Much like the initial midnight iterations of haste and sub rogue, these changes once again show that no one with a “class developer” responsibility actually plays sub rogue at any meaningful level, or they just hate the spec. I don’t think any of the long time sub rogue could have even written up such changes as a joke for April 1st.

The base of the spec in 12.0.5 was in a decent place. Bare bones Trickster needed some form of actual cleave reintroduced and deathstalker needed quietus removed and Black Powder allowing for actual funnel damage.

The spec could use one more meaningful button press. Rework Goremaw into a big single hit that resets SecTech CD. Remove Goremaw and add “prism” as an ability.

You all took the dog out back and slaughtered it infront of the kids vs going for a ride to the farm. The worse part is you’ve made atrophic probably good enough that we’re stuck on this forsaken class for mythic raiding instead of playing something that actually gets some well thought out design applied to it.

No real utility
No prio
No burst
No cleave

Nice dps spec with a meaningful identity… /s

Do better or just remove the class.

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From a PvP standpoint, the tier set bonuses are going against the playstyle of a sub rogue.
Not that I think it was created with PvP in mind at all but just to put that out there.

I would rather see tier set bonuses that help shadow dance burst windows even more rather than damage outside of it.

And lastly, I don’t think people really like bonuses that are tied to a single talent on the tree.

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What are we even doing here? Is there a point to any of this? I don’t know why I’m bothering to type this out but I guess blizzard won’t know until they read it:

I am so incredibly and deeply disappointed in you, blizzard.

I’ll read through this thread but I already know blizzard won’t do the same unless they just have Claude summarize it for them.

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I’m already gone. I was hanging on by a thread and this tranch of changes proves my gut feeling was right. I had to resub to move a community over to another admin since you can’t administrate them externally, but I did so with some of the gold I had lying around. I’ll be back in TLT or I’ll be back never but if sub keeps getting changes like this I guess I’m gone for good.

Maybe gw3 will be good

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I don’t disagree with basically hating Lingering Shadow (I know I do too). I just still think Fire Mage is still worse because of how much Pyroclasm changes the playstyle and how half of Fire Mages hate it and Half Enjoy it.

They still have the same issue where you simply can’t path around it for a less optimal build regardless AND a non insignificant chunk of players of the spec absolutely despise the talent.

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I have heard many negative things about Mage this tier. The point is not to compete in how awful our tier sets or classes are. Let me rephrase what I meant.

This tier set emphasizes perhaps the least liked talent that Subtlety rogue has. The last time Lingering Shadow was relevant, the gameplay around it was extremely unintuitive and dull. In my opinion, basing the tier set bonus around our weakest ability and our most hated talent, betrays the truth that there is no direction for Subtlety.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I could be on board for a builder-focused Subtlety. In fact, I think that builders are an area where Subtlety could improve dramatically. Outlaw is a spec with really interesting builder choices and a priority around using those builders. Subtlety, having a single builder inside and outside of Shadow Dance, and an AoE only builder, simply needs more variety in its builders, procs, etc. In the past, Perforated Veins in Shadowlands was an interesting concept for builder-focused Subtlety. This talent is now a toothless passive with no gameplay attached to it.

Unfortunately, all that we get are flat bonuses to our builders instead of real gameplay.

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I don’t think the tier set is as bad as you making it out to be. I tested it on PTR and it’s actually quite strong.

My issue however is that this tier set is going to have the consequence of forcing us to pool dance charges so we can dance back-to-back so that we have Lingering Shadow up for the second dance. This is going to kill what little flexibility we had with Shadow Dance to begin with, and I’m not a fan of that.

It just seems like they have heard our gripes with Backstab / Gloomblade feeling weak and overcosted and certain talents being useless like Lingering Shadow and are trying to fill the gaps with a tier set. If they had simply buffed Backstab / Gloomblade and reduced its energy cost without tying it to a tier set that would have been a huge win.

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Impotency isn’t the concern. If you took every builder talent the two set is probably a lot better than it currently looks, even. The issue is the flexibility like you said and moving damage outside of our CDs. Losing the Midnight Season 1 set is the bigger issue here.

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My guess is that we will drop Veiltouched for Gloomblade and one point in Finality for Lingering Shadow. Maybe the other point in Finality will move to Perforated Veins but we will see what the sims say.

The moving damage outside of cooldowns might be more of an issue for PvP but for PvE it’s largely a nonissue. Like I said, the set is pretty strong in PTR - dummy DPS looks solid. Lingering Shadow was my second top damage source. The second dance burst when you have Lingering Shadow overlapping with dance is very powerful.

But yeah, having to double dance to make full use of the 4 set is not very fun. And I would have preferred Blizzard fix our anemic generators instead of using tier set as the bandage.

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None of the resource generator nerfs are live on the ptr so how it plays / dummy dps are far from accurate. Shadowcraft is massively buffed on the ptr since they changed it to 75% instead of 40% and forgot to remove the doubling.

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That’s unfortunate. We’ll see how it plays out once all the changes go through.

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Prophethood did a great rogue/Sub feedback thread back in March with nearly 120 likes.
Read it Blizzard Rogue feedback

Now look what you come up with for 12.1.

IMO what the current patch notes tell me is “we Blizz designers don’t know how our spec plays in relevant content and thank you for the feedback so far but we won’t listen to it.”

I may be wrong and all that stuff in the notes is just placeholder stuff before they come up with something better but since there is zero communication….who knows.

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Lets talk about Sub’s DPS profile.

Without Rupture what is going to happen to Sub’s DPS profile if it is going to be less bursty now? And if Rupture was not pruned wouldn’t that have helped Sub to be more balanced between a DoT like Rupture while still having burst when needed which would have preserved Sub’s core identity?

It seems to me that Sub with Rupture would have fit in the new design paradigm of patch 12.1 of classes not relying so much on burst but have more sustain or smoothed out damage profiles.

So was removing Rupture a mistake? It might be. Something to think about.

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman: