Combining the Assassination and Subtlety Trees?

Classes Rogue
1

I’ve often commented (here and elsewhere) that it’d probably be a good thing for Blizzard to combine the Assassination and Subtlety specs into a single spec since there is so much thematic overlap between the two (it’d also make room for a ranged “Sniper” spec similar to the function Amber Kearnen performed for SI:7, but that’s another discussion).

I had some time today (Sunday) to actually test myself on how feasible that assumption (combining Assassination and Subtlety specs into one) really is. So, what follows is my attempt at describing how that could happen. If it’s all just a bad idea and a terrible mess, I hope it’ll show itself for what it is.

Combined Spec Name: Shadowblade

All rogues, regardless of their specialization, are technically capable of “Subtlety” and “Assassination” so neither of those descriptive names feel unique enough to delineate themselves from other Rogues. “Shadowblade” makes sense as a descriptor for a spec which prioritizes stealth (hence, “Shadow”) in close enough proximity to stab targets (hence, “Blade”). Shadowblade also has its roots with the Uncrowned in the Legion Rogue Order Hall, so there is plenty of lore and inspiration to draw from.

Base Abilities

Rogue

  • Level 1 - Sinister Strike - Deal physical damage to a target. Awards 1 combo point.
  • Level 1 - Stealth - Grants stealth until cancelled.
    • Note: Stealth is core to rogue class fantasy and should be granted earlier.
  • Level 1 - Pick Pocket - Pick the target’s pocket. When done outside of stealth, it costs some energy and awards 1 combo point.
    • Note: Pick Pocket is core to rogue class fantasy and should be granted earlier. In Exile’s Reach (starting zone for new players), rogues should be able to Pick Pocket the ward stones off the named ogres. Allowing it to be used outside of Stealth helps to reduce UI complexity and allows rogues to utilize it more regularly. It triggers the global cooldown outside of stealth, preventing players from macro spamming it to generate extra combo points faster.
  • Level 1 - Pick Lock - Allows you to unlock locked mechanisms.
    • Note: Pick Lock is core to rogue class fantasy and should be granted earlier. This ability should also have its activation use updated so that rogues don’t have to manually click this ability first before unlocking many things (like lockboxes). Exile’s Reach should have a few new chests scattered about which are locked and can only be opened by rogues (or using a key which drops off the final dungeon boss, requiring diligent players to backtrack if desired).
  • Level 2 - Flourish - Perform a flourish, dealing damage based on your current combo points and causing your next ability to become a Finisher. Finishers cannot award combo points and consume all available combo points for an additional effect based on the ability used. Flourish costs no resources and is not affected by the global cooldown, but cannot be used without combo points and cannot be used again until you use a Finisher or otherwise run out of combo points.
    • Note: The introduction of Flourish aims to eliminate unnecessary “generator vs. finisher” button bloat. By extension, it also aims to remove UI complexity and provide more opportunities for rogues to express skill without having to grow extra fingers or spend extra time writing macros or messing with keybinds. It also creates a unique opportunity to add in more “finisher” options than is currently available. The Exile’s Reach combat training quests would need to be updated to account for this mechanic.
  • Level 2 - Eviscerate (passive) - Flourish makes Sinister Strike a Finisher, consuming combo points to deal bonus damage.
  • Level 3 - Cheap Shot - Stuns the target for 2 seconds, awarding 1 combo point. Entering Stealth resets Cheap Shot’s cooldown, and using Cheap Shot from stealth increases its stun duration by 2 seconds and awards 1 additional combo point.
    • Note: Allowing Cheap Shot to be used outside of stealth for a reduced effect on a cooldown opens up more readily available utility options for the Rogue.
  • Level 4 - Fleet Footed (Passive) - Movement speed increased by 15%.
  • Level 5 - Sprint - Increase movement speed for a time.
  • Level 6 - Kick - Interrupt target’s spellcast, awarding a combo point with a successful interrupt.
    • Note: Adding a baseline combo point reward helps to make this ability more interesting.
  • Level 7 - Ambush (Passive) - Sinister Strike deals bonus damage and rewards an additional combo point when used from Stealth.
    • Note: Combining Ambush into Sinister Strike reduces UI complexity, aiming to eliminate the need to shift bars during stealth.
  • Level 8 - Crimson Vial - Rapidly heal yourself over a few seconds.
  • Level 9 - Slice and Dice (passive) - Spending combo points increases your attack speed by 50% for 3 seconds per combo point spent.
    • Note: Basically an improved “Cut to the Chase” because it also activate Slice and Dice. It allows the bonus attack speed to still feel like it requires intention to initiate without having it bog down various moments of a fight. Rapid attacks is a pretty core part to general rogue class fantasy.
  • Level 10 - Crippling Poison - Add Non-lethal poison to your weapons which slows enemy movement speed. Only 1 Non-lethal poison can be applied at a time.
  • Level 10 - Lethal Poison - Add Lethal poison to your weapons which deals bonus nature damage.
    • Note: Currently, all lethal poisons effectively do the exact same thing with basically the exact same “instant” damage. Having “different” lethal poisons doesn’t make a lot of sense, particularly when players are just going to choose whichever one mathematically deals the most damage anyway. This change will make more sense are you continue to read about changes made to other poisons, such as Wounding Poison.
  • Level 11 - Sap (passive) - Kick transforms into Sap while Stealth is active. Sap interrupts spellcasting and incapacitates the target for up to 1 minute. Sap has no cooldown when neither you or the target are engaged in combat.
    • Note: Sap into Kick reduces UI complexity, aiming to eliminate the need to shift bars during stealth.
  • Level 12 - Feint - Reduces AoE damage taken for a few seconds.
  • Level 13 - Cheap Setup (passive) - Flourish makes Cheap Shot a Finisher, consuming combo points to extend the stun duration.
    • Note: Combining Kidney Shot into Cheap Shot reduces UI complexity, aiming to eliminate the need to shift bars during stealth. Cheap Shot was chosen as the name for the resulting ability since not all enemies have a Kidney.
  • Level 17 - Vanish - Immediately stealth and leave combat.
  • Level 23 - Wound Poison - Add Non-lethal poison to your weapons which reduces healing received, stacking.
    • Note: The effects of Wound Poison make more sense as a Non-lethal poison, particularly since it’s damage output as a lethal poison make it strictly worse than other Lethal poisons.
  • Level 25 - Safe Fall (passive) - Take reduced damage from falling.
  • Level 28 - Distract - Throws a distraction. During Stealth, enemies will look toward the target location for up to 10 seconds. Outside of Stealth, your threat is reset against enemies in the affected area, possibly shifting that threat onto allies with the tank role that are likewise in the affected area.
    • Note: Part of an effort to make abilities have an alternate use (and be useful) outside of Stealth. Also reduces UI complexity due to changing bars.
  • Level 28 - Shroud of Concealment - Provides stealth for allies in range for a time.

Shadowblade

  • Level 10 - Mastery: Assassination - Increases the damage of your Finishers and abilities benefitting from stealth by X%.
  • Level 11 - Shadowstep - Teleport to a target within 25 yards and increase your movement speed for a moment thereafter.
  • Level 15 - Garrote - Causes an enemy to bleed over time. Awards 1 combo point.
  • Level 16 - Poisoned Knife - Throw a knife at a target enemy, applying your active weapon poisons. Awards 1 combo point.
    • Note: I think Poisoned Knife is thematically more iconic for Rogues than Shuriken Toss. The 100% application chance of weapon poisons is also decidedly more useful.
  • Level 17 - Rupture (passive) - Flourish makes Garrote a Finisher, consuming combo points to deal an increased amount of damage over time as a separate bleed effect.
  • Level 19 - Fan of Knives - Damage nearby enemies with a chance to apply your weapon poisons at their normal rate.
    • Note: I think Fan of Knives is thematically more iconic for Rogues than Shuriken Storm.
  • Level 22 - Envenom (passive) - Using Sinister Strike as a Finisher grants you an increased chance to apply weapon poisons for a time based on the number of combo points spent.

Spec Talent Tree

With a lot of the explanations on base abilities out of the way (particularly in regards to Flourish, learned at Level 2), I’ll omit a lot of “Note:” since most of the following descriptions should be pretty self-explanatory with what was mentioned before.

Also, any strictly utility-based abilities have been removed or reworked in what’s presented here, since I believe that the Class Tree should ideally handle all of those.

  • Row 1
    • Shadow Dance (passive) - Finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point spent to cause your next damaging ability to be used as though from Stealth. You also gain the defensive benefits of stealth for 0.5 sec per combo point spent.
      • Note: This aims to make Stealth-reliant benefits more regularly accessible to Shadowblades. Additional talents further down the tree aim to improve this further.
  • Row 2
    • Shadowstrike (passive) - When benefiting from Stealth, Sinister Strike can be used on targets up to 25 yards away and teleports you behind them. Sinister Strike’s damage bonus from Stealth is also increased.
    • CHOICE
      • Deadly Poison (passive) - Your Lethal Poison also deals Nature damage over time. Your rogue bleed damage that you deal to targets affected by your Lethal Poison generates Energy, and when a target dies with any of your rogue bleed effects they refund a portion of Energy to you.
      • Shadow Techniques (passive) - Your auto attacks have a chance to generate energy or combo points, storing excess combo points up to your maximum which become available whenever you spend combo points. Also, Slice and Dice is always active and increases your attack speed by an additional amount based on your Haste.
    • Backstab (passive) - Sinister Strike deals bonus damage and ignores armor when used from behind your target.
  • Row 3
    • Double Dance (passive) - Shadow Dance affects an additional ability and its chance to activate increases to 25% per combo point spent.
    • Rogue’s Shivalry (passive) - Shiv gains an additional charge, deals 100% increased damage, and causes the target to take additional Nature damage from you.
    • Path of Blood (passive) - Your maximum Energy is increased by 100, and Garrote deals 50% increased damage over its duration when used from Stealth.
  • Row 4
    • Thrown Precision (passive) - Fan of Knives has a 10% increased critical strike chance and its critical strikes always apply weapon poisons. Additionally, Flourish deals AoE damage when immediately proceeded by Fan of Knives.
    • Seal Fate (passive) - Critical strikes with abilities that reward combo points reward an additional combo point per critical strike.
    • Stratagem (passive) - You gain 1 additional combo point, and each combo point you spend has a 10% chance to refund itself.
    • Terrifying Precision (passive) - Critical strikes from Fan of Knives ignore armor, and striking at least 3 enemies with Fan of Knives increases your movement speed by 30%.
  • Row 5
    • Crimson Tempest (passive) - Flourish makes Fan of Knives a Finisher, causing enemies to bleed based on the number of combo points spent.
    • Mutilate (passive) - Sinister Strike now also strikes with your off-hand weapon.
    • CHOICE
      • Deathmark - Cause target to bleed and duplicate other rogue DoT effects on target.
      • Shadow Blades - For a time, your combo-point generating abilities award full combo points and all your abilities deal 20% additional damage as Shadow.
    • Gloomblade (passive) - Sinister Strike deals Shadow damage, and its damage is increased.
    • Lingering Exposure (passive ) - Attacks which ignore armor cause all of your other attacks and abilities to ignore 30% of the target’s armor for 10 seconds.
  • Row 6
    • Premeditation (passive) - Stealth grants you 1 combo point per second while active.
    • CHOICE
      • Symbols of Death - Temporarily double your maximum Energy and dramatically increase your Energy generation and regeneration. During this time, you deal additional damage based on your missing Energy.
      • Internal Bleeding (passive) - Kidney Shot and Garrote apply an additional bleed to the target, dealing more when either ability is used as a Finisher based on the number of combo points used.
    • Deadly Flourish (passive) - Flourish makes Deathmark or Shadow Blades a Finisher, increasing their duration per combo point spent.
    • CHOICE
      • Shadow Clone - Designate a target, summoning a Shadow Clone nearby. 100% of the damage you deal to that target is duplicated by your Shadow Clone onto a nearby enemy. Limit 1.
      • Caustic Spatter (passive) - Sinister Strike causes a portion of the Nature damage you deal to the target over the next 10 seconds to also harm nearby enemies. Limit 1.
    • Master Assassin (passive) - Your abilities have increased critical strike chance when benefitting from Stealth.
  • Row 7
    • Shadowflash Dagger (passive) - Flourish makes Poisoned Knife a Finisher, causing it to deal additional damage and strike all enemies in a line in the direction of your primary target.
    • Flashing Flourish (passive) - Flourish leverages a Poisoned Knife to strike enemies outside of melee range. Flourish gains a range equal to that of Poisoned Knife, and will always try to throw at least one Poisoned Knife if triggered with Thrown Precision.
    • CHOICE
      • Whirling Flourish (passive) - Flourish has a chance equal to your haste to strike an additional time.
      • Precise Flourish (passive) - Flourish always deals a critical strike, and its damage is increased by an amount equal to your critical strike chance.
    • Ghostly Flourish (passive) - Whenever you or a nearby ally dodge an attack, you perform a free Flourish which does not trigger the normal Finisher effect. Flourish also grants you and a nearby ally a stacking increased chance to dodge, lasting until a successful dodge is performed by either of you.
    • Ghostly Terror (passive) - Flourish makes Distract a Finisher, causing it to perform an AoE taunt with an ally as its focus (preferring those with a Tank role) which lasts longer based on the number of Combo Points spent. Enemies taunted in this fashion take additional damage and have crowd control effects last longer on them.
  • Row 8
    • Inevitability (passive) - Sinister Strike increases the duration of your harmful damage over time effects, with reduced benefits for Kingsbane and Deathmark.
    • Tiny Toxic Blade (passive) - Shiv deals 200% more damage, no longer costs energy, and hits 4 additional nearby targets.
    • Dashing Scoundrel (passive) - Your critical strikes with Lethal Poison generate Energy and your regular attacks no longer miss.
    • Indiscriminate Carnage (passive) - Garrote affects 2 additional targets when used while benefiting from Stealth, and for 6 seconds thereafter.
    • Serrated Bone Spikes (passive) - Garrote applies a bone spike, dealing Bleed damage until the target dies and awarding combo points based on the number of active bone spikes. Limit 3.
  • Row 9
    • Zoldyck’s Shadow (passive) - Vanish significantly reduces the cooldown of your other rogue abilities, and spending combo points reduces the cooldown of Vanish.
    • Darkest Shadow (passive) - Shadow Dance also significantly increases the damage of any damaging abilities it affects.
    • Scent of Blood (passive) - You have increased Agility for each target affected by one of your Bleed effects, up to 20%.
  • Row 10
    • Perfect Shadow (passive) - Flourish has a chance to cause your next Shadow Dance to also grant you the effects of Evasion, Cloak of Shadows, and Feint for 3 seconds. Your first Finisher used during this time refunds all combo points spent.
    • Kingsbane - Poisons the target, dealing increased damage each time Lethal Poison deals damage to the target.
    • Shadow-Tempered Blades (passive) - Your chance to apply Lethal Poison is doubled. Additionally, all Nature and Bleed damage you deal is converted to Shadow damage, and all effects which utilize Nature or Bleed damage utilize Shadow damage instead.
      • Note: The ability to apply multiple Non-Lethal poisons simultaneously should be its own talent on the class tree.
    • Goremaw’s Bite - Deals Shadow damage, awards 3 combo points, and causes your next 3 generators to cost no Energy.
    • Sudden Demise - All Bleed damage increased. Enemies die instantly when your remaining Bleed damage exceeds 150% of their remaining health.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I’m actually really enjoying how Assassination plays right now, but it wouldn’t hurt to explore other ways to make it more thematically interesting. Both Subtlety and Assassination’s talent trees are rather… narrow, thematically speaking.

And for those of you that actually took the time to read everything, I salute you.

3 Likes
2

This would make an (arguably) broken spec even more ridiculously broken.

The problem with this proposed spec is that it’s entirely broken. It has zero drawbacks and would annihilate the need for Outlaw or any other Rogue spec.

3

What a great idea!

4

Isn’t this just Sub?

Hey, I’m all for it if I can get back a non-magical Backstab spec that’s consistently top damage for fights it can get behind (and bottom when it can’t). One that’s focused on positioning and taking advantage of enemy weak spots.

But uh, ranged Rogue can go to heck. Play MM Hunter with Camo if that’s your thing.

This is pretty interesting though…

I think it’s a good first step. But I want to explore potential bad behavior.

Set up a scenario. You’re fighting a pack with your group. You fill combo points. You pop Flourish and see it deal some damage. You go to hit Eviscerate, but the last target died first. No big deal, and moving to the next pack, you hit Stealth.

You now have Stealth and Flourish active. What happens when you arrive to the next pack? By setting either as priority, you are locked out to use the other without a cancelaura (which would be strange behavior itself).

Overall, I like the baseline idea. There are a few quirks though that have real play examples that I can’t really understand. Also, descriptions of new abilities seem a bit long and could use shortened where possible.

Things like this should be a talent in the Class tree.

Also, I think an energy stim is easier to include and avoids things like prioritizing combo spend before interrupt (e.g., kicking gives +10 energy over 2 seconds on a successful interrupt). That said, the GCD overhead is only a risk with an on-GCD Flourish (current spend system).

Several classes need to talent their interrupt. Getting it baseline is already a plus. Getting it baseline plus the back-end augment is probably a bit much. Want it to be even better yet? Make an energy stim baseline, but bring back Prey on the Weak as a talent that affects targets interrupted by the Rogue.

Pickpocket awarding combo points? Ridiculous. How did I overlook that?

Some skills should be rewarding outside of combat, and not everything should be built with that loop in mind. The game instead should be extended outside of combat design. It should be WORLD of Warcraft, not a Combat Simulator of Azeroth. I am all for rebuilding certain things from the ground up. But pickpocket is my comfort food. Please don’t do this to me…

One of the “for funsies” rebuilds is that all enemies come with a built in “weak spot”. That is, a certain area of the arc around them is identified as an area players are favored to get the +5% damage bonus (from the +/- 5% variance). And then incorporating the ability to see weak spots into certain class kits, and extending that system for all combat participants. This drives group utility to classes like MM and Rogue, would would emphasize lighting up, extending, and enhancing the flanking potential of their party. Also, this would really drive more of a “difficult to master” emphasis on encounter design, which they’re currently masking by making class kits themselves hostile and unintuitive.

5

Not combining any of that. It’s absolute nonsense providing a lot of passives and other things to make some super class that isn’t balanced at all.

  • We are separate on purpose so we aren’t ridiculous and have limits which IS balanced.

  • Being a new rogue that your are my man, things being split and having to make choices to trade is what we all must do. Whether one agrees or not, “having everything “ or “sharing more stuff” type deals isn’t healthy or good.

  • Us Subtlety stay the way we are because we want to be Subtlety. This iteration is a solid combination of the tools of the past in a modern way. Assassins do their own deal uniquely and Outlaw does theirs where we all have individual kits to specialize further. The same edicts go all triple damage specializations. The support class nonsense and sod style things aren’t happening.

  • we already saw us rogues get weird with legion, legion 2.0 aint happening again and the devs have already commented many times how they learned from all that junk. The DF talent update with some mechanical changes did a lot for us and it retained individuality and is being polished upon further.

  • Before some jokers start getting silly with “but outlaw / assassins don’t use stealth” YOU’RE A ROGUE. Not a warrior, not a darn dk, or a silly dh or some other nonsense.

We operate differently, require finesse, planning, and use a dual resource system instead of putting things on cd and other classes do. Ive seen enough weird things going on in here lately and these type of posts are straight up sabotage at this point.
Learn our ways and stop trying to zug in pvp and meter maid scoreboard nonsense.

Too much tom foolery here lately and its polluting the health of our class and what we stand for. Stop trying to homogenize, gripe about mechanical changes when they did touch other classes too for fairness, stop making propaganda and pushing ridiculous agendas. Be better rogues. This crap has got to stop in here. Glad the devs ignore a lot of what is going on in here lately as it makes us look weak, whiney, unorganized and trashy.

Get it together rogues. This stops today.

6

It my head a rework of this nature would incentivize a similar rework for the Outlaw spec. There were a ton of ideas I omitted which would cause Flourish to hit multiple times or be useable again with a small window of time for the same effect, but I omitted those ideas because I felt the flavor was more inline with what I thought Outlaw/Combat should be.

As for it’s proposed “overpowered-ness”, I tend to feel like it’s easier to first focus on whether or not the concept is fun then tweak numbers later. Concepts are more difficult to present as “cool” or “desirable” when they’re pitched as being intentionally weak and/or balanced.

Actually, most of the talents I proposed are carried over from Assassination (since I personally found more of Assassination’s talents more interesting than what the Subtlety tree offers, but some Subtlety talents were particularly flavorful/thematic and felt worthy of keeping and/or expanding upon).

The idea of “Flourish” feels very duelist-y, swashbuckler-y, and rogue-ish at the same time to me. It also introduces a new button press which allows the rogue to eliminate roughly half of its current offensive buttons (allowing “Finishers” to combine into the non-combo-point-spending counterparts).

I had considered having Flourish do literally nothing more than cause your next button press (for affected abilities) to become a Finisher, but felt that having it deal damage would make it more interesting (though that does bring up the issue of it being more difficult to use in combination with stealth-related bonuses and mechanics).

Personally, I kind of envisioned enabling Rogues to combine BOTH their Flourish and Stealth bonuses into a single GCD (like using Sinister Strike as a combo point Finisher from Stealth for super duper effect). Mechanics like that might need PvP-specific nerfs, but it’d feel really good to be able to set stuff up like that from a skill and play loop potential standpoint.

While absurd, this idea stems from a desire I had to try and make all of the Rogue’s abilities potentially useful in some way (even if it required talents) outside of stealth. Ideally, it’d be nice if the Rogue could avoid the need of having their main action bar swap out whenever they’re in “true stealth” vs. “not true stealth” (i.e. Shadow Dance). Having to test and really consider where action abilities are located can be really unintuitive for first-time rogues, especially if they pick a spec that “dances” them in and out of stealth. Having Pick Pocket grant a combo point was perhaps one of the lazier ways to incentivize/validate its use outside of stealth. If there are better ideas, I couldn’t think of them at the time I wrote the opening post.

For me, I personally believe that the following three things determine how “fun” a class is to play (in order):

  1. Presentation of class fantasy.
  2. Playstyle flexibility.
  3. Numerical balance in relation to other playable options.

Personally, I think it would be better to have a singular “Shadowblade” spec than what feels like (to me) a watered down version of what the rogue class fantasy could be. Assassination is thematically just “focuses on Bleeds and Poisons”, and Subtlety thematically just “focuses on Shadow and Stealth”. Blizzard has done a pretty good just so far of blossoming these narrow themes into something more interesting, but neither of them carry the sort of diverse potential that other class themes can (such as “Fire” mage vs “Frost” mage, both of which can leverage a wide variety of mechanics into each element because magic is heavily involved with the creative expression of said mechanics and class fantasy).

Numbers can always be tweaked later. Nailing the class fantasy and getting it right should be the real priority. While Blizzard has done a really good job with Assassination and Subtlety thus far, I honestly think it can be better to combine them.