So I have a 114 Rogue. I had boosted him right when I came back to wow for this expac. I fell back in love with some of my other characters so I shelved him for a bit. last night I decided to take a look thru all the specs for rogue and sub really interested me. not only did the spec sound really fun but at least from doing calcs in my head it appeared to have a really big initial burst opportunity in pvp with the right talents. not sure on what it has outside this gimmick, But everything I read about this spec says its horrible in both pvp and pve. is this true? does the spec have any viability in pvp? id mostly be doing arena
If you don’t have experience playing Rogue don’t bother with Sub. Now if you find playing Sub fun then go for it and play Sub. But right now it lacks the damage and is there to set up damage for teammates.
so when you say setup damage what does this spec have the sin spec doesn’t? in the specific area? or are they similar in the control aspect? I ask because sin is obvious ahead of sub for pvp and ill just run sin if it performs that much better. but sub looked to have a really big initial shadowstrike if you blow cds and use the 2 pvp talents that specifically buff it. I was thinking along the lines of stun from stealh (not cheapshot though)vanish pop super buffed shadowstrike. with the talents and popping cds it appeared to have a high dmg output. am I wrong?
It has far more crowd control potential with Shadowdance and Cheap Shot/Sap. You set up kills for your more damage oriented friends. Like a support class.
Assassination is popular because it does strong sustain damage and it’s braindead easy to play. Why set up kills when you can just kill your enemy through sheer damage? Sub is too much effort for not enough pay off.
3 Likes
Just go sin… why are we even having this conversation. It’s the worst spec to pvp as unless you’re r1.
2 Likes
It definitely becomes playable at 85% ish mastery. I was like 9/0 the last BG with it. Buy that 850 ring off the auction house that has 400 mastery and that will help a lot.
Sub takes a lot of skill and proper traits to play well, and is not for beginners.
Definitely worth the investment in time though. If you get alot of mastery and 3 traits of nights vengeance it is definitely playable. Heavily heavily gear dependent.
2 Likes
TLDR: Just go outlaw or Assassin for PvP, assassin the best of them all, they give more pressure and damage and they give a good amount of stuns just like sub can. Sub rogues suck right now in pvp and they aren’t getting buffed anytime soon since they do fine in PvE
I play sub in pve but assassin in pvp, with thanks to the nerf to sub no matter how much gear you got you will not compete with other classes on damage, all you are there is support and even then that’s not great. When facing an outlaw/assassin rogue, they would just laugh at you while they pound you into the ground if you were to fight them 1v1, fighting healers you would be tickling them. The other two specs gives way more pressure and they can stun too which makes sub not so special. YAH you can say “But they give shadowdance cheapshot stuns blah blah blah” If all you are doing is stunning WHICH EVERYONE CAN DO can cause DR and if the one main thing is to be a stunbot then now you are useless all together, lets not forget relentless talent which also reduces pvp CCs.
Subs problem is they do no damage for the effort required out of them in PvP, you can use all shadow dances charges and still won’t bring someone down to 30% and you better hope they don’t leap/charge/run away or a single heal(which they will) cause then your shadowdanceing will be wasted and all damage gone. The nerf to sub with the removal of a talent which increased shadowstrike crit from 30% to 10% to all right removing all together as well the mastery reduced by 33% in PvP (an undocumented, hidden nerf implemented at the start of BFA) while shadowstrike and Evis continue to be nerfed by 10% and 15% in PvP respectively. This hurt sub rogues really really bad BUT WAIT. THERE’S MORE
Lets add insult to that injury. Assassin with master poisoner gets a 30% healing reduction, sub only gets 15% with nightblade (WHICH can fall off or dispelled by pretty much anything easy) and it takes a sub rogue more combo points to reapply but for an assassin rogue, just an auto attack. No combo points needed.
Now a sub rogue in PvE is fine and fun, huge damage finishers, 11k+ backstabs, the list goes on.
4 Likes
God I miss the old sub spec pre legion
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Sub is not doing good in PvE. Just look at statistics on WoW logs. They are one of the worse specs in the 75% percentile range, definitely the worst rogue spec, and when you look at 100% percentile range, they are even worse, often at the very bottom. Sub’s damage is lack luster, and even it’s maximum dps through min maxing is worse then almost every other spec. That is just in raid.
Now look at M+. I have never seen a sub rogue in M+ since uldir. They were very good in M+ during season 1, partially because of shuriken combo infested mobs, now they are the absolute worst. In uldir you would see mostly assassin and sub rogues in dungeons, with the occasional outlaw. Now you see majority outlaw, very rarely an assassin, and never a sub rogue. Their AoE got gutted when they took out shuriken combo, and nothing besides a small shuriken storm buff was put in to fix it. The only AoE finisher they have is secret techniques which just doesn’t cut it. Their azerite traits are poor besides First Dance. All of subs decent traits besides First Dance are single target exclusive, so they don’t help at all in AoE. Meanwhile look to Assassin who has Echoing Blades and Shrouded Suffocation for AoE, and Outlaw with Keep Your Wits About You, both traits that increase your AoE substantially, which First Dance doesn’t even do. Subtlety falls behind the other specs in both single target, AoE, and loses in burst to Assassin.
The only reason to play subtlety in PvE right now is for fun.
1 Like