Developers’ notes: The changes for Subtlety in this update look to improve upon initial goals with further adjustments based on gameplay testing and community feedback received thus far. Some previous changes swung the pendulum too far, like overemphasizing Haste as an outlet for cooldown reduction on too many abilities and talent effects, and removing all generic damage bonuses from Shadow Dance. Other changes did not go far enough, like leaving circumstances of unnecessary cooldown overlap between 2 buttons (Symbols of Death and Shadow Dance) when 1 combined button would serve better, and where core abilities (notably Rupture and Shuriken Storm) had muddled mechanical identity. Finally, adjustments to resource pacing and damage profile are baked throughout the total changes with the intent that overall combat flow remains satisfying and damage output feels controlled and potent with the updated lineup of streamlined abilities and shorter-but-more-frequent cooldown pacing. We hope you enjoy Subtlety in the Midnight Beta and look forward to receiving community feedback that will continue informing iterative improvements.
New Passive Ability: Shuriken Storm (Rank 2) – Shuriken Storm deals 100% increased damage while Stealthed. Learned at level 20.
New Talent: Improved Secret Technique – Secret Technique damage increased by 10%.
Dark Brew has been redesigned – Your weapon poisons have 10% increased application chance and now deal Shadow damage instead of Nature. Shadow damage increased by 10%.
Shadow Focus has been redesigned – Abilities deal 10% more damage while Stealth or Shadow Dance is active.
Weaponmaster has been redesigned – Backstab and Shadowstrike have a 15% chance to create a Shadow Clone that repeats the attack for 50% of normal damage as Shadow.
Perforated Veins has been redesigned – Backstab, Gloomblade, Shuriken Storm, and Shadowstrike have 10% increased damage while Find Weakness is active.
Replicating Shadows has been redesigned – Shadow Clones deal 20% increased damage and your effects that have a chance to create them have 5% additional chance to occur.
Shuriken Tornado has been redesigned – Shuriken Storm has a 15% chance to create Shadow Clone that repeats the attack for 50% of normal damage as Shadow.
Death Perception has been redesigned – Find Weakness, Shadow Dance, and Shadow Blades each increase the damage of finishing moves by 10%.
Dark Shadow has been redesigned – Shadow Dance increases all ability damage by 5%/10%, and Shadowstrike and Shuriken Storm damage by an additional 5%/10%.
Secret Technique now learned at level 25 (was a talent).
All ability damage reduced by 17%.
Melee auto-attack damage increased by 82%.
Shadowstrike damage reduced by 10%.
Backstab damage increased by 20%.
Gloomblade damage increased by 20%.
Shuriken Storm damage increased by 50%.
Eviscerate damage increased by 14%.
Black Powder damage increased by 9%.
Secret Technique damage increased by 26%.
Danse Macabre effect damage increased by 110%.
Shadow Dance duration reduced to 6 seconds (was 8 seconds).
Shadow Dance cooldown reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
The First Dance bonus to Shadow Dance duration reduced to 3 seconds (was 4 seconds).
Master of Shadows now generates 30 Energy over 3 seconds (was 25 Energy).
Planned Execution effect is now granted by Shadow Dance (was Symbols of Death).
Warning Signs effect is now granted by Shadow Dance (was Symbols of Death).
Deepening Shadows effect increased to 150% but now only benefits from the value of your Haste stat (was 100% of all Haste buffs).
The Rotten effect now triggers when Shadow Dance is activated (was Symbols of Death).
Shadowcraft now increases the frequency of Shadow Techniques by 40% while Shadow Dance is active (was 75%)
Many talents have changed locations and the talent tree structure has been adjusted, including removal of some talent nodes and updated connections.
The following talents have been removed:
Improved Shadow Techniques
Inevitability
Rupture
Swift Death
Symbols of Death
Symbols of death gone, 20 sec shadow dance, rupture gone, holy moly. Such a massive win. Feels so much more cleaner and streamlined now.
I’m just really excited for all 3 specs so far with the changes.
I like the touch that weapon poisons will do Shadow Damage if talented into Dark Brew.
Now I hope for Assassination they will merge Fan of Knives and Crimson Tempest where CT is a upgraded form or FoK gets the ability to spread bleeds (and a glyph to give FoK the CT animation).
Rupture gone doesnt feel like a win as there were multiple reasons to use the dot and Dark Brew already existed to make it more thematic. Actually feels completely unnecessary when you consider how they removed Symbols in the same patch.
LOSING RUPTURE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE THEY NEED TO BRING IT BACK NOW
If they bring back rupture and proceed with all the other changes I will be super happy, yes there are many other issues they could address but overall the core changes would be in the right direction.
Man the sentiment of Rupture being removed cause it doesn’t fit thematically is non-sensical and only seemed like a very small subset was echoing this notion I am baffled they actually just out right removed it.
Rupture fits rogue and Sub perfectly. It has so many use cases please please please please bring back Rupture!!!
Symbols going away is good. It was a clunky button that didn’t really feel impactful - it was just another thing to throw into Shadowblades along with the kitchen sink.
I’m glad they are backing off from Haste affecting the cooldown of Dance (given that Shadow Blades didn’t auto-include Dance). Having it lengthen Dance duration instead is a much better change.
However I am still concerned that Shadow Blades and Dance interaction. We will still be forced to save 2 Dance charges for Shadow Blades, and now Dance’s cooldown no longer lines up cleanly with Shadow Blades’s cooldown. Previously I had advocated for Shadow Blades to give a free Dance window, which could still be the solution. Another alternative is to give Shadow Blades (or an improvement talent for it): “Shadow Dance does not lose duration during Shadow Blades”. Or perhaps a talent that at least refunds a charge of Shadow Dance when Shadow Blades is activated. But as it stands having to hoard 2 Shadow Dances for Shadow Blades still feels really bad.
I also still want to point out that Veiltouched (5% more magic damage) and Deeper Daggers (8% more shadow damage) remain utterly redundant, with one or both deserving of a redesign.
Overall though these changes are a step in the right direction I feel. I especially like the changes to Weaponmaster, Shuriken Tornado, and Replicating Shadows - I think the whole ‘Shadow Clones’ (along with shadow damage) aspect is exactly the kind of thematic identity Subtlety has been lacking. I would like to see Replicating Shadows increase shadow clone creation chance by 10% instead of 5% though, as this would compliment Ancient Arts so that expending 6 combo points brings the chance of making a clone all the way to 100%.
Its so true collectively as a whole all the changes are so good there is just this once thorn which is the removal of rupture. Bring it back and this expansion cycle would be a huge win for us (yes there are still some sticking points they could address but in large a lot of the major concerns have and are being addressed).
There is no win until Thistle Tea is eradicated and Without A Trace + Subturfuge are given a benefit.
Subturfuge alone has gone from a 1 point nothingburger to a 2 point nothingburger over the last 3 years. That is the net change after tallying everything up. They cant keep removing stuff, offer no replacement, and then scrap the new things they create after every xpac.
Yeah I agree. Thistle Tea is still a very unfun talent and the fact that Subtlety doesn’t value the Subtlety capstone lane of the class tree is just wrong.
I agree Thistle Tea should just be removed at this point. Also the auto proc aspect they introduced was one of the single worse changes they could of done. I posted against that change when it was still in the change notes. So they somehow managed to make the talent even worse then its original iteration which was already bad to begin with
I agree that Subturfuge and Without a Trace need something to be done namely from a PvE perspective. They still hold value in a PvP context but even there I run two build variants and don’t even always run it anymore which kind of also speaks to how they are devalued and not truly worth of a capstone.
This might be a bit biased but I feel as though Vanish having 2 charges could simply be baseline for all specs and that still would be balanced for PvP. Then they just introduce some new capstone in its place.
Especially given the various rando bugs that break you out of stealth for no reason
The drastically reduced immunity window that Vanish provides functionally making it far easier to catch you out
The fact that there are natural counter play to stop rogues from resetting via vanish
New paladin interaction with bubble letting them see stealthed targets
Hunter Flare
DH spectral site
Bleeds
Actual true sight buffs in Arena
AoE/cleave
etc
Then for PvE Vanish is being moved away as an offensive option for the other specs to begin with and Subturfuge is already devalued to begin with.
Wait if you are crying about me crying is that a double negative does that make us both happy?
I sometimes enjoy emulating simpleton creatures that do not have the ability to muster a single rationale thought even if they tried. Makes life more simple and fun !
being a Rogue used to mean something man, I swear. they throw us a bone and in the same swoop, they cut the bone in half. hopefully they do bring it back though. everything started to get bogged down when they gutted the kits and started throwing abilities around as talents or spec specific thematic.
Definitely for Assassination. Not so much for Subtlety. It’s just a low damage DoT. Rupture doesn’t have the same synergy with Subtlety as is does with Assassination.
