PROPOSAL: Let's deliver curated Subtlety feedback

Classes Rogue
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We’ve seen so much discussion here recently about unpruning, class fantasy, and Shadowlands, and yet the feeling is that feedback observed so far on the alpha forums doesn’t speak for many/most of us.

I can’t say too much about it but I know a guy who knows a guy, and I am confident we could get a document into the class design team’s hands.

What I am proposing is that we curate a document summarizing 1. high level points on intention and philosophy of our approach to Subtlety Rogue design; 2. specific feedback on every single ability and talent for Shadowlands Subtlety, based on that approach; and 3. specific feedback on every ability that we wanted but didn’t get in the unpruning.

Basically instead of just talking to each other in these threads all day, we could take a more organized and constructive approach.

Therefore my request for my fellow community members:

I. If you’ve already written something about subtlety design that you’re very proud of, please find it in your post history and quote it.

II. If you have anything new or additional to say, now is the time.

This would all have to be absolutely constructive, and I will need to edit my own strong emotions out of the process.

It’s quite late here, past 2am and my mind is racing, and I have to work first thing in the morning at my day job. But if there is interest in this approach please reach out here and let’s collaborate.

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We may have argued for a bit, but I understand where you’re coming from and would love to discuss this further in this manner. For now, I’ll pop in here to mark this, and propose something, likely small, as it continues. As most of what I was going to say about what Subtlety needs will likely be said or already covered with more eyes.

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It’s an emotional topic for me and I’ve been fighting this battle for years. I’m glad we were able to turn the conversation in a more productive direction. Thanks for staying with me and seeing it through.

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I’m honestly ecstatic to have reached an accord there. I feel you on the passion here, and I totally level with that. I can’t hold a grudge for anyone doing their best with honest intentions, my dude.

If you make a discord for this, count me in. Discussion on this topic is huge, and people playing the spec offer so many venues for good discussion to be had. I’m all for doing what little i can to aid that.

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Below is basically from a copy/paste from the post I made the other day.

Happy With:

  1. Slice & Dice returning. Having more buttons to press & more micro-managing mechanics that reward good rogues for taking advantage of their entire kit is healthy.
    Slice & Dice IMO changes the game, fun, & complexity of Rogue & especially Sub in PvP. The best way to put into words how nice it is would be:
  • Having abilities like Slice & Dice, Rupture, etc allow good Rogues/Subs with the knowledge/foresight an extra tool to apply (Slice/Rupture/Etc as an example) preemptively before their burst, and this adds a skill-cap. It rewards good rogues with such foresight to be provided with better results than a rogue who is not as good.
    Abilities like Slice & Dice allow you to set yourself up for success.
  1. Shadow Dance going back to 1 Charge, this makes Shadow Dance FEEL more energetic & impactful when you press it.
  • Currently in BFA you can sort of just throw dances out, if you don’t set them up properly, no big deal! You have 1-2 more charges!
    However with a more powerful dance on 1 charge, this makes Dance not only feel better, but again it rewards good Rogues. A good rogue will take every step possible to set up their Shadow Dance windows for the maximum output, whereas an inexperienced Rogue will be unable to do this, leading to their Dance being less effective; the way it should be.
  1. Rupture/Shiv/Poisons returning, like Slice & Dice these are all iconic rogue abilities we’ve had since Vanilla/TBC and should have never been removed.

Things I would like to see before Launch:

  1. On the topic of Slice & Dice, something I would like to see is for them to bring back Energetic Recovery passive.
  • This made Slice & Dice have an interesting twist, and it allowed for Rogues to energy-pool for their burst windows. Again, it rewarded good Rogues for taking advantage & having the knowledge of their entire kit.
  1. Bring back Garrote. IMO blizzard seems hesitant to add CC back to Sub’s toolkit due to the idea that it would become “bloated” with another CC button.
  • I think that with the fact that we wont have a Shadow-Dance charge for literally every stun DR makes bringing back Garrote not only make Shadow-Dance feel more impactful, but also makes going for restealths feel more impactful as well.
    Currently Sub feels like a Cheapshot bot during restealths / dance due to not having another CC option for stealth. Bringing back Garrote would make us feel more whole.
    ( I also propose if Garrote was added back in, that Shadowy Duel be removed )
  1. Find Weakness should NOT be applied by a simple builder ability (Backstab). This makes Find Weakness feel… well useless. By making Backstab apply Find Weakness, it makes Find Weakness essentially equivalent to it being just a passive that we get by auto-attacking the target. It will become forgotten about due to how simple it is to activate.
  • My proposed change is to make it applied through Stealth abilities (Shadowstrike / Cheapshot ) the way it works currently for the most part.
  • I understand the change they did for this is a PVE change, most likely for the new AOE finisher, but there has to be a way to make it only accessible through stealth-abilities. Perhaps make a talent that buffs Find Weakness if you only use it through stealth abilities?
  1. Some may agree, some may disagree and this one is less important than the 3 above, but I think that the Shadow-Theme should be very minimal.
  • Ambush should come back as a replacement for Shadowstrike. Fan of Knives should come back as a replacement for Shuriken Storm, etc. Rogue, & Sub in specific, should be a class that is basically all Physical / Bleeds. The spec moved away from this in Legion and frankly IMO, it just doesn’t fit well. It doesn’t help making Sub Rogues feel like a “Rogue”.

In hindsight after making those suggestions above, any additional suggestions I have for bringing things back to Rogue/Sub would be:

  1. Premeditation
  • Once again, not only has it been in the game since Vanilla, but it also complimented Slice & Dice in a huge way by allowing us to Premed->Slice&Dice before a fight. It was an iconic move that could have many uses.
    Slice & Dice being a thing again is amazing, but having Premeditation would be like a cherry on top.
  1. Gouge: Ahhh, back here… Why should they bring back Gouge? I could give you a million reasons.
  • Didn’t affect RMX in a big way, but allowed for us to play with other classes and have another setup tool to help cover our spriest/warlock/rdruid teammates to get CC off of gouge.
  • Has been in the game since the beginning. Self explanatory. Its ICONIC man.
  • Being able to potentially set up gouges for your own burst setup would be nice. Back in the day you’d use it to set up for example a Backstab (since it had positional requirement) possibly into a kidney shot? Well obviously that wouldn’t be the case nowadays, but you could use it to get a combo point as well as get behind the target, prep your burst, and then cheapshot off of it and go swinging. It could save you extra GCD’s by allowing you to set up.
    There are MANY reason’s why Gouge should be in the game right now, especially for Sub.

Overall i’m pretty happy with how Sub is currently looking in Alpha/Shadowlands. It’s gone a long way (Big step-up from BFA) but its still got a long way to go. Keeping what they’ve already done so far for alpha + adding in even a FEW of these proposed changes would be giant strides for making Sub the once-beloved Spec that originally attracted us all to it to begin with.
I wasn’t originally expecting Slice & Dice or 1-Charge Dance but very happy that they brought them back for Sub.

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I want combat and assassination also, sub is a must but I want the whole class back!

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bump
10char

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Remember when this rogue forum was a happening place? Me too, and it just goes to show how bad things are when the forum is this dead.

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Sorry for being inactive today :X. Super busy day at work, followed by ZG launch on classic, followed by a guild meeting because we’re making some leadership changes.

While I love the Rogue class as a whole, I wouldn’t want to give strongly opinionated feedback on the specs that I am less invested in. It personally bothers me somewhat when someone who plays mostly another spec or class shares strong opinions about Subtlety and I think it’s important that I show the same courtesy of letting the people that are most invested in those specs have the floor.

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Makes sense and fair, I love all 3, but different versions from different expansions appeal to me more than others…

Example, I love playing combat daggers in Classic and TBC also love mutilate in TBC and Wrath, and strangely mutilate in MoP is a lot of fun too.

I love Sub in Classic, TBC, Wrath and MoP, and to a degree also WoD. I LOATH Combat as of the deep insight thing, it never appealed too me. but I know some people really love it a lot so its more a preference thing I suppose, just never felt good too me because I am more of a vanilla, tbc, wrath combat fan, its just different as you know and tis mostly because I actually prefer the original blade flurry, that’s what it came down to for me, its just so versatile and I have always been able to do such fantastic AE damage on trash because of it, if the mages want to beat me on trash they are gonna have to pull out the stops because Blade flurry dagger combat is really fkn good. Some of it is very simple on the surface, but there is complexity there in the nuance, for me thats where the fun is on those PVE specs.

Sub tho, sub should be the PVP spec, it should never have been made into a PVE spec, that was a mistake. I am fine with players trying to make sub work in raid, and its fine if it bring something cool like the hemo debuff, I like that sorta stuff but it should never have been made into a proper PVE spec, now I am rambling…

Any way, after seeing the demon hunter stuff I am kinda bummed and thinking I will not play shadow lands because they’re giving Deamon hunters are stuff basically… Thankfully TBC is on the way so I don’t really need to worry that much, because 10.0 might fix it?

I will always love the rogue class, and I will fight for the rogue class, but not gonna go so rabid over blizzard’s mistakes any more and they are indeed making a lot.

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this

Im hoping that Shadowlands is good that way I don’t have to refer to “Classic” for serious arena’s (as fun as TBC would be), unfortunately if Blizzard decides to listen to these few specific players that can only see the game from a one-dimensional point of view that are unable to see the importance of things like Rupture, Slice, or Bursty Dance return and just flat out dislike it for 0 reason then I will have to resort to TBC because atleast with TBC we know what we’re getting and these clueless Rogues cant ruin our class.

So long as Blizzard keeps Rogue EXACTLY the same that it is on alpha (or adds even more) I will play. If they go back on any of the changes they’ve done so far, then it might just be time to play another game (or play TBC) where blizzard cant ruin class design by listening to casual players that are unable to realize the impact of each ability and why we have them.

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Some new voices have entered the conversation on the alpha forum and are giving me more hope.

I’m deeply concerned about Find Weakness procing from Backstab and Fan of Knives crits. It can’t be tuned to properly satisfy its purpose under that design. It’s like Blizzard is backdooring the frequent Shadow Dance damage profile onto us, only now we don’t get to press Shadow Dance as much.

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Mmm, I see some people advocating the importance of having Bursty Dance / Slice & Dice / Rupture back which is nice, but you still get the occasional PVE-only blockhead that is against them, so again knowing blizzards track history… I’m still worried a small amount.

Believe me I feel you. FW being applied to Backstab/FoK crits is a terrible change, and yeah in its own way still forces us to stay out there due to not only FW being easily applied, but also because dance will still have a CD reduction. I extremely dislike the FW change.
However, so long as we get to keep Rupture, Slice, Bursty Dance (despite what is mentioned above) I will take what I can get since Alpha Sub design still looks better than BFA’s (so long as they keep everything the way it is on Alpha).

I’m not trying to be complacent either because being complacent means you never fully get back everything you want for your class, but considering its Blizzard and they already mentioned “Not many more changes are coming” then so long as I get to keep my beloved Rupture/Slice then i’ll give Shadowlands a chance.

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Let’s say that Find Weakness is like ice cream.

It’s good, right? Tasty, delicious ice cream, and each time you Dance or open, you get something different.

Now you get Find Weakness proccing from Backstab and Fan of Knives. Convenient, yes… but the flavors blur into something that you can’t identify. It’s sweet, but there’s no definition, and it all becomes a horrific soup.

THAT is why Subtlety needs to apply Find Weakness from Stealth and Dance only. It has a distinct flavor then, it’s not just a debuff that’s up all the damn time. It makes Find Weakness special. This ALSO means that Blizzard can balance our burst around Find Weakness and our AoE around other abilities.

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They specifically said they were trying to get classes and systems ready as early as possible so that they would have time to act on feedback. I believe we have a small window, as later in the beta it WILL be too late.

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Yea, the FW thing is pretty gross. I spent some time last night and today attacking dummies with no dance or stealth, and could sometimes go like ten minutes at a time only using maybe 1 or 2 Eviscs without FW. Otherwise, the times it would fall off could just be used to refresh SnD or Rupture… then Backstab a few times to get FW again.

Being that this is at level 53 with random green gear and no gems or food, it will only get more passive later on.

How to fix this?

The obvious answer would just be to remove FW from Backstab and Shuriken Storm. But if the designers want something to make it more relevant for PvE, maybe there needs to be a plan B?

For instance, maybe Backstab/Shuriken crits could extend FW by 2 or 4 seconds? This would squeeze out a bit more uptime on, say, a raid boss, without turning it into an always on passive. And in reverse, there’d be some counterplay in PvP since people could use CC or pillars to keep it from staying up 24/7.

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100% now is the time because of you wait for late even mid alpha it’s way too late

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unfortunately RANDOMS like us don’t get alpha invites ex d

Yeah this sounds better than FW being purely off of Backstab / Shuriken Storm crits.

Btw props to you for actual decent feedback on the Rogue Alpha forums, you actually seem to understand how Rogue/Sub works, as well as the importance of having Slice & Dice / Rupture back.
Hope you keep it up. Can’t be having these few clueless Rogues on the Alpha Forums trying to get things removed rather than have more added back.

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Blizzard tic box now days: player is heavy into pvp, NOPE!

Player is heavy into Raid, maybe!

Player is a YouTube person, Yup!

Player streams, Yup!

Player is friends with dev team, YUP!

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“Taking this from a post I made at 6am that never got seen”
After looking at all the class changes for Shadowlands it’s obvious rogue and especially subtlety needs more un-pruning and changes, please let me explain why…

Most Abilities still missing from Subtlety’s past for context:

  • Gouge
  • Garrote
  • Premeditation
  • Preparation
  • Dismantle
  • Hemorrhage
  • Ambush
  • Shroud of Concealment
  • Recuperate
  • Shadow Walk
  • Expose Armor
  • Combat Readiness(talent)
  • Tricks of the Trade(the one with damage buff so its not useless in pvp)

The only “new” abilities we got back were SnD / and Shiv + poisons and poisons might as well be passives anyways… Also adding Slice and Dice without unpruning premeditation and energetic recovery(passive) makes no sense, PvP was not taken into consideration with any of these changes. Lastly the pickpocket thing sounds cool for PvE players but totally useless or at least not practical even if it worked in pvp.

To put this in perspective… Warriors for example got 11 spells readded to all their specs, it’s obvious rogues got very shafted in this un-pruning compared to most classes. Not even saying that I want all of the missing abilities I listed back to my spec but please at the very least give us back gouge, garrote, premed so we can continue the reason lots of sub players decided to play sub in the first place… CONTROL

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