Remember when we still had tools

Classes Rogue
21

…Again, having uptime and downtime has always been a part of Sub’s identity, no? If you want a spec that’s all out all the time, Outlaw would be a better fit. There’s nothing that requires restealths, no energy pooling, no waiting around at all, just spam away to reset all your CDs to spam more.

Yeah, I’m now 100% sure that you didn’t actually play Legion Sub. What the Dark Shadow + DFA meta replaced was a Subterfuge + Enveloping meta that was basically always in SD. High SD uptime was actually the entire reason why the mid-expansion rework was needed. Sub had no burst and no actual gameplay with the Enveloping build, we just perma-spammed 2 SS 1 Evisc and pressed Symbols on CD. Dark Shadow made it so that Sub could sit there, OUT OF SHADOW DANCE, and WAIT, getting energy and CDs back, getting the 6 CP Finality for the next DFA. Then, after everything is ready, we explode with damage all at once. Saying that you liked DFA Sub for high SD uptime is like saying you like KFC for their Big Mac.

2 Likes
22

Level 6 vanilla wow, that is how long ago we got it. Oh but that’s OP, cant have an ability that breaks on damage and requires melee range and you be face to face with an enemy, and 45 energy… Completely OP according to modern blizzard.

3 Likes
23

Monks with AoE kidneyshot, no cost, and ranged gouge.
Blizz: This is fine.

3 Likes
24

In blizz logic its fine, because monks don’t have stealth.

25

With the zillion things that basically negate stealth that just about everyone has, hey nerf rogues.

26

Other classes have better stealth tools though so Blizz can’t hide behind the Rogues have stealth argument. :frowning:

27

Well firstly, as Forgetmenot said, having downtime on burst and setting up for your next SD window has always been a defining playstyle of Sub. If this is something your against and want to advocate change for, then live your dreams, just note that it goes against what Sub’s style has always been and always should be - Having big burst/CC windows with Dance, then going through a small downtime window & preparing / setting up for the next one to make it as big as possible.

Another thing too is that with old SD, we also had things such as Sanguinary Veins, Slice & Dice, & a Backstab that actually did semi okay damage. All of this meant that

  1. Setting up for your next burst felt rewarding, because you could notice the damage buff from Sanguinary Veins & you could notice the energy regen from Slice & Dice.
  2. It made our consistent damage not feel as bad as it does now, due to Backstab actually doing SOME SORT of relevant damage paired with sanguinary / slice & dice (as mentioned right above)

Pretty much this.

Sub shouldn’t be this spec that is GO GO GO all the time, it should be a spec centered around planning & preemption for a big SD. This is why having 1-Charge Shadow Dance, Slice & Dice, & Rupture (if they bring back Sang Veins passive for rupture)
All of these are defining abilities of Sub.

When I go back & think of what it meant to be a SUBTLETY ROGUE, it was having multiple finishers that provided different utilities / damage benefits, maintaining & having forethought & awareness on when to apply them at the best possible time for your next Shadow Dance, then having your Dance every 1 Minute for big burst (& cool CC chains in PVP)

Sub in Legion/BFA isn’t even recognizable IMO, you have a SEVERE lack of finishers that allow for any modification or forethought to enhance your burst; Ontop of the fact that Shadow Dance with multi-charges doesnt feel as powerful or rewarding - Which leads to it feeling way less fun.

4 Likes
28

High uptime relative to a 1m SD window. You’re being disingenuous. I didn’t play prior to whenever the .5 rework patch happened and only ever used Dark Shadow. The point was that you always had an SD charge to use with your DFA.

I want SD to be a planned burst window that you actually have to pool/plan for. Currently the low cost of Shadowstrike, 100 max energy, and talents like Master of Shadows undermine this. I want 60 energy Ambush returned. I want a higher max energy so you’re not forced to take boring talents like Vigor just to pool properly. I want a proper FW debuff that enables physical CP generators to hit harder.

What I don’t want is a boring spec designed exclusively around maintaining a handful of 100% uptime buffs/debuffs in PvE (SnD, Rupture, Hemo, etc). This was pretty much any version of Sub prior to Legion. It’s not that maintenance buffs are bad, they just have to be part of a more complex playstyle. What Legion brought was dynamic buff stacking that considerably increased the skill ceiling in spite of pruned abilities.

Again, all of this is exclusive to PvP only. Without any type of buff to stack with SD (Mantle, SoD, Master of Subtlety etc) there’s zero setup in PvE besides ensuring SnD/Rupture don’t fall off during its uptime. There are no coordinated CC chains, no Garrote, no Cheap Shots, no Shadowstep Saps or whatever else you do in arena these days. An 8s 1m SD window basically just translates to 5-6 Shadowstrike/Ambush with some Evis sprinkled in between. It’s not enough to make the spec fun to play.

I generally agree with the rest of your post. They’re going the complete wrong direction in SL right now. Find Weakness stacking more damage onto Eviscerate means everything else is going to be weaker. And this was their replacement for SV/Nightblade. The whole reason those buffs existed was to create some synergy/priority between finishers.

They could have copy pasted either of those effects but instead they come up with something that dumps even more damage into Eviscerate (which already dominates our damage profile). And turns FW into another 100% uptime automatic debuff with zero positive gameplay impact. I don’t know why I care so much about how classes are designed anymore. It’s clear they’re catering to a radically different demographic then whatever I belong to.

29

Except that why does every spec need to be good or something for PVE?

Why can’t one spec be set up for idea raid damage, another for PvP, and another that’s kinda a decent hybrid of both? Like every single expansion before legion entirely destroyed the game.

2 Likes
30

Eh? While lining up SnD and Rupture (and pooling energy and oh, do I need to feint? or keep recup rolling before Legion? and line up premed…) might not have been pre-Sabertoof-Feral levels of plate spinning, it was still way more setup than most other classes even if you weren’t cross CCing a boss.

2 Likes
31

The DFA playstyle wasn’t really even Dancing for the sake of openers anymore lol. It’s literally just the one GCD of DFA during the 4 seconds of damage buff that did everything. We want to maximize the rest of that 4 seconds, sure, but looking back, I’m honestly not even sure how much difference that would make. It was fun, but the focus wasn’t even on Dance at all, and saying that playstyle had “Dance uptime” is laughable.

And, regarding the direction of Sub in SL, I’m actually decently happy about what they’re doing, after playing the current Sub in a few 15 or higher keys. Right now, beyond just having no damage at all, Sub also has this issue where a whole bunch of our kit is useless in certain situations. For example, FW is a good debuff to have up, but in an AoE situation, applying it to anything beyond your priority target is just not worth it, since pumping out an Evisc every other GCD is better. Thus, on the average trash pull, you effectively lose a whole talent row’s worth of DPS, and the same thing sorta applies to the bonus damage on Nightblade as well. That bonus damage is basically Sanguinary Vein, but without Crimson Tempest to apply it, it’s also not used at all in AoE situations in favor of spamming more Eviscerates. Then, on single target, the Night Vengeance Azerite trait–which is completely core to our spec–also suffers from the same issue. You can do into SD with it up to immediately get off a big Evisc, but after you’re in Dance, it eats up CPs and GCDs that could’ve gone to Eviscerates, so trying to proc a damage buff actually ends up being a detriment to your damage.

What we want is a way to set up the debuffs, and then spam many upfront damage finishers back to back. High FW uptime + Shuriken Storm FW application gives us exactly that. It basically merges all our maintenance enemy debuffs into one easily-applied thing, and rewards us with basically the same thing–extra damage. With the right tuning, armor shred/percent damage increases/shadow damage procs will honestly all just be the same thing with cosmetic differences. This way, we get to use all of our kit, all the time. The only point of concern I see so far is Shadow Vault animation self-stunning us.

Regarding energy and wanting to pool energy, it’s gonna be hard to tell how that’s gonna go lol. So far, the trend has been us getting our energy sustain through the borrowed powers of each expac, with stuff like Energetic Stabbing/Lucid Dream Minor, and pretty much none of the Rogue borrowed powers are out yet. I want to be hopeful, but honestly, we’re basically mandated to be hopeful anyways, since we already can’t go any lower on the damage chart lol.

32

because noone wants to carry around 5 diff gear sets for diff specs/content

33

I only enjoy Sub, and I hate PVP with a passion. So, do I not deserve to play the game at all?

34

Being the BEST choice doesn’t make it the only choice. There has never been and never will be PVE balance. The closest we ever got to that was mists 5.3, and even then if you’re going for max parses there will always be someone at the top and someone at the bottom.

Just because a class spec it’s best for PvP or best for PVE does not mean it’s entirely bad for other content it’s just less optimal. For example right now there are top PVE specs and those that are not, this has never been any different, my point is why make everything about well everything when the experience could be so much more than that if it were more like it was classically.

In TBC and forward I have had 3 rogues, I enjoy all the specs, they are all fun I their own ways, I raided all 3 specs through cata and parts of mists and wod. In every expansion I was able to make sub, combat and assassination work effectively to their strengths and for those builds did reasonably well.

There is nothing that ever held sub back if you really wanted to play it, you just had to accept it was never going to be Combat.

Look at the game now, there is all that, it’s never actually changed they only give you the illusion that your character is gonna compete at the top, but really if you are not in a top 10 in the world guild it doesn’t actually matter.

Nothing I said before was meant to prevent anyone from playing the spec they like in the content they want, only that maybe we should go back to a point when the game and the classes made sense and the game wasn’t pure garbage.

2 Likes
35

Being significantly weaker will absolutely make a spec the wrong choice, and imo, “bring the player” has always been a complete joke. Certainly, only a handful of people will ever time a +30 key. However, why would you ever be content with timing a +15 as Sub, when you can time +20s as Outlaw with the exact same amount of min-maxing?

If I wanted to place anything before progression, I would just do pet battle/fishing/transmog farming and call it a day. Playing sin is cancer, but I suck it up and play the viable spec because I care about improving myself. The point is, though, I’m paying for this damn game and I shouldn’t have to “suck up” anything.

36

you are entitled to play whatever spec you are want. people are also entitled to not take you if the spec underperforms. pure dps classes main a class not a spec you play whats best/viable or you have to deal with the negative side of playing off meta

1 Like
37

I’m entitled to play whatever spec I want and, so long as I play properly, be able to achieve roughly the same amount of progression. Understandably, small gaps in performances are unavoidable, but that gap 100% has to stay statistically irrelevant. If Blizzard fails to deliver that, then whatever they’ve vomited up is a major failure and a piece of garbage.

1 Like
38

I think you missed part of the point, blizzard will never make all specs equal at everything, and really it’s just stupid to even attempt that because the end result is overall mediocrity of all specs.

Thing is, its never going to even be close at any point because it’s intentional to have certain specs above others. They tune it that way intentionally. The made no error in tuning, it was planned for certain things to be bad.

If you don’t believe,I can prove it. Wait till Sunday when I have time if you don’t believe.

2 Likes
39

I 100% believe that, because all logs have been saying that Sub is garbage for over a year, and Blizzard has not even handed out a single flat damage buff. I’m saying that this is a garbage way to design a game and they should go bankrupt and lose their families for balancing like this.

40

I understand why they do it, but disagree with the methods. Their problems have to do with how far detached they are from the game play and the community. The little contact they have is with “the meta” and that’s about it.

1 Like