This is going too far.
Shadow Dance was easily the most exciting and interesting dps cooldown in the game. The issue became when it was redesigned to be the entire basis of the rotation and gameplay, rather than a burst of awesomeness once per minute that complemented the outstanding classic Rogue toolkit and rotation.
The Shadow Dance charges, and more importantly cooldown reduction mechanic, should be removed in returning to a static 1min CD Dance. This accomplishes:
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Reducing the Dance uptime to let classic Rogue abilities like Gouge, Crippling Poison, and Shiv shine in controlling the battlefield rather than relying on one dimensional Cheap Shot spam.
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Find Weakness baseline and buffed appropriately for a 1min Dance playstyle. That creates interactivity with our core mechanic, Stealth, for creating burst windows.
Subtlety is at its best as a control spec that picks moments for devastating single target burst. The 1min CD of Shadow Dance is important for the pacing of the spec and the way it creates its windows.
Finally, a note about “rotational” Shadow Dance. This didn’t make the rotation more interesting, it made Shadow Dance worse. What makes oldschool Subtlety so much fun is the management of timing created by having many finishers (slice and dice, rupture, eviscerate, kidney shot), DR categories, pooling energy, and Find Weakness windows.
Playing the spec in PvP meant managing the timings of all those things, and the way they interacted with each other was extremely satisfying.
But the current “rotational Dance” design has removed the things that made the rotation interesting outside of Dance, while also making Dance itself much, much less exciting. This has been a terrible recipe.
They should consider a passive that lets Rogues restealth in PvE without completely dropping combat. Or use PvE traits, legendaries, or some specific system to lower Vanish CD in PvE to allow more frequent Find Weakness application. The key is that there is the variety between the classic Rogue toolkit and rotation, and Shadow Dance as an exciting moment of different possibilities. Both interact with Find Weakness (Stealth), energy, and combo points to control the delivery of our damage and crowd control in ways that create two separate but connected phases in a larger cycle.
The only thing I can think of from Legion and BFA that isn’t altogether terrible is the 2nd charge for Shadowstep. I think that’s a fine design and doesn’t create the same degenerate side effects with the current charge (and CDR) design for “rotational shadow dance”. Assuming going forward that Feint isn’t a spammable shield wall, considering whether Preparation is coming back, and assuming that other classes are getting back tools as well. Then you have to properly evaluate the ability and understand that its value doesn’t scale with encounter length and the real value is that is it allows you to sit on a charge in your pocket without losing the value of regenerating the cooldown. In other words, the charge mechanic interacts in a different and far less disruptive way with our mobility (step) than it does with Dance.
Finally a note about Burst of Speed (since I’m on the topic of mobility) for the few fans you hear mentioning it. You will have to understand that this ability while not preferred over Shadowstep in competitive arena play was still too good in more casual PvP. With that said, it does have value in casual PvE particularly in soloing old raids and farming. You could tune the ability to retain its value in a more casual setting without creating problems in PvP. The way to do so is to preserve the ratio of its energy cost (such that it can be maintained out of combat but not in combat while maintaining a rotation) while proportionately increasing the cooldown so that it can be used less frequently, and scaling to greater energy cost per press, as a snare breaker. Thus it remains useful for out of combat zooming but not for sticking to players with little counter play. Shadowstep is ultimately a much more rewarding in combat button than BoS, BY FAR, and should be basically default for serious play.