So Subtlety Seems...to have Issues

Classes Rogue
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Hello Rogue forums. It has been a while.

I haven’t touched my poor Rogue since early S1 and, prior to S3 dropping, I am once again evaluating classes to see which I want to main for the season. I’m considering Rogue again because - as per usual - my raid team does not have one.

I have personal issues with Assassination (it feels glacially slow and I’m not a big fan of babysitting two bleeds) and Outlaw (swingy values, Crackshot windows are miserable to play correctly, I was never that good at it), so I’m giving Subtlety another go. I always liked the base idea of Subt: free combo points with Shadow Techniques, Shadowdance windows to allow Ambush (Shadowstrike) hits, big finishers.

But…oh boy does this spec seem to have issues once I dug deeper.

To get to the point, this spec is wildly feast and famine with EVERYTHING revolving entirely around its go window with Flagellation + Shadowblades. Initial impressions was that I race to Shadow Dance as much as possible and hit Symbols in preperation for Shadow Dance.
But no.
You take all the talents that give you extra charges and just hoard everything for Flagellation + Shadowblades. Hit flag, Shadow Dance Symbols and get many finishers as you can in 12 seconds, then once the initial flag falls off (and really you NEED an addon to track this) you then hit Shadowblades, Shadow Dance again, Symbols, pump DPS, Symbols again, pump DPS before flag ends.
Once that ends, congrats! You can get up, take a stretch, and go grab a drink since your DPS absolutely plummets off Niagara Falls until the next flag + Shadowblades.

So I have to ask…is this really intended by the devs? I know most specs these days revolve around their go but this just seems excessive. Backstab/Gloomblade (never taken) are quite possibly the most pathetic fillers in all of WoW right now - they might as well just do 0 damage. Even Shadowstrike - a souped up Ambush, which used to be one of the most feared Rogue abilities - hits for paltry numbers.

Rather than being a spec revolving around stealth benefits and shadow damage (what I feel Subtlety should be all about), Subtlety is really just a ‘Eviscerate as hard as you can with everything stacked together’. It also distorts stat weights - haste is a complete dead stat for Subt since you don’t lack for energy during your go window and your go window is all that matters.

The big culprits here are really Flagellation (GIANT mastery buff that lines up with Shadowblades), Dark Shadow + Danse Macabre (all meaningful damage is just during Shadow Dance), and then the charge stacking talents (Double Dance and Death Perception).

It just seems really unhealthy for the spec. If it were up to me, I would remove Flagellation (or make it a passive talent that activates with Shadow Blades and lower the mastery buff), remove Double Dance and Death Perception, and remove Danse Macabre (which also incentivizes doing a Backstab during Shadow Dance which feels counterintuitive).

Personally I would lean more into the shadow magic aspect of Subtlety:

  • Have Subt mastery also buff shadow damage done.
  • Change Shadow Blades to cause every finisher to instead strike the target with a shadow clone for shadow damage with every combo point spent. (Would make for an awesome visual as well)
  • Merge Weaponmaster and Shadowed Finisher to make Shadowed Strikes: Backstab/Gloomblade and Shadowstrike has a (higher %) chance to strike again in the shadows for shadow damage.
  • Move Dark Brew further up the tree and change it to only affect Instant Poison making it deal substantially more damage as shadow and have it give Instant Poison an (increased) chance to proc Shadow Techniques.
  • Move Swift Death below Deepening Shadows and have Swift Death instead lower the cooldown of Symbols of Death per combo point spent.
  • Give more synergies with stealth to Subtlety. The fact that Subtlety doesn’t actually want the Subterfuge talent is baffling design.
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Good news is that the devs did make Sub have choices to do more damage with CP generators instead of relying on stacking modifiers for finishers and go windows.

But I agree there is room for improvement there. Backstab and Gloomblade could use more help.

:+1:

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

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Idk sustain damage across the board is actually awful, only rupture feels ok outside of dance lol/flag/dance/the kitchen sink. This is the biggest issue retail faces compared to say classic wow, everyone is only allowed to do damage during cds. Unless you play feral or boomy, sustain is garbonzo beans.

Why is sustain garbage? Because blizzard gave us every single barrowed power/lego/artifact/azerite garbage so when we press the buttons we over kill someone by 100%, then have no damage for 30+ seconds (speaking for other classes). This new class tree is garbage, and i don’t think pvp will ever be good with this current “system.” Two many procs, hots, dots, and cds to even take seriously anymore. All my actual tryhard pvp friends are just on Cata and will be playing mop when it comes out.

How do we fix this? Stop playing the class and participating in content until they fix the problem. We’re actually the least popular class, if not the second to least (not much better lol). Use the easy gearing to play other classes. Unfortunately, this company only cares about metrics and not feedback. That or see you guys in classic +!

Oh, fix the stealth bug! Almost season three… actually guys… That’s the reason we might not be getting anything, blizzard is 100% fixing this issue for us :sunglasses:

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Ironically you should have seen Sub’s sustain before they buffed the sustained damage. This is because in early TWW it was all about CDs for Sub and flailing around without CDs. Also the mid expansion DF rework gave Sub more options for damage with combo point generators.

It was worse than what you see now which is true.

As for classic the big take away is that like MoP, current retail TWW has too much trash micro CC. During and post MoP Brolinka took out or nerfed most of the micro CC which is why MoP is the gold standard for PVP “balance”.

Rogues are penalized with Kidney Shot nerfed to 5 seconds in PVP, Blind and Gouge nerfed. And yet micro CC can be chained and it is untouched.

Also the changes to soft CC not breaking on instant damage is straight up broken.

:+1:

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

5

Sub is a spec where every button press needs to be intentionally timed. If youre racing for anything youre not doing it right.

You dont need an addon. It can appear on nameplates as an aura.

And in exchange, when inside SD we now use finishers back to back frequently. The CP you spend outside of CDs is primarly to refresh SD CD. Its satisfying.

Its more focused on both of those with the Trickster addition than it has since Legion.

Why is this a bad thing?

No one wants passive auto attack buffs.

Sub already has the most stealth interactions as its the only spec with Shadow Dance. The real issue is the fact that Shadow Dance was taken out the class tree for a cheap replacement Sub cannot interact with (to your point)

1 Like
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Im not even really sure how to properly make a post about my gripes with sub.
To me its pretty clear its the pvp spec and im fine with that as im a much better assass player and have no intention of playing outlaw ( ma daggers).

Keep in mind im just speaking from a pve perspective after having tried my best with it over the last couple of weeks. I dont hate any of the sub abilities but i really dont know why backstab is still in the game. Backstab sucks and sub should get its own version of mutilate. Shadow dance can feel really awkward at times and the over reliance on it is a bit absurd. I think the biggest issues with Sub PVE are some of the talents and how they operate such as Flawless Form, Nimble Flurry and Dance Macabre.

Theres never really a good time to use black powder when you have nimble flurry and overall theres way to many CDs that need to be used in the right order to have somewhat of decent dps. God forbid if enemies die too fast. Speaking of enemies dying to fast, even just doing some world quests or weekly dailies is awkward with this heavy burst design.

In terms of changes, the only thing i can think of without making pvpers upset is to rework the whole spec and either make it very clear that its primarily for pvp or design it in a way where it has very good aoe and sustained damage outside of shadowdance burst windows, clean up the bloated CDs, give Sub a shadowy version of mutilate, make black powder viable and just change the way certain talents operate (which would happen anyways becauae of suggestions above.) Id also be ok of shadowdance had a longer cooldown so the burst felt more important like mark of death or something as long as the sustained st and aoe where there. I do believe the spec can be fixed in a way to not destroy it in pvp. :woman_shrugging:

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I do not think Sub talents are geared for pure PVP because it would look a lot different. The problem is the devs insist on Sub = single target raiding, Assassination = multi target raiding Outlaw = hard capped M+ spec.

But that was fine when BFA released but BFA was almost a decade ago. Now? All the traditional raiding specs are just as powerful in M+ while still keeping their PVP prowess.

Rogues are capped for balance reasons that do no longer exist for other specs in the game like Boomkin, Rets, Mages, etc.

Just the reality of the situation.

:+1:

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

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I didnt know when signing up to play rogues the intention was to play 2 specs in PvE and 1 in PvP.

Yall are just overcomplicating the spec for no reason.

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Like i said im not a sub master but even theres glaring issues right from backstab being a pos ability. I didnt say it WAS the pvp build but it certainly feels like it. As ive dabbled with some other classed i either havent played or havent touched in years it feels like every spec is broken. When youre owned by microsoft im sorry but you could at least dedicate a few people to each class to work on them exclusively

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I think the big takeaway I’m trying to convey is that ALL of our damage is in our go window and it’s so utterly distorted you have to hoard cooldowns to further boost your go window, leading to the giant block of time between go’s feeling miserably bad.

Like, I struggle to out DPS the TANKS when I’m between cooldowns. It’s horrendous.

I don’t have a problem with a class being burst designed but this is too far. Even arcane mage feels better to me between CD’s.

Edit: Oh, as a side note it’s interesting that out of all the specs in the game, subtlety is the one spec where the single button assist fails MISERABLY to play at. Which really does not bode well for the state of our spec.

Because subt ultimately does not scale very well and it’s unhealthy for the class. It’s okay for a stat to be particularly strong but it’s not okay to have stats that are particularly bad.

Outlaw is in the same boat with mastery. I just cannot process why Blizzard has not changed Outlaw’s mastery. (I swear there must be a dev that has threatened to go ape if Outlaw’s mastery is ever not main gauche)

Historically rogues go assassination towards the end of expansions because assassination scales better - all stats are very solid for sin.

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This is a list of all the changes i felt Sub actually needed. I do agree something regarding SD needs to be tweaked to allow for more fluidity, but the spec plays well right now. M+ especially has never been better for Sub.

It feels like it because it has the most burst and simultaneously the most reliable CD ever since SD was taken out the class tree. If SD were still in the tree, all the specs would be able to send out long stuns a bit more frequently while having more consistent burst ability without relying on combat dropping or Vanish.

Sounds like this is a personal issue, because when properly played its not an issue. So what if you do tank damage for one pull? Why does that matter if youre doing more dps than the other 2 dps in a key combined on the next pull?

This actually isnt true for Sub. Scaling is always subject to tuning and honestly, Blizz sucks at tuning. Yes balanced stat weights helps counteract that fact, but if Blizz stopped preemptively nerfing classes with less stat scaling the first week of a patch (historically Fury, Windwalker, and Sub) they wouldnt be trash 10 weeks in when the other specs have gotten their additional stats. That happened to Sub this season, it was buffed again around 11.1.5 and now its middle of the pack.

The bigger question here is how would you even make haste a valuable stat for a melee spec thats entirely focused on burst

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I think the main thing I enjoyed from the sub rework is shadow craft, Shadow blades is also cool.

The main issue I have with sub is that it has literally no damage outside of blades, which results in overall disappointing damage in AOE.

In fine with Omega burst oriented in st. In AOE not so much.

Arcane mage does this damage profile best, mostly burst oriented, but still capable of doing decent numbers outside of CDs in aoe

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This is false. It hits as hard as arcane in aoe if not harder in varying pull sizes.

Im talking to someone that cant even post on his own rogue as i progress through +16s :unamused:

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Not true. We have Backstab. That stuff will mess you up.

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It really doesn’t.

I don’t know in what universe you’re living where sub is doing just as much aoe as arcane, but it isn’t.

Maybe burst aoe, but overall aoe? Arcane is easily winning, especially at around 5 to 10 targets.

Like have you actually tried arcane?

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My biggest issue with the spec, sure this might be nice when you’re pveing and just wailing on something freely. In pvp, if you get stopped for a milisecond thats the go lol. It’s god awful, downtime is borderline afk, and goes just don’t feel rewarding without throwing the kitchen sink at someone. Tuning the class would only be like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound, sure it helps ig, doesn’t solve the problem at its core. Bad design, and the refusal to change.

I’m glad you enjoy it though.

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Timing matters for Sub in PVP too. But yes the downtime is a problem and hopefully it can be addressed through PVP talents.

:+1:

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

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Maybe increase Shadow Dance duration to 15 seconds and tweak the damage as needed.

The short duration is what I think makes Sub feel so bad. You get 8 seconds to pop CD’s and get off a few Shadow Strikes. If you get interrupted for any reason, that 8 second window is trashed with no opportunity to recover.

Or maybe, simple let Backstab hit harder, a lot harder. Or beef up the bleed and poison damage a little. Let the Dot’s carry you through the down time.

There a ways to make Sub feel better. It’s just up to Blizzard and they don’t seem to care.

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This can be a problem in PvE too. In raids mechanics can disrupt your go windows, and there are plenty of encounters that demand bursts of decent DPS in order to win (most notably priority adds that spawn in)

There’s a reason Subt is one of the lowest ranking specs for raids despite being able to dish out decent damage.

It truly does feel like Subt was designed purely to be a PvP burst class first and foremost.

I mean, the numbers don’t lie - looking at max level specs in dataforazeroth subtlety rogue is currently the second least played spec in the game, ahead of only augmentation whose reputation has been completely obliterated this expansion.

Clearly something is wrong.

Edit: I also want to reiterate the fact that the single button system plays Subt the worst out of any spec in the game. It seems to me that the devs (or at least the devs who implemented the single button system) don’t fully understand how Subt is even played right now.

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Im also of the opinion that PvP can and should be tuned its own way without affecting PvE tuning and Blizz rarely does that. Its why i dont consider PvP in this.

1 Like