Subterfuge: 6 seconds is too long

Classes Rogue
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I was going to make a long, design philosophy post about this but I’ll save it. I’m dealing with subterfuge screwing with my mod macros to the point where I have to rebuild my UI and I’m not in the mood.

Openners are made to give us the jump. We’re rogues. That’s our job. Subterfuge was introduced to lessen the impact of being kicked out of stealth early, which was a good design choice given how fragile stealth is and has become over time, but it was also predicated on the idea that we’d be thrust into our rotations relatively quickly so the stealth/normal action bars didn’t interfere with each other.

6 seconds of this screws that up. it’s 5 seconds into the fight and sap is still on my bar, with zero use. It requires us to completely re-engineer our bar to have both stealth and non-stealth abilities on hand or play our toons ineffectively.

Rogues are complicated enough as it is and this isn’t helping. 4 seconds, max. That might even be too much time.

Removing shadow dance for an extra vanish feels like a welcome, long overdue change, but using vanish as a means to replace the extended shadow dance is missing the point of why we use opening moves. Just make openers stronger with a shorter window, and tune the filler strike spam around that. Or make a passive buff after coming out of stealth to simulate the dps boost, but don’t force us to interact with a giant-a** move-set while integrating it with an entire OTHER different-a** moveset. We’re the only class where we use one button to have access to 8 other buttons on a bar dedicated to a different utility, half of which we can’t use. You don’t even make druids do that, and they have 4 specs and a bad case of dingleberries, but blue was smart enough to design it so that each form has its own specific moveset. Rogues were not afforded this.

I have a feeling that some 2100 card-carrying badass is going to claim that it would be a nerf, but c’mon dude, the skills ceiling on rogues is SO HIGH. it’s SO high. Can we tune this class around solid core mechanics rather than niche gimmicks that drastically changes every patch?

On a side note, but still relevant to this topic, please fix subterfuge [stealth] macros. Outlaw works, the others do not. Don’t force us to use random ambushes, just empower our strike (sin strike/mutilate/backstab) or make our strike DO ambush (like it does in outlaw).

Better yet, just make ambush a version of strike if we’re in stealth, or if it an ambush procs on the next strike, strike just BECOMES Ambush in one nice, neat button across all three specs.

This post is a plea for consolidation. There has a been a lot this expec, but they’re not enough.

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You literally dont though. Is the average rogue just dumb? What is this?

Put sap and the other utility buttons you rarely use on Bar 2. Keep the stealth bar identical to Bar 1. The option to swap whats on your stealth bar is there, doesnt mean everyone has to use it.

Druid form bars literally work the same way as rogue stealth bar

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You got to operationalize your bars. My stealth bar and my unstealthed bar are the same with the exception of key abilities. For instance my Gloom Blade → Shadowstrike because anytime I could use Shadowstrike I have no reason to use Gloom Blade.

Similarly Kidney Shot → Cheapshot on my stealth bar. The difference between my stealth bar and unstealthed bar are minimal as a result.

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I can’t believe you’re arguing to nerf something so good for the sake of it being convenient for your UI setup. Common man. Fix your UI.

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Wow, that really just sounds like a personal issue now, doesn’t it? But alright. Let’s see what bad take comes from “I’m too lazy to tune my UI” here.

The design philosophy of “stealth moves are only openers” was literally never once their intention. Stealth moves do more damage due to their normal unavailability of use, thus allowing for you to choose moments to spike extra damage, throw stuns, or escape. Vanish always existed prior as a utility action to allow you to flow moment-to-moment combat in a way that was unique. The only difference is that you now get 6 seconds of a window of extra utility now, which is in no way a negative.

Tell me you’ve never used vanish to do anything more than press a damage button without telling me you’ve never used it for that. The option to quite literally interrupt 6 adds with cheap shot instead of mindlessly hitting DPS buttons is exactly the utility it’s designed for.

Then go play monk or warrior. Obviously stealth and the stealth bars are causing too many issues for you, and they play as better rogues at this point anyway.

They also gave you 8 total action bars, 7 of which don’t change during the stealth window and can be laid out in a way that allows you to press whatever ability you want even in Subterfuge. Sounds like a skill issue if you can’t even manage your own UI. Stop trying to ruin an entire class that’s already struggling just because you can’t spend 5 minutes to figure this out.

It doesn’t take a “2100 card-carrying” player to recognize that removing 1/3 or more of a buff that 60% of the damage profile of all 3 specs is relying on at the moment would be a nerf. Anyone who took more than 3 seconds to actually do the math would know this is a horrid idea.

I agree that I would prefer subterfuge have OTHER OPTIONS that are viable for players that don’t wish to play the Vanish weaving builds, but completely destroying a valid playstyle just because you can’t figure out your own UI is a personal problem. Not a situation where the devs need to kill the functionality of the class more to cater to your incapability of fixing your own macros. Maybe learn to play without them, a large majority of us don’t use macros or weak auras and play just fine.

And this is a note from someone that has actually played the class at a moderate level for more than the last month. Don’t listen to people who want the developers to fix things but can’t even be bothered to fix their own personal problems.

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Oh yeah? then why you got rogues coming back to wow saying they don’t recognize their class and why their bars are acting weird after patch? Are they stupid, or does the design suck and feel wierd?

Why can’t we have a class design that has basic abilities that simply work the way they do in stealth mode and another way not in stealth mode? Why do our macros have to be so much more complicated than other classes just to compensate for a mechanic that is core to our functionality?

Why has inelegance been a core complaint of our class since its conception?

There is no pvp build that doesn’t take subterfuge, by the way, so ‘take another option’ isn’t really the option. Two vanishes cannot be argued with for functionality.

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Who? I mean, I see YOU saying that.
Are you talking about the BtE bug here or…?

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No, the [stealth,mod:alt] mod bug. before, when subterfuge was active, the bar would keep the stealth bar up until subterfuge dropped. Now, only outlaw does it. I can’t stack ambush and basic strike abilities onto the same modifier macro anymore, which I was relying on for my playstyle…

For the last decade and a half.

And no, I’m not the only one complaining about subterfuge.

I understand top-level players are singing about it, they’ll sing about anything that allows them to push area ratings, but average players are, in my opinion, correctly identifying it as weird, inintuitive disruption.

Just give us more vanishes if we need more stealth uptime. We were able to push 4 abilities’ last expansion in three seconds. Why do I need to have sap and shroud and distract on my stealth bar when everything else also needs to be on my stealth bar because stealth isn’t stealth anymore, it’s just part of combat?

As I said, I’ve been playing since AQ. I’m not stellar at pvp but I’ve been to high 1700s. I’ve played thousands of battlegrounds. This change was recent and its radically restructured the combat flow of rogues, mashing two skillsets that are (like druids) supposed to be distinct. It’s shadow dance for all classes. That’s fine, but if it’s gonna be that, can we pleas consolidate some of this crap? Make it more accessible. If there’s a power problem, just deal with it through number design.

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Subterfuge was originally introduced in MoP to protect the Rogue when doing a clean opener but also not being targeted.

Current Subterfuge of six seconds seems to me an evolution that BlizZard wants Rogues to focus on stealth again as that is the core of the class.

But the proposal of making Subterfuge to 4 seconds but making openers stronger is not a bad idea.

By the time MoP rolled around openers were very weak and most Rogues were just auto attack bots outside of the traditional openers in PVE and PVP.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

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I macro’d Sap, Vanish, and Stealth to the same hotkey because there’s no situation I’d need more than one of them at a time.

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Ironically the six seconds of extra stealth just reinforces how bad Sub is outside of stealth windows and how bad Outlaw’s Sinister Strike is compared to Ambush.

Sub needs more staying power outside of stealth windows and Outlaw’s Sinister Strike doesn’t feel good to press as a combo point generator.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

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On a side note, y’all look stylish AF with your dark hoods.

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I wish the “Remove Shadow Dance” crowd understood this.

Theyre complicated cause you made them complicated. Rogue doesnt need to use stance macros as once again, we have one bar that automatically changes with stance and really only 2 abilities you may want to use based on stance. The rest (sap, pickpocket) can be slapped on the other bars and used as you please when you do enter the stance. You mentioned shroud? I dont even have shroud bound on the main bars. Its off to the one side action bar i dont have set to mouseover cause i use it so little and its such a critical ability when i do use it, that id rather just click it. Once again, you dont need the stealth bar to use stealth abilities. Its there for convenience.

Druid is the class that actually has entirely different movesets dependent on stance. You claimed Rogue has 8 different abilties changing. No. Thats Druid.

Dang, I wonder why. Does Subterfuge provide more utility or something?

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The reason why Shadow Dance was removed was because it is not just a DPS cool down on a short CD but also utility. So that is why it was removed as it was too hard to balance Assassination and Outlaw with Shadow Dance.

Now there is room to build up Assassination and Outlaw again but BlizZard is half way there to finish the job.

Similar situation with Invigorating Shadow Dust as Sub needs room to breathe and other parts of its kit to shine.

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

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You are delusional. It was removed because you and others cried for months about its inclusion. The only place the utility balance really mattered is (as always) PvP and once again that can be tuned separately.

Same with Shadowdust. The only issue with it was the fact that it was a talent. Some of you same rogues cried for months having to play with it because you felt you needed spreadsheets to play with it. Suddenly you now include reasoning like “it lets the spec breath”. Selliane was the only one who initially claimed that. You dont care about that.

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“Why do our macros have to be so much more complicated than other classes just to compensate for a mechanic that is core to our functionality?”

They don’t.

You’re doing it wrong.

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I don’t buy this.

You’re saying it was removed as it made things too hard to balance. But it gave us 1 min CD stealth skills for 6 seconds. If that was too strong and they removed it…why would they extend subterfuge from 3-6 seconds and give us another vanish charge?

How is the former too hard to balance, but the latter is acceptable?

#GiveShadowdance&MfDback

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BlizZard balances PVE now with utility in mind also not just PVP and Shadow Dance on a 1 minute CD was too OP which is why they chose to do it that way.

Subterfuge opener at six seconds is the way they can balance by having it for openers, restealths or vanishes.

Shadow Dance should have never been a capstone because it caused balanced issues that made Assassination and Outlaw rot as specs respectively as their tool kit outside of Shadow Dance was literally over shadowed.

BlizZard made the right call which is why they just need to finish the job of making Outlaw and Assassination better without Shadow Dance as they are half way there.

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

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Nah, they removed Shadow Dance because it absolutely smothered all three specs as ‘must pick’, but weirdly had nothing to replace it with, so they gave the people with Shadow-Dancing Hard-ons a pity talent, which plagues Outlaw to this day.

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Because any acceptable replacement for Shadow Dance would have been a must pick as well. Its like you guys have a singular braincell moving around in there like a dvd screensaver. You called for its removal but didnt have any ideas of how to replace it either so dont even act like Blizz did something wrong there besides following trash feedback.

Thistle Tea and Echoing Reprimand shouldve have been killed off to make room for capstones that would actually compete with Shadow Dance and keep the actual playstyle shifts for all 3 specs.

No they dont. Tired of your masochism. Rogue has the least raid utility. In M+ it needs to sacrifice its damage every time it helps the group with a stun or blind. In Delves we cant even take hits cause of the way we are meant to play. So tell me where is our OP utility that absolutely had to be nerfed? We are already tuned by the need to use resources and gcds (relevant because energy specs cannot reduce their gcds) on utility.

Every other class brings multiple things for the group often on a 1min CD or less but Shadow Dance for rogues was too much. Stop the clownery.

1 Like