I’ve played Subtlety Rogue across WoD, Legion, Shadowlands, and BfA (skipping Dragonflight entirely) and now in War Within. However, I’ve noticed how visually underwhelming Sub Rogue feels in WW.
For example, I got the Void Reaper’s Contract trinket, and its visuals felt far more aligned with the Subtlety theme than the class’s own abilities. Every time it procs I feel “WOW this should’ve been sub talent, literally”.
Eventually, I switched to Assassination and discovered that Ambush (which procs every few seconds in combat) still uses the old Shadowstrike animation. Ironically, Shadowstrike itself doesn’t use this animation anymore. Why? It makes Assassination feel more like a Sub Rogue than Subtlety does.
The heroic talents also feel hollow. They add no real visual flair, aside from the “X” mark from Deathstalker. There’s no cohesive or impactful visual theme in any of Rogue’s heroic talents.
Subtlety lacks the “shadowy” feel it used to have. You can’t teleport with Shadowstrike anymore (only from stealth) and there’s no visual feedback from double strikes from a talent (in Legion it was a legendary ring and it had a visual shadow echo which stroked your target). It just… happens… SUBTLY (got it?).
Shadowstrike isn’t teleporting you above target and strike from above as in Legion (which felt INCREDIBLE). Assassination and Combat Rogues, on the other hand, have somewhat strong visual identity (coins, poison pools), while Subtlety feels bland. Even visuals from trinkets and other specs feel more “Sub” than Subtlety itself, which is just bad design.
Please bring back the thematic identity of the Subtlety Rogue. Make it dark, shadowy, and stalker-like again. Sub deserves better.
10 Likes
And return our CDR and nerf it to 50% watever. Vanish CDR is unique talent for Sub.
2 Likes
The shadow theme for Sub was a failure in Legion which is why BlizZard is moving away from it.
Subtlety is a bit tricky to deal with thematically.
Thematically, it should effectively live in stealth and never leave it. Statistically, they’d be too powerful if they just “lived” in Stealth all the time. Shadowdance is Blizzard’s answer to that, which frankly feels a bit underwhelming thematically because it’s so sparse.
I’d almost want Blizzard to explore something akin to “Shadowform” from Shadow Priests, a “mode” that Subtlety Rogues engage with 100% of the time granting a psuedo stealth and access to stealth abilities. If it’s on 100% of the time, I imagine it’d be easier to balance around.
4 Likes
As they should have. Too much emphasis on mah fantasy hijacks it. We are untangling the nonsense slowly. The duality is good but one shouldn’t supersede the other.
Shadowstrike permanently teleporting was a gimmick and def wouldn’t fly in today’s standards. The return of SV via death perception was a good move. Balancing CDR is a pain in the butt and constantly got us nerfed as a result. Something too frequent isn’t going to be potent or favorable for “buffs”. They lowered our cds as is and that’s solid, overall pretty happy with how we are currently.
1 Like
i think its hilarious that sub is your utility role class of rogue. cc and setups.
yet your best hero talents are aoe attacks that ruin all your cc.
it makes no sense.
5 Likes
Rogue just needs a class rework. I think the class tree force it into specific builds for all specs and its bad.
2 Likes
Each spec would have a lot more freedom to be its own thing if so much throughput wasn’t tied into the class tree.
Class tree → Fun Utility
Spec tree → Fun Throughput
1 Like
BlizZard is scared of Rogues gaining that type of power. So that isn’t happening lol. 
1 Like