Sub Rogue, What happened?

[Yoshimiko]

I just tried to pvp with my sub rogue..and it feels weaker than a resto druid beating someone down in kitty form.

I'm wearing fullS11 epic pvp gear, sitting at ~145k hp, ~60%ish resilience, 22% pvp Power, Fear & Vengeance, all setup like I had it pre-5.0(took a short break)..I wandered into a BG Hopes high, looking to have some fun, after our raid.

Noticed a few key spells are missing, but I thought little of it - no Prep was kinda painful to see, choosing between shadowstep and prep is a rather..bleh choice. No combat Readiness either without speccing into it.. Not liken where this is going, but I still thought it could still be good!

BG starts up, EFC is all alone - 85 Warrior. I open up on him with a Cheap shot> pop all CDs>Shadow step Ambush!....14k? Ambush!...11k?

Well he breaks out of my CS with 80% hp...turns and hits me for 85k Heroic Strike, Stuns me and finishes me off with ease inside Shockwave.

What the hell happened? Ambush and Back stab hit like wet noodles now - 5k ambushes aren't uncommon now. Lost a lot of our Survival CDs, and now Eviscerate is our main DPS ability? I'm so very confused.

Am I doing something wrong? Is Sub just not viable anymore? I really wanted to level my rogue, but it just feels unplayable...

From Skada: Average Ambush(104 crits, 2 non crits): 17.6k, Min: 4k, Max:25k(on a clothey). Backstab average: 11k.

[Mefistophelis]

well ... seems like you got your damage tuned to be in logical amounts and now you cry ? your op period is over mister .

[Yoshimiko]

well ... seems like you got your damage tuned to be in logical amounts and now you cry ? your op period is over mister .

All CDs full blown dps mode on Rogue is...14k damage per GCD. That's a 'logical amount'?

To put this into perspective: My feral druid's rip(who is btw in much worse gear) now is roughly 8k/tic. Rake + rip does more damage. Got that? A pair of dots out damages my rogues burst. The warrior hit me for 50% of my HP in 1 shot.. Chaos bolts for 80-100k on 60% resilience, Frost Bomb+FFB+Fbolt hits me for ~110k, pretty much unavoidable.

I'm not saying these are OP(although I do think warriors are OP at 90, that's another discussion) at this level, I'm saying calling this good, or even acceptable, is a joke. Pre-5.0 I did 45k DPS in DS. Now I doubt I'd pull 15k. I just don't see how that's the 'logical amount'.

[Petraclese]

Sounds to me like that warrior was still wearing his cata pvp gear. Also do you have pvp gear? Pvp power makes a huge diffrence.

[Rio]

I just tried to pvp with my sub rogue..and it feels weaker than a resto druid beating someone down in kitty form.

'

Resto in kitty is quite powerful actually, with the correct talents ofc.

[Yoshimiko]

Sounds to me like that warrior was still wearing his cata pvp gear. Also do you have pvp gear? Pvp power makes a huge diffrence.

60% resilience, 22% pvp power.

[naticus]

subtlety dmg is almost comparable to assassination's at lvl 90 with pure gear. i'm sitting at 60% res with 42% pwr and i rip through people. rogues scale pretty well with gear especially daggers. if you're playing sub, you should try taking Elusiveness instead, so you can Feint the damage off. use paralytic poison to keep on top of people as well as keep them inside smoke bomb. i think the biggest kicker with sub would be the leather or lower armor bursts with eviscerates and the insane slice and dice finishers (mine pushes my attack speed nearly 60% faster). hemo and backstab actually hit pretty decent, i wouldn't worry about rogue's damage until you get some decent gear, at the very least weapons. i used to complain about rogues at the beginning of MoP, but then when i got more gear i started to realize rogues are still decent. at this rate we'll be good during mid season, great near end season, and godly a couple seasons in. one small buff to rogues we become op, one small nerf we become gimped. we're a balanced class imo.

[Guns]

Subtlety is still good, the damage just comes from different sources.

For one, you no longer have increased crit for ambush or backstab.
You can't cause much pressure by just spamming backstab or even ambush.
I know a lot of rogues who did this in 4.3 because it worked but this is no longer the case.

Most of your big damage will come from eviscerate.
Unfortunately, outside of that and cooldowns... the rest of your damage comes from auto attacks.
Backstab crits for < 20k at level 90.

Ambush still hits hard but there are a few important changes to remember:
(You may already know this, just want to point these changes out)

Sanguinary veins(+16% dmg) no longer comes from hemorrhage.
Instead, it comes from having rupture, garrote or crimson tempest up.
Recuperate no longer grants energy regen, now slice and dice does.

Try this next time:

Premed>SnD>cheapshot>rupture>agility trinket>shadowdance>ambush til 5cp>eviscerate

It's possible to do all this before the initial Cheap shot(glyphed for 5 seconds) will fall off.

If they trinket you can blind and re stealth > sap until stun DR falls off and then finish them off.
With PoTW(10% while stunned) + 10% dmg for 10 seconds out of stealth, you can cause a lot of burst during your opener.

Make sure to keep rupture up unless you garrote, and also keep SnD rolling because it gives you energy.

EDIT: Try playing assassination if you aren't enjoying sub. I'm having way more fun with mutilate. IMO, it's challenging to play sub atm because it's difficult to maintain the level of uptime you need on your target to deal good damage - with the amount of cc everyone has + the low mobility we currently have.

[Rio]

Subtlety is still good, the damage just comes from different sources.

For one, you no longer have increased crit for ambush or backstab.
You can't cause much pressure by just spamming backstab or even ambush.
I know a lot of rogues who did this in 4.3 because it worked but this is no longer the case.

Most of your big damage will come from eviscerate.
Unfortunately, outside of that and cooldowns... the rest of your damage comes from auto attacks.
Backstab crits for < 20k at level 90.

Ambush still hits hard but there are a few important changes to remember:
(You may already know this, just want to point these changes out)

Sanguinary veins(+16% dmg) no longer comes from hemorrhage.
Instead, it comes from having rupture, garrote or crimson tempest up.
Recuperate no longer grants energy regen, now slice and dice does.

Try this next time:

Premed>SnD>cheapshot>rupture>agility trinket>shadowdance>ambush til 5cp>eviscerate

It's possible to do all this before the initial Cheap shot(glyphed for 5 seconds) will fall off.

If they trinket you can blind and re stealth > sap until stun DR falls off and then finish them off.
With PoTW(10% while stunned) + 10% dmg for 10 seconds out of stealth, you can cause a lot of burst during your opener.

Make sure to keep rupture up unless you garrote, and also keep SnD rolling because it gives you energy.

EDIT: Try playing assassination if you aren't enjoying sub. I'm having way more fun with mutilate. IMO, it's challenging to play sub atm because it's difficult to maintain the level of uptime you need on your target to deal good damage - with the amount of cc everyone has + the low mobility we currently have.

Why in hell would you Rupture before you pop trinks/cds?

Doesn't Rupture copy your stats when you apply it?

---------- Post added 2012-11-05 at 06:41 PM ----------

subtlety dmg is almost comparable to assassination's at lvl 90 with pure gear. i'm sitting at 60% res with 42% pwr and i rip through people. rogues scale pretty well with gear especially daggers. if you're playing sub, you should try taking Elusiveness instead, so you can Feint the damage off. use paralytic poison to keep on top of people as well as keep them inside smoke bomb. i think the biggest kicker with sub would be the leather or lower armor bursts with eviscerates and the insane slice and dice finishers (mine pushes my attack speed nearly 60% faster). hemo and backstab actually hit pretty decent, i wouldn't worry about rogue's damage until you get some decent gear, at the very least weapons. i used to complain about rogues at the beginning of MoP, but then when i got more gear i started to realize rogues are still decent. at this rate we'll be good during mid season, great near end season, and godly a couple seasons in. one small buff to rogues we become op, one small nerf we become gimped. we're a balanced class imo.

So you're saying it's basically like Cata/Wrath? We were pretty weak at the beginning of those expansions, but as gear/seasons/tiers improved our damage improved tremendously.

Is the same happening with MoP? I certainly hope so.

[Guns]

Why in hell would you Rupture before you pop trinks/cds?

Doesn't Rupture copy your stats when you apply it?[COLOR="red"]

Rupture doesnt do much damage. The point of using it is for the +16% damage you get from sanguinary veins. I suppose you could blow cds first and then hit rupture... But i doubt it would make a difference.

I was just outlining a generic opener you could use. Throw in shadow blades and you can do some epic burst in a few seconds

[naticus]

So you're saying it's basically like Cata/Wrath? We were pretty weak at the beginning of those expansions, but as gear/seasons/tiers improved our damage improved tremendously.

Is the same happening with MoP? I certainly hope so.

yes, atm most rogues don't even have great gear, most have decent gear. the ones in pvp are probably complaining when they are using heroic pve daggers. in the pve aspect of the game, once rogues have pve daggers and some gear we're constantly top 3 if not best single target dps in raid. subtlety rogues scale really well because they have a Sinister Calling (increases total AGI by 30%), means the more gear we have along with the talent it gives us a boost almost exponentially. the difference between rogues who have a full set of pvp gear and those who have almost a full set is like 20% pvp power vs 40% pvp power, and that's a huge difference. if you really want to test this out try it on the PTR and compare that to what you currently have. ever class scales with gear, but some just scale with gear better than others, in this case rogues.

---------- Post added 2012-11-06 at 12:59 PM ----------

Rupture doesnt do much damage. The point of using it is for the +16% damage you get from sanguinary veins. I suppose you could blow cds first and then hit rupture... But i doubt it would make a difference.

I was just outlining a generic opener you could use. Throw in shadow blades and you can do some epic burst in a few seconds

Guns is right, the rupture dmg is something you probably wouldn't be worried about as a sub rogue, it gives a dmg buff. you should be focusing on setting up your shadow dance. if it was assassination spec then the rupture and poisons it would make more sense to wait until your procs are up to refresh or apply.

[Deleted]

Sub was killed on two counts(and there's a third change that further broke its PvP viability):
- The change to Sanguinary Vein completely broke Subs ability to target-swap on demand, which is an absolutely devastating change both for PvP and PvE.
- The empowerment of Eviscerate essentially made sure that damage, apart from Eviscerates, is extremely low; We have one slightly hard hitting ability, and that one takes time to build up to.
- The third one was the shift from having Energetic Recovery on Recuperate, to having it on Slice and Dice. This forced another unwanted finisher to land on Sub's action-bar, while also removing general fight sustain.

All this adds up to an inability to swap targets at will, massive rotational ramp-up, lack of sustain, ridiculous finisher juggling(Slice, Recup, Rupture, Kidney, AND Evisc?! GTFO).

[Kael]

The third one was the shift from having Energetic Recovery on Recuperate, to having it on Slice and Dice. This forced another unwanted finisher to land on Sub's action-bar, while also removing general fight sustain.

I think Energetic SnD was a TERRIBLE change, but I don't follow your logic in this statement at all. Are you calling Recuperate the unwanted finisher? For the most part (in PvE) it can be avoided, and without needing recup, the buff watch list is 1 shorter (I know, we have to manually reapply rupture now; but the # of buttons needed is actually down). What it COST is a giant source of passive healing in PvE that made the spec stand out (+mobility, +spec swapping, +burst compared to other specs, all of which are either gone or, in the last case, just less present).

That said I think this was mostly a PvP discussion. As PvE DPS goes, moving the energy to SnD was a buff, but the overlaying consequences are detrimental (in my opinion).

For PvP... I imagine that the shift to evis is conceptually positive except that backstab/ambush offer nothing until high ilevel on weapons and then only under FW, lowering PvP sustain damage, and relying on rupture probably felt like death. No more reduced damage taken from AoEs or anything else in the tree has started to add up.

[Nosferato]

blizz was lazy tho couldnt just done the same as with assa venomous wounds, make snd and recup both give energy regen back but not stack letting only one proc.

[Deleted]

I think Energetic SnD was a TERRIBLE change, but I don't follow your logic in this statement at all. Are you calling Recuperate the unwanted finisher? For the most part (in PvE) it can be avoided, and without needing recup, the buff watch list is 1 shorter (I know, we have to manually reapply rupture now; but the # of buttons needed is actually down). What it COST is a giant source of passive healing in PvE that made the spec stand out (+mobility, +spec swapping, +burst compared to other specs, all of which are either gone or, in the last case, just less present).

That said I think this was mostly a PvP discussion. As PvE DPS goes, moving the energy to SnD was a buff, but the overlaying consequences are detrimental (in my opinion).

For PvP... I imagine that the shift to evis is conceptually positive except that backstab/ambush offer nothing until high ilevel on weapons and then only under FW, lowering PvP sustain damage, and relying on rupture probably felt like death. No more reduced damage taken from AoEs or anything else in the tree has started to add up.

Bad wording on my part, sorry.
That point was specifically directed at PvP. Recuperate was the only maintenance buff needed for PvP in Cata, due to increased sustain and higher damage output, while SnD was generally not wanted or needed. This change forces Sub to use SnD under all circumstances, which is very detrimental to Sub-PvP, due to the fact that finisher-juggling is a very difficult, straining, and largely ineffective task.

Whether it was/is a buff to PvE is arguable. Yes, you're one button down, but you're also one ability up due to Rupture having to be manually applied now, and the penalty of not having Rupture up has been dramatically increased due to SV. Overall, it's a nerf to the target swapping and sustained damage of the spec.

I don't really think it adds up very well, actually. The reason Sub was so potent in 4.x, was mainly due to thee reasons;
- Energetic Recovery was on to rogue himself, thus making energy regeneration a non-issue.
- Strong combo point builders, making Eviscerate unnecessary.
- Combo points were largely irrelevant and could be used for whatever purpose necessary.

The third point is the most important one. Combo points could go for so much utility without any real loss in damage; Recuperate, Kidney, Deadly Throw, etc... Eviscerate wasn't a must, because our damage mainly came from Backstab, while Eviscerate was closer to being a "free" Backstab, rather than a finisher. Now that the value of combo points has increased so much, what we can afford to use them for has been reduced, and the flexibility of the spec has suffered because of it.
Sure, you can Kidney.. But that's a lost Eviscerate.
Sure, you can Recup, but that's a lost Eviscerate.
Sure, you can Rupture, but that's a lost Eviscerate.
...

The guy who thought finisher juggling was "fun" or a "good idea" should be executed by shoe-to-the-face.

[Yoshimiko]

Hmm, Well when the servers pop back up I might try again. I wasn't even touching Garrotte and I only SnDed with excess points - since I Recup was almost always the better option in short fights. Losing 16% damage was kind of huge too.

Big, Unwanted, changes it seems. Sucks, but maybe this could still be fun.

[Deleted]

Hmm, Well when the servers pop back up I might try again. I wasn't even touching Garrotte and I only SnDed with excess points - since I Recup was almost always the better option in short fights. Losing 16% damage was kind of huge too.

Big, Unwanted, changes it seems. Sucks, but maybe this could still be fun.

Some of the "bad" changes weren't unwanted, but just poorly executed.
- They didn't address the problem that is Backstab/Hemo(or Shred/Mangle for that matter).
- Energetic Recovery on Slice and Dice is a great idea, but it cripples PvP as a result; the best workaround would've been to add a major glyph that allows you to relocate it back to Recuperate.
- The removal of Serrated Blades(the talent that refreshes Rupture) was also a bad and unwanted move. If the goal was to streamline the spec, it didn't accomplish anything and just moved the goalpost further back.
- The combination of Rupture and Sanguinary Vein was and still is a horrible, horrible idea. Not only did it kill target swapping, but it's also the root of the "finisher juggling" problem.

The Rupture-SV problem is a very strange one. They wanted us to use Rupture, they wanted us to keep SV... But their approach is simply moronic; They could've made Rupture strong enough to be worth using by itself, have it be applied manually, and just let SV stay on Hemo. Alternatively, we could stick to the weak Rupture that does activate SV, but is automatically refreshed by Eviscerate.
Instead, we have a useless and weak Rupture that has to be applied manually, and is also exclusively activating SV. I.e. all of the drawbacks from the aforementioned ideas in ONE stroke, and none of the benefits...

The spec is easily fixable, it just needs some dev-attention:
- Backstab's damage should be rolled into Hemo; There's no need for two builders. Having two means that the first one is broken...
- Add a glyph that relocates Energetic Recovery to Recuperate instead of Slice
- Remove Sanguinary Vein. It simply doesn't work as it is right now. Having to use Rupture is devastating, and using Hemo would make it trivial. It either needs to be reworked or baselined.
- General changes; baseline Dirty Tricks and remove the CP cost on Kidney Shot. Combo points can't be wasted on utility every other classes can dish out for free, and do so more reliably.

The changes aren't too massive. Slight buff to utility, slight buff to survivability, rather huge nerf to maintenance, and the spec should be pvp-viable once again.

[Phocket]

I'm a 90 Sub Rogue (55% resil, 32.5% power with no weapons...yet) and my evis crits for around 80k, most I've done is ~170k with it. While backstab does hit like a fun noodle, it can do some decent damage if you are in position (hits for between 20-40k depending on crits). Just build most of your CP's with hemo, keep SnD up, Rupture then pop dance -> Cheap Shot -> ambush till you have 5CPs and 5 anticipation charges, then double evis...works well for me. If you tie in premed to an opener, you get extra CPs to do that double evis without having to waste energy getting them. I also tie in Shadow Blades to get extra cps for the evis's...just gotta make sure SnD and rupture are rolling and have a time of >10 seconds and you'll burst them out of their socks.

[Deleted]

Bad wording on my part, sorry.
That point was specifically directed at PvP. Recuperate was the only maintenance buff needed for PvP in Cata, due to increased sustain and higher damage output, while SnD was generally not wanted or needed. This change forces Sub to use SnD under all circumstances, which is very detrimental to Sub-PvP, due to the fact that finisher-juggling is a very difficult, straining, and largely ineffective task.

While we didn't need SnD in PvP in Cata, it still was a huge dmg buff even then. If you wanted to prepare a burst dmg while staying on target, you almost always used a SnD in order to get the pressure up. As you tell us, Evis was just a "free backstab", it didn't bring so much damage as 20 sec of 55+ % haste.
But of course SnD wasn't as needed as today.

[deftones]

I kinda lol at people still wearing cata gear in 85+ bracket.

I have full MoP crafted blues on my 85 Rogue, sitting at ~60% crit, 80% mastery (buffed).

I have zero trouble, dropping 20k Hemo's, 60k Evisc's, yadda yadda.
Granted, I have 442/415 iLvl weaps.

85's are pretty godly in MoP blues :P
Side note: I got hit with a 226k Chaos Bolt crit by an 85 'lock... ouch.