Legion - Subtlety discussion

[Minka]

Prosby Finality along the bottom row.

wasn't the top row better becasue then you go to akaaris soul afterwards etc?

[Jaronicity]

wasn't the top row better becasue then you go to akaaris soul afterwards etc?

There's debate going on in one of the other threads (maybe it's this one even, I follow too many to keep track) about the most efficient way whilst yielding the most DPS out of the traits and going topside just doesn't give the oomph that the bottom would. That is my understanding of it. Another poster had made a graph detailing several routes to take and what numbers you would garner based on each particular route.

Also, the top row is filled with sad damage traits (relative to the other ones) that you might be better off going down to Finality on the bottom (same number of traits but less power needed overall) in addition to picking up Demon's Kiss which would be a big DPS increase since NB hits hard. Then I'd go up to Energetic Stabbing and I haven't thought much after that point.

EDIT: I probably know the answer to this, but would it ever be worthwhile to take Gloomblade after maxing out the Quiet Stabbing trait? I feel like MoS will mostly be our talent choice in the first tier, just an idle thought I had while looking at the artifact tree.

[glowpipe]

Not sure if this is the place. But I haven't touched sub since way way back when we had hemmorrhage and ghost strike in the 51 talent ordeal.

As a pure assassination minded rogue and when looking at the new sub skills. Is it wrong of me to sorta compare them. Like basis rotation sorta. I know its much more indepth but i need to start one place.

What i mean is something along the lines of this.

Symbol of death is basically your slice and dice. Need to keep it up at all time.
Shadowstrikes and backstabs are you mutilates, A combo builder. One to be used in stealth and the other when you are out of stealth. Shuriken storm is your fok. Aoe builder.
Nighblade is your rupture. Need to keep it up at all times.
Eviscerate, well that speaks for itself, but for the sake of this train of thougth. Your envenom.

Shadowdance is just a modifier to be able to cast shadowstrikes instead of backstab.

Am i far off ?

[Puffah]

Not sure if this is the place. But I haven't touched sub since way way back when we had hemmorrhage and ghost strike in the 51 talent ordeal.

As a pure assassination minded rogue and when looking at the new sub skills. Is it wrong of me to sorta compare them. Like basis rotation sorta. I know its much more indepth but i need to start one place.

What i mean is something along the lines of this.

Symbol of death is basically your slice and dice. Need to keep it up at all time.
Shadowstrikes and backstabs are you mutilates, A combo builder. One to be used in stealth and the other when you are out of stealth. Shuriken storm is your fok. Aoe builder.
Nighblade is your rupture. Need to keep it up at all times.
Eviscerate, well that speaks for itself, but for the sake of this train of thougth. Your envenom.

Shadowdance is just a modifier to be able to cast shadowstrikes instead of backstab.

Am i far off ?

They're all basically the same at the core yes, with builders, dot/buff maintainers and finishers.

[Celfydd]

Am i far off ?

You could look at it like this, but I would argue that it's not useful to do so. Whenever you generalise you run the risk of overgeneralising. A number of rogues already did so by assuming that Shadowstrike was "basically" just Ambush. However they ignored all the ways it differed from Ambush, and therefore missed a number of tricks.

I would start off from the perspective that they are different classes with a completely different ability set, and learn the whole thing from scratch. That way you can learn the individual nuances and sequence possibilities as they are, without any assumption that they "should" behave in a particular way.

Assassination is a dot spec. You apply debuffs on your target and keep them up. If your target moves out of range for a few seconds it's not normally the end of the world, you won't lose much damage while your dots are still ticking. The damage is pretty much sustained over time as well, there isn't much of a rotation and you just do stuff as it becomes available (with the exception of vendetta, and if talented exsanguinate, cooldowns). It's fairly reactive.

Subtlety is not a dot spec. You have 1 target debuff but mostly it's about keeping up buffs on yourself. If your target moves out of range your damage is going down the tubes quite quickly so you need to stick with them, that's what the debuff is for as well as your teleport mobility. Your damage goes through a short cycle of a high damage period followed by a low damage period - much of the playstyle is knowing how to time these windows, planning ahead for them so that you can do the most damage in your high time (dance and stealth) and not lose too much damage during the recovery time (backstabbing and pooling). It's very proactive.

The main focus of assassination is to find ways to buff the damage caused by your debuffs. The main focus of subtlety is to spend as many finisher combo points as possible in order to reduce the cooldown on dance and give yourself more options for dance windows and more periods of high damage in general.

[glowpipe]

snip

Thanks. This was a good explanation. Guess i will have to look at some more guides and read up more before considering this spec.

[Hashcrypt]

For aoe situations should we be doing similar to Assa rogues and doing SS>NB like they do multi target ruptures? Or should we just do Evis spam on priority targets?

[elfporn]

For aoe situations should we be doing similar to Assa rogues and doing SS>NB like they do multi target ruptures? Or should we just do Evis spam on priority targets?

Depends on how long targets live. On long lived adds you should spread nightblade, short lived adds you focus priority target with evisc spam, and burst aoe you should be using shuriken storm during shadow dance.

[Hashcrypt]

Depends on how long targets live. On long lived adds you should spread nightblade, short lived adds you focus priority target with evisc spam, and burst aoe you should be using shuriken storm during shadow dance.

Alright cool thanks. I'm guessing that once Mythic+ starts we'll be doing lots of NB spreading on aoe packs.

edit: Also for single target, are we ever really wanting to cast backstab unless SD is completely out of charges? I've found myself just auto attacking while my energy builds in between SD. Is this how Sub's rotation should be flowing? SD>>SS spam>>Finishers>>pool energy and repeat?

[Celfydd]

for single target, are we ever really wanting to cast backstab unless SD is completely out of charges? I've found myself just auto attacking while my energy builds in between SD. Is this how Sub's rotation should be flowing? SD>>SS spam>>Finishers>>pool energy and repeat?

You'll spend a long time autoattacking if you do this, although it's impossible to say exactly since you can't predict incoming CP from Shadow Techniques. Remember that you want to try to spend as many finisher CP as possible to reduce the dance CD, and Backstab is still necessary to build those CP to spend.

With DS, your ST rotation looks something like this, it's fairly stable:
dance -> SoD -> Shadowstrike x2 -> Nightblade -> Backstab to 5/6CP -> Eviscerate -> pool -> dance -> Shadowstrike x3 -> Nightblade -> Backstab to 5/6CP -> Eviscerate -> pool
You are pooling only to 70 with Master of Shadows and Eviscerate will have given you a nice chunk of energy so it probably won't be for very long, a second or so.

With Vigor you will tend to have 3 finishers between dances as often as not, and thus need to alternate which one you're doing after the shadowstrikes. You have much more energy and can therefore do SoD+Shadowstrike x3 or Shadowstrike x4 during dance, meaning that a greater percentage of your damage is Shadowstrike and less is finishers, but the overall damage amount is similar. With Vigor I find myself pooling for a little longer because the smaller finishers don't refund as much energy. Try to pool to 120 (with MoS) to fit all your Shadowstrikes into dance, although you can get away with slightly less.

This of course ignores Vanish and other cooldowns for the sake of simplicity.

[Hashcrypt]

You'll spend a long time autoattacking if you do this, although it's impossible to say exactly since you can't predict incoming CP from Shadow Techniques. Remember that you want to try to spend as many finisher CP as possible to reduce the dance CD, and Backstab is still necessary to build those CP to spend.

With DS, your ST rotation looks something like this, it's fairly stable:
dance -> SoD -> Shadowstrike x2 -> Nightblade -> Backstab to 5/6CP -> Eviscerate -> pool -> dance -> Shadowstrike x3 -> Nightblade -> Backstab to 5/6CP -> Eviscerate -> pool
You are pooling only to 70 with Master of Shadows and Eviscerate will have given you a nice chunk of energy so it probably won't be for very long, a second or so.

With Vigor you will tend to have 3 finishers between dances as often as not, and thus need to alternate which one you're doing after the shadowstrikes. You have much more energy and can therefore do SoD+Shadowstrike x3 or Shadowstrike x4 during dance, meaning that a greater percentage of your damage is Shadowstrike and less is finishers, but the overall damage amount is similar. With Vigor I find myself pooling for a little longer because the smaller finishers don't refund as much energy. Try to pool to 120 (with MoS) to fit all your Shadowstrikes into dance, although you can get away with slightly less.

This of course ignores Vanish and other cooldowns for the sake of simplicity.

Awesome, I'll have to bookmark this and use it as reference. I enjoy Assass and Outlaw, but so far Sub seems to have the most depth and complexity associated with it's rotation. I love it.

[kindath]

You'll spend a long time autoattacking if you do this, although it's impossible to say exactly since you can't predict incoming CP from Shadow Techniques. Remember that you want to try to spend as many finisher CP as possible to reduce the dance CD, and Backstab is still necessary to build those CP to spend.

You kinda can - Shadow Techniques always procs every 3 - 5 autoattacks.

Here's a lightweight weakaura that could help someone:

dGZzdaGAOuwpuODbvSnqfntkkZMOBcf52uyNczVODly)kWpHknmfv)wudfkyWcvdxPUefvNduPJPQ64cflKalvO0IvIwoHEiuspv6XG8CGLPOmvitwvMovxKGUQc5YKUoL2iOchwKntr2ou1hHI60Q8zf57kOPbQYFvvgnOmEqvDsLWTuOQRbLQZRKEMcL1QqLxdLy(teRb7J9reB26YlOS4ocz2IiHSVdSLPvKcFN18BqCZ3dIxeBcYp8ks8MMurmLFkJg))CwGknHH8fCwb4Iq4Ijwx8MMurIybBvkx8y)HlCc3)zSpRyYVCGDm2Nc8rHZz3Y0QkYAb6hKmh0fpUK1x3kRIxdo7opufrRBLrWJ1gu8AWz9ZqFSa7sfVg8Anz6Gp7NWiHXI5fJtiRIxdolwZglt(G4MLNyTa9dSvPmkzOuaRfOFGTkLlECjBizOSfw6LhoiosHGfUySkG1c0pq2kcPJcNtbSwG(TZdvr06wPawlq)EkWhfoNcybzRiKokCo7wMwvrwWwLYOKHYwyPxE4G4ifcw4IXQa6SW0BcMZiSpNvMtpIy9KudorSgwPFerNolyRqeXcUWKuz0y0zHKjaGiwWfMKkBS4I5rcPZAkb5xoqeRHv6hr0PZAb6hKmbauaRycsjI1Wk9Ji60zFNjthKv6ReXAyL(reD6SwG(b2kefWkMLkrSgwPFerNoRfOFqzJLjNcy343EsQbNiwdR0pIOtNoRPCW7HrLrZMZ(oWwMwRNGWcG18nROoD5aADRShuoWIXC2GrZXzmwSzb(zAL1mHWbI9ESfw6LhoiosHGfUySkGD49Cymc7ZzdwdK4nnPIag9Z(oa2Sbi)WRSjPKf4jiSaWq(colwfgHeglDwa7mCMHZpo)S4z0p8M9tNea

I have the timer duration hardcoded to 3s as that's roughly the expected proc time - almost always proc'd at 3 seconds, sometimes took up to another second to proc. You'll get different results depending on your haste or during bloodlust, so adjust the timer as nessecary.

[Celfydd]

You kinda can - Shadow Techniques always procs every 3 - 5 autoattacks.

Maybe you can just pool then and only use Backstab in order not to cap energy over 70/120 minus whatever energy is going to be refunded by the finisher. Fortune's Bite should make that more viable as well.

This would be easy for Vigor since a 5CP finisher always gives 40 energy - so you pool to 80 before using Backstab (edit: sorry, no, 115, because of the cost of Backstab itself). It's (ironically) less predictable for DS since you can get either 40 or 80 energy from the finisher.

[Blayke]

This is how I feel, Blizzard made a stupid and illogical change based on ??? that baffled and angered the whole community,

Well, so far this pre-patch has had a whole bunch of those, hasn't it? (RIP, mass rez)

So yeah, i agree it was a dumb idea on their part, although I had already worked around it. But I can still be happy when Blizz occasionally realizes it screwed up and once in a while actually listens to its player base.

[Bigbazz]

Rogue newbie here, planning on a rogue being my main alt in legion. Sorry for the stupid question, but why is the shadow dance bar such a big deal. I find I am able to bind my keys without issue.

Shadow Dance used the stealth bars for 8+ years, which made sense since it allows you to use stealth abilities. In Legion they changed it so that Shadow Dance no longer used the stealth bars, it was an annoying inconvience that made no sense. Their own reasoning for it made you question if the guy writing the post had even played rogue to any degree in the past.

It was an unexpected and unneeded change that beta testers spent over 6 months fighting to have reverted, so I guess people got double angry at Blizzard using ignorance to explain changing a functionality that only had a negative effect on gameplay. It's nice that it finally got back to where it needed to be, but why it was changed to begin with is quite baffling to me.

[Wow]

Shadow Dance used the stealth bars for 8+ years, which made sense since it allows you to use stealth abilities.

Half that time it used it own bar that wasn't stealth or the normal bar I believe it was mop that changed it to the stealth bar.

[ymirsson]

The point was, most other classes with similar mechanics had a useful UI implementation.
Or maybe the Interface guys only play mage or druid, as those 2 classes got as much attention and special snowflakes(in their UI, not necessarily performance wise) as 18 classes combined.

[Jaronicity]

Half that time it used it own bar that wasn't stealth or the normal bar I believe it was mop that changed it to the stealth bar.

I remember having to activate ShD and then having the 3 or 5 seconds to put as many abilities as I could on the bar before it expired. The times they are a-changin'.

[Sephiroso]

I remember having to activate ShD and then having the 3 or 5 seconds to put as many abilities as I could on the bar before it expired. The times they are a-changin'.

Even back then addons like Bartender were available which let you see all the extra bars so that aspect isn't really any different at all from how things are nowadays.

[Jaronicity]

Even back then addons like Bartender were available which let you see all the extra bars so that aspect isn't really any different at all from how things are nowadays.

I hardly used add-ons back in the day so to me it is changing :P