Legion - Subtlety discussion

[shoegazing]

I'm not exactly sure what defines "a rogue" but your obvious problem is that when people have a different view of a subject then you have, they are automatically inferior.

Stealth, Hit & Run Tactics, Crowd Control, and Burst Damage

Every PvP Rogue will tell you that those 4 things are pretty much what has defined the playstyle of this class in PvP for the past 12 years... it's not exactly controversial.

[ymirsson]

Hit & Run Tactics, Crowd Control, and Burst Damage

Doesn't this represent PvP for every class? I mean, maybe the differences are too minisculee for me to spot, but every player tries to set up his (or her) teams damage window and then use it.

[shoegazing]

Doesn't this represent PvP for every class? I mean, maybe the differences are too minisculee for me to spot, but every player tries to set up his (or her) teams damage window and then use it.

Is that how e.g. affliction warlock + elemental shaman compositions play with their spread target rot pressure?

Is that how warrior/enhance plays with their limited CC but strong anti-CC capabilities and high sustained single target pressure?

There are different comp archetypes and CC+burst is only a single comp archetype... comps like RMD and thug cleave (rogue+hunter) fit that archetype, but others do not.

However in Legion with the amount of pruning and homogenization, the differences are pretty suppressed. That's why you had assass/fire RMDs playing more like an aggro cleave comp and just running at healers pressing damage buttons as opposed to carefully setting up, etc.

Just more evidence that Legion PvP is utter shit... Blizzard has badly damaged the diversity of playstyles in PvP and butchered the identity of several iconic classes so badly that they don't even resemble anything like themselves any longer.

[Critical92]

Lining cc's together is a thing of the past. Legion is all about stun enemy, nuke enemy, cod (spawn, run, kill/get kill, respawn) gameplay.

So many classes got stuns and very few have a breakable cc left in their arsenal.

[Coldkil]

Ok, this ends right now. This whole thing about PvP vs PvE is completely useless - you're not discussiong the spec, you're just picking at each other because someone said "hurrdurr PvP is king, PvE is for dummies" and another said "hurrdurr PvE is king, PvP is for dummies".

Stick to the thread topic - so Sub spec discussion. Legion PvP couldn't be less relevant in this case. Reiterating multiple times "i love/i hate Sub" is just spam at this point.

[Todesbote]

Has anyone tried (on live) 3 Soul Shadows relics + Legendary bracers + CoF? I have been trying to get more Soul Shadows relics from Gul'dan but not a single one dropped for me. Currently I'm running 1 ES + 2 Gutripper. Simcraft tells me that replacing all three relics with Soul Shadows isn't a huge gain even though 80% Shadow Blade uptime could be achieved. Anyone tested this on live?

[Xvolte]

I could test it (I have two 895 gul'dan relics and an 875 shadow blades duration relic), but I would have to replace 3 880 relics (nightblade damage, evis crit, and energy refund). I also have the legendary bracers but no trinket yet.... Lost a 900 ilvl with a socket on thursday to a dude it was barely an upgrade for while I'm sitting here using dual 875 trinkets -_-".... I'll post my logs from our heroic run from thursday, but I will not be able to post logs again until 2 thursdays from now (i have work). I'll try swapping relics and see what happens.

This is with no CoF, nightblade + evis crit + energy refund relics. Also, not all fights I'm using bracers on. I swap to the cloak on heavy AoE fights.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

[shoegazing]

Ok, this ends right now. This whole thing about PvP vs PvE is completely useless - you're not discussiong the spec, you're just picking at each other because someone said "hurrdurr PvP is king, PvE is for dummies" and another said "hurrdurr PvE is king, PvP is for dummies".

Stick to the thread topic - so Sub spec discussion. Legion PvP couldn't be less relevant in this case. Reiterating multiple times "i love/i hate Sub" is just spam at this point.

No one is arguing that PvP is better than PvE or vice versa. Can you quote the portion of my post where I said that? I suggest you improve your reading comprehension because it is seriously lacking.

The argument is simply one about the priorities of the development team, and it's not much of an argument. It is obvious that they prioritize PvE over PvP and that PvP was an afterthought when redesigning this spec. For pete's sake, they wanted to prune Blind and Shadowstep and make Dance into a passive proc, you cannot tell me with a straight face that PvP was even remotely on their radar when suggesting that kind of class butchery. There is a large and still growing body of evidence which indicates a lack of institutional knowledge on the part of Blizzard developers and class designers regarding PvP and that fact is not disputed by anyone who is informed on this topic. In fact Blizzard has confirmed it themselves as both Celestalon and Holinka have openly admitted that they are not Gladiator caliber players, and Hazzikostas himself capped out at Duelist in Burning Crusade and hasn't done any PvP since.

The most talented and knowledgable PvPers working for Blizzard are Talbadar and Sodah (both multi R1 / tournament caliber players), who are both lowly QA testers with zero input over the class design process, and they were both hired after Legion development was more or less completed.

It is not an insult or flame to PvE rogues to state the fact that Subtlety is very badly designed for PvP right now. The problems are common knowledge in the PvP community: overavailability of stuns and teleports, underavailability of other CCs and burst damage, and the lack of a proper roguelike hit & run playstyle based on bursting from stealth and then restealthing -- you know (or you would know if you have any knowledge of Rogue PvP) the way that Rogues have always played in PvP since vanilla WoW.

Legion Sub is not a Rogue from the perspective of a veteran PvP Rogue, its playstyle is closer to an Deathknight with Blind. You will find very, very few high rated Rogues that have anything positive to say about this trashcan of a spec. Any of the top Rogues on the NA PvP ladder will tell you the same thing... Nahj, Snutzr, Nessper, Sativ... look up their posts on the official forums on this topic, they will all tell you the same criticism that I have told you, because there is pretty much unanimous agreement within the progression PvP community that Legion Sub is a steaming pile. Pshero has grown pretty negative towards it as well. Maybe Whaaz likes it, maybe not (I am not sure) but he's always been a little weird so who knows.

Even Pikaboo, probably the #1 Subtlety Rogue in the history of the game, the first player to reach 3200 rating on NA ladder, is playing Assassination, a spec which he does not enjoy, over Legion Subtlety. It's not controversial, there is no disagreement... it's an accepted fact within the rated PvP community that this is far and away the worst version of our beloved class that has ever been created. There really is no competition.

[Kaluna]

Has anyone tried (on live) 3 Soul Shadows relics + Legendary bracers + CoF? I have been trying to get more Soul Shadows relics from Gul'dan but not a single one dropped for me. Currently I'm running 1 ES + 2 Gutripper. Simcraft tells me that replacing all three relics with Soul Shadows isn't a huge gain even though 80% Shadow Blade uptime could be achieved. Anyone tested this on live?

I'm not really sure that is a good idea to have 3 SB relic.
Without a single one, I already have more than 55% uptime on SB, the difference would be small I guess.
It would be interesting to see some sim about it.

[honung]

if you want hard numbers you can direct yourself to arenamate where you'll find there are only about 1000 players from each region in any bracket over 1200 rating. it's dead now. go play league.

Nah, it's just broken. If you go to 2300+ it shows the exact same numbers. Only from 2400+ does it start changing. The proper information isn't in the API anymore from what I've been told so they only have the leaderboards to go by, which is also why the title cutoffs are broken. Last season there were 210,000 characters above 1000 rating in EU and 148,000 in US, which is pretty low and it's likely even lower now, but it's certainly not 1000 people.

You PvE fans have no freaking clue how good you have it. Every single thing in this game is catered just to you.

While an exaggeration, the general idea here is certainly true. As someone that participates in both raiding and arenas, PvE is just much better taken care of by Blizzard. Not to mention it also gets content. While we have two new arenas in Legion, there hasn't been a new battleground since patch 5.3.

Not pointing any fingers but I don't really like the general tone in here, think it could be more civil.

As for the general discussion on Subtlety class design in PvP, I agree that it's absolutely atrocious. The spec does not have any burst worth mentioning, Shadowstrike teleport is incredibly stupid, you are hardly rewarded for restealths, the optimal talents (Vigor, Premeditation, Master of Shadows, Shadow's Caress and Phantom Assassin) make you have effectively infinite Shadow Dance charges and Energy, so doing damage as the spec is very spammy sustained damage with no burst. Thankfully you can play Thief's Bargain sometimes which makes the spec a bit better, but often the health lost is too much.

I think the issues of the spec run pretty deep and won't be fixed this expansion, but they could make a band-aid fix that I think would help. What I would like to see is Thief's Bargain changed to something like this:
You do 50% more damage while in Stealth and for 4 seconds after, but Shadow Dance only has one charge.

That way you have burst and a Find Weakness-like mechanic that strongly encourages restealths. Deepening Shadows is something that would have to be looked at, perhaps weakening it if you have the talent. The damage modifier and buff duration would have to be tested to get right, of course. It would also make the spec fun to play in BGs again, because unfortunately I don't think any of the 3 are at the moment. WoD Subtlety had very strong opener burst in BGs and then you'd run away to get a restealth and do it again, which was a ton of fun for me.

[Djanco]

from what i understood, the titles and other rewards weren't given out properly because you were required to complete 50 games total for the season and a lot of people didn't because they got rating in the first 3 weeks before everyone got changed/nerfed and people just sat their rating.

[honung]

from what i understood, the titles and other rewards weren't given out properly because you were required to complete 50 games total for the season and a lot of people didn't because they got rating in the first 3 weeks before everyone got changed/nerfed and people just sat their rating.

What happened was that they messed up the DQs when giving out titles. To count as a player towards the cutoffs, the only requirement is being above 1000 rating. Then for, say, Duelist, they take the top 3% of all those people. However, you also need to have 50 wins in the season to be eligible for a title, so they disqualify anyone that has less than that. Last season they made it so that you needed to have 1000 rating and 50 wins to count as a player instead of just 1000 rating, which shot the title cutoffs through the roof as many casuals and alts don't have the 50 wins. This was later fixed and people got the right titles.

[Kwakman]

Gotta love these hardcore Subtlety comments posted here...

One thing I wanted to pick peoples brain about is the PTR version of ES. It's a flat 25% and its still increases the energy gains. If we can get 4/4 it will give us 30 energy back I think. That seems like enough, otherwise we might energy cap alot. Would mean we get some more wiggle room with Relics

[Deleted]

Just got the Arcway Neck in 885. Anyone has experience with it and knows how it feels? Gonna test it out tomorrow or so.

[eil]

Just got the Arcway Neck in 885. Anyone has experience with it and knows how it feels? Gonna test it out tomorrow or so.

I'm still using an 865 version and it's pretty great--though I'd imagine the effect is a bit superfluous if you have legendary boots.

[Deleted]

I'm still using an 865 version and it's pretty great--though I'd imagine the effect is a bit superfluous if you have legendary boots.

hmhm, have the boots (dropped the bracers right now btw) and i get that. also, it fucks up my stats a bit. gonna see.

[Kwakman]

I use it but I guess I get extra mileage out of it since I'm a gnome (110 energy ftw). 870 ilvl but the 850 one simmed higher then Prydaz 940. So its pretty good if 90ilvl increases sim lower.

[Deleted]

Just got the Arcway Neck in 885. Anyone has experience with it and knows how it feels? Gonna test it out tomorrow or so.

Still using it too, mine is 870 version. Though it has no mastery wouldn't change it for any other, literally cannot play without it. Got no ES relics nor boots

[Tay098]

I have always been a fan of Sub spec. When I came back to the game in Legion, I felt obligated to go Assassination to raid. I have the legendary shoulders and cloak and I have 4 pc. So I am having a hard time deciding what spec to set as loot spec while I raid as Assassination. So my questions are. In 7.1.5 do sub rogues compete with assassination? How important are the "right" legionaries to competing? How does the comparison look so far for 7.2?

[elfporn]

I have always been a fan of Sub spec. When I came back to the game in Legion, I felt obligated to go Assassination to raid. I have the legendary shoulders and cloak and I have 4 pc. So I am having a hard time deciding what spec to set as loot spec while I raid as Assassination. So my questions are. In 7.1.5 do sub rogues compete with assassination? How important are the "right" legionaries to competing? How does the comparison look so far for 7.2?

With the cloak and shoulders you would do excellent as sub, particularly if you get a full artifact. Shoulders are amazing and one of the BiS pieces for the spec. And the cloak is amazing on it's own for sub - makes the spec top-tier at burst aoe.

If i was in your place, i would set loot spec to sub. But i'm very partial to sub over ass. You're in a very good place as far as legendaries go.

Sub will be more versatile to target swapping, ass probably will still do slightly better at tunneling.

Oh and make a stopattack macro for sprint to take advantage of flickering shadows with those shoulders.