Spec Tuning Coming Sept. 13

[Valkaneer]

should've stopped playing sin a long time ago.. you decided to play an inferior spec so don't complain

SIn was not an inferior spec at the start of legion, and it takes far to long to regrind leggos. You act as if he was QQ like a baby which he was not. Can't wait till SUB gets nerfed and he can say the same to you.

[Dunderstudy]

Should have stopped playing sin because blizzard has no idea wtf they are doing.
I mean it's bad enough they gave dh's exactly what vendetta should have been via a talent ,being on top for 30 or so seconds from a couple poison bombs isn't as impressive as catching up slowly but steadily, which I see happen alot.
I don't see a point in stopping to play a spec because you have inferior designers, but hey I've been a sin since wrath when I started why would a spec that's literally supposed to be able to kill things be able to do so efficiently?

They may as well give sin back hunger for blood that can only be used when you have bleeds up....

[AceofH]

i'm not sure how blizz finds it acceptable for rogues, who can't tank, and can't heal, and bring little to no raid utility other then the ability to cheese mechanics here and there, to have two specs currently sitting at the bottom of the barrel, and even sub is showing as middle of the pack overall in tomb.

i mean, fact is i saw this coming, but its absurd.

[Toogoodman]

should've stopped playing sin a long time ago.. you decided to play an inferior spec so don't complain

Few things here with this flaming shit post

1) Sin was the best spec in EN/ToV/NH by miles
2) Sub was a miserable, under performing spec before 7.2.5
3) Sub is now, slightly ahead on single target, roughly ~10%, but miles ahead in AoE
4) Just because a spec, during thus patch is better, doesn't mean it will stay that way, and it in fact has historically changed since MoP

Try not to be such an asshole

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i'm not sure how blizz finds it acceptable for rogues, who can't tank, and can't heal, and bring little to no raid utility other then the ability to cheese mechanics here and there, to have two specs currently sitting at the bottom of the barrel, and even sub is showing as middle of the pack overall in tomb.

i mean, fact is i saw this coming, but its absurd.

Blizz has been dumpstering rogues since Cata, we were kings from vanilla-WotLK and they hated it

[Varolyn]

Blizz brought in many issues with sin when they decided that it should be a full-on dot spec. They also messed things up when they removed the nature damage from venomous wounds, and tried to balance it out by buffing up rupture. Problem is, rupture scales like crap on it's own. They also removed dispatch because... reasons? They can't even use class fantasy as an excuse, as assassination was the only spec to have any kind of execute from cata(when it used backstab) to Legion. Moreover, dispatch gave assassination some decent weapon damage scaling, a huge issue for the spec right now. I know people are going to say that NH sin was the best iteration ever, because it performed so well, but it really wasn't, in fact, it was one of the worst as the so called poison spec had little to do with poisons, plus AP was such a lazy design for a "ultimate" talent.

So, blizz can easily fix the spec in the next expansion. Turn Garrote back to what it used to be, and give it back to all three specs. Bring back dispatch, but perhaps make it a bit more interesting. Turn venom rush back to what it was in wod, and finally, make Poison bomb a talent with 2 charges each with a 1 min cd.

Blizzard literally turned a spec that played so smoothly in MoP and Wod, and turned it into a clunky, wannabe feral druid mess because of "class fantasy." But they can fix it, but I have my doubts that they will.

[Dartz1979]

Rogues and warriors need their self healing things back... i liked when i attacked and self healed some when i was low on hp.

[Dunderstudy]

Blizz brought in many issues with sin when they decided that it should be a full-on dot spec. They also messed things up when they removed the nature damage from venomous wounds, and tried to balance it out by buffing up rupture. Problem is, rupture scales like crap on it's own. They also removed dispatch because... reasons? They can't even use class fantasy as an excuse, as assassination was the only spec to have any kind of execute from cata(when it used backstab) to Legion. Moreover, dispatch gave assassination some decent weapon damage scaling, a huge issue for the spec right now. I know people are going to say that NH sin was the best iteration ever, because it performed so well, but it really wasn't, in fact, it was one of the worst as the so called poison spec had little to do with poisons, plus AP was such a lazy design for a "ultimate" talent.

So, blizz can easily fix the spec in the next expansion. Turn Garrote back to what it used to be, and give it back to all three specs. Bring back dispatch, but perhaps make it a bit more interesting. Turn venom rush back to what it was in wod, and finally, make Poison bomb a talent with 2 charges each with a 1 min cd.

Blizzard literally turned a spec that played so smoothly in MoP and Wod, and turned it into a clunky, wannabe feral druid mess because of "class fantasy." But they can fix it, but I have my doubts that they will.

I actually agree with alot of this I almost feel like just the venomous wounds nature damage would be enough with toxic blade in the mix.

I honestly though rogues scaled really well late expansion ,however that was such a long time ago for previous expansion I suppose.

I guess we will see how things go this tier.
there might be some things we can do to move on up a tad...

[Deleted]

You are mixing two things that have nothing to do together : DPS scaling and spell design.

DPS scaling is the ability to have DPS increase with gears : the more powerfull your equipment gets the more damage you do and increases at the same rate as (or better or less than ) for other specs and classes. Blizzard perfectly adresses this point with damage auras which are doing exactly that : increasing the damage by a factor. Rogues are behind on the damage meter not because of the mechanics but because Blizzard adjusted the value of the factor too low. Having rogues (or any other class or spec) perform better only requires Blizzard to increase the damage aura factor. It is low right now for Sin and Outlaw because Blizzard wants it to be this way.

As for the spell design, it is much more time consuming to change the spell design and implementation than adjusting a single figure in a configuration file to have a spec deliver 10% more DPS. Spells require programing, art work and should confirm to the so called "class fantasy".

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How to automatically balance all specs ?

1. Collect DPS statistics during a week for all specs on the current tier.
2. nerf by 1% the damage aura of the top 5 specs.
3. buff by 1% the damage aura of the bottom 5 specs.
4. iterate every week.

Slowly but surely all specs will be balanced for the current tier and you could have strong single target specs and AOE centric specs. A spec will be able to shine on a fight which better matches its abilities while being globaly balanced.
Devs will no more be pointed at to for unfairly nerfing to the ground or overbuffing a spec as the tuning mechanics would be simple, automatic and universal. Maybe, they have other objectives than fairness, transparency and simplicity.

[shaunika123]

In all seriousness I am gonna be pretty pissed if this new raid tier doesn't have any nature damage trinkets to couple with toxic blade.
The fact that sub does More with shadow damage and there's so many trinkets that give that is mind boggling.

A nature damage trinket active with 100 crit during a vanish/opener would be really nice to have one of these days

you mean that whopping 4% shadow damage increase we get?

yeah that sure does make trinkets OP

You are mixing two things that have nothing to do together : DPS scaling and spell design.

DPS scaling is the ability to have DPS increase with gears : the more powerfull your equipment gets the more damage you do and increases at the same rate as (or better or less than ) for other specs and classes. Blizzard perfectly adresses this point with damage auras which are doing exactly that : increasing the damage by a factor. Rogues are behind on the damage meter not because of the mechanics but because Blizzard adjusted the value of the factor too low. Having rogues (or any other class or spec) perform better only requires Blizzard to increase the damage aura factor. It is low right now for Sin and Outlaw because Blizzard wants it to be this way.

As for the spell design, it is much more time consuming to change the spell design and implementation than adjusting a single figure in a configuration file to have a spec deliver 10% more DPS. Spells require programing, art work and should confirm to the so called "class fantasy".

- - - Updated - - -

How to automatically balance all specs ?

1. Collect DPS statistics during a week for all specs on the current tier.
2. nerf by 1% the damage aura of the top 5 specs.
3. buff by 1% the damage aura of the bottom 5 specs.
4. iterate every week.

Slowly but surely all specs will be balanced for the current tier and you could have strong single target specs and AOE centric specs. A spec will be able to shine on a fight which better matches its abilities while being globaly balanced.
Devs will no more be pointed at to for unfairly nerfing to the ground or overbuffing a spec as the tuning mechanics would be simple, automatic and universal. Maybe, they have other objectives than fairness, transparency and simplicity.

the fact of the matter is, that some specs NEED to do more raw damage than others tho

if every spec did the same dps, you'd just take the one with the most utility
just look back a month or two at the start of tos, before they nerfed sub, how much we were stacked because not only did we do top tier dps, we also couldnt die.

[T18Z]

Few things here with this flaming shit post

1) Sin was the best spec in EN/ToV/NH by miles
2) Sub was a miserable, under performing spec before 7.2.5
3) Sub is now, slightly ahead on single target, roughly ~10%, but miles ahead in AoE
4) Just because a spec, during thus patch is better, doesn't mean it will stay that way, and it in fact has historically changed since MoP

Try not to be such an asshole

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Blizz has been dumpstering rogues since Cata, we were kings from vanilla-WotLK and they hated it

Nah.

If you had boots Sub was neck and neck with Assassination and near the end of EN Sub began to overtake it. In the early stages of ToV Sub was still pretty much equal, it just never had the level of spec representation + the RNG factor to provide insanely good logs like Assassination had.

NH was were Sin was ahead by a good margin, until you got the legendary shoulders, convergence and your secondary BiS at the time, at which point Sub became competitive again in single target and murdered Sin in AoE fights.

People just stayed Assassination because it wasn't as legendary dependant, had an easier rotation with more room for error and it was the spec of choice where most people invested their AP at the start of the expansion after Outlaw got gutted early in EN. Going Sub was just never viable for most of the population, but if you got luck with legendaries and knew what you were doing you'd equal/beat Sin rogues in ST on average providing normal kill times and RNG.

[Wenoxar]

i'm not sure how blizz finds it acceptable for rogues, who can't tank, and can't heal, and bring little to no raid utility other then the ability to cheese mechanics here and there, to have two specs currently sitting at the bottom of the barrel, and even sub is showing as middle of the pack overall in tomb.

i mean, fact is i saw this coming, but its absurd.

You mean by far the most significant utility? You call it little to no utility.

It is logic that there have to be some specs at the bottom. Two out of three rogues' spec being at the bottom is perfectly fine. Think about WW monks or Ret paladins or Havoc DHs that are at the bottom as well, and they have only one DPS spec available. This is not that much fine. And rogues being #1 class of all classes you want to bring up to ToS shouldn't complain, really.

[Deleted]

It is logic that there have to be some specs at the bottom. Two out of three rogues' spec being at the bottom is perfectly fine. Think about WW monks or Ret paladins or Havoc DHs that are at the bottom as well, and they have only one DPS spec available. This is not that much fine. And rogues being #1 class of all classes you want to bring up to ToS shouldn't complain, really.

Your argument would have some validity to it IF IT WASN'T FOR THE F'ING ARTIFACT & LEGENDARY SYSTEM. Screw being alt-friendly, having to grind the AP & rolling on the right legendary for the right spec combined with having a shitty balance just doesn't cut it (I'm outlaw btw). At least prior to Legion the only thing being a pain in the ass was the aligning the right stats to the spec.

Nevertheless I think its inexcusable to disregard the remaining 2 specs of a class as long it has 1 that is competitive, not saying other classes aren't getting shafted - the development team should strive to keep a certain equilibrium among all specs and saying someone being at the bottom is perfectly fine is plain bullshit. There's always going to be a "loser" in the competitive race but the gap shouldn't be this big and players accepting the size of this gap are just worsening the whole field.
In the end what they really need to address is how they've designed some of the classes (RtB Outlaw, FoF WW) - some were addressed such as the slow-build up of Demo locks and the rest were left to numbers crunching and tuning. Its been nothing but band-aid solutions lately and now we'll have to wait for the next expansion to see if they'll fix things.

[Maquegyver]

It is logic that there have to be some specs at the bottom. Two out of three rogues' spec being at the bottom is perfectly fine. Think about WW monks or Ret paladins or Havoc DHs that are at the bottom as well, and they have only one DPS spec available. This is not that much fine. And rogues being #1 class of all classes you want to bring up to ToS shouldn't complain, really.

No, we shouldn't be concerned with other specs. Other specs can voice their own concerns. Rogues overall are in a bad place. We scale poorly. We bring soaks which won't be a thing next tier (to anywhere near the same level). They have said they put too many soaks into ToS and will have less going forward. What will we get as compensation? Likely nothing. We are the worst pure dps class across all specs. Sublety is the only spec that can compete dps wise which is pretty piss poor for a pure dps class. If they gave half a damn no specs would be so far behind (last is fine but the gap is far too large). Its really that simple. There is no reason to not tune weekly if needed. Other than laziness and forcing pure dps to swap specs every major patch to up playtime (thanks artifacts...).

[AceofH]

You mean by far the most significant utility? You call it little to no utility.

It is logic that there have to be some specs at the bottom. Two out of three rogues' spec being at the bottom is perfectly fine. Think about WW monks or Ret paladins or Havoc DHs that are at the bottom as well, and they have only one DPS spec available. This is not that much fine. And rogues being #1 class of all classes you want to bring up to ToS shouldn't complain, really.

Besides being able to cheese a few mechanics here and there what utility do we bring outside of feint and cloak. Hunters can bring brez, hero. Locks bring soulstones, healthstones, and summons, mages bring hero and with ib can cheese and completely immune kj Armageddon.

[Deleted]

As mentioned above, legendaries and AP farming are preventing most players to switch from one spec to another and balancing should no more be considered among classes but among specs. There is no more pure DPS as spec switching is as difficult for hybrids as it is for pures nowadays.

[Halobob87]

Besides being able to cheese a few mechanics here and there what utility do we bring outside of feint and cloak. Hunters can bring brez, hero. Locks bring soulstones, healthstones, and summons, mages bring hero and with ib can cheese and completely immune kj Armageddon.

A few mechanics? LOL. Rogues can cheese pretty much everything.

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

all hail assassination.

why? while it is a super easy spec to play and master, it allows me to actually look at my computer screen and keep up my rotation. making me a better player.

all hail assassination.

[Wenoxar]

Besides being able to cheese a few mechanics here and there what utility do we bring outside of feint and cloak. Hunters can bring brez, hero. Locks bring soulstones, healthstones, and summons, mages bring hero and with ib can cheese and completely immune kj Armageddon.

You're correct. Normies want to get summoned into their Emerald Nightmare (Heroic), they want to get healthstones, bloodlust on pull and if they die they want to be combat ressed. Now I finally see the superior perspective for Rogues -- I'd give away that useless cloak, feint and cheat death for the sake of Combat Res and Bloodlust. Or a summon stone ofc, in case if somebody wanted to switch talents in Dalaran cuz Tome of Tranquil Mind technology just isn't there yet.

[Ilir]

all hail assassination.

why? while it is a super easy spec to play and master, it allows me to actually look at my computer screen and keep up my rotation. making me a better player.

all hail assassination.

you can do that with any spec, any classes, any role

[Mask]

Blizzard literally turned a spec that played so smoothly in MoP and Wod, and turned it into a clunky, wannabe feral druid mess because of "class fantasy." But they can fix it, but I have my doubts that they will.

Hate what they did to Sin in 7.0. I played assassination exclusively all through MoP and WoD and loved it. I think that was the longest stretch I ever stuck with one rogue spec straight because I liked the playstyle so much more than either of the other specs at the time. When 7.0 hit it just ruined it...