Subletly vs Assassination in PvP: Assassination wins, I managed to solo a Warrior

[Sturmbringe]

So, I have been using Asa as a PvE spec only, managing to pull about 50k DPS scoring 5th or 6th in Sha raids with my mostly quest blue/green gear.

I went Subtlety for PvP, which in my case, mostly consists of ganking people while they are questing as I do not have the time to do organized PvP. Subtlety is the most "Rogue-ish" spec IMO, it's still the closest you can get to Vanilla Rogue as played by Ming. Vets probably remember Ming and his cookie cutter spec in 2006.

Anyway, even by using Sub's major CD (shadow dance) and by making optimal use of rupture by keeping it up (+16% damage), Sub's PvP damage is, quite graciously, pitiful.

I couldn't even kill warriors who had 5 or 6 mobs on them while doing the dailies and were at less than 50% health. In fact, I could not kill anything else apart from...other rogues.

Frustrated, I tried Assassination today, and OMG, all of a sudden my skill as a Rogue went up by 158% or so. By spamming Asa's CD's *SB+Vendetta) alongwith the level 85 on use PvP trinket, I managed to SOLO a warrior and even solo a Shadow Priest.

The SP died so fast that he didn't even have time to understand what hit him. Of course he was at 65% health, but this is a MAJOR improvement over Sub's performance. As Sub, it would have taken 4-5 Sub Rogues with a healer to kill a SP in full PvP gear and maybe a 10 man raid to kill a warrior.

What's your experience?

(I am in full Contender's PvP gear while questing and I am using 2x level 463 heroic weapons)

[Kael]

As I say every time I post about pvp, I'm not actually a PvP'er, but there is one really gigantic flaw in your plan to attack a warrior with multiple mobs on him. My warrior is still 85, but my roommate's is back to 90, and he cackles maniacally when a mob dies and he can Victory Rush 150k back onto his name. From what I've heard, assassination's ability to care less about armor is a godsend overall, though.

[Deleted]

I remember going up against a warrior in a 2v2 fight.

The warrior did something.
I lost 140k health.
He did it another 2 times.
I died.
Took about 5 seconds.

I'm never touching a warrior again.

[Deleted]

Trying to gank a Warrior with mobs on him was not too clever as he will just finish one off for a nice heal so you had no chance there. Assassination is by far the best damage dealing spec for PvP but sub played well is still by far the best.

[Khrayzee Gaming]

Sub still has great burst potential its just all about the talents you picked and setting up the dance

[Deleted]

Sub's PvP damage is, quite graciously, pitiful.

l2p issues,



sorry for epic paint skills.

[Deleted]

l2p issues,

http://i50.tinypic.com/25ptj5c.jpg

sorry for epic paint skills.

You highlighted the issue, without proving your point.
The entire list you posted shows us two, TWO, attacks that did some good/decent damage, while the others were laughable. Both of those were Eviscerates; the one attack we have in our arsenal that does very good damage, but also comes at the highest price we have; 5 combo points, survivability, utility, and damage. Nevermind the fact that the ramp-up to gaining Eviscerates, outside of cooldowns, is atrocious.

[Deleted]

You highlighted the issue, without proving your point.
The entire list you posted shows us two, TWO, attacks that did some good/decent damage, while the others were laughable. Both of those were Eviscerates; the one attack we have in our arsenal that does very good damage, but also comes at the highest price we have; 5 combo points, survivability, utility, and damage. Nevermind the fact that the ramp-up to gaining Eviscerates, outside of cooldowns, is atrocious.

i wouldnt call non crit 38k ambush a bad one, but yer the dmg outside cooldowns is bad but he straight up claimed sublety is good for nothing which clearly isnt the case isit?

[Deleted]

i wouldnt call non crit 38k ambush a bad one, but yer the dmg outside cooldowns is bad but he straight up claimed sublety is good for nothing which clearly isnt the case isit?

That one Ambush hit for about as much as every Backstab should hit. It wasn't a "bad" hit, it was just what I'd consider a "normal" hit, compared to the output of other classes.

[Deleted]

So, I have been using Asa as a PvE spec only, managing to pull about 50k DPS scoring 5th or 6th in Sha raids with my mostly quest blue/green gear.

I went Subtlety for PvP, which in my case, mostly consists of ganking people while they are questing as I do not have the time to do organized PvP. Subtlety is the most "Rogue-ish" spec IMO, it's still the closest you can get to Vanilla Rogue as played by Ming. Vets probably remember Ming and his cookie cutter spec in 2006.

Anyway, even by using Sub's major CD (shadow dance) and by making optimal use of rupture by keeping it up (+16% damage), Sub's PvP damage is, quite graciously, pitiful.

I couldn't even kill warriors who had 5 or 6 mobs on them while doing the dailies and were at less than 50% health. In fact, I could not kill anything else apart from...other rogues.

Frustrated, I tried Assassination today, and OMG, all of a sudden my skill as a Rogue went up by 158% or so. By spamming Asa's CD's *SB+Vendetta) alongwith the level 85 on use PvP trinket, I managed to SOLO a warrior and even solo a Shadow Priest.

The SP died so fast that he didn't even have time to understand what hit him. Of course he was at 65% health, but this is a MAJOR improvement over Sub's performance. As Sub, it would have taken 4-5 Sub Rogues with a healer to kill a SP in full PvP gear and maybe a 10 man raid to kill a warrior.

What's your experience?

(I am in full Contender's PvP gear while questing and I am using 2x level 463 heroic weapons)

A bad player is a bad player bro, goes both ways.

[Stede]

The thing you've to understand about Subtlety is that it actually does good damage. You really need to be in good gear to see it, though. You do have to work a lot harder to line things up, but that's honestly true of all rogue classes. Hemo, Rupture, and ofc SnD are needed, and then you have to actually pool - not just energy, but also CP.

Lots of people take Shuriken Toss, I keep Anticipation. Dancing to proc Find Weakness and dumping 2-3 Ambushes and 3 Full Eviscerates - I don't care what class you're fighting, it hurts - a lot. No other spec has the burst of Subtlety, when played correctly. Add onto that the insane utility of Nerve Strike inside a Shadow Dance, and a rogue, played well, and played tactically, can make a big difference.

As for Warriors - open hard, and keep nerve strike going.

[Verain]

l2p issues,



sorry for epic paint skills.

I'll remember the next time my target doesn't die, that OBVIOUSLY I should have just CRIT EVISCERATE MORE.

MY BAD BRO ME BAD

[Deleted]

The thing you've to understand about Subtlety is that it actually does good damage. You really need to be in good gear to see it, though. You do have to work a lot harder to line things up, but that's honestly true of all rogue classes. Hemo, Rupture, and ofc SnD are needed, and then you have to actually pool - not just energy, but also CP.

Lots of people take Shuriken Toss, I keep Anticipation. Dancing to proc Find Weakness and dumping 2-3 Ambushes and 3 Full Eviscerates - I don't care what class you're fighting, it hurts - a lot. No other spec has the burst of Subtlety, when played correctly. Add onto that the insane utility of Nerve Strike inside a Shadow Dance, and a rogue, played well, and played tactically, can make a big difference.

As for Warriors - open hard, and keep nerve strike going.

The problem of the spec isn't the damage itself; If all a Sub rouge had to do to do some competitive burst was to keep up Slice and pop Dance, the spec would still be pretty good for PVP. However, the problem is that none of our specs are that simple anymore.

- As Sub, you need to line up Rupture, Slice, possibly Recuperate, Kidney Shot, and still find some way to store another 5 combo points to launch your Eviscerates. The ramp up, so to speak, is simply too long and requires quite a bit of maintenance.

- Combat doesn't have any specific needs, but it has rather bad energy generation due to its need to be in melee range. That, and the fact that Bandit's Guile takes quite some time to stack makes it very painful to play in PVP...

- Assassination is awkward in PVP as well. You heavily rely on Slice and Rupture, but even with both of them up, you still need quite a bit of target-uptime to do any damage.

A welcome change would be the removal of combo point costs on utility alone. They should, at the very least, make Kidney free.

[Stede]

The problem of the spec isn't the damage itself; If all a Sub rouge had to do to do some competitive burst was to keep up Slice and pop Dance, the spec would still be pretty good for PVP. However, the problem is that none of our specs are that simple anymore.

- As Sub, you need to line up Rupture, Slice, possibly Recuperate, Kidney Shot, and still find some way to store another 5 combo points to launch your Eviscerates. The ramp up, so to speak, is simply too long and requires quite a bit of maintenance.

- Combat doesn't have any specific needs, but it has rather bad energy generation due to its need to be in melee range. That, and the fact that Bandit's Guile takes quite some time to stack makes it very painful to play in PVP...

- Assassination is awkward in PVP as well. You heavily rely on Slice and Rupture, but even with both of them up, you still need quite a bit of target-uptime to do any damage.

A welcome change would be the removal of combo point costs on utility alone. They should, at the very least, make Kidney free.

Solid points, all of them, and a good suggestion. Solo'ing stuff can definitely take longer than most other classes, but the toolkit of counters rogues have generally means we should win a lot of pure 1 on 1 encounters when our CDs are up. I'm a bit of a weirdo in that I take leeching with my 4-set, so I can usually manage a 1-1 without having to recup. In fact, with nerve strike, the stuns give me a lot of breathing room.

Kidney without CP would be awesome. I'd even love to see all finishers not cost energy at all, but how they'd balance that on the PvE side... idk.

Random thought - while we're having decent discussion - Blind on 1 min CD - a viable utility now as a ranged gap closer when being kited.

[Deleted]

Solid points, all of them, and a good suggestion. Solo'ing stuff can definitely take longer than most other classes, but the toolkit of counters rogues have generally means we should win a lot of pure 1 on 1 encounters when our CDs are up. I'm a bit of a weirdo in that I take leeching with my 4-set, so I can usually manage a 1-1 without having to recup. In fact, with nerve strike, the stuns give me a lot of breathing room.

Kidney without CP would be awesome. I'd even love to see all finishers not cost energy at all, but how they'd balance that on the PvE side... idk.

Random thought - while we're having decent discussion - Blind on 1 min CD - a viable utility now as a ranged gap closer when being kited.

The removal of the energy cost on finishers is a very welcome change;
- We're balanced around ALWAYS performing 5-point finishers
- When we do perform a 5-point finisher, the finisher is virtually "free"... You need to pool some energy to perform it, but you'll have it returned by Relentless Strikes.

So really, the energy cost on finishers doesn't seem to fulfill any specific role at all. Its removal would leave PVE largely unchanged (it would be a very small buff, in fact) and it'd help us a bit all-around in PVP, when we perform finishers with less than 5 points.

As for further suggestions:
- Kidney without the CP cost seems like a necessity now that CC has been handed out like candy on Halloween.
- Would love to see a talent or maybe a glyph that'd turn Recuperate into a cooldown, rather than a finisher.
- Sub remains a powerful spec, but Sanguinary Vein needs to go if it is to be viable. Either have it removed, or simplified. Having to Rupture in PVP is simply not viable.
- Alternatively, they could make finishers "useless" and make us rely entirely on Backstabs, like in Cata. That way, CP's could go for utility, while the main source of damage would be our Backstabs.

I'd like to stress just how much SV need to be removed or reverted. That's the main issue of Sub right now.

[Anthas]

This is good news, as I've always been a fan of Assassination (mostly for PvE, however). With what little I've done in PvP, Subtlety always seemed like a spec for veterans of the class; the "rotation" seemed boring but made up for it with a deep bag of tricks. I might have to try out my beloved Assassination spec for PvP sometime and get my feet wet (with blood).