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  1. #21
    I have played Sub in PvE a lot. Let me share my views.

    - It does better single target damage than Combat. By 1-2%.
    - It is behind Assassination on a straight nuke fight e.g. Garajal by about 3-4%.
    - Sub aoe is much better than Combat, except if you use AR and/or SB for aoe. Overall because of 30% agi, better energy regen, and SV, it is much better. It is less good at aoe than Assassination though.
    - Sub is not the hardest spec to play. Combat is imo, until we are permanently energy capped and back to Sinister Strike spam.
    - In terms of just numbers, Sub will, however, get better and better because of scaling and, I think, it will overtake Assassination in the middle of the next tier if no changes are made to either spec.
    - However, scaling or not, the main reasons to not play Sub are (i) the positional requirement of Backstab and Ambush - on almost every fight, there are times when you cannot always get behind the boss and (ii) weak target switching because of the SV changes.

    In 5.2, I think Sub will be back for some fights, if scaling pushes it over the top as the best single target spec and/or if there are any fights when there are important 10-20 second burst windows.

  2. #22
    Deleted
    sub as mentioned above is built to scale and always suffers in the early tier, with the item upgrade system inflating our ilevels and gear it might be viable next tier once your upgraded or posibbly in heroic of this tier when upgraded.

    from my ecperience in vaults -> i went from doing sub 90% right in terms of positional and cd's to 60% right as assasination and did 15k more dps. it's a bigger gap now as well that i rememer to use cd's better and i had originally forgotten to macro in my trinkets to vendetta so was not using them all fight for a week

  3. #23
    Sub is actually viable. My top Sub Parses on WoL usually would rank Top 50 on Assassination, and until recently my weapons sucked big time.

    Yeah, fuck the DPS Gain from Assa when im not enjoying myself. Destroying meters still (10 Man), so im not "holding back my raid" or any of that BS. For Garajal HC Firstkill, i specced Assa. That's it. Oh, and the usual Cleaving-Madness as Offspec, of course. Btw, rofl at the Combat-is-harder-Notion. I don't even try with that shit and still rank.

  4. #24
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Nouk View Post
    Sub is actually viable. My top Sub Parses on WoL usually would rank Top 50 on Assassination, and until recently my weapons sucked big time.

    Yeah, fuck the DPS Gain from Assa when im not enjoying myself. Destroying meters still (10 Man), so im not "holding back my raid" or any of that BS. For Garajal HC Firstkill, i specced Assa. That's it. Oh, and the usual Cleaving-Madness as Offspec, of course. Btw, rofl at the Combat-is-harder-Notion. I don't even try with that shit and still rank.
    thats part of combat,

    do 80% right to get 95% of your potential dps,
    do 100 to get 100, but it takes that alst 20% jsut for 5% more dps, ( rupture on shalow insight etc),
    it's skill "floor" is higher and the ceiling isn't so far away.
    sub used to have a lower floor and higher ceiling due to having to watch several things ( hemo bleed, rupture, snd, recoup) as well as faster cd's as most were 1 minute ( dance) or 2 minutes ( Vanish) and in mop they gained a 3 minute shadow blades.
    mop happened and rupture refresh was thrown out with the compensation for removal of recopuerate as something to have to refresh, we lost neding to refresh a 30+ second finisher ( which had to be done at 5 combo points) to be replaced with a finisher we have to do every 24 secs. -> less space for evis's, and a PVP nerf as you could prevoously ignore snd and jsut keep recoup up where as now u need recoup in addition to everything else as without snd no energy return, without rupture no 16% damg boost, without recoup your diein to fast, combined with hemo only tickling now and how often you can't backstab due to positional requirements damg done is down.
    with the loss of recoup up sub is no longer the "survivor" in pve due to it's perma self healing ( mostly replaced by leech poison in pve) and at current gear levels combat with revealing strike has it's finishers ( except rupture) hit for more despite sub's mastery being a flat increase to all finishers.

    comparing energy return mechanics
    -> sub 8 energy every 2 secs from snd
    -> ass 10 energy 75% of the time PER active rupture every 2 secs (anytime u target switch with duration left on old rupture it stil can proc energy for super regen if active on 2 targets, or deliberately via redirected 5 pointers)
    -> combat -> off-hand/Mastery procs energy return rate scales with gear ( haste for more of-hands, hastery for more mastery attacks) and eventually leads to an almost perma energy capped rotation but with no high energy cost spell to dump it on ( shame sinister strike glyph didn't stay at being + damg + energy cost)


    sub has lost out in energy and damg, it's once every minute burst might be useful on a future fight but i would expect blizz to use a 2 min cd requirement as not many classes are based on a 1 min cd model but a lot are for 2 mins,

    sub would theorecically win on a 3-4 target fight due to crimson tempest and sang vein if refreshing tempest with <1 sec left so the new tempest got the sang buff from the previous as combat can cleave to only 2, and assasination just has to fok and hope it gets poisons up which it does regularrly especialy if synchronised with envenom.

  5. #25
    Thanks for summing up the changes from Cata to MoP, but i play Sub since Classic (with some Main swapping in BC/WotLK) and raid with it since Firelands, so no need for a historical Subtlety Lesson.
    All the things you claim for Combat being hard to max DPS has equivalents on Sub's side.
    On another Note: Burst DMG isn't Subs domain anymore, on Burst phases i lose against other classes.

    Also combat's finisher hitting stronger than mine? I doubt that. My mastery is at 42%, RS gives 35%. Find Weakness beats Derp Insight, too.

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Viglante View Post
    thats part of combat,

    do 80% right to get 95% of your potential dps,
    do 100 to get 100, but it takes that alst 20% jsut for 5% more dps, ( rupture on shalow insight etc),
    @Nouk This is what I meant i.e. it is hardest to play well and not play badly.

  7. #27
    Sorry to say but sub is still waaay behind Mut. Specially with Dispatch being so powerful. Fights like heroic 4 kings assassi can be better than Combat cleave, depeding of course on how good your raid is to burn down the boss. I used to love topping the meters with my orange weapons as sub, leaving combat rogues way behind on most fights, the reality has just changed. Energy refund on BS crits could fix it and make the spec more fun again IMO.

  8. #28
    They removed everything that made it fun. And they made it easy. It only became popular because it was the only challenging spec left in the game (other than maybe Feral), but Blizzard butchered what was once an almost perfectly balanced rotation. I say almost because being forced into 5pt Eviscerates wasn't fun.

    I guess it was too much to expect people to practice a spec before they perform within the 95th percentile...

  9. #29
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Chult View Post
    Sub isn't horrible. It just doesn't have a niche. Assassination does better single target and AOE. Combat does better single target and cleaves. Pair that with the annoying positional requirements, and there isn't a whole lot of reason to spec it currently.

    I expect Sub to scale really well in subsequent tiers, but as for now, it just isn't there yet.
    Sub does more controlled burst and with 3-4 targets does a lot more aoe dps than mut. subs energy regen is also the best sustained of all 3 set ups

  10. #30
    no, the only work to combat is keeping rupture up tbh. still as mindless as it was in wotlk

    I also use weak auras though, so tracking anything buffs included is right there for me, no thought involved
    It's not the great who are strong...
    It's the strong who are great...

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