Improving Subtlety

[D3athsting]

Backstab(30 sec cd): Stabs the target for 800% weapon dmg plus (enter number) and an additional 30% of the initial damage over 10 secs, requires you to be behind your target, backstab's cooldown is reduced by haste.

Your thoughts...

[loki504]

op!!! thats all i can say.

[Kael]

An interesting idea for PvE, but adding another burst key to PvP is just a bad idea; more to line up, and people would Q_Q about how quickly they died if they ate that backstab alongside a couple of eviscerates and an ambush under FW.

[Choptimus]

800%? Really?

[D3athsting]

It could become a finisher and replace evis (so that all spec could use different finishers) with percentage of dmg based on combo points(no cooldown).

[jtstormrage]

My Rogue is my main and I don't PVP much.

However, I do on my Moonkin. Last week, Rogues were Eviserating me for 150k (non-crit). that was with about 50% resi (pre-patch) and 15% damage-taken reduction for Moonkins, and killing me in 3-4 seconds.

That is pretty reasonable burst. I was dead on a number of occasions in a Cheap Shot i.e. from full HP to dead in under 4 secs (1 sec after Subterfuge).

[Kael]

That is pretty reasonable burst. I was dead on a number of occasions in a Cheap Shot i.e. from full HP to dead in under 4 secs (1 sec after Subterfuge).

I take it you're contending the idea that sub needs to be improved? Although I'd argue that it should make a comeback in PvE either way. Other than that, I can't see what your post would be doing in this thread...?

[Kassadin]

So, if this was implemented as an ability, Subtlety's rotation would be (not including openers), 4-5CP SnD> 5Cp Rupture> 5CP Backstab> use eviscerate till Backstab is off CD or until rupture is due for refresh> rinse and repeat?

To ease the rotation, I suppose they should do away with SnD, and make energetic recovery passive. That'll make subtlety a bit more unique than it actually is.

[deviantcultist]

Let's get this straight. Behind the target requirement is outdated, especially for PVE, given that it is a yes/no restriction that some bosses apply. I'd say have backstab as a pvp tool and have sub rotation involve completely new skills including the old ghostly strike, a new finisher and a mechanic similar to demonic fury that will help us manage shadow dance.

[Synexlol]

Mechanically, it was almost perfect before Mists of Pandaria.

Blizzard needed to a) ease the rotation, and b) nerf the scaling while bringing up base-values. And to be honest, b) wasn't even necessary.

Easing the rotation would have been easy. Simply make Rupture refresh on any Eviscerate, rather than forcing us to use a 5-pt in order to guarantee a refresh. At the loss of Eviscerate damage, it would be easy to keep 95%+ uptime on Recuperate, SnD, and Rupture. Maximizing damage would still be a challenge but the difference between being good and bad at playing Subtlety would be fairly small. Most importantly, the spec would remain interesting to play.

Nerfing the scaling would have been straightforward as well. Nerf the bonus crit damage on Backstab while increasing its base damage. Of course there's a lot of ways this could be done, many of which wouldn't impact the other specs in any meaningful way. But would it have been necessary? Was Subtlety lagging behind for the first tier-and-a-half a bad thing? Well, I think so, but it's definitely debatable.

Overall, I think Blizzard missed the ball with their Subtlety changes. If they wanted to do expansion-scale changes to Rogues, they should have removed SnD completely and re-balanced the class. Maybe they will do it for the next expansion when they, 5 years later, realize its the source of so many of the class' problems. But the fact that they decided to lump the defining energy mechanic of Subtlety into SnD tells me they aren't going to change it. It's actually quite amazing that they have convinced everyone that Slice and Dice is a legitimate mechanic rather than a giant band-aid.

[Kael]

Blizzard needed to a) ease the rotation, and b) nerf the scaling while bringing up base-values. And to be honest, b) wasn't even necessary.

Easing the rotation would have been easy. Simply make Rupture refresh on any Eviscerate, rather than forcing us to use a 5-pt in order to guarantee a refresh. At the loss of Eviscerate damage, it would be easy to keep 95%+ uptime on Recuperate, SnD, and Rupture. Maximizing damage would still be a challenge but the difference between being good and bad at playing Subtlety would be fairly small. Most importantly, the spec would remain interesting to play.

Nerfing the scaling would have been straightforward as well. Nerf the bonus crit damage on Backstab while increasing its base damage. Of course there's a lot of ways this could be done, many of which wouldn't impact the other specs in any meaningful way. But would it have been necessary? Was Subtlety lagging behind for the first tier-and-a-half a bad thing? Well, I think so, but it's definitely debatable.

Unsure about PvP, but if we could just roll back to the state of mid-late Cata PvE sub and toss that eviscerate change on, I think it would definitely have a place and being manageable.

[D3athsting]

Blizz tries to improve/replace talents that player don't feel like chosing, heck we have a whole spec that nobody raids with (wol rankings are quite clear, u can rank with 70k playing sub) and they don't even try to look deep into the main flaws of the spec (weak aoe, no cleave, positional req, subpar overall dmg)...
Sorry for rant

[Coldkil]

The biggest problem with sub is that is the iconic PvP spec (and the only true viable one). Screwing something about it means basically making rogues OP or UP in PvP, with all the whines related.

The biggest problem about rogues is not improving the specs, but to be able to improve the class as a whole since its model may be old and boring for some aspects, but still works over the same core after 8 years of changes.

[Deleted]

Remove backstab >>> replace dispatch >> give hemo ticks / rupture ticks a chance for a free ambush out of stealth / free dispatch.

[jtstormrage]

I take it you're contending the idea that sub needs to be improved? Although I'd argue that it should make a comeback in PvE either way. Other than that, I can't see what your post would be doing in this thread...?

The thread (in particular your post) referred to the issue of Rogue burst in PvP. I was commenting that Rogues have decent burst.

[D3athsting]

They should change the name of the spec too, too much bias, many rogues horrify when you put the words "subtlety" and "pve" together

[Mersynd]

Recently Blizzard stated that in 5.4 there will be more talent changes so people can stop feeling like they need to have a talent to fulfill a certain role. I think Rogues (especially Rogues since we got one of the worst talent options in 5.0) should get something similar to what Priests have in their last talent. Have three abilities that all act differently so you can choose them for each fight; for a Rogue it could be a positional requirement ability, or a ranged ability such as Shuriken Toss. I think Anticipation should be a base ability, or at least for one or two specs, and Marked for Death should be in a different tier. Then they can keep Shuriken Toss and add things like Backstab or something.

[Verain]

I kind of don't really get this thread. OP walks in with a change that would change our spec completely, and it's taken seriously!

Ok, I'll play along.


First, I VERY STRONGLY believe that at least one rogue spec should have a builder and/or finisher on a timer. However, I believe that this spec should be assassination.

With the change that OP has up there, your PvE game becomes, you open and set your buffs up, then, during find weakness, you backstab. You work really hard to get every backstab in during a find weakness. The rest of the spec is hemo spam (and the hemo bleed stops making sense to even have).

Is that really that interesting?

Meanwhile, in PvP, every burst cycle focuses on the backstab, because that will the most damage in a global of almost any class- and probably THE most damage over about three seconds, when combined with prior combo points, blades and find weakness up over the whole duration, eviscerate, mfd, eviscerate.



Subtlety PvE is about maintaining your bleeds and buffs. I think the spec is pretty decent. I dislike that backstab is as weak as it is, and that it's so damned hard to keep up any of these things in PvP.

1)- Energetic recuperation should fire if you have slice OR recup active. Recuperate needs buffed anyway, but that's a rogue issue, not a sub issue.

This change would make the rogue sustained rotation, which is trashcan in PvP, easier to maintain. Similar changes for combat would be that recuperate and kidney shot should work with restless blades. Similar changes for assassination would actually include a kidney shot that refreshes slice and dice and deals poison damage (say a third of an envenom).

2)- A cooldown could exist that would empower hemo to be as good as backstab. This would allow you to mess with the boss's face from time to time- and would be an actual cooldown in PvP, where facing is cheeseball anyway. Blizzard is probably reluctant to give us another button, especially one like this, however.

3)- Ambush 100% needs to be used from the front- for less damage, but useable. Frontal garrote is sweet, but it's primary use is PvP. Having to settle for Garrote on an Ultraxxion is lamesauce.



For what it is worth, I think Assassination could use one of these two:

1)- Poisoned Blade: 70 energy, 30 second cooldown. Applies a concentrated version of your non-lethal poison, as shiv does. Rewards 3 combo points. Causes about 3 mutilates worth of damage over 4 seconds.

2)- Poison Bottle: 50 energy, finisher. 30 second cooldown, 20 yard range. You throw a poison bottle at the feet of your enemy. The bottle applies a debuff to the enemy that deals damage equal to 2 envenoms over the course of 4 seconds. The poison remains on the ground for 10 seconds, dealing damage equal to 1 envenom over the 10 seconds to all enemies in the poison.


I'm just giving the values in terms of existing moves. Either of those would be fantastic for assassination.

[Buxton McGraff]

Put a cooldown on backstab and make it do more damage and add a useful debuff, return hemorrhage to it's old design (increases damage taken) and add the bleed effect to Backstab instead.

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 12:01 AM ----------

Backstab: 10 second cooldown, 40 energy cost, must be behind the target.
Stabs the target for X damage and causes the target to bleed for X amount over 15 seconds. Also applies a debuff causing the target to take 150% more damage from Rupture.
Hemorrhage: No Cooldown, 30 Energy Cost
Deals X damage + 50% more if the target is afflicted by Rupture. Applies a debuff increasing damage taken by the Rogue's next 15 Auto-Attacks by 20%.

[Skygoneblue]

All you really need to do is make the Hemorrhage bleed count towards Sanguinary Vein, buff its damage slightly, and tell Backstab to piss off. For a spec that relies so heavily on finishers, I'd be totally in favor of reverting to a single combo point generator.