Legion - Subtlety discussion

[shinji2009]

Just like with any spec in legion - if you have no dps legendaries, competing against those who do, you won't be able to top meters.

You should be sitting close to the middle with no dps legendaries, depending on the rest of your gear/trinkets and weapon level of course(huge)

I personally have ring/belt/trinket for my legendaries and my only real competition is the other sub rogue with BiS legendaries and our DH. More recently i'm very close to the sub rogue because i got CoF and can get close to his SB uptime (he has bracers).

Anyways, it's possible to be top as sub, with dps legendaries. Middle of the pack otherwise, depending on a number of other factors.

3

I get a legendary like once every few months for whatever reason it takes me FOREVER to get a legendary and then I am just getting tank stuff.

[Kwakman]

I had a godly night for loot last night: went from 2/6 tier pieces to 5/6 tier pieces AND CoF. Now I made the swap to anticipation and one thing im doubting is what to do with CP overflow.

Let's say I'm dancing and Weaponmaster goes nuts and I end up with 2/2,5 seconds left on SD and I have 10 cp. What is my best bet then; 2 Evisceratea and forgeet about the SD or use the remaining SD for a Shadowstrike and then 2 Evisc?

[elfporn]

I had a godly night for loot last night: went from 2/6 tier pieces to 5/6 tier pieces AND CoF. Now I made the swap to anticipation and one thing im doubting is what to do with CP overflow.

Let's say I'm dancing and Weaponmaster goes nuts and I end up with 2/2,5 seconds left on SD and I have 10 cp. What is my best bet then; 2 Evisceratea and forgeet about the SD or use the remaining SD for a Shadowstrike and then 2 Evisc?

4ss1finisher is not required gameplay to do effective dps. More often than not it will be 3ss2finishers. With anticipation the point is to reduce cp waste.

[mcrx]

I had a godly night for loot last night: went from 2/6 tier pieces to 5/6 tier pieces AND CoF. Now I made the swap to anticipation and one thing im doubting is what to do with CP overflow.

Let's say I'm dancing and Weaponmaster goes nuts and I end up with 2/2,5 seconds left on SD and I have 10 cp. What is my best bet then; 2 Evisceratea and forgeet about the SD or use the remaining SD for a Shadowstrike and then 2 Evisc?

if u're at 10cp, with ~2sec left on dance u can fit in 1 finisher and another sstrike after the finisher

[Clinkzthebonerogue]

I had a godly night for loot last night: went from 2/6 tier pieces to 5/6 tier pieces AND CoF. Now I made the swap to anticipation and one thing im doubting is what to do with CP overflow.

Let's say I'm dancing and Weaponmaster goes nuts and I end up with 2/2,5 seconds left on SD and I have 10 cp. What is my best bet then; 2 Evisceratea and forgeet about the SD or use the remaining SD for a Shadowstrike and then 2 Evisc?

You'll want to evis once then fit 1 more shadowstrike. if your weapon master goes nuts again then you'll sit at 10 more CP at the end of dance instead of 10CP without that extra evis.

Like Kwakman said, you'll want to minimize CP waste as much as possible. If you ever hit 10CP during dance just evis>SS>evis>SS if weaponmaster is going crazy. so you don't waste CP

[Deleted]

I had a godly night for loot last night: went from 2/6 tier pieces to 5/6 tier pieces AND CoF. Now I made the swap to anticipation and one thing im doubting is what to do with CP overflow.

Let's say I'm dancing and Weaponmaster goes nuts and I end up with 2/2,5 seconds left on SD and I have 10 cp. What is my best bet then; 2 Evisceratea and forgeet about the SD or use the remaining SD for a Shadowstrike and then 2 Evisc?

You have to think swiftly, options are infinite. You can evis and fit a shadowstrike then evis again. That's not the hard thing, the thing is when to refresh symbols, and also do not evis again if you are full energy, always fit a backstab or sth for energy efficiency and shadow dance charges efficiency.

[Deleted]

So what is considered "best" and "best safe" specs now?
Shadowcraft sims 2-2-3-3-1-1-1 WAY above everything else for me but i am not sure how correct is that.

[Maelstrom51]

So what is considered "best" and "best safe" specs now?
Shadowcraft sims 2-2-3-3-1-1-1 WAY above everything else for me but i am not sure how correct is that.

Weaponmaster is usually better than Master of Subtlety, especially with Anticipation.
Anticipation is a little worse than Deeper Stratagem unless you have four set tier or legendary bracers + CoS. If you have both its much better.

[Deleted]

Weaponmaster is usually better than Master of Subtlety, especially with Anticipation.
Anticipation is a little worse than Deeper Stratagem unless you have four set tier or legendary bracers + CoS. If you have both its much better.

Shadowcraft must be broken
It sime vigor 10% higher than deeper strat
Premeditation 9% above alacrity
And finally MoS 10% above DfA and 2% above MfD Didn't know MoS boosts my dps by 10% to start with.

Oh and lastly it sims my Assa at 460k and Sub at almost 600k — i don't have any spec specific legendaries (belt+aoe cape) and have 35 traits in both so everything being equal rly.

[Maelstrom51]

Shadowcraft must be broken

Yes its been very broken this expansion.

Also its not a sim. I didn't even catch that you said shadowcraft and not simcraft.

[elfporn]

Weaponmaster is usually better than Master of Subtlety, especially with Anticipation.
Anticipation is a little worse than Deeper Stratagem unless you have four set tier or legendary bracers + CoS. If you have both its much better.

i'd like to know at what point is MoSub better than weaponmaster? i maintain about 79% uptime on it on krosus right now. (I usually run WM) It only drops when platform breaks, with a few 1-2 second gaps occasionally.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes its been very broken this expansion.

Also its not a sim. I didn't even catch that you said shadowcraft and not simcraft.

i'd like to emphasize this - shadowcraft cannot be trusted at all. it's been broken since wod

[Jaronicity]

When to Shuriken Storm? Specifically for Botanist. My understanding is 2 targets but with boots 3 targets? Just trying to get a handle on legendaries and talents to use. I got KJ trinket off Gul'dan yesterday. Wondering if it's worthwhile to sub the boots out on fights I likely won't be SS a lot.

EDIT: Tried this setup for Botanist in LFR just because it's LFR. Used KJ trinket.

MoS
Shadow Focus
Anticipation
Bleh
Bleh
Alacrity
DfA

Opening part of the fight was challenging because you need to wait until at least he splits the first time to get going but after that and especially in P3 you can really pump out finishers and it's easy to keep NB rolling on all 3 targets. Finished at about 565k fwiw. Only picked up SF because the spreadsheet said 3 targets it was highest and I just wanted to put it into practice and see how it went. Would use WM but I feel like it was bugged with DfA and the 50% evisc wouldn't land sometimes if it procced WM. Is this still the case (was it ever the case)?

[T18Z]

When to Shuriken Storm? Specifically for Botanist. My understanding is 2 targets but with boots 3 targets? Just trying to get a handle on legendaries and talents to use. I got KJ trinket off Gul'dan yesterday. Wondering if it's worthwhile to sub the boots out on fights I likely won't be SS a lot.

EDIT: Tried this setup for Botanist in LFR just because it's LFR. Used KJ trinket.

MoS
Shadow Focus
Anticipation
Bleh
Bleh
Alacrity
DfA

Opening part of the fight was challenging because you need to wait until at least he splits the first time to get going but after that and especially in P3 you can really pump out finishers and it's easy to keep NB rolling on all 3 targets. Finished at about 565k fwiw. Only picked up SF because the spreadsheet said 3 targets it was highest and I just wanted to put it into practice and see how it went. Would use WM but I feel like it was bugged with DfA and the 50% evisc wouldn't land sometimes if it procced WM. Is this still the case (was it ever the case)?

WM is still bugged with DFA yeah, so don't use them in combination.

I personally use Shuriken Storm on two targets when outside of dance and 3 targets when inside of dance with the boots. In regards to which legendaries to use it's actually quite hard to really gauge on a fight like Botanist, because the boots will be strong in the initial stages of the fight but useless later on. Many of the top parses use boots though, so I dunno.

[Maelstrom51]

WM is still bugged with DFA yeah, so don't use them in combination.

I went ahead and hit a dummy and I couldn't reproduce this. I went until I got a weaponmaster proc on DfA, and eviscerate hit twice and I got two Relentless Strike procs as expected.

[Jaronicity]

I went ahead and hit a dummy and I couldn't reproduce this. I went until I got a weaponmaster proc on DfA, and eviscerate hit twice and I got two Relentless Strike procs as expected.

Good to know. Few fights where I wanted to use both but thought it might hinder me. Will try it out.

Any other opinions/statements on boot usage in AoE scenarios?\

[T18Z]

I went ahead and hit a dummy and I couldn't reproduce this. I went until I got a weaponmaster proc on DfA, and eviscerate hit twice and I got two Relentless Strike procs as expected.

Must've recently been fixed as it's been bugged the whole expac untill now. No clue why they didn't add it to any notes.

[Rixan]

I have better results with MoS instead of Weaponmaster

Not really sure why (using anticipation)

Maybe it's because very frequently I'm casting two eviscerates within dance so that consistent bonus damage is doing something for me, dunno

[Deleted]

Must've recently been fixed as it's been bugged the whole expac untill now. No clue why they didn't add it to any notes.

Still bugged.

Just now I tried about 20 DfAs on dummys and every weaponmaster proc I had switched eviscerate to a different target, and sometimes the eviscerate didn't occur.

[Jaronicity]

Yea, upon further investigation, it just plain isn't landing sometimes. Fly up, come down somewhere in the middle of the target and nothing happens. Sad

[Deleted]

Hey guys,

long time lurker here, I've been constantly checking this thread over the last couple of weeks with the goal to improve my DPS and obviously to do less mistakes to achieve that goal.

Armory: eu,battle,net/wow/en/character/mannoroth/Feyo/advanced - replaced the two dots with commas due to posting restrictions

Logs: www,warcraftlogs,com/rankings/character/12763906/latest (normal/heroic/mythic) - replaced the two dots with commas due to posting restrictions and sorry, some of them are German

First of all, I do not have the Boots (but Bracers + Ring) and sometimes I tend to blame my average performance on missing them, which shouldn't be the case and already leads me to my first question: despite not playing 100% perfect, are the missing Boots accountable for the ~10% performance I'm lacking to achieve close to 100% (see heroic logs later)? After our first mythic Krosus kill I compared my log with the log of Ireath - Kazzak EU and noticed how the boots gave him almost 850 energy over a 5min 48sec fight, which leads to way more Shadowstrikes, CP, Finisher, Dance up-time and such. But on the other hand my legendary ring did 7.5 million damage, I guess there is no doubt that the Boots are probably the #1 legendary right now (not accounting the Shoulders and Stealth bug atm), but I'm still curious on how much I can blame my DPS for missing them.

Even though I do have mythic logs, which are pretty bad (expect Trilliax maybe), I want to talk about my heroic logs. Way more kills to talk about, to analyse and if there are some huge mistakes I'm pretty sure I'm reproducing them on mythic mode as well. So to fix both my heroic and mythic logs, I first need to fix the heroic ones.

Before starting, a few things about my mythic logs:
- Skorpyron: was focusing way too much on AoEing adds instead of boss damage (almost zero SD charges during his damage phase), it's nice to have a DfA ready for adds but I should've focused way more on boss damage

- Chronomatic Anomaly: first kill yesterday, not that much difference to heroic but still mediocre performance overall (died at like 10%, pretty much too focused on boss abilities and not dying since I'm currently a trial in my guild)

- Trilliax: pretty solid I'd say (currently Rank 14 Sub Rogue ), also not that much difference to heroic mode

- Krosus: probably worst performance ever, everyone in my guild had a bad performance logwise, can't really tell why though

Now back to my heroic logs (feel free to analyse my mythic logs as well, but I already figured out what went wrong and I guess it's a combination of that and the mistakes I'm already doing on heroic mode). I'm not going to post my thoughts on each boss, more like an overall view.

Mistakes I found from analyzing my own logs and also comparing them to logs from the best Sub Rogues:
- I'm overvaluing Shadowstrike at 7+ CP, sometimes I even Shadowstrike at 9 or 10 CP due to basically overvaluing it, I should rather Eviscerate+Shadowstrike or even just Eviscerate at that amount of CP (depending on how long SD lasts). Which basically leads to wasting a lot of CP and losing on DPS, so playing with Anticipation changes the basic 4 SS + 2 Finisher routine

- At 3+ adds I'm also activating SD to use FoK, but I just spam FoK 4-5 times during SD instead of using Eviscerate/Nightblade in between and due to that I do waste CP as well (that's only for a few bosses but still), maybe there is a certain cap where simply using FoK instead of using finishers in between FoK casts is more beneficial due to the pure amount of FoK damage compared to the damage of Eviscerate(s), but then I'd be capping again, missing Energy gains from casting finishers and also the CD reduction on SD charges

- Sometimes I use Vanish/Goremaw's Bite too early into the fight, on one hand I want to use it as early as possible to grant myself another usage later in the fight but on the other hand I end up casting one or two finishers without reducing SD charges

- I used to play ranged DPS until HFC and I sometimes find myself randomly standing next to the boss instead of behind, which sometimes leads to unnecessary parries/dodges or whatsoever, not some Sub only thing, but might account for a dps loss too during some fights


My DPS overall may not be the worst, but there is no doubt I could do way more (especially on mythic) and I know about the current situation of Rogues and the discussion between Assassination and Subtlety, but I'm going to continue hoping for the Boots and trying to improve myself to make up for not playing Assassination. The other Rogue in my guild has both Assassination Bracers+Boots, Sub Boots, Ring, Cloak and since yesterday the Trinket too. So it's just a matter of time until he will do more damage than me, once he gets used to the mechanics and how we play them. I simply can't be arsed to make a switch, to hope for two BiS legendaries instead of one, regrind AP (currently 54 Sub, 52 Outlaw, 40 Assa), get used to the spec (which isn't that much of a deal I assume), get the relics and play a spec I'm so far behind on compared to any other Assassination Rogue. And even though Sub has much RNG baked into the spec, I want to make it work, be useful for my guild but also perform decent for my own ego.

So please help me analyzing the logs and tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'm not the greatest in terms of analyzing logs but I tried to find the most obvious mistakes and listed them above. I tried to keep it as less text as possible but I want to emphasize how much I care about my performance, so sorry for the wall of text and thanks in advance, guys!