Legion - Subtlety discussion

[Jaronicity]

I was gonna say it was because initially that was the spec that early sims and people were talking about so that's what people used as well. No doubt it will change in Tomb. I think the DS build will be good on fights with a priority add or a phase of increased damage. I've had good success with Alacrity, DS and ES in all sorts of combinations so I guess that's a good thing we now have so much choice!

[shaunika123]

Dead link bro

yeah fixed it

[lolpve]

Weaponmaster + DFA seems pretty popular, I assume any bugs have been fixed with their interaction? Or is that just paper dps?

[shaunika123]

I don't get it, people are saying Dark Shadow build left and right, including Riff's guide, but all the data on WarcraftLogs pretty clearly shows a Shadow Focus - Enveloping Shadows - Master of Shadows build to be better on single target. Those talents are on average higher than their counterparts on virtually every fight: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...Talents®ion=3

You can see the same if you look at the top 100 Sub parses on most fights: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...63&partition=3 Here's Star Augur

Am I missing something? Dark Shadow - DFA build seems more complex AND performs worse. If you look at some AoE fights, it pulls ahead, but as far as I can tell, people are recommending it even on ST. Riff doesn't even mention Enveloping Shadows at all in his guide, only listing Dark Shadows and Alacrity as viable options.

because the sims were saying ES is better so everyone ran ES on wednesday, then the APL was fixed, but since people are saved on mythic they cant try anymore :P

if you check HC logs, there are quite a few high parses with DS now

[nordveien]

Did Crit value increase significantly compared to pre-7.2.5?

Simming my character with 7.2.5 nightly build and noticing that it shows Crit as second best stat, very close values for Vers, Crit, Mast (and Haste still down below).

Rough pre-7.2.5 values (for my toon):
Vers~=Mst~=17
Crt~=Hst~=11

Rough 7.2.5 values (for my toon, same legendaries, "same" talents):
Vers~=18
Crt~=Mst~=17
Hst~=11

Re-simmed with a few varying talent combos (mainly changing talents in 15 and 90 rows), same results. One of the legendaries was Mantle (both pre- and post-7.2.5).

If it's true, is Crit value change only caused by changes to Etched in Shadow (now Weak Point) and, possibly, The Quiet Knife damage increase to Backstab?

[elfporn]

Did Crit value increase significantly compared to pre-7.2.5?

Simming my character with 7.2.5 nightly build and noticing that it shows Crit as second best stat, very close values for Vers, Crit, Mast (and Haste still down below).

Rough pre-7.2.5 values (for my toon):
Vers~=Mst~=17
Crt~=Hst~=11

Rough 7.2.5 values (for my toon, same legendaries, "same" talents):
Vers~=18
Crt~=Mst~=17
Hst~=11

Re-simmed with a few varying talent combos (mainly changing in 15 and 90 rows), same results. One of the legendaries was Mantle (both pre- and post-7.2.5).

If it's true, is Crit value change only caused by changes to Etched in Shadow (now Weak Point) and, possibly, The Quiet Knife damage increase to Backstab?

Short answer is yes. Because of the Weak Point trait.

[Deleted]

Weaponmaster + DFA seems pretty popular, I assume any bugs have been fixed with their interaction? Or is that just paper dps?

Damn you got me excited. Just tested it on training dummies and on my second DfA I procced weaponmaster on the aoe portion and it switched my target and cause no eviscerate to cast

I would complain at Blizzard about this bug, but I'm just too happy with the state of Sub right now to complain, the spec feels so much stronger now, for example on HC Gul'dan 7.2 I struggled to keep about 800k dps, can now pull 920k dps (ilevel 907 equipped).

[shaunika123]

Did Crit value increase significantly compared to pre-7.2.5?

Simming my character with 7.2.5 nightly build and noticing that it shows Crit as second best stat, very close values for Vers, Crit, Mast (and Haste still down below).

Rough pre-7.2.5 values (for my toon):
Vers~=Mst~=17
Crt~=Hst~=11

Rough 7.2.5 values (for my toon, same legendaries, "same" talents):
Vers~=18
Crt~=Mst~=17
Hst~=11

Re-simmed with a few varying talent combos (mainly changing talents in 15 and 90 rows), same results. One of the legendaries was Mantle (both pre- and post-7.2.5).

If it's true, is Crit value change only caused by changes to Etched in Shadow (now Weak Point) and, possibly, The Quiet Knife damage increase to Backstab?

less shoulder uptime+new trait that buffs crit damage of SS and BS

for me it's still, mast+vers = ~20
crit=18

but that's mainly cos im running triple gutripper relics

[Deleted]

In my opinion dfa builds are only working in combination with deeper stratagem and the vigor ring.

[milkbonez]

played around with it more. I think it's the fact that since Shadowstrike lost its teleport, Shadowfocus is the more reliable version of the legendary boots. The extra shadowstrike in subterfuge seems to be a lot more harder to execute because of what they did with relentless strikes /energetic stab (nerfed the energy spikes)

So the energy return from shadow focus seems to overtake that extra shadowstrike and makes the rotation more smooth. It's not that shadowfocus is so dam good but it allows us to toss the boots away and use the wrists instead

The legendary wrists were already good with high uptime on shadow blades but we could never take it because the energy regen from boots and power of shoulders were too good to pass up. So in theory we have absorbed the boots as a talent and now taken the next two best legendaries = shoulders/wrists

- - - Updated - - -

More energy from shadow focus = more energy to do the newly buffed backstab.

Ok i was going to respond before you upated your post, i have no problems getting 4x SS w/o boots. They buffed subterfuge to make SD last 1 sec longer so even w/o boots i manage to usually fit in 4 SS.

I have noticed backstab doing some crazy damage, especially on crits, but idk...still not making sense to me why SF is better....i mean i get it and the logs back it up but i don't understand why we wouldn't want more shadowstrikes from shadow dance and vanish/subterfuge.

[Uni73]

My guess is that dark shadow will solidly becomes the best build once we have t20. 25cd and the extra 10% dmg on Symbols should solidify the burst build. Possibly with DFA as well.

Pure feelycraft based on my current experiences attempting to play dark shadow + DFA and seeing the timing of symbols in that rotation but 25 cd instead of 30 should go a long way to improving the feel of it.

I think the rotation may end up being hold DFA to line up with symbols each time, then symbols>DFA>dance right before the evis>SS>SS>evis>SS then either going into a 2nd dance if available or just backstabs. You maybe be able to burn two dances with one symbols, then one dance the next, then two dances again and so forth, always lining it up with DFA at the start.

[Critical92]

It's interesting to see what is best, when to use symbols and if holding dance charges to fully use 2 dances inside sod will be a damage gain.
You can SoD/Dfa, Dance right before it lands (spam dance while flying it works) and go normal dance rotation.
In riffs guide is an opener posted maybe that could be used for every dance.
That build plays a lot like wod sub with a dance every 1 min.

[Jaronicity]

Damn you got me excited. Just tested it on training dummies and on my second DfA I procced weaponmaster on the aoe portion and it switched my target and cause no eviscerate to cast

I would complain at Blizzard about this bug, but I'm just too happy with the state of Sub right now to complain, the spec feels so much stronger now, for example on HC Gul'dan 7.2 I struggled to keep about 800k dps, can now pull 920k dps (ilevel 907 equipped).

Yea it'll do that or just land you behind your target so you're facing the wrong way and thus can't eviscerate. I think it happens when wm procs and also hits other targets. Alacrity is pretty high for me as well so I'm really just doing whatever since a lot of my sims are very close.



If I play with dfa then I go gloomblade (crits close to 1M for me) or MoS otherwise I'd use WM and Mfd - but I can't say I use WM much (GN master race! XD). Apl is constantly changing so who knows what will happen if things get changed.

Did a m+ yesterday with mos, ns, ds, dsh, dfa. Was pretty wild.

[Valentyn]

I don't get it, people are saying Dark Shadow build left and right, including Riff's guide, but all the data on WarcraftLogs pretty clearly shows a Shadow Focus - Enveloping Shadows - Master of Shadows build to be better on single target. Those talents are on average higher than their counterparts on virtually every fight: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...Talents®ion=3

You can see the same if you look at the top 100 Sub parses on most fights: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...63&partition=3 Here's Star Augur

Am I missing something? Dark Shadow - DFA build seems more complex AND performs worse. If you look at some AoE fights, it pulls ahead, but as far as I can tell, people are recommending it even on ST. Riff doesn't even mention Enveloping Shadows at all in his guide, only listing Dark Shadows and Alacrity as viable options.

Mostly because people went into the raid before those new updates and sims went live showing Dark Shadow and DfA.
I'm in the top 100! YAY!

I'll be trying DS + DfA, but the only boss left for us is GulDan, and we'll see how that goes there. Parasite damage is excluded from logs though

[shaunika123]

In my opinion dfa builds are only working in combination with deeper stratagem and the vigor ring.

the vigor ring is very bad, you dont need the energy you can just run SF

[lolpve]

It's interesting to see what is best, when to use symbols and if holding dance charges to fully use 2 dances inside sod will be a damage gain.
You can SoD/Dfa, Dance right before it lands (spam dance while flying it works) and go normal dance rotation.
In riffs guide is an opener posted maybe that could be used for every dance.
That build plays a lot like wod sub with a dance every 1 min.

The way I am doing it is to use both dance and symbols in a macro spammed mid-air during DFA and then having the entire symbols uptime for a double subterfuge dance. But that's very different to what guides suggest. In M+ that means making sure to start bosses with an evis finality ready.

[Umbrex]

Mostly because people went into the raid before those new updates and sims went live showing Dark Shadow and DfA.
I'm in the top 100! YAY!

I'll be trying DS + DfA, but the only boss left for us is GulDan, and we'll see how that goes there. Parasite damage is excluded from logs though

i tried simming with the latest nightly and ES was till ahead by 35k in my current gear. Tried lots of setups and SF/ES was ahead by quite a bit in most cases

[Pinch]

DFA doesn't seem worth it until you have T20. When you get it though (and a KJ trinket too for good measure), it seems pretty hard to top. From my PTR testing, I was pretty consistently doing a solid 10% more DPS (around 1.1m unbuffed over 8 minutes at 910 ilvl) with it than any other build/legendary/trinket combination I put together, although I hadn't really put much time in to Sub before 725.

I'm pretty sure that Specter is going to get a nerf for Subtlety like it has for Warriors, because you can stack +130% damage every time you click it with the DFA burst dance build, and it lines up very well.

[shaunika123]

DFA doesn't seem worth it until you have T20. When you get it though (and a KJ trinket too for good measure), it seems pretty hard to top. From my PTR testing, I was pretty consistently doing a solid 10% more DPS (around 1.1m unbuffed over 8 minutes at 910 ilvl) with it than any other build/legendary/trinket combination I put together, although I hadn't really put much time in to Sub before 725.

I'm pretty sure that Specter is going to get a nerf for Subtlety like it has for Warriors, because you can stack +130% damage every time you click it with the DFA burst dance build, and it lines up very well.

oh it is, trust me

altough for now it's basically competitive with the MFD build, but it's still very good

cant say whether it's the best or not cos the simc APL still isnt updated for the DFA dance combo, but it looks to be very good

[Jaronicity]

All I'm reading is not to trust sims at the moment because , as shaunika said, it's not fully optimised. Riff's guide is updated almost daily with new information. And I know talents have changed at least twice since patch. Big spec now (assuming shoulders+ bracers) is 111xx13. Ymmv however. I feel like a lot of specs are fairly close so you can play what you like for the next few days.