Whoch route should I go?

[Deleted]

I've come back to wow and picked a Rogue. Finally got my artifact choice but unsure which spec to go with. I'm mainly interested in PVP, I do enjoy stunning and causing havoc but I'm assuming all the specs have the same amount of stuns? Plus I'm new to the rogue but up for learning how to play it right, so difficulty doesn't bother me so long as it's enjoyable once learnt.

Thoughts?

[honung]

Assassination
Lowest skill requirement for a Rogue by a wide margin. Basically a Frost DK in Rogue form. Poor toolkit, playstyle demands you run after people and spam damage. On paper the CC toolkit looks similar to the other specs, but in practice the only CC you reliably have access to is Kidney Shot, and Assa needs to use it on kill target. Other than that you have Cheap Shot, Sap or Garrote on restealths or every 2 minutes with Vanish and Blind every 2 minutes. Spec gets easily kited because Rogue slows are 30% (36% for Assassination) and it has no Shadowstrike like Subtlety.

When you play it in 3s, your role is usually to tunnel someone into the ground. Kidney on DR, spam damage. Sometimes you also multi-dot for extra damage. You have very limited ways to do anything else than that so when your teammates are in trouble you often can't help them much, so you just kind of pretend it's not happening and keep doing what you're doing and hope they live.

It's my favourite spec to play in BGs because it can actually kill people by itself, and it is easy to get restealths which allow you have more CC than usual.

Subtlety
A support spec with strong CC. Has unlimited access to Cheap Shot and Sap while being able to stick on targets with Shadowstrike. Also has a shorter cooldown on everything with Shadow's Caress, so has access to powerful things like Kick and Blind more often. Is played with talents that make any form of resource management trivial, so the main difficulty of the spec is just coordinating CCing well with your teammates and resisting the urge to stun randomly and waste DRs. Doesn't actually do any burst damage, so you're mostly a stun bot that's there to support your Mage so they can kill people.

Horrible to play in BGs because it can't kill people in a reasonable amount of time.

Outlaw
A spec that is very powerful WHEN YOU HAVE TRUE BEARING (cooldown reduction roll from RTB). Has decent burst when you have CDs but puts out no sustained damage. Great CC with ranged Kidney with no CD and Gouge on top of the usual toolkit. Also has Tricks which gives your Mage 15% more damage during burst so they can kill people for you more effectively. Main problem with the spec is that it is basically completely useless when you don't have True Bearing up, so you find yourself running around doing nothing just trying to roll it.

Not really played it in BGs much, but can't imagine it's particularly good.

But yeah, without trying to sound overly negative I'm just keeping it real. Assassination is brainless and the other two are mostly support specs that completely depend on the strength of other classes for their viability, and neither is what I signed up for. Hopefully it'll improve come 7.2.5 where they've said they are going to be redesigning Subtlety so it has burst again.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the reply and the information! So basically Assassintion is currently the go to spec for most things right now? Never really enjoyed DoT gameplay from playing a warlock and feral in the past bear in mind this was a long time ago, so my question is how many do you have to maintain? As if it's not that intensive I may roll that instead of sub (always liked the idea of striking from the shadows - but want some bite instead of being a CC support)

[honung]

Thanks for the reply and the information! So basically Assassintion is currently the go to spec for most things right now? Never really enjoyed DoT gameplay from playing a warlock and feral in the past bear in mind this was a long time ago, so my question is how many do you have to maintain? As if it's not that intensive I may roll that instead of sub (always liked the idea of striking from the shadows - but want some bite instead of being a CC support)

All three specs are playable though Subtlety is generally the best for 3s at the moment, but it depends on what you're facing.

Assa juggles two DoTs, Rupture and Garrote.

[Deleted]

All three specs are playable though Subtlety is generally the best for 3s at the moment, but it depends on what you're facing.

Assa juggles two DoTs, Rupture and Garrote.

I'm looking to play a mixture of 2s with my friend (he's a fury - dunno if it's a good setup but yeah) and random BGs till I'm "alright" at PVP then look for some 3s. 2 dots should be alright, does it have better burst than sub too?

[honung]

I'm looking to play a mixture of 2s with my friend (he's a fury - dunno if it's a good setup but yeah) and random BGs till I'm "alright" at PVP then look for some 3s. 2 dots should be alright, does it have better burst than sub too?

Sustained damage of Assa and Sub are fairly similar, but Assa has a 24% healing reduction in Wound Poison which is a huge deal. Assassination has way more burst, and every Kidney is fairly threatening. When you have Kidney, Vendetta and Kingsbane it's a ton of damage.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Assassination's traits are very powerful and that could make it pull ahead as time goes on. All three new traits are good, especially the golden which is crazy. In the old tree there are plenty of powerful three-pointers that you can put a fourth point into. Vendetta CDR, Poison damage, Rupture damage, Envenom damage, Rupture crit. Subtlety's new traits are mixed. The new four-pointer is very strong, but the other two are bad. Most of the three-pointers in the old tree kind of suck, with the only one that really stands out being Eviscerate crit. Shadowstrike and Nightblade damage are also okay, but you're not Shadowstriking that much when you're going for kills anyway.

But on the other hand, Subtlety is getting big changes next patch so who knows what's going to happen.

[Deleted]

Sustained damage of Assa and Sub are fairly similar, but Assa has a 24% healing reduction in Wound Poison which is a huge deal. Assassination has way more burst, and every Kidney is fairly threatening. When you have Kidney, Vendetta and Kingsbane it's a ton of damage.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Assassination's traits are very powerful and that could make it pull ahead as time goes on. All three new traits are good, especially the golden which is crazy. In the old tree there are plenty of powerful three-pointers that you can put a fourth point into. Vendetta CDR, Poison damage, Rupture damage, Envenom damage, Rupture crit. Subtlety's new traits are mixed. The new four-pointer is very strong, but the other two are bad. Most of the three-pointers in the old tree kind of suck, with the only one that really stands out being Eviscerate crit. Shadowstrike and Nightblade damage are also okay, but you're not Shadowstriking that much when you're going for kills anyway.

But on the other hand, Subtlety is getting big changes next patch so who knows what's going to happen.

Do you think if I tried out Assassination it would be good with my friends fury? Or would Sub be better for that?

[honung]

Do you think if I tried out Assassination it would be good with my friends fury? Or would Sub be better for that?

I think it'd be a terrible comp either way. The only properly solid double DPS comp for Rogue is Rogue Mage, and even that is not as good as healer comps.