Legion - Subtlety discussion

[FurtyIRL]

Hello boys, made some changes to the sub guide yesterday that should be live by now. Let me know if you have any (specific) feedback regarding it. For example, there was a guy in this thread saying the guide is not optimal who was asking what number of targets he should use Shuriken Storm on the previous page (EVERYONE IS AN EXPERT). Keep in mind it is a prepatch so not every theorycrafter's best effort is firing on all cylinders, as most of us are focused on Legion. It is important to keep in mind guides are iterative and my personal goal is to make sure we can put together the most helpful information we can muster as a community. Cheers

http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/subtlet...-pve-dps-guide

[Geoffar]

Hello boys, made some changes to the sub guide yesterday that should be live by now. Let me know if you have any (specific) feedback regarding it. For example, there was a guy in this thread saying the guide is not optimal who was asking what number of targets he should use Shuriken Storm on the previous page (EVERYONE IS AN EXPERT). Keep in mind it is a prepatch so not every theorycrafter's best effort is firing on all cylinders, as most of us are focused on Legion. It is important to keep in mind guides are iterative and my personal goal is to make sure we can put together the most helpful information we can muster as a community. Cheers

http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/subtlet...-pve-dps-guide

Using this talent setup feels so good compared to some of the other ones I've tried. I can actually do burst. Altough I feel like Vers and Crit pull ahead of mastery for the prepatch, since BHTV makes Shadow Strike so strong and its doing 40% or more of my damage.

[lxoxrxd]

the damage that's in the tooltip is 100% the damage you see on screen (after armor mitigation of course). as long as you ignore procs and stuff, single hit tests are just fine on the ptr.

- - - Updated - - -

My reply was tongue-in-cheek because I think anything that old is bordering on irrelevant and would require some significant followup.

In that time I know for a fact that there have been changes, inconsistency, and new attempts at making it consistent (like the overhaul speed stacking got in WoD, which can be either multiplicative or additive depending on the permanency of the increase).

I don't have Legion, and don't intend to play Legion, so I can't test. Somebody with Legion just make a *log* of Backstabbing a dummy 100 times from behind and then 100 times from the front, and post the mean (once is not enough, there's far too much variance), and then this issue should be put to rest. Recuiem needs to post some logs, not just a blanket statement from a single hit test.

the damage that's in the tooltip is 100% the damage you see on screen (after armor mitigation of course). as long as you ignore procs and stuff, single hit tests are just fine on the ptr.

[Deleted]

Hello boys, made some changes to the sub guide yesterday that should be live by now. Let me know if you have any (specific) feedback regarding it. For example, there was a guy in this thread saying the guide is not optimal who was asking what number of targets he should use Shuriken Storm on the previous page (EVERYONE IS AN EXPERT). Keep in mind it is a prepatch so not every theorycrafter's best effort is firing on all cylinders, as most of us are focused on Legion. It is important to keep in mind guides are iterative and my personal goal is to make sure we can put together the most helpful information we can muster as a community. Cheers

http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/subtlet...-pve-dps-guide

I guess you're refering to me. I'm not claiming to be an expert, not even close to that, just that with the current data we have (like from sims) there were some inconsistences in your guide which seem to have been adressed now. I didn't mention them in my previous post, but iirc they were about Gloomblade, Nightstalker vs Subterfuge, DS vs Vigor, Premed vs Alacrity and MoSh vs the DfA.

Master of Shadows, in particular, seems that according to the sims it will always be the superior talent in its row, even at lvl 110. Maybe it's not set in stone yet, but a lot of stuff previously written in the guide that were dubious were written as certainties, such as DfA > MoSh. Stat priority was also wrong. Anyway, the guide seems to have been improved.

I have 2 points to adress though:

1. I think you should develop more about Shadow Techniques, specially since the Vigor build allows you to effectively wait for a proc to give you your 5th CP without wasting Energy. I believe this is actually quite an important aspect of Vigor's build rotation, and also an advantage over DS.

2. A minor point, but isn't Symbols of Death best used 2 or 3 seconds before the pull so you can start the fight with full energy?

[FurtyIRL]

I have 2 points to adress though:

1. I think you should develop more about Shadow Techniques, specially since the Vigor build allows you to effectively wait for a proc to give you your 5th CP without wasting Energy. I believe this is actually quite an important aspect of Vigor's build rotation, and also an advantage over DS.

2. A minor point, but isn't Symbols of Death best used 2 or 3 seconds before the pull so you can start the fight with full energy?

Yeah, as I said it's an iterative process Most of the information was considered accurate as of the Beta, and the Sim data only arrived a day or two before the patch, so had to re-do and re-proof a bunch of stuff. I appreciate the more specific feedback, because as I said, I would love to make sure that in Legion there's a resource that can be considered perfectly accurate and always updated, and I think that starts with the community. I'll definitely keep it updated as changes ebb and flow so if anyone ever spots anything that they think is "dubious", or if you just have questions in general, don't be afraid to get in touch Then we can fix it for everyone else.

[panzaghor]

Hello boys, made some changes to the sub guide yesterday that should be live by now. Let me know if you have any (specific) feedback regarding it. For example, there was a guy in this thread saying the guide is not optimal who was asking what number of targets he should use Shuriken Storm on the previous page (EVERYONE IS AN EXPERT). Keep in mind it is a prepatch so not every theorycrafter's best effort is firing on all cylinders, as most of us are focused on Legion. It is important to keep in mind guides are iterative and my personal goal is to make sure we can put together the most helpful information we can muster as a community. Cheers

http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/subtlet...-pve-dps-guide

One theorycrafter says that the difference between vigor and DS is only 1% and the other say DS isn't viable

[Deleted]

One theorycrafter says that the difference between vigor and DS is only 1% and the other say DS isn't viable

Pre-patch or Legion?

[Blokes]

@ FurtyIRL

Excellent work as always. To continue the discussion:

How important is it, with a Vigor/Premed build, to dance with 100 energy (70 with MoSh) AND 1 combo point? Wouldn't it remove the need to rely on Shadow Techniques to produce the extra one, and give you a 100% chance to proc relentless strikes, to make sure you can fit 4 shadowstrikes into each dance?

Also, would it be a dps increase to make sure you pool enough energy when you need to refresh Symbols that you can cast symbols and the normal dance rotation? Somewhere in the 130ish (100 with MoSh)?

Also, in the guide, under 3.1 in the rotation section, you call Deeper Stratagem the preferred talent in tier 3. Minor typo, I'm sure.

Again, thank you for your contribution to the rogue community. It is appreciated.

[shaunika123]

master of subtlety is totally bugged live atm (if you overlap it it doesnt extend the dura and even if you dont it just randomly disappears sometimes) is weaponmaster a better choice with that in mind?

[Deleted]

master of subtlety is totally bugged live atm (if you overlap it it doesnt extend the dura and even if you dont it just randomly disappears sometimes) is weaponmaster a better choice with that in mind?

Possibly, yes.

Anyone willing to share some Weak Auras for tracking everything? I'm not good at making these.

[shaunika123]

Possibly, yes.

Anyone willing to share some Weak Auras for tracking everything? I'm not good at making these.

if you search for the spell in wowhead itll show you the string for tracking the ability so you can make basic track weakauras for it that way

[panzaghor]

Pre-patch or Legion?

Pre-Patch.

[Blayke]

Those numbers look about right to me as well considering how often we (don't) Backstab in Legion, to keep it competitive with MoS. If you want to get an idea of how much it would add to your DPS, take how much damage you do from Backstab in a log and multiply it by 1.635 (Gloomblade does about 63.5% more damage than Backstab against a target with 35% armor and no spell resistance... if a mob in PvE has spell resistance then you need to adjust for that too... I don't PvE anymore so I couldn't say). So even with 10% bonus from MoS, your Gloomblade would always do more damage than Backstab, regardless of positioning. MoS makes up the difference though by increasing ALL YOUR OTHER damage also.

And yes, that means that the guide is very badly wrong, and people will almost assuredly be confused throughout the xpac.

As a side note, I always worry that this kind of mass confusion that's just objectively wrong tends to drown out and cause legitimate criticism to be likewise ignored.

Sadly this seems to have gotten derailed when it meandered into the quagmire of patch 1.12. I too would like to see a definitive answer on this. From everything i'm reading, gloomblade seems to be a better choice, but i'd like to see it addressed by folks who are way better at theory crafting than i am.

[dak1]

Sadly this seems to have gotten derailed when it meandered into the quagmire of patch 1.12. I too would like to see a definitive answer on this. From everything i'm reading, gloomblade seems to be a better choice, but i'd like to see it addressed by folks who are way better at theory crafting than i am.

If you can get an addon like recount, go stab something in the face a few dozen times, and save the log, then do it again stabbing from behind, and post the results, I'd be happy to interpret the data for you and tell you how Backstab works.

If you then do your best rotation for 3-4 minutes with Master of Subt as a talent and post that log too, I can tell you what your ideal level 15 talent would be for you (your rotation might not be ideal, other talent choices might change things, and durations can also change things with MoS's effectiveness converging to an average from above, so the assessment would be specific to you and the duration you test for).

I'm not playing Legion though due to a combination of being really frustrated with class development and being a new father so not having the time anyway.

[Blayke]

If you can get an addon like recount, go stab something in the face a few dozen times, and save the log, then do it again stabbing from behind, and post the results, I'd be happy to interpret the data for you and tell you how Backstab works.

I appreciate the offer, especially considering you no longer play the game. I do think I've kinda figured out how backstab works though.

The reason I think this goes beyond just jumping on a target dummy is because while Gloomblade definitely hit harder than Backstab when I tested both on the dummy (I'm assuming the dummy's armor has the same damage reduction percentage as a raid boss), I don't think it just begins and ends there. The issue is what is going to produce the greatest damage overall, a harder hitting cp generator (i.e. gloomblade), or having our shadowstrikes hit 10% harder? The latter would seem to be the obvious choice. But rogue mechanics can sometimes be counterintuitive, so I'd really like to see the math on both.

[Jaronicity]

I appreciate the offer, especially considering you no longer play the game. I do think I've kinda figured out how backstab works though.

The reason I think this goes beyond just jumping on a target dummy is because while Gloomblade definitely hit harder than Backstab when I tested both on the dummy (I'm assuming the dummy's armor has the same damage reduction percentage as a raid boss), I don't think it just begins and ends there. The issue is what is going to produce the greatest damage overall, a harder hitting cp generator (i.e. gloomblade), or having our shadowstrikes hit 10% harder? The latter would seem to be the obvious choice. But rogue mechanics can sometimes be counterintuitive, so I'd really like to see the math on both.

The thing is is that it's not just a matter of Shadowstrike hitting 10% harder. It's Nightblade, Shadowstrike, Eviscerate, DfA all getting buffed. That said, I can definitely see a scenario wherein a boss or mechanic makes it difficult to stab from the back making GB a reasonable alternative without sacrificing too much damage from everywhere else. Not to mention the fact that Sub doesn't BS all that much anyway.

[kindath]

master of subtlety is totally bugged live atm (if you overlap it it doesnt extend the dura and even if you dont it just randomly disappears sometimes) is weaponmaster a better choice with that in mind?

Probably not if you focus on not overlapping the duration. If you do overlap, vanish will allow it to refresh normally again. But that's a lot of work for a bugged ability that should just work properly.

But assuming that it bugs out immediately, you'd still get a 10% damage boost on every shadowstrike and (assuming ~30-40% shadowdance uptime) a ~3-4% damage boost on nightblade, autoattacks, and some amount of damage boost to the average eviscerate. I estimate you'd get about a 4-5% overall damage boost out of a master of subtlety that bugs out immediately.

Meanwhile, Weaponmaster should give you a ~7-8% overall damage boost since it doesn't effect autoattacks, but does give extra combo points. Also worth noting that weaponmaster is better at AoE.

[shaunika123]

Probably not if you focus on not overlapping the duration. If you do overlap, vanish will allow it to refresh normally again. But that's a lot of work for a bugged ability that should just work properly.

But assuming that it bugs out immediately, you'd still get a 10% damage boost on every shadowstrike and (assuming ~30-40% shadowdance uptime) a ~3-4% damage boost on nightblade, autoattacks, and some amount of damage boost to the average eviscerate. I estimate you'd get about a 4-5% overall damage boost out of a master of subtlety that bugs out immediately.

Meanwhile, Weaponmaster should give you a ~7-8% overall damage boost since it doesn't effect autoattacks, but does give extra combo points. Also worth noting that weaponmaster is better at AoE.

it usually expires after 1-2 shadowstrikes

and i cant not overlap it since due to ring openers and setbonus i have to use use dances right away

so it's really just annoying

[kindath]

it usually expires after 1-2 shadowstrikes

and i cant not overlap it since due to ring openers and setbonus i have to use use dances right away

so it's really just annoying

Yeah, you're right. Can't even use vanish to fix after opener because of the set bonus.

Use weaponmaster until MoSub gets fixed.

[viezavi]

Is Withering Bite still in game? Read it on Wowhead saying that it is a possible hidden spell for our artifact