Slice and Dice = just another weakaura on your screen.

[Finear]

RtB is the reason I mained outlaw in Legion, loved the idea and the animation. It seems to be a love or hate kinda ability. No in-between.

yeah theme wise i love it but i hate the gameplay around it

in general i really like how outlaw fantasy works but playing it feels so weird, i think i enjoyed cata/mop combat the most (granted i play assassination most of the time)

[Saltysquidoon]

RtB is the reason I mained outlaw in Legion, loved the idea and the animation. It seems to be a love or hate kinda ability. No in-between.

Yeah, it is, because watching the other rogue drop a six role and shoot to the top of the meters while you're stuck spending 15 CP to reroll buried treasure and hanging out with the tanks is just about the quickest way in the world to make someone hate an ability I've ever experienced.


As for SnD it's a boring maintenance buff you just hit when your WA tells you, it's up there with hunters mark in terms of lazy unpruning for the sake of 'muh buttons'.
It's not even a feels neutral button for muti like it is for combat (which actually has rtb interactions with it), it feels bad having to press this instead of envenom (there is a reason cut to the chase has existed for muti since cata), not to mention it effectively has anti synergy with the kyrian ability.

I suspect sub will feel just as bad with the "time to drop a big meaty eviscerate, oh dance is up in 10 better refresh SnD instead" moments. It's bad enough on live using cp to keep up shitty right blade, imagine how unfun it's going to be juggling rupture and snd around dance windows.

This is the thing: There is a place for plate spinning in wow; There is a place for buffs and debuff. But they need to actually have a place in the kit (beyond 'muh buttons', 'muh vanilla') that makes you want to press them. Buffs or debuffs that feel like homework you have to finish before you get to go out and have fun are just badly designed our poorly implemented.

[shoegazing]

Yeah, it is, because watching the other rogue drop a six role and shoot to the top of the meters while you're stuck spending 15 CP to reroll buried treasure and hanging out with the tanks is just about the quickest way in the world to make someone hate an ability I've ever experienced.


As for SnD it's a boring maintenance buff you just hit when your WA tells you, it's up there with hunters mark in terms of lazy unpruning for the sake of 'muh buttons'.
It's not even a feels neutral button for muti like it is for combat (which actually has rtb interactions with it), it feels bad having to press this instead of envenom (there is a reason cut to the chase has existed for muti since cata), not to mention it effectively has anti synergy with the kyrian ability.

I suspect sub will feel just as bad with the "time to drop a big meaty eviscerate, oh dance is up in 10 better refresh SnD instead" moments. It's bad enough on live using cp to keep up shitty right blade, imagine how unfun it's going to be juggling rupture and snd around dance windows.

This is the thing: There is a place for plate spinning in wow; There is a place for buffs and debuff. But they need to actually have a place in the kit (beyond 'muh buttons', 'muh vanilla') that makes you want to press them. Buffs or debuffs that feel like homework you have to finish before you get to go out and have fun are just badly designed our poorly implemented.

You would not have this issue if you weren't looking at the game solely from a limited "muh rotation in PvE" perspective.

Sure, when tunneling a boss, SnD mostly becomes a thing that you just refresh every time it's up. There are still nuances in encounters that have in-out phases for melee. In PvP, the question of "do I want burst damage now or to increase my throughput in the near future?" is a lot more interesting, as well as "how many combo points should I spend on this based on the time on target I anticipate having?"

[Saltysquidoon]

Sure, when tunneling a boss, SnD mostly becomes a thing that you just refresh every time it's up. There are still nuances in encounters that have in-out phases for melee. In PvP, the question of "do I want burst damage now or to increase my throughput in the near future?" is a lot more interesting, as well as "how many combo points should I spend on this based on the time on target I anticipate having?"

Sure it's less binary in PvP (everything is) but it's not like you have infinite options to spend CP on.
The prio for sub I imagine would be; ST (if talented, which it wouldn't be) > evis (if you think they'll die or you're going into a burst window and you expect them to die) > snd (if they aren't going to die and it's not up/needs to be refreshed) > Rupture (if they aren't going to die/you expect to be switching or off-target/ if snd is up).

I mean with the damage amp going from night blade to find weakness and dots, in general, being ass in pvp (right now) rupture is going to be weak as shit.

[shoegazing]

Sure it's less binary in PvP (everything is) but it's not like you have infinite options to spend CP on.
The prio for sub I imagine would be; ST (if talented, which it wouldn't be) > evis (if you think they'll die or you're going into a burst window and you expect them to die) > snd (if they aren't going to die and it's not up/needs to be refreshed) > Rupture (if they aren't going to die/you expect to be switching or off-target/ if snd is up).

I mean with the damage amp going from night blade to find weakness and dots, in general, being ass in pvp (right now) rupture is going to be weak as shit.

Yeah, I'm not defending the Shadowlands design, which I think is more hot garbage coming from a team at Blizzard that has seen a lot of turnover (both Chadd Nervig and John Yang have moved to Hearthstone) and has already demonstrated many times over that they didn't understand Rogues very well to begin with (I'll never forget that they tried to implement a random, uncontrolled AoE shadow damage explosion on leaving Stealth, and the fact that nobody in the room shot that down within two seconds of its proposal is all the evidence I've ever needed that they are fucking morons who very obviously have never once played this class in PvP).

For Subtlety, I'd like to see Energetic Recovery on SnD and Sanguinary Veins for bleed effects. I'd like to see Find Weakness applied only from Stealth/Dance and not randomly from builders, and I'd like to see Find Weakness buffed to its pre-Legion level.

With that said, your concept of the finisher priority in PvP is a decent start but also doesn't account for Kidney Shot, which on the one hand should be used optimally when you can fire on all cylinders with damage and CC, but on the other hand sometimes needs to be used at a non-optimal time to avoid losing the match. The other thing that you aren't accounting for is that in PvP, it's usually better to spend less than 5cp on finishers like SnD and Rupture.

[Saltysquidoon]

With that said, your concept of the finisher priority in PvP is a decent start but also doesn't account for Kidney Shot, which on the one hand should be used optimally when you can fire on all cylinders with damage and CC, but on the other hand sometimes needs to be used at a non-optimal time to avoid losing the match. The other thing that you aren't accounting for is that in PvP, it's usually better to spend less than 5cp on finishers like SnD and Rupture.

You're right about kidney, MB on forgetting it. I was thinking strictly in transferring PvE to PvP and overlooked it.

[Dunkelzahn]

You have to remember how Blizzard's developers think.

"If someone is using an ability or doing something in game a lot, it must mean it's a fun ability or activity, so let's double down on it! So what if they're only doing it because it's needed if not mandatory to keep up with the Joneses, or we're bribing them to use it? That's inconsequential. We're fantastic game designers, so everything we add is automatically fun, this just confirms it."

That's why you have abilities like Slice and Dice.

[shoegazing]

You have to remember how Blizzard's developers think.

"If someone is using an ability or doing something in game a lot, it must mean it's a fun ability or activity, so let's double down on it! So what if they're only doing it because it's needed if not mandatory to keep up with the Joneses, or we're bribing them to use it? That's inconsequential. We're fantastic game designers, so everything we add is automatically fun, this just confirms it."

That's why you have abilities like Slice and Dice.

I find this analysis flawed for several of reasons, not the least of those being that Slice and Dice has already been pruned and unavailable to Subtlety and Assassination for the past two expansions.

More broadly, you may not want to admit it, but a lot of Rogues have been asking for a return to Rogue gameplay how it was before the Legion expansion.

[Hero2Zer0]

SnD should've stayed a talent, smoke bomb, and gouge, woild be nice. What I really want is the old death from above

[Saltysquidoon]

More broadly, you may not want to admit it, but a lot of Rogues have been asking for a return to Rogue gameplay how it was before the Legion expansion.

Can I have Cut to the Chase then? It's integral to the return to my pre-legion gameplay.

[shoegazing]

Just make Slice and Dice a passive already, it might as well be with rogues requiring 100% uptime. Would their DPS -really- take off if they every, what, 40 seconds(?) spent those combo points on a damaging finisher instead?

I doubt it.

This change has nothing to do with tuning. It's not a matter of "our dps would take off if we didn't have to refresh slice and dice". The tuning of our damage will be done to reach a pre-determined target whether or not SnD exists. The point of this change is purely the playstyle.

Can I have Cut to the Chase then? It's integral to the return to my pre-legion gameplay.

Take it up with the developers. I've been tweeting them multiple times per week that they need to bring back Premeditation and Energetic Recovery to support SnD's place in Subtlety's kit.

[Naiattavain]

damn shoegazing your doing alot of work. is sub going to be that good to play again?

[Mozu]

RtB is the reason I mained outlaw in Legion, loved the idea and the animation. It seems to be a love or hate kinda ability. No in-between.

You love the idea of RNG rolls to the point where you just keep rerolling until you get the buff you want? I'm curious, do you care about parsing at all?

I think the people who are happy about snd coming back are the people who enjoy being competitive on meters, and people who were happy with rtb are those that care less about that aspect of the game.

[shoegazing]

damn shoegazing your doing alot of work. is sub going to be that good to play again?

No. They are making baby steps in the right direction but overall it still looks utterly terrible.

[Saltysquidoon]

I think the people who are happy about snd coming back are the people who enjoy being competitive on meters, and people who were happy with rtb are those that care less about that aspect of the game.

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion since in SL outlaw's going to have both rtb (with the CD) and snd. Further, snd is going to have effectively no impact on the meters because blizzard isn't going to just not balance around the fact they're giving every spec a 20% attack speed increase.

[Mozu]

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion since in SL outlaw's going to have both rtb (with the CD) and snd.

Because the CD importantly reduces the amount of variance a bad roll will give you since you can't sit there and spam reroll wasting energy and combo points? Seems obvious.

Further, snd is going to have effectively no impact on the meters because blizzard isn't going to just not balance around the fact they're giving every spec a 20% attack speed increase.

I don't even know what you're saying here. The important part about snd is that you can work it into your rotation reliably with zero rng. Maintaining a good rotation then becomes about skill rather than luck. It has nothing to do with damage balance whatsoever.

[Saltysquidoon]

I don't even know what you're saying here. The important part about snd is that you can work it into your rotation reliably with zero rng. Maintaining a good rotation then becomes about skill rather than luck. It has nothing to do with damage balance whatsoever.

My point was "I think the people who are happy about snd coming back are the people who enjoy being competitive on meters" just makes no sense because outlaw still has rtb and you can still get a bad roll you just can't fix it in SL and every spec is getting snd as just a button your press when the simmed WA lights up, snd gives you no more (and arguably less, since more buttons means more chances to fuck up) control then you have now.

[Mozu]

My point was "I think the people who are happy about snd coming back are the people who enjoy being competitive on meters" just makes no sense because outlaw still has rtb,

I agree, remove rtb entirely. But in its current SL form, it at least reduces the rotational dps variance it causes by not requiring you to waste energy and combo points to fix it. Thus, it'll have less impact overall on your damage than it currently does. Which is a good thing when dealing with RNG. You want an ability you can control, not a slot machine, to decide your contribution to the group.

and every spec is getting snd as just a button your press when the simmed WA lights up,

It just goes to show how out of touch the people that use "just another weakaura" are when they say this. For being such an easy thing to do, there sure were a lot of rogues that couldn't do it effectively back then (and even now on classic).

snd gives you no more (and arguably less, since more buttons means more chances to fuck up) control then you have now.

It gives you absolute control rather than relying on RNG. It's not a hard concept.

[Ragnarohk]

You love the idea of RNG rolls to the point where you just keep rerolling until you get the buff you want? I'm curious, do you care about parsing at all?

I think the people who are happy about snd coming back are the people who enjoy being competitive on meters, and people who were happy with rtb are those that care less about that aspect of the game.

No, I don't acre about about parsing. I liked the overall theme of the class (always had a pirate xmog/title/mount/pet) and the gambling aspect of RtB. It felt awesome when you fished out all the buffs, and when you didn't, it was fine too. The spec was in a really good spot in Legion as far as I remember. It was just a really fun spec to play. I wans't raiding mythic tho. Highest I went was heroic raiding and Mythic+15. I play as a casual now, without group commitment and fixed schedule or anything.

[Mozu]

No, I don't acre about about parsing. I liked the overall theme of the class (always had a pirate xmog/title/mount/pet) and the gambling aspect of RtB. It felt awesome when you fished out all the buffs, and when you didn't, it was fine too. The spec was in a really good spot in Legion as far as I remember. It was just a really fun spec to play.

Yeah, it makes a lot more sense to enjoy RtB thematically if you're not worried about doing well competitively.

There's good and bad ways to handle RNG in rotations (fire mage vs frost mage, for instance) so hopefully Blizzard can make a better competitive rotation while maintaining the thematic ideals that players like you enjoy.