Shadowlands Sub Rogue : "Hopefully better" then BFA? That is all?

[Saltysquidoon]

The problem with sub isn't that it's not WoD sub (much to shoegazing's chagrin I'm sure) it's that they didn't commit one way or the other (same with outlaw).

Instead of going full naruto ninja nonsense, they decided to do some strange half and half where they kept the absolute bare bones of sub (eviscerate goes brrrr) and replaced the flesh with some half-assed ninja skin.

That and because sub was good on one fight in the first tier they decided to nuke the spec for an entire expansion.

[shoegazing]

Instead of going full naruto ninja nonsense, they decided to do some strange half and half where they kept the absolute bare bones of sub (eviscerate goes brrrr) and replaced the flesh with some half-assed ninja skin.

Why should they ever go "full naruto ninja nonsense" totally out of left field for the spec when many Rogue players have invested hundreds of days /played over a decade or more into their character? It would be one thing to introduce a new spec, it's another thing entirely to replace someone's character with something completely different.

Do you not recall the huge backlash after the initial Legion announcement? Throughout Legion beta and up to launch, then again in 7.2.5 patch, they rolled back more and more of the initial Legion vision.

In BFA they rolled more of it back further still (reintroducing Find Weakness) and now in SL they are rolling back even further pieces of it.

So since the initial Legion announcement, there has been a consistent and clear trend for multiple expansions of what direction they are going in. I do agree that they need to fully commit and go all the way, of course. The sad reality is that time and development budget are likely the only things holding them back.

[Fantazma]

Only 1 week for the beta....
- We still have 1 talent "hidden in the shadows". (what if it sucks?)
- No mention of GOUGE yet (with the whole community is asking for this skill in feed-back).
- If they think they fixed Sub-Rogue by just giving us SnD (seriously, I still think this should be a passive skill), Poisons and Shiv ... they are drunk.
Only 1 week for the Beta. Pray for sub.

[shoegazing]

Only 1 week for the beta....
- We still have 1 talent "hidden in the shadows". (what if it sucks?)
- No mention of GOUGE yet (with the whole community is asking for this skill in feed-back).
- If they think they fixed Sub-Rogue by just giving us SnD (seriously, I still think this should be a passive skill), Poisons and Shiv ... they are drunk.
Only 1 week for the Beta. Pray for sub.

SnD returning is great. We need more finishers. We need to be able to make decisions like, do I want to do some damage now, or do I want to do even more damage later? SnD allows us to make those decisions again.

But yea the overall lack of communication is a huge disappointment. Almost every class received multiple Blue posts explaining their reasoning and the further changes they are making.

Meanwhile Rogue talents aren't even complete and we've received absolutely NOTHING from Blizzard in terms of "this is how we are thinking about the class, this is what we are planning to do, these are the points we still aren't sure about" etc

[Fantazma]

SnD returning is great. We need more finishers. We need to be able to make decisions like, do I want to do some damage now, or do I want to do even more damage later? SnD allows us to make those decisions again.

But yea the overall lack of communication is a huge disappointment. Almost every class received multiple Blue posts explaining their reasoning and the further changes they are making.

Meanwhile Rogue talents aren't even complete and we've received absolutely NOTHING from Blizzard in terms of "this is how we are thinking about the class, this is what we are planning to do, these are the points we still aren't sure about" etc

I'm just going to disagree about SnD.
Of course, getting a new skill is always a good thing ... however I believe it would be much more interesting for SnD to come in as a passive (8 secs of SnD each time we use SS or Cheap Shop, for example?) Or else a BUFF in Symbols of Death?
I dont know....! I don't like having to spend combo points for my spec to do what it should normally do. It's just my opinion.

And about "we need more finishers"....
I believe we already have enough. They just REALLY need to look like finishers. Do you remember "Death From Above" on WOD ?? This applied damage at the beginning of the jump and when it hit the target it was an eviscerate with 50% more damage. (today it is 10% and no more damage is applied at the beginning).
Sad to see an iconic skill become today's trash ....
If they buff DFA or Eviscerate...
If they buff SecTec...
...we will never need new finishers.

[Radazar]

SnD returning is great. We need more finishers. We need to be able to make decisions like, do I want to do some damage now, or do I want to do even more damage later? SnD allows us to make those decisions again.

But yea the overall lack of communication is a huge disappointment. Almost every class received multiple Blue posts explaining their reasoning and the further changes they are making.

Meanwhile Rogue talents aren't even complete and we've received absolutely NOTHING from Blizzard in terms of "this is how we are thinking about the class, this is what we are planning to do, these are the points we still aren't sure about" etc

what other finishers do you want? we will have a single target finisher, and DoT finisher, a buff finisher and a new AoE finisher, what more can they add?

the problem isnt that we need more finisher, its the ones we have that need worked on. right now the spec has no identity. Going the ninja road wouldn't be a bad thing as it would give them a clear idea on how to better make the spec feel different from the other two

[Niwes]

I tell you why not much will change and Sub still will suck in SL:

when you have a look at WarcraftLogs for the last 3-4 years, you realize, for pure dps classes, that you find 1 of these 2 pictures:

picture 1)
- 1 spec is superior i.e. raiding
- 1 spec is superior i.e. m+
- 1 spec sucks everywhere

picture 2)
- 1 spec is superior in raiding and m+
- 2 specs sucks everywhere

this is true for every pure dps class like mages, hunters, locks and rogues.

the reason why is simple: to pack most specs together in the frame that is above „viable“ Blizz/Game has simply too much specs. since they can not make a hybrids only dps spec total garbage, because its his only dps spec, they have to „use“ pure dps specs as the garbage specs. because they have 1 or 2 alternative dps specs.

that said and with above picture (its the truth, checkout WarcraftLogs archives) in mind, you realize for rogues the following fact:

Rogue class have to have at least 1 garbage spec.

so, now that we analyzed that and can call that a fact, we look at „which spec“ will be the garbage spec. when you look at Blizz over the years they go the „dont change something that is not broken“ road (most of the time, not always). Assa works well and is on top since 3-4 years+ overall. Outlaw worked well in m+ but overscaled. no one literally play sub.

so, what do you think they will do ? ofc they bring outlaw in line, keep assa as it is and piss on sub. because they need 1 sucking spec anyway. why should they change the overall thing ? they make i.e. 700.000 sub rogues happy and make 700.000 assa rogues angry, when they swap assa i.e. to the grabage spec. they win nothing.

so the easy answer is: they will not change much. going into SL Sub, MM or Surv Hunter, Arcane Mage and Demo or Destro Lock still will suck. you can call me on that, because you just have to look at the past and combine this with a reasonal and rational mindset. the result will be whats happening.

[Fantazma]

Rogue class have to have at least 1 garbage spec.

Dude, I'm sorry but that doesn't make sense.
If I have three children, will the youngest be born without a leg so the world will not lose his balance? (just kidding) lol
Before Legion Assa, Combat and Subtlety were great ...!
Sometimes it was not perfect for all types of content ... but it was almost perfect and it was almost impossible to see a player unhappy with any of the 3 specs.
As I said before, I have nothing against the concept of class fantasy. I find it interesting. But in the case of the Rogue Sub we were not lucky ... and the spec today is only a shadow (purple) of what was once ...

[Vezy]

I don't often often post on public forums , but I've decided to try to add something to the conversation. Might be quite a long post ,so hold on to your butts.
I've been maining rogue for years, sub to be more specific , raided on it in Heroic and Mythic and was around 2k back in mop (nothing special ,I am aware) back when I liked pvp in wow. I am not going to say much about the state of the class in pvp at the moment as I have not got enough exp to do so , and the fact that 8.3 pvp is a clownfiesta.
So with that out of the way:
Outlaw : Combat was never complicated to play but outlaw is terrible (in my opinion ofc). There is nothing about the spec that stands out to me , except the nutty dmg it could/can dish out. The basic rotation is just build 5 CP and roll , if you get a good roll , great , if you get a bad one , sucks to be you. When you do have a good buff you still do nothing special , you build faster CP faster , press the 2 buttons you have faster and do more dmg. And you have the whole BtE will it crit won't it crit thing.
In Shadowlands all they are doing is putting RtB on a cd and making it cost energy instead of CP. I've not got alpha access so I don't know how it feels , but I wager it makes little difference, you are just stuck with bad rolls for longer. They are also removing the 2 stacks of BF back down to one , from what I've seen you will still be able to have it up most of the time , so no big deal. (I personally despise the spec and have a hard time understanding why people enjoy it , but to each his own)

Assas: It's what it is. Shadowlands is not mixing it up too much , SnD will just give you a buff to maintain, might be a bit overkill considering you've got quite a few things to maintain already so you will end up spending even less CPs on instant dmg. I feel Assas has a good core but that it's missing , idk how to put it, "moments of glory" . It is solid (for those who like that style of play) and I hope that all the systems that are being added (soulbinds , conduits , legos and whatever else) give it some more bling.

Sub: My area of expertise. The black sheep of the rogue family. I don't know what they were hoping to achieve when they completely redesigned it back in Legion (spec fantasy?) but at the start it was , as a lot of you might remember, dead. Very few played it (kinda like now) , I played it back then. Blizz to their credit saw that it was dead and gradually fixed it over the course of legion and by the end when we had all the legos the artifact stuff and all the changes it was good. It was not not easy for sure , the whole Death from above , 100% crit , % dmg increase combo was decently tough to pull off and felt rly good (them 20 mil crits). And it was like that more or less from ToS to Antorus. Then Bfa happened. We lost alot. Legos, artifact abb, Shuriken combo after Uldir . And we were back to the start of legion more or less. A clunky , hard to execute dead spec that even when played perfectly does significantly less dmg than a facerolling Outlaw or DH. Today , after all the system bandaging , it feels meh tbh , I still play it , I sadly don't have the time or the will to raid on it , but I do some 15s ,16 ,17 and easily outdps your average meta reroller that has now picked up a fire mage or DH or whatever. It needs some love to be sure and I'm hopeful . Shadowlands is again making a decently sized redesign of the base spec that to me looks (I can only look at this point , as I have not played it) better. Quite a similar situation to assas , if their systems add more depth to the skeleton of the class it should be good . We still beed to see that last talent , and Blizz , pls give us a better animation for Shadow Vault , I don't wanna hop my way up the dmg meter , you can do better than that I'm sure.

So to me the thing that will make rogue a good class this expack will be the systems. So what can we see from the systems?
Covenant abbs: There is a chat about this already , although I believe it has derailed a bit as online discussions tend to do, but the opinion of the majority is that they are underwhelming. I agree. The Kyrian one has a chance to be interesting , but these days we don't control our CPs as well as we used to , so the testers say that it's a bit clunky. But even if it is good , I doubt I will see many Kyrian rogues, the aesthetics contrast to much in my opinion. Venthyr , it's a joke , even if the dmg was good , it does not add anything to the playstyle of any of the 3 specs . It exists, it's like a passive more or less. (Hope it gets a full rework) Necrolord, seems fine , does not blow my pants off and it does not interplay much with any of the base specs. Night fae , seems a bit clunky in a lot of content (esp solo) but I can see it being fun , although I would still prefer it to change bottom up. So that's that , in summary I don't think it's the end of the world , most of the changes are positive I just hope they nail the borrowed power systems as it could get a bit stale. It ties to some of the more large scale issues with Shadowlands , like that fact that I don't think they will be able to balance covenants very well.

[Radazar]

Covenant abbs: There is a chat about this already , although I believe it has derailed a bit as online discussions tend to do, but the opinion of the majority is that they are underwhelming. I agree. The Kyrian one has a chance to be interesting , but these days we don't control our CPs as well as we used to , so the testers say that it's a bit clunky. But even if it is good , I doubt I will see many Kyrian rogues, the aesthetics contrast to much in my opinion. Venthyr , it's a joke , even if the dmg was good , it does not add anything to the playstyle of any of the 3 specs . It exists, it's like a passive more or less. (Hope it gets a full rework) Necrolord, seems fine , does not blow my pants off and it does not interplay much with any of the base specs. Night fae , seems a bit clunky in a lot of content (esp solo) but I can see it being fun , although I would still prefer it to change bottom up. So that's that , in summary I don't think it's the end of the world , most of the changes are positive I just hope they nail the borrowed power systems as it could get a bit stale. It ties to some of the more large scale issues with Shadowlands , like that fact that I don't think they will be able to balance covenants very well.

its sad the Venthyr is the one i like the theme of the most but the ability is meh, your right even if the upgraded poison dose a lot more damage its passive so not fun. i agree with you the Kyrian seems fun and might be one of the better ines but the theme doesn't fit rogues at all. i know the armor is cosmetic but still. hope they listen to us in beta and we can get the venthyr changed

[Coldkil]

its sad the Venthyr is the one i like the theme of the most but the ability is meh, your right even if the upgraded poison dose a lot more damage its passive so not fun. i agree with you the Kyrian seems fun and might be one of the better ines but the theme doesn't fit rogues at all. i know the armor is cosmetic but still. hope they listen to us in beta and we can get the venthyr changed

Agree - though i vastly prefer a boring but reliably working ability compared to the clusterfuck that the "empowered combo" one is. Also venthyr give an additional teleport, with is nothing to scoff about.

Add also that i love the setting, it's a no brainer to me.

[Kaver]

We need to be able to make decisions like, do I want to do some damage now, or do I want to do even more damage later? SnD allows us to make those decisions again.

This decision is almost never going to be relevant in the current edition of the game because we generate so many resources (combo points). You can generate 5-6 combo points in 1 sec, so there is not really going to be any interesting decision. If you compare Combo Points to money then it's like saying that a billionaire has an interesting decision of whether to buy a car or a boat. It's not interesting because he can just buy both. We are currently "billionaires" when it comes to combo points because we generate so many that this choice between using SnD or Evis is not interesting because we can use both in the matter of a few seconds anyway. It's not like it was in classic where combo points was much more scarse.

[Radazar]

Agree - though i vastly prefer a boring but reliably working ability compared to the clusterfuck that the "empowered combo" one is. Also venthyr give an additional teleport, with is nothing to scoff about.

Add also that i love the setting, it's a no brainer to me.

didnt even think about the teleport, but im with you i like the setting and it was my first pick even before i know what the ability was.

i did see a new weapon enchant that when usinf a spell or ability you make your target take more damage from that school of damage, so i was thinking for sub, if the damage increase is worth it, we might see gloom blade be worth using in PvE with all the bonus shadow damage we will be doing. or at least i hope it dose

[Coldkil]

didnt even think about the teleport, but im with you i like the setting and it was my first pick even before i know what the ability was.

i did see a new weapon enchant that when usinf a spell or ability you make your target take more damage from that school of damage, so i was thinking for sub, if the damage increase is worth it, we might see gloom blade be worth using in PvE with all the bonus shadow damage we will be doing. or at least i hope it dose

Didn't see that but makes sense. It all depends on numbers - but yeah it seems a good idea. I'd really like to see a better use of Gloomblade.

[Vezy]

didnt even think about the teleport, but im with you i like the setting and it was my first pick even before i know what the ability was.

i did see a new weapon enchant that when usinf a spell or ability you make your target take more damage from that school of damage, so i was thinking for sub, if the damage increase is worth it, we might see gloom blade be worth using in PvE with all the bonus shadow damage we will be doing. or at least i hope it dose

We will see about the dmg of the ench it might be bis but even if it is I doubt it will change the gameplay much. As for Gloomblade , I find it really dull. Yea your main builder is now shadow dmg and you don't need to be behind your target while that is good for those fights where you can't be behind your target and has seen use in pvp it does not alter your gameplay one bit, it's just a waste of a talent spot. Most of your dmg as sub comes from Evisc and Shadowstrike. If you manage your Shadow dances well enough you shouldn't cast that many backstabs/gloomblades. I've not used that talent at all since it's been introduced , might as well not exist as far as I'm concerned. Would much rather have a interesting passive that alters the way the spec works so that I feel when I change talent build that I've actually changed my rotation somewhat.

[Coldkil]

That's basically what everyone thinks. Still, we have Gloomblade there and since it's not going away apparently either we're gonna use it because it's superior in performance or not because it's inferior.

It's just pure numbers right now, and since nothing is balanced yet we can only guess. Granted i'd just have backstab and gloomblade merged (or the latter removed altogether) and replaced with something that's actually worth having.

[Radazar]

We will see about the dmg of the ench it might be bis but even if it is I doubt it will change the gameplay much. As for Gloomblade , I find it really dull. Yea your main builder is now shadow dmg and you don't need to be behind your target while that is good for those fights where you can't be behind your target and has seen use in pvp it does not alter your gameplay one bit, it's just a waste of a talent spot. Most of your dmg as sub comes from Evisc and Shadowstrike. If you manage your Shadow dances well enough you shouldn't cast that many backstabs/gloomblades. I've not used that talent at all since it's been introduced , might as well not exist as far as I'm concerned. Would much rather have a interesting passive that alters the way the spec works so that I feel when I change talent build that I've actually changed my rotation somewhat.

only reason i say use gloomblade with that enchant if the damage buff is worth it is the addition to evisc doing 50% extra damage as shadow to targets with find weakness.

[Vezy]

That's basically what everyone thinks. Still, we have Gloomblade there and since it's not going away apparently either we're gonna use it because it's superior in performance or not because it's inferior.

It's just pure numbers right now, and since nothing is balanced yet we can only guess. Granted i'd just have backstab and gloomblade merged (or the latter removed altogether) and replaced with something that's actually worth having.

I have seen a few people that like gloomblade (for reasons unknown to me) but yes the majority share the opinion that it's shit. I feel blizz has been better with feedback this time around so I don't see a reason why the community wouldn't make a list of things that we don't like. They said multiple times that we should and that we should also back up our feedback with precise reasons. So Gloomblade , bad , Covenant abbs, mostly bad , what else? Shuriken Tornado? I've not touched it , I've never seen a rogue using it and if I did I'd be on the floor laughing. I mean , I might be mistaken , but they did say they read the forums , now how much they care is another question.
They still have time , they said they are not doing full redesigns but they still can change talents , although I also don't hold out much hope that they will. There are less that 1000 parses for sub rogues in Ny'alotha and I'm sure their internal numbers on the spec are not great . How much resources do they want to invest? I feel that rogue as a whole has been a bit left out of this whole process I do hope they take another ,more detailed, look at the class and smooth out some of the rough edges.

[kevincuomo]

I will swap to SUB when they bring back DFA to PVE... its the main reason the spec was so much fine. I loved SUB in Legion it was amazing.

[shoegazing]

This decision is almost never going to be relevant in the current edition of the game because we generate so many resources (combo points). You can generate 5-6 combo points in 1 sec, so there is not really going to be any interesting decision. If you compare Combo Points to money then it's like saying that a billionaire has an interesting decision of whether to buy a car or a boat. It's not interesting because he can just buy both. We are currently "billionaires" when it comes to combo points because we generate so many that this choice between using SnD or Evis is not interesting because we can use both in the matter of a few seconds anyway. It's not like it was in classic where combo points was much more scarse.

It was an interesting decision in WoD PvP and all previous expansions. Do I Kidney that DK to buy my healer some space even though I don't have SnD up and I'm not ready to burst into that Kidney Shot ?

Your mileage while executing a scripted rotation and tunneling a boss for 5 minutes may vary.