The "flow" of sub rogues in shadowlands

[Mafic]

I want to play sub but I feel the dev team are so arrogant and incompetent they will find a way to keep it bad. They have far too much pride to ever admit that the spec played better for years until Legion and their braindead idea to give it charges and near 100% uptime.

Reminds me of the whole situation with devs fucking with shadow word: death, a simple but iconic pvp ability that they spent years botching rather than admit it worked better previously.

Agreed.

If they want to make changes they should improve sub not take it several steps back.

[shoegazing]

• Premeditation. This thing allows Slice and Dice to never be cast and reaching upwards to 5 minutes of duration, without any given input from the player. @shoegazing will forgive me for taking back my stance on the matter, but if this has to be the return of the ability I'd rather it being the old 2cp off the global. It will be gutted badly as it stands, either Premed or SnD.

No hard feelings. Active Premed was a better design all around.

For one, it's more satisfying to press Premed and SnD while sprinting towards your enemy in Stealth, vs. it just happening automatically because you pressed Ambush

It's also more interesting to play with because the player gets the choice of how those 2cp get used and where and when exactly they occur in the rotation.

The thing is, if concern about button count is the only thing stopping them from brining back active premed as opposed to the awful passive design.... then why does Symbols of Death still exist? That is a truly superfluous button that doesn't justify a separate keypress at all (and I hate the class fantasy of it too).

[Mafic]

I think what they are trying to do with Symbols of Death was going for old school Cold Blood in the upcoming expansion. But old school Cold Blood was a much longer CD. If they intend to keep Symbols of Death a short CD I am not sure how they will balance.

[Keenii]

Akaari's Soul Fragment legendary nerfed by 50%.

[Coldkil]

Akaari's Soul Fragment legendary nerfed by 50%.

Yet, it fails to solve the issues in design. The legendary was strong as hell because you have an insane amount of uptime of SD, which is wrong by default. Nerfing it to half its power may fix the damage/numbers but doesn't make the spec better.

Apparently with this Sub has fallen quite a bunch of ranks (for whatever they count for - hint: not really much) and right now Outlaw is in a better place than before.

Also, not only Sub related but generally: soulbinds with their scaling are going to matter much more in the long run, while covenant skills will be less relevant also due to balancing passes going through. So don't choose your covenant only based on the skill.

[Mafic]

My view is that SD should return to a single powerful cool down. I feel the same way with AR in that both should be DPS cool downs that feel fun to use and not just part of a standard rotation. Rogues don't really have the yellow damage to have their main cool downs just help with the standard rotation.

[ZerFunk]

ok. here is my theory:

as in the last 4 xpacs, same as usual will happen:
- sub starts great
- sub gets nerfed to the ground, before .1 even is out
- assa will remain as the top notch spec 90% of xpac
- rest get the garbage location.
- combat/outlaw for m+ full aoe
- sub is dead

reasons:

- as always for all other pure dps classes blizz just get 1 spec top notch balanced. rest is garbage, cause 36 specs.
- as always, blizz get assa easy „balanced“ (if you will call it so), so no investment/effort
- blizz not changed or overhauled rogue that much, that they can go „sorry all assa rogues out there, you have to play sub now“. so they do not wanna piss off all the assa players. typical conservative blizz stance.

in short:

short time after release assa will be king, outlaw for m+, sub dead. thats my prognosis. just my oppinion.

this.
exactly what happened in legion and bfa its gonna happen again.
that being said, im still gonna play sub, its gonna get nerfed to the ground with the first patch and im gonna go play an alt for the rest of the expansion.
fuckbliz

[Niwes]

this.
exactly what happened in legion and bfa its gonna happen again.
that being said, im still gonna play sub, its gonna get nerfed to the ground with the first patch and im gonna go play an alt for the rest of the expansion.
fuckbliz

sad to say so, but thats the best one can do (play sub for fun, play alt for being competitive). since its not „what class do you play?“ and more „what spec do you play?“

[Jackstraw]

No hard feelings. Active Premed was a better design all around.

For one, it's more satisfying to press Premed and SnD while sprinting towards your enemy in Stealth, vs. it just happening automatically because you pressed Ambush

It's also more interesting to play with because the player gets the choice of how those 2cp get used and where and when exactly they occur in the rotation.

The thing is, if concern about button count is the only thing stopping them from brining back active premed as opposed to the awful passive design.... then why does Symbols of Death still exist? That is a truly superfluous button that doesn't justify a separate keypress at all (and I hate the class fantasy of it too).

I mean, I like the name? It has a certain gravity to it, if anything else.

I concur with some of the proposals in that SnD could be akin to Roll the Bones in that it could be a strong short cd, but I like the upkeeping, feels nostalgic enough.

Active Premed in the current state of the class has the same issue I sometimes see in MfD: the lack of Sunder Armor kind of pigeonholes the extra CPs in a limited number of things. You can maybe plan to have a short Rupture as you're pooling for some burst, but I don't know, it's the same issue for a lot of classes: a lot of bones have been bared for things to be brought back into the game willy nilly. And it's a bloody shame.

[Coldkil]

My view is that SD should return to a single powerful cool down. I feel the same way with AR in that both should be DPS cool downs that feel fun to use and not just part of a standard rotation. Rogues don't really have the yellow damage to have their main cool downs just help with the standard rotation.

Its designed to be one, but then all the complementary stuff make so upotime goes through the roof. To me it just looks like someone is working on one side, someone else on the other and they don't talk.

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lack of Sunder Armor

Holy hell, i forgot about that finisher (wasn't Expose Armor btw?). That would have been nice to get back, instead of SnD, especially for sub and its concept of exploting the weak points of your target. I cannot really explain why this sounds to me so much better than SnD; maybe it's because something i apply to the target and not something i have to keep up on myself?
@shoegazing since you're basically the most interested guy into the spec, how do you see EA instead of SnD for sub? While both are very much iconic and SnD probably much more than EA.

[Mafic]

Its designed to be one, but then all the complementary stuff make so upotime goes through the roof. To me it just looks like someone is working on one side, someone else on the other and they don't talk.

That may be true but at this point it has happened frequently enough to say they have put Sub and Outlaw in the sustain category bucket. I say this because Sub having multiple dances forming the backbone of the rotation and then Outlaw being about sustain and cleave while burst cool downs Kspree and Dreadblades are both talents.

For whatever reason they don't want Sub to be about single target burst from a single CD like shadow dance used to be. However, shadowblades still exists so there indeed may be two teams that need to communicate with each other on design intent with Sub.

[Azantrox]

Yet, it fails to solve the issues in design. The legendary was strong as hell because you have an insane amount of uptime of SD, which is wrong by default. Nerfing it to half its power may fix the damage/numbers but doesn't make the spec better.

Apparently with this Sub has fallen quite a bunch of ranks (for whatever they count for - hint: not really much) and right now Outlaw is in a better place than before.

Also, not only Sub related but generally: soulbinds with their scaling are going to matter much more in the long run, while covenant skills will be less relevant also due to balancing passes going through. So don't choose your covenant only based on the skill.

What ranks are you referring too? Just DPS performance or? I thought personally the legendary nerf would have affected sub so much ?
Just a question btw, before anyone takes this as mockery

[Jackstraw]

Holy hell, i forgot about that finisher (wasn't Expose Armor btw?). That would have been nice to get back, instead of SnD, especially for sub and its concept of exploting the weak points of your target. I cannot really explain why this sounds to me so much better than SnD; maybe it's because something i apply to the target and not something i have to keep up on myself?
@shoegazing since you're basically the most interested guy into the spec, how do you see EA instead of SnD for sub? While both are very much iconic and SnD probably much more than EA.

Yeah, Expose, not Sunder. Sub was very much about management and upkeep, you'd go for some meaningful burst after setting up stuff, so my stance on the matter is why not both SnD AND Expose?
You'd need to rework the current Find Weakness though: in Cata it made Expose Armor obsolete by becoming a 70% (100% PvE) armor ignore when opening, and now it simply wouldn't work with the abundance of non physical damage the spec deals.
Old FW was a buff when performing a finisher, like 15% when fully talented, Assa tree. Having Sub being a master of finishers would be fine in my mind.

[Coldkil]

What ranks are you referring too? Just DPS performance or? I thought personally the legendary nerf would have affected sub so much ?
Just a question btw, before anyone takes this as mockery

There are sites like THIS that continously provide charts about if a dps is "viable" or not, but they're at best guesses and don't count for anything. As we perfectly know every content/fight is different, and i don't even mention PvP which is a completely different beast.

They're not 100% useless, but it's not the end-of-all.

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Yeah, Expose, not Sunder. Sub was very much about management and upkeep, you'd go for some meaningful burst after setting up stuff, so my stance on the matter is why not both SnD AND Expose?
You'd need to rework the current Find Weakness though: in Cata it made Expose Armor obsolete by becoming a 70% (100% PvE) armor ignore when opening, and now it simply wouldn't work with the abundance of non physical damage the spec deals.
Old FW was a buff when performing a finisher, like 15% when fully talented, Assa tree. Having Sub being a master of finishers would be fine in my mind.

Yeah, makes sense to not have it given FW. My bad. Yet it sounds better than SnD at least for me. It's a very thin line though.

[Azantrox]

There are sites like THIS that continously provide charts about if a dps is "viable" or not, but they're at best guesses and don't count for anything. As we perfectly know every content/fight is different, and i don't even mention PvP which is a completely different beast.

Ah I see, I thought you were referring to streamer made so called " tier" list or something. Was confused! Cheers!

[Coldkil]

Ah I see, I thought you were referring to streamer made so called " tier" list or something. Was confused! Cheers!

Depending on the streamer, some are pretty good imho. Usually the ones that don't do much of a tier list and instead go through "pros and cons" of each class. One fundamental concept is that the performance depends on how good a player is first of all. If you're playing a spec badly, you're not gonna see good results (but imbalance is always there, some specs are way more forgiving than others).

[Protean]

sub is a very solid choice as it is now for st

sad thing is how besides necrolord bone spike all other covenants feel underwhelming , especially the echoing reprimand , who ever thought of that. they could go and make it : you do x dmg , you apply a debuff that increases the dmg of next finisher, no need for that silly combo point thing. as for slaughter it could work for sub pvp with shadowdance but besides that its useless in pve.

Not correct. You need to use the finisher on a specific number of combo points to trigger it. It's noted as a blue marker instead of a red.

You shouldn't have formed that opinion before you understood it.

[Wheeler]

I have mained assassination rogue after the horrible outlaw rogue came with Legion. I love Assassination, but after a few hours in the shadowlands beta, i tested sub. I want to hear if i am just seeing it from "everything is greener on the other side" eyes, but sub just flow really well. I really like how i swap between stealth and not, its not to much to do, but enough to keep it active.

Do sub rogues or other rogues in here feel the same? Have they "fixed" sub rogues to make it a very enjoyable pve spec?

No, I played all 3 specs at one point or another in Mythic/Heroic (When it was top dawg) content. I think that the Shadowlands iteration of Subtlety is the best it's ever been, and the most excited I've been to play my rogue in years.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVED Legion Sub, but we all knew that it was gimmicky and not long for this world. This is a much more polished version of the spec, and for the first time in almost a decade I find it to be a better "designed" spec than Assassination is. SnD just doesn't feel great to press as Sin. It feels like it drops right into an empty space with Sub. Like it belongs there. Rupture feels great with it too. The rotation doesn't need an in-depth guide to figure out, you can just play around with it and get the basics of it by how it works. That's a good class design.

Good luck figuring out how to be 80% optimal on something like a Frost Mage in BFA. Or a Fire Mage, for that matter. Not intuitive. This is intuitive.

[Jackstraw]

Yeah, makes sense to not have it given FW. My bad. Yet it sounds better than SnD at least for me. It's a very thin line though.

It's the same old argument basically: there are changes needed, for sure. But not the ones pushed, which albeit not the ones the userbase would like, surely move things forward for classes and specs.
However for the proposed changes of said classes and specs there would be the need of a rework akin to what Shadowpriests got. And those require work.

...and I sometimes fear the dev team left in charge of WoW doesn't have in them to do such a momentous task more than once or twice, without flunking the rest. And I don't want to sound bitter, but I do remember when I looked forward to expansion changes and sometimes patches too.

[Naiattavain]

It's the same old argument basically: there are changes needed, for sure. But not the ones pushed, which albeit not the ones the userbase would like, surely move things forward for classes and specs.
However for the proposed changes of said classes and specs there would be the need of a rework akin to what Shadowpriests got. And those require work.

...and I sometimes fear the dev team left in charge of WoW doesn't have in them to do such a momentous task more than once or twice, without flunking the rest. And I don't want to sound bitter, but I do remember when I looked forward to expansion changes and sometimes patches too.

those days are gone its what ever blizzard wants the professional wow players to do now. days of having fun with rogue are dead.
professional gaming killed wow