Returning after a Hiatus

[SpacedOut]

So I'm coming back to WoW at the behest of some friends (against my better judgement), and I'm trying to figure out what's going on with this beloved class.

Word on the street - from some likely uninformed friends at least - is that Sub > Combat > Assass, although I can't for the life of me find someone good actually raiding as sub. After a few minutes bashing away on a dummy I think I figured out why. Is the difference not enough to get people to play the finger-twister that is subtlety?

Secondly, what are the current places for guides/class resources. I remember EJ being the thing, but the guides, while good, seem less substantial and complete these days than they used to be.

Here's a link to my armoury: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...oalot/advanced

In case you couldn't guess, I rage-quit the game a while ago after a not-insubstantial amount of raiding failed to produce a single weapon drop for me, still working on that. Blues for the moment.

[Terces]

Sub really shines on single-target fights and only really excels if you can properly master the rotation. It is definitely a harder one to learn for most people.
Assassination is still really good and has the versatility of being decent in both single-target and multi-target fights as Fan of Knives does well with the mastery stacking of assassination.
Combat is also a really solid option but only truly shows its strength once you get some solid weapons and the Assurance of Consequence trinket off of Sha.

Basically it boils down to what weapon drops you get and what you're comfortable with. I'd argue that all 3 specs are fairly viable currently. Especially if you're not in a highly competitive raiding environment.

As for resources, yeah you're right, EJ is fairly dead these days. Icy-Veins is my go to this days as far as guides are concerned. They seem to be fairly accurate and up-to-date.

[-Raer-]

Just play what spec you like, and have the weapons for. Terces summed it up pretty well.

[Sesshou]

Word on the street - from some likely uninformed friends at least - is that Sub > Combat > Assass, although I can't for the life of me find someone good actually raiding as sub. After a few minutes bashing away on a dummy I think I figured out why. Is the difference not enough to get people to play the finger-twister that is subtlety?

If it was a clearly better spec, you'd see more people using it. Sub now is far, far easier than it was in DS yet you saw lots of people run sub in DS because it was clearly better and you could easily see that from the numbers people were doing. Now you will see people say sub does more ST, but if you actually go look at what people are producing, that is extremely questionable. I don't know that I'd say sub is more complex than combat (definitely more than assassination and a lot easier to mess up than assassination), but the positional thing can certainly be an annoyance... an annoyance that you are not being compensated for.

Sub also has the weakest AE which begs the question if you really should be another spec for fights with AE because there is a clear difference, is there any point in not just sticking with whatever other spec since there isn't a clear difference on ST?

Though at your gear level (and assuming a combat weapon far higher ilvl than your dagger doesn't fall into your hands), I'd guess you'd do a lot more with assassination anyway.

[Coldkil]

Subtlety is worth using as soon you have gear to mantain it.

I'm having a lot of fun with it, and i use it on every fight on SoO successfully (keep in mind that i'm doing normals atm, hopefully this night we get garrosh down and start HM next reset). On Garrosh after a few tries (need to learn fight and timers) i always end as top damage dealer or only after out pala tank (too much aoe and vengeance FFS).

What Sesshou said anyway is correct. Sub is surely capable of doing damage, but still it brings nothing that can match Combat cleave or Assa AoE - single target damage is pretty much equal between specs. You can get used to Sub cycle, and also to the positional requirement of backstab (which still is annoying as hell); but you cannot compensate for mechanics that Sub simply doesn't have.

I'm playing sub because the aoe/cleave in my raid is more than enough to do the fights. If anytime it happens that we need more of it, i'll switch combat for sure.

I already know i will be missing those 280k+ BS and 450k+ Evis. Sub is extremely satisfying.

EDIT: next week i'll upload some WoL logs for people to see. Very likely my rotation will be skewed and will need optimization, still i think they will be useful as reference for people willing to try the spec.