Spec Mandatory: What to do when Devs have a favorite?

[Fantazma]

This can be a crying topic. And I know that the funniest spec for me (Subtlety) hasn't had all the changes announced yet. A talent is missing (and I'm not optimistic about it). And I think that's it. Am I forgetting something?

I had high hopes of playing main-Sub but it is almost certain that once again (if I really want to do as much damage as possible playing with my Rogue) I will have to choose assassination.

Before you suggest me Outlaw I definitely hate this Spec. I don't like Pirate-Class-Fantasy, I don't like to use swords, I don't like play-style ... anyway ... nothing.

Looking at all the information it is quite obvious that the Rogue (a class with 3 DPS specs) will once again find its maximum power in the assassination spec.

In my opinion Subtlety has a lot more that makes play-style more fun and (unlike some opinions) I love the Purple-shadow-magic-class-fantasy of this spec. I find the gameplay faster and smoother ... even with all the nerfs that the class has suffered in recent times.

Assassination is a spec badass expert on poisons and DOTs that will make any enemy worry ... but it's incredibly slower than Subtlety. Using Multilate (at 50 energy cost) for me is agony.

But do what? Numbers don't lie. From everything I've seen and cataloged about BETA so far in Shadowlands the Assassination spec is at least 15% (maybe 20%) more efficient when it comes to "killing the enemy" than Subtlety.

I was really expecting a big rework like the Shadow Priest had a few days ago. A rework that would bring us a game-style similar to what we even had WOD. After all, this is our feed-back ... but (what a surprise) the devs didn't hear us (or we were just ignored).

It seems that I will continue with this "paranoia" that the devs have a favorite spec and want to see us all choosing it ...

[niztheundead87]

well sub doesnt look that bad in beta.

the kyrian covenant ability could be an interesting choice , since 7 cp finishers are being boosted with the sub mastery.

[StillMcfuu]

According to the bs little beta DPS chart, Sub is more like 2% behind Assassination. And I would definitely assume that's without proper leggos, incomplete covenant trees, etc..

You can load into PTR and play the changes, the spec plays way better than BFA so I'm hyped to play it.

[Fantazma]

You can load into PTR and play the changes, the spec plays way better than BFA so I'm hyped to play it.

Sub is so broken right now that any slight change will seem like the spec has improved ....but let's look at this a little deeper:

- They gave us Slice and Dice ... but without Premeditation (old skill that gave us 2 CPs for the opener) I can't imagine how to use SnD without being forced to choose Marked for Death. Once again MFD will be mandatory in that row. And I wish I could have some choice there ...! I have said this before and I will repeat: SnD should be an active skill for 10 secs and with 30 secs cooldown. Spending combo points on SnD maintenance will hurt a lot ...

- The feed-back to give us Gouge back was GIANT !! However, nothing has been mentioned so far. We may have a surprise but so far no blue post about it. This skill is sorely lacking in PVP.

- Of course, when we got Rupture back, Poisons and the little buff in Dark Shadows (looks like ANOTHER mandatory talent in this row)... we had an improvement in the spec ... but at the same time I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the maintenance of Find Weakness. It seems that FW is essential to have acceptable damage. If you can't apply this whenever u want ... the spec will be broken. FW is not a buff that u can use like a proc. It is essential.

- We are still full of *talents* and *PVP talents* totally useless.
A lot of incredibly useful and fun stuff was taken from us like Premeditation, Preparation, gouge, garrote, shadow reflection, sanguinary veins, hemorrhage, etc etc ...! I would trade 10 skills of the current subtlety to have at least 1 of those I mentioned.

- But not everything is lost. The devs gave us the Shadow Vault skill. Hahahahah ... nobody asked for it, nobody needed it, and so far nobody knows exactly what this is for ...!

I'm sorry but with so much broken in the spec I really doubt that Subtlety is only 2% behind the assassination ...!

[StillMcfuu]

Sub is so broken right now that any slight change will seem like the spec has improved ....but let's look at this a little deeper:

- They gave us Slice and Dice ... but without Premeditation (old skill that gave us 2 CPs for the opener) I can't imagine how to use SnD without being forced to choose Marked for Death. Once again MFD will be mandatory in that row. And I wish I could have some choice there ...! I have said this before and I will repeat: SnD should be an active skill for 10 secs and with 30 secs cooldown. Spending combo points on SnD maintenance will hurt a lot ...

- The feed-back to give us Gouge back was GIANT !! However, nothing has been mentioned so far. We may have a surprise but so far no blue post about it. This skill is sorely lacking in PVP.

- Of course, when we got Rupture back, Poisons and the little buff in Dark Shadows (looks like ANOTHER mandatory talent in this row)... we had an improvement in the spec ... but at the same time I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the maintenance of Find Weakness. It seems that FW is essential to have acceptable damage. If you can't apply this whenever u want ... the spec will be broken. FW is not a buff that u can use like a proc. It is essential.

- We are still full of *talents* and *PVP talents* totally useless.
A lot of incredibly useful and fun stuff was taken from us like Premeditation, Preparation, gouge, garrote, shadow reflection, sanguinary veins, hemorrhage, etc etc ...! I would trade 10 skills of the current subtlety to have at least 1 of those I mentioned.

I'm sorry but with so much broken in the spec I really doubt that Subtlety is only 2% behind the assassination ...!

https://www.wowmeta.com/shadowlands/dps-rankings

This is the list I'm talking about, it's not too much to go bye, but for early pass, un-optimized look it gives you an idea.

MfD: General accepted use of this skill is 15-20sec before pull, SnD shouldn't be a massive issue to get up quickly. I hate to say it, but the last thing Sub needs is another buff button on a 30sec cooldown, wish symbols would just get combined with Dance because that's when it's being used... every time.

I don't think gouge will ever go back to Rogue wide.

FW could be a problem, but I highly doubt the NYI Talent will be anything other than a way to apply FW reliably, probably put it on Shiv because that button is just a slow/wound poison which... isn't really relevant in Raid.

Like I mentioned, pop into PTR, I gave it a go for an hour, messed around with builds, it's playing pretty well. At least from a feel standpoint, which current Sub feels like shit to play and doesn't put out damage as expected. At least on PTR it feels better, and from what I've seen from my rogue resources and from that list, I can believe Sub is doing decent damage.

I don't really pvp anymore, I don't really want to comment on that side of the house.

[Radazar]

Sub is so broken right now that any slight change will seem like the spec has improved ....but let's look at this a little deeper:

- They gave us Slice and Dice ... but without Premeditation (old skill that gave us 2 CPs for the opener) I can't imagine how to use SnD without being forced to choose Marked for Death. Once again MFD will be mandatory in that row. And I wish I could have some choice there ...! I have said this before and I will repeat: SnD should be an active skill for 10 secs and with 30 secs cooldown. Spending combo points on SnD maintenance will hurt a lot ...

- The feed-back to give us Gouge back was GIANT !! However, nothing has been mentioned so far. We may have a surprise but so far no blue post about it. This skill is sorely lacking in PVP.

- Of course, when we got Rupture back, Poisons and the little buff in Dark Shadows (looks like ANOTHER mandatory talent in this row)... we had an improvement in the spec ... but at the same time I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the maintenance of Find Weakness. It seems that FW is essential to have acceptable damage. If you can't apply this whenever u want ... the spec will be broken. FW is not a buff that u can use like a proc. It is essential.

- We are still full of *talents* and *PVP talents* totally useless.
A lot of incredibly useful and fun stuff was taken from us like Premeditation, Preparation, gouge, garrote, shadow reflection, sanguinary veins, hemorrhage, etc etc ...! I would trade 10 skills of the current subtlety to have at least 1 of those I mentioned.

- But not everything is lost. The devs gave us the Shadow Vault skill. Hahahahah ... nobody asked for it, nobody needed it, and so far nobody knows exactly what this is for ...!

I'm sorry but with so much broken in the spec I really doubt that Subtlety is only 2% behind the assassination ...!

Your wrong on the part where you said no body asked/ needs shadow vault, the spec was in need of a AoE finisher that you dont have to talent into. from my testing on the PTR FW isnt hard to apply, with the 100% crit from symbols and dance i haven't seen the debuff fall of much if at all really, and i havnt been keeping up with my rogue on live so my gear isnt optimal at all so my crit is low. same thing with SnD, it sucks using combo points for it at the start of a fight but with out burst and combo point generation at the start of a fight its not that big of a loss.

I will admit the spec isnt finished but its not terrible at the moment. learn to use the tools you have effectively

[Critical92]

Sub is so broken right now that any slight change will seem like the spec has improved ....but let's look at this a little deeper:

- They gave us Slice and Dice ... but without Premeditation (old skill that gave us 2 CPs for the opener) I can't imagine how to use SnD without being forced to choose Marked for Death. Once again MFD will be mandatory in that row. And I wish I could have some choice there ...! I have said this before and I will repeat: SnD should be an active skill for 10 secs and with 30 secs cooldown. Spending combo points on SnD maintenance will hurt a lot ...

- The feed-back to give us Gouge back was GIANT !! However, nothing has been mentioned so far. We may have a surprise but so far no blue post about it. This skill is sorely lacking in PVP.

- Of course, when we got Rupture back, Poisons and the little buff in Dark Shadows (looks like ANOTHER mandatory talent in this row)... we had an improvement in the spec ... but at the same time I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the maintenance of Find Weakness. It seems that FW is essential to have acceptable damage. If you can't apply this whenever u want ... the spec will be broken. FW is not a buff that u can use like a proc. It is essential.

- We are still full of *talents* and *PVP talents* totally useless.
A lot of incredibly useful and fun stuff was taken from us like Premeditation, Preparation, gouge, garrote, shadow reflection, sanguinary veins, hemorrhage, etc etc ...! I would trade 10 skills of the current subtlety to have at least 1 of those I mentioned.

- But not everything is lost. The devs gave us the Shadow Vault skill. Hahahahah ... nobody asked for it, nobody needed it, and so far nobody knows exactly what this is for ...!

I'm sorry but with so much broken in the spec I really doubt that Subtlety is only 2% behind the assassination ...!

You are heavily misinformed about beta sub.
Why do you need mfd for snd? Is it for pvp purpose? Because mfd was always a very good talent in pvp. For pve there will be an opener where you either spend a few gcds for snd+rupture before you start dance or only snd and rupture after dance. Time and theorycrafting will tell but no, mfd will not be mandatory.

Gouge back would be indeed a good move.

Dark shadows is worse than enveloping shadows, because all it have now is a 30% dmg amp (baseline 15+15 DS) but at the cost of 1 charge. It is playable but ES with 2 charges + the base 15% dmg amp is the better pick.

Shadow Vault currently is a tuning problem. If it is done right you have the luxury to choose between prio dmg(eviscerate), burst hybrid aoe(secret technique) or constant aoe(vault). Also you can literally have all 3 because 2 are baseline and 1 is a talent.
With good tuning there will be a target point and vault will overtake eviscerate in raw dmg.

The base spec plays so much better than the bfa version. These so called logs are also really stupid because there was not really any number tuning at all and many people just test things or have no idea how sub works because of years of playing assassination or outlaw. First thing many new sub rogues need to learn is that you don't spam dance, but even that got lifted and works in beta.

Beta Sub is a huge improvement overall, but in the end blizz tuning will decide what is good and what not. Also 2% is near a perfect score. Imagine current classes were between 2% of each other.

[Fantazma]

I made a mistake and I apologize for that.
I should have said before that for PVE, SL-subtlety is better than BFA-subtlety (but still again behind assassination) and for PVP (gameplay that I play) Subtlety was totally defaced in Legion and the changes coming in Shadowlands don't fix even 20% of the current problem.

That said, let's go:

- Shadow Vault: Ok, maybe for PVE it should be nice to have one more AOE skill (although I think SecTec, Shuriken Storm, Shuriken Tornado should be more than enough ...). Still ... it is a very weak AOE and it seems that the reason for Shadow Vault's existence is to keep FW up and allow some Critics. I ask: Isn't it kind of humiliating that we have to keep pressing a "shuriken + jump" to have something that should be natural for this spec? And for the PVP I'm pretty sure I'm not going to use that.

- SnD without Premeditation: Once again maybe in PVE on a boss that will take 10-15 minutes to die it shouldn't make much difference but in PVP it is a huge waste of initial damage that we use in Opener. I clearly see a lack of synergy in the PVP. In shadowlands I should spend the initial combo points on Rupture or Kidney Shot but to try and fix a broken spec I should use SnD. I can only imagine Premeditation or MfD to solve this. It is a pity. I haven't tested it yet but I hope that SnD really is worth all this cost ..!

- Dark Shadows: The buff that we will have in SL on this talent comes precisely to try to fix the tragedy that they did with Shadow Dance from Legion. In the old days when you pressed Shadow Dance you could smell the fear exhaling from the enemy. It was Rogue's "Chaos Bolt". Then they extended SD and the spec became Pretty meh. Rogue Sub is not the "master of survival". In PVP you either kill fast or you die fast. So I will definitely use Dark Shadows. The "long dance" (enveloping Shadows) is only there to irritate the enemy. Not to kill him.

- Find Weakness: in the past this skill pierced 70% of the armor. In SL this will be 30% and we will have to press several buttons in a macabre ritual to maintain this UP buff. As I have seen several youtubers saying ... this is not always possible and the damage you apply drops dramatically in this period. It is precisely by looking at the FW in SL that we realize that the Devs do not intend to reverse the Nerfs that the Rogue Sub has suffered in recent years. Back to the title of the topic, my conspiracy side believes that Devs have a favorite spec ... and it's not Subtlety.

[Coldkil]

We have already multiple threads discussing Shadowlands changes for rogues. Closing.