Slice and Dice back seems like 3 steps backward

[Varolyn]

The problem with SnD being back for assassin is that it really doesn't add much to spec complexity, even if being an extra button. Yes, it is very impactful in terms of damage, but it isn't going to be this thing that separates orange parse rogues with purple ones. All it simply means is that you're just gonna replace a few of your envenoms with snd's now throughout a fight. You're still gonna fire off Shiv(TB) on cd, and refresh dots/snd if needed in the window. You're still gonna maintain your debuffs/buffs. All SnD is just maintenance, there is no min/max strategy in using it. You simply just maintain the buff, that's it.

I really wish blizz would have re added Kingsbane to Sin. That was a much more fun ability than a maintenance buff were just gonna maintain anyway.

[Saltysquidoon]

And? I fail to see the relevance of this statement

Because you explicitly brought up being an 'old school player' (and implicitly making an appeal to nostalgia). I was merely pointing out that having such a wealth of experience you would thus be well versed in Cut to the Chase and its application to SnD for Muti.

What do you mean? It increases your poison procs and it enhances your energy regen, allowing you to do more stuff.
It is literally the same thing as Rupture in every way. And how well you can maintain the both of them will make a significant difference down the line.

I mean Rupture interacts with exsanguination and the two bleed legendaries and scales into aoe... But even if we accept your argument here doesn't that make the one that's less interactive redundant?

I honestly feel like a lot of you are just complaining because you don't think OLD GUD NU BAD

[tylenol]

The problem with SnD being back for assassin is that it really doesn't add much to spec complexity, even if being an extra button. Yes, it is very impactful in terms of damage, but it isn't going to be this thing that separates orange parse rogues with purple ones. All it simply means is that you're just gonna replace a few of your envenoms with snd's now throughout a fight. You're still gonna fire off Shiv(TB) on cd, and refresh dots/snd if needed in the window. You're still gonna maintain your debuffs/buffs. All SnD is just maintenance, there is no min/max strategy in using it. You simply just maintain the buff, that's it.

I really wish blizz would have re added Kingsbane to Sin. That was a much more fun ability than a maintenance buff were just gonna maintain anyway.

Would've been easier to just add it back how it was before they removed it, Cut to the Chase baked into envenom, problem solved...it'd be exactly the same as it is now except you have to spend a bit of energy on it once in a while, pointless

[Evolixe]

Because you explicitly brought up being an 'old school player' (and implicitly making an appeal to nostalgia). I was merely pointing out that having such a wealth of experience you would thus be well versed in Cut to the Chase and its application to SnD for Muti.

Nah, I only played Assassination in LK.
Otherwise I've always stuck with Combat and Sub because those were by far more interesting specs.
And no, that doesn't invalidate any of my standpoints.

I mean Rupture interacts with exsanguination and the two bleed legendaries and scales into aoe... But even if we accept your argument here doesn't that make the one that's less interactive redundant?

I honestly feel like a lot of you are just complaining because you don't think OLD GUD NU BAD

Why would it make it redundant? Just because you don't like to have 2 levels of depth?

SnD is something you have to manage. And you have to manage it well in conjunction with the other things you also have to manage.
This means you might sometimes have to choose not to use that Rupture or SnD in order to actually make the most of your performance.

Those choices are supposed to set you apart from the next guy. And the spec is to be built around the expectation that this happens.
Now if your case was that it isn't properly built around that expectation, I would have some sympathy for your arguments (idk if this is the case).
However this entire thread consists of people that don't want SnD back "because" and then follow without reason other than "its an extra button boo hoo"

[pokies]

For PvE it adds another button to the rotation, another thing to keep up. Not a lot, but that alone can show a difference between some players.

For PvP, it adds a bit more complexity for bursting and overall sustain damage. Especially openers/setting up burst. I didn't miss it personally, and I wasn't happy (or unhappy) to have it back, but having Premeditation for Sub negates the point of it honestly. So it might as well go again for all I care. Recuperate OTOH, I liked that. Having something to keep up for HP/energy regen instead of attack speed.

Definitely! A bit of complexity is always nice!

[GreenJesus]

Lol.. Legion & BFA rogue noobs can't handle a single maintenance buff without crying.

[Unholyground]

That would be fine if they added it only to those specs. I play assassination and i played rogue since vanilla beta, and i cant stand SnD. But then again, i dont suffer from nostalgia and only care about gameplay and want numbers to just be competitive, but not at cost of gameplay... other way around is way more acceptable.

This right now means im probably locked out of playing assassination this whole expansion. BfA assassination was very fun to play(granted, azerite powers had something to do with it), no idea why they wanted to make it worse, and only payoff for that addition of plain maintenance buff is that you deal less active damage and more passive damage. Lose-lose for assassination. Purely negative change. Adding even more maintenance and converting active damage into passive damage on top of it. Just insane.

If they added SnD, reduced its attack speed bonus for assassination instead of increasing it and added some energy regen to it, or some new mechanic to get energy to actually help gameplay instead of hurt it, then fine... but as it is, its just terrible and assassination gameplay in SL is pure trash because of it.

At least last time we had cut to the chase, so didnt have to worry much about it. Not to mention that now assassination is doing by far most passive/autoattack damage of all 3 specs, like 40% of total damage. Totally fits the flavor of the spec too.

Blizzard went full ridiculous this expansion. Because some people liked classic, they decided to bring back old crap that should have stayed in the past and screw those of us that prefer retail. Yet another example of how stupid are those that make decisions at blizzard.
Same as how when there are talents that result in very different playstyles, they see that 80% pick one talent (because it provides more dps) and then make it baseline because, well, 80% obviously show majority prefer that one, right? So now those 20% that opted out of it even when it cost them dps are left with no choice but to have that playstyle they hate or not play the spec anymore. Because you lose much less dps by picking one talent over the other, because both are dps increases over baseline, just one is less than the other, but when its baseline... you lose a lot and there is nothing to make up for any dps lost. But for blizzard, thats good change... when in fact its tragedy. Doesnt help the 80% at all, they still play the same, but screws the rest for no reason.
And same is with SnD returning... going for those few that suffer from nostalgia and think vanilla is great or something as silly as that and screws all the rest that dont... for no reason. Add it as talent, so those loving it so much can go for it... let the rest of us actually have fun.

I think you also need to take into consideration they made many changes over years that the vast majority hated, this is why Enhace Shaman and Shadow Priest are similar to their older renditions and are playing far better

[fossilgenera]

sub honestly feels the same as last expansion. um i don't think the spec works like its supposed to. i know this is intentional but damn is it annoying to get some service for the spec. we need the performance of wods subtlety back for the spec to feel ok other wise there is no reason to play the game anymore.

The spec has felt fine, and has performed fine for pretty much all of the beta. It was over performing until they fixed the combo point generation that the akali legendary had, but has still been in a mostly decent place.

[RobertMugabe]

Nah, I only played Assassination in LK.
Otherwise I've always stuck with Combat and Sub because those were by far more interesting specs.
And no, that doesn't invalidate any of my standpoints.




Why would it make it redundant? Just because you don't like to have 2 levels of depth?

SnD is something you have to manage. And you have to manage it well in conjunction with the other things you also have to manage.
This means you might sometimes have to choose not to use that Rupture or SnD in order to actually make the most of your performance.

Those choices are supposed to set you apart from the next guy. And the spec is to be built around the expectation that this happens.
Now if your case was that it isn't properly built around that expectation, I would have some sympathy for your arguments (idk if this is the case).
However this entire thread consists of people that don't want SnD back "because" and then follow without reason other than "its an extra button boo hoo"

haha are you serious?

If you ever struggled to maintain both rupture and snd as mut then this only meant you were a trash player. This was never a struggle as this spec was not designed like that as you are describing it. Maintaining both of them was part of the spec and extremely easy. It has nothing to do with setting apart good from bad players (unless you literally had no idea how to play the class, as in you didn't even look up a guide)

[Evolixe]

haha are you serious?

If you ever struggled to maintain both rupture and snd as mut then this only meant you were a trash player. This was never a struggle as this spec was not designed like that as you are describing it. Maintaining both of them was part of the spec and extremely easy. It has nothing to do with setting apart good from bad players (unless you literally had no idea how to play the class, as in you didn't even look up a guide)

Congratulations, you missed the entire point.

I'm not talking about past time Assassination. I'm talking about the here and now Assassination.

Yeah, its braindead if it auto refreshes. Which is why it doesn't now. And you have to weigh that choice yourself.
If you've got the capacity for doing that properly at all, you're going to find situations where you do not want to refresh SnD the second it falls off.


Besides that, Assasination has always been the easy mode spec. There's nothing wrong with making it ask just a tad more of the player.

[Warning]

haha are you serious?

If you ever struggled to maintain both rupture and snd as mut then this only meant you were a trash player. This was never a struggle as this spec was not designed like that as you are describing it. Maintaining both of them was part of the spec and extremely easy. It has nothing to do with setting apart good from bad players (unless you literally had no idea how to play the class, as in you didn't even look up a guide)

For me at least its not about difficulty, cause refreshing a buff isn't difficult. It has a couple of different problems.

1. It doesn't feel fun to spend combo points on a maintenance buff. Maintenance buffs are by definition not directly impactful so pressing them doesn't feel good. They also eat into the amount of Eviscerates/ Envenoms I can do so they basically make me press my juicy buttons less often.

2. It's very constraining in PVP. There's much more target switching and CC in PVP so having to go through two cycles of building up combo points and spending them on maintenance every time is more annoying, especially because you might get CC'd and then never get your juicy payoff eviscerate or kidney shot.

3. A bunch of your damage is tied up into SND so all your other abilities are less impactful. Every button you press does less than it would if S&D didn't exist.

Given those facts I'd prefer no slice and dice.

[Ealyssa]

Lol.. Legion & BFA rogue noobs can't handle a single maintenance buff without crying.

I've seen a lot of people saying they don't like having a maintenance buff feeling so empty
But none saying they can't handle it. Are you projecting ?

[Twdft]

I believe most of the spells players find "empty" could be fixed by simply giving them an initial damage component. Slice'n'dice sucks not because it would be hard to maintain, but because it takes away from other finishers. Make it hit let's say 75% of what envenom does and the empty feeling might go away for a lot of players. At least it gives energy reg now so you can actually tell a difference without a damage meter.

Making mutilate extend snd to infinity isn't the answer, if you press a key once per fight why have it? Which led to snd being deleted a couple years ago... seems like a circle and I'll not be surprised at all when 9.1 or 9.2 deletes snd again or gives us some rework in another way. I can't see snd staying as it is now.

[ymirsson]

I believe most of the spells players find "empty" could be fixed by simply giving them an initial damage component. Slice'n'dice sucks not because it would be hard to maintain, but because it takes away from other finishers. Make it hit let's say 75% of what envenom does and the empty feeling might go away for a lot of players. At least it gives energy reg now so you can actually tell a difference without a damage meter.

Making mutilate extend snd to infinity isn't the answer, if you press a key once per fight why have it? Which led to snd being deleted a couple years ago... seems like a circle and I'll not be surprised at all when 9.1 or 9.2 deletes snd again or gives us some rework in another way. I can't see snd staying as it is now.

SnD does not feel empty because it does not direct damage, but because it has a near unnoticeable feedback. No glow, no dmg number, no nothing. It's just a buff icon, 2 minimal red swirls last time i looked, and faster autoattacks which rarely ever get cleanly animated because they have low priority.
I don't think tacking some random direct damage on to it would solve the issue which is the fact that WoW as a whole has mostly moved on from simple maintenace buff with 100% uptimes. People just expect different from current class design.


Edit: I'm neither proposing to change SnD into a necessary CD by giving it some arbitrary damage or additional buff component nor giving it a more impactful graphic feedback. My melee stack is bloated with spell effects anyway.

[Eazy]

Lol.. Legion & BFA rogue noobs can't handle a single maintenance buff without crying.

There's a difference between maintaining additional buff/debuff and having a nice cool ability. SnD is just another ability to click every 36s.
SnD is bland, monotonous and straight BORING.
Kingsbane was much better and more complicated.

[shoegazing]

SnD is just another ability to click every 36s.

Symptoms of Patchwerk Brain include an inability for the affected PvE player to see anything outside of an idealized spreadhseet scenario where there are no mechanics to dodge or play around and you have perfect 100% uptime on the target while you do nothing but tunnel vision an idealized PvE rotation.

This one looks like an advanced case. It may be terminal.

[ymirsson]

Symptoms of Patchwerk Brain include an inability for the affected PvE player to see anything outside of an idealized spreadhseet scenario where there are no mechanics to dodge or play around and you have perfect 100% uptime on the target while you do nothing but tunnel vision an idealized PvE rotation.

This one looks like an advanced case. It may be terminal.

And we're back to "hurr durr, pvp iz best". Come on, shoebaby, i had so high hopes this time!

[Celfydd]

Slice'n'dice sucks not because it would be hard to maintain, but because it takes away from other finishers.

No, it sucks because it has basically zero synergy with any of the spec-defining assassination abilities (poisons, bleeds, etc) or with stats that feed into them (e.g. haste).

[Dextar]

It was nice not having it but it's not a big deal. Manage your resources and know your class, you'll be fine.

[Pandragon]

I actually like having it back. I like seeing the attack speed increase on my Rogue, plus the energy regen makes things flow smoother, and the specs now have stuff that benefits from the increased AS, like sub gaining combo points.

No, it sucks because it has basically zero synergy with any of the spec-defining assassination abilities (poisons, bleeds, etc) or with stats that feed into them (e.g. haste).

ummm... Haste increases attack speed, SnD increases attack speed, attacks apply poisons. Haste increases energy regen, SnD increases energy regen. More energy is more mutilates which apply poisons, and more mutilates means more chances for a crit which gives more combo points which gives more envenoms and applies more poisons. It all works out.