Dragonflight Rogue Talent Tree - prons and cons

Classes Rogue
21

The rotation inside shadow dance feels more satisfying because it’s more “condensed”

Less downtime, cooler aesthetics, more finishers.

I definitely do not like downtime in a spec, which is why i prefer outlaw and sub over assassination, although it does seem likely that energy regen will go up even for assassination.

I think sitting there pooling energy, “planning your next” move, is just plain boring, there is no planning, or more thinking to be done, it’s just slower. In fact id argue that with faster specs you generally have to think more, you abilities come off faster and you have to react faster, couple that with some mechanics, and it’s gonna be more difficult to keep track of everything you have to do, so the whole argument i hear a lot of people say about slower specs requiring more attention is just plain false for the most part.

The only outlier i can think of was feral during the start of legion, it was not fun, super slow, but a mistake was extremely punishing.

I also like the cd reduction because it rewards using your abilities correctly, by reducing the cd of shadow dance to the highest degree possible. So it’s a double feedback, both in terms of damage, and spec mechanics, and that’s one of the coolest things you can have to make a rotation feel impactful.

With no cd reduction, doing your rotation well only rewards you in terms of damage, but not in terms of mechanics.

22

I don’t think that makes the talent very good, if anything it devalues itself by not also applying to Sstrike. That since realistically your goal is to cast as few backstabs as you can get away with.

23

I mentioned Seal Fate mostly while speculating on a build where you don’t go down the middle beyond Shadow Blades, allowing you to pick up both The Rotten and Flagellation. With a build like that Shadow Dance is a static 1 min cd meaning that you will spend more time outside of Dance meaning that Seal Fate will have more value.

(don’t want to make 2 separate posts so the next part is a response to Ilyon)

Should we just get rid of energy then and turn into fury warriors with combo points instead of rage?

To me it feels rewarding to prep for burst by making sure buffs/debuffs don’t drop off and to pool energy, allowing me to fit as many damage globals in my burst as possible.

Meanwhile CDR doesn’t do anything for me because I’m not doing anything for it besides not over-capping on combo points which I shouldn’t be doing in the first place. So why have the façade of CDR? Instead just shorten the cooldown to where the CDR would put it IMO (or don’t and do other things to make the rotation more interesting).

It also makes Restless Blades less unique which has been a big part of Combat/Outlaw since Cata. On Outlaw it at least affects a bunch of cooldowns instead of just the one.

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24

Look, ill be very clear.

Gameplay>>>>>>flavor stuff. As long as the rotation doesn’t feel like a carbon copy from another spec i don’t care if a few mechanics are shared.

Let’s say that we remove the shadow dance cd reduction because flavor, well now you cast backstab for 51 seconds, would you enjoy that? I wouldn’t. So what would happen is this, either you do insane burst damage in your cd window, which is a problem for balance, or they need to increase the damage of backstab, but backstab itself is not fun to use.

They could reduce the cd of shadow dance to like 20 seconds, but then you are basically doing the same thing as having the cd reduction mechanic, but you remove the feedback of doing your rotation properly. So what’s the point? It’s like having chocolate ice cream but from 2 different brands, it’s still chocolate ice cream at the end of the day, only that one might be better than the other because it’s higher quality.

Let’s say that they reduce energy regen, well now you have 30 to 50 % of your time doing absolutely nothing, “planning” your next move. Is this enjoyable? It definitely isn’t for me.

I think people are looking to much at let’s make this different, instead of let’s make it fun. The first question is to make it fun, and then you change some stuff around so it doesn’t feel identical to another spec.

Flavor be damned if it means that the spec is not fun to play. Obviously you don’t wanna make a copy of another spec, but it’s more important to make a fun spec first, because if it’s not fun to play, then who cares if it’s different.

About uniqueness, look man, basically 50 % of the specs or more have some form of cd reduction, or extension. No one really complains about it, in fact many like it, i like using more combustion, i like using more adrenaline rush or vendetta or shadow blades or whatever. Why? Because using those abilities make your rotation more enjoyable.

Why do you think that people like using vendetta? It’s mostly not because of the damage increase, but because of the energy that allows you to cast more abilities, same for adrenaline rush, almost no one likes staying there doing nothing for 30 % of the time.

There are 2 main reasons why people like using those cds, 1: because it allows you to cast more abilities, 2: For a spec that already has low downtime, it’s because it gives them more procs that are fun to play with.

25
  1. Fun is subjective, and devs should offer playstyles that resonate with different preferences instead of making them all the same because that’s how you like it. The more different the classes/specs [feel to] play the better. Bonus points if the talent trees offer multiple playstyles.
  2. If your cooldowns are constantly up they feel less special. I agree that doing 4x-5x more damage during cds is unhealthy though. But so is overindulging. Too much of a good thing, as they say.
  3. Again you’re not actually reading my comments. You make a counterpoint that lowering cooldowns is the same as CDR, when that’s my entire point. It’s just without the thinly veiled hoopla. Whoop dee doo you didn’t overcap on combo points, you really need an extra pat on the back for that?
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26

Its much more than that though. Getting the right amount of casts in your shadowdance every time without missing one. Making sure that whatever you do, you only spend as many backstabs as you need in order not to overcap your energy and not more. Getting that correctly is what CDR rewards you for. And I think its a good thing.

Otherwise you’re just mindlessly pressing buttons until you’re out of energy and thats not very engaging.

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27

I don’t get the overcap on combo points, to be 100 % honest that seems to be more of a skill issue. That’s why i didn’t respond to that. Because i generally don’t overcap on combo points.

Sure sometimes it can happen if i get a double proc on shadowstrike, but that’s not the norm, and it’s out of my control, if i have 100 % control over it, i basically never overcap.

It’s not even about patting on the back, it’s more that, if you overcap on combo points, then are you even playing correctly?

No offense, but why should i take in consideration what you are saying when you don’t even play the spec that well?

I think the point i made is pretty sound, i look at what’s fun before everything else, because that’s what’s really important, a spec that is different, but not very fun, is just not a fun spec, no matter how different it is.

First you look whether or not your spec has fun interactions, which may overlap with other spec mechanics in some broad ways, yea sure, the shadow dance cd reduction is similar to restless blades, i can live with that as long as the gameplay resulting from it is more enjoyable.

There are only so many things you can do to make a fun spec, if different means less, then it’s not really different, it’s just worse.

What else could the possibly do? Lower the cd of shadow dance to 20 seconds? That’s pretty boring as it removes the feedback loop of doing your rotation properly, although it’s better than dance every 1 min.

28

The last time Sub was fun was during Cataclysm / MoP, since then, the spec has been dumbed down so that it could be played by anyone.
To like the playstyle of the post Legion spec, you either didn’t played during Cataclysm / MoP or you were too bad at it to play it efficiently.

The Shadow Dance CD reduction isn’t fun, it’s just mindless spamming.

And btw, pooling energy is not “planning your next move”. Back in Cata / MoP, you had to know exactly what you’d do 30-40 seconds later. Managing SnD, Rupture, Recuperate, Hemorrhage so that nothing falls off during ShD and maximising Find Weakness uptime with Vanish WAS “planning the next move”.
The spec was fun, you had lots of things to do, an insane burst every minutes and when ShD was on CD, it was still fun, you were not waiting for your energy to use your Backstab (or not as much as you think i guess) and the damage was still pretty high because Backstab dealt a lot more damage than now and and you had talents increasing the critical rate and critical damage.

Our class has 3 damage spec wouldn’t it be better to have one spec for aoe, one for cleave and one for single target ? No ? Let’s make a spec that’s good at everything so that you don’t have to play the other 2… That’s smart !

And for the DF talent tree, they’re trash atm and i do hope they just messed it up to make it good later.
Shadowstep in the sub and rogue tree, same thing for Shadow Dance (not to mention that ShD for all specs would be an aberration).
Shadow Techniques is a badly updated HaT, Shadowblades should be replace with Dark Reflection (it would fit the spec A LOT more) and Deepening Shadows reducing the CD of ShD is probably the worst idea they ever had for the Sub spec, reducing de CD of Vanish would be far better !

Btw, i’ve been playing Sub Rogue as a main since cataclysm pre-patch (4.0.1) so i think i know the spec well enough, having played it far more than most people and i already made a post with what i would change to make the DF Sub spec good / fun on the french forums, i could do the same here if anyone wants it, just let me know.

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29

All specs should provide a baseline in aoe and st, then you can give a spec slightly more st, or aoe compared to others, or funnel etc, but the difference should never be enormous.

If you are literally talking about making for example, assassination the st king, but virtually no aoe, outlaw the aoe spec but low st, etc…

That’s a really bad idea.

About time, time does not equal skills, i only found a couple of logs over the past few years, you say you have been playing sub since cata, but the little data i found does not reflect this, if you played for so long you should be great at sub, but the logs are average at best, and there aren’t a lot of them.

Sorry, but i call people on their bs.

The point is, based on data, you don’t know what you are doing, so ill ask you too. Why should i take into consideration what you have to say, about how specs should be designed?

30

It’s a bad idea if you refuse to play the other specs, but as i said, our class has 3 damage specs, give everything to one spec and the other two won’t be played (or a lot less). That’s a sad, bad idea.
Is it too much for you to learn 3 specs ?

I can’t have fun with a spec that dumb, it’s too boring so i don’t really play, still a main sub tho.

Because i played the spec at a decent level (former heroic / current mythic) during Cataclysm, MoP, WoD and Legion ? And the new version that appeared in Legion was too dumb to be interesting so i stopped playing. But my point is still valid, the spec WAS fun, it’s not anymore, except for those who couldn’t play it decently before.
Oh and you don’t need to clear the current raid in the highest difficulty to understand how boring the spec is, any new player doing his world quest could do it. And if you don’t… I guess that explains a lot.

You didn’t answer that btw, was i wrong ?

Edit : And i won’t even talk about the fact that you’re judging a character that was barely played a couple weeks in Shadowlands with a level 45 demon hunter. :wink:

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31

Nope i think you’re straight up wrong on your point about liking the legion version and after.

To be honest i initially didn’t like the 7.0/7.1 version of sub, but then it was improved significantly, by reducing downtime, more shadowstrikes, more eviscerates, more shadow dance etc, they also brought back find weakness, and you still have to use vanish correctly.

The thing is that people really do not like it when i bring up data, because you can argue about how good of a player you are and how difficult things were and blah blah blah, until i bring up actual data and everything they said was completely bs, and it turns out that they actually don’t know what they are doing.

Aside that, i never said that damage should be 100 % homogenized and every spec should do the same damage in st and aoe, what i said is that specs shouldn’t be over specialized either, where for example assassination does really good st damage, but almost no aoe etc…

Aside that you want some logs? Well in shadowlands i didn’t really play a lot, only lfr, but i do have some logs, or i also have logs from characters i used to have before i transferred to silvermoon.

Examples, from defias brotherhood, ryura, jinmori, maanar… You can look up the logs from legion, and even bfa for ryura, and decide for yourself, and i only improved, i can pretty much play every spec, i just need to understand the rotation, and i can generally pull at least blues, but mostly purples, or even orange consistently.

You could say that i don’t understand class rotation design etc… But you’d be wrong.

I tend to notice, a lot of people who really disagree with me, generally aren’t great players, isn’t that interesting…

32

Wait, wait, wait, whaat?!
Is this a coincidence or Garrote on wowhead Talent Calculator has no Stealth requirement AND has 1h melee weapon requirement?? It means it can be cast like Hemo or any other combo filler!
But who would want to spam a spell which cause only dot dmg… Does no stealth requirement was intentional? They plan make Garrote a new Hemo or what?

33

I don’t think that’s the case, from what i remember hemo used to increase the damage you would do to the target by a certain amount.

He probably meant that garrote could do a similar function. But i honestly don’t really like dots just for the sake of dotting.

I like dots that give you something else other than just damage, for example assassination dots give you back energy, stuff like that is actually enjoyable. But a dot that only does damage is boring.

34

Yeah, exactly. What I meant is some quasihemo here, when taking all the spell description. But why Garrote is suddenly no stealth spell I wonder.

This is not Hemo for sure. I really would se Hemo in class tree right now.

35

That doesn’t answer my question : Did you play as a Sub Rogue during Cataclysm / MoP ?

Again, not a good thing, they just made the spec dumb enough to be played by anyone. And having Shadow Dance that often makes it less impactful.

Lol. Was there really a bad way to use Vanish ?

Well good luck bringing up actual data on me, when there’s none because i don’t log.
According to the logs, i didn’t play during MoP for example. So yeah, go on, bring up data, they’re worthless.

Yeah, you’re just asking to be good in every situation, making one spec above the other 2. People will just pick the best spec overall and never change, if that’s a good idea for you…

Looks like you can play some specs, but i don’t see how that’s relevant while discussing the Sub spec, especially when no spec since Legion can compare to Cata / MoP Sub rogue.

I never said that, you’d have to be extremely stupid not to understand it.

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36

You’re on ignore now Ato, yes i did try out sub buring mop/cata, not on the main server though. I liked dispatch from assassination. Didn’t enjoy sub much, but it wasn’t too bad.

Iv’e had enough of your rambling now.

All these people who have no idea about the game come at me as some kind of expert, did you play sub during mop/cata?! When it was super difficult and cool! i bet you couldn’t do it because you have no idea about the skills required to play the spec optimally, and then i look at the logs of these people, and i see nothing at all worthy of attention.

Yea, not on retail but i did try it, didn’t like it that much, either way i would play it better than you looking at data.

Because the skills i have are applicable to all specs, i don’t just play 1 spec well. I just need to understand the rotation, and then that’s it.

I played feral druid at the start of legion which was one of the most punishing/difficult specs ever made, it wasn’t very enjoyable though, and could do the rotation pretty much perfectly after a few days of training, you think i wouldn’t be able to play sub rogue in cata/mop?

As for garrote, i think it will have a cd, no way it doesn’t, i mean you shouldn’t treat a dot like a spammable anyway. At best it would be for multitargeting like assassination, aside that, it may provide a damage boost on the target, like nightblade used to, but it’s not very good, it’s pretty boring.

What would be better is if garrote could give you a proc sometimes when you do damage to a target, like, a chance to use shadowstrike out of dance or stealth, or make the next finisher free and as if it used 7 combo points, stuff like that. Otherwise id rather not, to be completely honest.

37

There’s a 6s CD so…

Garrote already is like that, no stealth requirement and no weapon requirement.

LOL, look at this guy, putting me on ignore when he finally admits that he couldn’t play the Sub spec decently when it required skills haha.
Talking about people who aren’t great players… What a clown.
No wonder he likes the current version so much, now that the spec can be played by a monkey, he can finally play it.
And the excuse of liking the Assassination spec better… You had to wait for your energy all the time, Assassination was slow, the exact opposit of what he says he wants lol.

“I couldn’t play the spec before because it was too hard so i don’t want it to change back to what it was”
:clown_face: :clown_face: :clown_face:

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38

There you go again misreading what I’m saying…
Either your reading comprehension is severely lacking or you’re being extremely obtuse.

Not overcapping on combo points is nothing special, how on earth do you get me supposedly not being able to manage something as simple as that out of what I wrote?

From Vanilla til Wrath Hemo applied the debuff that increased the damage of auto attacks and special attacks. During Cata it was essentially Mangle with a glyph that made it apply a bleed, during MoP and WoD the bleed became baseline and the Mangle debuff got removed.

Regardless of whether it’s a dot or a debuff that increases damage, it’s a debuff that you keep up and don’t want to press during Dance.

Reminds me of the person that was in charge of the Legion gutting “”“rework”“” of Subtlety claiming that you had to be a ninja IRL to play the spec and he wanted it to be easier

39

Garrote right now doesn’t have a stealth requirement either. Its just tucked away inside the assassination spec.

Old school sub really wasn’t as hard as any of you try to make it sound. Present day specs have far more depth to them then anything in the game pre MoP. Have you guys played classic at all? Its kind of a joke as far as difficulty goes

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40

What was this point about then? Why did you even bring it up? I don’t seem to recall mentioning anything about overcapping.

  1. Again you’re not actually reading my comments. You make a counterpoint that lowering cooldowns is the same as CDR, when that’s my entire point. It’s just without the thinly veiled hoopla. Whoop dee doo you didn’t overcap on combo points, you really need an extra pat on the back for that?

Aside from that, i noticed before that people who really disagree with me tend to be of the lower end of players.

Most of the time they really disagree, i then look at their logs, and let’s say that they are not the best, so ill ask again, why should i take into consideration what you have to say when you can’t even play the spec you are talking about properly?

It seems to me that, many of you have no idea about what you are actually talking about, and the ideas you have are frankly not that great, yea reduce the cd of shadow so now you get more or less the same effect, but without the feedback, great, what did that change exactly? Nothing your rotation is just a little less satisfying to do.

But “uniqueness” Yea well it doesn’t really matter if it means the spec is less fun to play with right?

Or the other guy implying that i couldn’t play sub rogue, even though i can, and i shown him data of my actual logs on various classes, and this guy has at best a couple of low end purple outlier logs, while most others are either grey or green, and he doesn’t have a lot of them either. This is the level of player that is most critical at the moment, just to put it into prospective. He also said that apparently he played sub since cata, which would mean that at this point he should be absolutely great, but the data just doesn’t match, so either, he doesn’t know what he’s doing and he never cared to improve his skills, or he’s lying.

Do you really think i have no idea about how to play sub? Sure i didn’t play retail during mop/cata, i tried it on another server many years back, but you know what i can play? I could play feral during the start of legion, one of the hardest specs ever made in terms of mechanics. So if those people wanna come to me about how i couldn’t play sub rogue and that’s why i wanted it changed, you’re wrong, Just straight up.

The reason why i wouldn’t like shadow dance of such a long cd is because i don’t like using backstab most of the time.

So ill ask again, why exactly should i take into consideration what these people have to say, when the class they apparently main, they can’t even play that one well? And then have the gall to talk about skill to me, and how i couldn’t do it because it’s too hard, while their logs are in the green/grey and mine are in the purps consistently? Don’t you think that maybe i know a little more than you do? Since i can do well on pretty much any class i get my hands on?

Iv’e no issues calling people out on their bs, even if it makes me seem like an a hole.