I was referring to the new talent Call of the Wild, where it will function mostly like the old Stampede did. At least it seems that way.
How it’ll turn out, numbers-wise, we’ll find that out eventually. It will be interesting to see how the gameplay flow turns out to be when we’re able to get Alpha Predator as BM, allowing for Kill Command to have 2 charges. As for Cobra Senses as a talent, I’d like to think that there are far more interesting things that can be done. We already, likely, have Cobra Shot with that effect baked in, and then you have Killer Cobra doing much of the same, but better. Do we really need a 3rd talent/effect that focuses on that?
Honestly pretty disappointed in the Rogue trees, especially in regards to Subtlety:
Where did all the unique spec abilities go that Subtlety used to have?
Everything is shared between multiple Rogue specs or straight up removed. If you go back to the old WOTLK talent tree and look at the abilities that used to be unique to Subtlety:
Please move Marked for Death, personally hate the way it feels to play with it outside of Pvp (some may disagree) I don’t like the idea that I have to take it to get cheat death.
I don’t think a rotational gameplay altering ability (MFD) should gatekeep having something as quality of life as Cheat Death.
ideally id prefer swapping the position of Cheat Death with Elusiveness, as MFD and Elusiveness see their best game play in Pvp so putting them together makes more sense whilst not forcing the cheat death mfd loop
I’ve been playing a lot of subtlety rogue over the past 2-3 expansions (yes even a little bit when it was turbo bad in BFA). I am a community figure in the rogue discord community Ravenholdt and a Method guide writer for subtlety.
There’s no point to beat around the bush when it comes to the rogue spec trees; raid/party utility should NOT be spec based in a class that only has pure dps. I know you’re trying to do something “unique and interesting” with raid/party buffs in DF, but please consider the ramifications it will have on the gameplay for people that just want to play “their spec” that they find is the most fun. As it stands with Atrophic Poison and Restless Crew existing, you will almost never have space for a subtlety rogue in any notable raiding guild. Restless crew is also just very problematic for m+ reasons, please reconsider these talents and put them in the class tree or straight up just forget they ever existed.
As for the sub tree itself, we got some really good and needed changes in the latest alpha build. But some issues remain.
Perforated Veins being capped to 3 stacks leaves you with 2 options when playing with this talent. You either backstab in shadow dance or you simply ignore it. The reason why it’s capped at 6 stacks in shadowlands is because that’s approximately the number of shadowstrikes you will use in shadow dance. Using backstab during dance is a bad feeling and overcapping the stacks is also a bad feeling
Invigorating shadowdust follows up Perforated Veins and is just a very strange talent that seems out of place in the “builder side” of the tree. 20 seconds of CDR on a 2 minute cooldown does not sound very fun or strong. Shadowdust could easily be made more interesting by allowing it to reduce Vanish as well.
Secret Technique is a talent that has consistently been mistreated since its creation in BFA beta. This spell could be very cool, but the fact that it competes with Black powder for aoe damage and has practically 0 interaction with any other sub passives except the mastery makes it a very boring and lackluster button press. Secret techniques could be made to do way more damage and the trade off being that it gets target capped so that it has some kind of niche (low target cleave/aoe).
Shadow mist is being looked at according to the communication we’ve had with one of the rogue class tree devs. But i will bring it up anyway, it seems incredibly lackluster as a capstone talent, i haven’t seen it ingame, but when i read that i have to chase small clouds ingame to get some weird shadowstep benefit, it just doesn’t sound very good. This could honestly be replaced by a buffed Secret Technique button and that would make it a compelling option in my opinion.
Class tree:
Cheat death has a very problematic placement in the tree at the moment, it’s way too deep into the “sub side” of the tree, which basically forces the other 2 specs to go deep into subtlety and heavily lean you into going for a shadow dance build. Not everyone wants to play with shadow dance, so moving cheat death to somewhere else would probably make it way less intrusive on gameplay.
Tight spenders is one of those talents that might seem good at first glance, but when you break it down, it’s actually one of the worst talents in the tree. For sub its 4.5 energy saved per eviscerate and even less on rupture and slice and dice, it just doesn’t do a whole lot and should either get reworked or buffed.
Thistle tea and Echoing reprimand are both very lackluster capstone talents which also further “forces” you into going for a shadow dance build, which again, might not be fun for some people that just wants to play outlaw or assassination and not have stance changing shadow dance forced on your gameplay.
Find weakness being a 2 point talent for sub when you can already get its benefits on backstab and shuriken storm from your spec tree is just very bad/strange. But we HAVE to take it because it’s in front of another charge of shadow dance and 1 charge shadow dance is very awkward to play with. Please reconsider the position of Find Weakness or remove it from the class tree and give shadowstrike the Find Weakness application baseline or in the sub tree.
Overall I think the sub tree is pretty good, it has some very weak nodes that kinda limits the amount of potential builds you can make. Fixing the left side of the sub tree and replacing the middle row capstone talent are 2 very needed changes, in my opinion.
But nothing about the sub tree matters as long as Atrophic Poison and Restless Crew are in the game and something the 2 other rogue specs can bring. Because subtlety as a spec will just not be brought for the vast majority of mythic raids and m+ dungeons. Community perception matters, this raid/party utility unique thing that you have going on is going to become the “covenant lock” of Dragonflight and has to be fixed. Nobody wants it except for the devs and their idea of “meaningful raid comp choice”, which simply does not exist for any guild that isnt in the RWF, because most guilds below just copy whatever they do.
So yea, a very dark shadow is hanging over the rogue class at the moment and before that’s adjusted. The future of subtlety is looking grim.
Hmm so one prediction was wrong, dont envy the classes and speccs not out yet. Did get some prediction right tho like.
And this holds true for Wings, crusader strike, blade of justice and divine steed (steed has 4 talent points and it gives us a less version of what we have today by lasting shorter and having a longer CD)
5 talent points in basic tree to buff consecration and 5 more in Ret (exo included) in 9 seperate talents.
Thats a lot for one single spell.
The one single plus i see in this is Spellwarding. Rest is just a rewamp of our rotation.
I do not disagree. I wasn’t overly happy with it either.
Like, they’re pretty mutch the same as they were, the only difference being that Holy can now interrupt. But if you look at resto shaman. They get Lightning Lasso, that new earth totem that reduces dmg by 10% and Thunderstorm.
I will say though. Combine Ret and Holy on a team and you got immunety to every class in the game. Kinda disgusting.
But it does feel like one can do a very ranged heavy Ret attacker in the current build.
2 Hammers of wrath that can be reset with final verdict on a Wings that lasts minimum 30 sec with 30% dmg and haste. Can be fun aswell and hope it functions as i think it does.
Hunter talent trees seem very…meh.
Nothing is really blowing my skirt up at present. Would be nice if they gave us something really different, or just some interesting new visual effects for existing things.
Careful. Tah is a BIG defender of the current hunter tree.
BM needs to be all about healing pets, looking through their eyes, lallygagging in world quests and off tanking with pets, because that is needed in every dungeon.
