Rogue Backstab Feedback - Issues and Solutions

[Sliceneck-living-flame]

Introduction
Back when the PTR was up I had this thread about openers overshadowing the finishers:

Rogue finishers get overshadowed by the openers

The idea behind building combo points and then spending them on a finisher has always been that you are using smaller attacks to build up to a bigger attack. That bigger attack should feel substantially stronger than the smaller attacks, otherwise this kind of gameplay loop doesn’t end up feeling very good. So far, most of the rogue runes have empowered combo point builders more than finishers, which has resulted in combo point builders (mutilate in particular, but also backstab with the change…

Long story short, it doesn’t feel good when damaging finishers (e.g., Eviscerate) aren’t doing noticeably more damage than the openers (e.g., Backstab, Mutilate), let alone less than them. The thread offers some more in-depth reasoning on this.

At the time of writing this thread it was only an issue with Mutilate (since the Backstab rune changes hadn’t been introduced yet), which was remedied decently well by the Mutilate nerf.

Backstab trivializing the leveling
However, the same issue now exists with Backstab, especially during the leveling, since you end up non-crit backstabbing for almost the same (or more in some scenarios) damage as an Eviscerate & in addition to that, Backstab now requires less energy than Eviscerate and has a much higher crit chance (if you pick the right talents).

Thus, you end up just spamming Backstab (and Ambush when it procs) and end up not really having anything to do with your combo points at all. Non-damaging finishers are usually not worth it with how quickly enemies are dying & they don’t give the same satisfaction of a damaging finisher anyways.

Ambush having the same animation and sound as Backstab makes it feel even more like you are spamming one button & I think some people have even created macros to turn it into exactly that. Ambush essentially ends up feeling like a Backstab crit.

Picking other builds for leveling is something that you can do, but you’d always feel like you are wasting your time, because they do so much less damage. Due to the Backstab build being so bursty, you sometimes end up having up to 3-4 times the DPS on short-lived quest mobs compared to e.g. a Mutilate build.

Backstabbing from the front
Another thing that I don’t like about the Backstab changes is that you are now able to use it from the front. Some reasons for why I dislike that:

• fantasy - it simply goes against the fantasy of the ability. It is literally called Backstab, which should be a stab from the back, not a stab from the front.
• positioning - having to position yourself correctly adds depth to both PVP and PVE, so the removal of this restriction takes away a fun dimension of gameplay.
• energy pooling - a fun (but usually not strong enough) playstyle during leveling in base classic as a dagger rogue was to pool energy and sap or kidney-shot to then backstab from behind for (decently) big damage. Buffs to Backstab offered the opportunity to make this playstyle viable and competitive with other playstyles, but taking away the positional restriction also takes away the point of playing like that and instead results in the rather bland one-button rotation described above.

The bluepost for the Backstab buffs mentioned that the design intention was to offer an alternative to Mutilate. This seems to have been partially achieved, since Backstab seems to now be a viable choice for dungeons (due to the high burst), albeit not necessarily for raids (because the longer encounters make mutilate or saber slash more valuable).
The thing is that the buffs would still remain effective for instanced content if the positional restriction was intact, because it is usually trivial to remain behind enemies when they are being tanked.
On the other hand, it would no longer be possible to spam Backstab during the leveling process, thus fixing it’s main issue.
What remains is PVP content, where the change would also be a positive, since Backstab is currently quite OP there (some video examples below). The positional requirement would be a small but not overly extreme nerf for PVP, probably roughly the amount of nerf that it needs.

Ambush procs & character control

The Ambush proc is another thing that I don’t quite like, though it’s not as big of a deal as the other issues I mentioned.
In general, I don’t really like the idea of procs in Classic. One thing that I prefer about the Classic gameplay is that it feels like you are in control of your character, like the character is an extension of yourself, as opposed to retail that has a lot of procs and other effects randomly popping up that make you feel a bit more like your character is doing it’s own thing, rather than doing what you want.

I don’t really mind the idea of having Ambush be usable outside of stealth with this rune, but it would be better if it was something that you can plan for, rather than something that happens spontaneously.

Some possibilities for this include:

• Build-up - Make Ambush usable after a certain number of backstabs. This would be better than the proc but I don’t really like it either, since it’s kind of like an extra set of combo points.
• Low Health - Make Ambush usable on enemies with health below 20%. This could feel quite fun in leveling if the positional restriction was also added back in. You could play around a lot with how you pool your energy and stun your enemies to open them up for Backstabs while also making sure to be able to Ambush at about exactly the time that they have 20% of health (since it would likely kill them off). At the same time, it would also be quite strong and fun in dungeon content, where you might observe the HP of multiple trash enemies and try to land as many Ambushes as possible to maximize your DPS.
• After a 5CP Finisher - Make Ambush usable after a full (5 combo points) finisher. Being able to land an Ambush after every 5 CP could feel quite fun, especially when following an Eviscerate / Envenom, though it might be too strong.

Of those three, I probably like making it usable on low health the most.

EDIT: While I do prefer those options to an ambush proc, I don’t think that any of them are ideal, I merely suggested them because the rune is already a thing and probably not going away completely. In a future iteration (e.g. Classic+) I would much prefer to simply keep Ambush as a stealth-only ability, like it was for a long time in WoW’s history.

Backstab runes competing with utility runes

My probably most favorite addition to the rogue in SoD was the Quick Draw ability. There are so many fun things that you could do with it, both in PVE and PVP. I remember using Quick Draw, Saber Slash and Between the Eyes to solo the Alterac ogres in phase 1, it was great.

This was also the reason for why I never really tried the Backstab build in phase 1, because ‘Slaughter from the Shadows’ shares the slot with Quick Draw. With Backstab being strong now, this is again becoming an issue, though to a lesser extent because you now have Shadowstep, which is probably my second-favorite rune and a much needed gap closer (in fact, the lack of such and the reliance on engineering is the main thing I dislike about Era PVP as a rogue), but there is nothing quite like Quick Draw haha.
I also never liked that Quick Draw shared a slot with Deadly Brew. In general, I don’t like the idea of DPS runes competing with utility runes, though there might be exceptions where it does make sense.

So, the SoD rogue could benefit quite a bit from a rearrangement of the runes, a good way of doing this could be to have a slot where you choose between the following three, since they have somewhat similar purposes:

• Quick Draw
• Between The Eyes
• Waylay

In phase 1 this would’ve been a bad idea, because you required both Quick Draw and Between the Eyes in PVP, but now with Kidney Shot and Shadowstep available, this could be a good way of organizing a slot to offer an interesting and non-trivial choice.

More generally, a good place of inspiration for how to arrange rune slots might be the talent system introduced with Mists of Pandaria. A lot of players didn’t like this system due to it being so much more basic than the regular talent trees, but it did often offer real and interesting choices, which is something that each rune slot should strive for.

The Perception of Other Players

In addition to the logic laid out I would also like to offer some more empirical evidence for how other long-term rogue players are perceiving the backstab build.

Pshero is a very skilled rogue player that has reached Gladiator many times. Here is a short 1 minute clip titled “the new rogue spec is so dumb”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8dDySIJnNU

Payo is someone that has played Classic forever, more or less maining rogue. Here is an 8m video where you can see the Backstab gameplay in action, titled “This P4 ROGUE Spec IS BROKEN”, where he also calls it dumb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYTQorFscXQ

Personally, I don’t even really mind the Backstab build in PVP, it’s kind of fun, albeit a bit bland and too overpowered. The main problem with it is during leveling.

Summary

The main issue of the Backstab build is that it trivializes the leveling, which could be remedied by adding back the positional requirement, while also having other positive effects and not negatively affecting other types of content.

Other potential improvements include tweaks to the Ambush logic and a rearrangement of rune slots. Personally I would also like to see an Eviscerate rune or some buffs to the Eviscerate scaling, you can look into my other thread (mentioned at the top) for some reasoning on that.

A tweaked and slightly simplified SoD rogue with Quick Draw and Shadowstep has the potential to be one of the most fun iterations of a rogue ever, on par with BC and Wrath, but with the added variety of utility abilities like Shadowstep no longer being restricted to the Subtlety spec.
I’m looking forward to what it might evolve to in the future of SoD and beyond, and hope that some of the reasoning here will be built into it.

[Kiboxx-lone-wolf]

Well, besides “I want to play the class this way, so please change runes to make my play style more viable”, I did not see any good argument.

I personally don´t like mutilate-poison-dot build. I think it takes away a lot of the typical play style of a rogue with blind, solarplexus, sap, etc. Now I quite enjoy the new backstab build. But that is just my opinion.

Regarding your “arguments”:

-Eviscerate does approximately as much damage as backstab. I think that is good. It is more energy efficient than backstab (if you have relentless strikes), so a good thing for pve. If it would do more damage, you would be forced to use it always as finisher, but now you can actually choose between rupture, slice and dice, kidney shot etc. I think it allows you to be more creative with your finishers.

-You decide what way you kill the mobs when leveling. I personally prefer cheap shot, ambush, ambush, solarplexus, kidney shot, ambush, ambush, done. Leveling without loosing any hp. Might be a bit slower but without down time. If you want to do it differently, that´s fine, but don´t complain that, if you only press one button, the play style is boring. If you feel like you are wasting your time playing a different play style, could it be that your mind set is wrong?

-Backstabbing from the front was necessary, I think. In dungeons, you start backstabbing a mob and suddenly you get aggro. What to do now? Vanish (every 5 minutes), feint (and loose energy), take your combo points and move to the next mob? Most options make you loose dps or require a cool down and, as I see it, backstab build had to be buffed to be closer to mutilate and saber slash. And in pvp? All classes are now able to kill you using only instant casts, using insignia and running away. Multiple people attacking a person, dots making it impractical to use solarplexus… It´s most of the time not a one on one. Backstabbing from behind was fun in classic or in 1 on 1s, but it feels a bit too slow for sod. Regarding “fantasy”: You also have vulnerable points from the front, why not attack there instead of from behind? “Positioning”: it is still preferable (definitely not “trivial”) to attack a mob from behind to avoid parry, dodge etc. and you have to get in front of the target to use solarplexus. Stun lock is still necessary for damage mitigation. If the opponent is stunned, who cares if you attack from the front or the back?

-“It feels like you are in control of your character” and procs would not support that feeling? If you attack an opponent and have to wait until he exposes a vulnerable spot / drops his defense, that would actually be a proc. It is not something that comes from within the rogue (“wow, now I can suddenly do an ambush”), but which is determined by the outer circumstances (if you care about the role playing aspect).

-Your suggestion to “build up” backstabs to get an ambush sounds even more dull. Now, at least I have to pay attention and press ambush in the right moment. Current version seems a bit more entertaining to me than blindly counting your backstabs.

-Your suggestion to use ambush only when health is below 20 % again sounds a bit dull. In dungeons, mobs die so fast that you probably won´t get the opportunity. And with bosses it would make the last minutes quite boring.

-I really did not like quick draw and I am happy that is no longer meta in pvp. Running around unstealthed without stun lock seems to be the most non rogue thing to do. If you want to kite some random mob you can still just put crippling poison on your off hand weapon and spam poisoned knife. Fun!

-Videos: Why should I care if some youtuber calls a spec dumb?

So, to sum up, you just mention your preferences as arguments. I think you currently can play your play style. It is just not meta. You can try and ask blizzard to change the entire class setup, so it suits your preferences, but there is no basis for it. I mean, it could have been that sod rogue was implemented in the way you described. It could also have been implemented in a completely different way. I am sure there are a lot of players who have more ideas to even more different play styles. But that is the way blizzard has decided and I don´t really see an argument to change anything.

For the first time in 4 seasons, rogues can more or less choose between mutilate, saber slah and back stab build without being too far from the meta. So I actually think the current situation is fine. Just buff rogue tanks, that´s the real problem

Sorry, I got bored this morning and felt like typing

[Sliceneck-living-flame]

Thank you for the thorough answer, you raise some decent points, so I’ll go through them in order. I also propose a set of changes for a potential classic+ (irrespective of SoD) at the end of this post and I’m curious to see if we can agree on that, so if the post is too long feel free to skip to the end.
Note that there was a recent interview (1-2 days ago) where they have pretty much confirmed that SoD is the testing ground for something like Classic+, so I feel like this kind of discussion could be quite valuable.

Poison / dot based builds
I also don’t really like a poison or dot based build, what I want is the basic rogue playstyle of opener + strong finisher to be viable.

I think the energy-pooling based playstyle that I mentioned is something that you would enjoy, because it relies on stuns and Gauge (what you call Solarplexus, I think it is the German name) in order to be able to backstab, while not allowing for mindlessy spamming the ability. As I mentioned, I’m all for buffing Backstab and making this playstyle more viable, what I dislike is simply that the spammy semi-one-button playstyle is the strongest.

Eviscerate Damage
Eviscerate doing approximately as much damage as Backstab is not quite enough, because Backstab crits so much more often. You are right that Relentless Strikes makes it a bit more energy-efficient, though I don’t think that this is enough to make it feel worth pressing, let alone satisfying to press. Damaging finishers doing approximately as much damage as openers is not enough, they should do noticeably more to feel satisfying. I won’t go into details about why, because I explained it very thoroughly in the thread linked at the very top, but I do want to note, that this was the case for every single iteration of rogue in 20 years of WoW (minus maybe some brief exceptions that were fixed quickly). In fact, Classic (era) is the only original version of WoW that has level ranges where Eviscerate feels a bit too weak, but even then, it is still significantly stronger than your openers and worth pressing. So, while you are right that different players have different preferences and that I might care more about having a satisfying damaging finisher than other players, it is also something that has objectively been a part of rogue for the entirety of WoW’s history & while I think that SoD or Classic+ can and should substantially deviate from Classic Era, I don’t think that it is a good idea to deviate from the essence of rogue in general. At the very least, this very standard playstyle of rogue should be viable and not significantly weaker than other less common playstyles.

It is true that raising the damage of Eviscerate in a vacuum would “force” you to use it as a finisher, but the point is to make it stronger than openers, not to make it stronger than anything else. If a buff to Eviscerate would end up being the way to achieve that, then other damaging finishers like Rupture would also have to be buffed. In fact, I’m actually in favor of raising the Rupture damage to be higher than Eviscerate (like it is in e.g. Wrath) because that makes for a nicer PVE rotation (maintaining Slice & Rupture and then Eviscerating). Slice & Kidney wouldn’t need a buff in this scenario, they would still be worth pressing in the correct situation, like it is the case in e.g. Wrath.

Stun-based Playstyle
The exact combo you mentioned (assuming that by Ambush you mean Backstab) doesn’t really work because you don’t have the energy for a gauge after a cheap shot and two backstabs, but you are right that a stunlock-based playstyle can be somewhat worthwhile and fun with the backstab build.
I’ve tried it out a bit more and it is situationally worthwhile, but unfortunately, opening with Ambush (when you have improved Ambush and the +45% crit chance after a honor kill) and then spamming Backstab can kill the enemy so fast that you barely have time to take any damage, therefore making the the stun-based playstyle just a slower way of achieving the same thing.

Optimization-based mindset
There is no such thing as a good or bad mindset, that’s kind of relative, but there are a lot of players that like playing their class optimally & it definitely isn’t ideal game design to make the optimal way of playing less enjoyable. This is why so many players complained about the nightmare incursions, because those were very efficient but at the same time very grindy and repetitive.

Backstab positioning in dungeons
You are right that getting aggro and not having anything to press could be an issue in SoD. On era, this would not be a problem, because you could press sinister strike in this situation, without losing out on too much damage, but in SoD, everything is so much stronger than sinister strike that this wouldn’t really be viable anymore. You could throw out a stun in this situation or a redirect and jump onto another enemy, but I’m not sure if this would be enough to make it play well, it would have to be tested.

It’s hard to say what the best route for SoD would be with this, but the key takeaway for a Classic+ is that buffing abilities in a vacuum without considering the other abilities is not a good idea. I.e., if you buff backstab too much, you might also have to buff sinister strike. If you buff Eviscerate, you might also have to buff Rupture, etc.

It might be too late for SoD, but there is definitely room for future iterations to have a backstab-build with the positional requirement intact that works well in dungeons.

About the fantasy point: Yes, an enemy can be vulnerable from the front, but the ability is called back-stab, my point still stands.

Character control & tweaks to Ambush
Fantasy: The idea behind the ambush-proc is not that the enemy exposes a vulnerable spot, but that you are exposing it with the backstab, which is why it can only proc on a backstab. In fact, I would argue that in any (real life, etc) fight you are the one forcing the enemy to expose a weakness, rather than them doing it on their own. Thus, if you don’t have control over when your character forces the enemy to expose their weakness, you have less control over the character.

I agree that none of my solutions for making the non-stealth ambush feel more controlled are ideal. These were simply suggestions because we already have that rune and it’s probably not going away. For future iterations, i.e. Classic+, it would probably better to just keep Ambush as a stealth-only ability, like it was for a long time in WoW’s history. It’s a bit too retaily for a Classic+, though I can concede that this is a bit subjective. Either way, I care much less about this particular issue than the other ones I mentioned, the most important being that damaging finishers are too weak.

Quick draw
Yes, I can see why someone wouldn’t like Quick Draw, I kind of liked the plays you could do with it but I agree it’s not the most rogue thing to do. I also wouldn’t want it to be the absolute meta, just one of multiple utility-options to choose from.

Videos
Yeah, agree you don’t have to care haha. The videos weren’t really meant for other players reading the post, but more for a dev potentially stumbling upon it to see that there are other long-term rogue players that dislike this build.

Subjectivity and the essence of a rogue
While you are right that some of what I said was about my own preference, not all of it was.
As I mentioned above, weak openers followed by strong damaging finishers have been the core of rogue for 20 years of WoW. In fact, this is how you play rogue from the very first second you log into the game, you already play like that at level 1 (though in retail it might be lvl 4 or so to get Eviscerate haha). Every version of rogue at any level bracket was always, at it’s core, based on that.
Backstabbing from the front and ambush procs do exist in later iterations of WoW and while I really don’t like those, they are definitely debatable, but finishers being too weak is not.

The future of Rogue beyond SoD
We have a bunch of disagreements, but it seems like we both do enjoy a more control-based rogue-like playstyle. Maybe we could come up with a plan that would be satisfactory for both of us & then maybe other players can critique it. That way we can find something that works more generally and a dev stumbling upon this thread can use it for inspiration.

So, let’s forget for a moment about the things that were introduced in SoD that might be hard to take back and start with a clean slate.
Starting from an ERA rogue at it’s core, these are roughly the changes that I would want to see in a Classic+:

• More utility - Adding things like Shadowstep and Quick Draw. Shadowstep would probably be enough, but as I mentioned, I personally really really liked Quick Draw. In Era, you are often in a situation where you have literally nothing you can press (without relying on items) against a hunter or mage, if your longer CDs are down, so Rogue really needs some kind of gap closer, to make the PVP encounters more balanced and more interesting. Some people might argue that introducing too much mobility can dumb down PVP and lead to a state like retail. This is true, if you introduce too much, but having too little isn’t good either, you need to find a balance. PVP from BC to MoP was very good & they all had rogues with Shadowstep.
• Eviscerate Buff - As I mentioned, Eviscerate is more or less fine on Era, but there are level ranges where it still feels a bit too weak, so a small buff to the AP scaling could be a good idea.
• Rupture Buff - Rupture should do more damage than Eviscerate to make it worthwhile to maintain on longer encounters, with some eviscerates in-between, similar to the Wrath playstyle.
• Backstab Buff - This could take many forms, but it shouldn’t take away the positional requirement. The idea is to enable the energy-pooling and stun-based playstyle, without buffing it so much that Sinister strike would become completely worthless in the situations when you are forced to use it.
• (MAYBE) More Openers and Finisheres - Having more playstyles to choose from is good, but they shouldn’t replace the standard playstyle. For example, you could add Mutilate and Envenom to enable a playstyle similar to Wrath-Assassination, but the basic playstyle of sinsister strike / backstab and Eviscerate should still be decent, potentially based on a slightly reworked combat tree.
• (MAYBE) Even more Playstyles - I’m all for enabling more wacky playstyles, even ones that have something like an ambush proc, but they shouldn’t make the standard rogue playstyle (that many players have come to love over the years) completely obsolete.

Do you agree that this would be a decent set of changes for Classic+? If not, which of those changes would you like to exclude, or which additional changes are missing that you would like to see? Maybe we can come to an agreement haha

[Shrezzadudu-ravencrest]

Who cares what you want? ur a stupid player with a wall of text calling for nerfs for your own class!
You’re the only one complaining, just play Saber Slash lol or something else.
I will unsub if they remove front stabbing! This is so fun like this alot how it is!

[Acidy-wild-growth]

I was looking for a Backstab Topic to add my PoV.

I like Backstab Build with Blade Dance in mostly defense Gear. You get extra hitpoints and at least ~100 Def = 0.04% * 100 on dodge and parry as well as reducing enemy dodge block parry and it adds >400AP. That makes a Bleed Tank build the best solo option for me.

The pure Damage output of such a build drops of in the raid. The improved Expose Armor is so good solo but in a raid all get it one way ore another. The 400AP are not that significant any more.

I studied the logs and i think that the Cuttthroat Rune is too weak in raids. You want to attack from behind anyway and all the Bossfights give you that option only the 15% on an Ambush do something, but Ambush is only ~40% stronger than Backstab at best. Means that Cuttthroat does not much at all (around 7% increase total output for 8 Talent Points invested to get 45% crit chance).

There are too many runes that i would only use in pvp or maybe for some fights like huhuran AQ40 where you need range and movement. I would say it would be best to give those rune slots more options and add some bleed or physical dps aspects for those slots.