Sub - A perfect spec brought to shambles by BfA

Classes Rogue
46

Appreciate your effort in trying to get the spec to work but, doesn’t it feel recently like were always trying to apply band-aids to the spec in order to make it playable these days?..

I mean, after the second round of heavy sub nerfs, Sub players found an awkward way to make first dance work to give us at least “some” burst before that was changed. It really shouldn’t be that way.

What I don’t understand and find most frustrating about Sub this expansion is the complete lack of communication and/or justification for massive changes/nerfs to the spec, such as the complete removal of Phantom assassin.

PA was removed, taking away our burst almost completely. Not a single line of blue text to justify the complete removal of a PvP talent…

Meanwhile, Shadow Priests get an entire wall of blue text explaining a multitude of talent changes and buffs in great detail in the run up to 8.1…

So frustrating Blizzard…

47

well, i’ve tried gloomblade now. it felt better than the standard find weakness build, but not as much better as i had hoped. with 5x 415 backstab traits and gloomblade i got it to around 9k, which is the same as with 3x in the skirm i tried. in real games it’s not as reliable to hit from behind and you often have to run away and drop your stacks.

it still takes kidney>sheep>sheep>fear>duel>kidney>sheep to actually kill a lot of the time, and even then you often just get something like swap and then the go is over. it feels very weak. yesterday we had a windwalker at like 20% with no hots and it took step kick into duel into kidney on his druid to actually finish him off because he just lines my mage and priest and my damage is barely more than his self-healing.

i think sub is harmed a lot by how slow the meta is, it takes forever to land kills in general, not just for sub, and that doesn’t suit a spec designed around short burst windows with cc. the spec is weak in general and the meta doesn’t suit it at all, which is not a great combination.

1 Like
50

in legion we wanted to combine:
dfa
shadow blades
shadow dance
symbols of death
vanish 100% crit buff
finality: eviscerate dmg buff
nightblade dmg debuff
trinket
shuriken combo, if possible
goremaw’s bite (not super important, but prefered).

in bfa we wanna combine:
shadow dance
shadow blades
symbols of death
trinket
nightblade
(rip shuriken combo)

in warlords sub was more about having high find weakness uptime, then squeeze in as many ambushes and evis as possible, during dance.
there wasnt really much preperation before the burst.

didnt play much sub in expacs before that, since they wernt the optimal pve spec, iirc.
wait, i think i did on spine of deathwing actually, for burst, but i cant remember the rotation.

please enlighten me, how did you prevent yourself from ending up infront of avatar of sargeras, when casting dfa? and on any other “legless” bosses.

sure they were nice, the cloak was only good for padding meters tbh.
what made sub game breaking, was when the m+ group catered the rogue, by pulling a bunch of mobs together with a boss or a high prio trash mob. so the rogue could benefit from shuriken combo and delete the prio target.
this wasnt possible to pull of, to the same extend, by the average rogue in a average pug.

51

yes legion had more modifiers. both bfa and legion have blades btw, though the bfa version increases builder damage while legion just lasted longer. you didn’t goremaw during dance usually, could if you wanted to burst extra hard i guess. you didn’t mention find weakness if you wanted to list all the things. i guess nightstalker too.

there was prep in wod, you needed a fresh rupture to not immediately multistrike it off and adequate snd duration. hfc sub was more about stacking damage modifiers to do a bajillion burst than find weakness uptime cause of maalus, soul cap and 2 set.

pretty sure avatar couldn’t parry, can’t recall that happening. even if he could you can usually avoid that sort of thing.

cloak was good for doing enormous burst aoe. whether that’s padding or not depends entirely on the situation. in a raiding environment yeah typically wasn’t needed, had plenty of aoe lords.

52

just wanted to elaborate the amount of buffs difference, between legion and bfa.
youre right about shadow blades, i did mean to include it, mustve slipped, my bad, ill edit it in.
i didnt feel the need to include find weakness and nightstalker, since theyre applied passively in dance.

youre right about the fresh rupture and adequate SnD in wod, but it was pretty easy to pull of, especially thx to anticipation (i miss that talent :frowning: ). and sure we waited for soul cap procs to use dance.
we also had shadow reflection.
damn, wod sub was fun.

anyway my point is, legion had 8 buffs/cds to actively track, maintain and combine. bfa have 5, wod had 5…6?
i guess 8 is just too much for my liking.

but again, i understand if others like it.

im palledan btw

53

Out of interest, what changes would you make to Sub PvP right now to make it competitive? I don’t think it would need that much imho

My own personal wish-list aside from a small redesign back in the direction of WoD (which isn’t gonna happen any time soon) would be something like:

  • Buff eviscerate damage by 5-10%

  • Return Phantom assassin as a pasive attached to Shadowdance but nerf it from 35 to 20% increased chance to crit.

And either one of these three.

  • Buff backstab damage by 5-10%

  • Increase duration/or damage buff of Nightblade

  • Increase duration or shorten CD of Symbols.

54

i think subtlety is fine mechanically. it’s just legion sub with minor changes, and that’s pretty good. it’s not mop or wod sub but it’s still fun. it just needs more damage. two ways that make the most sense to me are just slapping a blanket damage buff on the spec or buffing dark shadow and/or find weakness.

i don’t want phantom assassin. right now i get to run 3 fun active abilities in bomb, duel and cold blood. i don’t want to replace any of them with a passive damage modifier.

symbols duration is already a thing in inevitability, and reducing the cooldown isn’t much use. the way it is now lines up well with stun drs.

55

Yeah I enjoy Duel more than i was expecting. This is why I suggested that Phantom Assassin be baked into Shadowdance as a passive. Sorry I should have been clearer. Add to the shadowdance tooltip “increases critical strike chance by 20%”.

The ability to crit more often might be the only damage buff we need but I cant help thinking Evis should hit harder.

56

probably won’t happen because it would affect pve. subtlety could use help in pve as well but it would be unusual for blizzard to adjust pve balance in the middle of a raid tier.

there are many ways you can buff sub’s damage (burst in particular) and ultimately it doesn’t matter all that much if that’s done by buffing damage, damage modifiers or specific abilities.

just hoping there will be some changes when 8.1.5 drops on the 13th. even if subtlety doesn’t get buffed hopefully the meta will speed up which should help the spec.

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