I am going to play the spec regardless as I enjoy the fantasy, but what is the actual issue with Sub?
Is the damage that poor? Or just outside cooldowns/burst window? Any constructive feedback would be great!
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if you’re making this thread, especially with what you’ve written, i’d say just play and don’t worry about it.
No, the damage isnt’t at state to think Sub isn’t viable at PvE content, but very generally speaking, it has less dmg then other rogue specs and, the rumor I heard is, it has less dmg than most / every other dps class at the moment - but I haven’t any data do prove it.
The real problem is people who heard Sub isn’t viable and believie the gossip (not caring or testing is it true or not) may no willing to invite you to do they keys, but I never know what the reason I get declined to invite to PUG group, so I can’t prove it was the reason.
I described my experience playing Sub in PUG already (I encourage you to read it):
Right now I’m 213ilvl, doing 3,9M dps, and I do get invites in PUGs with no big issue + I do M+ and Raids with my guild which dosen’t care spec I play.
So, yeah, play the spec you find fun, no the spec/class “everybody” says you should play. It’s game for fun, not a prison.
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Sub rogues are ranked bottom DPS in mythic raiding, which is sad. However, this is where the tragedy stop.
Sub rogues are really decent, if not good, in mythic+. Whereas, they might not be as good as outlaw in M+ and because people see that they are bad in mythic raids, they also assume they are bad in M+ … which is really dumb lol. Also, sub rogues are generally decent in heroic and normal raiding scenarios aswell. At this level of raiding a large chunk of the damage is derived from the difference in skill levels amongst the players anyway.
I say go for it, unless you are gonna do mythic raid progression then you can stick to sub rogue for as long as you want and be relatively competitive. Even if you do start progressing on mythic raids, then sub rogues are fine if you are a good player.
in M+ you will mostly be doing AOE damage. Basically on all packs with more than 4 mobs. the AOE rotation (simplified) is: shuriken storm>black powder>shuriken storm >black powder > and so forth. However, while doing AOE you’ll want to pop shadow dance and symbols and even shadowblades in some situations. You will see that in mythic+, because of the increased amount of combo point generation, due to all the AOE packs, your shadow dance uptime will be very high. This is because of your passive deepening shadows which reduces the cool down of your shadow dance whenever you spend combo points. This is also why sub rogues are much more competitive in M+ than in mythic raiding, because of the cool down reduction mechanic (CDR) that allows for much more uptime on Shadow dance. It also goes without saying, that the AOE outside of shadow dance is also decent. However, yes… The Single target damage outside of shadow dance is a bit lackluster, which is why you have to learn how to stay in shadow dance as long as possible and never waste combo points by e.g. overcapping CPs. On that note, sub rogue single target damage is actually competitive with most other classes, the reason for why sub rogues fail in castle nathria is because their cleave damage is very bad (2-3 targets).
Finally, what makes sub rogue hard to play is that you have to constantly use your cool downs, like symbols, shadow dance and shadowblades in order to compete with the other classes. This means that you want to use your CDs as often, but also as efficient as possible and this balance can sometimes be hard to strike. For example, what you dont want to do is use shadow dance when you are low on energy or worse, just before a mechanic where you have to run away from boss.
Anyway, I hope this information helps. I would still recommend sub rogue, because it is incredibly fun to play and this is especially true if you wanna do a lot of M+ 
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I am, but there’s no harm in asking for a bit of information, I like to be clued up! 
This is great feedback - I appreciate it, thanks!
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Thanks for this!
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No problem
Sub is awful on 2-3 target cleave, like probably the worst spec in the game on those amounts.
Sub has low burst decent sustain aoe if you have enough targets, generally speaking 4-5+. This means that certain specs make it seem worse than it is in m+ or aoe situations. If you run with a fire mage that knows what he’s doing, he will blow most trash packs up before you get to do damage. But i have been playing sub in keys lately and i can sustain about 7k+ dps in most dungeons, which is about the same as assassination.
Sub has decent single target damage. I have played sub for all of castle nathria mythic (total of 130 kills so far) and i can compete with really good players playing really good single target specs.
The spec has a bad reputation because people are usually bad at playing it. You can see this at warcraftlogs where the difference between the bottom and the top sub rogue is more than any other spec, and at the same time sub is one of the least RNG specs in the game.
AND, it’s getting a big buff to both ST and AOE going into 9.1, so you will definitely be able to play it in all situations.
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Sub is the most mechanical spec left in the game on ST due to having to juggle with many more things than other classes:
- maintain rupture / SnD at all times but reapply before dance windows (ideally outside of a FW window in general)
- you’re punished for not being behind a target
- lining up energy pooling windows with your shadow technique proc
- not overcapping your dance charges
- loosing uptime is hurting your dps much more than other specs since you’re also loosing on dance charges as well as loosing the value on a FW window…
As Pushnoir said, the spec isn’t relying too heavily on RNG…it’s rather a lot of micro things going on at once and you want to prevent them from overlapping, that’s when the dps loss happens. For example you don’t wanna ever reach the moment where your rupture and SnD are both reaching pandemic range and a 2nd dance charge is 10 seconds away. When this happens i feel that the spec is telling you “hey guess what, you messed up 25 seconds ago so you’re getting punished NOW”.
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Every spec is viable if youre not doing world first raiding or 23+keys
Tell that to people who don’t want you in keys or raids as a Sub Rogue. I find it really hard to get into a group these days,compared to expansion’s first months when basically everyone wanted a sub rogue in party.
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What keys? Personally until +11-12 I have no problem with beeing invited into PUGs. I can’t tell about higer keys because I havn’t queue to them yet.
Well last 2 times I tried to get into CN Heroic for example i got kicked out as soon as the RL realised I’m a Sub. I pull off around 5k dps at 206 ilvl…idkn maybe it’s just me being bad,cause idkn where that scales compared to other Sub rogues’ dps. Or maybe it’s just people following the Meta,since Sub is at the bottom of the dps charts/sims as far as I know currently.
For the last two weeks I’ve been struggling hard NOT to reroll some other dps toon,cause I invested so much time and effort lerning this spec and I really love it.
Sounds dumb to reroll now that it’s getting a big buff to both ST and AoE in 9.1. If you had done it in february or something, fair play. But you’ve lasted this long.
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Yes, I totally 10000% agree. I’m struggling to get into a group as a sub rogue.
Blizzard please, if you read this … >> It is a very big discrepancy between the first weeks of this expansion and these days for sub rogue players. Please dev team or someone do something! I was investing money and time in this spec to play a competitive one, ok?
Ah, you both mean trouble to be invited in raids, yes? I’m not a 3h raid fan, but I found cool social guild running CN N and H every week x2, and they don’t bother your spec, only some minimum ilvl.
Mentioning PUG I describe M+, not raids. My advice for you, search for friendly social guild.
Ur Rio must be near 650.
Try to find pt +15 without guild
I am in a really good guild, they are good in raids, they are friendly and nice ppl and not all the time I cant enjoy the raids because I got work to do also in real life for money, some of my money go to this bloody game.
But… They are doing something. Next patch sub rogue is looking really good, not even joking. In preliminary simulations it beats assassination on single target and it got buffed by like 30%+ in AoE. They wont do anything to this current patch, but in a few weeks the spec will be competitive again.