Subtlety Talent Tree Redesign (graphic concept)

Classes Rogue
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Disclamer:
This is only my “the dream” idea of talents. Feel free to share your ideas and inspirations. Maybe you put your talent trees here? I would be more than glad to see it.

My inspiration was this US forum thread by Gorgouge:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/shadowlands-didnt-have-to-have-4-systems/925144

In general I imagine all the talents presented here would work like in descriptions found in Wowhead. Of coarse the numbers (dmg %, duration etc.) should be balanced appropriately.
The general fantasy idea of this concept is to restore Subtlety identity and iconic abilities selected from it’s ritch heritage (lost in part).
The general mechanic idea is to give a player some versatility - the freedom of choice between:
1) Burst and sustained damage
2) Single and AoE damage
3) White, Shadow, and Bleed damage output
4) Action bar full of buttons vs. more passive abilities

Overview (I recommend to open the graphic side to side):
First:
Automatic white dmg bonus with Weaponmaster or one button combo generator of shadow or bleed dmg to choose from. Gloomblade replace Backstab ofc.
I would go one step further and give Gloomblade a feat to be used with any 1h weapon like Hemo. In addition, depens of weapon used I would give Glommblade a bonus f.ex. 180% dmg bonus with dagger equipped, and 120% dmg bounus with 1h equipped. In that way choosing a weapon would already give us a choice between more bursty or sustained dmg.

Second:
Classic set - why change it, when it works.

Third:
Same here. It simply works as a logic suplement of the tree here.

Fourth:
A Cata inspired talent row to better manage your movement in all scenarios. Shadowsteps - basically Sub in this concept would have basically a one charge of Shadowstep, so this talent would give a second charge.

Fifth:
A clever defensive row. You can run with your life with no thinking (Cheat Death), plan some defense few seconds ahead (Elusiveness) or plan way ahead and gain a dmg reduction in time, staying a little long in battle if necessary. I think “Soothing Darkness” just don’t fit in the set.

Sixth:
Prey on the Weak - a momentary dmg increase during a stun, Dirty Tricks - a constant faster using of few abilities but with no dmg increase, Sanguinary Vein - more dmg to bleeding targets with no breaking of Gouge (which would be back in our arsenal as well). All talents PvE and PvP viable (even a middle one in some way).

Seventh:
Master of Shadows - more energy gain = often attacks, Premeditation - semi-passive Slice and Dice using, or for all those who don’t like it: Alacrity - replace Slice and Dice (!) so it counts like a 100% passive but less bursty SnD. Clever, huh?

Eight:
A simple but viable choice between single target ranged PvP talent, and a two different AoE talents, which works mechanically in a diferent way and with different dmg output (again you choose between white, shadow and bleed dmg).

Ninth:
First talent give a bursty white dmg bonus, second one is more frequent Shadow Dancing, and the third one is a semi-passive prolonged rupture gained value in longer fights. One active and two passives.

Tenth:
The final row is what I was looking for decent utlimates from talents we already have, but I’m sure Devs could give us some more interesting talents for white dmg and bleeds as well.
First one is MoP version of Find Weaknes - I know it would fit also our regular Sub rogue spellbook. Second one is our recent ultimate but now we could choose if its shadowy bursty style fits us. Third one is the final replenish of our bleed dmg arsenal.

Bonus:
In addition to the talent tree:

Rogue Spellbook
Blind
Crimson Vial
Crippling Poison
Gouge
Instant Poison
Kick
Kidney Shot
Mind-numbing Poison
Picklocking
Recuperate
Rupture
Sap
Shiv
Slice and Dice
Vanish
Wound Poison

Subtlety Spellbook
Backstab (CP or dmg bonus when behind the target)
Black Powder
Deepening Shadows
Honor Among Thieves (in baseline instead of PvP)
Master of Subtlety
Mastery: Executioner
Relentless Strikes
Shadow Dance
Shadowstep (one charge)
Shuriken Storm
Shuriken Toss

Subtlety PvP Talents
Cold Blood
Death from Above
Heightened Senses (very cool talent deep in Sub fantasy)
Leeching Poison
Master of Deception (like Hightened Senses cool but forgotten talent)
Shadowy Duel
Smoke Bomb

Glyphes
Glyph of Blackout
Glyph of Burnout
Glyph of Classic Ambush (an old sound)
Glyph of Classic Backstab (an old sound)
Glyph of Classic Vanish (an old sound)
Glyph of Disguise
Glyph of Flashbang
Glyph of Shadowstrike (if somone love it… :wink: )
Glyph of Sprint (new visual needed In my opinion)

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You’ve added in some of the most broken abilities in Rogue history. It wasn’t fun playing Burst of Speed in cataclysm but it was mandatory. That might be nit-picking this specific scenario though

I agree that we need more depth of talent choices - Classic/TBC talent tree’s offered real options. The Balance/design was good because (Generally) the talents went like this:

Bottom of a Tree: Quality of life Talents that any spec would like
Middle of Tree: Utility, Cooldowns, Defensives.
Bottom of Tree: Major Damage Abilities.

This meant every talent spec could get access to those early and impactful talents on any tree, no matter what spec they played. They could also go across multiple tree’s to unlock various cooldowns and defensives that where generally more utility/PVP focussed.

The downside was that if you decided to go for 2-tree’s and play a Hybrid spec, you would miss out on the strongest and biggest “throughput” abilities at the bottom of a tree. Basically you lost DPS/damage for utility, which was the core of many PVP builds.

However the new talent tree has given all the “Quality of Life” low level talents to every spec. They’ve then split the mid-tier talents up into the talent options, allowing you to chose a LOT more of these. Finally they’ve baked in every major offensive cooldown to the class, then provided top tier talents that are just as strong, which makes it possible to play a very defensive “build” without sacrificing any of the biggest one-shot cooldowns of a class.

The best example of why this is an issue i can think of is stealth right now: Rogues, Druid and Hunter all have stealth. It’s all the same strength and they all have the level of stealth detection. In the past this would mean the druid scarified healing ability or mana stability or crowd-control options. But now they just get it for free.

Resto druids moving at 100%+ speed while stealthed and being as “hidden” as a rogue is ridiculous. They can then shapeshift into a bear and they have all the baseline tanking talents normally reserved for feral druids.

And the sad thing resto druids aren’t even OP - they even feel weak right now. Because all those benefits I’ve just listed are mirrored across all classes, which means Melee with insane movement speed and gap-closers, but also insane burst and instant cast CC.

Bring back old talent Trees.

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Blizzard use “borrowed powers” because they don’t want to add too much new stuff to the baseline class, which is reasonable. The problem now is that they prioritize adding borrowed powers before making sure the baseline class is good. Many classes how broken or dead talents which are never used. It should be a priority of Blizzard to fix these talents and make classes good before they add new borrowed powers.

TL;DR - Fix what you have before adding new stuff.

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The recent form of Burst of Speed is present under the PvP Talent Maneuverability. I dont remember if it was back then a second Sprint or/and it just release you from movement imparing effects like recent talent does according to the Maneuverability description. None the less I think it is a fun talent.

It was a pleasure to me to read your toughts on how talent tree has changed over the years. I agree we were cut off from the high end abilities when we choose to mix talents of more than one spec in Classic-Wotlk talent trees. I even remember a mix of three specs. For example in Classic we had " Improved Sprint Backstab Rogue Talent Build" - check Wowhead, and in TBC I presume we have " Trispec Hemo swords" build. If it were fun or not - not me to decide, but we have a freedom of choice to build it, and that is what counts to me when I think of an old talent tree.

I know, it’s true. every system has it flaws. Always.
More choice and versatility in talents and spells desing is something I believe would give more fun when playing WoW and diminish the cons of the system used, whatever it would be, you know.

It would bring back some classic flavor that’s for sure. Old talent trees had it’s pros.
In reality I’m affraid the talent tree desing went so long way from where it began, right now it would be very difficult to expecting from devs to recreate it in the retail in pure classic form.
What I was trying to achieve here playing with this concept is to take some cool, core abilities of rogue and of Sub rogue we lost and imagine what would it looks like in our recent talent system (with a little improvements :wink: ). I hope it will be inspiration for other players and maybe for the devs themselves. Hope so :slight_smile:

Well, I totally agree. It would be more fun to feel our core talents and abilities are tight, solid and well balanced of its own, and then the “borrowed power” would came in to give us some cherry on top instead of turn our playstyle up side down :slight_smile:

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ye its only shows what blizz take from us in years … they always take someting to rougs and dont bring nothing new to table … gouge , burst of speed, combat readiness and etc…

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Found it as a comment under Hemo spell in wowhead. Comment made during 3.3.5 patch, retail:

Sub has great combo point generation from Stealth, but into a fight it sucks. This tool help Sub rogues stay competitive IN the fight rather than just in the beginning.

Familiar sympthomes? :wink:

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