With symbols and dance basically lining up every 30 sec or so due to cool down reductions on dance. Is vendetta justified to be on a 2 minute cooldown? Should it offer more or have a CDR system build into as well like sub has.
Feels quite a long wait between burst windows for Assa.
Thoughts?
Itâs a boring cd overall, basically no aoe applications, standard % damage modifier.
Technically you have this with one lego already but itâs pretty underwhelming anyway. Vendetta is already super strong, long duration and offers niche utility on top of damage with stealth vision + in 9.1 mobility with step cd reduction. Having access to it wonât matter as much considering many defensives that counter it are on a shorter CD anyway and currently itâs already your objective to force defensives on a kidney shiv to get a full vendetta on the next stun. Shorter CD on it = youâll close some games faster but thatâs it.
I donât think it is fair to compare symbols+dance with vendetta. Dance is not so much a CD⌠it is part of the baseline rotation for sub rogues any damage outside of it is laughable. Personally I like this playstyle. In M+ a sub rogue arguably spends the majority of his/her time (when in combat) inside shadow dance.
A fair comparison would be vendetta and shadow blades.
I donât think you can make a sweeping comparison like this, the two specs play very differently. If you would have shorter vendetta timings you would need to do way less damage between CDs, do you really want that for assa?
CDR is also a mechanic which has very obvious downsides to any benefits you get as well. Particularly while being melee, not being able to have 100% uptime on the boss can hurt your damage more than specs without CDR mechanics. Both sub and outlaw suffer from this.
i like vendetta where it is. it feels impactful and powerful.
Iâd actually go at it from another angle. Shadow Dance shouldnât have any way to reduce its CD. Having it up so often devalues it, makes it just another rotational ability, instead of a cool and powerful thing you press to get that Fast and Furious Nitro-boost effect. It would put some much needed decision making into the mix, instead of just âuse it whenever itâs availableâ. Making Shadow Dance feel more meaningful would also mean the Spec could deal some actual damage outside of CDs. If Shadow Dance then felt like that extra Oomph! when you need it, the spec wouldnât need Shadow Blades for anything, because at its core Shadow Dance has the potential to be one of the coolest abilities in the game. It literally allows you to cheat, and use Stealth abilities out in the open!
As for Vendetta⌠much like SnD, it just needs to go. Vendetta is boring, it doesnât have any use in AE situations, the Stealth detection is useless or extremely niche-use at best, and if it didnât have the Thistle Tea effect baked into it, you wouldnât even notice, when you pressed it. Sure, you can apply pressure with it, but that can be said of any CD, so itâs not really an argument in favor of keeping it.
Vendetta could be replaced with Shadow Blades, or something like that, as it would be useful and dynamic in all combat situations. Make it Poison Blades, and change the Shadow Damage to Poison Damage, so it scales with Mastery, and Assassination might see some really fun gameplay.
Personally this is why I like shadow dance and that shadow dance has become a core part of the rotation rather than a âBOOMâ button is what I have been enjoying the most with Sub rogue. This is from a PVE perspective, not PvP.
Part of what makes a skilled sub rogue in PVE nowadays is understanding how to stay in shadow dance as long as possible and making good use of shadow techniques and deepening shadows. Timing is still incredible important, but instead of having a set timer on when the stars align, like a set 2 minute CD, sub rogues can manipulate the CD slightly and have to make decisions in real time, rather than being aware of the fact that âevery 2 min I can pop my big burstâ.
The way that shadow dance synergies with AOE situations is also great and it is part of why sub rogues are still decent in mythic+, because they can stay in shadow dance much more frequently due to deepening shadows + shuriken/Black powder. Since you will be using shadow dance during AOE exactly because of deepening shadows, it adds much more complexity to the sub rogue gameplay and in my opinion it is a fun type of complexity. If Shadow dance was just on a set CD, then the whole rotation in AOE would be dumbed down and to some extent for single target as well. The only skill required would be to know when to pop your burst macro, which is infact still a core aspect to the sub rogue gameplay.
In other words, I think the CDR that sub rogues can play around is probably one of the greatest aspects of the specc.
Fair enough. Luckily we have 3 Specs, that feel different enough, so people can play what they enjoy the most.
The way you describe it, kinda reminds me of how Insanity worked with Shadow Priests in Legion and BfA. I liked the playstyle, but it was pretty clear, that a system like that would be very hard to balance. I guess it comes down to how accessible is the Spec meant to be, and how rewarding can it be made, without making it feel like people have to play it to compete, even if they would prefer another Spec instead.
I like your argumentation in favor of Sub working with their CDR. Maybe itâs just not my thing. Last time I really enjoyed Sub was back in WoD, and even there it was more for casual PvP.
I have to agree, less uptime on shadow dance means it either does more damage, or damage has to be shifted to other abilities, and letâs be real who wants to use backstab?
No one.
I actually think that shadow dance as a rotational ability/cd is good, and enveloping shadows should be baseline.
I liked the pre-legion shadow dance better even in PVE. Back in Wod your job was to keep find weakness up which you had to do by rotating dance, vanish, prep, vanish, dance and making use of set bonuses like the one you had in SoO (iirc) or w/e it was in WoD that gave you the effect proc.
I actually didnât play rogue back then, so unfortunately I canât relate 
I assume find weakness worked completely different then as well, now its zero effort to apply it. I just know that I am really satisfied how shadow dance works right now. I love the flow of it 
Current design of sub is literally impossible to balance and should be obliterated from the game.
What makes you think that?
Because sub is generally considered a burst spec, where it bursts within shadow dance and its current implementation is to have exceedingly high uptime on shadow dance? Because dance uptime is so high and what dance inherently gives you, if dance gives you too much damage due to its uptime you are busted and if dance damage isnât high enough, again due to its uptime the spec is garabage/a CC bot. The damage outside dance is basically zero because the uptime of dance itself is too high if they make sustained high then if dance is too low it will feel like dance is irrelevant and if dance is too high then the whole spec again would be busted.
its basically a worse design problem than fire mages, because combustion just gives you access to damage whilst dance gives you access to all stealth abilities as well as damage. It is why in PvP you are either a CC bot and do no damage, you one shot or you have these current âall inâ builds.
Sub is what happens when you take a perfectly designed PvP spec and try to make it work in PvE, then gutter the spec the moment its used in PvE because you realise it cant work in both settings.
Sub rogue can be balance in PvE, at least when you think of it on paper. The feeling, pacing of it feels good, itâs satisfying, fit to the modern design of a class in PvE and PvP, at least for me, so why change it.
I think what it requires the most right now is the balance of numbers, so the overall dmg output would be decent and compairable to other two specs.
Look, Outlaw is useful and do the best dmg when cleaving, and with boss his single dmg is ok.
Sin is the best in single dmg in the long run, when the fight is long, and his dot sustained dmg can shine, and its cleaving is worse then Outlaw.
Sub does ok AoE, but is the best at burst dmg, so heâs doing very high dmg in burst window, less dmg in out of burst time, and that rythm would be totally ok, if overall, f.ex. at the end of the boss fight, the dmg done would be similiar to two other specs.
But it isnât right now and for me that means the numbers need tuning.
For me personally it would be cool to choose between new playing style of Sub and the WoD/MoP one to choose between white, Shadow and Bleed dmg as main dmg output, more sustained and more burst etc.
And I really would like to get my big weapon back to my main hand, but after all these years I really have little hope it would happen eventually.
Blizzard has a terribly track record, when it comes to balancing numbers. You only need to look at Covenant balance to see that. BfA was a whole expansion worth of them trying to calculate things to perfection, and it was a total mess. They should just bite the bullet, admit some things are inherently overly complex, and instead focus their efforts and resources into getting the basics feeling good.
I still think, that as a concept Shadow Dance is one of the most interesting and potentially fun abilities in the game. I just fear the âdouble or nothingâ approach to designing it might be more harmful, than is worth in the long run.
I see your point, but first of all you only have a high uptime on shadow dance in mythic+ where you can shuriken storm+black powder, as such this is not the situation in PvP or ST encounters. Although, it is true that you still want to increase your SD uptime in these situations as well⌠but it doesnât compare to the CP generation in M+.
Also, the high burst sub builds are still viable with e.g. 1-dance builds. I am not saying that I like them, but you canât say there arenât good ways for sub rogues to burst, just because of CDR balancing and even without 1-dance builds the sub burst is still decent. Here, I think they can give more attention to shadow blades, rather than shadow dance as the primary source of big burst. For starters, they should reduce the CD of shadowblades to 2 minutes.
Personally, I think its sad that blizzard canât make more separate PvP and PVE nerfs/buffs to make a specc viable in both contents, without having to nerf/buff the entire specc in order making it work in both PVE and PVP⌠However, I think they are on a good track in designing the specc as it feels very fluid and rewarding to play. I dare to say that the current state of sub rogue is one of the most interesting speccs that I have played throughout my years in WoW.
I also donât think that its a worse design problem than fire mages, its easy to just tweak the stealths abilities, especially if it is a matter of tweaking it for different content such as PvP and PVE. Generally, blizzard do PvP and PVE tweaks all the time and they could do it more often. I also donât see any major design flaws in sub rogues, itâs not comparable to the state of assassination during shadowlands launch for example. However, sub rogue still needs a lot of tweaking, which Blizzard unfortunately have been neglecting to a large extent.
tbh vendetta is an awful cd.
i dont like the idea of a dmg cd locked to 1 specific target.
it only really works out on single target boss fights, but in m+ for example during trash fights where there are no mobs to live for the full duration u gotta either hold it forever or waste it on a mob that dies in 5-10 sec which also feels kinda bad.
it works out in arena, but in bg its pretty useless again with all the immunitys and tons of def cds some classes got.
i mean u cant give ur opponent a clearer signal to use a def cd than vendetta.
also the long ramp up for sin is pretty bad for pvp in its current state when there are warrior, enhancer, rets, druids, warlocks that just delete u in 1-2 gcd.
This was my big issue with vendetta. Symbols and dance both provide the same damage buff (more with 1 dance). But are personal buffs.
Vendetta is a single target enemy DEBUFF. If that target gets BoP/sac/dies instantly etc then you have a long wait till itâs ready again.
Yeah assa dmg is overall higher in a sustained fight but as mentioned that rarely happens.
Vendetta should be a personal damage buff with perhaps a spectral sight system built into it (if they want to keep that aspect).
It is a very good on demand burst CD in arena. As shown by many high ranked players.
Imagine wings was applied to the paladin against one target only. Or avatar etc. Itâs not a great design.
Maybe the reduction in shadow step vs vendetta will make it feel like a high pressure ability.