Hey everyone I think we have been a bit bad at picking up all the hints blizzard has dropped since release of Dragonflight season 1 as to why they just want us to stop playing sub rogue. Rogue is already basically the least played class in the game, and sub is the least played spec of that class. (you might say oh in season 3 DF sub was the most played in mythic raid, but thats because it was literally the most op spec in the entire game in s3 dragonflight, and even then, if you looked at non mythic logs, it was the lowest rogue spec played WHILE BEING THE MOST BROKEN SPEC IN THE GAME )
lets go down the memory lane and look at all the hints we got.
im not going over the DF changes because theres a word limit on this and my god my first version of this draft was a litearl infinite yap… so Ill just take a look at tww changes since alpha.
Thes will be in order, so if you see something that they did for tww launch and are changing in the 11.0.5 release patch notes, ill explain that too.
Spec changes:
- cttc baseline → premeditation only now gives you full combo points from stealth: This was a good change for outlaw and sin (gave them basically +1 spec point), for sub? now my opener is me spending the first 7 seconds of combat pressing backstab to get enough cps to get snd and rupture up. additionally, this change meant premed and the first dance are literally the exact same talents (except premed also works with vanish). i love getting literally duplicated talents in my tree (hint 1)
- sepsis removed from sin and outlaw. remained on sub → fascinating, who enjoyed pressing sepsis? this talent actually worked well for sin in s2 but has never worked for sub.
- shadow dance went back to sub and instead we got 2nd charge of vanish in its place. shadow dance going back to sub was good for almost everyone, sure some outlaw players didn’t like losing it, and some sin “MAH RESETEALTH” copers didnt like the change, but it was healthy for the game. but what did sub get? well, we lost 2nd vanish charge, a utility talent, and a defensive talent (since we have a talent that gave us a 30% max health shield on vanish). so sub was the only spec in the game that basically lost a defensive, a utility, and had a defensive talent nerfed by 50% . (hint 2)
- They then decided to lock 2nd vanish charge behind 2 points of subterfuge, which is basically only a thing for outlaw, and pvp. But the 2nd vanish charge was required for any dust builds, which meant we just had to path through 3 dead talents, suffer a clunky playstyle of ignoring all 6 seconds of subterfuge in our cds, to play dust. (hint 3)
- They then put Shadow focus in place of our 2nd vanish charge, but its now a dps talent competing with utility talents in the same row, something they have made sure not to do for other specs (even though the 2nd vanish charge was a major dps talent for dust builds and they didnt care). well, lets nerf this talent by 50%, make sure its worth about 0% damage, so players dont feel like they have to take it. great solution. (oh and shadow focus and master of shadows are literally identical in functionality and use) we are now at 2 duplicated talents. (hint 4)
Now we get to 11.0.5 changes:
- snd change → you dont need to press snd anymore, it just automatically works. this works great for sin and outlaw. for sub? its fine, but this changes litearlly not a thing for sub. all it does from the earlier change with cttc is that on opener, instead of going strike, slice and dice, 5 backstabs, rupture. you instead do strike, evis, 5 backstabs, rupture. you just press a 3cp evis instead of a 3 cp snd. you still have to spend the next 6 seconds pressing backstab before you can start your roration. they managed to once again find a way to screw sub. im so proud. (hint 5)
- Soothing darkness changes → this was originally a SUB only talent, was reworked to work for all 3 specs, and put in class tree, now its basically only an outlaw talent. once again, nerfing subs survivability. with this change, what can we do with the last point in our class tree capstone? put int recoup? but recoups been broken since dragonflight season 1 and doesnt work. thanks blizz. once again, we nerf subs survivability (only spec in the game to get 2 survivability nerfs in less than 1 patch) (hint 6)
- dust removal changes → now dust is a very polarizing topic, many people hate it. but what dust did was 3 things. 1) it gave sub a niche that differentiated it from sin. without it, theyre both 2 min burst classes, except sin has better cleave, and execute and sub has nothing. 2) it solved core problems of the spec. without dust, we are very starved on dance charges, our cds feel unfun to play, since we need a 6 second intermission between dance 1 and dance 2 to farm back sectech → which also means since dance is 8 seconds + 6 second intermission, the last 2 seconds of dance 2 will fall out of blades… and lastly, it helped us have sod cover the entire blades duration, so we dont overcap shadow technique cds, and also have even enough energy to get all gcds out during dance. 3) dust was the only reason there are any form of talent diversity for the spec. the dark brew builds play the exact same talent in all form of PVE content (m+, raid, solo content, single target, cleave, everything). Now these are all from a pve perspective, PVP wise, pikaboo put this better than I could. (hint 7)
- but this dust change is not the only problem. they are doing this in the middle of a patch. For example, silken court has a 1.5 min interval burn timer, so for people that are progging that boss and rely on subs rogues burst at 1.5 min intervals, after the patch they have to re-evaluate their plan because sub is no longer able to have cds there, people have to relearn fights they are already progging on because they didnt have the human decency of waiting to make such a giant horrible change for a major patch. (hint 8)
- New talent : 1/2 additional Symbols charges → this is the most disgusting change of all. not only it shows that 1) the devs dont even understand how sub works (what is the point of a 3rd symbols… it will literally be 100% unplayable, and all it does is it makes sure we also cant take rotten). 2) the devs dont have the most basic understanding of the talent tree itself, in that, even if this node was good (which to be fair, 1 charge of Symbols is a “fine” thing), because of how its positioned it is literally not pickable. 3) This just shows that the devs understood the lack of sod during blades problem of the spec, but not the other things that dust solve, once again showing how clueless they are in how this spec works.
I think im putting all of this together and understanding why rogues so unpopular. I think im finally getting why sub could be the most broken spec int he entire game, and most players who are not a high end mythic raider, will never play it. Honestly, I think blizzard is doing a great job in killing the spec.
I guess last hint but from s1 DF to s3 DF sub m+ title owners went from basically tripple digit to single digit, to 0 players in season 4. great job blizzard. specs almost dead. great job everyone
ORGINAL POST FROM NA FORUM:
