Subtlety Cooldown usage

[Sluggy95 0]

Yo guys - i am a progression raider that has a pretty good understand of the subtlety spec and how to achieve very substantial DPS however for those with a significantly better understanding of the spec i have a question

 

Right so i open the fight with 10 CP's with assistance of healers before hand - on the pull timer i use SnD at 4 secs and a pre pot at 2 secs to give room for any tank errors on pulling exactly.

 

Then i:

 

1. Ambush

2. Shadow Reflection

3. Rupture

4 - continue single target rotation for duration of first Find weakness

5. then i shadow dance

 

this happens on a typical non bloodlust pull - if its a lust pull i complete the first 3 steps then insta shadow dance and go HAM.

 

However if its a non bloodlust pull and i wait to dance, then my shadow reflection does not always line up nicely with my shadow dance. Should i be saving my shadow reflection for a dance? and likewise restraining from dance if its up and shadow reflection has around a 10 sec CD?. Or can i just use reflection whenever and achieve similar dps?

 

i know this may be difficult to answer but a detailed explanation regarding cooldown usage in general (concerning Find weakness appliers) would be much appreciated into timing them.

 

Many thanks in advance - Sluggy 

[lipsinch 46]

For that, we'd need some math for timers and damage done per energy spent. It's a valid point to bring up, as we can line up an all-around standard opener. Thing is that due to stats, this is highly variable, so it's hard to draw a list on what-to-do-when.

 

As for me, I currently hold SR till 1st FW drops so I can use with Dance, but I still feel it's not optimal, so I've been trying new things once I go into raids.

 

We can try set up something, if you have the patience to do some math. Just don't expect much, I'm just a humble peasant. =)

 

 

Edit: Not exactly topic related, but I have a question: how do you roll with those 10CP once you SnD prepull? Wouldn't you have 5 CP dead due to SnD not activating Anticipation and would delay your burst?

Edited December 23, 2014 by lipsinch

[Sluggy95 0]

Yo lipsinch,

 

Well i see what you mean - however when u open with your ambush hemorrage etc which usually takes you to 5 CP's when u finish with a rupture for eg on pull - then your anticipation stacks from the pre-pull take effect granting you 5 CP's after your first Rupture or finisher if you get me?

 

So as for my burst - i can get a 5CP Evis off straight after applying rupture :)

Edited December 23, 2014 by Sluggy95

[Carrn 284]

Starting with 10 cp is pointless, cause you lose the cp generated from Ambush and Premed. Unless you mean you have the healers spend 12 seconds getting you to 6cp, then you Premed and Ambush your way to 10. Either way you're wasting healer mana for something that I don't think makes any difference at all.

 

SR is best saved to be used with Dance, because that's when you'll be hitting hardest with the most skills - it's better to get your clone to spam Ambush and Evis (the thing I mentioned elsewhere about getting the clone to copy Rupture THEN going into Dance doesn't seem to really have any effect at all, so I would bind SR to Dance. That way every second Dance you get SR, and it always lines up nicely

[Sluggy95 0]

Carrn,

 

thanks for the reply,

 

what i mean is you cast slice n dice when u have 10 CP's pre pull then u have 0 CP's but 5 anticipation points - then u premed ambush and hemo to 5 CP's then u rupture, and then your anticipation stacks come forward as 5 new CP's which u can save for when u pop reflection and SD for an extra evis.

 

so in theory you are not losing / wasting any combo points while getting dots up asap and increasing the damage dealt in SD and SR through the 5CP insta evis at the start

 

Look forward to your thoughts on this,

 

Slugg

[itsdomsn 0]

hey, so what is the optimal usage for SD?

 

i saw a paragon rogue on stream starting 5 cp snd obviously, then he directly went into SR + SD after the opener.

isn't it better to make use of find weakness after the opener and wait till it runs out to use SD + SR?

[Helix 1]

You're all forgetting about Master of Subtlety (actually 15% but wowhead hasn't updated it seems) which is much more valuable than extra Find Weakness duration AFAIK, and doesn't come with SD. Just macro SR to SD and be done with it.

 

The real question is, how much should we delay SR + SD if Vanish is about to come off CD - assuming you will be able to sit and squeeze out whatever DPS you can at all times.

Edited December 26, 2014 by Badass

[Carrn 284]

hey, so what is the optimal usage for SD?

 

i saw a paragon rogue on stream starting 5 cp snd obviously, then he directly went into SR + SD after the opener.

isn't it better to make use of find weakness after the opener and wait till it runs out to use SD + SR?

Was he running MFD?

 

 

Carrn,

 

thanks for the reply,

 

what i mean is you cast slice n dice when u have 10 CP's pre pull then u have 0 CP's but 5 anticipation points - then u premed ambush and hemo to 5 CP's then u rupture, and then your anticipation stacks come forward as 5 new CP's which u can save for when u pop reflection and SD for an extra evis.

 

so in theory you are not losing / wasting any combo points while getting dots up asap and increasing the damage dealt in SD and SR through the 5CP insta evis at the start

 

Look forward to your thoughts on this,

 

Slugg

 

My opener, before pull, is:

 

Stealth, Premed, Unstealth, Prepot, Stealth, SnD

 

And after pull:

 

Ambush, Hemo, build cp with BS to 5, SR, Rup. Dance

 

That ends up using most of my FW time, SR duplicates the first Rupture so I don't waste a gcd on it inside Dance, then I go through the normal burst rotation.

 

Only thing that changes is SnD sometimes goes off with 3 cp if a healer crits early. This doesn't waste any time, energy, or cp, which is the main problem I see with what you're saying. They're probably pretty close to the same, but when one revolves around a lot of build up time (2s for each bonus cp, which is 2s healers have to be spending mana on you), I think that just taking care of it yourself is better 

 

 

You're all forgetting about Master of Subtlety (actually 15% but wowhead hasn't updated it seems) which is much more valuable than extra Find Weakness duration AFAIK, and doesn't come with SD. Just macro SR to SD and be done with it.

 

The real question is, how much should we delay SR + SD if Vanish is about to come off CD - assuming you will be able to sit and squeeze out whatever DPS you can at all times.

 

 

Delay Vanish instead. Dance (especially if you have SR up for it at the time) is a much higher burst window than Vanish. This is even more beneficial if you're properly pooling energy and cp before going into Dance, because you can sit yourself at 8cp the entire time and maximise the number of Evis casts you get off 

[Helix 1]

Delay Vanish instead. Dance (especially if you have SR up for it at the time) is a much higher burst window than Vanish. This is even more beneficial if you're properly pooling energy and cp before going into Dance, because you can sit yourself at 8cp the entire time and maximise the number of Evis casts you get off 

 

Why would you delay Vanish when you don't get Master of Subtlety from SD. The idea is to use SD during MoS for maximum damage, not to extend Find Weakness.

 

If I see vanish is going to come off CD in a few seconds I usually delay SD + SR. I'm just wondering how many seconds its worth delaying before it becomes counter-productive.

 

Edit: This makes even more sense when you are using Shadow Focus instead of Subterfuge. Which you should anyway.

 

Edit #2: Obviously Find Weakness will become priority outside of lining up CD's though.

 

Edit #3: Unless you mean having Vanish off CD before SD + SR, wouldn't happen often due to the long duration, but then the question still stands, how long to delay Vanish before it becomes counter-productive? (I'm guessing it wouldn't be more than a couple of seconds in both cases)

Edited December 27, 2014 by Helix

[Carrn 284]

I don't think Master of Subtlety is a thing anymore. If it is, I don't see it in either one of my Rogues' spellbooks.

 

In any case, Shadow Dance allows more damage in its duration than Vanish does, and Vanish should be used to prolong (or add) Find Weakness in preparation for a high number of Evis casts after building up cp's, which you get with Dance by default

[Helix 1]

I don't think Master of Subtlety is a thing anymore. If it is, I don't see it in either one of my Rogues' spellbooks.

 

In any case, Shadow Dance allows more damage in its duration than Vanish does, and Vanish should be used to prolong (or add) Find Weakness in preparation for a high number of Evis casts after building up cp's, which you get with Dance by default

Spec sub, stealth, open on dummy, look at your debuff ;)

 

Using Vanish for FW when you have Dance off CD is a bad idea afaik.

[Carrn 284]

Oh, it's integrated into the Stealth tooltip. TIL.

 

In any case, 5s of increased damage isn't worth it, considering in that time you'll get like 1-2 Ambushes and 1 Evis at most, if you use it alongside Dance.

 

The flip side of that is that you waste a full 10s of Find Weakness, which if used properly will include at least 3, possibly 4 depending on HaT procs and Premed cooldown, Eviscerates which completely ignore armour. Those 3-4 Evis casts, plus the Ambush and handful of Backstabs are worth far more than 10% extra damage on attacks which you would already be using.

 

Ninja edit: Stealth tooltip has it at 10%, the buff I get says 15%, so I don't know which is which. Either way, I'm reaching the same conclusion

 

Because Evis is such a large part of Sub's damage output, the key to playing Sub is maximising the number of Evis casts that get off during Find Weakness. This is even more crucial as you get into higher gear levels, where Mastery really begins to stack up, and Evis becomes more and more of your damage.

 

Edit 2: So I asked around and dug through some charts to find numbers to back this up. 

 

Master of Subtlety, even if it's 15%, is still worth less than Find Weakness. Without pulling out numbers and everything, caster bosses run off 22% reduction on attacks and Melee bosses run off 27%. 

 

Pretty much what that boils down to is that FW is a 22-27% damage increase for 10s, where MoS is only 15% at the most for half that time