It's been nearly two years, but I'm back, baby! And, and... I'm no longer a subtlety rogue. I'm assassination. So what on Earth happened for me to make the change? Here's my story...
I was already a subtlety rogue before Wrath (mainly PvPing), so with the "bug" of Honor Among Thieves, subtlety rogues were the kings of the DPS crop. Shortly before my last post (January 2nd, 2009), changes had happened to subtlety rogues. That change came in the form of Honor Among Thieves, where they added a one second cooldown. It killed the DPS of subtlety rogues. I was noticing my DPS was way, way below not just combat and assassination rogues, but all other DPS classes. My DPS was barely above the tanks.
But that was just for raids, I used subtlety for PvP too. But that also became a problem. Ambush and Backstab both need to be from behind. But in PvP, when you got your feet rooted or frozen and your target is facing you, stunned, you can't do any real damage. Sinister Strike with a subtlety build doesn't do serious damage.
The PvP environment (and subtlety build) changed with Wrath of the Lich King. Shadowstep and Ambush and Shadow Dance and Backstab use to dominate all other rogues in PvP during the Burning Crusade. Not any more. Not only was subtlety not cutting it much against other classes (unless your target keeps its back to you), but combat and especially assassination rogues were able to stand toe-to-toe with me, and unless I could keep their back to me, I'd miss out on getting a chance to kill them.
Shadow Dance was the main problem. Shortly after Wrath was released, Ambush did less damage than it used to. So in order to take out a target one-on-one, you needed Shadow Dance. And let me tell ya, I can count more times that Shadow Dance failed than it worked (was stunned, rooted, wrong position, etc).
So I decided to test out combat. Vast change in DPS for PvE compared to subtlety. Huge, huge change. For PvP, I tried out a combat PvP built. I found, when using all cooldowns, there was a lot damage. But I found that, without cooldowns, I preferred subtlety over combat. I seemed to die quicker than I did when I was subtlety. So I stuck with subtlety for PvP and combat for PvE.
I did combat for about a week. I then tried out assassination. I tried it out for PvE and found I got more DPS with assassination than I got with combat on single targets. In fact, I loved Mutilate. It has the power the original backstab, but has NONE of the positioning requirements. So it's great for solo PvE and raid PvE.
I tried assassination out for PvP also and I was floored. It was amazing. Every Mutilate had the power of the original backstab, but I could do it from any position. (Yes, rogues do it from behind, but because we choose to, not because we can't do it anywhere else.) There was such power and survivability with this spec and build. It was just like how the subtlety spec used to be, but lacked Shadow Step. But in giving up the mobility of Shadow Step, I then gained full run speed while stealthed AND a 15% run speed increase. Ohh-yeah...
So I was sold. Subtlety has always had great survivability (such as Ghostly Strike, Cheat Death, etc) for PvE, but weak DPS compared to the other specs (and other classes). But now that it's DPS seems to have gotten even weaker for PvE, and a PvP Mutilate assassination build has gotten much stronger for PvP, I've made the switch to assassination for both PvE and PvP and I'm lovin' it.
Then shortly after I made the switch, I stopped playing for, shit... at least a year. I came back for about a two months during Trail of the Crusader.
But I stopped playing WoW for a few months and then started back again at the start of Icecrown Citadel's release. I've been an assassination rogue ever since, doin' raids and mainly PvP.
It's unfortunate what's happened to subtlety, but I've just been burned too many times before in the past. Now I'm gonna' go with what puts out the most power, what feels the best and what's the funnest to play. If something doesn't have all three of those things, I ain't doin' it. Now my loyalty lies with whichever spec does me right, and for the past year of on-and-off play, assassination's had my back every time.
Prey on the weak,
Night Elf Rogue
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