#1 - Aug. 15, 2016, 5:44 p.m.
For a bit of context on the late change to our thinking on this: we rarely allow automatic functionality (such as action bar swaps, or macros) to choose between core damage abilities on the player’s behalf. We believe it’s important that the player has to make those choices themselves. The Rogue Stealth bar has always been a minor exception to this, but for many years, the Stealth bar was only active for the single ability you used to open a combat, and was not seen again for the duration of combat (other than with Vanish). The ability to bind your openers to the same buttons as your rotational abilities was a convenience that didn’t affect your use of abilities in combat.
However, the new Shadow Dance (and to a lesser extent Subterfuge), has resulted in some Rogues regularly using openers during combat, as elements of their rotation. In this case, the Stealth bar changes from a minor convenience that lets you place once-per-combat buttons on more convenient keybinds, to actually making regular, mid-combat decisions for you.
That said, after following the ongoing discussions and carefully considering your feedback, we understand the desire for consistency with other abilities that allow Stealth-only actions. Given the gray area that Shadow Dance is in, and the widespread feedback that using the Stealth bar would be more consistent and intuitive, we’ve decided to go ahead and allow Shadow Dance to once again swap your main action bar. This hotfix is scheduled to live with weekly restarts in each region.
A few details for players who use macros to further manage their buttons:
- Shadow Dance will be treated similarly to Subterfuge for the purposes of macro conditionals. It will not activate [stealth], but it will activate [stance:2].
- If you want to make a macro that mimics the behavior of the main bar (i.e. swapping when you have any of Stealth, Vanish, Subterfuge, or Shadow Dance), you can use the macro conditional [bonusbar:1].