Mists of Pandaria Classic Subtlety Rogue Rotation and Cooldowns

If you have not already, we recommend reading the Spells Summary page first. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.

As a Subtlety Rogue in Mists of Pandaria your primary goal is to maximize your up time of Find Weakness. This is done by casting one of your Stealth abilities like Ambush. Keep in mind abilities like Shadow Dance and Vanish will greatly increase the availability of abilities that can proc your Find Weakness buff so understanding how to optimally utilize each of them is the key to dealing maximum damage.

Your poison usage as an Subtlety Rogue is quite simple, we will always use Deadly Poison as our lethal poison. For our non-lethal poisons you have a few choices to make Leeching Poison will cause a small amount of self-healing and will often be the best choice but also consider Mind-numbing Poison to slow casting speeds on your target and Crippling Poison to slow the targets move speed.

As a Subtlety Rogue your focus is to maximize your time under the effects of the Find Weakness buff that causes you to ignore 100% of your targets armor, greatly increasing the damage dealt by all of our Physical damaging abilities which is nearly your entire damage profile. This can be achieved by casting an ability like Ambush that can only be used in Stealth or when Shadow Dance is active so it is important to maximize the usefulness of each Shadow Dance and Vanish cast to guarantee the highest possible up time on Find Weakness. We will also focus on maintaining Rupture and Hemorrhage on your target in order to benefit from Sanguinary Vein and as always keeping Slice and Dice for those extra auto-attacks and the increased Energy generation from Energetic Recovery. Highlighted below is a list of priorities to maximize your DPS as a Subtlety Rogue.

1. Keep Deadly Poison active;
2. Make sure to prepot using Virmen's Bite;
3. When exiting from Stealth open with Ambush;
4. Cast Shadow Dance on cooldown when you are at or near 80 Energy and Slice and Dice, Hemorrhage, and Rupture are active and will remain active for the duration of Shadow Dance;
5. Keep Slice and Dice active at all times;
6. Keep Rupture active on the target;
7. Keep Hemorrhage active on the target;
8. Cast Eviscerate to spend Combo Points if Slice and Dice and Rupture are already active;
9. Cast Ambush if Shadow Dance is active to generate Combo Points and do not forget to Premeditation each time you cast Shadow Dance for essentially free Combo Points;
10. Cast Backstab if Shadow Dance is not active to generate Combo Points.

Your AoE rotation as a Subtlety Rogue will largely depend on how many enemies you are fighting and how long you expect them to survive. If you are fighting against 2-3 enemies continue your single target rotation as normal but make sure to apply Rupture to the other targets to benefit from Sanguinary Vein.

When fighting 4 or more enemies we will start using Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points and can largely ignore the single target rotation above as our goal is now to keep Slice and Dice active and get Crimson Tempest active on as many targets as we can. It is worthwhile to use a 1 Combo Points Crimson Tempest at the start of your AoE to get Sanguinary Vein applied to all of the targets, but after that Crimson Tempest is ideally cast with 5 Combo Points assuming Slice and Dice is already active.

1. Keep Deadly Poison active;
2. Keep Slice and Dice active;
3. Keep Crimson Tempest active on as many targets as possible;
4. Use Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points

Subtlety Rogue deals a lot of its damage during cool down windows so knowing how to properly utilize each of them will have a considerable impact on your damage dealt.

Shadow Dance is your single largest damage increase as a Subtlety Rogue. Shadow Dance allows you to use abilities that otherwise require Stealth for 8 seconds and reduces the Energy cost of your Ambush ability by 20 while active. Shadow Dance is best typically best used with your combat potion so if possible pair it with your Virmen's Bite, the goal of your Shadow Dance is to get as many Ambush casts as possible to maximize your Find Weakness up time so consider waiting until you are at 80 Energy or higher before using this cooldown.

Shadow Blades causes your auto-attacks to deal Shadow damage and causes your Combo Point generating abilities to generate an additional Combo Point. This cooldown is best utilized while under the effects of Bloodlust/ Heroism in order to maximize the amount of auto-attacks.

Vanish causes you to instantly return to Stealth allowing for the use of Stealth abilities like Ambush. Vanish a massive part of your toolkit as a Subtlety Rogue due to the importance of Find Weakness. Use your Vanish off cooldown to maximize your Find Weakness up time but make sure not to overlap this with Shadow Dance. Preparation can also be used to instantly reset the cool down of your Vanish for even more Find Weakness up time. If you are running Shadow Focus this will also greatly reduce the Energy cost of your Ambush allowing us to generate even more cheap Combo Points.

Smoke Bomb obscures anyone inside of it from outside targets and reduces damage taken by 20% while inside of the Smoke Bomb. This ability has many unique interactions with various mechanics in dungeons and raids so make sure to coordinate with your group when this is best utilized.