Subtlety Rogue PvP Guide for Mists of Pandaria Classic

Subtlety Rogue retains their spot as the masters of crowd control and disruption. Thanks to abilities like Cheap Shot and Blind you will have no problem controlling the pace at which you fight as a Rogue especially in smaller format PvP. Subtlety is also capable of massive burst damage thanks to Shadow Dance and with the addition of Shadow Blades that damage potential is even greater.

Strengths

• Unmatched burst damage when pairing Shadow Dance and Shadow Blades.
• Incredible mobility thanks to Burst of Speed.
• Best crowd control in the game thanks to abilities like Kidney Shot.
• Reworks to Find Weakness greatly increase damage done outside of cooldowns.

Weaknesses

• Very reliant on defensive cooldowns like Cloak of Shadows.
• Requires considerable set up to deal maximum damage which can be easily disrupted.
• Struggles when being targeted.

• Glyph of Hemorrhaging Veins — Causes our Hemorrhage ability to benefit from Sanguinary Vein greatly increasing our damage done.
• Glyph of Blind — Causes our Blind ability to instantly remove all damage-over-time effects from the target allowing us to easily crowd control a target with Blind that would have otherwise instantly broken it due to the damage-over-time effects.
• Glyph of Cheap Shot — Increases the duration of your Cheap Shot ability by 0.5 seconds. We will be using Cheap Shot quite a few times both in our opener and during Shadow Dance so the added duration will quickly add up.

Make sure to check out our Spells Summary Page. Having a clear understanding of your abilities as a Rogue is crucial to both be able to deal maximum damage and apply the maximum amount of pressure by utilizing crowd controlling abilities like Kidney Shot and Gouge. Even a well timed Smoke Bomb can be the difference between you team surviving or not.

1. Backstab — Acts as our primary source of dealing damage and generating Combo Points when you are able to get behind your target.
2. Hemorrhage — Acts as our primary source of dealing damage and generating Combo Points when you are not able to get behind the target. If you follow our recommend build above you will also be using Glyph of Hemorrhaging Veins which greatly increases the value of keeping Hemorrhage active on your target.
3. Gouge —Instantly incapacitates your target but can only be used on a target you are currently in-front of. Any damage will break this incapacitating effect.
4. Kick — Is an instant, melee ranged interrupt. In Mists of Pandaria the Energy requirement has been removed making this ability much easier to use re-actively.
5. Kidney Shot — Is an instant cast stun that's duration scales with the amount of Combo Points spent.
6. Rupture — applies a damage-over-time effect to the target scaling with the amount of Combo Points spent. This is a great way to deal damage to a target especially in a situation where you expect to be attacking the same target for its entire duration.
7. Eviscerate — Acts as our primary spender of Combo Points to deal damage. This is ideally used with five combo points but sometimes a lesser amount will get the job done and finish your target.
8. Recuperate — Is a heal-over-time effect that allows you to convert Combo Points to healing. With changes made to Energetic Recovery now being attached to Slice and Dice it is not as important to keep active but if you find yourself being targeted its a great way to keep yourself ahead of the game.
9. Slice and Dice — Greatly increases your attack speed when active, the duration of this buff scales with the amount of Combo Points spent to apply it. With changes made to Energetic Recovery it is crucial to maximize our Slice and Dice uptime to increase the rate at which we regenerate Energy.
10. Redirect — Instantly transfers all of your Combo Points onto your current target, allowing for much easier target swapping.

Subtlety Rogue has a number of tools it can use from Stealth allowing it an unfair advantage on its victims. Understanding what each ability does and how to properly use it will help you greatly in both starting a PvP encounter and while Shadow Dance is active.

• Garrote — Deals a considerable amount of Physical damage over its duration and also silences your target for 3 seconds. With the strength of Sanguinary Vein it will be important to keep this active when possible on any target you are looking to kill. This also activates Find Weakness which will allow us to ignore 100% of the targets armor.
• Ambush — will act as your primary out of Stealth ability as Subtlety if Garrote is already active on the target. Ambush will also apply Find Weakness which in Mists of Pandaria allows us to ignore 100% of our targets armor while it is active, greatly increasing our damage done by all of our Physical damaging abilities.
• Sap — is a short incapacitate that can only be used on players that are not in combat. Any damage will immediately break this effect.
• Cheap Shot — stuns the target for 4 seconds.

Subtlety Rogue is known for its countless cooldowns and seemingly has an answer for any situation. Understanding how each of these abilities functions is a key to being prepared for the constantly changing environment that is PvP.

• Cloak of Shadows — instantly removes all harmful magic effects and grants immunity to all magic damage and effects for five seconds. While this ability will typically be used to survive you can also use it proactively to ignore an enemies otherwise effective crowd control like a mage trying to cast Polymorph.
• Smoke Bomb — summons a eight yard radius cloud of smoke that prevents enemies attacks from coming into or leaving the shrouded area. This is an incredible ability in PvP as it completely neutralizes threats from outside of the bomb and also stops targets inside of it from being healed. This can be used to either avoid incoming spells or to kill an enemy that would otherwise able to be healed through your damage.
• Shadow Blades — causes your auto-attacks to deal additional Shadow damage and your Combo Point generating abilities like Backstab to grant an additional Combo Point.
• Marked for Death — marks your target for death instantly granting 5 Combo Points. If the target dies the cooldown is instantly reset. This is a great way to not only apply your Slice and Dice and Rupture buffs but can even allow for a quick Eviscerate to finish off your target.
• Tricks of the Trade — Increases your targets damage by 15% for its duration. This ability is a great way to boost the damage dealt by an ally especially when they have DPS cooldowns active.
• Vanish — instantly sends the Rogue back into stealth allowing for the usage of Stealth-only abilities. This can be used to either avoid incoming damage and get yourself away from a dangerous situation or to head back into Stealth to use one of your more potent abilities like Garrote and to reapply Find Weakness which will greatly increase our damage output.
• Shadow Dance — allows you to cast Stealth abilities while out of Stealth. This ability has great potential both offensively and defensively. When on the offensive this allows you to cast tons of Ambush/ Garrotes allowing you to deal tons of damage and maximize our Find Weakness uptime. If you need to peel in an emergency it can allow you to spam Cheap Shot on multiple targets greatly reducing your enemies ability to deal damage. Keep in mind Glyph of Cheap Shot will slightly extend this duration, increasing our ability to mitigate incoming damage.
• Preparation — instantly resets your Vanish, Sprint, Evasion and Dismantle cooldowns.
• Evasion — increases your dodge chance by 100% for 10 seconds.
• Dismantle — disarms the enemy for 8 seconds.

Rogue has had poisons greatly simplified in Mists of Pandaria. You will have a choice of one lethal poison and one non-lethal. Wound Poison will be our default choice for our lethal poison but what non-lethal poison you choose will largely depend on the situation. Most often it will be Crippling Poison to slow your target and maximize up time but an argument can be made for Mind-Numbing Poison if you need to slow the targets casting speed, especially when focusing a healer.

• Deadly Poison — is a lethal poison that deals damage over time. This can complicate the use of abilities like Gouge and the healing reduction found in Wound Poison will often outweigh the damage.
• Wound Poison — reduces the healing the target is able to receive and deals a Nature damage. This is our default choice for a lethal poison in Mists of Pandaria purely because of the healing reduction applied to the target.
• Crippling Poison — slows the target, this will act as our primary non-lethal poison as Subtlety in PvP.
• Mind-Numbing Poison — increases the cast speed of the target lessening the amount of casts the target would otherwise be able to cast. This is a strong choice to consider for your non-lethal poison if you are struggling with the enemy casting too many abilities.

While trying to get the most out of your Subtlety Rogue in Mists of Pandaria PvP, these are the professions we recommend:

1. Blacksmithing — Gives you access to two additional gem sockets, one in your Gloves and one in your Writs. Even with the removal of Resilience these two bonus sockets are still incredibly valuable and should be filled with Agility gems to maximize our damage output.
2. Engineering — grants us Synapse Springs which allows us a ton of Agility on demand. Pairing this with Shadow Blades and Shadow Dance will lead to massive amounts of burst damage.

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for an Rogue in PvP.

Subtlety Rogue is an incredibly versatile class that can pair with almost any other classes. In Mists of Pandaria you will have even more options for teammates as many crowd control restrictions have been changed making it even easier as a Subtlety Rogue to dictate the pace of your fights.