Subtlety Rogue DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.1

The most impactful optimization for Subtlety right now is making sure you always have Ancient Arts active for its most powerful abilities. A lot of the time this will happen naturally during play but sometimes it has to be forced with an additional combo point generator, even at full combo points, to ensure that it is up. One way to minimize the number of times you have to cast that additional generator is to enter your Shadow Dances with the correct buffs and stacks active. The ideal setup depends on your hero talent:

Trickster: You want to buff Secret Technique, and since it is the first spell you want to cast in Shadow Dance, you want to enter it with the right setup. Make sure to have 7 combo points, 5 or more stacks of Shadow Techniques and Ancient Arts active before you enter Shadow Dance. The exception to this rule is during the second half of Shadow Blades, where you just want to cast it as soon as possible when the first Shadow Dance runs out.

Deathstalker: There is a lot more flexibility here. The underlying idea is to make sure that Darkest Night is ALWAYS buffed by Ancient Arts during Shadow Dance. Which spell you cast first can vary depending on your buffs when you enter Shadow Dance. Here are some examples of setups that accomplish this, though there are other valid combinations.

• Full combo points + 1 stack of Deathstalker's Mark + 4-5 stacks of Shadow Techniques.
• No combo points + Darkest Night active + 5 or more stacks of Shadow Techniques.
• Full combo points + Darkest Night active + Ancient Arts active.

All of these Darkest Night optimizations are centered around single-target or low target count cleave. Since Darkest Night has no impact on high target count situations you should instead follow the Trickster rules listed above for multi-target/AoE situations.

As a Rogue, most of your abilities need Energy to be used. Your Energy bar has a default capacity of 100 Energy and refills at a rate of 10 Energy per second. With Vigor the cap is instead 200 Energy. Your Energy regeneration is increased by:

• Haste (Haste on items + Haste-enhancing buffs).
• The Relentless Strikes passive, which guarantees your finishers restore 5 Energy per Combo Point.
• Shadow Techniques, which awards 5 Energy every time it procs. It also procs more significantly often during Shadow Dance thanks to Shadowcraft.
• Vigor if selected.

The way Subtlety Rogue currently plays there is no need manage or think about your energy. Outside of Shadow Dance there will not be enough energy to cast a spell every single global, that is completely fine and normal. Conversely when Shadow Dance is up you can spam all of your globals thanks to the extra combo points you generate and spend via Relentless Strikes and the multitude of Shadow Techniques stacks you generate.

This is the source of what might seem like "random" extra combo points one might get when just starting to play Subtlety. These are a stacking buff you get on your character which makes your next combo point builder generate additional combo points based on how many stacks of the buff you have. It is worth noting however that the game will never spend these stacks to put you above your maximum combo points, instead the stacks of the buff will be kept. Every time the effect is triggered and you gain a stack you also gain 5 energy.

The buff stacks up from passively auto-attacking as well as from Ancient Arts. However the passive generation from auto-attacks are not as random as the tooltip suggests. While it averages out to 28% like the tooltip says it actually works like this:

1. Your 1st attack has a 0% chance to proc it
2. Your 2nd attack has a 50% chance to proc it
3. Your 3rd attack has a 100% chance to proc it
4. If the 2nd attack did not proc it, the 3rd has a 100% chance to proc it.
5. Whenever it procs it starts over from the beginning.

When Shadowcraft says it "triggers 25% more frequently" it instead has a 100% chance to proc on the second attack. Since such a large share of the combo points generated by the spec comes from Shadow Techniques the Shadowcraft is practically required as it doubles the combo points per trigger.

To understand Ancient Arts you must first understand how Shadow Techniques works, which you can read about in the section right next to this one.

The first Apex talent, Ancient Arts, is fairly straightforward. Whenever something expends (consumes/uses) Shadow Techniques stacks, there is a chance that you will spawn a clone that deals additional shadow damage. This chance is 15% per Shadow Techniques stack by default but the talent Replicating Shadows, which you always select, increases the chance to 20% per stack, so if you expend 5 or more Shadow Techniques stacks you have a 100% chance to spawn the clone.

The second Apex talent, Ancient Arts, increases all shadow damage dealt, and also makes it so whenever you spawn a clone you will get 1 stack of Shadow Techniques. This includes Ancient Arts clones and Secret Technique clones. It also benefits from Shadowcraft, so whenever you cast Secret Technique during Shadow Dance you get a total of 4 Shadow Techniques stacks.

The third and last Apex talent, Ancient Arts, is the one that has the most impact on the rotation. Whenever you cast a combo point generator ( Shadowstrike, Backstab or Shuriken Storm) and you have 5 or more Shadow Techniques stacks left afterwards the buff activates. The buff has a shadowy glow indicator near the center of your screen in-game to notify you that it is active, and what it does is that your next combo point spender will expend your Shadow Techniques stacks, just like a builder would, which effectively means you get your combo points refunded without needing to cast a builder, allowing you to cast another finisher right afterwards. This also synergizes with and activates Ancient Arts, which then spawns a clone that deals damage based on your finisher.

Shadow Blades is our most important cooldown. Its available every 90 seconds and while it is active your combo point generating abilities generate twice as many combo points and every attack deals an additional 20% extra damage as shadow damage.

Because of this every cast of Shadow Blades wants to be accompanied by 2 casts of Shadow Dance, as stacking multiple damage cooldowns at the same time leads to more damage. This is also the perfect time to be using other damage increase effects such as your potion or any racial buffs you may have ( Blood Fury as an example).

Shadow Dance is your "bread and butter" cooldown, and your damage output relies heavily on proper usage. Shadow Dance has 1 charge, or 2 when talented into Shadow Dance, each with a 20 second recharge. Its baseline duration is 6 seconds.

However, the talent Deepening Shadows extends it based on the amount of Haste stat your character has. So any buffs like Bloodlust or Power Infusion will not increase the duration, but an on-use trinket like Light Company Guidon will.

It can also be extended by the The First Dance talent, in a raid encounter this effect will only ever occur at the start of the fight. But increasing the duration of Shadow Dance is so powerful, its often worth considering anyway unless the fight is very long.

In Mythic+ however, this effect can occur very often, and it is often wise to wait a few seconds or two with engaging the mobs, especially if this 6 second window is close to being completed.

Generally you want to be casting Shadow Dance when Secret Technique is ready, which should be nearly on cooldown. Though the cooldown of Secret Technique is 25 seconds, it can get reduced by Haste.

Due to Deepening Shadows increasing the length of dance by such a variable amount its recommended to always cast abilities with as little time in between them as possible. This includes having one or multiple macros to make sure the first spell cast inside Shadow Dance is casted immediately and not 0.2 seconds later. You can find these in our macro guide: