Season of Discovery Subtlety Rogue DPS Talents and Runes

Your talent build as an Subtlety rogue is largely set in stone due to the strength of talents located deep within the Subtlety tree such as Preparation and Deadliness. While talents like Premeditation can be useful we opt to head into the Assassination tree for Ruthlessness and Relentless Strikes which will greatly increase the amount of energy available to you.

Gloves — Mutilate

Pants — Envenom

Chest — Deadly Brew

Waist — Shadowstep

Feet — Master of Subtlety

Helm — Combat Potency

Wrist — Cut to the Chase

Mutilate will be the default choice for gloves thanks to recent changes that have reduced its energy cost to 40. It also synergizes incredibly well with the talent Opportunity as well as many of the other Runes we have chosen like Envenom and Deadly Brew. Mutilate deals 20% additional damage to a target afflicted by a Poison while Envenom and Deadly Brew also work to constantly apply more poisons.

Envenom deals bonus damage to targets that are afflicted by Deadly Poison which Deadly Brew works constantly to apply. This also synergizes incredibly with Mutilate as it also deals more damage to a poisoned target. Between the Eyes is a great tool if you find yourself needing a ranged stun but deals considerably less damage and will not benefit from the other Runes we have chosen the same way Envenom does.

Deadly Brew applies a stack of Deadly Poison anytime another poison is applied to the target, this scales incredibly well with other talents such as Mutilate and Envenom which both deal additional damage against a target that is poisoned.

Shadowstep is an incredibly powerful mobility cooldown that teleports you behind your current target and increases your movement speed by 70% for 3 seconds. This can also be used in conjunction with the talent Preparation in a situation where you need to cover a lot of distance quickly. Shuriken Toss is another great choice however as it allows you to deal AoE damage. AoE is Rogues single greatest weakness so should you find yourself in a situation where consistent AoE is required definitely switch to Shuriken Toss.

Master of Subtlety increases your damage by 10% for 6 seconds after exiting stealth, this greatly strengthens our opener and turns Vanish into a DPS cooldown. Also consider using Preparation to reset your Vanish cooldown for even more uptime on the Master of Subtlety buff.

Combat Potency greatly increases the amount of incoming energy allowing you to cast more Mutilates and since you are casting more Mutilates you will have more combo points to cast more Envenoms. Honor Among Thieves is another strong choice for this slot but is very dependent on what classes you find yourself in a party with.

Cut to the Chase allows you to cast Slice and Dice once and each Envenom cast will refresh its duration. This allows you to spend all of your combo points on Envenom and makes the rotation much more fluid, allowing you to avoid over pooling energy. Carnage is another great choice for this slot however the added casts of Envenom will outweight the flat damage increase from Carnage.

More engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Rogue.

Opportunity greatly increases the damage dealt by your Mutilate ability. Mutilate benefits from any effect that benefits Backstab unless otherwise stated.

Elusiveness reduces the cooldown of your Vanish and Blind abilities by 90 seconds. Pairing Vanish and Master of Subtlety allows for a considerable damage boost.

Preparation instantly resets the cooldown of all other Rogue abilities. This can be used in a plethora of ways to either refresh the cooldown of a defensive ability such as Evasion or Blind or push the damage by resetting your Vanish cooldown allowing you to re-enter stealth and deal 10% more damage thanks to Master of Subtlety.

Deadliness Increases your attack power by 10% while this is an incredibly simple talent it will greatly increase the damage you deal and makes gear scale even better when receiving an upgrade.