On this page, you will find out the optimal PvE stat priority for your Subtlety Rogue in WoW Forever. We first present the stat priority, before delving into more complex explanations.
Subtlety Rogue Stat Priority
Welcome to the Stats page for Subtlety Rogue. While this page is intended for Level 60,
and provides insight into stats that won't be available on gear until close to the endgame,
there is quite a bit of academic information and knowledge in this guide that may serve
you will while leveling already. If you're curious why enemies keep resisting your 
Sap,
or how that enemy managed to Dodge a 
Ambush from Stealth despite being unaware of
your existence, you'll find out here!
Each of these stats will provide a unique bonus that is particularly useful for Subtlety Rogues, which is why we recommend you try and prioritize getting them on every piece of gear.
| Stat | Bonus |
|---|---|
| Weapon Damage | Your abilities scale directly with your weapon damage, and we use a lot of them. |
| Expertise | Lowers the chance of having your abilities dodged or parried. |
| Hit Chance | Reduces the chance of your attacks missing, which will waste a GCD and cost you some Energy. |
| Weapon Skill | Lowers the effect of Glancing Blows (see below). |
| Agility | Increases your Attack Power, the Critical Strike Chance of your abilities, and your Dodge chance. |
Subtlety Rogue Stats Explained
In order to understand the full benefit of all stats, we'll be listing their benefits to your damage output and survivability in their entirety, in order of importance.
Weapon Damage
While most other classes simply look for the highest weapon DPS, we specifically also care about the speed of a weapon. Higher DPS is generally better, but keep in mind that we use many instant skills that use your weapon damage with a bonus damage modifier. Between a 100 DPS weapon that has a 1.9 speed, and a 90 DPS weapon with a 2.8 speed, the 2.8 speed one will serve you better.
Expertise, Hit Chance, and Weapon Skill
Expertise reduces the chance for enemies to dodge and parry your attacks. You can already avoid getting parried by simply standing behind your enemy, but as per the table above, that makes Expertise as valuable as Hit when standing behind the enemy regardless. It becomes twice as effective when you are forced to attack a boss from the front though.
Hit Chance lets us miss fewer attacks, wasting less Energy, and increasing our
passive damage. As a dual-wielding class we have a high chance to miss against bosses: 8% chance
on abilities like 
Backstab, and 27% on auto-attacks. Chance to Hit reduces these
numbers, and you will want to get 8% under any circumstance.
Weapon Skill helps limit the negative
effect of this nasty and unavoidable downside to playing a dual-wielding melee class. It
is very rare as a stat, so try and grab it whenever you can. Subtlety does a lot of
damage via abilities like 
Hemorrhage or 
Rupture, making us less reliant
on auto-attacks than the other two specs, so grabbing a lot of Weapon Skill is not as
important.
FAQWhat are Glancing Blows?
Glancing Blows are a type of attack that can only happen to auto-attacks, that reduce the damage your autos deal to an enemy. Both the chance and amount of the damage reduction are based on your weapon skill relative to your target's Defense Skill. For virtually all PvE scenarios, this simply means the difference in Level to your target, but if you ever start auto-attacking a tank-specced player in PvP who invested heavily in Defense, you will feel the pain almost immediately.
Note that the chance to have your attacks be a glancing blow cannot be lowered with increases to weapon skill. Only the damage reduction can be reduced with it.
Assuming you have maxed your weapon skill at Level 60 to 300, and are fighting a boss 3 levels above you, who will therefore have a Defense skill of 315 (Level x 5), we arrive at the numbers for Glancing Blows in all of our calculations.
Glancing Chance = 10 + (Target Defense Skill - Attacker Skill) x 2%
Glancing Damage Reduction = 5 x (2^( Target Defense Skill/5 - Your Skill/5) -1) %
These formulas essentially mean that for every 1 difference between your Weapon skill and their Defense Skill, the chance increases by 2%, with a base of 10%. This leads to a 40% chance to Glance against bosses.
Meanwhile the damage reduction at a 3-Level difference is a whopping 35% less damage on a Glancing blow, with the damage reduction being reduced by ~3-4% for every Weapon Skill you get. The value of Weapon Skill diminishes for each point, but most players consider 8-10 Weapon Skill a sweet spot, if you can even get that much.
While each of these stats has a different effect, they all fundamentally do the same thing by changing the hit-table of our melee abilities and melee auto-attacks.
Melee Hit Table Explanation and Examples
Agility
Increases your melee Crit chance, raises your Attack Power by 1, and increases your chance to Dodge. One of your most important stats beyond the ones affecting the hit-table.
Attack Power (AP)
Rogue only gets one Attack Power from Agility and Strength each, so having raw Attack Power on items will generally let you hit harder than grabbing one of the primary stats. Agility does have the added benefit of providing Crit and Dodge as well, which is why it is slightly more important, but if you have more than twice as much AP on an item as you have Agility/Strength, it is likely better to use the AP item.
Critical Strike
Increases the chance for abilities to deal 100% extra damage. You can further increase this bonus with some talents, but due to Crit Cap concerns on auto-attacks, we currently value it quite low.
Haste
Haste provides attack speed, which we do not benefit from all that much as most of our damage comes from abilities and finishers.
Strength
Provides one Attack Power per point, increasing the damage of melee attacks. Not a stat we ever aim to get more of, but a nice bonus that often appears on leather items.
Stamina
Increases your HP by 10 per point. Rogue is quite squishy, so don't sacrifice this stat too much just for a little bit more damage. A dead rogue does zero damage.
Changelog
- 26 Oct. 2026: Guide Added.
