Subtlety Rogue DPS Easy Mode — The War Within (Season 1)

This section is intended for players who are new to the game or class, have no intentions of raiding Mythic difficulty, or simply want a more straightforward way to play their specialization without being overwhelmed by the numerous priorities and active abilities that need to be taken into consideration for optimal play.

Subtlety, at first glance, can seem very simple. You build combo points and spend them to do damage. However, to maximize your damage potential it can be a very involved process which requires knowledge and understanding of the basics which will be addressed here. This section aims to point players to a way to play Subtlety by easing into it. This will not be the absolute best setup, but it will perform better for those who are getting up to speed with the intricacies of the specialization.

If you are completely new to Subtlety Rogue and are looking to understand what tools we have at our disposal, make sure to check out our spell summary page first to read what each ability does.

These choices are optimized for ease of use. There are a variety of builds that are floating around, and we may even see new builds floating around when more people experience the new raid. Although some talents might offer marginally higher gains when played perfectly, if played improperly they could cause the player do less damage. The talents recommended here aim to present the best setup that has very little punishment for unfamiliarity or mistakes.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by clicking 'Export Talents'.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by clicking 'Export Talents'.

If you are looking for the absolute best-performing talents for Subtlety, you can find a more in-depth analysis on our full talents page below.

The general single-target stat priority for a Subtlety Rogue is:
Agility > Mastery >= Versatility > Critical Strike > Haste

1. Mastery
2. Versatility
3. Critical Strike
4. Haste

The general multi-target stat priority for a Subtlety Rogue is:
Agility > Mastery >= Versatility > Critical Strike > Haste

1. Mastery
2. Versatility
3. Critical Strike
4. Haste

To learn more about how stats interact in different scenarios and why in the stats page below.

Note that the current best-performing single-target build uses Danse Macabre, which forces you to cast different abilities during Shadow Dance. For us, this simply means we want to cast Backstab and Secret Technique once per Shadow Dance.

1. Cast Shadow Blades on cooldown.
2. Maintain Slice and Dice. Now automatically refreshed with Cut to the Chase being baseline for all three rogue specs.
3. Maintain Rupture on your primary target and any targets that live over 12 seconds. Aim to refresh it before Shadow Dance windows.
4. Cast Symbols of Death on cooldown; this will result in you utilizing Symbols without Dance. This is intended as it will ensure that you have Symbols back for your second burst window. You will want to send Symbols without Dance after your initial burst window. An example of this can be found in Ravenholdt in the Beta Info Thread. Shout out to Eleem for putting together a visual for this!
5. Cast Shadow Dance on cooldown.
6. Cast Thistle Tea if at 3 charges in combination with Shadow Dance and after that, use it when you are running out of Energy.
7. Cast Secret Technique with Cold Blood to spend Combo Points when reaching 6 or more and 5 or more during Shadow Dance after you have gained some Danse Macabre stacks.
8. Cast Eviscerate to spend Combo Points when reaching 6 or more and 5 or more during Shadow Dance.
9. Cast Vanish on cooldown to get an extra Shadowstrike.
10. Cast Shadowstrike to generate Combo Points if Shadow Dance is active. Otherwise, use Backstab (from behind the target if possible to gain 20% extra damage on it).

As mentioned above, try to combine and sync your offensive cooldowns together to deal maximum damage.

1. Maintain Slice and Dice. Now automatically refreshed with Cut to the Chase being baseline for all three rogue specs.
2. Maintaining Rupture on any target that lives at least 12 seconds is a DPS gain; however, this can sometimes be hard to estimate.
3. Cast Symbols of Death on cooldown.
4. Cast Shuriken Tornado/ Thistle Tea on cooldown in combination with Shadow Dance.
5. Cast Secret Technique with Cold Blood to spend Combo Points when reaching 6 or more and 5 or more during Shadow Dance after you have gained some Danse Macabre stacks.
6. Cast Black Powder to spend Combo Points when reaching 6 or more and 5 or more during Shadow Dance instead of Eviscerate if there are 3+ targets.
7. Use Shuriken Storm during Shadow Dance instead of Shadowstrike, if there are 3+ targets.
8. Cast Shuriken Storm to generate Combo Points.

While Shadow Blades still does decent damage on AoE, the value of extra Combo Points gained is diminished. Use Shadow Blades at your own discretion on multi-target or save it for a single-target situation.

Vanish has fairly low value on multi-target and is best used to extend the duration of Find Weakness or refresh Slice and Dice.

For the opener sequence and to see how the rotation changes with multiple targets, visit the rotation page.