Subtlety Rogue DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight (12.0.1)

Always start the fight in Stealth and with Instant Poison and Atrophic Poison applied.

Always start the fight in Stealth and with Instant Poison and Numbing Poison applied.

1. Cast Shadow Dance when you have 6 or more combo points and Secret Technique is ready or Shadow Blades is active.
2. Cast Shadow Dance when you have 2 or fewer combo points and Secret Technique is ready or Shadow Blades is active.
3. Cast Shadow Blades during Shadow Dance.
4. Cast Secret Technique during Shadow Dance with 6 or more combo points.
5. Cast Eviscerate with 6 or more combo points when Darkest Night is active
6. Cast Coup de Grace with 6 or more combo points.
7. Cast Black Powder with 6 or more combo points.
8. Cast Goremaw's Bite when you are not in Shadow Dance.
9. Cast Shuriken Storm to build combo points.

Make sure to always start the fight off with a Shadowstrike to apply Deathstalker's Mark.

You always want to use two of Shadow Dances during your Shadow Blades so do not cast it when Shadow Blades has less than 10 seconds left of its cooldown.

On exactly 2 targets it is slightly better to build combo points with Shadowstrike over Shuriken Storm whenever it is available.

You do not need to actively use Thistle Tea, its optimal to have it automatically activate when you have low energy.

At any point more than 20 seconds before the fight use Shadow Dance once to activate Supercharger.

1. Stealth
2. Shadowstrike
3. Eviscerate
4. Any on-use stat trinket, potion and any stat racial you might have (ex: Blood Fury/ Ancestral Call/ Berserking)
5. Shadow Dance
6. Shadow Blades
7. Shadowstrike
8. Secret Technique
9. Continue on with your regular rotation.

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:

• Melee Haste (Haste on items + Haste-enhancing buffs).
• The Relentless Strikes passive, which guarantees your finishers restore 6 Energy per Combo Point.
• Shadow Techniques, which awards 4 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 4 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 0% chance to proc it
3. Your 3rd attack has a 50% chance to proc it
4. If the 3rd attack did not proc it, the 4th has a 100% chance to proc it.
5. Whenever it procs it starts over from the beginning.

When Shadowcraft says it "triggers 40% more frequently" it instead has a 50% chance to proc on the 2nd attack and a 100% chance on 3rd. Since so much of the combo points generated by the spec comes from Shadow Techniques the Shadowcraft is practically required as it doubles both the combo points per time it triggers and the energy.

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.

As mentioned in the rotational guide above, one unintended consequence of how Ancient Arts is designed is that for Trickster it is beneficial to cast Shadowstrike while at full combo points if you do not already have the buff active and casting said Shadowstrike would grant you the buff. This might get hotfixed or changed in some way but until then it is optimal to do this, by ~1.5% or so. If you enable the Ancient Arts talent in the rotational guide above it will be included.

Shadow Blades is our most important cooldown. Its available every 90 seconds and while it is active your combo oint 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 the Macro Section of our Resources Page: