Subtlety Rogue DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.2

Within this page, we will go over every single talent available to Subtlety Rogues. Many of them are only passive effects, but they all can have an impact on how the spec is played, whether active or passive. To see how these choices fit into how you play as a Subtlety, take a look at the Rotation section of our guide.

While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the talent builds listed below work great for specific purposes.

The go-to build for all Single Target Encounters in Raid.

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

The Dark Brew build for raiding for most encounters.

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

The suggested builds might differ based on the current tier's bosses, so make sure to read the dedicated raiding page below.

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

Due to the dynamic nature of Mythic+, different affixes and dungeons can change our choice of talents. Check out the Mythic+ page below.

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

Due to the dynamic nature of Mythic+, different affixes and dungeons can change our choice of talents. Check out the Mythic+ page below.

The Class Tree for Subtlety Rogues is fairly straightforward, and the few choices you will have are mainly utility options, which we will talk about in this section.

With the redesigned talent trees, your talent options can change quite a bit. The biggest change you can make in these rows is swapping Improved Sprint or Master Poisoner for Gouge/ Airborne Irritant for some more CC options. However, untalenting Master Poisoner is not recommended.

While Master Poisoner does not increase our output, it makes our Atrophic Poison reduce the target's damage dealt by 3.6% instead of 3% which means that you should always pick this talent for progression raiding.

The options in these rows are quite limited. However, with the redesign, we are now afforded more utility options than we were before. The only must-have DPS options in these rows are Subterfuge and Improved Ambush. There is a new talent ( Stillshroud) that reduces the cooldown of Shroud of Concealment that can prove useful in mythic+ and for raid trash skips.

These rows give us the meat of our DPS options in the class tree. The redesigned opened up two charges of Shadow Dance for Subtlety Rogue with the move of Nightstalker instead of Find Weakness (which has been relocated to the Subtlety Spec Tree). There's a lot of contention around Acrobatic Strikes at the moment, but it was made clear that Blizzard views it as a DPS talent and intend to keep it where it is at

With 10.2, Black Powder becomes baseline for Subtlety rogue, so the difference between the ST build and the M+ builds comes down to you either take Shuriken Tornado, or you don't.

If you played Subtlety Rogue prior to 10.2, you'll notice a completely new Specialization Tree. With that, you'll see Find Weakness as the starting talent, and you'll see now that we get access to the beloved Shadowlands Conduit Quick Decisions. You'll also see the choice node of Cloaked in Shadows/ Fade to Nothing has been moved into this part of the tree. Overall, you'll take the same 8 points in every build for PvE purposes.

With the new tree comes new gateways, which means this part of the tree opens up a bit more. You'll notice we no longer take Gloomblade (although that is always still an option if you want to drop Replicating Shadows, but you lose out on the 20% damage bonus to rupture doing so). For Mythic+/AoE/Cleave situations, you drop Weaponmaster and pick up Shuriken Tornado.

Much like in our class tree, these rows are packed with output options. Including the new Shadowcraft and Goremaw's Bite. If your only care is output DPS, the points you place in these rows are pretty much automatically decided. We always take Flagellation and Deeper Daggers and round it off with Finality, Dark Shadow, Danse Macabre, Dark Brew. The best simming single target build also always plays Inevitability and Shadowcraft.

If you choose to, you can enable "War Mode." Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
• 15% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Subtlety Rogue-specific PvP talents.

1. Death from Above is just a stronger Eviscerate./li>
2. Dagger in the Dark — Whenever Stealth is active, you apply a debuff to nearby enemies that causes them to take an additional 5% damage from your next Shadowstrike. Stacks up to 8 times. This is nothing special, but still a slight damage boost.
3. Only two of the Honor Talents increase our DPS while outdoors, so the last choice is up to you on which one you think suits you the best.

Veil of Midnight, Shadowy Duel, Silhouette, Smoke Bomb, Thick as Thieves, Distracting Mirage, Control is King, Dismantle and Maneuverability have limited use in PvE content in terms of increasing your damage in the open-world.