Subtlety Rogue DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Shadowlands Pre-Patch 9.0.1

Level	Choices
15	✓ Weaponmaster	✓ Premeditation	✗ Gloomblade
25	✓ Nightstalker	✗ Subterfuge	✓ Shadow Focus
30	✗ Vigor	✓ Deeper Stratagem	✗ Marked for Death
35	? Soothing Darkness	✓ Cheat Death	✓ Elusiveness
40	? Shot in the Dark	? Night Terrors	? Prey on the Weak
45	✗ Dark Shadow	✗ Alacrity	✓ Enveloping Shadows
50	✓ Master of Shadows	? Secret Technique	✗ Shuriken Tornado

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Tranquil Mind and Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

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.

• Level 15: Weaponmaster
• Level 25: Nightstalker
• Level 30: Deeper Stratagem
• Level 35: Cheat Death
• Level 40: Prey on the Weak
• Level 45: Enveloping Shadows
• Level 50: Master of Shadows

The standard build for raiding for most encounters.

This is our recommended build for Mythic+ dungeons and encounters with a lot of targets.

• Level 15: Premeditation
• Level 25: Nightstalker
• Level 30: Deeper Stratagem
• Level 35: Cheat Death
• Level 40: Prey on the Weak
• Level 45: Enveloping Shadows
• Level 50: Secret Technique

This build is an excellent starting point for questing and general purpose usage.

• Level 15: Weaponmaster
• Level 25: Shadow Focus
• Level 30: Marked for Death
• Level 35: Soothing Darkness
• Level 40: Shot in the Dark
• Level 45: Enveloping Shadows
• Level 50: Master of Shadows or Secret Technique

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

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

Subtlety Rogues have few talents that impact our rotation, so give the rotation page a read to see how conditionals change when picking up certain talents.

✔ Weaponmaster

✔ Premeditation

✘ Gloomblade

Tier 1 talents augment existing abilities with minor damage increases.

• Weaponmaster causes your Shadowstrike and Backstab to have a 15% chance to hit the target twice each time they deal damage.
• Premeditation causes your first Shadowstrike that you cast from Stealth to grant you up to 10 seconds of Slice and Dice or generate 2 additional Combo Points if Slice and Dice is already active.
• Gloomblade replaces your Backstab, deals Shadow damage, and is unaffected by facing.

Weaponmaster and is the best option on this row for single-target.

Premeditation is the best option for AoE and cleave situations because you often will want to maintain Find Weakness up by casting Shadowstrike.

Gloomblade is generally only used in PvP situations.

✔ Nightstalker

✘ Subterfuge

✔ Shadow Focus

Tier 2 talents augment your Stealth and Shadow Dance abilities to provide a damage increase.

• Nightstalker increases movement speed by 20% and damage by 12% while Stealth and Shadow Dance are active.
• Subterfuge allows abilities requiring Stealth to be used for an additional 3 seconds after Stealth breaks. Shadow Dance also lasts for an additional 1 second.
• Shadow Focus reduces the Energy cost of abilities by 25% when used from Stealth or while Shadow Dance is active.

Nightstalker is our go-to option due to it simply being better than the other options in virtually any situation.

Shadow Focus makes the rotation smoother, along with making it easier to utilize every global cooldown during Shadow Dance.

Subterfuge is a weaker than the other options for raid and dungeon purposes, but is a fine choice for questing.

✘ Vigor

✔ Deeper Stratagem

✘ Marked for Death

Tier 3 talents augment your resources.

• Vigor increases your maximum Energy by 50 and increases Energy regeneration by 10%.
• Deeper Stratagem increases maximum Combo Points to 6, allows finishing moves to consume 6 combo points, and increases the damage of finishing moves by 5%.
• Marked for Death marks a target and instantly generates 5 Combo Points. The cooldown is reset if the marked target dies.

Deeper Stratagem is the best option on single-target while also gaining increased value on multi-target. This is due to the increased resource generation on multi-target which lets us cast more finishers, making the 5% finisher increase component more valuable. It also makes Combo Point management easier and helps you not to waste them.

Marked for Death is very close to Deeper Stratagem on single-target, but is quite a bit harder to use optimally.

Vigor makes the spec more forgiving regarding mistakes, but is weaker than the other two options.

? Soothing Darkness

✔ Cheat Death

✔ Elusiveness

Tier 4 talents improve your personal survivability.

• Soothing Darkness allows you to regenerate 3% of your maximum life per second while Stealth is active.
• Elusiveness causes Feint to also grant 30% reduced damage taken from all sources.
• Cheat Death causes fatal damage to instead reduce you to 7% of your maximum health and grant 85% reduced damage taken for 3 seconds. Cheat Death cannot save you from damage greater than double your maximum health. It has a 6-minute cooldown.

Cheat Death is a good choice for players in a raid environment, as it is entirely passive and great for soaking raid mechanics when needed.

Elusiveness is technically the best talent in most situations, but requires you to be extremely proficient with Feint usage and very aware of incoming damage. Generally, Cheat Death is best for learning encounters and soaking high damage mechanics, whereas Elusiveness is great for sustained incoming damage, or soaking frequently occurring mechanics.

Soothing Darkness is a useful talent for questing and world content, but has no use in a practical environment.

? Shot in the Dark

? Night Terrors

? Prey on the Weak

Tier 5 talents improve your crowd control utility.

• Shot in the Dark causes your next Cheap Shot to be free after entering Stealth or Shadow Dance.
• Prey on the Weak causes enemies disabled by your Kidney Shot, Sap, and Cheap Shot to take 10% increased damage from all sources.
• Night Terrors causes Shuriken Storm to decrease the movement speed of targets it deals damage to by 30%.

Prey on the Weak is generally the preferred choice here because of the damage boost it provides to your group when focusing the stunned target.

Night Terrors can be useful for some situations where AoE slow is needed, but due to it only being 30% there are often classes that have better options when it comes to slowing targets.

Shot in the Dark is a fine choice for outdoor content to preserve your Health due to the free stun.

✘ Dark Shadow

✘ Alacrity

✔ Enveloping Shadows

Tier 6 talents involve potent build-defining passives.

• Dark Shadow causes you to deal an additional 15% damage while Shadow Dance is active.
• Alacrity causes finishing moves to have a 20% chance per Combo Point to grant 2% Haste for 20 seconds, stacking 5 times.
• Enveloping Shadows grants an additional charge to Shadow Dance and causes Deepening Shadows to reduce the cooldown of dance by an additional 1.0 second per Combo Point consumed.

Enveloping Shadows is the strongest option for single-target due to the sustained damage it offers and also because of the synergy it has with traits such as The First Dance.

Dark Shadow offers slightly more burst but is just worse for overall output than Enveloping Shadows.

Alacrity is worse than the other two options in virtually every situation.

✔ Master of Shadows

? Secret Technique

✘ Shuriken Tornado

Tier 7 talents focus on resource utility and powerful finishing moves.

• Master of Shadows causes you to gain 25 Energy over 3 seconds when entering Stealth or Shadow Dance.
• Secret Technique is potent finisher move that deals full damage to primary target and reduced damage to secondary targets. It has 45-second cooldown which is reduced by 1 second for every Combo Point you spend.
• Shuriken Tornado causes you to automatically release a Shuriken Storm every second for 4 seconds. It has 1-minute cooldown.

Master of Shadows is the best choice for single-target damage and it is a good option for newer and less experienced players.

Secret Technique is currently the best option on situations with multiple targets.

Shuriken Tornado is highly situational because of how the talent functions. This talent is the best option to funnel single-target damage on AoE situations. However, due to how situational the talent is, it has very limited use.

In Battle for Azeroth, there will be the option to go into "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 to be "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. Thief's Bargain reduces the cooldown of your Vanish by 45 seconds and reduces your maximum Health by 15%. While this talent does not provide any damage increase, the reduced cooldown on Vanish is great when you do not want to fight a pack of mobs.
2. Cold Blood causes your next Shadowstrike or Cheap Shot deal up to 10% of the target's total health in Shadow damage.
3. Dagger in the Dark - Whenever Stealth is active, you apply a debuff to a nearby enemies that causes them to take additional 10% damage from your next Shadowstrike. Stacks up to 10 times. This is nothing special but still a slight damage boost.

Veil of Midnight, Shadowy Duel, Silhouette, Smoke Bomb and Maneuverability have limited use in PvE content in terms of increasing your damage in the open world. Honor Among Thieves can be used instead of Dagger in the Dark. Both are very negligible DPS gains so use whichever you prefer.

Patch 8.2 added a new Essence, Conflict and Strife, which allows you to use Maneuverability in PvE situations such as Raiding and Mythic. This talent is fairly useless, however the Strife is one of the best minor essences, check out the Essence page for more information on what Essences are the best.