Subtlety Rogue DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Talent Choices for Subtlety Rogue

Level	Choices
15	✓ Weaponmaster	✓ Find Weakness	✗ Gloomblade
30	✗ Nightstalker	✗ Subterfuge	✓ Shadow Focus
45	✗ Vigor	? Deeper Stratagem	✓ Marked for Death
60	? Soothing Darkness	✓ Cheat Death	✓ Elusiveness
75	? Shot in the Dark	? Night Terrors	? Prey on the Weak
90	✓ Dark Shadow	✗ Alacrity	✓ Enveloping Shadows
100	✓ 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.

2. Talent Cheat Sheets for Subtlety Rogue

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.

2.1. Sustain Damage Single-Target (Raiding)

• Level 15: Weaponmaster or Find Weakness
• Level 30: Shadow Focus
• Level 45: Marked for Death or Deeper Stratagem
• Level 60: Cheat Death
• Level 75: Prey on the Weak
• Level 90: Enveloping Shadows
• Level 100: Master of Shadows

2.2. Burst Damage Single-Target (Raiding)

• Level 15: Weaponmaster
• Level 30: Shadow Focus
• Level 45: Deeper Stratagem
• Level 60: Cheat Death
• Level 75: Prey on the Weak
• Level 90: Dark Shadow
• Level 100: Master of Shadows

2.3. Multi-Target (Dungeons)

• Level 15: Weaponmaster or Find Weakness
• Level 30: Shadow Focus
• Level 45: Deeper Stratagem
• Level 60: Cheat Death
• Level 75: Prey on the Weak
• Level 90: Dark Shadow
• Level 100: Secret Technique

2.4. General Use

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

• Level 15: Find Weakness
• Level 30: Shadow Focus
• Level 45: Marked for Death
• Level 60: Soothing Darkness
• Level 75: Shot in the Dark
• Level 90: Enveloping Shadows
• Level 100: Master of Shadows or Secret Technique

3. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Subtlety Rogue

✔ Weaponmaster

✔ Find Weakness

✘ 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.
• Find Weakness causes your Shadowstrike and Cheap Shot to apply a debuff to your target, causing all of your attacks to ignore 40% of the target's armor for 10 seconds.
• Gloomblade replaces your Backstab, deals Shadow damage, and is unaffected by facing.

Find Weakness and is the best option on this row for priority damage and multi-target situations.

Weaponmaster performs on a similar level as Find Weakness on single-target, however Find Weakness takes the lead as more targets enter the equation.

Gloomblade is generally only used in PvP situations.

4. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Subtlety Rogue

✘ 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.

Shadow Focus is our go-to option due to it simply being better than the other options in virtually any situation. It makes the rotation smoother, along with making it easier to utilize every global cooldown during Shadow Dance.

Nightstalker is good option for burst damage, but due to us having very limited Energy in Battle for Azeroth, it performs worse than Shadow Focus in most scenarios.

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

5. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Subtlety Rogue

✘ 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 very competitive on single-target while also being the best choice on multi-target situations. 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.

6. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Subtlety Rogue

? 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.

7. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Subtlety Rogue

? 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.

8. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Subtlety Rogue

✔ Dark Shadow

✘ Alacrity

✔ Enveloping Shadows

Tier 6 talents involve potent build-defining passives.

• Dark Shadow causes you to deal an additional 25% 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 because of the synergy it has with traits such as Blade In The Shadows, allowing us to cast a lot more Shadowstrikes.

Dark Shadow offers unparalleled burst and is a solid choice for single-target. It is also the best talent in cleave situations due to having good synergy with Secret Technique.

Alacrity is a good option for sustained AoE but will generally fall behind Dark Shadow even in said situations.

9. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Subtlety Rogue

✔ 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 and is not too far behind Master of Shadows on single-target.

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.

10. PvP Talents (War Mode)

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.

10.1. Subtlety Rogue War Mode Talents

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.

10.1.1. General PvP Talents

1. Relentless is a passive ability but it does not automatically remove crowd control abilities but instead reduces the duration.
2. Gladiator's Medallion is an on-use ability that removes all movement-impairing effects and all loss of control effects.
3. Adaptation is likely your most passive choice since it will automatically remove loss of control effects over 5 seconds. It is recommended for leveling to take this PvP talent.

10.1.2. Recommended Subtlety Rogue 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. Honor Among Thieves causes your and your party members' Critical Strikes to grant you a Combo Point; this effect can only occur once every 2 seconds.

Veil of Midnight, Shadowy Duel, Silhouette, Smoke Bomb, Maneuverability, and Shiv have limited use in PvE content in terms of increasing your damage in the open world. Death from Above can be a good option instead of Honor Among Thieves to burst down high health enemies such as Elites.

11. Changelog