Subtlety Rogue PvP Talents and Builds — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0.1)

There is one viable talent build as Subtlety. It features all the talents that empower finishing moves in order to have powerful burst damage during Shadow Dance, especially with Shadow Blades active.

This build emphasizes the damage of your finishing moves - Eviscerate and Secret Technique. Multiple talents are picked to specifically make those spells more powerful. The goal is to have decent sustained damage with Eviscerate and Secret Technique. Below are important talent choices you take as a Subtlety Rogue.

Nimble Fingers reduces the energy cost of Feint and Crimson Vial. This allows you to use important defensives when you need to without having to worry about pooling Energy.

Evasion increases your dodge chance by 100% for 10 seconds. This is one of your primary defensive cooldowns. Strong against physical burst damage.

Cloak of Shadows - Removes harmful magic effects and grants temporary magic immunity. One of Rogue’s strongest defensive cooldowns against enemies with magic damage.

Elusiveness if what makes Evasion and Feint so strong. This reduces damage you take by 20% while Evasion is active and Feint reduces damage you take by 20%. If you are able to use Feint before enemies try to deal damage to you, this should keep you alive.

Feint is an incredibly important defensive for Subtlety Rogue's. This ability is buffed from several talents, such as Nimble Fingers, Elusiveness, and Preemptive Maneuver.

Gouge incapacitates an enemy for 4 seconds. This is important to help extend crowd control chains on enemy players.

Blind disorients an enemy for 5 seconds. This is typically used on enemy healers and you can follow this up with a Sap if you use Vanish and the enemy healer drops combat.

Shadow Dance is the core spell for Subtlety Rogues. This allows you to use Stealth abilities and grants all the combat benefits of stealth. There are many spells that buff this spell in the Subtlety Rogue talent tree:

• Shot in the Dark gives you a free Cheap Shot after using Vanish or Shadow Dance. Use this to setup crowd control on enemy healers or kill targets.
• Master of Shadows and Fade to Nothing give you extra energy and movement speed when Shadow Dance is active.
• Shadow Focus, Dark Shadow, Death Perception, The Rotten, Shadowcraft, and Danse Macabre all increase your overall damage output while Shadow Dance is active.

Eviscerate is empowered by Shadowed Finishers, increasing its damage by 30% as Shadow. Because Shadow damage is magic, this part ignores armor. Dark Brew increases that part of the damage by 10%. Veiltouched increases it by another 5%. Finality allows every second Eviscerate to be buffed by another 15% (Finality is halved in PvP combat). And finally, Deeper Daggers further empowers the Shadow damage part by 8%. Add to that the modifiers that empower finishing moves, such as Deeper Stratagem and Secret Stratagem, as well as the modifiers that increase damage on your goes, such as Dark Shadow, and you have a very powerful Eviscerate.

Relentless Strikes is a passive, that guarantees your finishes restore 5 Energy per Combo Point spent.

Deathstalker is a great pick for Subtlety. Since Shadowstrike is one of your main abilities you will not have to think to apply Deathstalker's Mark, it will come naturally with your rotation. The talents Ethereal Cloak and Shadewalker give you more survivability and mobility respectively. But the reason why this Heroic Talent tree is good is the last talent, Darkest Night. When it is available your next Eviscerate will deal massive damage. Plus, during Shadow Blades, since you generate full Combo Points every time you use a builder, you might be able to trigger Darkest Night rapidly which will make your burst very deadly. And last, the talent Lingering Darkness will grant you extra Shadow damage once Shadow Blades expires. That means you can burst your target with Shadow Blades, and once your kill attempt is over you will be able to burst them again with Lingering Darkness on the next kill attempt since your Secret Technique deals Shadow damage (and part of Eviscerate does as well).

You can choose three of the following PvP talents; each has uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. The top three choices are the most useful but can be replaced with other PvP talents depending on your team's goal.

Smoke Bomb creates a smoke cloud around you. Enemy players who are outside the cloud will not be able to target anyone inside it. This talent is mandatory for multiple reasons. Firstly, it can help you land a kill by stunning a target when they have no trinket. By using Smoke Bomb right after the stun, you will prevent the healer from saving their teammate. Secondly, you can use it defensively to save yourself or an ally from a lethal cast about to go off, such as Greater Pyroblast. And lastly, you can use it to prevent incoming crowd control on you or your team if such crowd control would result in you losing a game, such as a Polymorph or Repentance on your healer when they have no trinket, and you are low on health. As you can see, this talent is helpful in many different situations, which is why it is so powerful. Note that, as Subtlety, the cooldown is only 2 minutes.

Preemptive Maneuver is a solid defensive option as it makes Feint reduce the damage you take even more when stunned, and reduces its energy cost.

Dismantle is a strong PvP talent that allows you to disarm an enemy for 6s every 45s. It is a great pick against Warriors, Hunters, and Rogues. Disarming an enemy can delay their next kill attempt or stop it entirely if they have pulled the trigger.

Thief's Bargain is a PvP talent with a lot of potential. Having Vanish more often means you can survive more or set up more for your team. Alongside the talent Without a Trace that gives you a second Vanish you have it very, very often! Do keep the damage penalty in mind when using it though.

Thick as Thieves is a strong PvP talent when playing a setup comp with an ally with very high burst. With this, you can further amplify their burst damage by 15% for 6s, which can be the reason why the target dies. The downside of this talent is that you have to spend a point in Tricks of the Trade, something you don't necessarily want to do.