Subtlety Rogue PvP Guide for Cataclysm Classic

Subtlety Rogue is the master of control in PvP thanks to countless tools they have to interrupt, stun and generally disrupt their enemies like Kidney Shot, Blind, Shadowstep. Subtlety Rogues also deal incredibly high burst damage especially with their Shadow Dance ability active.

Strengths

• Incredibly high burst damage with Shadow Dance.
• Very powerful defensive cooldowns like Cloak of Shadows and Vanish.
• Tons of crowd controlling abilities like Blind, Kidney Shot and Gouge.
• Pairs great with almost any other class but especially ranged DPS.

Weaknesses

• Struggles when being targeted once cooldowns have been expended.
• Heavily reliant on cooldowns to deal damage.
• Limited ability to self-sustain.

• Glyph of Hemorrhage — Adds a bleed component to our Hemorrhage ability, greatly increasing our damage dealt over the course of any extended PvP encounter. This also scales incredibly with our Sanguinary Vein talent.
• Glyph of Backstab — Causes our Backstab critical strikes to return 5 energy. Backstab will be our primary form of dealing damage when you are able to get behind the target both to deal max DPS but also apply Waylay.
• Glyph of Shadow Dance — Increases the duration of our Shadow Dance ability by 2 seconds allowing us to use an additional ability or two each time we use our Shadow Dance cooldown.

• Glyph of Preparation — Causes our Preparation ability to now also refresh our Kick, Dismantle and Smoke Bomb. This greatly increases the potency of our Preparation cooldown and allows us to make some great reactive plays by allowing us access to the ability to interrupt, disarm and completely disrupt spell casting on a specific area on moments notice.
• Glyph of Blind — Causes our Blind ability to instantly remove all damage-over-time effects from the target allowing us to easily crowd control a target with Blind that would have otherwise instantly broken it due to the damage-over-time effects.
• Glyph of Garrote — Increases the duration of the silencing portion of our Garrote ability by 1.5 seconds.

• Glyph of Poisons — Reduces the cast time of applying Poisons to your weapons.
• Glyph of Distract — Increases the range of your Distract ability by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Blurred Speed — Causes your Sprint ability to allow you to walk on water.

Make sure to check out our Spells Summary Page first. Having a good understanding of not only what your abilities do but how to optimally use them can often times be the difference between winning or losing in PvP. PvP will require you to constantly change your priorities from dealing damage, to surviving or having to peel to keep one of your teammates alive so knowing how to best use your spells will give you the best chance at victory!

1. Backstab — Acts as our primary source of dealing damage when you are able to get behind your target.
2. Hemorrhage — Acts as our primary source of dealing damage when you are not able to get behind the target though it is important to always keep the Glyph of Hemorrhage effect active to take advantage of Sanguinary Vein.
3. Gouge —Instantly incapacitates your target but can only be used on a target you are currently in-front of. Any damage will break this incapacitating effect.
4. Kick — Is an instant, melee ranged interrupt. It is important to note that this ability does cost a small amount of energy so keep that in mind when trying to interrupt. While it does require melee range you can easily pair it with an ability like Shadowstep to be able to interrupt further away targets.
5. Kidney Shot — Is an instant cast stun that's duration scales with the amount of Combo Points spent.
6. Eviscerate — Acts as our primary spender of Combo Points to deal damage. This is ideally used with five combo points but sometimes a lesser amount will get the job done and finish your target.
7. Recuperate — Is a heal-over-time effect that allows you to convert Combo Points to healing. This ability is incredibly effective in PvP as you are almost always taking at least a slight amount of damage so the ability to self-sustain as a Rogue is a great bonus. We also benefit from Energetic Recovery as Subtlety so try to keep this active as often as possible.
8. Slice and Dice — Greatly increases your attack speed when active, the duration of this buff scales with the amount of Combo Points spent to apply it. While not our primary focus this is an easy way to spend Combo Points when you are planning on switching targets and you already have Recuperate up and Redirect is on cooldown.
9. Redirect — Instantly transfers all of your Combo Points onto your current target, allowing for much easier target swapping.

Subtlety Rogue has a number of tools it can use from Stealth allowing it an unfair advantage on its victims. Understanding what each ability does and how to properly use it will help you greatly in both starting a PvP encounter and while Shadow Dance is active.

• Garrote — Deals a considerable amount of Physical damage over its duration and also silences your target for 3 seconds thanks to the Glyph of Garrote. It is also an easy way to activate Sanguinary Vein.
• Ambush — will act as your primary out of Stealth ability as Subtlety. Casting Ambush will both activate the Find Weakness and Waylay on your target allowing you a massive advantage.
• Sap — is a short incapacitate that can only be used on players that are not in combat. Any damage will immediately break this effect.
• Cheap Shot — stuns the target for 4 seconds.

Subtlety Rogue seem to have an answer to almost any situation so its important to understand how each cooldown works and more importantly when to use it.

• Combat Readiness — Reduces incoming damage by 10% stacking up to five times leading to a total of 50% reduced damage. Combat Insight stacks are gained by taking melee or ranged physical attacks so while this is an incredibly powerful defensive cooldown, you need to make sure you are being focused in order for this cooldown to be effective.
• Cloak of Shadows — instantly removes all harmful magic effects and grants immunity to all magic damage and effects for five seconds. While this ability will typically be used to survive you can also use it proactively to ignore an enemies otherwise effective crowd control like a mage trying to cast Polymorph.
• Smoke Bomb — summons a eight yard radius cloud of smoke that prevents enemies attacks from coming into or leaving the shrouded area. This is an incredible ability in PvP as it completely neutralizes threats from outside of the bomb and also stops targets inside of it from being healed. This can be used to either avoid incoming spells or to kill an enemy that would otherwise able to be healed through your damage.
• Tricks of the Trade — Increases your targets damage by 15% for its duration. This ability is a great way to boost the damage dealt by an ally especially when they have DPS cooldowns active.
• Vanish — instantly sends the Rogue back into stealth allowing for the usage of Stealth-only abilities. This can be used to either avoid incoming damage and get yourself away from a dangerous situation or to head back into Stealth to use one of your more potent abilities like Ambush.
• Shadow Dance — allows you to cast Stealth abilities while out of Stealth. This ability has great potential both offensively and defensively. When on the offense this allows you to cast tons of Ambushs allowing you to deal maximum DPS. If you need to peel in an emergency it can allow you to spam Cheap Shot on multiple targets greatly reducing your enemies ability to deal damage.
• Shadowstep — instantly teleports you behind your current target and increases the damage of your next Garrote or Ambush by 30%. This ability is best paired with Shadow Dance or Vanish in order to benefit from the increased 30% damage on your Ambush.
• Preparation — instantly resets a number of your cooldowns but most importantly your Vanish and Smoke Bomb cool downs.
• Evasion — increases the Rogue's dodge rating by 50% and reduces the chance to be hit by ranged attacks by 25%. This is a great tool should you find yourself with being targeted by an enemy dealing physical damage. This is especially useful against other Rogues to avoid being Kidney Shot.
• Dismantle — disarms the enemy for ten seconds.

Rogue is able to augment their weapons with poisons that allow you to have a much easier time maintaining uptime on your target as well as dealing damage, reducing their incoming healing or even slowing cast speed. As Subtlety in PvP you will typically want to maintain Wound Poison on your main-hand, Crippling Poison on your off-hand and Mind-Numbing Poison or Crippling Poison on your thrown weapon depending on your personal preference.

• Deadly Poison — is a stacking poison that deals more Nature damage with each stack. Even with Glyph of Blind we will not really be using this in PvP.
• Instant Poison — causes your attacks to deal additional Nature damage.
• Wound Poison — reduces the healing the target is able to receive and deals a Nature damage. This is our default main-hand poison as Subtlety in PvP.
• Crippling Poison — slows the target, this will act as our primary off-hand posion as Subtlety in PvP.
• Mind-Numbing Poison — increases the cast speed of the target lessening the amount of casts the target would otherwise be able to cast.

While trying to get the most out of your Subtlety Rogue in Cataclysm PvP, these are the professions we recommend:

1. Blacksmithing — Gives you access to two additional gem sockets in your Gloves and Writs allowing you to add Agility or Resilience depending on if you feel like you need to become tankier or you need to deal more damage.
2. Engineering — allows you access to the Engineering Helmet Agile Bio-Optic Killshades which can be socketed with Cogwheels increasing your Resilience and another secondary stat of your choosing by 208 as well as Synapse Springs which pairs incredibly with your Shadow Dance cooldown.

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for an Rogue in PvP.

Subtlety Rogue is an incredibly versatile class that can pair with almost any other classes in the game but especially with ranged damage dealers like Mages or Warlocks. Highlighted below are some of the strongest arena comps in the game to help you decide what best to pair with your Rogue.