Subtlety Rogue DPS Guide — The War Within (Season 1)

Subtlety Rogues revolve around burst damage windows by combining Shadow Dance, Symbols of Death, Flagellation and Shadow Blades whenever possible for maximum burst; however, this means that damage outside of these cooldowns is fairly low. Like other Rogue specializations, Subtlety has one of the best defensive kits in the game.

Strengths

• Exceptional burst damage.
• Good single target damage with priority damage focus in AoE situations.
• Fast-paced during cooldowns.
• Very good mobility.
• Powerful defensive cooldowns such as Cloak of Shadows and Feint.
• Very good mob control through spells like Kidney Shot and Blind.

Weaknesses

• Unforgiving rotation where mistakes can cost you a lot of damage.
• Weak low target cleave damage (2-3 Targets).
• Damage and pacing outside of Shadow Dance and Symbols of Death windows is very low and slow.
• Due to Combo Point spenders reducing the cooldown of Shadow Dance, losing uptime can impact DPS.

If you are planning on leveling a Rogue, make sure to check out our Leveling page below for tips regarding talents and more.

Addons make it easier to track important buffs and debuffs, which is why we recommend that you get used to them while leveling, so check out our addons page below. You can also find a few useful macros there.

Subtlety Rogue is a spec that deals with multiple different resources and a bunch of cooldowns, which may seem daunting to a new player trying to pick up the spec. Understanding the core concept of the specialization makes it quite a bit simpler, which is that the goal is to stack as many cooldowns as possible to deal massive burst damage.

You always want to use Shadow Dance and Symbols of Death twice during your Flagellation and Shadow Blades windows.

Maintain Rupture on your maintarget, cast Backstab, Shuriken Storm or Shadowstrike to generate Combo Points. Spend Combo Points on Eviscerate or Rupture if it is about to fall off.

If you are an absolute beginner to the spec, but would like to learn the basic fundamentals of the class, we recommend looking through the Spell Summary first, as well as the Easy Mode page linked below.

If you have previous experience with Rogues, you can head straight to the Talents and Rotation pages to jump right into the more complicated information regarding rotation and talents.

Since the game offers so many routes of gearing now, be it through Mythic+, PvP, Delves or Raiding, it is very difficult to list the exact best-in-slot items, as these often change for every character depending on what gear they are already wearing. Keep in mind that the best way to find out upgrades is by simulating your character. However, we will have Best in Slot items listed below from the current raid tier.

Important part of the gearing process is to make sure that you try to aim for gear that has good stats for Subtlety, along with proper gems, enchants and other consumables, as these provide you with a decent amount of DPS. Check out our dedicated stats page, as well as our enchants and gems page, to find out what to use as Subtlety Rogue.

Once you feel like you have the basics down and are ready to take the step into end-game content, whether it is PvP, Mythic+, or Raiding, we have pages that are ready to tell you optimal talents, tips and tricks and more below.

If you feel like your performance is subpar, but do not really know why, giving the pages below a read might help you or answer some questions you have regarding Subtlety Rogue.