Subtlety Rogue PvP Guide for WotLK Classic

Subtlety Rogue is synonymous with arena PvP; any experienced PvP player has Subtlety Rogue come to mind when thinking about PvP. Having a massive arsenal of tools available to them, Rogues can counter their enemies in almost any situation, always having a way to turn the advantage to their favor and come out on top of their enemies. Subtlety Rogues is one of the most difficult specs to master in PvP, requiring plenty of practice to play at a top skill level.

Strengths

• Powerful crowd control; can easily setup kills.
• Extremely high burst damage when cooldowns are available.
• Highly diverse toolkit, almost always having an ability to counter your enemies.
• Has multiple ways to interrupt casts, easily controlling enemies who need to hard cast spells.

Weaknesses

• No real form of self-sustain.
• Gearing and playstyle are fully offensive, leaving you vulnerable outside of defensive cooldowns.
• Very difficult to properly play; requires nearly perfect execution acquired from practice.
• Doesn't do well in large engagements, such as 5v5 arenas and battlegrounds.

This is a more standard, high-burst PvP build with a focus on arena. If you are focusing on 3v3 and 5v5 arenas, you will want to remove 2 points from Master of Deception and 1 point from Ruthlessness and put them into Master of Subtlety.

1. Glyph of Vigor — 10 additional energy helps greatly with your openers and when you are bursting someone for a kill.
2. Glyph of Preparation — Gives you an extra disarm and interrupt whenever you use Preparation.
3. Glyph of Shadow Dance — Gives you 2 more seconds on the duration of your Shadow Dance, increasing your all-ins, giving you a higher chance of securing a kill.
4. Glyph of Cloak of Shadows — Is a good option if you are frequently facing off against high, Physical damage dealers, such as Warrior with Shadowmourne.

1. Glyph of Vanish — The extra burst of movement speed after using Vanish can help reach your target or avoid getting hit out of stealth right away.
2. Glyph of Distract — The extra range is mostly used to interrupt players from drinking from further away.
3. Glyph of Blurred Speed — Does not really have a use in arenas, but can be useful sometimes in battlegrounds or open world PvP.

As a Subtlety Rogue your largest focus stats-wise will be on Attack Power after reaching the Hit Rating cap, and getting a decent amount of Resilience to keep yourself alive.

You will want to maintain 5% hit rating to help land your special attacks. This is especially important for crucial abilities such as Kick, Gouge, Kidney Shot and other crowd control spells.

Resilience is the largest source of damage mitigation you can get from stats. Resilience is a flat damage reduction from all PvP sources and getting as much of this as possible, especially early on, can help you drastically in most PvP situations. You will want to aim for at least 900 Resilience before considering other stats.

Attack Power directly increases the damage dealt by your attacks and skills. It scales slightly higher than pure Agility as Subtlety, especially since the value of Crit is slightly reduced by the enemies Resilience.

Agility grants 1 Attack Power per Agility and a small amount of Crit. It scales slightly worse than pure Attack Power in a PvP environment.

Your main two secondary stats are Crit Rating > Armor Penetration in that order. Other stats like Haste and Expertise have very low value in a PvP scenario as they are much more PvE focused.

If you are looking to maximize the potential of your Subtlety Rogue in Wrath of the Lich King PvP, these are the recommended professions:

1. Engineering — Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket gives you an additional ranged attack to help burst down your kill target, or secure a kill on a fleeing target from range.
2. Tailoring — With Swordguard Embroidery you will have much higher burst window opportunities with the proc.
3. Jewelcrafting — Gives you 3 powerful gems, Bright Dragon's Eye, giving you a huge Attack Power increase.
4. Enchanting — Gives you a nice, passive Attack Power boost with 2 x Enchant Ring - Assault.

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

When it comes to evaluating Subtlety Rogue's place within the Arena, we have created a number of guides devoted to listing a variety of popular team compositions which you can find below.