Season of Discovery Subtlety Rogue DPS Talents and Runes

Your talent build as an Subtlety rogue is largely set in stone due to the strength of talents located deep within the Subtlety tree such as Preparation and Deadliness. As we have reached max level we have many more options when it comes to how to spend our talent points outside of the Subtlety tree. This build opts for Relentless Strikes in the Assassination tree and Precision in the Combat tree. If you find yourself in a group where you are required to run Improved Expose Armor consider taking the two points from Precision and moving them there.

Gloves — Mutilate

Pants — Envenom

Chest — Deadly Brew

Waist — Poisoned Knife

Feet — Master of Subtlety

Helm — Focused Attacks

Wrist — Carnage

Back — Fan of Knives

Ring — Dagger Specialization

Ring — Nature Specialization

Mutilate will be the default choice for gloves thanks to recent changes that have reduced its energy cost to 40. It also synergizes incredibly well with the talent Opportunity as well as many of the other Runes we have chosen like Envenom and Deadly Brew. Mutilate deals 20% additional damage to a target afflicted by a Poison while Envenom and Deadly Brew also work to constantly apply more poisons.

Envenom deals bonus damage to targets that are afflicted by Deadly Poison which Deadly Brew works constantly to apply. This also synergizes incredibly with Mutilate as it also deals more damage to a poisoned target. Between the Eyes is a great tool if you find yourself needing a ranged stun but deals considerably less damage and will not benefit from the other Runes we have chosen the same way Envenom does.

Deadly Brew applies a stack of Deadly Poison anytime another poison is applied to the target, this scales incredibly well with other talents such as Mutilate and Envenom which both deal additional damage against a target that is poisoned.

Poisoned Knife acts as a nearly free source of damage and should be used on cool down. This ability refunds 5 energy per stack of Deadly Poison/ Occult Poison I present on the target making it an incredibly cheap way to deal damage and generate a combo point. As Subtlety energy can certainly be an issue slowing our damage output so having an extra, nearly free way of dealing damage and generating combo points is a great choice compared to alternatives.

Master of Subtlety increases your damage by 10% for 6 seconds after exiting stealth, this greatly strengthens our opener and turns Vanish into a DPS cooldown. Also consider using Preparation to reset your Vanish cooldown for even more uptime on the Master of Subtlety buff.

Focused Attacks is our default choice with how much Critical Strike rating is available both on gear and World buffs giving us a near constant stream of incoming Energy. This also synergizes well with talents like Malice. While Subtlety lacks some of the Crit multipliers you will find in other specializations you will still have plenty of Critical Strike to make this talent the best option.

Carnage increases damage dealt to targets with a bleed effect active on them by 20% and causes your Rupture ability to heal you for 40% of the damage it deals. The damage bonus here is massive and with the addition of Sebacious Poison we can focus on maintaining Slice and Dice and Rupture as we only have two combo point finishers to focus on maintaining as opposed to three. As Subtlety we will have an even easier time keeping this active due to the emphasis put on re-stealthing and being able to apply Garrote thanks to Preparation and Elusiveness.

Fan of Knives fills a massive hole in our DPS rotation giving us a spammable source of AoE damage. This synergizes incredibly with the Mutilate build recommended above as you will deal 75% of your weapons damage each time you cast Fan of Knives compared to 50% of weapon damage you would deal with any other weapon type.

Dagger Specialization and Nature Specialization greatly increases our chance to hit with Daggers and our Poisons. Dagger Specialization gives us 5 extra weapon skill which is a massive boost towards the 9% melee Hit cap required to hit bosses and allows us to itemize towards other stats. Nature Specialization increases the hit chance of our Poisons by 6% and while we are unlikely to reach the Spell Hit cap of 16% this is still a basically free increase to our DPS.

More engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Rogue.

Opportunity greatly increases the damage dealt by your Mutilate ability. Mutilate benefits from any effect that benefits Backstab unless otherwise stated.

Elusiveness reduces the cooldown of your Vanish and Blind abilities by 90 seconds. Pairing Vanish and Master of Subtlety allows for a considerable damage boost.

Preparation instantly resets the cooldown of all other Rogue abilities. This can be used in a plethora of ways to either refresh the cooldown of a defensive ability such as Evasion or Blind or push the damage by resetting your Vanish cooldown allowing you to re-enter stealth and deal 10% more damage thanks to Master of Subtlety.

Deadliness Increases your attack power by 10% while this is an incredibly simple talent it will greatly increase the damage you deal and makes gear scale even better when receiving an upgrade.

Relentless Strikes causes your finishing moves to have a 20% chance per combo point spent to restore 25 energy. As Subtlety we do not have any major means of generating energy faster so any opportunity to generate additional energy is extremely important.