Subtlety Rogue DPS Easy Mode — 12.1

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by clicking 'Export Talents'.

You can import the talent tree below into the game by clicking 'Export Talents'.

Before entering combat, always remember to apply the following effects.

• Apply Poisons, enter Stealth and Tricks
  Apply Instant Poison and Atrophic Poison.
  Cast Stealth.
  Cast Tricks of the Trade on your Tank right before you engage.

Subtlety is all about generating and spending combo points effectively while combining all of its various cooldowns together for big burst windows.

• Spenders
  Secret Technique or Eviscerate should be used when you have 7 combo points
• Generators
  Whenever you do not have 7 combo points, you should be casting Shadowstrike if you are inside Shadow Dance, and otherwise Backstab.
• Utilizing your Cooldowns
  Goremaw's Bite should be cast whenever it is available.
  Shadow Blades should be cast right after Goremaw's Bite.
  Cast Shadow Dance whenever Secret Technique is ready and you have 7 combo points.
• Aligning Cooldowns
  Every Shadow Blades wants to have 2 Shadow Dance inside of it, which means that even when Secret Technique and Shadow Dance is available, if the Shadow Blades is less than 10 seconds away you want to hold off and wait.

In AoE/Multi Target situations Subtlety plays very similar to how it does in Single Target, the main exception is casting the AoE spender and the AoE generator instead of the Single Target ones. Because the AoE generator gives 1 combo point per target hit you get significantly more combo points, which means you get to cast more spenders.

• Spenders
  Secret Technique or Black Powder should be used when you have 7 combo points
  Coup de Grace is an empowered version of Eviscerate from the Trickster Hero Talent which should be cast whenever it available, even in AoE, there is a macro that automatically does it linked below.
• Generators
  Whenever you do not have 7 combo points, you should be casting Shuriken Storm.
• Utilizing your Cooldowns
  Goremaw's Bite should be cast whenever it is available.
  Shadow Blades should be cast right after Goremaw's Bite.
  Cast Shadow Dance whenever Secret Technique is ready and you have 7 combo points.
• Aligning Cooldowns
  Every Shadow Blades wants to have 2 Shadow Dance inside of it, which means that even when Secret Technique and Shadow Dance is available, if the Shadow Blades is less than 10 seconds away you want to hold off and wait.

You can macro Coup de Grace together with your Black Powder button and it will automatically cast it for you whenever it is ready, the macro looks like this:

The last Apex Talent Ancient Arts will sometimes give you a buff, which you can see by a shadowy glow near the middle of the screen. When that happens, your next Combo Point Spender will deal additional damage and you will get your Combo Points refunded, allowing you to cast another spender right away. The other two Apex talents do not have any noticeable impact on the rotation.

During Season 2 of Midnight you will have access to these following Tier Set Bonuses.

• Rogue Subtlety 12.1 Class Set 2pc
• Rogue Subtlety 12.1 Class Set 4pc

The energy cost reduction from the 2-piece of the Season 2 tier set bonus allows practically every global outside of Shadow Dance to be filled with either a Backstab or a Shuriken Storm, leading to the spec having less downtime in the rotation. The damage buffs are also good to give the spells a bit more oomph.

The 4-piece effect allows Lingering Shadow to also affect Eviscerate and Black Powder, which makes this talent mandatory. The set effect does not alter how the rotation plays, but the second half of your Shadow Blades is now gonna be stronger than the first half due to this.

Subtlety has pretty weak passive defense, therefore it relies on using the active abilities for the vast majority of its defense.

Feint - provides a 40% damage reduction to AoE abilities with a very short cooldown and short uptime. It does have a very minor energy cost, but because of the abundance of energy as Subtlety that does not matter much. Basically anytime you feel like you are in danger, cast this.

Cloak of Shadows - grants immunity to magical effects on a 2 minute cooldown, allowingyou to stay inside deadly AoE zones or remove extremely dangerous debuffs from yourself.

Crimson Vial - provides a quite weak healing over time effect to yourself with a 30 second cooldown. This spell has an energy cost and costs a global cooldown, making it relatively weak and mostly reserved for the most dire of situations.

Evasion - grants 100% chance to dodge melee attacks on a 2 minute cooldown. This is extremely niche as it usually does not work on AoE effects in dungeons or raid, but on the few rare occasions where it does it is powerful.

Cheat Death - allows you to survive when you should otherwise have died on a 6 minute cooldown. This is not an active ability but it is an insanely powerful defensive tool to be aware of.

The general stat priority for a Subtlety Rogue is as follows. For more information on what's presented on this page, check out our main Stat Priority page.

Due to Deepening Shadows Subtlety has Haste breakpoints (or "caps") after which the value of Haste drops. For Season 2, the amount of Haste to aim for is somewhere between 700 and 1100 for both Trickster and Deathstalker. Unlike season 1 the breakpoint is not as strict so anywhere in that range is acceptable.

The Combat Assistant and the One-Button-Rotation are currently not very good for Subtlety Rogue. Using the One-Button-Rotation is around 10% less DPS than doing the rotation above in Single-Target situations and upwards of 15% in Multi-Target AoE situations.

Using The Combat Assistant does not incur the GCD penalty associated with the One-Button-Rotation, which makes the difference much less pronounced and not that bad to use.