Subtlety Rogue PvP Rotation and Playstyle — The War Within (11.0.5)

Subtlety Rogues have two roles in PvP: control the enemy team with Sap, Blind, Kidney Shot, Cheap Shot and Dismantle, and burst down stunned enemies very quickly. Subtlety Rogues lack sustained damage, but they make up for it by controlling the game's pace. You should partner with a class with extreme single-target damage and follow-up crowd control for your stuns, such as Mages, Hunters, or Priests.

Discuss with your team to have a game plan. Subtlety Rogue is a specialization that is exclusively played in setup comps. That means you and your team must agree on who to control and who to kill before the game begins. You need to know who will use their offensive cooldowns first. Wasting an entire go because you did not plan and broke each other's crowd control can make you lose the game.

Apply Wound Poison and Crippling Poison. Press Stealth and you are good to go!

The ability to control the enemy team makes Subtlety Rogues so deadly. To lock down a team, you will aim to push in and initiate crowd control chains on the healer ( Sap if they are not in combat, Blind and Kidney Shot/ Cheap Shot). Most of the time, your teammates will follow up as long as you stun the DPS so they cannot stop your team. You also have the option to use Dismantle to stop an enemy melee DPS in between your setups.

Rogues have two resources to manage. The first, Energy, is relatively straightforward. Using a spell costs Energy, and it regenerates over time. The second resource is Combo Points. Some abilities generate Combo Points, and powerful skills called Finishing Moves consume them. To maximize your damage output and your Energy regeneration, you must use your Combo Points efficiently. You have several ways to generate Combo Points.

• From Stealth, Subterfuge, or when Shadow Dance is active, there are two main ways to generate Combo Points:
  • Cheap Shot stuns the target and generates 1 Combo Point.
  • Shadowstrike can only be used in Stealth as well. It deals damage and generates 2 Combo Points.
  • Note: both of these abilities put the Find Weakness debuff on your target. It is essential to have this debuff on any target you want to use Eviscerate on.
• When not in Stealth, you generate Combo Points with the following:
  • Goremaw's Bite deals good damage and generates 3 Combo Point. While this ability does not require Stealth, you will always use it during Shadow Dance during a kill attempt, as the damage is significant.
  • Backstab deals little damage and generates 1 Combo Point. If you hit from behind, it will deal 20% increased damage. Critical Strikes will apply Find Weakness for 6s.
  • Shiv generates 1 Combo Point. If you have Crippling Poison on, it will slow the target by 70% for 4 seconds.
  • Shuriken Storm is an AoE ability and will generate 1 Combo Point for each target hit. Weirdly enough, in PvP, this does not work on pets, only players. You can use this when two players or more are stacked, and you need to generate Combo Points. Be careful not to break crown control, such as Polymorph when using this ability.
  • Shuriken Toss does very little damage but generates 1 Combo Point. This should be used if you are slowed/rooted and cannot reach your target but are about to overcap Energy.

Now that you know how to generate Combo Points, learning how to spend them is even more critical. As a Subtlety Rogue, you have a passive called Relentless Strikes that grants you Energy for every Combo Point you spend on a Finishing Move. It makes it essential to use the Finishing Moves with 5 Combo Points. Here are the abilities you will be spending Combo Points on and what situations you will use them in:

• Kidney Shot is your primary stun to set up crowd control on the enemy healer or kill target.
• Rupture is a bleed that lasts longer based on how many Combo Points you use. Only use this ability when you are not bursting a target.
• Slice and Dice increases your attack speed. Slice and Dice should almost have 100% uptime during an arena match. Only manually use it when you are not bursting a target.
• Eviscerate is your primary damaging ability. This will deal more damage based on the Combo Points used for it. It also deals additional shadow damage to targets with Find Weakness on them.
• Secret Technique is a powerful finisher with great damage but has a cooldown. This will deal more damage based on the amount of Combo Points used for it. It will only be used alongside offensive cooldowns to go for a kill.

The opener refers to your team's opening CC chain and damage done as soon as you exit the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns. If the enemy healer or your kill target uses their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble.

The opener is a key part of the game as Rogue. Stealth gives you the advantage as you choose how the fight begins. Because people will not be in combat right after the gates open, you will be able to Sap a target, already providing your team with numerical superiority. If you manage to get stuns on the other enemies, you can create a situation where your kill target is stunned for you and your team to deal damage without any external help.

If you forced a trinket in the opener, you are on the right track to winning the game. If the enemy healer used their trinket, you could go with a Blind on them, followed by a Sap while you kill the or a Gouge enemy DPS. If the enemy DPS uses their trinket, you will be able to do a go on them with a Kidney Shot followed by a Smoke Bomb to prevent the healer from helping and hopefully kill the DPS in that stun.

There are multiple openers as a Subtlety Rogue. Whether you want to use Shadow Blades or not will completely change the rotation. Below is an example of a standard opener without Shadow Blades.

1. Sap the enemy healer, or the enemy DPS if you open on the healer.
2. Use Cheap Shot on your kill target.
3. Use Shadow Dance and Symbols of Death. With the talent The First Dance, you now have 5 to 6 Combo Points.
4. Use Eviscerate.
5. Use Shadowstrike.
6. Use Shadowstrike.
7. Use Cheap Shot.
8. Use Eviscerate.
9. Use Cheap Shot.
10. Use Shadowstrike.

And below is an example of an opener with Shadow Blades. With Shadow Blades every Combo Point builder grants 7 Combo Points.

1. Sap the enemy healer, or the enemy DPS if you open on the healer.
2. Use Shadow Blades.
3. Use Cheap Shot on your kill target.
4. Use Shadow Dance, Symbols of Death and Thistle Tea.
5. Use Eviscerate.
6. Use Shadowstrike.
7. Use Secret Technique.
8. Use Cheap Shot.
9. Use Eviscerate.
10. Use Cheap Shot.
11. Use Eviscerate.

As you can see, Shadow Blades allows for way more damage because every second global is a finishing move.

Sometimes, the enemy you want to attack will have abilities that they can use in between your Sap on the healer and your stun on your target. To prevent that you can instead Sap the target you want to kill, Cheap Shot or Gouge the healer, and then go for your target. Below is what it looks like.

1. Use Sap on your target.
2. Use Cheap Shot or Gouge on the enemy healer, depending on the kind of CC your team can follow up with.
3. Use Slice and Dice. It is important if you do such an opener without Shadow Blades because it will allow you to gain extra Combo Points with the talent Premeditation.
4. Use Shadow Dance and Symbols of Death. With the talent The First Dance, you now have 4 Combo Points.
5. Use Cheap Shot on your kill target while they are still in a Sap.
6. Use Eviscerate.
7. Use Shadowstrike.
8. Use Eviscerate.
9. Use Cheap Shot.
10. Use Shadowstrike.
11. Use Cheap Shot.
12. Use Eviscerate.

When you have the enemy healer in crowd control and are trying to kill an enemy, you use your burst damage. With the current build, the burst rotation is exactly the same as the opener with Shadow Blades, only you will use Blind, Kidney Shot, or Gouge on the target you want to control instead of Sap.

1. Use Shadow Blades.
2. Use Shadow Dance, Symbols of Death and Thistle Tea.
3. Use Cheap Shot on your kill target.
4. Use Eviscerate.
5. Use Shadowstrike.
6. Use Secret Technique.
7. Use Cheap Shot.
8. Use Eviscerate.
9. Use Cheap Shot.
10. Use Eviscerate.

You may also perform your burst rotation with a Kidney Shot on your kill target for a longer stun if your team is able to control the rest of the enemy team without you, or if you use Blind.

1. Use Shadow Blades.
2. Use Kidney Shot.
3. Use Shadow Dance, Symbols of Death and Thistle Tea.
4. Use Shadowstrike.
5. Use Eviscerate.
6. Use Shadowstrike.
7. Use Secret Technique.
8. Use Cheap Shot.
9. Use Eviscerate.
10. Use Cheap Shot.
11. Use Eviscerate.

If you do not immediately need to run away once your stuns expire, you can keep attacking the target with Shadowstrike to build Combo Points and Eviscerate to spend them.

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available and when your enemies cannot be crowd-controlled because of diminishing returns. Because Subtlety Rogues have weak sustained damage, they spend their sustained damage windows trying to re-Stealth if possible to prepare the next setup, or, if they cannot, they apply their bleed to the enemy, their maintenance buff to themselves and gather Combo Points for the next setup.

1. Try to re-Stealth if possible.
2. Use Rupture with 5 Combo Points.
3. Use Slice and Dice with 5 Combo Points. Having this buff up lets you auto-attack faster, which leads to more Shadow Techniques procs. That means more Energy and more Combo Points, which in turn leads to getting Shadow Dance back faster.
4. Use Eviscerate with 5 Combo Points and do not need to refresh Rupture.
5. Use Backstab to generate Combo Points.

Vanish is one of your main defensive cooldowns. Use Vanish to avoid damage and get away from the enemy team. It can also be used to land crowd control with Sapand Cheap Shot. Note that the talent Without a Trace provides a second charge of Vanish, a solid defensive improvement.

Cloak of Shadows is a strong defensive cooldown when playing against casters. Use this when in trouble against caster teams and run to safety. You can also use it to mitigate incoming magic crowd control abilities, such as Mortal Coil or Hammer of Justice. Note that with the honor talent Veil of Midnight you can use Cloak of Shadows to get rid of physical debuffs and to dodge attacks.

Evasion is a strong defensive cooldown when playing against melees and Hunters. Use this when the enemy team is using offensive cooldowns on you. You can also use it to dodge incoming physical crowd control abilities such as Kidney Shot or Mighty Bash.

Feint (with the Elusiveness talent) is the trickiest but most useful defensive ability a Rogue has. It grants you a flat 20% damage reduction from everything for 6 seconds on a 15-second cooldown. This is a potent tool to mitigate incoming damage. A Rogue is weak against stuns, so preemptively using Feint when a stun is coming your way greatly increases your chance of surviving heavy damage from the enemy team. Of course, it can be used when the enemy team is using cooldowns on you, even if there is no stun.

Crimson Vial is a minor healing over time effect. It can be used the same way as Feint, either when you are about to get stunned or when the enemy is using cooldowns on you, and your healer needs extra help.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.