Subtlety Rogue Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Subtlety Rogue. Prior to the expansion's launch, this page will detail everything you need to know about Subtlety Rogue in the upcoming The War Within expansion, including class and spec changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some very light predictions on the state of the spec.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, as there will likely be regular changes to parts of the spec's kit, talents and abilities throughout the TWW Beta process. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Subtlety Rogue. The purpose of this page is to serve as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Subtlety Rogue has received a number of changes to it's talent trees, which includes the shuffling of some talents, as well as changes to a handful of talents and abilities throughout. The most impactful ones in the class tree are:

• Acrobatic Strikes no longer grants increased melee attack range. It was reworked to now grant additional auto-attack damage, and movement speed.
• Cut to the Chase is now baseline for all Rogue specs.
• Subterfuge now lasts 6 seconds, and is a 2-point talent right before the right-most capstone in the class tree.
• Shadow Dance was moved into the Subtlety spec tree, and replaced with a new capstone that grants an additional charge of Vanish instead.
• Nightstalker was removed.

There have also been some changes in the spec tree:

• Shadow Dance was introduced to the spec tree, giving Subtlety two charges of Shadow Dance which returns Subtlety to being the "Shadow Dance" spec.
• Invigorating Shadowdust was announced to be nerfed to 10s/20s, however on Beta it remains 15s/30s, if the nerf goes through this will simplify Subtlety for a lot of players.

Overall, these changes move the spec in the right direction, removing any need for snapshotting due to the removal of Nightstalker, by making Shadow Dance strictly for Subtlety, and potentially nerfing Invigorating Shadowdust. The potential nerf to Shadowdust will lead to a much simpler approach to Subtlety, and will ease the learning curve for many trying to pick up the spec.

The War Within has major implications for all specs thanks to the Hero Talent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondary stats when entering a new expansion.

Subtlety Rogue gets to choose between the Deathstalker and Fatebound Hero Talent Trees. In the sections below, we will take a small dive into the design and benefits of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and offer some thoughts on their potential performance and gameplay implications.

The Deathstalker Hero Tree is centered on the Deathstalker's Mark ability, and the capstone that further boosts its value. The remaining talents are largely damage increases to individual abilities, with little to no interaction with the Deathstalkers Mark itself. The entire Hero Talent tree is very random, with each ability getting one talent to barely buff its damage. This feels like a major lack in direction and theme, with most of the power simply being locked behind the capstone.

Gameplay-wise, it is difficult to tell how these new talents will affect our rotational priorities. The fact of the matter is that the tree was added very late into the TWW Alpha cycle, and is a very buggy and nonfunctional mess. We will have to wait for Blizzard to address the bugs to get a better understanding of what the direction is supposed to be for its gameplay before we can draw any conclusions and work with simulations to figure out the best way to play with this new set of passives. The biggest issue presented by Deathstalker is the fact that Subtlety will struggle to proc the capstone of the tree. Unless the Rogue attempts to circumvent using Shadowstrike in Shadow Dance which goes against the entire gameplay loop for Subtlety.

What we can tell so far, is that Deathstalker will be awkward to play in Mythic+, as the Deathstalker's Mark is locked onto a single target. Since moving it to a different target requires a stealth or shadow dance-cast Shadowstrike, swapping it will largely rely on monitoring Darkest Night procs. This directly clashes with our desire to spend Combo Points on Rupture, Black Powder and Secret Technique instead.

Power-wise, taking the current functionality, spell data and tooltip descriptions by its word, Deathstalker is a very large DPS increase, more than anticipated. This is unlikely to remain, especially once the Hero Talents are fully functional, but the design goal seems to be to offer a strong single-target DPS increase through the Deathstalker Hero Talents.

The biggest concern is how much of the overall damage gain of the entire set of talents is just locked behind the capstone, Darkest Night. Many of the talents throughout this Hero Talent tree are very low impact, with only minor DPS benefits, while most of its power is tied to Darkest Night. This is problematic, because as stated above, proccing Darkest Night requires not using Shadowstrike in Shadow Dance. How Blizzard intends to get around this issue remains to be seen.

As for utility, Deathstalker offers a very useful cooldown reduction to Shadowstep, as well as additional defensive benefits through either Ethereal Cloak or Bait and Switch, which further supplements our already strong survivability.

The Trickster Hero Tree Talents are centered around Unseen Blade, a proc that applies after using Backstab and Shadowstrike. Initially, this only applies a damage increase to your target in the form of a debuff, with many talents further improving these benefits or granting different ones entirely. You also gain more control over proccing Unseen blades as you allocate more talent points in this tree.

Gameplay-wise, Trickster is a very passive tree, with the capstone putting you into an animation lock that heavily disrupts gameplay flow. As a result, this hero talent tree is a bit awkward to play, and the Unseen Blades debuff further locks you onto a singular target.

Power-wise, Trickster seems to perform slightly better in low-cleave environments but it is currently trailing behind Fatebound on pure-single-target or larger AoE fights. The difference is very minor, however, so feel free to play around and enjoy the Trickster theme. It bears mentioning, that any of the current predictions are based on the idea that the animation lock of Coup de Grace will be removed. If it does not, Trickster will become noticeably worse than Fatebound.

Defensively, Trickster is very potent, giving a damage reduction against enemies affected by your Unseen Blade, or improving the efficacy of Feint. It also offers some great utility, with a permanent Tricks of the Trade or a reduced cooldown for Blind which will be very useful in Mythic+.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Subtlety Rogue in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Rogue Subtlety 11.0 Class Set 2pc — Symbols of Death increases the damage of your next Secret Technique by 20%.
• Rogue Subtlety 11.0 Class Set 4pc — Secret Technique increases the damage of your other finishing moves by 16% for 7 sec.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and are not expected to have any gameplay impact. The tier set was clearly designed to not overwhelm players as they get used to the new Hero Talents and get to wrap their head around them. This set really shines in emphasizing Secret Technique which many Subtlety Rogues will appreciate as most of the DF tier sets completely ignored it.

Strengths

• Subtlety's identity returns by being the "Shadow Dance" spec.
• Secret Technique is officially focused and emphasized as part of Subtlety's identity, which it had unofficially been for all of DF.
• The potential nerf to Invigorating Shadowdust (it was announced nerfed, but remains unchanged on Beta currently) will remove the "Extra Homework" for Subtlety Rogues.

Weaknesses

• The Specialization Tree is still severely lacking in a lot of places and is in desperate need of an overhaul.
• Incredibly bugged Hero Talent implementation for Deathstalker and Trickster makes testing, practicing, and simming difficult or impossible.
• The animations for Deathstalker and Trickster leave a lot to be desired.
• The class tree seems incomplete, replacing Nightstalker with "3% leech while stealthed" seems like a complete filler as it's literally useless, and the double vanish charge may be dead on arrival with how many points required to take it.