Introduction
Hey, my name is Stealthi. I raid and play rogue in the guild Colour on Stormreaver EU. We are a 3 day guild that tries to make the most out of our 3 days of raiding to hover around world rank 50.
I've been in the top end of public logged Subtlety rogues for the last few years, and I strive to continuously improve my gameplay while finding new and better ways to play the spec.
One of my favorite things to do is to help out other people become better at Subtlety. Which is why you will most likely be able to find me chatting a lot in the Subtlety channel in the rogue class discord Ravenholdt.
If you have any questions about this guide or want me to elaborate on some parts, do not be afraid to DM me on discord or ping me in the Subtlety channel.
I hope you will find this guide helpful and something to lean into when learning the spec or taking that next step in your understanding of how to play Subtlety.
About the specialization
Subtlety is a spec that offers a lot of flexibility in how you deal damage. It can tackle almost any kind of damage scenario. It however does appear to become a little bit more complex to play going in The War Within, which might be a turn off for some players, since we need to track a good bit more things now.
Overall I think subtlety is in an interesting spot going into The War Within.
Strengths
- Varied damage profile.
- Cooldown flexibility.
- Mobility through Sprint, Shadowstep, and Vanish + Shadowstrike teleports.
- Durable with Feint, Cloak of Shadows, and Cheat Death.
- Many control options in M+ and on raid bosses with adds.
Weaknesses
- Mediocre two and three target cleave.
- Loses a moderate amount of DPS during frequent downtime periods due to cooldown reduction (CDR) mechanics and gaining resources from auto-attacks.
What has changed
Changes in patch 11.1
In patch 11.1 we don't see any major changes to the class itself apart from a few fixes, those fixes being Coup de Grace no longer charges you when used from outside of melee range and Secret Technique now works with our major cooldown Shadow Blades (this is big for damage) and lastly a fix to our talent Replicating Shadows so it no longer gives us delayed refunds on combo points through Shadowcraft.
Changes in Patch 11.0.7
In Patch 11.0.7 nothing is really changing for the spec, but we are however blessed with another Ring to farm (Cyrce's Circlet) similar to back in Dragonflight which has some unique effects. It is however time gated to farm out this ring to its maximum item level, it's roughly 2.4% better than any other alternative.
Changes in Patch 11.0.5
In Patch 11.0.5 we got a good bit of changes to our talent trees, I'll quickly go over them.
- Invigorating Shadowdust has been removed and the talent Death perception has taken its place granting us access to 2-3 charges of Symbols of Death + a nice little damage amp on top.
- Sepsis has been removed.
- Shadow Blades has seen number changes going from a 2 min cooldown to a 1 min 30 cooldown and its duration taken from 20 seconds down to 16.
- The First Dance has been reworked as well which increases the duration of your next Shadow Dance by 4 seconds after spending 6 or more seconds out of combat.
These were the subtlety specific changes now to the general rogue changes.
Cut to the chase now just grants duration of Slice and Dice what this means is we can unbind Slice and Dice.
Echoing Reprimand has gotten a big overhaul and change in functionality and name and is now called Supercharger, what it does now is whenever you press Symbols of Death your next finisher counts as it has been used with 2 more combo points; below that we have Forced induction and Echoing Reprimand, Forced induction further enhances Supercharger making it enhance the 2 next finishers instead of 1 and Echoing Reprimand now makes it so your next Backstab after consuming a supercharged finisher deals some extra damage.
Changes in The War Within
Going into The War Within, the most notable changes to the spec is some talents that have either been removed or moved around, most notably the removal of Nightstalker (8% damage during stealth) which changes some gameplay for us which is always nice and Subterfuge got moved down into its spot to become a two pointer for 3-6 sec duration.
We also saw Without a Trace getting moved into the General Rogue tree instead of being Subtlety only.
We also have Cut to the Chase becoming baseline for all three specs, which basically means we can unbind Slice and Dice and due to Cut to the Chase becoming baseline they reworked Premeditation removing the Slice and Dice part of it so it now only grants full combo points on your next builder from stealth.
The long awaited removal of Shadow Dance from the General Rogue tree has also happened making it so Shadow Dance is now only available for Subtlety and the 2nd charge is now found in our Spec tree.
And probably the most discussed talent change of the class Acrobatic Strikes got reworked into an auto attack damage / movement speed talent, which not a lot of people are happy with.
Lastly, of course going into The War Within we also have these new “Hero talents” which for Subtlety is Deathstalker and Trickster, they are a bit much to go over in this short section of what has changed so I'll explain them more in their own section down below.