Gear
Tier Set
Vault of the Incarnates has extremely basic tier sets across the board for all specs. This is also true for subtlety. We do not play around the tier set at all. It’s a passive damage increase that doesn’t really impact anything we do.
2 Piece Tier Set
Spending combo points on Eviscerate and Black Powder increases your crit chance on Shadowstrike and Gloomblade by 2% per combo point spent.
So this kind of happens naturally by just playing the spec, you will get 10-14% damage and extra crit chance on our two main builders.
4 Piece Tier Set
Backstab, Shadowstrike, and Shuriken Storm critical strikes increase the damage of Eviscerate, Rupture (12%), and Black Powder (8%) for 3 seconds.
In summary
So basically, 2p and 4p interact and feed into one another, but we don’t really bother looking at them or playing around them, it just happens.
Trinkets
Ruby Whelp Shell
A passive trinket that has the chance to proc 6 different things depending on its training. You train this trinket by activating the on-use on certain targets for certain procs. This might sound confusing but all you really need to do as subtlety is go to the target dummy area in Valdrakken and target the single target dummy and use the trinket. Doing this will train your dragon to do the Fire Shot more often, which is the overall best proc for subtlety.
It might not look like much, but it competes with any passive trinket in the game. The downside is its proc chance, at 1 proc per minute it can do quite big damage swings (both positive and negative).
You can use this script to see your dragon training: /run for i=2148,2153,1 do V=C_CurrencyInfo.GetCurrencyInfo(i); print(V.name.." - discovered:",tostring(V.discovered)..", quantity:",tostring(V.quantity)) end
Note that even if you have 6 in Fire Shot, you can still proc the other stuff sometimes, it’s not a guarantee.
Controlled Current Technique
Controlled Current Technique is a passive trinket, that increases attack speed and, after reaching 10 stacks, does a bunch of passive damage that also cleaves onto another target.
Whispering Incarnate Icon
Whispering Incarnate Icon is a passive secondary stat trinket. Ultimately this trinket is decided by your group setup, if you can get the DPS + healer + tank benefit, it’s really good. If you can’t get that, it’s just average.
Manic Grieftorch
Manic Grieftorch is a massive damage on-use trinket (2-second channel), nothing special, press trinket, channel huge damage burst.
Hunger of the Pack
Hunger of the Pack is another passive trinket, another trinket with secondary stats. Critical strike rating is very good for subtlety in Dragonflight, even more so than before. Mainly because of Seal Fate, a simple but solid trinket.
Spiteful Storm
Spiteful Storm is a fully passive trinket that just does damage, the only minor min/max you can do is make sure you keep having the same target in aoe or cleave situations as its damage increases over time on your main target.
Algeth'ar Puzzle Box
Algeth'ar Puzzle Box is a big mastery on-use trinket that can be useful in AoE situations, M+ or similar. Note that this takes 2 seconds to cast, so use it during pre pull or during downtime mid-fight.
Windscar Whetstone
Windscar Whetstone is an uncapped AoE damage trinket that does a ton of damage and seems to be a very good option for AoE, M+, or even cleave.
Crafting
The absolute best combination of Embellished items requires you to get a rare ring drop from the first boss of the raid (Eranog). Since the Flaring Cowl is a head item, it also means you need to adjust your tier set pieces accordingly. The second best combination is still pretty good and it also means you have a high item level weapon ready quite early on. The other options are quite bad so I wouldn’t bother with those.
Flaring Cowl + Elemental Lariat (requires Seal of Diurna’s Chosen)