Subtlety Rogue Playstyle and Rotation Guide

General Rotation:

When you play with the Deeper Stratagem and Secret Stratagem talents, you will finish at 6 or more combo points (5 while in Shadow Dance), which also applies to all the finishers in the priority lists. However, it does not apply if you are playing Resounding Clarity and have charged combo points active.

Below I will list spells in a priority order to make it easier to understand the importance of certain parts of the gameplay loop for subtlety.

Single target Priority list

1. Be in Stealth if possible.

Generator priority:

2. During Shadow Dance + Shadow Blades use Backstab for a stack of Danse macabre.
3. During Shadow Dance use Shadowstrike.
4. Outside of Shadow Dance use Backstab.

Finisher priority:

5. During Shadow Dance use finishers with 5 or more combo points, Secret Technique with 3 or more Danse Macabre stacks, otherwise use Eviscerate.
6. Outside of Shadow Dance use finishers with 6 or more combo points, keeping up Slice and Dice and Rupture, otherwise dump combo points with Eviscerate.

Cooldowns:

7. Use Shadow Blades always line it up with Flagellation.
8. Use Symbols of Death on cooldown or with less than 3 seconds remaining. Invigorating Shadowdust or the Season 2 tierset can lead to overlaps.
9. Use Shadow Dance with low combo points during Symbols of Death or when you are about to cap on charges.
10. Use Vanish outside of Shadow Dance on low Combo Points or when Shadow Dance, Symbols of Death, Shadow Blades, Flagellation and Secret Technique are on cooldown if specced into Invigorating Shadowdust.
11. Use Thistle Tea for energy or if you are about to cap on charges.
12. Use Flagellation at 6+ combo points so you can use a finisher immediately after it and if Shadow Blades is up or have less than 14 seconds left on its cooldown.

Opener

Single target opener

Note that with the single target opener when playing the talent Shadowcraft you need to pay attention to your Shadow Technique stacks since you will get some combo point refunds especially after your Secret Technique.

Disclaimer if you are still using the season 2 tierset that grants you Symbols of Death on Shadow Dance casts you want to follow the old rules still and delay your Symbols of Death for after your Secret Technique cast.

1. Start from Stealth.
2. Use Shadowstrike.
3. Use Shadowstrike.
4. Use Flagellation.
5. Use Shadow Dance.
6. Use Rupture.
7. Use Backstab + Thistle Tea + Symbols of Death + Shadow Blades.
8. Use Eviscerate.
9. Use Shadowstrike.
10. Use Secret Technique.
11. Use Shadowstrike.
12. Use Eviscerate.
13. Use Shadowstrike.
14. Continue with the normal priority list.

Multi Target Priority list

1. Be in Stealth if possible.

Generator priority:

2. During Shadow Dance + Shadow Blades use Backstab for a stack of Danse macabre on 3 targets or less.
3. During Shadow Dance + Shadow Blades use Shadowstrike for a stack of Danse macabre and to consume the buff Premeditation or if 3 targets or less.
4. During Shadow Dance use Shuriken Storm on 4 targets or more.
5. Outside of Shadow Dance use Backstab only on 1 target, if more than 1 target use Shuriken Storm.

Finisher priority:

6. During Shadow Dance use finishers with 5 or more combo points, Secret Technique with 3 or more stacks of Danse macabre, otherwise use Black Powder / Eviscerate if prior targeting or if 3 targets or less.
7. Outside of Shadow Dance use finishers with 6 or more combo points, keeping up Slice and Dice and Rupture otherwise dump combo points with Black Powder / Eviscerate if prior targeting or if 3 targets or less.

Cooldowns:

8. Use Shadow Blades always line it up with Flagellation.
9. Use Symbols of Death on cooldown or with less than 3 seconds remaining, Invigorating Shadowdust or the season 2 tierset can lead to overlaps.
10. Use Shadow Dance with low combo points during Symbols of Death or when you are about to cap on charges.
11. Use Vanish outside of Shadow Dance on low Combo Points or when Shadow Dance, Symbols of Death, Shadow Blades, Flagellation and Secret Technique are on cooldown if specced into Invigorating Shadowdust.
12. Use Thistle Tea for energy or if about to cap on charges.
13. Use Flagellation at 6+ combo points so you can use a finisher immediately after it and if Shadow Blades is up or have less than 14 seconds left on its cooldown.

Standard Mythic+ AoE Opener and Gameplay

A brief explanation of one way to do an AoE opener, note that this does not include Shuriken Tornado.

Disclaimer: if you are still using the season 2 tierset that grants you Symbols of Death on Shadow Dance casts you wanna follow the old rules and delay your Symbols of Death for after your Secret Technique cast.

1. Start from Stealth.
2. Use Shadowstrike.
3. Use Rupture.
4. Use Shuriken Storm.
5. Use Flagellation.
6. Use Shadow Dance + Thistle Tea + Symbols of Death + Shadow Blades + Black Powder.
7. Use Shadowstrike.
8. Use Secret Technique.
9. Use Shuriken Storm.
10. Use Black Powder.
11. Use Shuriken Storm.
12. Use Black Powder.
13. Continue with the normal priority list.

When playing Shuriken Tornado, use this before entering Shadow Dance with Symbols of Death up. In a lot of cases when playing m+ you are gonna be chain pulling, or it takes 5-15 seconds for the tank to gather up mobs you can use this time to put up ruptures on as many targets as possible, if this is the case then you start from the Flagellation mark with full Combo Points.

After leaving Shadow Dance, keep maintaining Ruptures on targets that will stay alive for 12+ seconds, and otherwise just rotate Shuriken Storms into Black Powders.

Playstyle

Danse Macabre

Many people have asked if we “play around Danse Macabre”, and the answer would be “maybe?”. We do a few things to play around the damage buff gains.

• Backstab if we are in Shadow Blades for a stack of Danse Macabre or Shadowstrike on AoE for Premeditation and a Danse Macabre stack or during Shadow Blades.
• Using an Eviscerate before using Secret Technique, this is mainly done for the extra 6% damage stack from the Eviscerate

Apart from these quite small things, we do not play around Danse Macabre stacks, they happen naturally and you don’t have to worry about it.

Finality: Rupture

I did not know where to put this information, but I feel like it's important to know.

Basically, we play around Finality Ruptures in Dragonflight because of how much damage Rupture is doing at the moment. I will try to make it as simple as possible.

It's a decent gain to refresh Rupture inside of Shadow Dance as your first finisher if you have Finality Rupture buff up, this is due to Finality being very strong and the reintroduction with Nightstalker DoT snapshotting no matter the remaining duration of the previous Rupture.

Pandemic Timers

Subtlety has two abilities affected by the pandemic timer (30% of the duration), Rupture and Slice and Dice. Most modern Weakaura packages come with a check for pandemic on these abilities, but if you do not have that, these are the timers:

• Rupture 8.4 seconds left (9.6 with 7 cp)
• Slice and Dice 12.4 seconds left (14.4 with 7 cp)

Survivability

In general, a Rogue is probably one of the most sturdy DPS classes in the game.

Playing around this fact is often underrated when it comes to DPS. We can do things that few other classes would get away with. Limit testing with Feint, Cloak of Shadows, and Cheat Death is one of the first things I do when testing bosses on PTR.

How much can you get away with before it becomes a problem for both healers and your life?

And this becomes even more true in patch 10.2 with all the new defensive utility talents getting introduced such as Ephemeral Bond, Exhilarating Execution, Graceful Guile and even Elusiveness if Cheat Death is not needed since it makes Evasion and Feint a 20% DR.

Movement

I won't say too much about this, but I will say that any good Subtlety rogue knows how to get the most out of Sprint and Shadowstep.

• Getting that extra melee or ability off before having to move by stepping a ranged DPS
• Sprint and gap close with Shadowstep
• Avoid knockbacks with Shadowstep
• Vanish (2 charges in Dragonflight) and Shadowstrike teleport