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Introduction
Hey, my name is Stealthi. I raid and play rogue in the guild This is Fine on Tarren Mill EU. We are a 2 day guild that tries to make the most out of our 2 days of raiding to hover around world rank 30-40.
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.
Introduction to Subtlety Rogue
Subtlety is a spec that offers a lot of flexibility in how you deal damage. It can tackle almost any kind of damage scenario. Subtlety has been known as one of the “harder” specs to get into but going into the Midnight expansion it becomes quite a lot simpler to play so that should make it more approachable for the majority of the people looking to try out the spec.
Overall I think subtlety is in an interesting spot going into The Midnight.
What has changed
May 5th Hotfix Changes to Subtlety Rogue
We got a bit of a shift in talents due to some recent buffs and nerfs. The Cloud Cover talent saw a significant reduction in power with some compensation in the form of an aura buff to the spec and a slight buff to its choice node, which results in us going back to our old build and old stats that we want to go for.
Changes to Subtlety Rogue in Patch 12.0.5
There are 2 significant changes to Subtlety going into the new patch one being an old friend returning, our AoE Blind which is now back with Airborne Irritant plus a rework to the talent Cloud Cover.
The rework to Cloud Cover makes our Shadow Blades drop a smokebomb when pressed that gives us a buff that can be extended to 20 seconds in total and lets us apply Fazed 2 extra times on the mob triple stacking the effect we have with fazed in our hero talent which makes it an incredibly strong talent.
There is also a change to Deathstalker which gives us a new button on a short cooldown that allows us to move our Deathstalker's Mark to a new target which is nice QoL for the hero talent and lastly we get a new talent called Sanguine Vial which slightly buffs our Crimson Vial when we kill open world mobs which Rogue has been notoriously struggling with survivability in for ages.
Midnight Changes to Subtlety Rogue
There is quite a lot of stuff happening to Subtlety rogue going into Midnight, too much to go over here. I suggest reading the actual patch notes to catch up on it all but I will quickly go over the really important stuff.
Most important is that our passive Deepening Shadows is getting reworked to no longer give us cooldown reduction on Shadow Dance per combo point spent, but will now instead increase the duration of Shadow Dance based on our Haste; the same goes for our cooldown finisher Secret Technique and Shadow Blades that now only doubles our combo point generation instead of instantly filling our combo points.
Other than that, the most notable changes are the removal of Rupture, Flagellation and Symbols Of Death from the spec and of course the addition of our Apex talents.