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, which also applies to all the finishers in the priority lists.

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

• Be in Stealth if possible.

Generator priority:

• During Shadow Dance use Shadowstrike.
• Outside of Shadow Dance use Backstab.

Finisher priority:

• During Shadow Dance use finishers with 6 or more combo points. Prioritising Secret Technique over Coup de Grace over Eviscerate.
• Outside of Shadow Dance use finishers with 6 or more combo points, keeping up Rupture, otherwise dump combo points with Eviscerate.

Cooldowns:

• Cast Shadow Dance when Secret Technique is ready to be used
• Cast Shadow Blades during Shadow Dance
• Cast Secret Technique during Shadow Dance
• Use Vanish outside of Shadow Dance at low combo points followed by a Shadowstrike

Single Target Opener

Single Target Opener:

1. Start from Stealth
2. Use Shadowstrike
3. Use Shadow Dance + Shadow Blades
4. Use Secret Technique
5. Use Shadow Dance + Symbols of Death
6. Use Shadowstrike
7. Use Eviscerate
8. Use Shadowstrike
9. Use Eviscerate
10. Use Shadowstrike

Just continue with Shadowstrike and Eviscerate until Shadow Dance ends and immediately use another charge.

Multi Target

Be in Stealth if possible.

Generator priority:

1. During Shadow Dance use Shuriken Storm on 2 targets or more.
2. Outside of Shadow Dance use Backstab only on 1 target, if more than 1 target use Shuriken Storm

Finisher priority:

1. During Shadow Dance use finishers with 6 or more combo points, use Black Powder on 2 targets or more but always prio Secret Technique over Black Powder.
2. Outside of Shadow Dance use finishers with 6 or more combo points, with Black Powder on 2 targets or more

Cooldowns:

1. Cast Shadow Dance when Secret Technique is ready to be used
2. Cast Shadow Blades during Shadow Dance
3. Cast Secret Technique during Shadow Dance
4. Use Vanish outside of Shadow Dance at low combo points followed by a Shadowstrike

Standard Mythic+ AoE Opener and Gameplay

1. Stealth
2. Shadowstrike
3. Eviscerate (skip if you already have Slice and Dice active)
4. Shuriken Storm + Shadow Dance + Shadow Blades
5. Secret Technique
6. Shuriken Storm
7. Black Powder
8. Continue with the normal priority list

Pandemic timers

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

• Slice and Dice 12,4 seconds left (14,4 with 7 cp).

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.

Defensives

The way I think about using Defensives is “how can I make this fight easier for my healers / raid”.

So I spend a lot of time finding things to maybe cheese mechanics with Cloak Of Shadows, this is however not always the best use case for these defensives and I generally recommend using them to help out your healers. For Cloak of Shadows in particular i think it's very important to sit down and figure out where these very high magic damage intakes are so you can help out by just not taking any damage at all, one of the best examples of this is the last debuff clear on Mythic Sarkareth in P1 where you have everyone clear at the same time basically, using cloak here is a very big help for your team, over cloaking something like a swirly to get more uptime on the boss.

Feint i think is a little harder to use well, since you can very easily be over using it and losing out on potential damage when feinting too much since it costs a decent amount of energy, best mechanics to feint are stuff where you know a massive AoE hit is coming or stuff that would otherwise kill you, like the Raszageth P1 bombs before they nerfed them, you had a timer for when these went off and even if they weren't on you they still did a lot of damage to the raid, or the Hearts mechanic on Echo of Neltharion or his AoE stomp during P1, stuff like that where you are forced off from the boss anyway gives you really good value from Feint.

Cheat Death is just your fail safe, it allows you to be greedy with health potions and Warlock stones, it really allows you to minmax and makes it a lot easier to find the sweet spot for how greedy you can be in a fight and help you figure out what actually kills you (without actually killing you). You can also find mechanics to cheese with this a decent example was during Kurog Grimtotem progress i managed to solo two Frost explosions due to being able to Cheat Death one of them, same thing on Magmorax where you go the center with a swirly to die with it on progress you can live that with Cheat Death.