World of Warcraft

Updated for patch 4.3

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1. Introduction
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A while ago someone gave me the idea to write a guide about Subtlety PvP, and well, here it is. The idea of this guide is to give a general overview of how the spec works, what your role is and also a lot about preparing for PvP, both arena and regular battlegrounds.

As usual, the guide is mainly meant for new players, but if you’re already more experienced it might still be useful as well. You can sometimes skip a few parts, and hopefully the table of contents will help with that.

I am also not planning on telling you exactly what to do and expecting you to listen to every word I say. There’s a lot of room for personal preference, so I’ll give advice but in the end, it’s all your own decision, especially for casual PvP but even for the more competitive players.

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Your role in PvP
-2.1 Your role in Battlegrounds
-2.2 Your role in Arena
3. Stats
-3.1 Primary Stats
-3.2 Secondary Stats
4. Gems, Enchants, Reforging and Poisons
-4.1 Gems
-4.2 Enchants
-4.3 Reforging
-4.4 Poisons
5. Talents and Glyphs
-5.1 Talents
-5.2 Glyphs
6. Rotations
-6.1 The Opener
-6.2 After the Opener

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2. Your role in PvP
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May it be battlegrounds or arena, a Subtlety Rogue always has a special role. After all, the Rogue class is very different from most other classes, so it’s important to make good use of those differences.
As a small introduction to the class mechanics, I will describe the general role Subtlety Rogues have in PvP.

2.1 Your role in Battlegrounds

In battlegrounds, your most important ability will simply be stealth. Of course it’s possible to just follow the crowd and get as many killing blows as possible, but if you want to optimise your winrate, that’s not the best way to go.

As a Rogue you have the great ability to basically solo a battleground without doing any damage. All you need to do in for example a battleground like AB, is ninjacap flags. Stealth around the map capping flags, or try to use a Sap-Blind combination to cap a flag while there’s a defender nearby. Not only is it extremely effective, in my opinion, it’s also the best fun you can have.

Even better, you can ninjacap flags in TP and WSG. When the enemy team tries to pass the flag to a stronger Flag Carrier, all you have to do is jump in and click faster than the enemy to make them extremely mad.

Basically, if you ask me, Subtlety Rogues in BGs should be annoying. Just terribly annoying. Naturally, especially here there’s a lot of room for personal preference, but I did want to at least mention this. Rogues are not really Warrior-like, and that changes the playstyle in BGs.

2.2 Your role in Arena

Subtlety Rogues are a spec with a lot, and I really mean a lot of control. Not only do we have the best slow in game, we also have all kinds of abilities like Gouge, Blind, Sap, Kick, multiple stuns etc etc.

Therefore, your role as a Subtlety Rogue in arena will mainly be controlling the enemy. We have good burst, but the sustained damage is fairly weak meaning that tunnelvisioning is probably the worst thing you can do.
This is hard though, so it might require quite some practise before you can manage to get rid of the tunnelvisioning.

All in all, as a Subtlety Rogue, your role is to keep the enemy of your teammates when needed, while keeping constant pressure on the enemy when your teammates don’t need help. Especially against a caster you can both control the enemy by locking them out completely, while also keeping pressure up.

Finally, if you want to aim high in arena it could help a lot to watch some videos of the best Rogues. They often have some impressive play and although they need huge skill for all of that, there’s a lot you can learn from them.

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3. Stats
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The first part will be very straightforward, and most players will be familiar with that already. If you already know that part, feel free to skip ahead to the secondary stats part.

3.1 Primary Stats

There are 5 different primary stats. We only really need 1, while the others come automatically, or are simply just completely useless.

-Agility:
This is your main stat and you will need as much of it as possible. Every rogue item, with the exception of a few trinkets, has agility on it. If the item doesn’t have agility, it will usually not be useful for a rogue.
Agility adds 3 stats in cataclysm: Attack Power, Dodge and Crit rating. These are all important stats in PvP, which makes Agility the best choice at all times.

-Stamina:
Stamina is an important stat because without it you’ll end up at your base hp, somewhere around 46k. However, there is Stamina on basically every item (once again, except for trinkets), so you will already have enough of it. Therefore there’s not much need for more Stamina than you get from your gear by default.

-Strength:
Strength adds 1 Attack Power. It’s not completely useless, but not worth it either. Therefore, try to avoid this as much as possible.

-Intellect/Spirit:
These 2 will increase your mana and mana regen while in combat. Unfortunately, Rogues have no mana, so you can consider these stats absolutely useless ^^

3.2 Secondary Stats

There are 6 relevant Secondary Stats. None of them is even nearly as useful as Agility, but I will come to that later.

-Hit:
Hit is a very important stat, mainly for arena but also for BGs. Not only is it incredibly annoying when an essential ability misses, it’s also quite painful for your performance.

To make sure your Special Abilities never miss, which you can consider the important abilities, you need 5%. Getting that 5% is advised, not only for your performance, but also for your own personal sanity. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing that essential Blind miss the target ;)

Apart from that you don’t have to focus much on Hit. You will still miss a lot, because to get your "white" hits (melee hits) to never miss you'll need a lot more Hit and that simply isn't worth it.

-Crit:
Apart from Hit, Crit is (arguably) the best secondary stat there is for Sub Rogues. If you would try it out on a dummy, you might find that stacking Haste gives more dps than Crit does, but the difference is slight.

The problem is though, that Crit is more useful if you can’t stick to a target 24/7, while Haste becomes better when you can. Therefore, in PvP, your damage will be higher if you stack Crit.

-Haste:
The issue with Haste is that it doesn't really enhance burst damage much and mainly helps for your sustained damage, which is less important in PvP. Therefore, crit might still be better, but the difference, especially once you get Cataclysmic gear, is minimal.

The difference between Haste and Crit isn’t huge though, so if you prefer to use Haste, there’s nothing wrong with it and it will barely damage your performance, even if you don't have Cataclysmic gear yet.

-Expertise:
Expertise is not an extremely important stat for Subtlety because our main attack has a positional requirement, meaning it can’t be dodged/parried (you can’t dodge/parry from behind).

However, due to all kinds of lag, it could be that you seem to be behind a target, while you actually aren’t. On top of that Gouge forces you to be in front of the target, so it has become advisable for Arena to get some more Expertise.

This is mainly personal preference though, because there’s still quite some discussion about it. Some say you need 5%, some say you should ignore it all together. I’d say, do whatever you prefer and what fits your playstyle ;)

-Spell Penetration

Much like Expertise, Spellpen is also a personal choice. Gemming for it is not a good plan, but the +70 Spellpen enchant on cloak is worth it if you prefer. However, the +22 Agility enchant is just as good, so it's entirely up to you: neither enchant is "better" than the other.

-Resilience:
Resilience is extremely important in PvP, but it comes with your gear so it’s not really something you have to worry about too much. Don’t waste too much time gemming or enchanting Resilience, because it really isn’t worth it. Rogues are not a class which need a lot of Resilience.

-Mastery:
Long story short: it’s a bad stat for PvP. Performance wise, it’s not worth it so unless you’re a big Mastery fan, I’d advise you to avoid it as much as possible.

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4. Gems, Enchants, Reforging and Poisons
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I won’t lay out a perfect plan of what you should do with every slot, but I will give you some general advise. The aim is not to let you follow my words like mindless sheep, but mainly to get you on the right track. You can fill in the blank spots yourself simply by doing some thinking.

4.1 Gems

This will mainly be the same as the stats part described above. Generally, you will want to have Agility on every gem because this stat is so superior.
Right now, the stat is even so good, that you would optimise your damage by going full out on +40 Agi gems (Delicate Inferno Ruby), completely ignoring the socket bonus.

Choosing to go for the socket bonus anyway wouldn’t cause a huge loss though, so that wouldn’t be a major issue either. If you decide to go for the socket bonus, generally speaking, it’s best to use +20 Agi and +20 Hit in Blue sockets, and +20 Agi with +20 Crit in Yellow sockets. You could maybe even go for +20 Agi/+20 Resi in Yellow slots, if you feel like you lack Resilience or if you get targeted a lot.

4.2 Enchants

For most enchants you can use the Stats chapter to guide you through, since most of them are fairly straightforward. To simplify the comparison between Agility and secondary stats, let’s assume that Agility is 3x better than Crit. So 1 Agility = 3 Crit.

The weapon enchants are an exception here though. They don’t contain simple “+ <stat>” enchants, so I will list the most important ones and I’ll give a short explanation:

-Pyrium Weapon Chain:
This one is very important for PvP. You don’t really want to do anything without one.
It will reduce the duration of Disarm effects, and since a disarm can lock you our entirely for 10 seconds, it’s quite an important enchant. This one goes on your Offhand.
It's definitely a must-have for arena, but if you only play BGs, you could consider taking double Landslide. It will be very annoying if you do get disarmed, but it's less of an issue than it is in Arena.

-Landslide:
This is by far the best enchant out there, because the AP increase is very important, especially compared to the other possible enchants. The only issue with it is that it’s fairly expensive.
It’s not even nearly as expensive as it used to be, but it’s still not cheap, so if you can’t afford it then you can try one of the next enchants:

-Hurricane:
Hurricane is a decent enchant, but not nearly as good as Landslide. It’s very cheap though, so a good option to start with.

-Avalanche:
Avalanche has about the same cost as Hurricane, but it’s a lot weaker so not really worth the money. Hurricane is a better alternative, for the same price.

4.3 Reforging

Reforging can be done with all the secondary stats, but I’ve basically explained this in chapter 3 already. There’s not much I can add to what I said there.

4.4 Poisons

Firstly, it's important to have Crippling Poison on your Offhand and your Thrown weapon, so you can always apply it with Shiv, FoK or Deadly Throw.

On your Mainhand you can chose between Wound or Mind Numbing Poison. Currently, this decision mainly depends on the situation because Wound Poison was buffed in patch 4.3 up to 25% healing reduction. This makes it superior in battlegrounds and arena, although if you are for example in a group with another Rogue/Warrior, you might want to chose Mind Numbing after all, as it really is a great Poison.

In the end, choosing between these 2 depends entirely on the situation and on personal preference.

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5. Talents and Glyphs
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As with every spec, there are a lot of possible options. There is not 1 “best” spec and even with glyphs you have some choice.
For arena, it also depends a lot on the setup you play with. If you play with a Disc Priests (lots of absorbs) you don’t want to have too many +healing taken talents, because it won’t have much effect.
With a Resto Druid/Shaman, that’s the exact opposite.

I will list every talent which can have some doubt about it from the Subtlety tree. So, if there’s a talent in the Subtlety tree which I didn’t mention, that means that it’s basically a must-have and that there is no discussion about it.
I will also list a few important talents from the other trees. Here it’s the exact opposite: the ones I don’t mention are useless.

5.1 Talents

-Nightstalker:
Starting off with one of the hardest ones of all. Personally, I like this talent because it gives more stealth speed. Especially for battlegrounds, this is a very good talent.
However, for arena, mainly competitive arena, it might not be worth the points. Basically, anything is fine. Right now most high rated Rogues seem to go for 0/2 so they can spend the points in Cheat Death, but it depends on your playstyle.

-Waylay:
Blizzard really did their best to make these decisions as tough as possible, and they certainly managed.
Waylay can be very useful because it’s undispellable, and with 2/2 it will instantly apply when you open, which can help a lot. However, generally speaking, 1/2 is enough and you could even consider to skip the talent all together.
Personally I like to keep 1 point in Waylay, but it’s definitely not a requirement.

-Initiative:
An easy one. This talent is practically useless, so don’t bother with it.

-Honor Among Thieves:
This one can be very useful, especially in battlegrounds, so I’d advice you to use it in there.
However, once again, arena gives some doubt. For arena Cheat Death can be a very useful talent, which means you need to save up an additional 3 points, where Honor Among Thieves can be a fairly good one to sacrifice those points.

1/3 is basically a must-have because it gives a 5% crit buff, but the other 2 points depend on what you do with your other talents. For BGs it’s advisable to take 3/3 though.

-Enveloping Shadows:
This one is useless for PvP so don’t bother with it, neither in arena nor in BGs.

-Cheat Death:
The main reason for doubt about how your talent tree will look is this one. It’s not a great ability for battlegrounds, but if it fits your playstyle it could still be a good option. I wouldn’t advise it though.
For arena, it’s a different story. Cheat Death is quite an important ability at higher ratings because it can make a huge difference, but even at lower ratings it can still save lives. Therefore, for arena, I’d say it’s worth it.

Note though that it’s not good to put anything but 0 or 3 points in this talent. If you just take 1 or 2 point in Cheat Death, it becomes RNG and that can be very annoying.

I’ll also just warn you that it will lead to some more decision problems with picking the rest of your talents ^^

-Serrated Blades:
It’s a PvE ability, and since Rupture deals very low damage, it’s not worth the trouble.

Non-Subtlety talents:
-Improved Recuperate:
Together with Quickening, this is the only real point of doubt outside of the Subtlety tree. You will want at least 1 of these abilities anyway, the only question is which one.
Improved Recuperate is very useful in Battlegrounds because it helps with your selfhealing, so it’s probably best to take it for BGs. However, it will cost you the movement speed increase from Quickening which can be annoying.
In the end, it’s personal preference for BGs.

In arena there’s another factor to keep in mind: your setup. For example in 2v2 with another dps, you will want to go for Imp Recuperate because nobody will be healing you. Besides that, if you run with a Disc Priest, Imp Recuperate will also often be the better option because a big part of their heals come from absorbs, which aren't effected by Quickening.

Note that if you decide to take this talent, you’ll miss out on some movement speed meaning it’s advised to get the Assassin’s Step enchant on your boots, which will make up for that difference.

-Quickening:
Basically the same story as mentioned above, but then opposite. If you do arena with classes like Resto Druids or Resto Shamans, Quickening will be your best option. For Holydins, it’s doubtful, so that’s a decision of your own.

If you do take Quickening, the Assassin’s Step enchant will become useless though.

-Coup de Grace:
2/3, because Lethality is better while you do want to reach tier 2 in the Assassination tree.

-Lethality:
3/3, because it helps a lot.

-Puncturing Wounds:
There are few situations where I’d say that it’s best not to get 3/3 in this talent. It’s a very good talent, so usually you should go for this one.

You could also take both Quickening and Imp Recuperate, meaning you will have to sacrifice 2 points in Puncturing Wounds. It gives more survivability and could be good in some situations, but it isn’t really advisable usually.

5.2 Glyphs

I will keep it short:
-Prime:
Both in arena and BGs your best options are Glyph of Shadow Dance, Backstab and Hemorrhage. These are by far the best glyphs performance wise. You could consider replacing either Shadow Dance or Backstab with Slice and Dice, but it’s not really worth it unless you really want to.

-Major:
In arena there isn’t really much choice. Your best options are Glyph of Blind, Garrote and Preparation. You could take Glyph of Gouge as well, which is not great competitively, but it can save you some frustration ;)
In BGs, the same 3 are still best, but you could also consider glyphs like Sprint or maybe even Vanish. Glyph of Preparation is extremely important for arena because Smokebomb is one of your main abilities there, but in BGs it’s slightly less useful. Therefore, you could replace that one if you prefer.
It can be incredibly useful for taking down an EFC though, so for RBGs, it’s a must-have.

-Minor:
Whichever you like the sound of. Generally speaking all Minor glyphs are equally useless, although the Glyph of Distract is fairly good so that would be an exception to the rule. Aside from that one it really doesn't matter which 2 others you pick.
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6. Rotations
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In PvP, there is no standard rotation. It’s different every single time, because that’s what PvP is: unpredictable. There is some kind of pattern in there though, so I will explain the most important parts of our rotation.

6.1 The Opener

Firstly, the opener. Naturally, you want to start every fight in stealth, and the more you can get back in stealth the better, because your damage is increased by a lot after you manage to get the Find Weakness debuff on a target.

Generally speaking, you always want to open with Garrote on a Caster, to save your DR on stuns and locking them out for 4 seconds. After the silence runs out, you can then stun them with Kidney Shot to lock them out even longer.
However, Garrote has a positional requirement, so sometimes you can’t manage. Don’t tunnelvision on it too long, because it’s more important to get an opener than to get a Garrote. If you can’t get behind the target or when the target is mounted, just open with Cheap Shot.

Against melee, it’s arguably best to open with Ambush. However, opening with Cheap Shot has it’s advantages as well, so it pretty much depends on the situation. I’d advice you to watch some videos of higher rated Rogues to get a general impression of what they do when.

An important thing to note though is the ability Premeditation. This will add 2 extra CP to your target, which can be very useful for getting a Recuperate up early, while it's also a great way to simply build up Combo Points.
I personally macro'd it to my Ambush, Cheap Shot and Garrote to make sure I always use it, but you'll have to decide what's best for your playstyle yourself.

6.2 After the Opener

It’s important to always keep a bleed on the target due to the Sanguinary Vein talent. That’s where the Glyph of Hemo comes in, so basically, try to start with a Hemo on the target as soon as possible and refresh it once the bleed starts to run out.
After that, you will mainly use Backstab (outside of cooldowns). As soon as you reach 5 Combo Points, you will want to get a Recuperate up since it increases your damage a lot (due to the Energetic Recovery talent).

These 2 abilities (Recuperate and the Hemo bleed) are the most important abilities you have, and you want them up and running at all times.

After that, you can build more Combo Points until you can get Slice and Dice (SnD) up. This also gives a damage boost and it’s better than using Eviscerate instantly. After you have these 3 up, you can start using Eviscerate to drop Combo Points, but not unless the other 3 don’t need refreshing.

That’s the basic rotation, without interruptions and without cooldowns. However, Sub Rogues are very cooldown dependant, so you will want to use your Shadow Dance ability as much as possible. Try to time it well though, and don’t waste it too easily.
You don’t want to dance while you’re stuck in a root.

More advanced players can also use their Shadow Dance to Sap an enemy player, but that requires a lot of skill and practise. If you’re very new to arena or if you’re doing BGs, it’s best to use Shadow Dance for damage or peeling (keeping the enemy of your teammates).

Try to prepare before using Shadow Dance by getting all your main abilities up (Recuperate, Hemo bleed and preferably also SnD), so you can get the optimal burst.

Besides that, especially in arena but also in BGs, it might be worth using Tricks of the Trade. This will increase the damage dealt by your target for a few seconds and can make a huge difference in arena, while it only costs a bit of energy.
You can find a good macro in the additional edits part.

That’s basically all I can say about the regular rotation, because besides that part, it all depends on the situation.

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I hope this guide helped answering a few questions about the Spec. If you still have a question which hasn’t been answered yet, feel free to leave a reply and I will try to answer as soon as possible.
Same goes for any criticism you might have, may it be about something I said or simply my grammar. Anything which might help improve the guide is much appreciated.

Finally, if you liked the guide, feel free to press the thumb up button ;)

Thank you for reading, and best of luck on your future endeavours as a Subtlety Rogue.

Dalrian

Additional edits:

The Hemo spec
Because many people asked I decided to add a small Hemo spec section.

The Hemo spec is exactly what it says: you use Hemo rather than Backstab. This can be very beneficial if you have some latency issues because you don't have to get behind the target, and it will give you a very slight burst increase during Shadowdance due to different Glyphs/Talents.
On top of that, there's some more survivability due to the fact that you don't need Puncturing Wounds or Waylay. You can use those points on talents like Cheat Death or both Quickening and Imp. Recuperate.

Your damage will also come more from Eviscerate, so you can replace Glyph of Backstab with Glyph of Eviscerate and then take 3/3 in Coup de Grace.

It will cost you a lot of sustained damage though, and in my personal opinion it's a terribly boring spec. Some people enjoy it though, so if that's the kind of spec you like then it might be worth considering.

Tricks of the Trade Macro

I found a very useful macro for ToT a while ago, so I thought I'd add it. It consists of 2 macro's. The first one will set a target for ToT, while the second one will carry it out.

So if you're in arena you just need to assign the "set ToT" macro to 1 teammate, and then you'll only have to click 1 button (the second macro) to always apply ToT to that target.

The "set ToT" macro:
/run ToT = UnitName("target")
/run if not InCombatLockdown() then EditMacro('TotT', nil, nil, '#showtooltip\n/cast [target='.. ToT ..'] Tricks of the Trade', nil); print('Tricks of the Trade set to : ' .. ToT); else print('Cannot change TotT now!'); end;

The second macro:
#showtooltip
/cast [target=Dalrian] Tricks of the Trade

The target will change automatically if you use the "set ToT" macro.

Weapons

As for weapons, ideally, you'll want to use a 1.8 speed dagger in your Mainhand and a 1.4 dagger in your offhand. The reason for this is that some abilities deal more damage when a dagger is equipped, making a dagger the preferred choice.
The reason you want to have your weapon speeds in this exact way is because the damage dealt by abilities is often calculated by your mainhand's damage, and therefore you want a slower dagger in your mainhand so it deals more damage.

Your offhand on the other hand is mainly important for applying Crippling Poison, and it's important to have a fast dagger here both for the energy cost on Shiv and to get quicker Crippling Poison applications.

For those reasons there really aren't too many exceptions and you'll always want to go for a 1.8/1.4 setup.

24/08/2011 16:23Posted by Karmakazi

You should add a hemo guide

I will add a part about it.

However, this is about Subtlety PvP, and although Hemo is possible, it's definitely not a good option. It's personal preference, just like using Sinister Strike. It might be more fun, but it isn't good performance wise.

I know Hemo spam has become at least half decent, but it's still not on par with the normal Sub spec.

Edit: added it in the additional edits part now. (post #6)

24/08/2011 17:47Posted by Karmakazi

. for example the top rogue in 2v2 of cyclone is hemo,

Where did you get that info?

Because I just checked the rankings, and the 2 highest rated Rogues don't even have the right spec for it. And they are double Sub specced.

It's really an overrated spec and I believe it mainly got attention because Mercader made a video about it's effectiveness.

Mercaders active spec however, is the normal Backstab spec now though.
I'll add the weapon chain part though, thanks for that.

24/08/2011 19:45Posted by Anomalus

Just a thought - Addons? :)

My dear friend Pheqbeast/Wrathebe took care of that:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1710235380

Fortunately, he won't be able to reply to the "dear friend" part, so I'm able to say so ^^

25/08/2011 02:02Posted by Karmakazi

You're confusing enemy player with raid bosses, spell hit cap in pvp is 4%.

Oh, that explains a lot. I thought it was a bit strange.

25/08/2011 13:09Posted by Zimquik

I use eviscerate soo rarely - is it really worth for me to put 2 points in Coup de Grace??

Whether that talent is useful is arguable, however, what would your alternative be?

The main reason you want 2/3 in Coup de Grace is so you can reach tier 2 in the Assassination tree, and there really is no other option than that.
You could try going a bit further in the Combat tree, but that isn't really worth the 30% crit on Backstab you'll miss out.

So no, it might not be worth the 2 points for Coup de Grace, but it's definitely worth the 5 points for Puncturing Wounds.