World of Warcraft

Introduction:

Subtlety is considered by many to be the bastard child of PvE, and while it certainly has its weaknesses, I personally view it as the only interesting tree. This guide is my attempt at showing how to make Sub viable; the rotation you should get used to, and the talents/glyphs/reforges you probably want. This is not a guide to the rogue class, and assumes that you have a reasonable understanding of your class; most, if not all of this information will be obvious to seasoned players.

I am not a hardcore superstar Rogue veteran, so any corrections or opinions are welcome. Thank you to those below, who have already contributed amendments and additional points.

I'll start with some basic pro and con:

Advantages:
Involved.*
Fast-paced.*
High single-target damage.

Disadvantages:
Involved.*
Fast-paced.*
Poor multi-target damage.
Not suitable for those with poor latency or FPS, due to timing accuracy.
Very penalising if rotation breaks.

*Rather subjective, so that's down to you.


Contents:

1. Talents/Build
2. Stat Weight
3. Gem Choice
4. Reforging
5. Poisons
6. Glyphs
7. Rotation + notes
8. Add-ons
9. External links
10. Combat off-spec


1. Talents and build:

This is relatively simple, and 8/2/31 is quite solid; there isn't much room for personal flair. Initiative is a filler, and Elusiveness is also rather weak. The only point of contention I can see will be Enveloping Shadows, but it's rarely of use, and a little crippling everywhere else - your call.

(8) Assassination:
2/3 Coup de Grace: Deadly Momentum is useless, so you'll want to spend two points here.
3/3 Lethality: 30% critical bonus, and allowing you to get...
3/3 Puncturing Wounds: Increasing your Backstab crit chance by 30%.

(2) Combat:
2/3 Precision: Increase melee and poison hit chance by 4%. While the hit cap is easy to reach, the white damage increase surpasses the alternatives.

(31) Subtlety:
Take everything other than Nightstalker, Waylay, Cheat Death, and Enveloping Shadows; bar the last, they're really more PvP orientated. Only put one point in Initiative.


2. Stat Weight:

Agility > 8% Hit > Haste > Crit > Expertise > Spell Hit > Mastery

Crit only beats Expertise with high-end gear, so if you're not raiding in Firelands, you can probably rate Expertise (up to 26) above crit. If you off-spec Combat, hitting the soft cap of 26 Expertise is important.

For sanity's sake it isn't a bad idea to hit the soft-cap of 26 Expertise.


3. Gem Choice and Enchants:

Delicate Queen's Garnets (Delicate Inferno Rubies if unavailable) in every slot, unless the socket bonus means the alternative isn't an agility loss. For your Meta slot, you'll want an Agile Shadowspirit Diamond. For weapon enchants, you can’t beat Landslide; for armour enchants, check out ShadowPanther (see External Links). Get whatever is decent and available, which will likely be down to faction, trade skills and cash-flow.


4. Reforging:

Reforge according to the stat weights above, but Shadowcraft (see External Links) is a very useful website.


5. Poisons:

Instant Poison on your main-hand, Deadly Poison on your off-hand; another easy choice.


6. Glyphs:

Prime:
You need Slice and Dice, and Backstab; Shadowdance and Eviscerate are probably on par, but Hemorrhage is above them in terms of DPS. If you don’t want another timer to watch, you can skip Hemorrhage and go with either ShadowDance or Eviscerate. Once you're comfortable with Subtlety spec, I recommend including Hemorrhage in your rotation.

Major:
Tricks of the Trade is essential, and Feint is very handy in DS.

7. Rotation:

Herein lies the fun; you basically want to ensure that Slice and Dice and Recuperate are always up, along with Rupture and possibly Hemo. You should try to maximise your Find Weakness uptime, and keep overlap to a minimum. Rupture is refreshed to it’s original duration by Eviscerate, and any refresh keeps the Master of Subtlety (+10% damage) bonus - this is important.

If you can start the fight with Combo Points available, that’s a major plus - you should use them on Slice and Dice. If that isn’t possible, get it up as soon as possible after Rupture. I hotkey a Tricks of the Trade/assist macro, and use it at the beginning of the fight.

Pool Combo Points at 4 (sometimes 3), so that Honour Among Thieves adds the remainder; this obviously doesn’t matter as much if you’re energy capped, so use common sense. I normally keep my energy at around 40% so that I don’t cap, but can still pool quickly enough for burst.

Premeditation - Shadowstep - Ambush - Rupture (when at 5CP) - Hemo (if using) - Backstab to 5CP - Recuperate (or Slice and Dice if it’s down) - Backstab to 5CP - Eviscerate - Backstab to 5CP - Slice and Dice (or Recuperate if SnD doesn’t need refreshing).

Then you 'simply' maintain the buffs/debuffs. You want to keep Find Weakness up as much as possible, so work in a Shadowdance or Vanish/Premeditation when it’s just about to drop. When you use Shadowdance, save your last Ambush for the remaining second of the Dance, which will maximise your Find Weakness time.

Finisher priority:

Slice and Dice (white damage means a lot to Subtlety)
Rupture (with Master of Subtlety)
Recuperate
Rupture (without Master of Subtlety)
Eviscerate
Opening rotation amendment:

Advanced opening:

Assuming that one has Wrath of Unchaining, epic/pre-epic, etc; I believe it is better to hold off on Rupture until the last moment of Master of Subtlety. This is due to the accumulation of Agility stacks, which will have a decent effect on Rupture for the duration of the fight (bonus is maintained through refreshes).


1) This is unlikely to work reliably on Dummies due to poor HaT procs, but you'll be able to get the feel for it quickly - or you can bring a friend.
2) You need 5 CP ready for SnD before the encounter begins; get those healers to cast some crits before you are ready.

As encounter countdown begins:

Cast SnD (5 CP).
Potion of the Tol'Vir.
Stealth.

As encounter begins:

Tricks of the Trade.
Premeditation.
Shadowstep.
Ambush.
Recuperate (should be a 5 CP cast).
Backstab.
Backstab.
Hemo.
Rupture (5 CP).

This way, one can maximise Rupture by including the agi boosts from a potion, and from weapon/trinket procs. Hemo will also benefit for the duration of the glyphed bleed, but that has far less impact, due to its duration.

Points worth mentioning:

You obviously won't bother with rupture on trash packs - just keep Recuperate up, along with Slice and Dice.

Keeping Hemorrhage up is a bonus, but don’t use it at the expense of major buffs dropping off.

After the opener, try saving Shadowstep for when Find Weakness is up - near its end. Unlike in PvP, you’re using it for the 30% ambush boost, rather than for mobility.

Remember what and when bosses will do, and plan accordingly. You don’t want to waste a Shadowdance just as a mechanic kicks in.

Planning your energy use is as important as planning your next couple of finishers - avoid using Shadowstep until just about to cap energy.

Use abilities such as the Blood Elf’s Arcane Torrent offensively - it’s free energy unless you’re saving it for an interrupt, and very handy during a dance. I don’t have a Night Elf, but I presume that Shadowmeld is a free opener every 2 minutes.

Refresh buffs/debuffs within the last two seconds or so, because doing it when there’s plenty of time left is a noticeable DPS loss.

Use your CP up before using Vanish/Premeditation/Ambush.

After a trash group fight, try to target another mob as soon as you can. Heal crits will give you free Combo Points, but you need something targeted to accumulate them.

I’ve seen Rogues completely ignore Shadowdance until a boss fight. Please, it’s only a one-minute cooldown - use it.

Tricks of the Trade is a beast with the T13 2-piece bonus; use it every 30 seconds! The only time you would delay it's use, is when you want to tie it in with Shadowdance or Ambush - and you'd only hold off for a few seconds.


8. Add-ons:

You most likely already have add-ons that cater for your needs, and the only kind of add-on I think is really needed, is a buff/debuff timer. I use RoguePowerbars, which is out of date but works fine.


9. External Links:

ShadowPather, a good item/enhancement listing:
http://shadowpanther.net

ShadowCraft, an excellent reforge/gem/item-comparison tool:
http://shadowcraft.mmo-mumble.com

ElitistJerks, great theorycraft with some top guides (most pertinent of which is linked): http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t119013-cataclysm_subtlety_compendium/

Combat Off-spec:

There's no getting away from it; if you're PvE Subtlety, then you almost certainly need a Combat off-spec for cleave. Boo bloody hiss. I'm going to work on the assumption that anyone off-speccing Combat will be using the Subtlety reforges. If you're at a stage in the game where you have one piece or gear for each spec, you're probably not reading this guide. Therefore, this will be brief; the rotation is simple.

SS.
Slice and Dice (1 CP).
SS till 4 CP.
Revealing Strike (skip if you have 5 CP).
Eviscerate.

I'm sure I don't need to say this, but Combat doesn't work with daggers unless they are the legendaries/pre-legendaries.

Enable Blade Flurry when you can hit two targets, and don't forget to turn it off when you're back on a single target. Do not let SnD drop.

Use KS and AR on cooldown, but make sure you deplete all of your energy before doing so. If you can use a Potion at the same time as AR - do so, but don't wait for potion cool-downs; just use it on the next AR.


Glyphs:

Prime: Sinister Strike, Adrenaline Rush, and SnD.
Major: Blade Flurry, Tricks of the Trade, and Feint.

Another pve sub guide...? Well, at least this one is good. Of course EJ guide* is better, but i guess not every new rogue will know about it, so maybe another one here will be helpfull for someone. And i can't say anything wrong about this one, so far ;)
Or maybe i can, but only one thing:

For sanity's sake it isn't a bad idea to hit the soft-cap of 26 mastery, although I'm normally hovering between 23-26.

But i'm not going to tell you, what is wrong here, i know you know that :D


* http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t119013-cataclysm_subtlety_compendium/

Good spot, thank you for that. :)

I figured it was probably worth having something short and sweet in here, to possibly go with the other guides. Most of it is pretty basic, and there are definitely more comprehensive guides available.

Pretty good guide here. Could be worth a sticky, especially as it's simple enough to use as a check list. You could maybe bundle up some links to other resources there, in case someone wants to find out more about the theorycrafting, or reforging or whatnot. It's just easier to find when the links are all together somewhere there.

Another thing I was wondering about, just to clarify it really, isn't Hemo-weaving currently the optimal tactic, by a noticeable margin? If so, then it might be worth emphasizing people using the Hemo glyph over SD and Evi.

As a side note I'd like to add, that while Sub is probably the most challenging and fun spec currently, I would advice against using it if you have latency or frame rate issues. You will lose a lot more potential with Sub than with either of the 2 other specs.

Hi Drustan, cheers for the pointers; I'll make some adjustments and add some grouped links in a little bit.

In my experience, yes to the hemo advantage - I was just trying to keep it simple for newer sub players who might struggle with another debuff to watch. Re-reading it, I didn't emphasise enough that it's something you ideally work towards and want to maintain.

I'll also add the latency issue as one of the negatives.

For the record, Crit doesn't outscale Expertise until fairly high-end gear (ie. Firelands normal at least). You should also mention that Expertise cap is a must if you plan to off-spec Combat (as most do).

Also, 6% Eviscerate damage or 1pt in Ruthlessness may not actually be worth more than 2% white hit from Precision.

Taking white hit to be worth 0.8 EP, we get 2% white hit being worth ~190 EP. 1 EP = 1 AP, which is generally worth more than 1 DPS, so I'll take 2% white hit to be worth 200 DPS, as a very rough figure; a third point in Coup de Grace is worth only 181 DPS according to Shadowcraft. A point in Ruthlessness is worth 222 DPS according to Shadowcraft, but you inevitably waste a lot of CPs as Subtlety which will diminish it's value.

So with these quite rough figures, it's clear that even if that second point in precision is only worth 2% white hit, it may still be the optimal choice.

Holy mow, synek in pvp gear lol. I didnt recognize you :D

02/11/2011 15:06Posted by Eléctrica

Holy mow, synek in pvp gear lol. I didnt recognize you :D

Boredom does strange things to you^^

...So with these quite rough figures, it's clear that even if that second point in precision is only worth 2% white hit, it may still be the optimal choice.

Excellent; good input - I'll make the appropriate changes. Cheers!

Nice guide tyvm :-)

Btw I use the add on poisoner, good if you're forgetful and forget to add the poisons to your weapons

Cheers! ^^

I was going to be a bit more in-depth on the add-ons, but figured it would overlap with the addons sticky in here. I tried to keep it a bit more minimalist. :)

Decent guide good job, Still Combat does more damage in hole Firelands patch so. But Sub is a really tricky rotation but fun to play in pve. Still even with a perfect rotation and stuff the dps bonus from Sub compared with combat is 1-2k max. atleast good job on the guide. keep it up

i see u made a guide here :o
decent one too,maybi the eu servers can use a combat rogue guide too,i need to start some maths

04/11/2011 10:49Posted by Mcmkiller

Decent guide good job, Still Combat does more damage in hole Firelands patch so. But Sub is a really tricky rotation but fun to play in pve. Still even with a perfect rotation and stuff the dps bonus from Sub compared with combat is 1-2k max. atleast good job on the guide. keep it up

Yup, I'm not much of a fan of Combat, and as it's a game, you've got to use what's best for you. I'm curious how things will change in 5.0.

i see u made a guide here :o
decent one too,maybi the eu servers can use a combat rogue guide too,i need to start some maths

Thanks ^^. A combat guide would be good, it's quite nice having all the information in one place.

Thanks ^^. A combat guide would be good, it's quite nice having all the information in one place.

agree on that

I've got a question about the rotation I've been struggling with a bit as a possible new convert (I'm currently assassination specced but Im trying sub and it's quite a lot of fun).

I find myself sometimes having rupture, slice and dice and recuperate all having about 10 seconds left, with me at 5 CPs and about to cap energy. So I hit eviscerate and rupture gets refreshed, all good. But if I then use the next 10 seconds to build CPs to refresh both SnD and recuperate, I'll be left with very little energy and rupture with only 6 seconds remaining, and there's no way I can pull a 5cp eviscerate out of my hat in time.

So what should I be doing? My first guess is to just pick 1 of SnD / Recup to refresh, then use the next 5 CPs to refresh rupture again, and only then refresh the now long lost other buff.
But when I try to reason it out, should I perhaps prefer Recuperate for it's longer duration? Meaning when those 10 seconds are over, I won't be left with low energy, 0 CPs and a buff about to fall off.
Any advice would be welcome :)

Also, do I understand correctly that if both rupture and SnD are near to falling off, I should shake my head at my failure and accept that rupture will have to be reapplied and first refresh SnD?

My questions are based on target dummy fights, I haven't raided with subtlety yet and I probably won't reforge all my gear just yet so my haste is lower than it could/should be since Assassination values it, but prefers Mastery. So it could be that with HaT procs these issues will never happen, but I might as well ask.

I find myself sometimes having rupture, slice and dice and recuperate all having about 10 seconds left, with me at 5 CPs and about to cap energy. So I hit eviscerate and rupture gets refreshed, all good. But if I then use the next 10 seconds to build CPs to refresh both SnD and recuperate, I'll be left with very little energy and rupture with only 6 seconds remaining, and there's no way I can pull a 5cp eviscerate out of my hat in time.

So what should I be doing? My first guess is to just pick 1 of SnD / Recup to refresh, then use the next 5 CPs to refresh rupture again, and only then refresh the now long lost other buff.
But when I try to reason it out, should I perhaps prefer Recuperate for it's longer duration? Meaning when those 10 seconds are over, I won't be left with low energy, 0 CPs and a buff about to fall off.
Any advice would be welcome :)

This is probably the most challenging aspect of the spec, and ultimately what would put most people off. If you start with a 5 Rupture/ 5 SnD/ 5 Evisc/ 5 Recup - the timers should be suitably spaced apart; unfortunately their durations vary, and there will always be a minor overlap.

You have a couple of options:

Refresh SnD/Recup early, or let them drop and refresh a second or two later.
Use one or two points on a refresh.

Two is normally preferable, but it really depends on how early you'd need to refresh. We can take Rupture out of the picture because there's no 'dps cost' in refreshing that through Eviscerate - you always it rolling over.

If you are going to use 1 CP, then you'll want to use it on SnD rather than Recuperate; white damage is so important, and SnD is the biggest DPS increase by a good margin.

05/11/2011 12:56Posted by Tomura

Also, do I understand correctly that if both rupture and SnD are near to falling off, I should shake my head at my failure and accept that rupture will have to be reapplied and first refresh SnD?

If Rupture and SnD are about to fall off, I'd probably Eviscerate to refresh Rupture asap if it had MoS on it, or refresh SnD if it did not. You can risk it and try to refresh rupture with 2/3 points, but I wouldn't recommend it. I can't say I never resort to it, but I always feel a bit dirty when I do. It's an imperfect world. ;)

05/11/2011 12:56Posted by Tomura

My questions are based on target dummy fights, I haven't raided with subtlety yet and I probably won't reforge all my gear just yet so my haste is lower than it could/should be since Assassination values it, but prefers Mastery. So it could be that with HaT procs these issues will never happen, but I might as well ask.

Things will be a lot easier when you have more haste, and are getting HaT procs. On the flip side, you have to put up with boss mechanics!