I wanted to make a post to share some thoughts about Subtlety rogue, and some potential ideas Blizzard could use/iterate on in 9.1.5, since I saw that there are class changes/legendary changes/etc. planned for the patch. I will try to cover all the aspects of the spec. Before I begin I just want to warn that I may ramble a bit at some points, or things may get a little disorganized. As a disclaimer, this post will mostly pertain to M+ and Raid.
Also as a preface, I know Sub rogue is currently very well tuned in Single Target, I think its in a good place considering the fact that this is the only thing it has going for it. Subâs cleave is atrocious and its AoE is only good over a very long duration. Also I think the 3 Rogue specs are very well tuned right now in general in relation to other specs in the game, and in relation to the other Rogue specs. All 3 specs are viable right now and you donât feel forced to play 1 over the other, which is how pure DPS classes should be balanced.
Summary on the Thematics/Flavor Changes of the Spec
At the start of Shadowlands Sub received a pretty cool addition of shadow damage into our kit, we also lost some of that flavor though. Nightblade, our previous maintenance DoT effect that dealt shadow damage, was replaced with Rupture, a generic bleed that we share with our brother spec, Assassination. What we did receive was Find Weakness (previously a talent) as a baseline passive that interacted with our finishers, causing them to do additional damage, as shadow damage. As icing on the cake, we have a conduit called Deeper Daggers that increases our shadow damage dealt after we use either Black Powder of Eviscerate.
Thoughts on these Changes
I very very much enjoy this shadow damage theme in this spec. I feel like it gives the spec a nice flavor that separates us from our friends Outlaw, and Assassination. It gives sub a neat spell blade theme that I think is cool for the spec. I wish Blizzard wouldnât be so halfway with it though, and instead just went all in. Replace Backstab with our first row talent (that is never taken) Gloomblade, bring back Nightblade, you could make SHADOWstrike also deal partial, or full shadow damage. Perhaps even change something with our mastery to incorporate shadow damage. In conclusion, just give sub more shadow damage, it adds enjoyable flavor to the spec.
Talents
In this section I want to go over all of the very sad talent rows in the sub rogue tree and share my thoughts on them, and suggestions for potential replacements/reworks.
Level 15 Row: Weaponmaster, Premeditation, and Gloomblade. This row quite unfortunate. Weaponmaster is stale in my opinion and adds randomness into your rotation, sadly its far superior to the other two in single target. You always play it in raid. The only diversity this row has is that you play Premeditation in M+ and PvP. Gloomblade is an absolute atrocity and should not be a talent at all, it should be baseline as mentioned beforehand.
Level 25 Row: Nightstalker, Subterfuge, and Shadow Focus. This is our row that modifies Stealth/Shadow Dance. My favorite in this row is Nightstalker because it makes Shadow Dance more bursty which is the dream for sub rogues, sadly this talent is currently not good at all because of how starved you become in dance. Shadow Focus is the default pick in 99% situations because it solves this starvation issue, it makes it so you never think about pooling before Shadow Dance, and makes it so you always get your 8 globals in the burst window. Subterfuge is a somewhat interesting talent, but it suffers from the same thing as Nightstalker, you run out of energy, so funnily enough you end up not even utilizing that extra second of Shadow Dance. This talent row being like this is actually a result of the Shadow Dance change made at the start of Shadowlands. Going from a 5 second window to 8 without changing anything else, buffs Shadow Focus quite hard, making it almost required.
Level 30 Row: Vigor, Deeper Stratagem, and Marked for Death. This is our row that modifies our energy and combo points. For our other specs Assassination and Outlaw, this row actually has some choices. For Sub rogue this row is a very quick and easy choice. Deeper Stratagem. I personally donât even mind this being the case. Deeper Stratagem fits the spec very nicely, a 6 combo point maximum compliments subs combo point generation very well.
Level 35 Row: Soothing Darkness, Cheat Death, and Elusiveness. This row is a defensive row so I wonât talk about it much. Cheat Death is a default choice, you can opt into Elusiveness though for certain fights/dungeons. One comment Iâd like to make is that, Fire Mage has a baseline Cheat Death in cauterize, why canât rogue have that 
Level 40 Row: Shot in the Dark, Night Terrors, and Prey on the Weak. Similar to the level 35 Row, this row has no real rotational implications, so not much to be said. People just choose whatever they want here.
Level 45 Row: Dark Shadow, Alacrity, and Enveloping Shadows. Before I go into this row, I have one very big point I want to make. Alacrity, needs to go. This talent is so stale, and so bland, I hate that I even have to look at it in this talent row. Please for the love of god replace this talent. With that out of the way, lets talk about Dark Shadow (DS) vs. Enveloping Shadows (ES). DS is currently a super dead talent, you take ES in every single situation in the game. Were in this situation for the same reason as why the level 25 row is so one dimensional, the Shadowlands mini-rework. At the start of Shadowlands, Shadow Dance went down from 2 charges baseline to 1 charge. Making the +1 Shadow Dance charges of ES very good, and on top of that, the talent gives you more CDR on your Shadow Dance charges. Also on top of this, the other main aspect of Subtlety is the spell Symbols of Death, you layer this spell on top of your Shadow Dances. Why this is an issue? Well, if you try to play DS currently, a natural desynchronization happens between Shadow Dance and Symbols of Death, creating a very awkward and uncomfortable gameplay loop because you donât want to hold either Shadow Dance (since you only have 1 maximum charge so you have to fire off immediately) and you donât want to hold Symbols of Death, so you can get the maximum amount of casts of it in a fight. ES doesnât have this problem because you have 2 maximum charges, so you can go past your 1st charge and still not fire off Shadow Dances, wait for Symbols of Death to come up and then synchronize both, which in the current iteration of Subtlety is the core goal you want to achieve. This row for myself, and other Sub rogue players is probably the biggest problem child. We want Shadow Dance to be super bursty, akin to the Fire Mageâs combust. Dark Shadows helps achieve this but it currently just breaks the gameplay of the spec and feels bad.
Level 50 Row: Master of Shadows, Secret Technique, and Shuriken Tornado. Master of Shadows is a general purpose talent which generates a bit of energy when you press Shadow Dance/Stealth. Quite boring for a final row talent if Iâm to be honest. Nonetheless you default to this in single target situations since the other two talents in this row are AoE specialized talents. Secret Technique, a 45 second cooldown finisher that used to be Subâs only AoE option before the introduction of Black Powder. In 9.0/9.0.5 this talent had a purpose in M+. In 9.1, Black Powder and Shuriken Storm were buffed, which made the 3rd talent in this row, Shuriken Tornado, substantially better than Secret Technique. Currently Secret Technique is a super dead talent that you donât even consider for any content in the game.
Suggestions for Potential Changes in Subtlety Talents/Passives/New Abilities/Etc.
Death from Above
Death from Above, or DfA, this is currently a PvP talent in all three rogue specs. Why this glorious ability that used to define Subâs gameplay was doomed to be a dead PvP talent I do not know. What I do know is this talent is looked upon very fondly by all players who experienced it back in Legion. It created an iteration of Sub that many enjoyed for its extreme burst, and preparation you had to do in your rotation to achieve it. Perhaps it was removed for its positional locking nature and how it could randomly kill you sometimes. What I do think this ability shows is that Subtlety in its current iteration of having multiple charges of its main cooldown, and a mini cooldown in Symbols of Death, NEEDS some sort of cooldown akin to DfA to create moments of heavy burst that gives you a feeling of reward and satisfaction. In BFA this was an Azerite Power Nightâs Vengeance that achieved this where you got a big powerful Eviscerate hit after using Nightblade. Currently in Shadowlands these moments of enjoyable burst are achieved through Flagellation, our Venthyr ability, and the legendary that augments it. I think Sub needs some sort of talent/baseline ability that acts as this catalyst of large momentary burst.
One idea I have is something akin to what Arcane Mage and Retribution Paladin have in their Touch of the Magi, and Execution Sentence abilities. A cooldown that puts a debuff on your target, that gathers a % of your damage dealt, then at the end of the debuff deals the stored damage to your target and/or targets around them. I personally like delayed damage effects such as these very much and think it would be a cool addition to Sub rogues kit in its current iteration. It would be fun in single target and also be fun with Subâs funnel capability in AoE.
Regardless of the form it comes in, Iâd really like if Sub got some big burst button as a baseline spell.
Shadow Dance
Shadow Dance is Subâs main button that creates our gameplay, our highs and lows. Before the reworks post-WoD, Shadow Dance used to be a flat 60 second cooldown where you dealt absolutely monstous amounts of burst damage. Now its more of an enabler that you layer other cooldowns on top. I donât mind the current gameplay, but I would prefer if there was a choice to play the more burst Shadow Dances. This choice does exist in talents like Nightstalker and Dark Shadows. The issue is these two talents are not playable unless they are to be buffed very hard. I think a way to fix these talents without buffing them super egregiously is to revert/partially revert the Shadowlands Shadow Dance changes. I think reverting back to 2 baseline Shadow Dance charges and maybe dropping the duration to 6 seconds instead of 8 would be beneficial for the health of the talent tree. This change would close the gap between Enveloping Shadows vs Dark Shadows, and Nightstalker vs Shadow Focus. Ideally these talents are at a similar power level and you can play the different builds without sacrificing throughput. I think 2 baseline Dance charges and a slightly shorter Dance would be a good change to begin with and also a viable change to make in a .5 patch.
Black Powder
Black Powder is Subâs AoE finisher that you spam every other global in AoE. I personally donât like this button existing in Subâs kit, but otherâs like that it exists and that it gives choices. Let me explain why I do not like it. I personally prefer the idea of Sub being a funnel first spec in AoE, and instead having it do burst AoE instead of sustained AoE. This is how it used to be with our Secret Technique talent. Iâd really love to see Black Powder reworked. Here is an idea I personally like.
âEvery target hit by your Eviscerate is afflicted with a stack of Shadow Venom. Black Powder detonates Shadow Venom stacks on every target afflicted for X shadow damage per stack.â
I think this type of ability could actually serve two purposes. A big AoE burst button, and also that aforementioned catalyst for big single target burst. The stacking aspect means you could build this debuff up on one target during downtime, then go into Shadow Dance and pop the debuff for massive burst damage. In AoE you would apply this with Eviscerates to either one priority target or however many targets youâd like, then trigger this when you like. I think this would create interesting and fun gameplay that you could plan around with your cooldowns. Overall just more fun than the current bland spammable finisher that is Black Powder. You could make this the new Black Powder, or remove Black Powder and rework Secret Technique into this.
Mastery: Executioner
This is somewhat of a lesser complaint but, our mastery currently sucks pretty bad in single target. It needs to be buffed. Perhaps allowing it to buff our Slice and Dice effect/duration. It would be a welcome change.
Vanish
This will be a short section, but one about something that makes me pretty frustrated. Why does the spec that is supposed to be the stealthy guy spec not have some sort of cool interaction with Vanish. Why donât we have a lower cooldown Vanish. You guys could do some cool things with Sub vanish, give it a reset mechanic, some sort of short damage amp, etc. Do something with Sub vanish, it giving just 1 extra shadowstrike is unacceptable.
Conduits
I wanted to talk about our conduits briefly. Theyâre quite undertuned compared to something like Ret paladin conduits or some other specâs conduits, but besides that they are pretty cool. Perforated Veins is the only one I hate, please stop trying to make backstab a thing, we hate that button with a passion, stop wasting our borrowed power budget on things that buff it. Deeper Daggers is awesome. Stiletto Staccato is also cool because it makes Shadow Blades a more appropriate cooldown.
Legendaries
In 9.1 you guys at Blizzard made Covenant Specific Legendaries, and let me tell you, this was probably the best thing you could have done for Sub, because oh my lord are our Spec specific legendaries TERRIBLE. Obedience (Venthyr Legendary) and Resounding Clarity (Kyrian Legendary) are definitely a large part of this specs success currently, not even because they are super op, theyâre just better than our other trash legendaries. The Sub legendaries currently leave a lot to be desired.
Covenant Choices
Currently Venthyr is very good for Subtlety. The Obedience legendary turns Sub into a one minute burst class with 30 second mini-bursts. Itâs an enjoyable playstyle and it does very good single target damage.
Kyrian is the second best choice. With the Resounding Clarity Legendary, the grand total DPS you do compared to Venthyr is actually pretty much identical. The way you do it though is different. The playstyle is a bit more spammy, and youâre actually more akin to an Outlaw Rogue. You press Shadow Dance quite a lot in this build and your damage profile is very flat. Still a fun choice for some.
Night Fae is sadly pretty undertuned. Sepsis is a sad excuse for a covenant ability. It does terrible damage, has a terribly long cooldown for the effect it has. Toxic Onslaught is also just very bad and is worse than our already bad spec legendaries. Iâd love to see Sepsis get some damage buffs and become a one minute or even a 45 second cooldown. Itâs just a really sad covenant for rogue right now and everybody would love to see it buffed.
Necrolord is the other not so great covenant for Subtlety. Although its more so for the reason that Serrated Bone Spike just does not really mesh with our kit very well. Serrated Bone Spike for Sub is essentially just a replacement for Backstab casts. Its that bland. In AoE you donât even really cast this thing, you just play it for the great AoE soulbinds. Unless you buffed the hell out of this covenant, I donât think itâll ever be that good for Subtlety.
Shadow Blades
The last thing I wanted to mention is our three minute cooldown, Shadow Blades. This cooldown is a very, very low power level button for the cooldown it has. This could be remedied in a couple ways. The easy way would just be to reduce it to a 2 minute cooldown. The other way would be to rework it. I have some ideas for this. I think a return of the âauto attacks deal shadow damageâ aspect of a previous iteration of Shadow Blades should return. You could also make it so while Shadow Blades is up your shadow damage is increased by X% making it so your eviscerateâs shadow damage aspect is boosted. Regardless of how you do it, please do something to this button, its just at such a lower power level for being on such a long cooldown.
Conclusion
Subtlety is in a good spot right now. The spec works. Its tuned well in the areas it should be tuned well. It has clear strengths and weaknesses. The gameplay flows smoothly. With all these things said, it can still be improved upon. I love this spec and its a big part of why I even play WoW, and I want to see it improve further and further. I hope this post gets the attention of some devs and that it helps create ideas that improve the gameplay of my favorite spec, Subtlety. If youâve made it this far in the post, thank you for reading.
