If you like serious sneaking around, popping up behind opponents, and blowing them up with your Ambush, then you’re looking to be a Subtlety Rouge. With various talents designed around immediate burst damage along with the ultimate ninja technique, Shadowstep, the Sub Rogue will appear and deal real damage very quickly.
When you choose the Subtlety spec, at level 10, you unlock certain abilities that are unique to you:
1 – Shadowstep – A short-range teleport that places you right behind your opponent.
2 – “Master of Subtlety” gives you a little extra damage when you get out of stealth, which means your Ambush hits much harder.
3 – “Sinister Call” adds 30% to your Agility and increases Backstab damage by 40%. This adds a large amount of damage to all your attacks.
4 – “Mastery: Executioner” increases the effectiveness of all your “final blows”, including Slash and Slash.
Weapons are an interesting topic here. Your Backstab skill requires daggers, and Ambush works best with daggers (but doesn’t require them). Your other damaging abilities deal more damage with a mace, ax, or sword (a slow mace, ax, or sword). Stab her in the back and you’re behind your opponent often enough to use it a lot, then make sure you have a dagger in your main hand. If not, use the most damaging one-handed weapon you can find. The “left hand” weapon must always be a fast dagger (the speed number in the dagger’s stats must be 1.4 or less).
Speaking of poisons … while leveling up, just hit “Instant Poison” or both weapons. For PvP, you must have “Stun Poison” on the left hand weapon and “Wound poison” on the main hand weapon. For dungeons or raids, put “Deadly Poison in the left hand and” Instant Poison “in the main hand.
Leveling up like a rogue of subtlety is quick and easy. Your general routine when attacking creatures will be to step into the shadow behind them, then ambush, strike once, and then gut. The ambush hits so hard that you will often “shoot” the creature. For those who survive, well, they don’t usually go beyond Eviscerate. Longer fights and / or multiple opponents are more difficult and the Subtlety Rogue is far better off choosing her fights rather than just jumping up and attacking like a Warrior would.
This is even more the case in Player Vs Player (PvP) combat. The Sub Rogue is at its best when it can start from Shadowstep and then use Ambush for immediate damage, Cudgel for its Silence and Damage Over Time (DoT,) effect, or Low Blow for immediate stun. Combo Points (CP) are accumulated using Bleed and then expended on another burst of damage (eviscerate) or another stun (shot in the kidney) or another bleed (break) depending on the situation.
On the battlefields, the “Honor Among Thieves” talent gives the Sub Rogue additional CP to use, and those CPs come from critical hits made by the other party members. In solo combat of any kind, this talent is useless, as there is no group feeding you with those CPs.
The “Find Weakness” talent, enhanced in WoW 4.06, allows you to ignore most of your opponent’s armor for a few seconds. So you don’t just sneak up on certain buffs (like Master of Subtlety), you get a huge damage boost simply by being able to ignore his armor for a while.
For long fights, the Subtlety Rogue’s damage drops rapidly once the “stealth attack” benefits wear off. Using Vanish and then attacking again will upgrade them. Shadowdance, an amazing ability, will also refresh Find Weakness, resulting in brutal damage. Wait until your energy is 100%, then Shadowdance to Low Blow (upgrades Find Weakness) to Eviscerate (now move behind opponent) to Ambush, Backstab (if you’re using daggers, Bleed if you’re not) at 5 CP then Eviscerate again (or Kidney Shot). That is a lot of damage. At that point, against a player, you can disappear and start over.
In a dungeon you can use the same technique, which is easier since the creature will normally have its back to you (and to the “Tank”). Replace Garrote with Cheap Shot and you’re in business. However, be careful not to do too much damage, otherwise the creature will likely wander away from the tank and eat you instead of.
The Subtlety rogue will generally do less damage than the Assassination or Combat rogue, but it also has some nice tools to work with and a very different playstyle. It might be a bit more challenging, but it can be a lot of fun and that’s what many of us think is really important.