Subtlety Rogue Rework: Talent Revamp, Enhanced Cooldowns, Improved Resource Management

Turn up the Volume!

Subtlety Rogue has seen a substantial amount of change in 10.2 Guardians of the Dream. These changes were announced for 10.1.5 but got delayed. The wait was worth it! We can finally play with all changes on PTR and I invite you all to join me as we dive into the good parts and also discuss the not-so-good changes.

TL;DR

The changes overall are very positive and allow for better mobility, increased utility, and a more defined damage pattern. Cooldowns feel impactful and the pacing between cooldown cycles and downtimes is noticeable. However, not all parts fit nicely together just now, but the gameplay is fun and it is an exciting time to play subtlety rogue.

Subtlety Tree changes

• Overview:

The initial pathing of the tree is not ideal. It offers us a lot of options we previously couldn't pick like Fade to Nothing or Quick Decisions, but pathing is slightly restricted by point economy. The current tree would require us to go down through Shadow Blades, Ephemeral Bond, and Fade to Nothing/Cloaked in Shadows. Not going down this path removes access to Secret Technique, which is a core talent for damage now. Gloomblade is in a similar position on the other side of the talent tree, but is unlike Secret Technique not a required option. Talenting down the very right side to get Stunning Secret requires you to pick up Night Terrors which isn't that great in weeks with the Sanguine affix.

The options after the first gate is great, some nodes are harder to reach like Premeditation and could be not played in mythic+ or multi-target fights as a consequence. The last gate is super interesting with two new capstones and the possibility to combine former capstone which you previously couldn't. For example, it is now possible to pick up Dark Brew, Flagellation, and Danse Macabre at the same time.

The Rotten is one option that seems too weak and might need further adjustments. But the entire tree invites you to try out new combinations and experiment with a variety of talent builds.

• Highlights

Shadow Blades becomes noticeably stronger:

Shadow Blades was always a fairly passive cooldown with low impact. The rework dramatically changes this. The spell now accelerates the resource generation and leads to a fairly fast builder/finisher cycle and a lot of finishing moves in a short time frame. This also leads to a shorter downtime between Shadow Dance casts due to Deepening Shadows. Gameplay is noticeably faster during the cooldown and gives the spec more "punch" in terms of damage output.

Shadow Techniques is Now More Complex:

Even if the change seems minor, having Shadow Techniques produce stacks is a big quality of life improvement. It adds a buffer that can be used in phases of high combo point income like with the Shadow Blades buff active. The tooltip is sadly hides some of the details of the spell.

Shadow Techniques generates one stack every third or fourth auto attack. Only successful auto attacks count towards the counter and the counter resets on a proc. The third attack has a 50% chance to proc and the 4th attack is guaranteed if the third did not proc. This means that the proc rate depends on weapon speed and makes daggers the dominant choice.

A New Talent With Shadow in the Name:

Shadowcraft (Passive) – While Symbols of Death is active, your Shadow Techniques triggers after 1 fewer attack, stores 1 additional combo point, and finishing moves can also expend stored combo points.

This new talent builds on the changes to Shadow Techniques. The tooltip is a bit confusing so let me quickly explain how it works.

During Symbols of Death:

• Shadow Techniques changes to proc every second or third attack (instead of third or fourth).
• Each proc generates two stacks of Shadow Techniques instead of one.
• Using a finishing move will refill your combo point bar from your Shadow Techniques stacks.

Example: If you have 4 Shadow Techniques stacks and use Eviscerate you will end up on 4 combo points after.

Kidney Shot Can AoE Stun:

Stunning Secret (Passive) – Kidney Shot has 100% increased cooldown and Energy cost, and now creates shadow clones to stun all other nearby enemies.

The probably most unexpected addition was this talent. It adds a six-second aoe stun to the spec and also the game. To give a rough idea of why this is so good let's compare it to similar effects. For an incomplete list, Leg Sweep, Shockwave, and Chaos Nova all have lower duration stuns.

Old Abilities Return:

Goremaw's Bite – Lashes out at the target, inflicting Shadow damage and causing your next 3 finishing moves to cost no Energy. Awards 3 combo points. Costs 25 Energy. 1 minute cooldown.

The Legion artifact ability returns and it's good? It kind of is, it adds one additional ability to use during Shadow Dance for Danse Macabre stacks and it has synergy with the magic and shadow damage talents in the tree (Dark Brew, Deeper Daggers, and Veiltouched). The energy return also makes up for the nerfs to resource-generating talents as well as the higher energy costs on most combo-building abilities. This makes this spell a nice addition, even if it isn't as exciting as some other classes/specs artifact abilities.

Other Changes:

Shadowstep and Black Powder are now baseline abilities. This change is great, talent setups on live currently have to decide between Shadowstep and Improved Shuriken Storm. Improved Shuriken Storm was the preferred choice for the majority of the time because it allowed the guaranteed application of Find Weakness in combination with Silent Storm, a talent we always picked up to unlock pathing options. Black Powder was skipped entirely in single target builds, leaving the spec with no aoe option. Both changes are welcome additions and provide Subtlety with higher mobility and baseline aoe capabilities.

Perforated Veins has been redesigned as a 1-point talent – After striking 5 times with Gloomblade or Backstab, your next attack that generates combo points deals 50% increased damage.

The Rotten has been adjusted:

This is a phenomenal change, Perforated Veins was one of the weakest talents in the tree before this redesign. The rework allows it to passively interact with your rotation while keeping an element to optimize around. While this change was good, the power level might not be that high. The Rotten change was bad. While it allows you to stack damage amps on combo point-building moves, aligning abilities means introducing delays. Delaying The Rotten is usually not good given the low cooldown and hence limits the potential of the spell.

A Few Talent Additions:

Ephemeral Bond (Passive) – Increases healing received by 12%.

Warning Signs (Passive) – Symbols of Death increases your Haste by 6%.

Ephemeral Bond is a decent option but currently does not work on Crimson Vial and Recuperator which is assumed to be a bug. This talent synergizes well with the talent tree changes because we are now allowed to select more healing-related talent nodes. Warning Signs opens the decision between critical strike (Planned Execution) and haste on a choice node. Haste is probably one of the weaker stats for Subtlety.

Changes to Energy Costs:

All energy changes aim to slow the gameplay down outside of cooldowns, similar to the removal of Seal Fate from the general tree. Shadow Blades, Shadowcraft, Goremaw's Bite, Thistle Tea, and the higher energy cap from Vigor provide ways to pool energy for cooldown windows or speed up resource generation. Talent Point Reductions:

• Shadowed Finishers is now a 1-point talent and its effect causes 25% additional damage as Shadow (was 20/40%).
• Improved Shadow Dance is now a 1-point talent and increases Shadow Dance duration by 2 seconds (was 1/2 seconds).
• Planned Execution is now a 1-point talent and increases critical strike chance by 6% (was 5/10%).
• Lingering Shadows is now a 1-point talent. Per point value has not changed.
• Deeper Daggers is now a 1-point talent. Per point value has not changed.

This change is mostly positive, and multiple of the nodes ended up getting buffed slightly to provide higher stand-alone value.

General Tree changes

• Overview

The rework is phenomenal, we can now freely pick between multiple good utility options without sacrificing damage. Cheat Death, Improved Sprint with the new Featherfoot, Atrophic Poison as well as the new Graceful Guile can all be picked up at the same time increasing our utility options. Recuperator is now also easier to pick up, allowing for additional self-sustain.

The one remaining concern is access to Acrobatic Strikes. The right and left side of the talent tree both are now noticeably stronger than the middle path, and picking up Acrobatic Strikes would mean losing a capstone talent. All 3 of our capstone talents (Thistle Tea, Deeper Stratagem, and Shadow Dance) are strong enough to only consider this option if absolutely needed for an encounter. The middle path remains not desirable because Echoing Reprimand does not work well with Shadow Techniques, Shadowcraft, and the reworked Shadow Blades. All mentioned talents increase the difficulty of hitting specific combo points.

• Highlights

Sprint Improved:

New Talent: Featherfoot (Passive) – Sprint increases movement speed by an additional 30%, and duration increased by 4 seconds.

Subtlety struggled to pick up mobility talents in season 1 and 2 due to the point economy. The rework allows us to pick Improved Sprint as well as this new empowerment.

Feint Like a Champion:

New Talent: Graceful Guile (Passive) – Feint has 1 additional charge.

This new talent is niche, but is fairly good if you can utilize the extra charge. Combining it with Elusiveness will make rogue very hard to kill.

Gameplay & Problems

The specialization is a lot more cooldown-reliant after the rework and as a consequence will feel slow and weak outside of cooldowns. Aligning and stacking your cooldowns becomes a core philosophy to the spec, and resource management will become a bigger topic. The flip side is that cooldowns now feel amazing and impactful.

Remaining Issues

I want to emphasize that most of the 10.2 changes are positive, but there are still problems with some topics I want to highlight.

A short, incomplete list:

• There are still a lot of bugs.
• Shuriken Tornado generates full combo points during Shadow Blades, potentially ending up as a single target cooldown.
• Shadowcraft, Shadow Blades, Shadow Techniques, and the season 3 four set tier bonus make it hard to keep track of combo point generation.
• The button count can be very high when playing Invigorating Shadowdust.
• Some nodes are hard to reach and would benefit from a better position (e.g. Acrobatic Strikes and Premeditation).<
• Multiple nodes feel underwhelming and probably see little play (e.g. The Rotten).

All of the mentioned problems are solvable and most of them are smaller concerns.

Conclusion

The rework brought substantial change to the spec, altered the gameplay noticeably, and addressed a lot of the concerns around survivability and mobility. The direction of adjusting cooldowns to be more impactful is good even if not every part of the spec fits well together just now. There is a noticeable change in pacing and gameplay that needs some time to get used to but the gameplay loop is fun already and there is a lot of new talent builds to explore.

I am excited for more changes and the Guardians of the Dream patch and so should you if you like playing Rogue.

Recent Updates

Blizzard released updates to the tree which I want to highlight.

• AoE Stun Removal

• Stunning Secret has been removed.
• Airborne Irritant has been moved to the class tree (was in Outlaw) and has been adjusted – Blind has 50% reduced cooldown, 40% reduced duration, and applies to all enemies near the target.

This change puts rogues aoe crowd control into the general tree. It is overall a good change given the lower opportunity costs to get the talent as well as to unify utility within all 3 specs.

• New Connections

The latest ptr cycle introduced the two green highlighted paths in the picture above. The change allows for a better point economy. Ephemeral Bond and Quick Decisions can now both be skipped to conserve points or allow more freedom of choice. Having Silent Storm or Swift Death cost slightly less could make them a compelling option. The now free talent spot (previously Stunning Secret) still needs a replacement, and I hope for something exciting.

Other changes:

• Goremaw's Bite cooldown reduced to 45 seconds (was 1 minute).
• Secret Technique damage increased by 12%.

The Goremaw's Bite buff was simply a consequence of a noticeably weaker result after. A bug related to the spell was fixed in the latest build. The cooldown reduction of Goremaw's Bite makes the use of the spell for energy more appealing and helps with the energy economy. All changes in Dragonflight 10.2 seem good and help reduce some of the rough edges of the rework.