Is subtlety garbage for pvp?

Subtlety is all about slow but heavy hitting big crits. The way resilience works in 3.3.5, sub rogues are hit with a nasty double whammy. Since nearly all of our damage comes from big Ambush and Eviscerate crits, we are neutered hardcore by the fact that Resilience lowers crit damage taken in addition to reduced damage taken and reduced chance to be critically hit.

So someone with high resilience has a high chance to not be crit by you, but if they are, that crit damage is lowered substantially via a combination of the crit damage reduction and overall player reduction.

The end result being you almost oneshot anyone without pvp gear by critting them 15k+ with ambush, but against a full pvp geared player, you're lucky to get a 4 or even 5k crit at the max. Keep in mind, your shadow dance burst is ALL YOU HAVE but that damage is neutered so hard it ends up being just about as much damage as some sustained dps classes regular rotations.

Assassination on the other hand deals damage via insanely fast ticks of damage and poison, not necessarily countered hardcore by crit damage reduction like subtlety is.

Any experience rogues out there who can lend a piece of advice?

Is subtlety garbage?

That's like asking is Arms garbage compared to fury? Lol, of course subtlety is not garbage mate. You gain a lot of free utility there. The opening can be premediation > slice and dice > shadow dance > cheap shot > garrote > kidney shot > ambush + ambush or premediation > shadow dance > cheap shot > garrote > slice and dice > ambush + ambush and kidney shot. The second combo is a bit better and you will still get insane damage. And no, subtlety rogue is not a garbage. Assassination is. I saw many high geared pvp rogues that kill enemies with ease even with 1200+ ressilence.

Either you are bad or idk.

play low resi with more pve items, im playing wtih 650 resi 99% arp, good amount of ap and 51% crit
and the strategy is kill them before they 3 shot u :D

It depends of the enviroment.
The main advantage of subtlely is the great burst with short cd. Sure, other classes can have a harder burst but on higher cd. (For example feral berserk)
Plus it isn't only damage, is a cc boost.

So basically, with a 1 min cd you can easily force defensives and you gonna get ShadowDance again before enemy defensives.

If you're talking about 1v1 encounters, yeah. Some classes can deny subtlely burst so assa pressure could be better and you waste the sdance cross cc.

The deal with 1vs1 is that you can't set enough pressure without sdance, neither maintain pressure after sdance.
A lot of classes gonna be at <40% after dance but if you can't survive the 50 cd for the next burst is game over.

Summary, sub is great for his purpose.
If you want sustain+burst there are better options that's for sure.

i know this isn't wotlk style, but you can set up burst. So land a clean full kidney and then proceed to pop trinket+dance, so even crtting by 4k you can land like 4/5 ambushes and 3 evis. Of course, landing that "clean kidney" is the real deal.

For other enviroments i don't see any problem. In bg i remember that i could just burst with dance on cd, they waste defensives if enough hp, you reestealth and then any other player gonna face a enemy without pvp trinket and defensives. (or you again after 50 secs)

For groups you can set a kill by yourself and then proceed to use utility beetwen dances.

In arena fits like hand in glove.

Again, you can force so much with a 1 min cd via cc/damage and that is what makes subtlely the more unique rogue spec.

Give a try to the spec beyond the dance opener, imo is pretty well designed spec for wotlk standards.

its 1.2% crit chance reduction for every 100 resil, considering most people stack ICC off set, jewels and weapons, they should be around 950 to 1100 resil, the crits you get from improved ambush, malice + gear is enough to crit at least 7 out of 10 ambushes in pvp
4k ambush is a good chunck of damage, even 3k is good enough, you get at least 3 ambushes from a shadowdance opener plus a small window to react or pull a 4th one

i dont know which version of rogue you are familiar with
in wotlk armor is relevant, you gotta be patient and rotate your CCs DR, looking for opportunities to restealth or vanish > sap wait for DRs > open > CC > restealth, and keeping doing this, avoinding taking damage while shadowdance is on cooldown, you lack any energy regain so you rely on restealth to get some energy back, this is sub 101 basically, doing damage while they cant hit you back, everytime you re-open on them you do some substantial damage, this is something assassination rogues cant really do because they rely on deadly poison stacks that requires them to stick to the target and burning defensive cooldowns much earlier, while being unable to gouge and blind frequently on the target

you can take the newbies full combo path like
cheap shot > hemo > backstab to 5cp > kidney > backstab running out of energy, never having a chance to shadowdance properly

then improve it by mixing gouges
(with 3/3 initiative) cheap shot > hemo > gouge to 5cp and bait a trinket > as gouge expires full kidney to pressure a trinket > as kidney expires you can get another gouge or blind and restealth and keep pressuring, whenever they trinket you blind, restealth and open with full shadowdance

this is the very basic playstyle you want to focus as sub, most people know how to deal with this, so you must be ready to disarm, evasion, cloak, whatever is needed to survive their first reaction and take control

you can however play like this with 41/5/25 prep/muti and combat
but in 3.3.5 41/5/25 loses to sub in both damage and mobility, and combat is better if played KS AR normaly and you cant spec prep as combat

you want to avoid doing zergs with your team in BGs and do your own thing alone, unless they are fighting for an objective that is your priority aswell, taking whatever you can by yourself and fighting isolated people, you dont rely on healers that much and with 2 vanishes you can stay safe from being zerged, other classes cant do this so let them do the zerg, its very hard to 1v1 a rogue defending objectives, it forces more people to go after you, weakening the enemy group fight

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Originally Posted by vailasama

its 1.2% crit chance reduction for every 100 resil, considering most people stack ICC off set, jewels and weapons, they should be around 950 to 1100 resil, the crits you get from improved ambush, malice + gear is enough to crit at least 7 out of 10 ambushes in pvp
4k ambush is a good chunck of damage, even 3k is good enough, you get at least 3 ambushes from a shadowdance opener plus a small window to react or pull a 4th one

i dont know which version of rogue you are familiar with
in wotlk armor is relevant, you gotta be patient and rotate your CCs DR, looking for opportunities to restealth or vanish > sap wait for DRs > open > CC > restealth, and keeping doing this, avoinding taking damage while shadowdance is on cooldown, you lack any energy regain so you rely on restealth to get some energy back, this is sub 101 basically, doing damage while they cant hit you back, everytime you re-open on them you do some substantial damage, this is something assassination rogues cant really do because they rely on deadly poison stacks that requires them to stick to the target and burning defensive cooldowns much earlier, while being unable to gouge and blind frequently on the target

you can take the newbies full combo path like
cheap shot > hemo > backstab to 5cp > kidney > backstab running out of energy, never having a chance to shadowdance properly

then improve it by mixing gouges
(with 3/3 initiative) cheap shot > hemo > gouge to 5cp and bait a trinket > as gouge expires full kidney to pressure a trinket > as kidney expires you can get another gouge or blind and restealth and keep pressuring, whenever they trinket you blind, restealth and open with full shadowdance

this is the very basic playstyle you want to focus as sub, most people know how to deal with this, so you must be ready to disarm, evasion, cloak, whatever is needed to survive their first reaction and take control

you can however play like this with 41/5/25 prep/muti and combat
but in 3.3.5 41/5/25 loses to sub in both damage and mobility, and combat is better if played KS AR normaly and you cant spec prep as combat

you want to avoid doing zergs with your team in BGs and do your own thing alone, unless they are fighting for an objective that is your priority aswell, taking whatever you can by yourself and fighting isolated people, you dont rely on healers that much and with 2 vanishes you can stay safe from being zerged, other classes cant do this so let them do the zerg, its very hard to 1v1 a rogue defending objectives, it forces more people to go after you, weakening the enemy group fight

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You mostly do the cheap gouge kindey thing to fully dispell the target with your partner (and set up proper dots with spr, since vt and pain take a few secs to do damage, so you can sync Mindblast, Plague, and the ticks from VT/Pain together with the Kidney and the rogue damage). Cheap gives you a guaranteed 3 CP, if you crit once (you have like a 50% base crit chance) you lose like 20 energy before you have to kidney, which imo is worth not dr-ing sap for (in a 1v1).


@OP Sub rogue is decent, its not t1 like warriors or hpalas, but its in a very decent spot and its viable everywhere. 1v1s, 2v2s, 3v3s, BGs, it can do healer/dps ,double dps. The class (not the spec) is top tier in pve too (you can spec full AP before you go arp, meaning ur gear for Assa and sub is the same). And with gear pretty much every class dies in a full dance and just a kidney with a full energy bar is enough to force CDs.

It requires the most pve gear out of every single class (alongside warriors) though, to really shine. But it is viable even in full pvp. (i.e AP vs ARP)

Im playing as a sub rouge and resi is no big deal right now, most of best players dont have more then 1k resilenc bc of pve bis gear.
Im going the same way, with a lot of arp.
In 1v1 the real problem is a ret pala with swap weapon but im not goona complaing about it.
E.g my crits landing on bis war are equal to 6-10k from ambush sometiems even more.
Just give it a try.

yes 100% garbage ,go play assa or combat then come back to sub.100 years after wotlk and still such stupid questions.whats more stupid is the people replying to this guy who is clearly triggered cause he cant play rogue or is just bad at the game.

I can barelly see mutilate rogues these days, and they were so much popular back then...