Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Subtlety Rogues in The War Within 11.0

All sections for Subtlety Rogue PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Subtlety Rogues in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Subtlety Rogue PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Deathstalker
Hero Talents: Trickster
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Deathstalker and Trickster. Both are played competitively and provide us with unique benefits that make our playstyle more fluid. However, Deathstalker has more representation in the current meta and is determined as our baseline pick out of the two Hero builds.

Hero Talents: Deathstalker

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Our new Deathstalker Hero talent tree supplements our potential spread pressure damage, as we receive talents that greatly enhance Rupture while also amplifying our burst windows, resulting in our rotation feeling more fluid. To start it off, let’s look at the core talents chosen that make up this build.

Clear the Witnesses assists you with generating back your Shadow Dance and Secret Technique, as you generate an additional combo point on Shuriken Storm after consuming Deathstalker’s Mark.
Darkest Night, as our capstone node, is the bread and butter of this entire Hero talent tree. This empowers our next Eviscerate, giving it buffs to its damage while guaranteeing it to crit on our target. You’ll be able to obtain this buff after consuming all three stacks of Deathstalker’s Mark off our primary target, which can be used to make unexpected swaps way deadlier.

We have one choice node that can be swapped around, which is between Bait and Switch and Ethereal Cloak.

Ethereal Cloak is your typical default pick, as you can immune magical effects for 2 additional seconds when Cloak of Shadows is pressed. This can enable you to play more aggressively, and prevents you from being peeled for longer from any magic based Crowd Control.
Bait and Switch is your alternative pick, as this makes our Evasion now reduce 20% of all magic damage taken, and makes Cloak of Shadows reduce 20% of all physical damage taken while active. This is more of a defensive option, providing us with more defensive mitigation out of our two major defensive cooldowns.

Hero Talents: Trickster

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Next up we have our default Trickster build. This build has risen in popularity with the new patch, providing us with so many Combo Point modifiers that make our rotation feel stronger. Not to mention, this build is slightly easier to play as since we don’t have to pay attention to Finality and Darkest Night to optimize our Eviscerate burst. We also don’t have to worry about Deathstalker’s Mark stacks, which in tern makes us a lot more flexible with target swapping.

However, there is the downside of having to occasionally cancelaura Flawless Form to prevent yourself from breaking various types of Crowd Control. Now, it’s important to understand some of our new Hero talents in order to optimize your gameplay.

Disorienting Strikes allows you to apply 2 additional Unseen Blade casts on the target you’re hitting without it being on an internal cooldown. This also reduces the cooldown on Secret Technique for more burst uptime.
Nimble Flurry help us with our cleave potential, and is applied by our core damaging spells.
Coup de Grace will replace your Eviscerate after 4 Unseen Blade strikes for a stronger finisher we can directly apply. We want to constantly use Secret Technique as much as possible to receive the most uptime on this ability.

Rogue Class Talents

In the Rogue Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of most noteworthy mandatory talents are:

Blackjack to reduce damage and healing on an enemy target by 30% after being affected by Sap or Blind, making it harder for Healers to recover coming out of Crowd Control chains.
Cheat Death to survive during those clutch moments where a bit of extra delay can guarantee your recovery.
Deeper Stratagem, which synergizes phenomenally with Secret Stratagem in our spec tree for a total of 7 max combo points, allowing us to further maximize our burst coming out of our finishers.

Regardless of the Hero build you choose to play as, we recommend some flexible talents located here that can be effective against certain compositions.

As for Trickster, opting out of Thistle Tea, Vigor, and Leeching Poison for Without a Trace, Subterfuge, and Soothing Darkness can be super convenient against setup comps, mainly ones with another Sub Rogue. This is because having more Vanishes makes using them more forgiving, allowing you to pre-emptively use them more often to avoid their burst windows. Most players typically use this when they notice their healer in Crowd Control to delay incoming damage at times where it matters the most.

Additionally, you can stick with our talents leading up to Thistle Tea for Deathstalker as well if you prefer having more burst during your setups.

Subtlety Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance onto each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Death Perception gives you an additional charge of Symbols of Death, and more damage while active.
Shadowcraft is quite impactful with more Symbols of Death uptime, as we receive more quality of life improvements to our rotation when it is active. Not only does this talent give us a faster and more efficient way stacking up Shadow Techniques, but we can automatically consume Shadow Techniques stacks after using a finisher. This will work as long as our stacks equal max combo points or higher.
Secret Technique, summoning clones to apply massive single target burst while cleaving all nearby targets, and as an added bonus we can build its cooldown back by spending combo points.

Then we have some talents that are interchangeable depending on the matchup at hand. First up, we have the selection between Cloaked in Shadows and Fade to Nothing.

Cloaked in Shadows is our default talent pick as it prevents us from immediately breaking out of Stealth after using it.
Fade to Nothing allows us to move relatively fast while in Stealth when paired with Shadowrunner, and can help us land Sap early on when the gates open. This also makes us slightly tankier after using Stealth, Shadow Dance, and Vanish.

Subtlety Rogue PvP Talents

In the current meta, your default Subtlety PvP talent loadout will typically include Thief’s Bargain, Shadowy Duel, and Smoke Bomb.

Thief’s Bargain increases your consistent pressure as you receive more uptime on your most significant spells, Shadow Blades and Vanish.
Shadowy Duel is typically used to extend some Crowd Control chains and stall out some Diminishing Returns to lock down targets furthermore during potential kill windows.
Smoke Bomb is considered to be your soft-locked pick as a Subtlety Rogue, but is generally more preferred than most options as this opens up more win conditions by playing off of the enemy’s trinkets.

Finally, you can swap to/from Smoke Bomb depending on the matchup, which include some of these optional talents:

Dismantle, which becomes more mandatory against powerful melee brawler specs, especially against Warriors after they use Warbreaker or Recklessness.
Veil of Midnight is another promising pick if you want to to remove bleeds like Feral Frenzy or Dragon Roar off yourself. Another neat mechanic this PvP talent provides is that you can immune incoming physical projectiles like Storm Bolt if you time it well enough, reacting similar to Shadowmeld.
Lastly, Death From Above now becomes a potential pick due to our new talent, Deathstalker’s Mark. This PvP talent accounts for two finishers when used, consuming two mark stacks off our target with one global. You can also immune some projectiles as well while the animation is happening.