Class Talents
With the new changes coming in Patch 10.2 it makes the talent tree a lot more open and allows you to take everything you want utility wise to fit whatever content you are doing which honestly is a massive improvement from our last general tree. One of the biggest things you will notice is that it's no longer free to grab Acrobatic Strikes and will cost some Simdps to do so, but in the scenarios where you would need Acrobatic Strikes it would outweigh that damage cost
Must haves
There are some very obvious ones, like Cloak of Shadows or Evasion.
Atrophic poison is a must-have if you’re the only rogue in your raid team. It’s a very cheap talent to take and it adds raid utility to a class that lately has been lacking in that department. What it does is that it reduces direct damage from your target by 3% (3.6% with Master Poisoner), this includes spells and mechanics used by a boss, so for raid survivability, it’s quite good (especially early on with bad gear).
Deeper Stratagem is basically the only dps node that's a lock in for pretty much all builds because of how strong it is.
Nightstalker is another one that is fairly hard locked in, all it does is increase our damage from Stealth and Shadow Dance by 10% and also snapshots dots
Situational talents
With the new changes in Patch 10.2 it gets a lot cheaper to get stuff like the extra Shadow Dance charge which is great, as it opens up a bit better flexibility in the dps choices at the bottom of the tree.
Talents like Shadowstep, Tricks of the Trade, Shadowrunner, Gouge, Nimble Fingers, Master Poisoner, Blackjack, Improved Sprint, Fleet Footed, Featherfoot, Graceful Guile, Airborne Irritant and Iron Stomach all have their place in the utility part of the tree and you basically get to pick what you want in the middle of the general tree which is a great change coming into Patch 10.2.
Talent Builds
With all of these different talent trees, I will mainly focus on the highest damaging builds. You can however play around with the utility options in the tree to fit the content you are doing. One thing to note is that our single target build is identical to the build you would use for cleave so I'm only gonna showcase the general single target builds and m+ builds.
Quick note for the Invigorating Shadowdust builds, the build does sim the highest by quite a decent margin but it's also a good bit more complicated and harder to play well. I've compiled a bunch of fight timings into a spreadsheet with noted down cooldown timing usage, and MRT notes that you can import to your private note inside of MRT and use the Kaze MRT WA that will then guide you to when you should be using cooldowns. Clicking this link will take you to the spreadsheet.
Single Target pre Season 3 Tier Set
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Danse Macabre + Flagellation + Shadowcraft + The Rotten
This build is recommended for when the new season starts before you get the season 3 tierset so with the old Aberrus tierset.
Some key talents:
- Replicating Shadows: this talent is very good for cleave and AoE as it spreads Rupture to 1 more nearby target, doubling the value of Rupture casts
- Secret Technique: this finisher has great synergy with Danse Macabre as it adds another stack, and because of the delayed clone damage hit, you also gain 6% more damage on the clones if you instantly use another builder after pressing “Sectech”
- Shadowed Finishers: basically increases your Eviscerate and Black Powder damage by 30%. This is incredibly good and should always be taken in any build you make for subtlety
- Danse Macabre: plays into our big Shadow Dance damage windows by making it even better and also adds an interesting gameplay loop to how we set up our Shadow Dance windows, overall just a great talent
- Flagellation: is an old Shadowlands favorite that returns as a mastery buffer instead of haste, reaching a staggering 80% more mastery at 30 stacks. The main value of the talent is in the mastery.
- Shadowcraft: is our new capstone which enhances our passive Shadow Techniques while Symbols of Death is active, making it proc 40% more frequently and allows you to consume Shadow Technique stacks with finishers when you have stored enough to fill your combo points.
- Shadow Blades: with its new rework turns into an actual cooldown for Subtlety which causes all of your attacks to deal an extra 20% damage as shadow and makes our builders generate full combo points for 20 seconds.
- Invigorating Shadowdust: This talent makes it so your Vanish reduces the remaining cooldown of your abilities by 15 seconds per point spent into it, main use for this is to Vanish when you have used all of your cooldowns to quickly be able to use them again.
- The Rotten: This just amplifies your next 2 builders after using Symbols of Death to deal 35% increased damage and causing them to always critically strike.
Single Target / Cleave
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Danse Macabre + Darkbrew + Shadowcraft + Flagellation
With the new structure of the talent tree we can now again pick up the second charge of Shadow Dance, allowing for more focus on Dances which is an amazing change.
Essentially you want to get Shadow Dance, Thistle Tea, Deeper Stratagem, and Improved Ambush from the class tree.
In the spec tree, you take the usual early single target talents Like Shadow Blades and Secret Technique
As for the spec tree capstone talents, you wanna grab, Danse Macabre, Dark Brew, Flagellation and Shadowcraft
Some key talents:
- Premeditation makes it possible to go from 0-1 combo points to 6 in just one Shadowstrike, which gives us more Danse Macabre synergy
- Secret Technique, this finisher has great synergy with Danse Macabre as it adds another stack, and because of the delayed clone damage hit, you also gain 6% more damage on the clones if you instantly use another builder after pressing “Sectech”
- The First Dance, sort of enables our Danse Macabre stack building by making it possible to reach max combo points with a unique builder like Gloomblade at the start of Shadow Dance
- Shadowed Finishers basically increases your Eviscerate and Black Powder damage by 30%. This is incredibly good and should always be taken in any build you make for subtlety
- Dark brewIs one of our capstones that makes us do 10% more shadow damage and all of our Nature and Bleed damage turn into shadow damage as well.
- Flagellation is an old Shadowlands favorite that returns as a mastery buffer instead of haste, reaching a staggering 80% more mastery at 30 stacks. The main value of the talent is in the mastery.
- Shadowcraft is our new capstone which enhances our passive Shadow Techniques while Symbols of Death is active, making it proc 40% more frequently and allows you to consume Shadow Technique stacks with finishers when you have stored enough to fill your combo points.
- Shadow Blades with its new rework turns into an actual cooldown for Subtlety which causes all of your attacks to deal an extra 20% damage as shadow and makes our builders generate full combo points for 20 seconds.
Single Target / Cleave + Shadowdust
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Danse Macabre + Shadowcraft + Flagellation
Class tree stays the same in this build but in the spec tree we shift points into Invigorating Shadowdust.
I will quickly go over how to use Vanish with this build. The easiest way to think about it is that you turn from a two minute class with Shadow Blades to a 1 min 30 sec class instead, with the ability to compress one set of cooldowns once more during a fight due to the two charges of Vanish, in so making one set of cooldowns 1 min instead of the regular 1 min 30 sec.
The general idea is to use Vanish outside of Shadow Dance with all of your cds on cooldown to reset as many of them as possible. The talent becomes a bit more tricky to play around once you need to line up your cooldowns with certain boss timings, which is honestly what makes this talent very versatile and situationally strong.
Some key talents:
- Premeditation: makes it possible to go from 0-1 combo points to 6 in just one Shadowstrike, which gives us more Danse Macabre synergy
- Secret Technique: this finisher has great synergy with Danse Macabre as it adds another stack, and because of the delayed clone damage hit, you also gain 6% more damage on the clones if you instantly use another builder after pressing “Sectech”
- Shadowed Finishers: basically increases your Eviscerate and Black Powder damage by 30%. This is incredibly good and should always be taken in any build you make for subtlety
- Danse Macabre: plays into our big Shadow Dance damage windows by making it even better and also adds an interesting gameplay loop to how we set up our Shadow Dance windows, overall just a great talent
- Flagellation: is an old Shadowlands favorite that returns as a mastery buffer instead of haste, reaching a staggering 80% more mastery at 30 stacks. The main value of the talent is in the mastery.
- Shadowcraft: is our new capstone which enhances our passive Shadow Techniques while Symbols of Death is active, making it proc 40% more frequently and allows you to consume Shadow Technique stacks with finishers when you have stored enough to fill your combo points.
- Shadow Blades: with its new rework turns into an actual cooldown for Subtlety which causes all of your attacks to deal an extra 20% damage as shadow and makes our builders generate full combo points for 20 seconds.
- Invigorating Shadowdust: This talent makes it so your Vanish reduces the remaining cooldown of your abilities by 15 seconds per point spent into it, main use for this is to Vanish when you have used all of your cooldowns to quickly be able to use them again.
Mythic+ without Shadowdust
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Danse Macabre + Flagellation + Dark Brew + Shadowcraft + Goremaw’s Bite
There are basically two different Mythic+ builds you can play and I'll include them both, they play a bit different to each other since one of them uses Invigorating Shadowdust to reset cooldowns. This version focuses more on survivability through Vanishing defensively and higher burst damage and higher damage outside of cooldowns, at the drawback of bursting less often.
Some key talents:
- Replicating Shadows: this talent is very good for cleave and AoE as it spreads Rupture to 1 more nearby target, doubling the value of Rupture casts
- Shuriken Tornado: an old favorite from BfA and Shadowlands, casts four Shuriken Storms back to back. This enables you to just finish four times in a short span of time, basically an AoE burst button
- Premeditation: makes it possible to go from 0-1 combo points to 6 in just one Shadowstrike, which gives us more Danse Macabre synergy
- Secret Technique: this finisher has great synergy with Danse Macabre as it adds another stack, and because of the delayed clone damage hit, you also gain 6% more damage on the clones if you instantly use another builder after pressing “Sectech”
- Shadowed Finishers: basically increases your Eviscerate and Black Powder damage by 30%. This is incredibly good and should always be taken in any build you make for subtlety
- Danse Macabre: plays into our big Shadow Dance damage windows by making it even better and also adds an interesting gameplay loop to how we set up our Shadow Dance windows, overall just a great talent
- Dark brew: Is one of our capstones that makes us do 10% more shadow damage and all of our Nature and Bleed damage turn into shadow damage as well.
- Flagellation: is an old Shadowlands favorite that returns as a mastery buffer instead of haste, reaching a staggering 80% more mastery at 30 stacks. The main value of the talent is in the mastery.
- Shadowcraft: is our new capstone which enhances our passive Shadow Techniques while Symbols of Death is active, making it proc 40% more frequently and allows you to consume Shadow Technique stacks with finishers when you have stored enough to fill your combo points.
- Shadow Blades: with its new rework turns into an actual cooldown for Subtlety which causes all of your attacks to deal an extra 20% damage as shadow and makes our builders generate full combo points for 20 seconds
- Goremaw’s Bite Our old Legion artifact ability is back, what this talent does is act as an energy cheat to allow you to back to back Shadow Dance on AoE without running out of energy, you press it just before your second Shadow Dance, if you however don't like the extra button this gives you, you can opt to take Shadow Focus instead.
Mythic+ with Shadowdust
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Danse Macabre + Flagellation + Shadowcraft
With this build we are gonna go into Invigorating Shadowdust which changes up the playstyle a bit basically making it about getting as many cooldowns out as possible, it plays with the same principle as the single target Invigorating Shadowdust build.
Some key talents:
- Replicating Shadows: this talent is very good for cleave and AoE as it spreads Rupture to 1 more nearby target, doubling the value of Rupture casts
- The First Dance: sort of enables our Danse Macabre stack building by making it possible to reach max combo points with a unique builder like Gloomblade at the start of Shadow Dance
- Shuriken Tornado: an old favorite from BfA and Shadowlands, casts four Shuriken Storms back to back. This enables you to just finish four times in a short span of time, basically an AoE burst button
- Secret Technique: this finisher has great synergy with Danse Macabre as it adds another stack, and because of the delayed clone damage hit, you also gain 6% more damage on the clones if you instantly use another builder after pressing “Sectech”
- Shadowed Finishers: basically increases your Eviscerate and Black Powder damage by 30%. This is incredibly good and should always be taken in any build you make for subtlety
- Danse Macabre: plays into our big Shadow Dance damage windows by making it even better and also adds an interesting gameplay loop to how we set up our Shadow Dance windows, overall just a great talent
- Flagellation: is an old Shadowlands favorite that returns as a mastery buffer instead of haste, reaching a staggering 80% more mastery at 30 stacks. The main value of the talent is in the mastery.
- Shadowcraft: is our new capstone which enhances our passive Shadow Techniques while Symbols of Death is active, making it proc 40% more frequently and allows you to consume Shadow Technique stacks with finishers when you have stored enough to fill your combo points.
- Shadow Blades: with its new rework turns into an actual cooldown for Subtlety which causes all of your attacks to deal an extra 20% damage as shadow and makes our builders generate full combo points for 20 seconds.
- Invigorating Shadowdust: This talent makes it so your Vanish reduces the remaining cooldown of your abilities by 15 seconds per point spent into it, main use for this is to Vanish when you have used all of your cooldowns to quickly be able to use them again.
