Subtlety Rogue DPS Gear and Best in Slot — The War Within (Season 1)

With the launch of The War Within, we get to grind out a whole new set of gear.

The War Within once again uses the Crest upgrade system that was introduced in Dragonflight. We recommend that you check out our dedicated page for more information on this gear upgrade system if you are not yet familiar with it:

2.

BiS Gear for Subtlety Rogue

With the sheer amount of gear available early on in an expansion, we will be providing you with a gear list that is worth chasing after.

Pre-Season Gear List

3.

Season 1 Gear List for Subtlety Rogue

This list contains an early set of gear that will help you get an idea of what you should be aiming for in Season 1 of The War Within. Keep in mind that just because an item is on this list does not mean it'll be the best for your character. This is simply sims the best out of various gear sets. Your character's specific needs will always be different than this list unless you have identical gear at identical item levels.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. Depending on your previous Great Vault choices and the gear you have available to yourself, your BiS gear will look different than this list in some spots.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Mainhand Weapon	Blood-Kissed Kukri (639)	The Bloodbound Horror in Nerub-ar Palace
Offhand Weapon	Stitchflesh's Scalpel (639)	The Necrotic Wake
Helm	Whispering Mask (639)	Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
Neck	Silken Advisor's Favor (639)	Silken Court in Nerub-ar Palace
Shoulder	K'areshi Phantom's Shoulderpads (639)	Revival Catalyst, or Rasha'nan in Nerub-ar Palace
Cloak	Troggstitched Drape (639)	Grim Batol
Chest	K'areshi Phantom's Nexus Wraps (639)	Revival Catalyst, or Broodtwister Ovi'nax in Nerub-ar Palace
Bracers	Sanguine Experiment's Bandages (639)	Broodtwister Ovi'nax in Nerub-ar Palace
Gloves	K'areshi Phantom's Grips (639)	Revival Catalyst, or Sikran in Nerub-ar Palace
Belt	Devourer's Taut Innards (639)	Ulgrax the Devourer in Nerub-ar Palace
Legs	K'areshi Phantom's Leggings (639)	Revival Catalyst, or Nexus Princess Ky'veza in Nerub-ar Palace
Boots	Fleeting Massacre Footpads (639)	Nexus Princess Ky'veza in Nerub-ar Palace
Ring #1	Seal of the Poisoned Pact (639)	Queen Ansurek in Nerub-ar Palace
Ring #2	High Nerubian Signet (639)	The Dawnbreaker
Trinket #1	Void Reaper's Contract (639)	Nexus Princess Ky'veza
Trinket #2	Treacherous Transmitter (639)	Nexus Princess Ky'veza

3.

Mythic+ Gear BiS List for Subtlety Rogue

This list contains the highest DPS setup with farmable gear from Season 1 Mythic+ Dungeons.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. Depending on your previous Great Vault choices and the gear you have available to yourself, your BiS gear might look different than this list in some spots.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Mainhand Weapon	Stitchflesh's Scalpel (639)	The Necrotic Wake
Offhand Weapon	Stitchflesh's Scalpel (639)	The Necrotic Wake
Helm	K'areshi Phantom's Emptiness (639)	Revival Catalyst
Neck	Trailspinner Pendant (639)	Mists of Tirna Scithe
Shoulder	K'areshi Phantom's Shoulderpads (639)	Revival Catalyst
Cloak	Swarmcaller's Shroud (639)	Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
Chest	K'areshi Phantom's Nexus Wraps (639)	Revival Catalyst
Bracers	Unbreakable Beetlebane Bindings (639)	Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
Gloves	K'areshi Phantom's Grips (639)	Revival Catalyst
Belt	Troggbone Cinch (639)	Grim Batol
Legs	K'areshi Phantom's Leggings (639)	Revival Catalyst
Boots	Besieger's Deckstalkers (639)	Siege of Boralus
Ring #1	High Nerubian Signet (639)	The Dawnbreaker
Ring #2	Ring of Dun Algaz (639)	Grim Batol
Trinket #1	Dead-Eye Spyglass (639)	Siege of Boralus
Trinket #2	Skardyn's Grace (639)	Grim Batol

3.

Raid Gear BiS List for Subtlety Rogue

This list contains the highest DPS setup, only using gear from the Nerub-ar Palace Raid.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. Depending on your previous Great Vault choices and the gear you have available to yourself, your BiS gear might look different than this list in some spots.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Mainhand Weapon	Blood-Kissed Kukri (639)	The Bloodbound Horror
Offhand Weapon	Blood-Kissed Kukri (639)	The Bloodbound Horror
Helm	Beyond's Dark Visage (639)	Revival Catalyst, or The Bloodbound Horror
Neck	Silken Advisor's Favor (639)	Silken Court in Nerub-ar Palace
Shoulder	K'areshi Phantom's Shoulderpads (639)	Revival Catalyst, or Rasha'nan
Cloak	Wings of Shattered Sorrow (639)	Rasha'nan
Chest	K'areshi Phantom's Nexus Wraps (639)	Revival Catalyst, or Broodtwister Ovi'nax
Bracers	Sanguine Experiment's Bandages (639)	Broodtwister Ovi'nax
Gloves	K'areshi Phantom's Grips (639)	Revival Catalyst, or Sikran
Belt	Devourer's Taut Innards (639)	Ulgrax the Devourer
Legs	K'areshi Phantom's Leggings (639)	Revival Catalyst, or Nexus Princess Ky'veza
Boots	Fleeting Massacre Footpads (639)	Nexus Princess Ky'veza
Ring #1	Seal of the Poisoned Pact (639)	Queen Ansurek in Nerub-ar Palace
Ring #2	Writhing Ringworm (639)	Broodtwister Ovi'nax
Trinket #1	Treacherous Transmitter (639)	Nexus Princess Ky'veza
Trinket #2	Void Reaper's Contract (639)	Nexus Princess Ky'veza

There are a number of good trinkets available for Subtlety Rogue in Season 1, from a variety of different sources. Some relevant ones to look for are:

• Treacherous Transmitter- There's a minigame when using this trinket, but it's extremely powerful as its the only on-use trinket available to us that lines up with our 90 seconds cooldowns. This trinket is by far the most important trinket to have as a Subtlety Rogue right in TWW Season 1.

• Void Reaper's Contract - A great passive trinket that does a lot of damage, and Subtlety also loves Versatility, which brings up the value of damage proc trinkets considerably.
• Shadow-Binding Ritual Knife - A passive trinket with agility and mastery, it has a proc that reduces a random secondary stat but its not up very often. Additionally you can use Cloak of Shadows to remove the debuff. Unfortunately its not available at the highest ilevels due to it originating from delves.
• Mad Queen's Mandate - A trinket that does a big burst of damage after a short channel, use this outside of your other cooldowns and make sure you do not use it right before you want to use your Treacherous Transmitter as it incurs a 20 second cooldown on the other on-use trinket.
• Empowering Crystal of Anub'ikkaj - A random stat proc trinket that is decent.
• Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg - Another trinket with a minigame, for this one you need to move and/or stand still to maximize it. You should try to stay below 20 of either stacks, the on-use does not share its cooldown with Transmitter.

There are many other options, most of them completely unusable by virtue of performing much much worse than those listed above.

As mentioned this trinket has a minigame attached to it which you must complete to achieve the agility buff. Whenever you activate the trinket one of 3 things will happen:

• It will ask you to jump 3 times.
• An arcane orb will spawn near your character which you must run into.
• A circle will appear near you character which you must stand in for 3 seconds.

Both the orb and the circle will always spawn in a fixed location based on where your character is looking. Its always front right, north-east and 1:30 o'clock. Which means you can turn your character around before using it to avoid it spawning in dangerous locations or in the middle of the boss/melee camp where its impossible to find it. The ideal time to complete this minigame and gain the buff in your rotation is when you are pressing your first Secret Technique but its not a huge deal if its a couple of seconds earlier or later than that.

Up to two of your crafted items can be Embellished. This is a similar concept as Unique-Equipped, as you can only wear two items that have the Embellished status. Some crafted items, many of which have powerful procs or beneficial effects by default, are considered Embellished. You can also add Embellishments from a variety of professions to any crafted item, adding the effect to this item either when creating it or at a later stage.

The recommended slots to craft on is either Mainhand Weapon, Bracers, Cloak, Belt or Boots depending on what other items you have available. There are a plethora of different embellishments that are all very very close to each other (since they're all relatively unimpactful compared to how strong they were in Dragonflight) so any combination of these 3 is what's typically the best:

• Two Duskthread Lining items.
• One weapon with Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension and one Writhing Armor Banding item.
• Two Elemental Focusing Lens items.

With all the different layers of gearing currently available to players, it is impossible to cover all edge cases and individual recommendations in a guide. We therefore highly recommend simming your own character by using Raidbots. This website allows for precise and individualized recommendations that consider your exact talents, gear, trinket, and all the other layers of gearing that the game has to offer. Learning to use this tool is essential to maximizing your potential, as it is the only reliable way to get information on which piece of gear, enchant, gem, or trinket is the best for your character.

The Droptimizer feature from Raidbots lets you identify which dungeons and Raid Bosses offer the highest DPS upgrades to you. It simulates all of the potential upgrades in a raid or a dungeon and lists the bosses/dungeons by rank order of how much DPS you can expect to gain from each of the items it drops. We have a guide for it that you can access using the link below.