The Sanctum of Domination raid design plays well into the skillset of Subtlety Rogue with a lot of single target heavy encounters. Subtlety manages to be one of the strongest single target damage dealers due to the powerful covenant specific legendary items (
Obéissance and
Clarté résonnante) introduced this tier. The Rogue specific weapon
Orée de la nuit enhances single target output further, as it benefits from the overall high Combo Point generation of the spec, gets empowered by
Dagues plus longues and synergizes well with
Réprimande retentissante. While pure single target output is very strong on fights like
Gardien des Fondateurs and
Sylvanas Coursevent its not the only thing the spec offers. The specialization can funnel more single target damage on fights with adds like
Etripeur d'âme Dormazain and is a very good candidate to burn down priority targets or for the Phylactery Realm on
Kel'Thuzad due to its short cooldown cycles.
Subtlety Rogue also offers fairly decent survivability with
Cape d'ombre that can be actively used to mitigate raid damage from spells like
Flèche gémissante , soak mechanics like
Sans pitié/
Oblitération or remove certain mechanics like
Appel d’éternité.
Feinte is very powerful esp. when combined with
Insaisissable and
Trompe-la-mort and can prevent you from dying when you make a mistake. The passive healing provided from
Éclat de Jas and
Éclat de Jas is also strong when playing with the Blood domination set.
The mobility from
Sprint and
Pas de l’ombre can be very efficiently used on several encounters like
Oeil du Geôlier,
Vestige de Ner'zhul or
Sylvanas Coursevent to get higher dps uptime or to avoid mechanics.
When it comes to weaknesses, Rogue still does not provide any sort of raid utility and hence is heavily reliant on tuning. Subtlety specifically also does preform poorly in two and three target cleave situations.
The specialization has also several death talent choices that could be buffed or changed.
Patch 9.1.5 does not fundamentally change any of the above stated things, but allows more dynamic between our two best covenant choices Venthyr and Kyrian.
Kyrian does take the lead dps wise on pure single target encounters, especially when paired with
Orée de la nuit due to its interaction with
Réprimande retentissante. Venthyr does fit well on encounters that benefit from the strong cooldown
Flagellation in combination with
Obéissance and offers slightly better funnel damage.
Necrolord is in theory good in multi target cleave situations, but there is little reason to play it given that other Rogue specializations are better suited in these cases.
Night Fae did get a noticeable buff to its covenant specific legendary
Assaut toxique that does translate into a ~2% damage increase overall, but still leaves it 3-4% behind.
This means that the main thing we will see in 9.1.5 will be a higher representation of the Kyrian covenant. Subtlety will stay around the same position on the dps chart, also due to the fact that its not a preferred choice since it doesn't benefit that much from dps cooldowns like
Infusion de puissance,
Bénédiction des saisons or
Affinité spirituelle that start to become a relevant part at later stages of the tier lifecycle.
For Assassination, 9.1.5 did not bring much in terms of change. Our AoE became uncapped (
Éventail de couteaux and
Tempête cramoisie now dealing reduced damage past 8 targets), but at the end of the day, we weren't brought for AoE damage to begin with. The other notable changes are the buffs to Night Fae, which still remains underwhelming, and will not see any play. We haven't seen a lot of Necrolord usage yet, but there is a case to be made that it can be better on some fights, strictly from a parsing perspective. On first glance however, it doesn't look like the Venthyr meta will be changing any time soon, as it continues to take the majority of logs.
There is however a bright side! We still enjoy our luxury as a top tier single target specialization, being able to pump out boss damage that rivals only feral druids. We continue to see strong usage out of Venthyr, using the Frost set bonus
Vents de l’hiver, alongside
Brigand audacieux. This brings with it good single burst on a 2 minute cooldown. The Venthyr legendary
Obéissance has also proven to be a solid option for specific timings.
Kel'Thuzad is a great example of this, allowing a cast of the ability
Flagellation every minute, essentially stopping any cooldown holding for the Phylactery. While not flashy in any situation, Assassination remains a strong progression spec able to handle soaks with
Cape d'ombre, tank a lot of damage with
Feinte and the plentiful absorbs from
Vents de l’hiver, and still provide strong boss damage regardless of the encounter.