Welcome to the All in One Mythic Guide to Zul in the Uldir raid! This guide should sort you out with most if not all things Mythic Zul. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the #subtlety channel in the Ravenholdt discord.

Upcoming Changes

This strategy is significantly nerfed come 8.1, Subtlety Rogue is receiving several heavy nerfs across the class due to its potential to cheese this fight.

Shuriken Combo was removed making eviscerate hit 28.5% less, with a 24.3% buff given to Shuriken Storms damage; Both of these changes are bad because it kills crawgs faster, and priority target slower; On Zul however eviscerate isnt your only ability, so this change is only a 20% nerf to priority target damage.

While sub rogues are still the strongest at priority damage, they have been brought more in line to other classes.

•  Shuriken Combo – Shuriken Combo is no longer listed as a Subtlety spell, removed from the spellbook entirely.
•  Shuriken Storm Sprays shurikens at all targets within 10 yards, dealing [(18% ->20.7% of Attack power)] Physical damage.

The First Dance was changed to become a haste buff instead of a crit buff, which makes it fairly useless for Zul compared to its Crit iteration. This trait could even be potentially harmful as it could switch your reorigination array to haste from mastery.

Read about the comprehensive changelog here.

TLDR: Nerfs to priority target damage, increase to AoE cleave, the Sub Rogue Zul strategy will no longer be as strong of a strategy come 8.1

Simming

To sim for Zul, do 6 Target Patchwerk, the time depends on your raid group but it’s typically 3-4 minutes. 6 Target removes the multi-dotting condition, you’ll have consistent adds, and there are no meaningful mechanics besides DPS for sub rogues.

However, even that comes with a few quirks and differences to the typical Zul playstyle (e.g. Night’s Vengeance simming at more value than it “should” because it automatically causes multi-dotting). This means you can put priority_rotation=1 into the Custom APL box on Raidbots and use it on Top Gear, Gear Compare etc. Using this plus the usual 6T 4min sim, the sim should match Zul better.

Gearing

Stat priority:

Mastery >> Critical Strike/Versatility >Haste

Talents: 2120013

Azerite: Archive of the Titans is extremely strong here; typically stat increase traits like Agi/Mastery/Crit will have strong value. Sub doesn’t really have any strong “AoE” traits, so you have to si your combinations using the settings in the previous section to be sure.

Strategy

Raid keeps the crawgs alive so Sub Rogues can tunnel and burn Zul with Shuriken Storm/Shuriken Combo

Rotation

Rotation is

1. Keep Nightblade up on Zul
2. Build combo points with Shuriken Storm
3. Spend combo points/finish on 5+ (Eviscerate, unless you need to refresh Nightblade).
4. SoD on CD along with ShD
5. Use ShD with SoD/tornado or to prevent overcapping charges (which can happen a lot since the CD reduces massively in AoE) and in SoD/tornado. Don’t hold SoD/tornado you hold a ShD charge.

Tips

• Keep Nightblade up on Zul, refresh so it doesn’t fall off during SoD/ShD but never refresh during ShD (refresh before if it will fall off during ShD).
• Don’t reapply find weakness in dance apply it through vanish/stealth and do so right before tornado.
• You can only fit 5 globals in dance (GCD isn’t affected by haste), and neither SoD nor ShD are on the GCD so you cast them at the same time; it does not matter which goes first.
• When using tornado, use it one second before SoD/ShD to not waste a GCD in dance, and always go into dance on high combo points for maximum priority target damage.
• See Kistler’s guide to see how you can deal with certain mechanics as a rogue.

Opener

Basically the same as the rotation but it goes as follows:

Potion/Shadow Blades > Shadowstrike > Nightblade> tornado > SoD/ShD > Eviscerate > Eviscerate > Eviscerate > Eviscerate > Shuriken Storm > ShD> Eviscerate > Shuriken Storm > Eviscerate > Shuriken Storm > Eviscerate > Shuriken Storm

Screenshot of opener and how it relates to the rotation

1) Applied find weakness through vanish/stealth only.
2) Kept up  Nightblade and did not refresh inside ShD.
3) Delayed SoD/ShD by a gcd to not waste a GCD in dance.
4) Went into ShD on high combo points to get 3 eviscerates in ShD instead of just 2.

Note: the single Shuriken Storms are from tornado and the double ones are from when Shuriken Storm is cast by the player, it’s formatted that way in WCL.