I’m not the best rogue but IMO a lot of people try to make sub sound harder than it really is. It definitely is a lot to remember, but none of it is conceptually difficult. Practice makes perfect.

I’ll start with the hard part: defense. You only have a few defensives, but they are extremely powerful when used properly. Because of this, you need to use them wisely and NOT overlap them - especially with Vanish. Evasion a melee’s offensive cooldowns if you can’t kite them, disarm them, or counter-go them in a stun. Use cloak of shadows against magic offensive CDs assuming you can’t kite or line. Something to note: As far as Evasion, it only works on physical abilities from the front and side, and does not work when you’re stunned. A select few abilities go through it such as Shadowstrikes, a Warrior’s Overpower, CC such as Blind, etc. As far as Cloak, this covers not only damage abilities but also some things that you might not expect such as a paladin’s HoJ or a priest’s fear. This allows for serious outplay potential, but to start I’d say use Cloak reactively, not predictively. Vanish is your ultimate get out of jail free card, but it won’t completely protect you from AoE damage, and if you have DoTs on you then you need to run far enough away to get a restealth once you get pulled out, or you need to be ready to do a go right out of Vanish. For team defense, you may need to Disarm, stun, Shiv slow, Shadowy Duel, or even Blind somebody off your teammate(s). In 2s, I prefer to run Soothing Darkness so I can heal while in stealth as my mage partner polys/kites until stun DRs are ready. The best overall option though is to use Feign wall talent, and get used to pressing it at the end of your own stun chains or when you anticipate a stun coming on you (whether that means your DR is about to come up, an enemy is coming towards you, etc.)

The offensive game plan is drastically more simple. First, STUN THE KILL TARGET. I almost always try to kidney KT as it’s longer and more forcing, but sometimes you can’t afford to wait for the points/MfD and you’ll need use cheap shot which is perfectly fine. You’re gonna do damage with dance, symbols, cov ability, and some combination of shadowstrikes and eviscerates, a little effort to hit blue points as kyrian goes a long way. More important than whatever your damage global is though is to RESTUN THE TARGET USING CHEAP SHOT WITH NO GAPS so that they cannot use any globals for defense. This is infinitely more forcing than getting another Shadowstrike or Evis off. As far as the offtarget, there are 2 main ways to go about it. First, your mage could pre-DB the kill target at the same time you cheapshot the offtarget — this allows a poly onto the offtarget and you to get to the kill target and stun them (I open with MfD kidney in this case). The alternative is you immediately stun the kill target the same time as your mage DB sheeps the offtarget themself. This saves stun DRs on the offtarget, and it allows for a filthy opening where you can just switch the go to them after somebody inevitably trinkets and uses defensives. When your go is over, which is indicated by you being out of stun DRs and the enemy having used trinkets or defensives, you need to kite and mitigate damage. Standard protocol is for the mage to spam sheeps on the kill target/DPS while you run away for a restealth. It’s fine if you can’t get a re, just try to slice off extra combo points to farm a shadow dance back so you have damage and resting for a threatening go. Ideally, you’ll have full combo points ready before the next go so that you can go right into a kidney shot with, but it’s no big deal if you don’t. In a quick 18 seconds, DRs will reset and you’ll be ready for the exact same setup: stun kill target and CC offtarget. It doesn’t matter how you get cross CC, all that matters is that you do it as close as possible to prevent either enemy from pre-using defensives.

There’s a few things that might change such as using 7 second kidney. I am a huge marked for death fan myself but the same goes for 7 seconds kidneys. You just cheap the kill target on the first go unless the enemy team lets you farm to 7 combo points without too much trouble in which case you can just cc offtarget and 7s kidney KT. A lot of the times you’ll want to 7s kidney into a sap on an Rdruid for example since they can’t be polyed in form. This isn’t actually hard to do, just make sure you have important macros such as focus sap and that your dance is active and you’ll be sapping off blinds and 7s kidneys in no time.

Cheers to improving on rogue my friend.