World of Warcraft MEGA-FAQ

Rogue

Summary ——-

This is the class I know the most about, so naturally I’ll give all the  advice I can. You have three options to pursue as a rogue: stealth, combat, or assassination (burst damage).

You can have all weapons except two-handed, polearms, staves, and axes. You can only have cloth and leather armor. Early on you want “of the Monkey” items, then “of the Bandit” if you want, and at 80 all your gear has agi/stam, attack power, and then some combination of armor penetration, haste, crit, hit, expertise, and resilience.

Your weapons are key, and they depend on your talent build. If going into assassination, get daggers, same for subtlety. But with combat you want any kind of slow weapon in the main hand and a dagger or whatever is fast in the off-hand. I’ll explain more later.

At level 20 you can purchase poisons from the poison vendors, usually near the rogue trainers.

Aside from using Energy, a rogue also relies on combo points to use their more powerful attacks. These are finishing moves, the assassination part of your talents, and they provide a benefit relative to the number of combo points  you’ve put on the enemy, up to 5. You can put these on through your instant abilities and through talents you’ve chosen.
Stats and Buffs —————

You need not look to any intellect or spirit buffs as you run off a fixed bar of 100 energy. Anything you get with INT should be discarded or replaced with anything else if possible, because even spirit may help as you’ll be in  stealth when not in combat.

You can have strength, but it’s best to look for “of the Monkey” items because you want both agility and stamina to not be a damage-dealing weakling. PvP seems to favor a mix of agility and stamina. So it makes sense to have stamina, agility, and strength buffs, but you want to get as much agility as you can.

Later in the game, around level 58, you will want to pursue “of the Bandit” items which do not buff stamina and agility as much as “of the Monkey” does, but it makes up for it with pure attack power. Still, more agility is key, so I would stick with monkey items, but bandit items are okay as well. Just know that usually attack power is stronger than strength and agility.

*NOTE: Agility adds to attack and also gives a small chance to dodge. More importantly, it also adds to critical hit rating. Pure attack power does not mean it adds that much damage, so don’t think it’s adding a ton to your DPS.*

PvP rogues can do a number of builds. At 80 you have resilience to helps  reduce crits and damage. At all other levels it’s up to you how much pure DPS you want. Agility, hit rating, haste could be replaced with strength or attack power for pure DPS, as you won’t be around long in large fights, and in most one-on-one people will escape unless you kill them fast. Once a rogue is pinned down, a rogue is dead.
Abilities ———

Here are the abilities of note, with the rest being instanst strikes.

Stealth – Your main ability, basically letting you turn invisible to all other NPC’s and those of the other faction so long as you are not too below their  level. If you want to stop a patrolling NPC use the Distract ability to hold them in one spot for a short time for you to plan your move.

*NOTE: In stealth your first action bar will switch to an alternate, which  allows you to hot key your stealth abilities. For this I like to put distract in one, unstealth in two, and then have my stealth attacks follow.*

Poisons – There are really only four you use, two for PvE, two for PvP. I say crippling and wound are PvP, while instant is you main hand poison while deadly is our off hand in PvE. Mind-numbing is trash, and the rage one really only has a few PvE uses and there aren’t that many rage classes you need to engage in PvP.

*NOTE: I like to keep all my poisons in my main bag, and keep them at 20. Yes, you can track poison vendors in your mini map.*

Sprint – Your only form of increased foot-speed, which could take two minutes to cooldown. It’s essential for fleeing, but at all other times it just lets  you get to places faster. In PvP it’s used to stay behind an enemy and make it harder for anyone to target you.

Blind – This move makes one enemy run in circles for a short time so long as they are not damaged. This is nice if you are attacked by two enemies, just blind one and hopefully you can kill the other in under 10 seconds.

Cheap Shot/Kidney Shot – Cheap shot is a sneak attack to give you 2 combo points and stuns the enemy for a time, with Kidney Shot using your points to stun the enemy for a time while in combat. The reason to stun an enemy in PvE is to reduce damage taken, or as a form of crowd control, but it’s  possibly better to use a finisher instead on a near-dead enemy. Kidney can be used to disrupt casting of enemies, even for just a second. In PvP or mobs these are best used because they control the crowd numbers and reduce damage taken, or possibly just to stall for time. Trust me, a lot of players will  drop whatever they are doing to attack a rogue that just cheap-shotted them, even if they could win by attacking something else.

Gouge – Just like the stun effects, this is serves the same purpose. It is a stun in which you can’t attack during or it breaks, but it can disrupt casting and stall for time. It’s really not of much use, you may as well just keep attacking.

*NOTE: Gouge could best be used as a fleeing move or to give you time to use a potion without wasting combat time. I guess in a losing battle you can gouge and sprint away. Also be sure you don’t have your deadly poisons on because any damage during will break it.*

Slice and Dice – In mobs this is your best ability to speed up your DPS, since that is all you are doing. Combine with Blade Flurry and you can eat up two  enemies at once, or leaving the second with little health.

Eviscerate – This is your splash/burst finisher, and your move of choice in PvE against single enemies.

Rupture/Garrote – Rupture uses combo points, Garrote is a stealth attack with a weak silence. Both cause damage over time that ignore armor. In PvE rupture is a great way of adding to your DPS on a boss. In PvP Garrote can help get the jump on a caster, possibly throwing them off their game.

Shiv – Instantly apply your off hand poison. Great for putting that crippling in PvP.

Lockpicking – This falls into a category of profession/key-bypass. As a  pseudo-profession you can answer the calls of any player who needs a lockbox opened, or offer it as a service in trade like any other craft. It depends on how much you charge for a pick. I like to leave the tip optional of whoever needs a pick, especially if you are wanting to use it to level.

Of course there are several doors and chests in the game that you can open, but of course you must be able to pick them and even then there are only so many dungeons in which to use your talent.

*NOTE: To level it you start by going to 50 or so where you first pick up the skill. Usually there is a place nearby that with more locks, such as the bottom of the lake in Redridge. Then a rogue trainer can start telling you where to go for further advancement. Refer to wowwiki.com about good  spots for lockpicking.*

*NOTE: This is a big note for those of you who don’t pick this up on your  own. You can only skill-up beyond your max by leveling up. For example, it takes until level 65 until you can open 325 lockboxes. That’s 65 times 5, as the skill max goes up by 5 with each level. It’s the same as weapons and such.*

Talent Trees ————

The first two are your main PvE talents. I guess if you have not enough money to dual-spec you could main Subtlety, but it’s really just for PvP.

Assassination – This is the tree for those who want to cause as many critical strikes and the most burst damage possible. Malice from the start improves  crit, but beyond that you are basically going Mutilate or bust. Mutilate is your ONLY ability, you will basically spam that as much as you can along with your other cooldowns of course. If you get this, get two daggers.

Combat – Combat helps you fight and somewhat avoid damage. Your main ability is Sinister Strike, with Killing Spree used whenever you can. Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush, and Slice N Dice are your next abilities of note to greatly add to that DPS. With the energy regen rate, with the assassination talent  Vigor, the Vigor glyph, and the 80 gear +10 energy buff, that’s 130 about 3 Sinister Strikes then an Eviscerate for about 10k damage in total, not  including your auto-attacks. Get a slow weapon in your main hand since that’s where your Sinister Strike comes from, then some fast weapon in your other hand; ideally both are swords for that sword talent node.

Subtlety – Purely for PvP, with the many tricks you can use for CC. This is  great for you 80s that can dual-spec. Energy and crits are not that important in PvP, the main thing is just using your cooldowns to close that space between you and the clothie of choice. Multiple vanishings and shadow dances will help you become worth a dang in PvP.
All rogues need the crit talent from assassination, the off-hand increaser from combat, and relentless strikes from subtlety; all in the first tier.

Feel free to pick up the following glyphs:

Minor – Blurred Speed and whatever else, there are only 4. Major – Sinister Strike, Killing Spree, Vigor, Fan of Knives, Rupture, Mutilate, and Slice and Dice.