Rogue Guide

1. Introduction
2. General Information
3. Talent Builds
4. PvE
5. PvP
6. Raiding

1. Introduction

Rogues are one of the most popular classes in WoW with good reason. They deal quite a bit of damage and have the ability to stealth around and sneak up on opponents to assasinate them. They excell at taking out caster classes with their high damage special attacks.

Also rogues have some escape abilitys such as Vanish which allow them to sneak into a enemy group take out a couple healers and then vanish and return to their side to heal up and prepare for another run.

Rogues also are great at leveling and grinding with their high DPS they can grind monsters very fast while being able to escape if need be. They also can take out other players in their grinding area if need be.

All of this make rogues a very fun class to play and they also help raids out quite a bit with their damage dealing abilities on alot of the bosses.

2. General Information

Rogues have 3 Talent trees, each improving one aspect of the rogue.

The Assasination tree specializes in improving your critical damage, and your ability to kill someone in the space of a few seconds. This is mainly about stealthing up and ambushing/backstabbing someone and then sprinting/vanishing to get away.

The Subtlety tree is used to improve your overall stealth efficiency. This gives you useful things such as improved Sap and Improved Ambush. Also allows you to increase your stealth level and speed.

The Combat Tree improves the rogues basic combat ability and is generally the best spec for leveling up and grinding. This is also a good spec for its Riposte ability allowing you to disarm monsters/players.

3. Talent Builds

21/8/22 General PvP Build

Assassination Talents (21 points)

Improved Eviscerate (3/3)
Malice (5/5)
Ruthlessness (3/3)
Improved Slice and Dice (3/3)
Relentless Strikes (1/1)
Lethality (5/5)
Cold Blood (1/1)

Combat Talents (8 points)

Improved Gouge (3/3)
Improved Sinister Strike (2/2)
Improved Backstab (3/3)

Subtlety Talents (22 points)

Master of Deception (5/5)
Opportunity (5/5)
Initiative (4/5)
Improved Ambush (3/3)
Improved Sap (3/3)
Preparation (1/1)
Improved Cheap Shot (1/2)

16/25/10 Raid DPS/PvP Build

Assassination Talents (16 points)

Malice (5/5)
Ruthlessness (3/3)
Improved Slice and Dice (2/3)
Relentless Strikes (1/1)
Lethality (5/5)

Combat Talents (25 points)

Improved Gouge (3/3)
Improved Sinister Strike (2/2)
Improved Backstab (3/3)
Deflection (2/5)
Precision (5/5)
Dagger Specialization (4/5)
Dual Wield Specialization (5/5)
Blade Flurry (1/1)

Subtlety Talents (10 points)

Master of Deception (5/5)
Opportunity (5/5)

4. PvE

Rogues are one of the best solo grinding classes in the game and a rogue was the first character to hit 60 out of all the servers. Many rouges use a combat build for leveling prefering to just melee down any opponents rather then using stealth.

This approach is very easy to do and is very fast as well and i don't recommend using a stealth/assasination build for leveling, it will be a pain. Similar to the fury warrior, rogues can stack up on items such as the darkmoon card: Heroism to improve grinding speed.

Getting to the point where you regain more life per fight then you lose is a great point allowing you to grind endlessly and level up very fast. Also check out our Alliance or Horde Leveling guides for spots to grind at.

Also if you play on a PvP server like myself you will want to have around 50% HP left at least after each fight as this gives you a good buffer against being killed easily by the enemy faction.

5. PvP

Rogues main ability is PvP, with stealth and their assasination abilities they can easily kill people in random World PvP and Alterac Valley. Whenever there is a mass of players of both sides running around a rogue can sneak in a take out a couple people then vanish and retreat somewhere safe.

This makes rogues a very fun to play class in PvP and also makes them the bane of all cloth/leather wearing classes. Even the mail armor classes can go down quickly to a rogue. Your main enemy as a rogue is a warrior, they have many abilities to counter a rogue including disarm and overpower.

'Whenever you can i suggest avoiding warriors as they can if lucky kill you in a few seconds. Besides warriors and paladins everyone else is free game for you to kill. Also you can use Sap and other stunning abilities to capture flags in Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin.

You will have to watch out for hunters with their numerous anti-rogue abilities and mages/warlocks AoE but if you get the jump on them you should win. Stun-Lock is using your stuns along with a timer to if done properly keep the enemy stunned the entire fight until you kill them.

This if done right can even allow you to kill a warrior or a paladin but many times they survive and can either escape or kill you. Another big thing is to have crippling poison on a weapon at all times. This makes any class easy prey for you and your team mates.

6. Raiding

In a raid situation your main role is to DPS, like hunters and fury warriors all you have to do is move in on the monster your ordered to attack and just pound out as much damage as possible while using feint every chance you get as well.

In Molten Core your also going to want a lot of Fire Resistance so the Volcanic Leather set is great armor for that.

Volcanic Leather Armor http://www.thottbot.com/?set=141

A fire resistance score of 150-200 is good and allows you to mitigate most fire damage in Molten Core. A dead rogue is a rogue doing 0 DPS so bring bandages, and potions/Whipper Root Tubers.

Also with the addition of Light Well you can use this as a easy bandage service for rogues&warriors that need a heal. Also holy nova is very useful for healing rogues/warriors in the DPS teams.