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World of WarCraft Rogue Guide February 25, 2007 Jakub Wojnarowicz |
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Summary: Considering playing WoW? Curious about the Rogue? Check this guide out - it covers all the basics and then some, complete with talent builds, professions, race choices, etc.
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 11 ) |
The Rogue is a special class in most games, and in World of WarCraft it is no exception. A Rogue in World of WarCraft is one of the four core pure classes, and fundamentally may be the most single specialized class in the game. Warriors are the pure tanks, Priests are the pure healers, Mages are for pure magic and ranged damage… yet each has the ability to do or become something else. A Warrior need not only absorb damage, he can become a considerable damage dealer himself, as may a Priest. Mages never vary from their damage-dealing roles, but they bring considerable utility to a party – they create food and water for healing and mana regeneration. Their water is the best in the game, better than anything you’ll buy at a vendor or see drop off a mob (‘mob’ being the MMORPG term for monster, being sort for mobile object, a word coined in MUDs). Moreover, Mages provide crowd control options with their polymorph spells.
A Rogue? Well, Rogues can pick locks on chests and scout ahead in a dungeon, but the reality is that in a Player vs Environment situation, a Rogue serves one purpose and one purpose only – to deal damage. Rogues do have some nice tricks like Sap and Blind, but generally speaking, other classes have abilities that have similar or better effects. Outside of his ability to deal hideous amounts of damage, there is little a Rogue can provide that another class usually can’t match or surpass. This guide will not only help you maximize your damage ability, but also teach you the few tricks a Rogue can bring to a group that help you stand out from your competition. We’ll also teach you how to gear yourself, what the best race choices are, and how to avoid the most common mistakes.
What’s the downside to being a Rogue? You’re not alone. Not nearly alone. They are one of the most common classes in the game and while you’ll hear in public chat and guild chat constant requests for a tank or healer, hardly anyone finds themselves saying “man, it’s so hard to get a Rogue these days.” Competition for groups is fierce. Find a guild – trust me.
Stealth
Just as the key feature of a Rogue in a group is his ability to deal damage, the key ability of the Rogue for himself is stealth. Stealth makes the player invisible to creatures, friends, and foes around him, but with certain limitations. Get close enough to someone, they will see you. Also, if you’re in a party or raid group, you’re always visible to your comrades. Finally, people and monsters higher level than you have an easier time spotting you. There are items and talents that boost your stealth level, but it’s never a 100% free pass. Also, you have to beware of certain mobs out there that are specifically stealth-detectors. When you enter stealth mode, you’ll see a spinning teal colored icon above the monsters with stealth detection ability.
Certain restrictions apply to stealth. Once you leave it, you cannot re-stealth for at least ten seconds. If you spend points in the Camouflage talent, you can reduce the cooldown time to re-stealth to five seconds, or one second per point. Also, you cannot stealth while you have been flagged as “in combat”. In PvP, you leave combat if you have not attacked or been attacked by an opposing player for five seconds. However, in PvE, there is no such grace period – you must either kill your target, be killed, or run away until the mob gives up and stops chasing before you can restealth. Finally, if you take any damage while in stealth, you leave stealth. This means that area of effect attacks (including non-damaging shouts from Warriors and frost traps from Hunters) as well as damage-over-time (dot) attacks that have already been applied to you before you stealth will break your stealth when they tick. Examples of dots that break stealth are bleed effects like Rend, or dot spells like a Warlock’s Curse of Affliction.
Finally, certain classes have special abilities to sniff you out. In addition to frost traps, hunters can use flares to detect stealth. The Warlock’s Felhunter pet can also see right through you. Naturally, this doesn’t include the area of effect attacks we’d already mentioned. Most classes have those – Mages, Paladins, Shamans, and so on.
In stealth is where you deliver your opening attacks – Ambush, Garrote, or Cheap Shot. Ambush requires a dagger in your main hand and does a lot of damage insantly. Garrote can use any weapon, and does damage over 18 seconds in 6 ticks (ie, every 3 seconds). It usually won’t do as much damage as a critical attack with an Ambush, but Ambush won’t always critically attack, and Garrote is a bleed effect, so it ignores armor. Finally, Cheap Shot will stun your target for 5 seconds. It’s the preferred opener for almost all situations, except stun-immune critters, usually bosses.
| What race? | Page:: ( 2 / 11 ) |
Alliance
The four original alliance races – Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Night Elves – can all be Rogues. Draenei do not have Rogue as a choice.
Humans used to be a good choice for Rogue in a PvE setting, but never really excelled at PvP. The two key abilities of a Human are increased weapon skill, which had significant beneficial effects before the latest major patch (weapon skill has been nerfed into near meaninglessness since), and Perception. Perception is an ability which, if activated, temporarily permits the Human to see stealthed targets better. It has very limited PvE utility and while generally good for non-Rogue classes, it is less useful for Rogues since they rarely end up fighting other Rogues, with the exception of Arenas for end-game PvP. Humans would thus be among the last choices for a Rogue.
Night Elves seem, based on fantasy stereotypes, to be an excellent Rogue choice when in fact they’re rather mediocre. Night Elf Rogues benefit from a slightly increased stealth level, and the Shadowmeld racial. Shadowmeld is a weak form of stealth which works only if the Night Elf doesn’t move. Naturally, this is not competitive with a Rogue’s stealth and is not only redundant but inferior. It is useful only in those very rare situations in which you need to stealth but your own stealth is still cooling down. The Night Elf is thus about as bad as the human; somewhat better for PvP but worse for PvE.
Gnomes are an excellent race for Rogues. Not only are they extremely small and thus hard to click if your opponent is relying on his mouse to target, but Gnomes have one of the better racial abilities in the game: Escape Artist. Escape Artist permits the Gnome to leave any movement-impairing ability. Whether you’ve been hit with a Root, Frost Nova, or even Concussive Shot, Escape Artist will get you out of it. It doesn’t work against Hunter traps for the most part, however. Since Rogues are almost completely dependent on being within melee range of their targets to be effective, Gnomes are an excellent choice. Besides, there’s nothing funnier than a 2-foot high Gnome stabbing a giant Tauren warrior in heavy plate with daggers the size of safety pins for 2500 damage Ambush critical attacks.
Dwarves are an unpopular yet almost ideal choice for a Rogue. Remember when I said that damage effects bring you out of stealth, forcing you to wait out bleeds, curses, and poisons? Well, there’s a level 66 Rogue ability called Cloak of Shadows which dispels all the curses and other spells, permitting you to use Vanish to stealth in an emergency and stay stealthed, but Cloak does nothing for poisons, bleeds, and diseases. Guess what, the Dwarf can get rid of those debuffs with his Stoneform racial. Like the Gnome, the Dwarf can address a key sticking point for Rogues – in this case the ability to restealth despite having a bleed or poison effect on them.
Horde
The Horde like the Alliance have four out of five races that can be Rogues. Three of them are original races, while Blood Elves are for The Burning Crusade owners only.
Trolls are one of the more unpopular choices for a Rogue and with some reason. They have two racial abilities – Regeneration (which doesn’t heal enough to be noticeable, never mind useful), and Berserking. Berserking increases attack speed from 10-30% for 10 seconds, depending how little health you have (the less, the more speed you get). This isn’t the worst buff in the world, but the limited duration and the dependence on having low health to maximize the benefit makes the Troll far from ideal.
Orcs are, like Dwarves, a very rare choice for a Rogue but one that is surprisingly effective. Whereas the Dwarf and Gnome racials address weaknesses of the Rogue, the Orc adds to a strength. Blood Fury increases attack power significantly and this translates to a considerable damage boost. It lasts for 15 seconds and can make your attacks really hurt an extra bit in that time. The innate Orc ability to resist 15% of all stuns is fairly decent but not especially useful for a Rogue. However, if you want a really damage-oriented character, and one that’s a fairly unique race choice, Orc is an excellent option.
The Undead Rogue is almost a cliché, they’re so abundant. A single ability, Will of the Forsaken, makes them the most hated class/race combination for Priests and Warlocks, and Warriors aren’t too fond of them either. Will of the Forsaken removes and charm, fear, or sleep effects currently present on you and gives immunity from them for the next 5 seconds. For classes like the ones mentioned above (particularly Priests/Warlocks, since Warriors generally handle Rogues fairly well), an Undead Rogue is a nightmare to deal with. Undead can also regenerate a considerable portion of health by eating the corpse of a humanoid or undead target. This saves on your food and bandage bills as you level up. Finally, Undead have the ability to stay under water for longer, which comes in useful at some points. An example would be the practice lock picking chests off the coast of Badlands.
Finally, there are Blood Elves. Blood Elves are most notable for their self-targeted area of effect Silence ability. This will interrupt all spellcasting and silence all casters for three seconds, provided you have at least one Mana Tap going. It’s ideal for group PvP if you can get among a bunch of opposing spellcasters to interrupt them.
Overall
All in all, race choice isn’t definitive by any stretch of the imagination, but as you can see, the racial abilities do have their uses. They won’t make you a good Rogue or a bad Rogue, but they can make a good Rogue slightly better in some situations. Hopefully you’ll be able to knowledgeably choose what is important to you and what’s not.
| Gathering trade skills | Page:: ( 3 / 11 ) |
Gathering stuff
The first ten levels in World of WarCraft go by very quickly. Nothing especially interesting happens, but we’ll give you some tips anyway. For starters, once you hit level 4-6 or so, you’ll be done with quests in your starting area and move to the newbie zone proper. You should take this time to find where the main city in the area is so you can train your professions. If you don’t do so now, you’ll end up doing it somewhat later (usually around level 10-12) and may find yourself spending unnecessary time skilling up your professions rather than doing that as you are leveling. Guards in all the major cities will be able to guide you to your profession trainer, just beware that at the moment at least the Draenei guards give directions in Stormwind rather than the Exodar (though this shouldn’t be a problem as Draenei can’t be Rogues).
There are basically two types of trades: gatherer and finished goods. Gatherers get the raw materials, finished goods use those resources to create the final useful product. Enchanting is perhaps the only exception, as it requires no goods from any of the gathering professions.
So what professions should you choose? That depends. Herbalism used to be a very good choice for rogues since they relied on herbs for components to make Thistle Tea and Blinding Powder, a potion and reagent that were both rather useful. Nowadays Thistle Tea isn’t quite as useful as before and Blinding Powder can be found by unlocking the chests found by pick pocketing humanoid mobs. However, herbalism is still a good way to make money. Definitely take herbalism if you plan on taking alchemy, unless you already have a different character or friend on the same server with the money to buy your materials for you.
Skinning is a safe if unspectacular choice. It provides for a steady flow of money as long as you end up killing mobs that can be skinned (beasts for the most part). However, there are no especially lucrative ways of earning money as a skinner. Those that do exist, like farming Cobra Scales, are lucrative because they’re a pain to do and take time. You should absolutely have skinning if you plan on doing Leatherworking, again, unless you have a source of income to buy your materials for you to skill up the leatherworking skill.
Mining is a lot like herbalism – in fact, if you have mining, you shouldn’t have herbalism and vice-versa. This is because herbalism and mining rely on markers on your minimap to show you where mining nodes or herbs are, and you can only show one or the other. Mining is harder to skill up than herbing, and before The Burning Crusade was released it was not as profitable, but for now it’s probably the more lucrative of the two professions. Mining goes well with the blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting trades. As always, unless you have an alternate money supply, get mining if you plan on doing any of those.
| Finished goods trade skills | Page:: ( 4 / 11 ) |
Engineering is possibly the most unique trade of all. It creates consumable items like dynamite that help add to your damage, specialized trinkets and weird items and rocket helmets. The trinkets can be specialized to fight against spellcaster, or some designs can be used to resurrect players even if you’re not a healer. Engineering is absolutely awesome to have for PvP, though it is rather expensive to skill up, like enchanting. Mining is the best gatherer trade to have for engineering, though it won’t make you self-sufficient. You’ll still need to buy other components from the auction hall.
Jewelcrafting is new, useful, and fairly lucrative. With it you create necklaces, rings, and can cut gems to fit into items with sockets in them at higher levels. There are also consummable items that can be created with jewelcrafting.
Blacksmithing is possibly the best choice for a rogue right now. Like all finished goods trades it’s a bit of a pain to finish skilling up, but the rewards for a Rogue are the most tangible: weapons. Specifically, you want to specialize as a weaponsmith and then focus as a hammersmith, because one of the best weapons in the game at the moment is a crafted hammer. To make things better, this hammer can be upgraded to make it even more powerful as you gather the necessary reagents. The thing is, you need to be a master hammersmith to even use this hammer, so don’t think you can simply buy one!
Leatherworking uses leather, obviously, to craft armor and certain consummable items. It’s gotten a big boost in the expansion and is a viable trade for a Rogue. Like all finished goods skills, it’s only truly profitable once you hit the higher levels and can start crafting the cool consummables and creating cured hides with your long cooldown ability.
Finally, there’s Alchemy. It’s not especially bad, but not particularly useful for a Rogue. Having your own supply of potions is somewhat cool, and at high levels the ability to transmute is both lucrative and necessary, if you specialize that way.
Ultimately, if you’re new on a server and have no one to help you with money, it may be easiest to go skinning and herbalism or mining. However, you will miss out on the advantages of a finished goods skill in the long run. Blacksmithing is probably the best choice, since it guarantees a good weapon for you. Engineering is also a good option if you’re sure you want to do a lot of PvP to earn your weapons as PvP rewards. However, just go with what sounds cool. You may have some regrets in the end, but nothing is irreversible and none of the regrets will have you slicing your wrists.
| Understanding your class | Page:: ( 5 / 11 ) |
The other Rogue resource is the Combo Point. Combo points, or CPs, are gained by using special attacks on targets. Sinister Strike, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, or Hemo are going to be your main CP generators. Openers, or opening attacks, like Cheap Shot, Ambush, and Garrote, also generate CPs, but you can only use these when in stealth. Once you attack and lose stealth, you cannot use them again until you re-stealth.
The trick is in taking advantage of the best combination of talents (discussed on the next page) to create the most CPs and do the most damage. You have to balance your energy with your CP generation. Sinister Strike without any talents takes 45 energy to create a single CP. Hemo takes 35, and Backstab takes 60! Mutilate also takes 60 energy, but generates two CPs at a time. Then there are talents that can give you extra CPs if you crit or if you deliver a finishing move.
Finishing moves cost very little energy (usually 25) but use CPs to increase their effect. A single point Eviscerate won’t do much damage, and a single point Kidney shot will only stun a mob for 1 second. However, use 5 CPs, and Eviscerate starts hitting hard, and Kidney Shot stuns for 5 seconds (6 at later levels). So it’s almost always best to use 5-point finishers, unless the target is almost dead or you’re desperate.
CPs don’t carry over from one target to another. You can switch targets and switch back to your original one and retain your previous CPs, but only as long as you didn’t attack the second target. Also, if your target dies, the CPs are wasted almost instantly.
You will often hear the terms “white damage” and “yellow damage” as a rogue. White damage is your regular weapon damage from auto-attack. Yellow damage means the damage from special attacks like Hemo, Sinister Strike, Eviscerate, Envenom, Mutilate, Backstab, Ambush, Rupture, Garrote, or your poisons. Your white damage is fairly constant, you can only change it by getting better gear and selecting a few key talents – however, it usually accounts for at least 60% of your total damage output. Where you mostly customize your class is with yellow damage – how much you do it, how you do it, and when.
| Your weapons, gear, and enchants | Page:: ( 6 / 11 ) |
A Rogue can only wear up to leather armor and this means he is squishie – you can’t tank and you can’t take a lot of damage. Your armor, like your weapons, should ideally have agility, or agility and stamina as stats. Though strength adds to your attack power as well, try to focus on agility. Agility adds to a Rogue’s critical strike chance and his dodge ability. Stamina increases your hitpoints and thus survivability, but agility is more important.
As you progress in levels, you will find items with +ap (attack power), +hit, and +crit ratings. 1 agility or 1 strength is equal to 1AP. 14 AP add 1dps to your attacks. Agility also adds to your +crit, but this scales with level (the higher your level, the more agility you need to gain a crit point). +hit isn’t affected by any stats except +hit items. A nice balance between AP, hit, and crit items is usually good. Typically, a Rogue player will value crit twice as much as AP and just as much as hit, so if you’re deciding between items, unless you get twice as many AP as you get hit or crit points, then it’s not worth switching. Some builds, Seal Fate builds in particular, are more dependent on crit gear than AP or hit. Combat builds, especially if you’re focusing on raids or instances, are going to be happier with hit and AP and need less crit items. But these are general rules, and can vary depending on the situation.
Similarly, your ratio of stamina and agility gear can vary depending on what you are built for. In instances, you can get away with slightly more emphasis on agility, unless you know you’re going to be taking a lot of damage (such as heroic instances with mobs that do significant AoE). In PvP, you want a lot of crit but you also need to be survivable. World PvP is different from Battlegrounds. In Battlegrounds, you’ll be attacked far more often and thus benefit from more stamina. In world PvP, you’ll get to choose your opponents and thus are less likely to be involved in a prolonged fight against multiple opponents.
Enchantments are expensive and should be used only if you intend to keep a weapon for a long time. If you got a nice epic drop, or even a very good rare weapon, that’s when you’d enchant. Krol Blade at level 51 or so is a good example. It’d be a worthy recipient of a +15 agi enchantment. On something like a Thrash Blade, which most Rogues go to the bother of getting, which you’ll outgrow fairly quickly, a Fiery enchant is enough and worth splurging on – it won’t make a huge difference in your life as a Rogue but it’s pretty sweet. However, generally people don’t enchant while leveling because the cost to benefit ratio isn’t worth it. Even at level 70, most people don’t bother with enchantments except on gear they know they’re stuck with.
| Talent points for leveling | Page:: ( 7 / 11 ) |
Be sure to take advantage of a talent calculator, like the one here, at wowhead, or the official one. Note that wowhead has a button that will give you the link to your build, and the official calculator has a link that changes as you add and subtract points. We’ll use the Wowhead calculator for the purposes of demonstrating builds.
You’ll hear a lot of talk about builds like “combat swords” or “seal fate/prep”, sometimes designated as “15/41/5” or “30/0/31”. These just roughly describe someone’s build, never in detail unless you ask.
Your leveling build should almost certainly be combat swords. That means speccing in the Combat tree and using swords. Why swords? Because swords come in fast and slow varieties, they’re abundant and generally cheap to buy if you must buy them. Daggers are harder to find and more difficult to use, and arguably less efficient for many stages of leveling (and I say this as a player who has spent a lot of time with daggers). Maces and fist weapons are options, but fist weapons are almost non-existent before level 60, while maces are usually limited in number – and there are very few decent off-hand maces available. Moreover, many maces are specifically designed with healers in mind, and have +heal or +spell buffs.
So, given that you’ll most likely to building around swords as your weapons, remembering to keep a slow, high-damage weapon in your main hand and a fast weapon in your off hand. Below are the step-by-step common, effective choices. Not all of them have to go in order, but the sequence below is popular.
| Dagger leveling | Page:: ( 8 / 11 ) |
Note: the last three talent choices don’t have to be done in order, the above is just my preference.
The upside of this leveling spec is that you don’t have to re-spec if you’re going to be raiding. This is pretty much the same build you’d use on raids or even 5-man instances, except that you should get 3/3 Improved Slice and Dice and 1/2 Endurance. I just showed an Endurance/Sprint build for extra PvP survivability, and to demonstrate that while I prefer Improved Slice and Dice, having 2 or 3 points in it isn’t mandatory to be effective in an instance or raid. Combat Daggers is an excellent damage build, competitive with other Combat builds and even a Mutilate/Dual Wield spec.
On the down side, Combat Daggers is among the worst builds available for PvP because its CP generation is the lowest possible. This means that stunlocking your target is very difficult. Your damage will be high, especially against cloth targets, but once they’re out of the stun you’re pretty much up the creek without a paddle.
| Hemo and Mutilate | Page:: ( 9 / 11 ) |
Respecing
A player respecs if he’s bored, if he really wants to get to a key talent early, or if he decides he wants to try another grinding build. Perhaps you’re tired of swords and want to try Combat Daggers or Mutilate, or maybe you want to do PvP and check out the Assassination and Subtlety trees.
Common builds
There are a variety of builds, even a variety of builds oriented around the same talent like Mutilate, each with a different purpose and style in mind. Let’s explore some.
Mutilate is a good damage-dealing talent with excellent combo point generation – the best in the game. Mutilate essentially replaces your Backstab attack if you were a dagger Rogue before, since it usually does more damage. The greater benefit of Mutilate is that it generates CPs at a very high rate. The downside to it is that it requires the target to be poisoned to get the 50% damage bonus, meaning that the few poison immune mobs (mostly mechanical and elemental creatures) are harder to take down. There are several ways to spec Mutilate, I’ll show some examples below:
Here is a hybrid Mutilate build I use. I play on a PvP server and find myself doing world PvP fairly often, so protecting myself and discouraging opponents is key. Camouflage reduces my stealth cooldown to 5 seconds, while Improved Gouge increases Gouge time to 5.5s, meaning I can re-stealth after a Gouge. Opportunity increases my Mutilate damage by 20% while Master of Deception increases my stealth level. Improved Sap comes in very handy in instances where taking a mob out of combat for up to 45 seconds is a huge advantage. Improved Expose Armor is rarely acquired by Rogues since it interferes with Sunder Armor, a key Warrior aggro ability, but it comes in useful on those many occasions I have a Paladin or Druid as the tank in a group, or if I’m grinding poison-immune elementals.
This is a fairly typical example of a Mutilate build for raids. It focuses almost exclusively on damage and CP generation. A slight variant would be this build, which gives up Improved Eviscerate and a couple of points in Improved Poisons to get 5/5 Vile Poisons. The 5/5 Vile Poisons isn’t so much for poison damage as it is to improve the damage from the Envenom skill which we’ll talk about later. This is arguably the highest damage Mutilate build possible, with excellent white damage and yellow damage.
Here is an example of a Combat Swords raid build. It would be very weak in PvP but one of the most powerful builds for raid damage. For 5-man instances, where Improved Sap comes in handy more often, this may be a bit more useful.
Hemorrhage, more commonly referred to as Hemo, is a controversial build that has its ups and downs. It requires the highest damage, slowest weapons you can get your hands on (like the old GM/HWL Sword/Fist weapons with a 2.9 speed and almost 60dps) to be efficient. Anything under 2.7 speed should not be considered, and even then, Sinister Strike is usually better. Hemo is popular not because of its effect, but because it generates a CP for only a 35 energy attack, rather than 40 damage from Improved SS. It’s the second most energy-efficient CP generating method. Thus, Hemorrhage replaces Sinister Strike as your CP-generating attack. The downside is that Hemo focuses heavily on the Subtlety tree, which is generally a PvP-oriented tree than one for PvE. However, there are some efficient PvE builds for grinding and even 5-man instances, though you’ll never top the damage charts in raids.
This is an example of a Hemo/Seal Fate build. It has decent DPS, but more importantly is extremely flexible for PvP. Preparation, Premeditation, and Cold Blood are all excellent cooldown abilities that give the Rogue a lot of flexibility and survivability. It is easily one of the most popular PvP builds out there. A popular variant has 2 points taken out of Improved Poisons and put in Murder.
| Subtlety, Assassination, and PvP | Page:: ( 10 / 11 ) |
Why not combat?
The Combat tree is a terrible option for PvP. PvP relies on burst damage and control – being able to deal a lot of damage in a short amount of time, when you need to. Even more than burst damage, however, being able to control the fight is the most important thing about PvP, and Rogues excel at that. To control, you need to stun. To stun, you need Combo Points and the Combat Tree just doesn’t provide them. In addition to stuns like Cheap Shot and Kidney shot, or the standard Rogue ability to Vanish to stealth even while flagged as “in combat”, talents like Preparation, Cold Blood, and Premeditation make the Rogue a vicious PvP opponent. Under ideal circumstances, even the most difficult classes, like Warriors, Hunters, and Druids, can be killed. Often this requires a bit of luck (ie, not missing a Cheap Shot or Kidney Shot), and a lot of skill, but it’s possible. Other classes, like Mages, Priests, and Warlocks, are meat. In fact, Rogues are the only class that Warlocks generally fear. However, if you go Combat, many of these abilities aren’t available or aren’t as efficient.
Subtlety is a talent tree with excellent PvP options, as is Assassination. I’ll provide some examples of builds below.
The downside to both builds listed above is that neither has Improved Gouge. Improved Gouge combined with Camouflage is just about the only way you’ll kill a feral-spec Druid or a Warrior, since it incapacitates your target for just long enough for you to re-stealth. It may take several such re-stealths before you beat through the massive armor of the bear-form Druid or the Warrior, and it takes some luck and not inconsiderable skill as well.
Non-dagger PvP
PvP without daggers is considerably different than PvP with. You usually rely on Sinister Strike or Hemo, so your CP generation won’t be as great as a Mutilate build. You’re also lacking the high-damage openings of Ambush. Your burst damage is usually limited to Eviscerates. Relying on Sinister Strike gives higher damage and you might as well spend the extra 3 points for Improved Gouge in that case, but then you have to choose between Seal Fate or Premeditation, rather than enjoying both. 25/5/31 is an example of a PvP build based around SS. It gives access to Cold Blood, Preparation and Premeditation, but not Seal Fate.
Some people have recommending a build like 31/20/10, but I have no experience with this. On paper, CP generation is decent, you get the benefit of 10 extra maximum energy from Vigor as well as Seal Fate and Cold Blood. The few useful PvP talents from Combat are also present – Improved Gouge, Endurance, and Improved Sprint. As mentioned before, however, I’m not a fan of Combat in PvP.
Of course, there’s always the Hemo/Seal Fate build mentioned before.
| Rogue FAQ | Page:: ( 11 / 11 ) |
Envenom or Eviscerate?
Envenom and Eviscerate are both finishing moves that rely on your points. Envenom also requires your target to be afflicted with deadly poison – one poison per CP you intend to use. Envenom deals nature damage and completely ignores armor. Eviscerate is affected by armor. Naturally, Envenom doesn’t work on poison immune mobs but is otherwise almost completely superior. However, if you intend to PvP, spec for Eviscerate, since Envenom relies on deadly poison, which is not a good choice for PvP. Remember, if you plan on using Eviscerate, get Improved Eviscerate. If you plan on using Envenom, get Vile Poisons and Improved Poisons.
Rupture or Eviscerate?
Long fight? Does the mob have high armor? Rupture. Rupture ignores armor and usually hits for more than Eviscerate even against light-armored targets. However, Eviscerate can crit and Rupture takes time to tick off – Eviscerate does the damage instantly.
What poisons should I use?
What poisons a Rogue uses is dependent on the situation. For common PvE grinding, instant poison is the best unless you’ve speced Mutilate, in which case a Crippling Poison or Deadly Poison are necessary so that the poison debuff is present for your Mutilate to gain the 50% damage bonus. Crippling poison is naturally ideal for mobs that run away.
In PvP, it depends on your target. Warriors should usually be hit with double crippling or main hand crippling and off hand instant. You want them slow. Most Rogues err on the side of caution and go double crippling.
Priests, Paladins, Shamans, and Druids should be hit with main hand Wounding Poison and offhand crippling, due to their annoying tendency to self-heal. This isn’t always true, of course. Shamans specced in Enhancement and Feral-spec Druids would probably be best to hit with an Instant instead of the Wounding, or even double-cripple.
Mages and Warlocks are definitely main hand crippling and off hand Mind Numbing. Both classes tend to run when they can, and being casters, the extra casting time that Mind Numbing poison adds can save your life.
Hunters should be attacked with double crippling poisons or a crippling and instant, just like Warriors. The difference is that while you want to be able to keep a Warrior far away from you when he’s not stunned, you want to be able to keep up with a Hunter if he isn’t stunned.
What’s Deadly Throw good for?
Deadly Throw uses CPs and does less damage than Eviscerate or Envenom. So why use it? Against targets that flee. Ideal against casters and hunters in PvP, and runner mobs in PvE.
Any mods you recommend?
Yes, get EnergyWatch so you can time your energy ticks (start your attack on a target just before you recharge 20 energy, it’s almost like 20 free energy), and CCWatch or Chronometer to watch your stun/incapacitate effects. There are also dozens of other mods out there like FuBar and its add-ons that help make leveling easier. At least get FuBar, LocationFu, Atlas, and Cartographer. It will help you when you’re getting co-ordinates from players in-game or websites guiding you through quests.
How do I skill up lockpicking?
The best way to do it is to keep at it from the moment you get the skill. Pick pocket humanoid mobs and they’ll occasionally have chests for you to open. Your class trainer will also be able to guide you to areas where there are practice chests to work on. If you’re in a group in an instance, nothing is going to annoy your teammates as much as your inability to open a chest. It’s one of the few non-damage abilities you bring to a group.
The official forums say I’m nerfed!
Ignore the official forums, they’re the haven of class whiners everywhere. There are good patches and bad patches, just play through them. Every class gets better or worse as time goes on. Going to the forums is only going to make you unhappy about yours. Were you unhappy before you went? Probably not.
How do I deal with class X?
Figure it out. There are too many class/talent combinations to worry about. Feral druids usually eat Rogues alive, but a Restoration Druid is one of the easier kills out there. Arms Warriors are terrifying if they’re in melee range and you can’t stun or gouge them, a Prot Warrior isn’t nearly as scary but it’s not worth beating on him for five minutes before he dies. Elemental Shamans play completely differently from Enhancement. You get the idea.
Hints and tips for groups?
Yeah, let the tank or Hunter pull. Let the tank attract the mob’s attention and build some aggro before you jump in and start beating on it. NEVER use Expose Armor if you have a Warrior tanking. ALWAYS use Expose Armor on tougher mobs if there is a Druid or Paladin tanking. Don’t stun a mob while it’s still running towards the tank, and watch out for the healer. Healers draw a lot of aggro, so this means adds (additional mobs in the pulls) or pats (patrolling mobs that run into your group) will sometimes focus on the healer. This is why you have Blind and stuns. The tank may not be able to get aggro off the healer immediately, so you do it. You’re only DPS, better that you die.
As a Rogue, you should be primary DPS. If you don’t know the instance, ask what to target. Usually the order of attack is as follows:
1. Any mob that causes Fear.
2. Any mob that Heals.
3. Any caster.
4. DPS mobs (Rogues, Hunters).
5. Other mobs.
There are exceptions, however. Ranged DPS should usually assist target off you, since it’s easier for them to switch targets than it is for you. It may be “cool” to totally top the damage charts, but in tough situations you should give up those CPs and use Stuns instead of Envenoms/Eviscerates. Also, you have to judge what’s more dangerous – a healer mob or a Fear mob. Best to discuss with your group.
If you’re with a bad tank who can’t hold aggro, don’t whine and quit, just cut down on the damage you’re dealing. The easiest way is to use stuns instead of damaging finishers. After that, switch poisons to non-damaging types. Then take it easy on CP-generating attacks. If that doesn’t help, bring it up as an issue in group chat.
How should I act in world PvP?
You’ll get to know the other side’s tendencies. There are aggressive guilds and tame guilds. There are jerks and nice people. I adopt a live-and-let-live policy unless someone starts trouble with me or my guild, then I’ll go all out. Unless a guild or individual starts trouble consistently, I don’t start it. Why? Am I a wuss? No, because reputations matter. There are Horde on my server who are kill on sight to half the Alliance. Nobody gives them a chance any more, and you don’t want that kind of reputation – you can’t grind for items, you can’t grind for reputation, you can’t quest. At least, not without being constantly interrupted.
Why don’t you ever have Daggers and Hemo, or Daggers and Sinister Strike?
Daggers are meant for Backstab and Mutilate. You could generate fast CPs with daggers and Hemo, but the damage would be absurdly low. Trust me, I’ve tried. Whether out of curiosity, ignorance, or determination to find something new that works, I’ve tried a lot of weird builds and Hemo Daggers is quite possibly one of the worst ideas ever, followed shortly after Daggers and Sinister Strike.
What’s the point of Distract?
Besides turning around your target mob for an easy pick pocket, cheap shot, or ambush, you can sneak around them easier in stealth. Also, Distract is actually fairly useful on select group situations. If you see a patrol about to hit your group while you’re fighting another set of mobs, use Distract to pause them for 10 seconds. Similarly, there are certain boss encounters that spawn right after you kill the trash mobs, and Distract can give your group 10 seconds to eat and drink to regain health and mana. Finally, you CAN use it in PvP. If you’re just barely out of range of your opponent and he’s about to run off, throw a Distract to turn him around for a split second so you can catch up. Your opponent cannot be flagged as “in combat”, however. Neither can the mobs.