WoW Rogue Guide

The rogue class in WoW is all about melee damage. The rogue’s only role in raiding is DPS, they are by no means a healing class or a tanking class no matter how you spec. Rogues can do exceptionally high DPS in raiding and are extremely effective in PvP because of some of their unique abilities which will be discussed later. Rogues do not use mana, rage, or runic power, instead they use energy which is constantly being restored rather quickly in and out of combat.

Some positive attributes to playing a rogue are for one, that they are able to use poisons on their weapons to greatly increase damage output. They are able to go into stealth mode and possibly be undectetable by other players until it’s too late and the rogue is stunning and killing the target. Rogues have a “kick” ability that is able to interrupt spell casting and can use potions that will create even more obstacle for spell casters.

Although rogues have some very nice pros, I’ll now talk about the cons. Rogues are completely melee attack based so they won’t be doing much damage at all from long range and will also have to be up close to their target. Rogues have something called Combo Points which are necessary to do certain attacks and do greater damage, these can get confusing and are hard to master to do the most damage possible. Rogues are restricted to wearing cloth and leather and have no shielding or healing abilities so they have to rely on their stealth abilities to escape tough situations and kill enemies before they kill them.

What Racial Abilites are good for Rogues?

Rogues have 8 races to choose from, 4 on each side (Horde/Alliance) and each of them is helpful in their own ways. Some races help mainly for only PvP whereas some races will help for both PvE and PvP. There isn’t a whole lot to worry about with racial abilities as a rogue so if you feel that you just want to pick the race that you think looks the best it isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference when choosing as a rogue.

Starting with the alliance we have humans who what the removal of movement impairing effects as well as increased expertise with one-handed swords by 3 which you can spec into as a rogue. The dwarf has the stoneform ability which removes bleed, poision, and disease effects as well as increasing armor by 10% for 8 seconds, this is also a good choice for a rogue since you already need the armor help at some times. Gnomes have the escape artist attribute to remove immobilization or movement speed reducing effects. The Night Elf is the ideal rogue pvp class, the shadowmeld allows you to vanish twice instead of just once every so often and the quickness passive attribute will reduce the chance you will be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 2%.

As you can see the Alliance races mainly help out the rogue in PvP but now we’ll discuss the Horde races which will help out more with PvE attributes. The Orc’s Blood Fury ability is useful for increasing attack power for 15 seconds based on your level which is helpful in raids and killing enemy players faster in PvP. This is also the same with the Troll’s Berserking ability to increase attack speed by 10-30% based on your health fir 10 seconds. The undead is a good PvP choice for a rogue because of it’s Will of the Forsaken ability to remove any fear, sleep, or charm effects. The Blood Elf has the Arcane Torrent ability which restores 15 energy which is very helpful as that is 15% of what you need to successfully preform attacks, it will also silence nearby enemies for 2 seconds allowing you time to get into position for whatever attacks you need to do.

Which talent spec should I choose?

The rogue’s three different talent specializations are Assassination, Combat, and Subtlety. I will start with Assassination which can be either a PvP or PvE spec, Assassination has many good features to it such as making your poisons less resistable and allowing you to gain more combo points while you are in combat which will then allow you to use more finishing moves. Some talents you will learn in this spec are things such as Imporoved Poisons which will increase the chance to apply instant deadly posion by 2/4/6/8/10%. Turn the Tables is also veru useful, whenever anyone in your party blocks, dodges, or parries an attack your chance to critically hit with all combo moves is increased by 2/4/6% for 8 seconds. And finally the last talent you will learn in Assassination is Hunger ofr Blood which is an ability which will enrage you and increase all damage by 5% and if you use this while a bleed effect is on you it will attempt to remove that effect and refund 15 energy. This effect can be stacked up to three times and lasts 30 seconds.

The next one I will be talking about is combat which focuses more on consistent auto-attack damage instead of focusing on the combo point required attacks. Combat is the ideal leveling spec because it allows you to focus on just constant killing instead of sneaking up on enemy targets to kill them. Combat has one talent that you are going to want to spec into no matter what spec tree you decide to take at that is Dual Wield Specialization which is available right away and increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 10/20/30/40/50% which is going to greatly increase DPS in any tree. Some other notable combat talents are Prey on the Weak which increases critical strike damage by 4/8/12/16/20% when your target has less health than you (as % total) which is almost all the time during raids. And also Killing Spree, which attacks enemies within 10 yards every .5 seconds with both weapons until 5 attacks are made and can hit the same target twice.

The last tree is Subtlety which is more of a stealthy talent specialization which makes it a very good PvP spec but is also good in PvE content as well. The camouflage talent increases your speed while stealthed by 5/10/15% and the cooldown of your stealth ability by 2/4/6 seconds. The Sinister Calling talent increases your agility by 3/6/9/12/15% and increases the % damage bonus of Backstab and Hemorrhage by an additional 1/2/3/4/5%. The Honor Among Thieves talent makes Subtlety raiding more effecient because when anyone in your group critically hits with a damage or healing spell/ability you have a 33/66/100% chance to gain a combo point on your current target. Although this cannot occur more than once per second it can occur once every two seconds making this very very effective especialy in raids when people are constantly critting. The last thing you will learn in Subtlety is Shadow Dance which allows the use of Sap, Garrote, Ambush, Cheap Shot, Premeditation, Pick Pocket, and Disarm Trap even if you are not stealthed.

What stats are important for a Rogue?

Rogues love agility, if you ever have an item where you need to choose between agility and strength always go with agility. If you plan on doing PvP you will want to pick up some extra stamina as well. Other than that Rogues also want a lot of attack power and crit strike rating as well as trying to be hit capped. Haste is also a good thing for rogues since you want to get a lot of damage out in as short of period of time as possible. If you plan on doing PvP you may also want to try to get some Dodge into your gear and also resilience as you would with any other class.

What professions should I choose as a Rogue

As with any class, professions aren’t going to make a huge deal on how you level and your DPS but a lot of rogues prefer Leatherworking and Skinning since rogues do wear leather and skinning goes along with gaining the materials for Leatherworking. Blacksmithing could also be used to create your own weapons. Engineering is also a good choice for a rogue because there are a lot of items that are required that you have engineering to create/use that are beneficial to rogues. Almost all professions are beneficial to rogues in some way so it’s really up to you and what things you think that you would enjoy using more than those in the other possible professions, some are better for PvE raiding and some are better for PvP.