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1.0 - The Rogue
2.0 - Rogue Abilities
3.0 - Leveling
4.0 - PvP
5.0 - Raiding
This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this guide here.
1.0 - The Rogue
Rogues are a group that I find hard to describe – Not because the class is so verily complicated, although they do have their fair share of tactical and situational abilities, but rather because it’s so very much fun, it’s almost hard to find a good place to start.
Rolling a rogue is the discovery of an entirely different world than that experienced by any other class save druid, the world of stealth, mystery, and most importantly, awesome PvE and PvP. The sheer magnitude of what stealth grants our class is what sets us apart from a simple DPS class and makes us one of the top Arena, Battlegrounds, and Raiding classes.
Rogues are famed for mayhem and slaughter with a side-dish of being nigh unbeatable when we choose to be, that is why you might choose to roll a rogue. That is of course if you haven’t already done so. The population of rogues per server is a clear indicator of the class’s popularity, but that doesn’t mean you can’t set yourself apart from the masses, all it takes is a little bit of dedication and some gaming skills.
Rogues popularity is in direct proportions to how easy the class is to play, but what this doesn’t reveal is how hard it is to play right. The difference between a rogue who chose his class for speed leveling and ease of use to those who truly master the class is astounding, allowing for rogues to truly come in all shapes in sizes as skill factors greatly into respective success or failure.
However, let us return to step one, as before you lead daring attempts at capturing the flag or can even think about topping the DPS charts, you have one rather large decision to make – What race of rogue should you roll, and what benefits does each provide.
Alliance Races
First of the alliance races we’ll be covering is the human, a race composed entirely of either bulky amazingly muscular males or stupendously disproportionate females, either way they don’t quite look the part – but that’s not why we care anyway now is it?
First off is an incredibly worthless 10% spirit increase passive racial, as a rogue you will absolutely never notice the effects of this and it is for all intents and purposes nonexistent. Next up, Diplomacy, is quite a step up from the previous ability, offering yet another 10% bonus, however this time it’s to faction/reputation gains, and what with the entirety of Outland being one massive faction grind it can’t hurt to have it.
Perception one-ups even the reputation gains should you be an avid PvPer, the increase to stealth detection allows you to become the greatest PvP scout possible and this comes into play more often than not when Arena teams are running with at least one rogue nigh 90% of the time.
Finally we gain an increase to swords and maces skills, five points, useful in raiding I suppose for absolute min-maxers but then again I don’t raid on a human rogue so I can’t exactly tell my tales of how great or unnoticed this improvement is. Either way it can’t hurt now can it?
Night Elves, likely the most popular alliance race for rogues despite the fact that it possesses the absolute worst rogue racials possible, namely a free stealth of inferior quality and only makes up for it with 1% dodge increase(although this is nice.)
All in all I’d say that if you’re playing your rogue right you won’t need the increase to ghost run speed, we’re stealth assassins, made for tactical and skillful play, not constant corpse runs unlike other classes.
Dwarves have stoneform as the only notable racial, and quite notable it can be especially in crucial PvP situations, although funnily enough this is largely a defensive racial for fighting other rogues. Fortunately this happens a lot so Stoneform does come in handy to the wary and prepared dwarf rogue, all one of them in existence.
Last but not least, well maybe height wise, we come to the gnomes. Gnomes can easily be said to be the greatest alliance PvP race due to the usage of a single racial, escape artist, the woes of all melee classes bundled up into one root/snare breaking ability with a 1 minute 45 seconds cooldown. How cool is that?
Horde Races
First we go to the trolls, and unfortunately they still have likely the worst racials in the game, an old throwback to beta times when regeneration was turned into the abomination it is today. It now grants a completely worthless and pathetic boost to health regeneration.
Secondly you have Berserking, an ability that costs us energy to improve attack speed, not all that useless when considering raid scenarios but I’ve seldom used it otherwise except when testing my DPS on random trash mobs.
Beast Slaying is a straight up 5% bonus to all damage dealt when fighting beasts, not unwanted given how many animals there are in world of warcrafts leveling grind, but generally worthless once you’ve reached the maximum level.
Oh, and you gain a 1% increase to throwing weapons critical chance, this might sort of yet probably not help if you use deadly throw more often than you really should.
Orcs on the other hand get far more of the good horde racial abilities, namely blood fury and hardiness, both of situational brilliance for rogues. Blood fury is a good almost great talent for improving your DPS when you have no fear of taking damage, or at least not the point of requiring heals.
Hardiness on the other hand is the perfect rogue counter, giving a 15% resistance to stun and knockout effects that comes in handy when fighting other rogues and a bit more rarely any other class with a stun.
Undead are a staple PvP Class what with Will of the Forsaken, a racial granting temporary immunity to fear, sleep, and charm as well as breaking any already present effects of these types. Quite useful for fighting Warlocks, Priests, etc.
Cannibalize is fairly gnarly to rub it in whenever you kill someone, also a great leveling regeneration talent. Finally, underwater breathing is cool because it saved my life when I went AFK underwater to grab a drink while doing a quest, nothing better than avoiding a corpse run. Also I suppose you could use it to pull off Rambo imitations via lurking in the water waiting for unsuspecting Alliance.
The final race to cover on the horde side is Blood Elves, gaining a possibly useful 10 point increase to enchanting, an improvement of five to all resistances, and finally Mana Tap/Arcane Torrent, the real gems.
Arcane Torrent allows you to instantly cast an AoE silence lasting two seconds and affecting all within eight yards, at least that is if it isn’t resisted which is more likely to happen than not, probably about a 3 or 4 out of 10 chance of it working properly.
Tradeskills
First Aid, it’s the only method we possess of in-combat healing and can serve to boost your leveling speeds dramatically, never underestimate the Blind and First aid combo whether it’s a PvP or PvE situation.
Secondly Cooking combined with Fishing can ease the price of food while leveling should you feel like picking them up, I also expect there should be some ways of making cash off this combo, neither of them take up a profession slot making it easy enough to pick up.
Out of the true profession skills, I personally like picking up gathering types as Rogues are probably the best hunter/gatherer class in the game, making it an easy method of building up massive stores of excess cash for Raiding materials, epic flying mounts, etc.
For information on leveling your rogues lockpicking abilities check out this Rogue Lockpicking guide
2.0 - Rogue Abilities
Rogue skill and talent trees are quite fun to play around with, made all the more so by the fact that whether you choose to specialize in any given tree or not, all the abilities will likely remain in common use due to the simple requirement of variety to remain viable as a rogue.
Combat rogues may find themselves using assassination, assassination rogues use sinister strike/eviscerate, and of course all rogues utilize the subtlety skills such as stealth, pick pocket, distraction, etc.
This sheer variety means you’ll have to section out what exactly you need in any given fight, then add on whatever abilities you think you might need to use, and final preparations demand you find some room for all the obscure yet still potentially required abilities that fill up our skill trees.
Assassination
Assassination fulfills the traditional image of the rogue to one degree, giving us massive critical strike damage from stealth, a whole slew of finishing move improvements, and the majority of our useful stuns/disorienting strikes.
Ambush, Eviscerate, Cheap shot, all these rogue staples utilized by each and every build type of rogue at one point or another, cheap shot seemingly being the combat rogue opener of choice for PvP and PvE, ambush for straight up assassins, and eviscerate is something all of us use.
Kidney Shot and Rupture are also used somewhat by those who recognize the need to. Kidney shot being a powerful and quite useful mid-fight stun via combo points while Rupture is a finishing move bleed attack keeping the target from re-stealthing/potentially slaying them should they be low on HP.
Combat
Combat is filled to the brim with basic attacks such as Sinister Strike, Gouge, and of course Backstab – something all rogues must have used or had used on them at one time or another. This presents another part of our firepower in combat, generally working in synergy with assassination abilities to dish out big numbers quite frequently.
Sinister strike is obviously the primary and likely most spammed/mashed key on any rogues keyboard from 1-70, being the primary method of building combo points on a target outside of specific talents as well as a fairly nice damage increase on its own.
Gouge and Kick both can be used as interruptions, gouge for emergency bandaging and both Gouge/Kick for interrupting enemy spellcasters when needed, quite useful for grinding Mage-type mobs or in PvP.
Subtlety
Subtlety comprises all our rogueish abilities, such as the ability to stun targets from stealth and effectively disable/remove them from a fight, distraction for tough stealth sections or simply to get the advantage when opening a fight.
Additionally you pick up Vanish quite early on, a major lifesaver for any rogue who comes prepared with enough flash powder, something you’ll definitely want to make the instant it becomes available. Pick pocket is a decent money maker on top of killing the mobs after you steal what you can.
Finally we come to Blind, an amazingly great mid-fight interruption for anything you need, whether that be time to re-stealth, bandage yourself, or just run away and live to fight another day – Yet again this applies to both PvP and PvE encounters.
This section is only an overview of paladin leveling, check out our Rogue Leveling Guide for more information.
3.0 - Leveling
Leveling as a rogue is actually quite fun in my opinion, more so than that of likely any other class. One reason for this is that rogues, alongside hunters, represent the fastest leveling classes in the game by leaps and bounds,
making it far shorter a grind by comparison to other more lacking in damage classes such as paladins.
Secondly would be the fact that the class simply becomes more fun as you level, the enjoyment factor increasing by leaps and bounds as you pick up each new tactical and intriguing ability, cheap shot, ambush, etc.
Finally, and everyone who inhabits a PvP server will most likely agree with me on this one, rogues are the ultimate anti-gank and ganking class in the game. We not only possess the tools to avoid an attempted gank and survive quite easily, but are also the premier PvP class throughout 1-60 with only a small decline on the way to 70.
Combat Rogue Leveling
20/41/0 Combat Rogue Leveling Build
Combat rogues are the fastest leveling types of an already speedy killer, however they pay for this consistent and immense damage output by being the most boring as well. Despite all my comments on rogues being fun and such, this enjoyment factor evaporates when you spend all your time mashing sinister strike and eviscerate.
Unfortunately for combat rogues, that is the only method of maximizing your potential DPS, however things can be spiced up by pulling multiple mobs at a time and blasting our adrenaline rush/blade flurry to drop groups of five to six monsters at the same time.
Leveling will be both fast and efficient, but don’t expect things to magically become fun at higher levels, expect to be mashing 1,1,1,2 for the rest of your combat rogue life, not very fun in my opinion but still effective.
Assassination Rogue Leveling
41/0/20 Assassination Leveling Build
Assassination is a moderately slower leveling experience but infinitely more interactive, this can count as either a pro or a con depending on what you’re looking for from 1-70. Many players would rather blast the music and watch a movie when grinding, others would rather have all attention focused on the game, this is for the latter as the former will be more suited to Combat’s style.
Assassination is all about the set-up, beyond that everything should die quite easily if you’ve properly prepared and opened the fight as you should be doing. The preparation part is largely due to a specific assassination talent that increases critical chance massively for a short duration after each kill, making it paramount to swift killing that you get to the next Mob and open with Ambush before it wears off.
As you progress through the tree you’ll pick up a number of improved finisher talents and eventually cold blood, all of this improving your burst DPS to insane amounts for the brief amount of time required to kill a given mob, but no more than that – lengthy fights will put the odds against your survival.
With proper set-up and usage of the abilities given you by assassination you’ll be capable of killing mobs before they break stun or have time to retaliate, an easily enjoyable leveling style.
Subtlety Rogue Leveling
13/2/46 Subtlety Leveling Build
Subtlety leveling is an odd mixture between Assassination and combat without truly matching either them in speed, but then again it represents amazing utility and freedom as to how you wish to combat any given opponent –a real king of the thieves style tree.
Almost every talent improves our ability to both control and escape fights if need be, giving us amazing combo-point generation, stealth capabilities, and eventually the ability to even reset the entirety of our cooldowns.
Subtlety is not my recommended leveling build for reasons aside from killing speed, largely that it’d be a pain for anyone new to rogues to master and make efficient, but as always any style of rogue will level fast regardless the build so pick this if it seems to fit your playstyle desires.
4.0 - PvP
20/0/41 Subtlety Arena Build
This is oriented towards assassination rogues, almost all of it pre-raid/heroic gear. For the combat rogue gear list check further below.
Helm:
Helm of the Claw - Quest Reward
The Night Watchman - World Drop BoE
Neck:
Traitor's Noose - Drop(Heroic Slavepens)
Jagged Bark Pendant - Drop(Botanica)
Back:
Cloak of Malice - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Delicate Green Poncho - Quest Reward
Cloak of the Inciter - Drop(Shadow Labyrinth)
Shoulders:
Sun-Gilded Shouldercaps - Drop(Black Morass)
Shoulderpads of Assassination - Drop(Sethekk Halls)
Chest:
Chestguard of the Dark Stalker - World Drop BoE
Hauberk of Karabor - Quest Reward
Wrist:
Shackles of Quagmirran - Drop(Heroic Slave Pens)
Armwraps of Disdain - Drop(Heroic Underbog)
Blade Dancer's Wristguards - World Drop BoE
Hands:
Handgrips of Assassination - Drop(Black Morass)
Gloves of the Unbound - Drop(Arcatraz)
Belt:
Socrethar's Girdle - Quest Reward
Epoch's Whispering Cinch - Drop(Heroic Durnholde Keep)
Legs:
Oilcloth Breeches - Quest Reward
Leggings of Assassination - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Boots:
Boots of the Unjust - Drop(Heroic Auchenai Crypts)
Felboar Hide Shoes - Quest Reward
Rings:
Lightwarden's Band - Reputation Reward(Aldor, Revered)
Band of the Exorcist - Vendor(50 Spirit Shards)
Ring of Umbral Doom - Drop(Botanica)
Trinkets:
Hourglass of the Unraveller - Drop(Black Morass)
Bladefist's Breadth - Quest Reward
Core of Ar'kelos - Quest Reward
Weapons:
Whispering Blade of Slaying - Drop(Shadow Labyrinth)
Twin-Bladed Ripper - Quest Reward
Borak's Reminder - Quest Reward
Illidari-Bane Dagger - Quest Reward
Ranged:
Emberhawk Crossbow - Drop(Arcatraz)
Wrathfire Hand-Cannon - Drop(Shadow Labyrinth)
Hemet's Elekk Gun - Quest Reward
This is the Combat rogue gear list, generally from sources similar in difficulty to the above list.
Helm:
Darkguard Face Mask - Drop(Auchenai Crypts)
Helm of the Claw - Quest Reward
The Night Watchman - World Drop BoE
Neck:
Talon Lord's Collar - Quest Reward
Traitor's Noose - Drop(Heroic Slavepens)
Jagged Bark Pendant - Drop(Botanica)
Back:
Delicate Green Poncho - Quest Reward
Cloak of Malice - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Cloak of the Inciter - Drop(Shadow Labyrinth)
Shoulders:
Mantle of Perenolde - Drop(Durnholde)
Sun-Gilded Shouldercaps - Drop(Black Morass)
Shoulderpads of Assassination - Drop(Sethekk Halls)
Chest:
Chestguard of the Prowler - Drop(Heroic Ramparts)
Chestguard of the Dark Stalker - World Drop BoE
Hauberk of Karabor - Quest Reward
Wrist:
Shackles of Quagmirran - Drop(Heroic Slave Pens)
Armwraps of Disdain - Drop(Heroic Underbog)
Blade Dancer's Wristguards - World Drop BoE
Hands:
Predatory Gloves - Drop(Heroic Mana-Tombs)
Handgrips of Assassination - Drop(Black Morass)
Gloves of the Unbound - Drop(Arcatraz)
Belt:
Socrethar's Girdle - Quest Reward
Epoch's Whispering Cinch - Drop(Heroic Durnholde Keep)
Legs:
Warpscale Leggings - Drop(Botanica)
Retainer's Leggings - Reputation Rewards(Scryers)
Oilcloth Breeches - Quest Reward
Leggings of Assassination - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Boots:
Boots of the Unjust - Drop(Heroic Auchenai Crypts)
Felboar Hide Shoes - Quest Reward
Rings:
Lightwarden's Band - Reputation Reward(Aldor, Revered)
Longstrider's Loop - Drop(Mana Tombs)
Band of the Exorcist - Vendor(50 Spirit Shards)
Ring of Umbral Doom - Drop(Botanica)
Trinkets:
Hourglass of the Unraveller - Drop(Black Morass)
Bladefist's Breadth - Quest Reward
Core of Ar'kelos - Quest Reward
Weapons:
Blinkstrike - World Drop BoE
The Bladefist - Drop(Heroic Shattered Halls)
Vindicator's Brand - Reputation Reward(Aldor, Exalted)
Latro's Shifting Sword - Drop(Black Morass)
Edge of the Cosmos - Drop(Mechanar)
Revenger - Drop(Botanica)
Ranged:
Emberhawk Crossbow - Drop(Arcatraz)
Needle Shrike - Drop(Underbog)
Skyfire Hawk-Bow - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Hemet's Elekk Gun - Quest Reward |
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