Overview

The Rogue class is the king of melee DPS. They have access to a wide range of special abilities, which mostly depend upon energy. The mantra of the Rogue is "fastest to kill, fastest to die." Unlike Hunters and Mages who have the ability to deal damage from ranged, Rogues require to be in close range, which often subjects them to tank-like damage input.

Rogues rely on agility, but should also aim for gear with additional stamina and strength.

Rogues can only wear leather or cloth armour, cannot wear shields, and can only wield 1-handed weapons (daggers, swords and maces) and ranged weapons. At level 10, they can dual wield two one-handed weapons. At level 20, they gain access to Poisons through a quest.

This class is the best for the player who likes to act quickly and unpredictably.

Races

Rogue can be played by:

Alliance

• Dwarves
• Gnomes
• Humans
• Night Elves

Horde

• Orcs
• Trolls
• Undead

All races can play the rogue with equal efficiency, but like any class in World of Warcraft, we should take a deeper look into the Racial Traits and how they affect the gameplay of a rogue.

• The Forsaken's (undead) ability to purge fear, sleep and charm spells is a huge benefit when PvP fighting a Priest or Warlock.
• Night Elves have increased dodge (an extra +1%), increased stealth (equal to a +1 in [Master of Deception]) and the highest base agility in the game.
• Gnomes have escape artist, which allows a gnome to escape from a root once every couple of minutes without using [Vanish].
• Dwarves have Find treasure, which puts chests, clams, etc on the minimap when active, and stoneskin which clears poison, disease, and bleed as needed every couple of minutes.
• Trolls have extra regeneration and 10% of their health regeneration remains active in combat which reduces downtime after any combat which you survive. Though generally unreliable, berserking, combined with [Slice and Dice] will give you +45% or +55% (depending on rank) attack speed, greatly increasing base damage output and poison procs.

Weapons

The Rogue class has a few different weapon choices available. These are:

• Dagger
• Thrown
• Swords (One Handed)
• Bows
• Crossbows
• Guns
• Maces (One Handed)
• Fist Weapons

Using different weapons will probably affect the way you apply your talent points in this class. Some abilities, such as [Backstab] and [Ambush], can only be done with a dagger in your main hand. If you are looking for a melee damage dealer that fights along side a tank but is not the tank, then a sword or mace is probably the weapon for you. If you are looking for a stealthy class that can do amazing damage with opening and finishing abilities then dagger will probably interest you most.

Many rogue abilities are instant attacks based on the weapon damage of your main hand weapon. It is desirable to use a slow main hand weapon as it will increase the effectiveness of your instant abilities. Often, slow weapons with a lower base DPS are more effective than quicker weapons with higher DPS. Note that after patch 1.8 comes out the speed of the weapon will mean nothing, since the multiplier will be a set number. Patch notes can be found here- http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Having some form of weapon swap macro is very useful for a rogue. Sinister Strikes are more effective with slow weapons, most of which aren't daggers. For example, using a dagger to ambush before switching to a slower main hand weapon for regular combat.

Notable weapons

• Talon of Vultros level 21, drops off Vultros, a rare monster in Westfall.
• Barman Shanker level 55 (50 required) Bind on Pickup, drops off Plugger Spazzring in the Blackrock Depths instance.
• Perdition's Blade level 77 (60 requuired) Bind on Pickup epic dagger from Ragnaros in the Molten Core instance.

• Cruel Barb level 24 (19 required) Bind on Pickup superior sword from Edwin VanCleef in the Deadmines.
• Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge and Dal'Rend's Tribal Guardian level 63 (58 required) Bind on Pickup superior swords from Rend Blackhand of Blackrock Spire.
• Vis'Kang the Bloodletter level 74 (60 required) Bind on Pickup epic sword from Onyxia from Onyxia's Lair.

Abilities

This section provides a taster of the abilities of the rogue. For more detail, see Rogue Abilities.

Opening Moves

These attacks can only be performed if the rogue is stealthed. Performing one of these moves (with the exception of improved sap) cancels stealth, so you typically can only get one opener in per fight. Unless noted otherwise, each of these attacks grants one combo point if it hits.

[Ambush]

This is the reason rogues like daggers - it is a hard-hitting high-damage attack, dealing 250% weapon damage plus a flat bonus. It requires that the rogue have a dagger in his main hand, and that the rogue be behind his target and stealthed. The damage from this skill is affected by armor, so Ambush is best used against low-armor targets, typically spellcasters, rogues, or druids.

[Garrote]

This attack afflicts the target with a bleeding effect, causing a flat amount of damage over 18 seconds. It requires that the rogue be behind his target. The damage caused is bleeding damage, and therefore is not reduced by armor. Because the damage occurs repeatedly, this effect slows spellcasting, prevents enemy rogues from stealthing, and prevents enemy players from bandaging. The actual damage from this attack is relatively small; it is typically used only when the benefits of these secondary effects outweigh the extra damage from an ambush.

[Cheap Shot]

Cheap shot is arguably the most versatile opener. It stuns the target for 4 seconds, and grants two combo points instead of one. Unlike ambush and garrote, the rogue need not be behind his target. Cheap shot is useful more often than not; it is a poor choice only against enemies which are immune to stun, or which can easily escape stun, such as mages which can Blink out of a stun.

[Sap]

This opener isn't really an opener - it cancels stealth, but deals no damage, grants no combo points, and doesn't activate auto-attack. Instead, it causes your target to become disoriented for a long peroiod of time, allowing you to fight other enemies or pursue other goals without that target interfering. Sapping a target still causes aggro; when the disorient effect expires, the target will chase down the rogue who sapped him. Sap can only be used on humanoid targets, and cannot be used on a target which is in combat. It is most useful in instances, to separate monsters from their companions so that the player's group can fight them in smaller groups.

One particular quirk of this skill which deserves discussion is [Improved Sap]. This subtlety talent gives the rogue a chance to remain stealthed after sapping, up to 90% with three points. This allows a rogue to sap an enemy in anticipation of an attack, giving other party members more time to use other crowd control attacks. Also, if the rogue saps an enemy and remains stealthed, he does not gain aggro with that enemy. A rogue with improved sap can sap an enemy, then destealth and interact with an environment item (mining vein, patch of herbs, etcetera) and restealth afterwards before the sapped creature wakes up.

[Premeditation]

This ability is available as a talent at the top of the Subtlety tree. When used, it grants two combo points on the rogue's current target. It can only be used while stealthed and within melee range of the target, and has a one second cast time, but does not remove the rogue from stealth when cast. Essentially, this enables the rogue to gain 3 combo points from his opener alone. It is most useful when combined with improved sap, to ensure that the enemy does not turn around while you're casting.

Combat Abilities

These abilities are your bread and butter in normal combat.

Many of these abilities are also combo moves, meaning that they grant combo points when they connect.

[Vanish]

Allows the rogue to vanish from sight, entering an improved stealth mode for 10 sec. Also breaks movement impairing effects. If you're PvPing, try to save this 5 minute timer for when it counts most... such as when a Mage uses Frost Nova on you.

[Sinister Strike]

This is the basic rogue attack. It causes weapon damage plus a flat bonus, with no side-effects or disadvantages. It has no cooldown, and doesn't take large amounts of energy to cast.

Sinister strike is an instant strike, and as such benefits greatly from slow weapons with a high base damage. Note that after 1.8 the speed of the weapon will not affect damage, just the high damage range.

[Backstab]

This is the other reason that rogues like daggers. Backstab causes 150% weapon damage plus a flat amount, and grants one combo point. It isn't quite as damaging as ambush, but it also doesn't require stealth. If you have a party member to tank a monster, then you can let fly backstab after backstab until it dies. Even by yourself, you can gouge or stun a monster, slide around behind it, and backstab. Backstab has a large energy requirement, and generates a lot of threat from monsters.

Backstab is an instant strike, and as such benefits greatly from slow weapons with a high base damage.

[Gouge]

This skill grants a combo point, causes a trivial amount of damage, and disorients the target for a short time. It requires that the rogue be in front of his target, and is on a 10 second cooldown. It is most useful for cancelling spellcasting, or to set the target up for a backstab.

[Evasion]

This ability improves the rogue's dodge chance by 50% for 15 seconds. It is on a 5 minute cooldown. This ability buys you a few more seconds to kill your target or get away - be certain to make that time count.

[Kick]

This is the rogue's main anti-caster ability. It cancels spells which are mid-cast, and prevents the caster from casting any spells from that school for a few seconds. It also causes a trivial amount of damage.

[Feint]

This ability reduces the rogue's threat level on his current target. It won't make a monster lose interest and go home, but it can make him decide to go bother a different party member. Rogues can build up threat faster than almost any other class, so the ability to reduce threat levels is critical, helping your tank to maintain the monsters' focus.

[Ghostly Strike]

This ability is available as a talent on the Subtlety tree. It causes 125% weapon damage, and grants you a 15% bonus to dodge for 7 seconds. It grants 1 combo point, and has a 20 second cooldown. It is kind of like a lightweight evasion designed for more regular use.

Riposte

This ability is available as a talent on the Combat tree. It cannot be cast unless you have recently parried an attack. When cast, it causes 150% weapon damage and disarms the target for 6 seconds. It has a 6 second cooldown, and costs very little energy to cast. Riposte is most useful against warriors, hunters, paladins, and other rogues; disabling their weapons takes most of their bite away.

[Blade Flurry]

This ability is available as a talent in the Combat tree. It increases your attack speed by 20% for 15 seconds. In this period all attacks strike an additional nearby opponent. It has a 2 minutes cooldown.

[Cold Blood]

This ability is available as a talent in the Assassination tree. It increases the critical strike chance of the next Sinister Strike, Backstab, Ambush, or Eviscerate by 100%; the next hit is guaranteed to be a critical strike. Note however that there is some confusion about this ability since the wording only indicates a doubling of the chance of a critical strike.

[Preparation]

This ability is available as a talent in the Subtlety tree. It immediately finishes the cooldown on all other Rogue abilities.

[Blind]

This ability blinds the target, making the target wander at 40% move speed for up to 10 seconds. If the target is attacked the blinding effekt is removed. This ability has a long range, and can thus be used as a long distance kick to disrupt spell from being cast. Blind is also very useful in PvP; either blind or gouge the opponent, and use the break to bandage yourself. This ability requires  [Blinding Powder] and has a cooldown of 5 minutes.

[Hemorrhage]

This ability is available as a talent in the Subtlety tree. It is an [instant strike] that increases physical damage dealt to the target by up to 3 (5 and 7 for rank 2 and 3 respectively). It lasts 30 charges or 15 sec, and awards 1 combo point. It has no cooldown.

[Adrenaline Rush]

This ability is available as a talent in the Combat tree. It instantly increases the Energy regeneration rate by 100% for 15 seconds. It has a 6 minutes cooldown.

Finishing Moves

These kinds of moves are unique to the rogue, and require the rogue to have saved up a number of combo points. When activated, the finishing move uses all available combo points (such that more points makes the abilities more effective).

[Eviscerate]

This is the most common, most reliable finisher - direct damage, no secondary effects. Damage from eviscerate is affected by armor; against heavy-armored foes, you'll get more damage out of rupture.

[Slice and Dice]

This finising move grants the rogue a temporary boost to his melee attack speed. This significantly increases his auto-attack damage, and gives commensuratly more chances for poisons to hit. This finisher is generally weaker than the others, but has the benefit of continuing after your target is killed. When a target is nearly dead, you can use slice and dice, kill it, and then move on to another enemy still benefiting from those combo points.

[Expose Armor]

This finishing move reduces the target's armor for 30 seconds, with more combo points increasing the amount reduced. This skill is most useful against elite foes, when working in a group; the combo points spent on exposing armor are usually better spent on damaging the enemy. Also, this skill does not stack with the warrior's sunder armor skill. The maximum potential of expose armor is less than that of sunder armor, but because sunder armor is stacked, any level of expose armor typically prevents a warrior from using sunder armor at all on that target.

[Rupture]

This finishing move causes bleeding damage, similar to garrote. It is used for similar purposes, but it does much more damage than garrote, and is therefore more attractive for casual use. The number of combo points invested in a rupture determines how long the effect lasts, but the damage per second which the skill inflicts is constant. As such, one or two point ruptures can be more effective than full 5 point ruptures; by the time a two point rupture expires, thr rogue typically has another two combo points, allowing him to renew the effect and maintaining the rupture damage continuously.

Poisons

Poisons are temporary weapon enchantments, which have a chance on each hit to produce a special effect. Because poisons are temporary weapon enchantments, they will disappear when entering an instance or battlegrounds. Only rogues can create or apply poisons, and they cannot poison other players' weapons through a trade window. Poison skill is initially learned through a rogue quest, available at level 20. This quest grants the rogue one initial type of poison; further types are purchased from the rogue trainer.

Poison creation is a production skill, like First Aid or Cooking. The player's poison skill level controls his access to new poisons; in addition to the level requirement, a rogue must have a certain level of poison skill in order to learn a new poison type. However, the player's poison skill maximum rises by 5 each level, and most rogues use far more than 5 applications of poison per level. As a consequence, it is rare for a rogue to have too little poison skill to learn a new poison as soon as his level permits.

[Instant Poison]

This poison has a chance to add nature damage to each hit with the weapon it is applied to. It has no side-effects or drawbacks.

[Deadly Poison]

This afflicts the target with a poison effect, causing nature damage periodically. Its damage is less than an equivalent level of instant poison, but it actually deals damage more quickly than instant poison thanks to its higher application rate.

Because deadly poison deals damage over time, it slows spellcasting, prevents rogues from stealthing, and prevents all players from bandaging. However, its continuing damage causes many forms of crowd control (polymorph, charm, freezing traps, etcetera) to break immediately. Deadly poison stacks up to 5 times, making it harder to remove with some spells.

[Crippling Poison]

This poison afflicts the target with a reduction in movement speed. It has no side-effects or drawbacks. It is a favorite poison for instances and PvP fighting, where the ability to prevent escape is key.

[Mind-Numbing Poison]

This poison afflicts the target with a reduction in casting speed. It has no side-effects or drawbacks.

[Wound Poison]

This poison reduces the effectiveness of healing spells which affect the target, causing them to heal lesser amounts. It stacks up to 5 times, making it harder to remove with some spells.

Other Abilities

[Pick Pocket]

This ability allows the rogue to get some extra loot from an enemy NPC. The rogue must be stealthed and within 5 yards of his target to use this skill. If it is successful, a loot box will pop up, allowing him to choose which items to take; typically, this is a handful of silver, with a chance for odd monster-specific items or gems. If the skill is resisted, the monster immediately detects the rogue and aggros. Failure rates depend on relative levels, but the base failure rate seems to be around 5%.

Many monsters have no pockets, and thus cannot be pickpocketed. Typically humanoid types will have pockets and beasts won't, but there are numerous exceptions. If a rogue attempts to pickpocket a monster who doesn't have pockets, the moster does not aggro. Enemy players never have pockets, and this ability does not work on creatures in combat.

The items recieved from picking pockets are not subject to group looting rules, so you always get all the items and 100% of the money. The money and items picked up with this ability are extras, in addition to the monster's normal loot when it is killed, so a rogue picking pockets is not depriving his companions of loot. Each monster has only a few items in his pockets when he spawns; if one rogue goes through an area, picking all the monsters' pockets but killing none of the monsters, then the next rogue through the area will find that all the monsters pockets are empty. For this reason, it is considered polite to kill every monster whose pockets you pick, unless you are in an instance; that way, the monsters will respawn and the next rogue through the area can pick their pockets as well.

[Sprint]

This skill increases the rogue's run speed dramatically for 15 seconds. It also doesn't break stealth when used, so it can help the rogue into or out of trouble equally.

[Pick Lock]

This skill allows the rogue to open locked doors, chests, and lockboxes. It is a gathering skill, like fishing or mining; the rogue must have it at or above a certain level to open certain types of locks. This skill typically doesn't advance quickly enough with casual use; rogues must occasionally go out on runs to improve their lockpicking. Fortunately, your rogue trainer can point you to areas which contain footlockers at your skill level.

[Distract]

This useful ability allows you to designate a circular area at some distance. Any enemies within that circle will pivot to face the center of the circle, and remain facing that way for 10 seconds. This allows a rogue to spin a target around, preventing them from seeing the rogue and opening up their back for an ambush. Distract does not break stealth, and does not prevent the monsters from aggroing. Distract does not work on creatures which are in combat. When used against a player, it spins them around but does not require them to face that direction for 10 seconds; the player can immediately change his facing.

[Detect Traps]

This skill gives you a short-duration buff which enables you to see traps. The skill uses no energy, is instant cast, does not break stealth, and can be used while mounted. The ability to see traps is of limited use at this time, but useful in PvP against Hunters, and against the mines in Alterac Valley.

[Disarm Trap]

This skill allows you to disarm a trap, preventing it from going off. To disarm a trap you must first detect it (with detect traps), then sneak up on it with stealth. If you come too close to the trap, you will trigger it, so approach only as close as you need to. Again, this is of limited use due to the lack of traps in the game at present.

Some good uses of [Disarm Trap]: Wooden Boxes in Stratholme, Hunter Traps in PvP, Landmines in Alterac Valley

Stealth

Rogues have the ability to stealth and become very hard to see. This is not invisibility however. Monsters and players (PvP) can still see you if you don't try to stay behind them. You can increase your sneaking abilities through talents (Master of Deception), this will give you a better chance to not be detected. Monsters that are above your level have a better chance of detecting you. However, a monster of any level will see you if you walk right in front of their face. Also, when a monster is almost near enough to detect you, it will make a noise and look in your direction. As long as you don't get any closer to the monster while it is facing you, it will not detect you, and will continue patrolling after a few seconds (so you can backstab them when they turn to walk away!). At level 22 you also gain the ability to cause a distraction to make monsters look away from your direction so you can sneak up with very little chance of being seen.

However, you move slower in stealth depending on the Rank of your skill. You can increase that movement speed with talent points spent on Camouflage - 3% per talent point, topping at 15%. You can also use Sprint while cloaked to increase your speed, not breaking your stealth.

Poisons

At level 20 you can go on a quest to acquire the Poisons skill. These poisons can then be applied to your weapon to enhance damage or cause other effects. Poisons have both a timer (the amount of time they last) and counters (the number of times they 'go off' before they run out). These are both displayed on the weapons properties when you mouse over the weapon. Note that applying poison will break stealth.

Talents

Rogue Talents are split into 3 categories:

• Assassination
• Combat
• Subtlety

Talent builders can be found at Official Blizzard site, Classes of Warcraft, WoW Vault, and ThottBot.

See the rogue talents page for further details.

Useful Add-ons

This sections lists some of the more helpful mods specifically for the Rogue class.

StunWatch

Displays a progress bar with the duration of your sap, cheap shot, gogue, kidney shot and blind. This is extremely useful to time you attacks, and keep the opponent stun locked.

RogueAgentSE

Two small buttons at the mini-map displays the current number of blinding powder and flash powder in your bag. This is particular helpful if you often forget to restock those two reagents.

SpellAlert

Notifies the player when someone begins to cast a spell. This is great since it lets you know when to kick, blind or stun the opponent; quite handy if you prefer not to be polymorphed.

WeaponQuickSwap

Useful for the rogue who likes to keep something other than a dagger equipped, but doesn't want to lose the use of dagger-based abilities.

These and more rogue-add-ons can be downloaded from Curse Gaming.

See Also

• See Starting a Rogue for some advice when starting out.
  
• See Rogue Sets for discussion of set items for Rogues.

Some good info at the official WoW forums:

• Rogue FAQ v4 (replies are broken)
• Rogue FAQ Replies Thread
• Lockpicking FAQ