Osiris’ Guide to Playing a Rogue v3.0

This guide or any of its contents are not to be used without the consent of the author. I will be submitting it to a few different sites. If you would like to repost it to your guild site you have my permission in advance as long as it isn’t rewritten or that you take credit for it as your own work. However, I prefer that you either simply post the link to Google Docs or contact me with your request and I will provide you with the HTML so that my hyper links stay intact.  I do not want it rewritten in any way with the exception of the many of you who have asked permission to translate it into other languages before posting it to their site.

Sorry for the shameless plug, but if you would like to support my work, please click on the Fallen Sword links in my guide. I make no money from you doing so, but I get in-game currency in this other game that I play on my free time when you set up an account. Don't worry, they're not spammers. Thanks in advance.

It’s been a long time. I wanted to do version 3.0 a very long time ago. But we’ve seen so many changes to the class that would have rendered my guide obsolete. At this point in time (roughly 6 months after the launch of BC) I feel that there will be very few changes to the class for quite some time. What drove me to update my guide is the fact that I am seeing more basic questions about rogue in every forum than I ever have before. The biggest problem with this is that Blizzard is terrible about disclosing game mechanics and most people in most forums dismiss questions by telling people to /learntoplay.

In this guide I (as always) write in a very subjective manner. Instead of just presenting the facts and letting you decide for yourselves, I will present what I think is best in many situations. The reason I do this is because I want to give new rogues a more solid direction. There are several controversial issues when it comes to rogue and I pick a side on most of it. Play the game any way that you like but if you're looking for guidance, here it is. Take it for what it's worth. That isn't to say that this guide doesn't serve the more advanced rogue. No one knows everything about the rogue class. Not even me.

The most common questions I get are related to builds. I’m not going to have an actual build section. Instead, I will list builds in various sections. People often confuse builds for PvP, PvE and leveling.

About the Author:

I’m married with two kids, work as a senior level technology salesperson in Silicon Valley and am the Guildmaster and Raid Leader of a large raiding guild. How I find the time, I will never know. I was in the original beta and was in the alpha for Burning Crusade. I'm not a writer. I was a music major in college because playing the saxophone got me laid. But I love to write. I love to write guides that put something very complicated into simple terms. And most of all I thoroughly enjoy serving the rogue community.

WHY PLAY A ROGUE?

Is this the class for you? As a rogue you’re going get to up close and personal to everything that you kill. The problem is that mobs cleave, AOE and do all kinds of nasty stuff that gets us a beating while wearing leather armor. It’s frustrating but it’s exciting. It also takes a lot of skill. We don’t push nearly as many buttons as classes like warlocks, warriors or paladins but what buttons we push and when we push them are critical. This requires that you have good instincts, excellent reflexes and a clear head more so than any other class in the game and I have played them all.

If you picked this class because you thought it would be easy, you made a big mistake. It is a relatively easy class to dive into, but if you want to master it, you have a long road ahead of you. Hopefully I can help you out some.

TALENTS FOR LEVELING A ROGUE

I’ve changed my thinking as to the best approach to this over the years in terms of giving advice to new players when it comes to leveling builds.

I recommend that you level with a combat swords build. This means that in your main hand you will use a sword and that you will be primarily going down the combat tree when choosing your talents. The reason I picked this as my recommendation is because it is both easy, effective and unlike the other trees provides immediate benefits with nearly every talent. You’ll deal with multiple mobs well and you will dish out a lot of damage while taking very little. Going down this path will minimize your chances of making a bad mistake in your choices of leveling. Combat Sinister Strike is arguably the best build for killing mobs quickly. At some point of your leveling process you will feel like you’re doing very little damage and taking a lot. You will want to change your spec to achieve this. You will be disappointed if you do. Stick to this build and you will be fine.

Why not daggers? I love daggers. But leveling with daggers is difficult for new players. The worst part is that it’s not even necessarily faster. To be effective with daggers you have to gouge and kidney shot a lot so that you can get behind mobs. This requires a lot of time to wait for your energy to get back and if your gouge or kidney shot get dodged, parried, blocked or is missed; you will find yourself in a tedious situation. Daggers are also not very effective against multiple mobs. I know some godly veteran rogues who suck at daggers. Where daggers really shine is against mobs that are significantly lower than you are. So unless you plan to really hold off from new zones until they become green, stick to swords.

Why not put points in subtlety? Subtlety offers some great talents. Unfortunately, most of them are too far down the tree to be worth going after. Even with 41 points, it’s not so ideal for leveling. I found subtlety to be very weak in comparison to other builds. Yes, you’re going to get busted in stealth a little more without Master of Deception, but who cares? You’re going to kill thousands of mobs. A few busting you isn’t that big of a deal.

Why not maces or fists? There just aren’t that many weapon options for maces or fists until you get into Outland. It’s not a crime to temporarily use a mace or fist while specced for swords if it is a solid boost over your current weapon. You could respec but I highly suggest that you just stick with your build and temporarily forgo the benefit of the sword specialization.

Why not hemo? I tested hemo very thoroughly. It's great if you want to stunlock mobs to death but it's too slow. Why slow your grind when you can kill so much faster and bandage every 10 mobs or so with a combat build?

Combat Swords Leveling Build

Combat (41 points)

2/2 Improved Sinister Strike

5/5 Lightning Reflexes

4/5 Deflection

5/5 Precision

2/2 Endurance

5/5 Dual Wield Specialization

1/1 Blade Flurry

5/5 Sword Specialization

3/3 Aggression

2/2 Vitality

1/1 Adrenaline Rush

5/5 Combat Potency

1/1 Surprise Attacks

Assassination (20 points)

3/3 Improved Eviscerate

5/5 Malice

3/3 Ruthlessness

2/2 Murder

1/1 Relentless Strikes

5/5 Lethality

1/5 Improved Poisons

Subtlety (0 points)

None

Here’s the order that you should take them:

1/2 Improved Sinister Strike – level 10

2/2 Improved Sinister Strike – level 11

1/5 Lightning Reflexes – level 12

2/5 Lightning Reflexes – level 13

3/5 Lightning Reflexes – level 14

4/5 Lightning Reflexes – level 15

5/5 Lightning Reflexes – level 16

1/5 Precision – level 17

2/5 Precision – level 18

3/5 Precision – level 19

4/5 Precision – level 20

5/5 Precision – level 21

1/5 Deflection – level 22

2/5 Deflection – level 23

3/5 Deflection – level 24

1/5 Dual Wield Specialization – level 25

2/5 Dual Wield Specialization – level 26

3/5 Dual Wield Specialization – level 27

4/5 Dual Wield Specialization – level 28

5/5 Dual Wield Specialization – level 29

1/1 Blade Flurry – level 30

1/5 Sword Specialization – level 31

2/5 Sword Specialization – level 32

3/5 Sword Specialization – level 33

4/5 Sword Specialization – level 34

5/5 Sword Specialization – level 35

1/3 Aggression – level 36

2/3 Aggression – level 37

3/3 Aggression – level 38

1/2 Endurance – level 39

1/1 Adrenaline Rush – level 40

1/2 Vitality – level 41

2/2 Vitality – level 42

4/5 Deflection – level 43

2/2 Endurance – level 44

1/5 Combat Potency – level 45

2/5 Combat Potency – level 46

3/5 Combat Potency – level 47

4/5 Combat Potency – level 48

5/5 Combat Potency – level 49

1/1 Surprise Attacks – level 50

1/3 Improved Eviscerate – level 51

2/3 Improved Eviscerate – level 52

3/3 Improved Eviscerate – level 53

1/5 Malice – level 54

2/5 Malice – level 55

3/5 Malice – level 56

4/5 Malice – level 57

5/5 Malice – level 58

1/2 Murder – level 59

2/2 Murder – level 60

1/5 Lethality – level 61

2/5 Lethality – level 62

3/5 Lethality – level 63

4/5 Lethality – level 64

5/5 Lethality – level 65

1/1 Relentless Strikes level 66

1/3 Ruthlessness – level 67

2/3 Ruthlessness – level 68

3/3 Ruthlessness – level 69

1/5 Improved Poisons – level 70

The order in which you should take these talents is debatable. Many of the talents in the assassination tree give a good damage boost. But surprise attacks is too good to not go after early. I could come up with a series of build orders that caused you to respec every few levels but that would be a total waste of time and gold. Stick with this build and take these talents in the order I listed them.

I chose not to recommend riposte in this build. Yes, it is nice to take a little less damage from time to time and yes, it does a good amount of damage. But it requires that you either set up a macro and spam it like crazy or watch attentively to see if you parry an attack. I want to keep it simple for you guys. I'm not saying that any of you are too stupid to set up a macro or pay attention to detail, I just wanted to come up with a build where you can mindlessly go into autopilot and level with as little effort as possible. I used riposte to level in beta and chose to go without it when BC went retail. There is something to be said about going into a mindless "autopilot" killing spree where you just crush mobs without thinking.

Your attack combo with this build should be the same just about every time:

Cheap shot, Slice and Dice, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Eviscerate

This is not the combo I used when grinding but that's because I came into BC with a lot of tier 3 and an excellent weapon. I killed stuff so fast that I wouldn't get half way through the 2 point SnD timer. A few seconds after they came out of the CS stun, mobs were usually dead. This won't be the case for anyone coming into BC with less than tier 2.5 and very good epic weapons. And that should be pretty much no one at this point.

In early levels you will be opening with garrote, but CS will be your opener once you learn it.

Once you gain some confidence you should utilize blade flurry and adrenaline rush. Gather up two mobs (three if you think you can handle it) and kill them at the same time. This is a great time to use evasion as well. Throw in evasion and you can handle 4, even 5 if you're good.

LEVELING GEAR

You will probably stumble across some good daggers, maybe even some really good ones. Don’t be seduced by them. Stick with a sword in your main hand. Your offhand is a different story. Ideally you want an extremely fast sword in your offhand, but a fist, mace or even a dagger are perfectly acceptable. The important thing is that it’s fast. The faster your offhand, the more combat potency procs you will get and the more damage you will do with poisons. There is very little gray area here.

Your main hand sword should be a high max damage weapon. If you’re using a 20 DPS sword with 60 max damage and find one that is 25 DPS but only 58 max damage you could go with the higher DPS at the small cost of max damage but the rule of thumb that will guide you is to go for high max damage swords.

The rest of your gear is for the most part going to be green. Until you hit level 58, this should be “of the monkey” gear. Agility and stamina is what you want. You will run into blue pieces on the auction house. If you want to spend the gold, fine, but you by no means need to spend a penny on the auction house even if you’re a mediocre player leveling a rogue for the first time. From level 58 on you want “of the bandit” gear. This stuff is fantastic. Most of the level 58 bandit items are better than the tier one epic Nightslayer pieces from Molten Core and in later levels it smokes tier 2.

LEVELING ADDONS AND USER INTERFACE

The default Blizzard user interface is all you need to level your rogue. If you’re looking for a few things to make life easier, here are some recommendations:

Mobhealth 3- It’s nice to know how much life a mob has left. Plus this is packaged with mob info 2 which I’m not a fan of but will give you some additional info on mobs that you’ve killed.

Energywatch – It’s good to get in the habit of knowing when your energy will tick.

Cartographer – This one is a must. By default your map is fogged out until you get to those areas. Cartographer removes all of that and adds an insane amount of functionality that will help you navigate the world (universe).

I don’t like the default Blizzard unit frames. The two I like the most are X-Perl and AG Unit Frames.

Fubar ExperienceFu - It's nice to know how much XP/per hour you're earning. This addon requires Fubar.

User Interface Settings

There are some options that you should consider in the Blizzard UI. In Graphic Settings there is an option to scale the size of your screen by selecting UI Scale and sliding the bar to the left to make it smaller. This gives you a lot more room on your UI and allows you to see more of your surroundings. You should also enable all of your bars. It’s nice to have a place to put all of your skills, poisons, bandages, potions, etc.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that you bind your abilities to keys. You should never be using your mouse to click on skills in combat. People make fun of clickers. Don’t be a clicker. It’s slow and clumsy. And those are about the last two things you can be as a rogue.  A lot of people ask me where I bind my keys.  I'm not going to post my Nostromo bindings, just make sure that everything that you commonly use is in a very convenient location. 

There are a lot of other addons that you can get. I don’t recommend that you mess with too many of them. If you overdo it you will just lag yourself out when you are in life and death situations. The big thing that you want to avoid is some of these compilations that people have put together. Most of these compilation authors started off with something simple enough. But as time went on they got more and more people asking for more and more worthless addons and now they’re to the point where they are loaded with junk. Mazzle is really cool if you want to run at 3 FPS or are an expert at UI’s. Keep it simple for now. Think more about adding functionality when you get serious about PvP or raiding.

LEVELING STRATEGIES

Green is good. Try to hold off from going into new zones until the mobs are green to you. Killing mobs and doing quests 3-4 levels below you is ideal. The quests will be a joke and you will chew through the mobs with ease. It’s very easy to destroy your XP per hour by going after mobs your level or higher. You get the same XP from a level 61 quest as you do at 58 and 66. Just don’t let them turn grey.

I never used to be a big fan of quests. I have changed my mind on this since The Burning Crusade. There are so many good resources out there for finding info on quests. Wowhead.com is the best. It will tell you where to go and what to do. The important thing is that you do the quests quickly. Don’t spend an hour looking for one stupid quest objective. Look it up and get it done. Your XP per hour will be amazing.

Do all of the quests in your zone except the group ones and knock all of your group quests out with others at the same time.

Try to keep a pace of no less than 5 quests completed per hour.

Why Am I Leveling So Slowly?

It's not a race. I'm not here to tell you that you need to go 1-70 in 8 days played. But if you're looking to level at a reasonable pace, here are some tips:

Avoid excuses not to level. I've seen a lot of people do anything that they can to keep from leveling. I've seen people spend days trying to gather the mats to craft one item at level 20. You want to go through a bit of trouble to complete a difficult quest because you really want the reward? Fine. Spend an hour. Don't let crafting get in your way of leveling when that item will be replaced with an easy to obtain quest reward 3 levels later. And please stop asking for a high level to run you through instances. There's nothing in WC that will make your grind so much easier that it's worth spamming channels for an hour straight. Sometimes I will ask guildmates to run me through instances that I know they can solo demolish an instance in 30 minutes. If I have 4 quests I can knock out in a short period of time, fine, but for the most part I don't run instances at all when leveling.

Set a goal. It's Thursday night, you have all of your crap done at home and you now have 6 hours of game time before you need to go to bed. Where do you expect to be by the end of the night? Set realistic goals. To expect to hit levels 14, 15 and 16 is perfectly reasonable. To expect to do 67, 68 and 69 in six hours is not. Try longer term goals. “I plan to be at level 44 by the end of the weekend”.

OK I'M LEVEL 70, NOW WHAT?

A lot of rogues don't seem to know what to do with themselves after they hit 70. It's easier if you're in a raiding guild that has a spot for you, but for 70% of the rogues out there this is not going to be much of your time if at all.

Get Geared Up

Just because you're not going to raid doesn't mean you shouldn't get as beefed up as much as possible. Non-heroic 5-man instances are a bit harder than the level 60 pre-BC instances. Most of those bosses had mindless strats and in most cases were a tank and spank. If you're saying “Been there done that” in reference to Scholomance, you are dismissing some amazing content in 5-man instances in Outland.

Better gear means better PvP and easier farming.

Get Your Mount

The non-epic flying mount is nice. The epic flying mounts are amazing. The enjoyment of flying on this infinitely faster mount is a rush that I'm still not over and I was at the mount vendor the day it went live in alpha. The netherdrake mount took that to another level for me. Besides the cool factor, faster travel means less time and let's face it; WoW is full of time sinks.

I realize that the gold you need for the epic is a lot to many of you. So what? If you make a pathetic 100g a day, you will have your mount in 2 months. That's nothing. The alternative is doing nothing about it, right?

Start an Arena Team

I don't care if you suck. If you're not already on a team, you probably already suck. That goes for many of you who used to do a lot of battlegrounds. So what? Nothing drills awesome PvP skills down your throat like arena teams do. I have known so many high warlords and grand marshals that couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. I still like battlegrounds but they don't make you better. There's no sitting in stealth and guarding towers and graveyards. If you don't push an aggressive game, your team loses. It's that simple. Arenas can be stressful. But that's only true if you care too much about your rating and/or are a sore loser. I went into arenas diving head first into the pool. I don't care about my rating at all. I treat it like I do beta testing. I just want to learn as much as possible.

The gear is so easy to earn. You can have a horrible rating and get a godly offhand in 30-40 matches.

Do Quests

It's not just for pre-70's. There are a ton of awesome quests out there and now Blizzard has repeatable daily quests which I absolutely love. After hitting exalted with Netherwing, I can still go back and do the dailies. They pay a good amount of gold and the mobs have excellent loot tables.

The quests since TBC are a lot cooler too. It's rare that you have a mindless, “kill x mobs” quest. There are events behind them sometimes and certain things trigger when you do these quests that you wouldn't see otherwise. The best quests I've done are those that you do from your flying mount.

Make Friends

This is supposed to be a social game. I don't mean roleplaying. That's a disconnection from being yourself. I mean real conversations. “Hey Steve, did your wife get that new job?” “Dude, did you get some from that chick you went out with last night?” “Oh you're an art major too? What do you think of the impressionists' blah blah blah”

I'm not saying that roleplaying isn't social. It certainly is. It's just not for everyone. Certainly not me. Well, except when my friends and I get drunk and take level 1 naked female gnomes into Ironforge. Sorry roleplayers, I'll try to keep it under 20 shots of Jaeger at my guild's next drunken Teamspeak.

I'm also not saying that you should disconnect yourselves from the roleplaying aspect. You don't have to be a “thee thy thou” person to immerse yourself into the lore of this game. In that aspect we are all roleplayers. Some of you aren't comfortable with integrating real life into this game. I respect that. Some people like their anonymity. But when it comes to making friends, it's a lot easier to listen to people than it is to really share who you are.

I don't care if you are an angry teen who is tortured at school and completely screwed up over your parents' divorce. I don't care if you're a hardcore drug addict that takes his depression out on everyone. At some point you're not a total f-tard and at least sometimes are someone that just about anyone would hang with. Use this game to bring the best out of you. It's supposed to be an escape from real life, not an extension of it.

If you don't play this game on Teamspeak or Ventrilo you are missing out on a lot of fun. Leveling fishing, for example, is about as fun as getting a enema while listening to Ashlee Simpson. Do it on TS while talking to your friends and it can actually be fun. Fishing, not enemas or Ashlee. Nothing numbs those horrors.

Be Better

Learn to be better at what you do. No one is saying that you have to be in full tier 9 epics and be ranked 3900 in arenas. Just strive to be better than you are now. I've been an overachiever for most of my life with most things and there's something to be said about slowing it down and not living life with your hair on fire 24x7. At my age I've learned to slow it down a lot. There's a middle ground. But this game can give anyone satisfaction when you take it to the next level. Get to 70 already. Do a heroic instance. Top the meters in a raid for once. Get 3 more people this week to think you're a cool person.

ROGUE MACROS

Thanks to my friends from Worldofwar.net for your contributions here. There are TONS of great macros out there. Enclosed are some pretty basic “must have” common macros. I don't like macros that are a cast sequence for rogues. I love it on my warlock but rogues really have to make choices based on combo points, dodge/parry/block/miss, how much armor a mob has, if it's poison immune, etc etc etc.

Riposte Macro

I don’t use riposte much anymore. For soloing mobs it can be good damage and it’s nice to be able to disarm them but I just keep it real simple. I also raid which means I parry very little. Even in PvP, most warriors have talents that make them immune and most good rogues wear a weapon chain on their OH. But here’s a macro for it in case it’s what you decide to do.

/castrandom Sinister Strike, Riposte

Cold Blood Eviscerate

Cold blood is easy to forget about. By using this macro you will waste it in situations where you might not want to use it but with this macro replacing eviscerate you will use it every time the cooldown is up and that is huge for damage.

/cast Cold Blood
/stopcasting
/cast Eviscerate

Auto-attack

This macro has been a godsend for me. It starts your attack before you backstab. This is really nice when you’re hopping from mob to mob. No need to right click on them or bind auto-attack to a key, just use this macro. Replace it with Sinister Strike, Hemorrhage or Mutilate as appropriate.

/startattack
/cast Backstab

Blade Flurry Trinket

Most activated trinkets are on a 2 minute cooldown. This makes the use of this macro very convenient because so is blade flurry. Just make sure you put your activated trinket in the top slot.

/cast Blade Flurry
/stopcasting
/use 13

Pickpocket

This is a must. It’s a ton of extra gold. Keep in mind that mobs in combat can still be pickpocketed, so you can wait for your tank to build some threat and you will still get your loot. The only downside is in situations where your Cheap Shot is critical. For example on the Moroes pull I CS the first mob that we kill as soon as it comes down the stairs. Pickpocket can be resisted and that knocks you out of stealth and unable to CS. Just keep these rare situations in mind. Otherwise, welcome to an extra 10-30 gold an hour just from having a macro. Replace Cheap Shot with Garrote and Ambush for their own macros.

/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Cheap Shot

PROFESSIONS

You should pick your profession based on how you plan to play this game. If you’re a serious raider, things like enchanting and jewelcrafting are a little more valuable. Also, if you’re going to be looting epic items from end-game raid instances, the benefits of hammersmith and leatherworker become a little less. It’s also about how you plan to make gold. Most people have a serious problem going out and killing mobs for a few hours a week. If that’s you, pick a profession that you plan to make a lot of gold with that doesn’t require a lot of mob killing.

Blacksmithing – This one is great for maces and swords. Maces are hot with rogues right now. You don’t even need to raid to get godly epic weapons. I recommend this highly unless you are in a serious raiding guild or are a dedicated dagger rogue.

Mining – I didn’t take mining on my rogue and that made crafting my maces a lot more expensive as I had to buy all of my mats in the AH. If you’re good at grinding for gold, you can pass on this one if you’re a blacksmith.

Enchanting – I love this profession. I don’t advertise my services as an enchanter because I get too many tells as it is. I just like being able to enchant for my guild and myself. It doesn’t make me that much gold, I just like it. Not an ideal rogue profession but it comes in handy especially if you upgrade your gear a lot. I’m not saying that this isn’t a profitable profession. It can be but it’s tedious to sell enchants to idiots all day.

Engineering – A lot of extremely serious PvPers are engineers. I think it needs a lot more love and it's not very profitable but to be able to mind control and kill people with a chicken doesn't completely suck. Plus the epic helm is really nice even if you raid.

Leatherworking – This got a little better. There are some very nice epic items that you can make and the leg enchants can be profitable if you farm it all yourself.

Alchemy – We got some godly new potions in BC. It’s nice to be able to make them yourself. You’ll definitely want to get herbalism with this. You could get alchemy and herbalism on an alt (like I did) but make sure it’s 70 and has a flying mount.

Herbalism – This can turn you a decent profit. Killing mobs makes money a lot faster but for now the demand for herbs is high and I think it will stay that way as long as alchemists need to learn new potions.

Jewelcrafting – This one is kind of like enchanting. It’s nice to have but not a must. If you’re going to be a JC you definitely want to get mining as well. Prospecting for gems is important if you actually want to make jewels.

MAKING GOLD AS A ROGUE

Just kill stuff. The best advice that I can give you is to learn to love killing mobs for hours at a time. There is no better way to make gold in this game. Do everything that you can to get past the things that talk you out of this. “Everything is camped”, “I keep getting ganked”, “This is boring”. Go into autopilot. Do whatever you can to be driven about doing the best thing in the game to make gold and that’s to just kill mobs.

There are no super profitable stealth runs or secret grinding strategies. Just go on a killing spree. I've tested how much gold per hour I can make soloing the highest instances possible and none of it comes close.

Stay away from gathering professions if you really want to make gold. I've seen people spend 4 hours gathering herbs that they absolutely needed for raiding. The total value of these herbs bought on the auction house might be 200 gold. Even a holy priest can make twice that in 4 hours. So do you really hate killing mobs so much that you would rather pick flowers for 4 hours than killing mobs for 2 hours? The first mob you kill might drop an epic item that sells for 2000 gold.

You want to make 100-300 gold per hour. I average 250 gold per hour just killing mobs. And I'll be honest, I have YET to loot an epic world drop BOE since TBC came out and I have made more than 40,000 gold just from killing mobs in the last 4 months. As a rogue, you play what is arguably the best class for farming gold. Yes, I am covered in epics but my solo mob grinding DPS isn't a quantum leap over what it was when I was in blue gear.

Shadowmoon Valley

I like Shadowmoon Valley a lot. There are a lot of good mobs out there that have excellent loot tables and almost all of them drop Scryer/Aldor items that sell nicely on the AH. They also drop a lot of cloth which is huge gold. Your pickpocket macro will make you a lot of extra gold as well. I like the mobs that drop Scyer items at the Black Temple. The Aldor guys are good too but you have to watch out for the elites.

Netherstorm

I also like the Mana Forges in Netherstorm. They have fantastic loot tables. The only downside is that you will have to deal with multiple mobs. Just muscle through the beating you will take from multiple mobs in your initial grind and you will get into a pattern of only having to kill solo mobs as long as you stay ahead of the re-pop.

Blade's Edge

Since 2.1, Blade's Edge has become a much better place to farm as well. Some of the ogres have pretty good loot tables.

I don’t like farming for motes. They can make you money but not as much as humanoid mobs will. The elementals that drop them are insanely camped and not extremely melee friendly in most cases.

You should also learn to play the auction house. I’m not going to get in depth about the Auctioneer addon but you should get it and learn to use it. How often you sell your items and how much you sell them for is the difference between 100g and 300g an hour. I'm also not suggesting that you play the AH like it's eBay. I have made a lot of gold buying items cheap and selling them high but you by no means need to do this to make gold. My best advice to you're when selling stuff on the AH is to be patient. Yes, you can sell netherweave cloth for 3g a stack very quickly. But what’s the hurry? Sell it for a middle price in comparison to what others are selling it for. If you want to undercut everyone, fine, sell it for one copper less than the lowest price. Don’t destroy the market. I’ve seen people sell items for less than they vendor for. Just be patient and try to get a feel for the market. Auctioneer defaults to an undercut of 5%. This is why items sell for too little. One guy sells an item for 10 gold, 10 other guys come in one at a time and undercut each other by 5%. Next thing you know it's being sold for less than 6 gold.

If you’re not an enchanter, have an enchanter friend disenchant all of your junk greens. Sell the enchant mats for a lot. It costs nothing to post enchanting mats, so if you have to keep reposting it at a high price you’re not wasting gold. If the lowest price for Arcane Dust on your server is currently 2 gold then I usually sell mine for at least 2.5. I can sometimes get away with 3 gold. This is of course differs from server to server.

Be on the lookout for green “of the bandit” gear. It sells exceptionally well in both mail and leather. The weapons sell exceptionally well. Sorcerer, Invoker and even Beast items sell well too. Just about everything else should be disenchanted. Why vendor a level 70 green bracer for 3g when you can sell the mats for 10-15+ gold?

You Hate Killing Mobs That Much?

Fine, there are other things that can turn you a profit. Any profession can be profitable. Farm the items you need to make things that sell well. Advertise your enchanting services. Work the AH and buy stuff that people sell for too little and resell it if you know what you're doing.

At the end of the day you really do need to put some time into killing mobs. If you do it to find materials for crafting then it's not so bad. Do 10 daily quests every day. You're earning faction and making gold at the same time with specific directives from quests.

THE PVP ROGUE

My goal here is to give you a solid foundation for PvPing and/or hopefully breaking you of some bad habits. This is the hardest thing in the world to write a guide on. This is especially true for dueling guides. Ask any of the great PvP writers how many times they have started a dueling guide only to have to scrap it because Blizzard makes changes in their attempts to balance PvP so often that you could type 500 words a minute and never keep up with the changes. Also, I can barely find the time to PvP anymore. This has changed a little in 2.1 when I no longer have to cough up blood to farm consumables for raiding. After I return from Blizzcon I will put together serious arena teams and start working on a PvP-specific guide.

PvP Builds

30/0/31

This is hands down the best build for dueling. For everything else, I hate it. The burst damage is great and the control is amazing but for battlegrounds and arenas it comes up short on damage in the long run.

Assassination (30 points)

Improved Eviscerate - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage done by your Eviscerate ability by 15%.

Malice - Rank 5/5
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%.

Ruthlessness - Rank 3/3
Gives your finishing moves a 60% chance to add a combo point to your target.

Improved Backstab - Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of your Backstab ability by 30%.

Relentless Strikes - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

Lethality - Rank 5/5
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, Shiv and Hemorrhage abilites by 30%.

Cold Blood - Rank 1/1
When activated, increases the critical strike chance of your next offensive ability by 100%.

Improved Kidney Shot - Rank 2/3
While affected by your Kidney Shot ability, target receives an additional 6% damage from all sources.

Quick Recovery - Rank 2/2
All healing effects on you are increased by 20%. In addition, your finishing moves cost 80% less Energy when they fail to hit.

Seal Fate - Rank 5/5
Your critical strikes from abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point.

Combat (0 points)

None

Subtlety (31 points)

Master of Deception - Rank 5/5
Reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while in Stealth mode. More effective than Master of Deception (Rank 4).

Opportunity - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage dealt when striking from behind with your Backstab, Mutilate, Garrote, and Ambush abilities by 20%.

Sleight of Hand - Rank 1/2
Reduces the chance you are critically hit by melee and ranged attacks by 1% and increases the threat reduced by your Feint ability by 10%.

Initiative - Rank 3/3
Gives you a 75% chance to add an additional combo point to your target when using your Ambush, Garrote, or Cheap Shot ability.

Ghostly Strike - Rank 1/1
A strike that deals 125% weapon damage and increases your chance to dodge by 15% for 7 sec. Awards 1 combo point.

Elusiveness - Rank 2/2
Reduces the cooldown of your Vanish and Blind abilities by 1.5 min.

Serrated Blades - Rank 3/3
Causes your attacks to ignore 8 armor/level of your target's Armor and increases the damage dealt by your Rupture ability by 30%. The amount of Armor reduced increases with your level.

Heightened Senses - Rank 2/2
Increases your Stealth detection and reduces the chance you are hit by spells and ranged attacks by 4%. More effective than Heightened Senses (Rank 1).

Preparation - Rank 1/1
When activated, this ability immediately finishes the cooldown on your Evasion, Sprint, Vanish, Cold Blood, Adrenaline Rush and Premeditation abilities.

Dirty Deeds - Rank 2/2
Reduces the Energy Cost of your Cheap Shot and Garrote abilities by 20

Deadliness - Rank 5/5
Increases your Attack Power by 10%.

Premeditation - Rank 1/1
When used, adds 2 combo points to your target. You must add to or use those combo points within 10 sec or the combo points are lost.

Combat Sinister Strike

This isn't an ideal build for duels but the damage is fantastic for 3v3 and 5v5. Even with adrenaline rush you can't perform a decent stunlock.

Assassination (19 points)

Improved Eviscerate - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage done by your Eviscerate ability by 15%.

Malice - Rank 5/5
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%.

Murder - Rank 2/2
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin targets by 2%

Relentless Strikes - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

Improved Expose Armor - Rank 2/2
Increases the armor reduced by your Expose Armor ability by an additional 50%.

Lethality - Rank 5/5
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, Shiv and Hemorrhage abilites by 30%.

Vile Poisons - Rank 1/5
Increases the damage dealt by your poisons and Envenom ability by 4% and gives your poisons an additional 8% chance to resist dispel effects.

Combat (42 points)

Improved Gouge - Rank 3/3
Increases the effect duration of your Gouge ability by 1.5 sec.

Improved Sinister Strike - Rank 2/2
Reduces the Energy cost of your Sinister Strike ability by 5.

Improved Slice and Dice - Rank 3/3
Increases the duration of your Slice and Dice ability by 45%.

Precision - Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%.

Endurance - Rank 2/2
Reduces the cooldown of your Sprint and Evasion abilities by 1.5 min.

Improved Sprint - Rank 2/2
Gives a 100% chance to remove all movement imparing effects when you activate your Sprint ability.

Improved Kick - Rank 2/2
Gives your Kick ability a 100% chance to silence the target for 2 sec.

Dual Wield Specialization - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 50%.

Mace Specialization - Rank 5/5
Increases your skill with Maces by 10, and gives you a 6% chance to stun your target for 3 sec with a mace.

Blade Flurry - Rank 1/1
Increases your attack speed by 20%. In addition, attacks strike an additional nearby opponent. Lasts 15 sec.

Aggression - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage of your Sinister Strike and Eviscerate abilities by 6%.

Vitality - Rank 2/2
Increases your total Stamina by 4% and your total Agility by 2%.

Adrenaline Rush - Rank 1/1
Increases your Energy regeneration rate by 100% for 15 sec.

Combat Potency - Rank 5/5
Gives your successful off-hand melee attacks a 20% chance to generate 15 Energy.

Surprise Attacks - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves can no longer be dodged, and the damage dealt by your Sinister Strike, Backstab, Shiv and Gouge abilities is increased by 10%.

Subtlety (0 points)

None

This is the only build that I would consider a hybrid for both PvP and PvE. No, I didn't add riposte to this build either. This is your choice. After about an 1800 rating, no one worth disarming will be disarmable because of talents and weapon chains. I also didn't get ruthlessness, which I know a lot of you like. This is a matter of preference. Expose armor is a great tool in PvP. This is a huge damage boost against all classes. That's right; I even use it on rogues in arenas and battlegrounds.

Mutilate

This is a fantastic all around PvP build. It's great for duels and it dishes out excellent damage in arenas and battlegrounds. Why deadly poison over instant poison? I like making it difficult for healers to dispel poisons and I like the damage my poisons do when I actually use deadly poison in PvP. And yes, that's right; I have no points in subtlety. The damage from going 41/20 is too good to pass on. It would be nice to have MoD, etc, but it just doesn't compare from the damage that this build does.

Assassination (41 points)

Improved Eviscerate - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage done by your Eviscerate ability by 15%.

Malice - Rank 5/5
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%.

Murder - Rank 2/2
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin targets by 2%

Relentless Strikes - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

Improved Expose Armor - Rank 2/2
Increases the armor reduced by your Expose Armor ability by an additional 50%.

Lethality - Rank 5/5
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, Shiv and Hemorrhage abilites by 30%.

Vile Poisons - Rank 3/5
Increases the damage dealt by your poisons and Envenom ability by 12% and gives your poisons an additional 24% chance to resist dispel effects.

Fleet Footed - Rank 2/2
Increases your chance to resist movement impairing effects by 10% and increases your movement speed by 8%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.

Cold Blood - Rank 1/1
When activated, increases the critical strike chance of your next offensive ability by 100%.

Improved Kidney Shot - Rank 3/3
While affected by your Kidney Shot ability, target receives an additional 9% damage from all sources.

Quick Recovery - Rank 2/2
All healing effects on you are increased by 20%. In addition, your finishing moves cost 80% less Energy when they fail to hit.

Seal Fate - Rank 5/5
Your critical strikes from abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point.

Vigor - Rank 1/1
Increases your maximum Energy by 10.

Find Weakness - Rank 5/5
Your finishing moves increase the damage of all offensive abilities by 10% for 10 sec.

Mutilate - Rank 1/1
Instantly attacks with both weapons for an additional 101 with each weapon. Damage is increased by 50% against Poisoned targets. Must be behind the target. Awards 2 combo points

Combat (20 points)

Improved Gouge - Rank 3/3
Increases the effect duration of your Gouge ability by 1.5 sec.

Improved Sinister Strike - Rank 2/2
Reduces the Energy cost of your Sinister Strike ability by 5.

Lightning Reflexes - Rank 3/5
Increases your Dodge chance by 3%.

Precision - Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%.

Improved Sprint - Rank 2/2
Gives a 100% chance to remove all movement imparing effects when you activate your Sprint ability.

Dual Wield Specialization - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 50%.

Subtlety (0 points)

None

General PvP Advice

I don’t enjoy dueling but I recommend that you duel a lot. Duel every class. Never duel someone that isn’t a solid PvPer. Practicing on green geared 10 year olds is the worst thing you can possibly do. It’s decent for self esteem but you will only develop bad habits. Go after 2100 ranked arena champions covered in epic gear. You do this one thing and I swear you will become 10 times the PvPer that you are today. I don’t care how good or bad you are today, this is my best advice.

I also recommend recording your duels with a program called Fraps. Go back and criticize your every move. Even when you win you should identify where you could have done better. When you do win, see if it happened because of some lucky resists or your opponent was really unlucky with crits or you dodged a lot of their key moves. I don’t recommend that you watch other rogues’ videos. None of them are designed to instruct you and will only have you trying to emulate their best highlights which might be impossible with your gear or something that is not a wise way of winning. There are also a few videos of some of the top rogues in the world dueling other top players. This is endgame PvP stuff. If your arena team is ranked 1900 and looking to polish a few things up they can be a decent reference for kill order and when to blind. But for the most part, work on developing your game not copying others.

Gear is important for PvP. You want a LOT more stamina for PvP than you need for raiding. Resilience is important too. Yes it's fun to crush your opponents with huge hits. But if you want to be serious about PvP you need a lot of stamina. Yes your attack power will take a dump but it's a small price to pay for the ability to almost completely eliminate the chance of a few lucky crits taking you out. This makes PvP a lot more about skill. To take a 12K HP opponent out you need staying power and you need to make very few mistakes.

Be fast. Speed is everything in PvP. The tougher your opponents, the faster they react to stuff. A rogue hits you with KS, a priest fears you or a mage sheeps you. How fast do you hit your trinket? Get the 2 minute version of the PvP trinket and get it on a hotkey. When you use this and how quickly you use it in response to being CC'd is HUGE in PvP. You're going to run into multiple opponents in PvP. You have to crowd control a lot. You need to be exceptionally good at changing targets and keeping others out of the game. Make them burn their cooldowns. If they use their cooldowns to break a blind when you're not pounding on them they likely won't have it ready when you finish off their buddy and start working on them. A great place to practice this is in Alterac Valley. When your group moves into another group, get in the mix and CC as many people as you can while putting out damage on one target. Yes, morons will break your CC. So what? Do it again. After taking such a long break from PvP I found that this was not like riding a bike. You need to keep your CC skills extremely sharp.

Know other classes. If you see “entrapment” pop up on your scrolling combat text display while in the middle of a frost trap and you use your PvP trinket, you don't know what a frost trap is. You need to understand how it works. This goes for hammer of justice, earthbind, death coil, berserker rage, etc etc etc. You need to know how their diminishing returns work, how long their cooldowns are and when it is the best time for them to use these abilities. You have unstable affliction on you. Who cast it on you? Does this mean that this warlock also has soul link? How does soul link work? You need to know this stuff. Look for class guides for all other classes. Class-specific PvP guides are ideal but even a general guide to playing each class is nice. Don't think that because you've taken a hunter to 70 that you have mastered it. I have a 70 hunter and while I know the class well, I am not an expert on hunter PvP despite logging hundreds of hours on my hunter in battlegrounds. Always be a student.

Lag is not your friend. When I raid, I find that the less addons I use and the less crap that I run in the background, the better I perform. In PvP, lag equals death, loss of arena rating and loss of battlegrounds. There are a lot of PvP addons that are great and I use a lot of them. But do yourself a favor and turn off any addons that you don't need when you PvP. You don't need damage meters or threat meters running when you PvP. Shut down your browser and anything else in the background. I know people who brag about their cutting edge computers who are able to run with everything maxed out and get 60+ FPS. Even they get lag sometimes. I won't get all technical about memory leaks and swap files, but NO ONE is immune to client-side lag. Ask anyone that was ever a serious competitor of any first person shooter. There are volumes written about every tweak known to man to keep your framerate as high as possible in these games. There's nothing that you can do about server side lag. And that's not always bad because your opponent is feeling it too. But client side lag is something that you do have control over.

Economy of Motion

I still see a lot of players trying to jump circle strafe around their opponents as if they were playing a first person shooter. Yes, WoW is somewhat of a twitch game but jumping around like a retarded monkey is not making you harder to hit. Do I put a lot of effort into getting behind my opponents? Yes. But that doesn't require randomly scrambling around. Put your efforts into making all of the right moves at all of the right times. Be efficient. Get behind your opponents and stay behind them. Use sprint to keep yourself in a position where you are hitting them and they are not hitting you.

Poisons

By default I always have crippling poison on my OH. In 2v2, what I put on my MH depends on what classes I am going up against. In any other multiple opponent situations I default to wound poison. There are a lot of situations where I will switch poisons. For example, in 2v2, a warrior takes my healer down and I take his down at the same time. I have wound poison on my MH and no longer need it because his healer is down. My first instinct is to CC the warrior, restealth, get away from him and switch to DP on my MH. This is debatable and depends on your style. If you are chain kiting a warrior, it might make more sense to put crippling poison on your MH as well.

How about a third poison on your target? Try this macro:

/outfitter wear pvp2

/cast Shiv

/outfitter wear pvp1

Obviously, this requires that you have the Outfitter addon installed but most of the major gear swapping addons have a macro component so check the documentation on those addons if that's what you use. You need to make a set called pvp1 that is your standard PvP gear. Then you make a second outfit which is nothing but a fast offhand weapon already coated with mind numbing poison. What this macro will do is swap out your offhand, cast shiv and swaps your other offhand back in. Jut make sure that your “pvp1” set includes your standard offhand weapon.

Let’s cover some of our attacks from a PvP perspective:

Sap – When fighting multiple opponents, one of them should be sapped if you're going to go in at all. Once they get into combat, you won't be able to sap them, so you need to be aggressive to pull this off without getting caught. Getting sap off in arenas is huge. If they use their trinket to get out of it, they can't use it on your blind later. If they don't, you just turned your arena team into a 2v1, 3v2 or 5v4 for 15 long painful seconds.

Gouge – You should gouge often. You should use it at the right times but that should be often. Use it to interrupt spells when kick isn’t up, use it to buy yourself a little extra energy if you have improved gouge and use it to restealth (I’ll cover that a little more in a bit). Your instinct should be to gouge rather than kidney shot when you need an interruption.

Kick – Most rogues don’t use this often enough. Improved kick is awesome but not necessary. It’s only two seconds but silence is golden against casters. Between kick and gouge, I can shut a healer down for a very long time.

Cloak of Shadows – Right now casters are crying like babies over this one. The better PvPers are learning how to work around it. A good mage, lock or priest will do something to force you to use it and cast something else 5 seconds later. A bad mage cries for Cloak of Shadows to be nerfed and a good mage blinks away and counts to 5. So you need to be smart about it too. Be patient. Let them load up dots first so you can get rid of them all. Also use it preemptively when it makes sense. If I see a mage casting sheep when my other cooldowns aren't up, I use cloak of shadows. If I see a hunter drop a trap, I will use it to resist it if I don't feel like I can get inside on him quickly by going around it. Remember, cloak of shadows does not break stealth, so you can activate it prior to moving in on a hunter standing on a trap, a paladin spamming consecration, etc etc.

Distract – This is great just before a duel or in real PvP when your opponent knows you’re there and is anticipating your first move. So often I do this from a distance and get someone to waste their fear, blink, etc. I’ve had fantastic PvPers fall for this one. It’s also great for catching those who try to run away. This of course doesn't work when they are in combat, so use it wisely.

Kidney Shot – I try to never use this unless I have a full energy bar and 5 combo points. Try to avoid using this as a panic attack when you feel like you’re losing. If you have to reset, use blind. I often find myself using blind after a KS when someone breaks it with their PvP trinket so I can reset and start over. Let the diminishing returns fade out and re-engage.

Stealth – So many rogues just aren’t very sneaky. You need to learn to circle around your opponent quickly without being detected. Have you ever tried to sneak up on a human rogue with perception on and a felhound in his group when you don’t even have MoD? It’s not easy. You are as plain as day to them. But it can’t be an impossibility to you either. You also need to learn to restealth. This is easy with blind. Just blind your opponent, click on the ground so you don’t have them selected anymore and wait until you drop combat. Once you do you should have a couple of extra seconds to get in position for another opener. This is also a great time to bandage. It's considerably harder to restealth with gouge but it is absolutely possible on a consistent basis. The gouge will sometimes break before you get into stealth but you should have just enough time to get into stealth before they can react. The trick is to move behind and away from them after you gouge.

Deadly Throw – Rogues don’t use this enough. Yes, I would rather do a 5 point KS or eviscerate than spend my combo points on DT but this is a great way to nail fleeing opponents and to get inside on ranged attackers. One point is all you need to get inside of most opponents. Also, don’t underestimate the damage that this can do. I’ve laid down some nice crits with this finisher. You can't let ranged DPS kite you. This is how I keep hunters in melee range.

Sprint – I almost always have improved sprint in my builds. This is invaluable for breaking snares. But it's also really good for keeping you in an advantageous position at all times (behind your opponent).

I was going to cover techniques for beating each class. I decided that to do this properly I would have to do it twice, so I chose not to add it this time around. I'd have to do it once for those who consistently have problems with a class and are new to rogue PvP and I'd have to do it again for endgame PvP. For example, warlocks with blue gear on, 700 spell damage and 8000 HP are a walkover for rogues. On the other hand, locks with full PvP gear, 1200 spell damage, 12K HP and 325 resilience are nearly impossible to beat. Then you have mages. How I fight a fire mage and how I fight a frost mage are completely different. PvP should be a guide in itself and I will work on updating my PvP guide when I get back from Blizzcon.

Stunlock Combos

There are two types of stunlock combos. There is a hard lock and a soft lock. A hard lock is where your opponent has absolutely no opportunity to fight back. A soft stunlock is where you have a good amount of control over your opponent be he will have brief moments of not being locked down. My best advice is for you to wait. This is the biggest mistake that I see rogues make. You need to wait out your gouge and blind to get your energy back until just before the incapacitation effect wears off. I'm not going into long combos. All you need to do is master your opening into blind/gouge-restealth and you will get the rest down from there.

Combat SS

CS, SS, gouge, AR, KS, SS, SS, SS, blind, restealth

Hemorrhage

CS, hemo, gouge, KS, hemo, hemo hemo, blind, restealth

Mutilate

CS, mut, KS, mut, gouge, restealth, CS, KS, mut, mut, eviscerate

Arenas

In general, you need to have good communication in arenas. Teamspeak or Ventrilo are an absolute must. I hear that one of the top 2v2 teams in the world doesn't use voice comms. Do not think for a second that you are ready to pull this off. These guys have probably been playing for so long that they ALWAYS know what they are going to do in any given situation. This isn't just because you need to communicate who you are going to sap or blind and it's not just to communicate a change in strat. You need to talk afterwards. Win or lose, talk about what you could have done to do even better. “We got lucky, that rogue was too stupid to blind you. Next time, get the cyclone off earlier and I'll burn the rogue down faster.” We fought the same team 3 times one morning. We smoked them the first time and they obviously didn't talk about changing their strategy. I could name a dozen things this team could have done to make life miserable for us.

If I really wanted get my team to 2400, I would seek out the best teams on my server and make friends with them. I'd pick their brains for advice and even try to get them to come out to Stanglethorn and practice. If not, I would do hundreds of scrimmage games before doing rated games. Even when I got to the point of doing rated games, I would warm up with a few practice games to get the blood pumping before taking on some really tough opponents in rated games. High rated teams have a lot to lose and not a lot to gain. If they make one big mistake against a team with a much lower rating, they lose a lot of points.

Get to know the terrain. Learn how to use it. There are little obstructions in some of the arenas that can cost you games if you don't know where they are. There is also line of sight. I use columns and walls to restealth a lot. Learn how to use the bridge. Learn where to run if you have to jump off.

2v2

Picking your partner is very important. A lot of rogues like to go with a healer. I recommend a druid or a paladin. My partner is a resto druid with feral charge. He was never a serious PvPer but he and I are having a blast together win or lose. The important thing is that you are friends with this person. Good chemistry is very important.

Rogue/rogue looks like fun but it's a rough combination unless both of you have excellent communication on crowd control. I think that any double DPS combo sounds like fun but they are probably a lot harder to get wins with and even harder to get a high ranking. Rogue/Paladin is nice if your paladin has good healing gear.

To do well in 2v2 you need to have a game plan for every combination out there. Against a shadow priest/warlock, who do you kill first? When do you blind and when does your partner crowd control? This also depends on your rating. Against a 1400 rated team, the lock might make the most sense as your first target. Against a 2400 rated team, the priest might be the better call. Or vice versa. It also depends on who you go up against. Some teams like to come after me first; others like to go after my druid. This might change our strat. And of course it depends on your style. In many cases there is more than one way to win. Even top teams dispute over whether you should kill the warrior or his healer first. Just keep in mind that what works at 1500 doesn't always work at 2400. You will be making adjustments along the way.

You have to treat it like a game of chess. If they do X, then I do Y, if they do Z then I do X. It needs to be instinctive too. Reacting to how your opponents react to you and how quickly you respond is key.

3v3

This is a mix of 2v2 and 5v5. Anything that I say about it would be redundant. All of the principles apply here. Some argue though that 3v3 is the best arena for rogues. Your team will have enough CC to keep you from getting burned down quickly and you can offer a lot of control here with blind and gouge. Just keep in mind that if you don't have a mage or priest on your team, you will likely be the first one that they go after.

5v5

Yes, 5v5 is rough for rogues. Once everyone is in combat, your chance to sap is done. Get behind them fast. I always try to sap one person, CS someone else and blind a third person, none of which are our assist target, before we really engage. Every chance I have, I will also gouge a nearby person (preferably a healer). That is unless it is vital that we tear down the target that we are on very quickly. This of course assumes that you can take them down quickly. If your target is a fire mage or holy priest, you should focus on burning them down. But I've gone against teams that were pally/warrior/warrior/hunter/warlock. NONE of these classes will go down quickly. This is where blind and gouge is even more important on nearby opponents.

TALENTS

I added this section by request of many of my readers. Please do not use this section as a means to create a new, cutting edge build. Just look at it as a resource for you to get a better understanding of why certain talents are chosen or not chosen in the popular builds. The comments on these talents are my opinions but you will find that my opinions are in line with what most experts agree on for the most part. I have tested every single one of these talents since BC beta in more than 100 different builds. I will continue to do this as we see changes in every patch, so keep in mind that when you view my profile that I am often testing something.

ASSASSINATION

Improved Eviscerate – This is a talent that you will see maxed out in virtually every build. You would certainly want this in any PvP build. While most good PvP rogues use a lot of different finishers, eviscerate is a common one and maxing this out is important. Many raiding rogues these days are talking about eliminating eviscerate from their arsenal altogether. I disagree with this in many cases. Yes, if you have a feral druid in your raid keeping Mangle up, rupture is king over eviscerate, but there are times where you will need to use burst damage on adds and that requires eviscerate.

Remorseless Attacks – The only build I would recommend this for is an assassination leveling build where you open with ambush. I've tested this before and after BC and I like how it forces you to keep a reasonable pace to stay ahead of the timer.

Malice – I would never use a build that didn't have this. 5% to crit is a lot of damage.

Ruthlessness – I like this talent. It's great for combo cycles. I can get to the end of my slice and dice timer, have 5 points up and instead of doing another SnD I can eviscerate/rupture and immediately do a 1 point SnD. It does equate to good damage for raiding. Some PvPers like it because it often leaves them with a combo point in case you need some sort of control immediately after performing a finisher like eviscerate into a 1 point deadly throw or kidney shot for a key interrupt when gouge and kick are down.

Murder – With some builds people debate between this and ruthlessness. It's been talked to death. Mathematically, it really comes down to preference. Since BC I have leaned more towards ruthlessness as fewer mobs and bosses in raid instances fall into this category than they did pre-BC.

Improved Backstab – If you're going to backstab (EVER), you need to have this talent. It's not worth backstabbing otherwise.

Relentless Strikes – I have this in every build as well. It equates to an insane amount of energy in the long run.

Improved Expose Armor – This is virtually worthless in PvE but I am a huge fan of it in PvP. I use it on anyone with as little as 3500 armor in arenas. This means everyone but mages, locks and sometimes priests. Some would rather spend their points on murder or poison talents. Again, a matter of preference.

Lethality – I've always been a big fan of this talent. I can't max it out with a combat daggers build which is tragic.

Vile Poisons – I like this talent for both PvP and PvE but I never max it out. I love how it makes my poisons difficult to dispel in PvP and I like how it boosts envenom damage in PvE. But again, if I'm going this deep into the tree, there are a lot of talents that I like more.

Improved Poisons – I like this talent but I never get it. Yes, I want a higher chance of landing poisons but now that we can shiv, I never get it.

Fleet Footed – I like this a lot for PvP. Yes I can get a boot enchant but the movement impairing defense is really nice. Do I like it for PvE? It's nice to be able to get to my next targets 8% faster and again, movement impairing effects can hurt us there too, but frankly I only get this when I go deep into assassination for mutilate and I only use mutilate in PvP and not PvE.

Cold Blood – Great burst damage. I really like to use this with mutilate. Both hands crit when activating cold blood.

Improved Kidney Shot – This is really nice for PvP. The downside is that when people use their PvP trinkets, it's to break KS, so it's not the biggest crime in the world to save the points and put them into poison talents.

Quick Recovery – No brainer. If you go this far into assassination, this is a must. The extra healing is invaluable. The energy conservation doesn't exactly suck either.

Seal Fate – Another no brainer deep into the tree. This equates to an insane number of extra finishers and that is good all around.

Master Poisoner – Again, you're not going to have problems applying poisons because of shiv. The protection against nature damage is ok, but it's not like any of us are fighting Huhuran anymore. Even if we were, I wouldn't get this talent for the sake of nature resists.

Vigor – More energy is always good. Keep in mind though that this extra energy only applies when you open on a new opponent. People go nuts over coupling this with the 10 energy gladiator set bonus for a 120 energy pool. Is 120 energy the be all end all for PvP? No. But it does redefine what you can do with stunlock combos to a small extent.

Deadened Nerves – This applies to melee damage and ranged weapon (hunter) damage only. Almost no one gets this.

Find Weakness – Yep, you have to get this. This is key for mutilate damage as you are constantly doing finishers.

Mutilate – I cover this in the raid build section. Like I've said, I love it for PvP but I won't ever use it for raiding again unless Blizzard does something about poison immune mobs or removes the poison requirement.

COMBAT

Improved Gouge – This has become a little less popular over the years but not with me. I never get it for PvE but I often get it for PvP. I gouge a lot. I almost only PvP in situations where I face multiple opponents (arenas, battlegrounds, world PvP). The longer I incapacitate those around me, the better.

Improved Sinister Strike – This is just like improved backstab, never ever perform a sinister strike without this talent maxed out.

Lightning Reflexes – I only put points here for filler to meet requirements for other talents. Yes, dodge is nice. But if I am need to dodge, it probably means that I didn't do a lot of things that I should of like stunlocking a melee opponent, being out of position on a cleaving boss or pulling aggro. Yes, high dodge saves me in situations like mobs that whirlwind but it's too rare to warrant investing talents. Yes, I also agree that I can't stunlock everyone all of the time (damn you PvP trinket) but again, dodge isn't the devil but I don't go out of my way to invest into lightning reflexes.

Improved Slice and Dice – This talent is too important for combo cycles. Must have for PvE. No exceptions.

Deflection – See lightning reflexes. I would only put points here for riposte.

Precision – Money. +hit is always good. It is by far your most important stat in a combat build.

Endurance – Yes, like most rogues I complain about our cooldowns being way too long. I never get this for raiding builds and try to get it for most PvP builds, which is nearly impossible if you're combat. I'd like nothing more than to see endurance and elusiveness removed from our trees and the reduced cooldowns given to us by default.

Riposte – I cover this elsewhere in my guide. I see its value but I never get it. I never get it for raiding and all rogues and warriors that I fight have weapon chains.

Improved Sprint – I always get this for PvP. Used wisely, it is one of our best talents for snare removal.

Improved Kick – This is in almost every combat build I use. It's not particularly useful in PvE but I almost always have it.

Dagger Specialization – If you are combat daggers this is a must.

Dual Wield Specialization – This is perspectively our highest DPS talent. You couldn't get me to dump this talent in a combat build even if Scarlett Johansson and Angelina Jolie were in a sweet embrace and begged me to drop it. Well, maybe then, but I dare them to make me try. :)

Mace Specialization – Combat maces must have this. The proc is fantastic for PvP and the damage, while not as good as sword, dagger or fist specializations isn't without its appeal.

Blade Flurry – Um, duh. This talent would be a no-brainer even if it didn't hit an extra target.

Sword Specialization – This talent changes every other patch and will continue to do so until the end of time. It will always be good and again, a must for combat swords.

Fist Weapon Specialization – Same as combat daggers.

Blade Twisting – I've tested this talent pretty thoroughly. It doesn't work on 99% of what you will find in a raid instance. If it would debuff the mobs (especially bosses) without the slowing effect then I'd consider it for hunter steady shot damage, but it's not like it procs much anyway. And that's the problem with this talent in PvP. Sure, it's great when it procs but we do have crippling poison on our offhand and can reapply it constantly with shiv. Don't ever get this talent.

Weapon Expertise – This is a no-brainer for PvE. Weapon skill isn't as valuable as it once was but the hit value that it brings to the table is big for combat potency. This doesn't apply to maces.

Aggression – Always. This is a lot of damage.

Vitality – People always question the quality of this talent. So do I. The amount of extra agility and stamina we get from this talent is insultingly low. I do pick this up in some of my combat builds as at the end of the day it does add something to survivability and damage. Not much, but some.

Adrenaline Rush – Same as blade flurry. You have to get this.

Nerves of Steel – I'd only get this talent if I wanted a PURE PvP combat build. Even then you will likely find yourself giving up a couple of points in assassination to get it. 10% stun and fear resist is nice to have, but there are so many important talents in the combat tree that make it difficult to pick this one up.

Combat Potency – This one is tremendous. It scales amazingly well with hit gear. I cover this more thoroughly later in my guide.

Surprise Attacks – This is a lot of damage and only one point. You have to get it.

SUBTLETY

Master of Deception – On one hand, this is a great talent because of how important it is to land a sap or an opener on your opponents in PvP. On the other hand, between human perception, fel hunters, engineering goggles, elixirs etc, we have the learn to be extremely sneaky to land our openers with or without MoD. Bottom line, if you PvP and you're going mid to deep into subtlety, get it. Otherwise, learn to be sneakier.

Opportunity – You must always have this talent with a backstab build and never have it with a mutilate build. Yes, opportunity's benefits apply to mutilate but getting dual-wield specialization is far more valuable.

Sleight of Hand – No, I would never get this talent. A good rogue rarely needs feint and we always have anesthetic poison on high aggro fights, which I never use. Here's how the math works: rogue+pewpewpew+watchthefrigginthreatmeters=youdon'tneedthistalent. I've seen a lot of mathcraft in my days and I assure you that this formula is accurate.

Dirty Tricks – I like this a lot. Getting that extra 5 yards on blind is really nice and it's a lot easier for me to get my saps off with it too.

Camouflage – The speed is nice and the reduction of the stealth cooldown comes in real handy. But it really comes down to grinding on mobs. It doesn't apply at all to raiding and it's not like you're getting 5 second restealth opportunities in PvP.

Initiative – I would get initiative in just about every heavy subtlety build but I hate that it's only 75%.

Ghostly Strike – This is good damage. It's only one point. Macros for this are pretty unreliable though.

Improved Ambush – Ambush stinks when you don't crit, so if you ever plan to ambush, you need to have this talent.

Setup – I didn't like this talent when it only gave points on dodged attacks. But now that it works on successfully resisted spells, it's slightly more attractive, especially with how it couples with cloak of shadows. I don't consider it a no-brainer though and would pass on it in most cases.

Elusiveness – Same as endurance. We should have these cooldowns by default. A lot of builds pass on this talent. Arena matches almost never require it. It's very rare that my 2v2 matches last more than 2 minutes and 3v3 and 5v5 matches are usually settled when the first person dies, which is almost always in the first couple of minutes and you wouldn't need your cooldowns after that anyway.

Serrated Blades – This is very good damage. I would always get it in a heavy subtlety build.

Heightened Senses – I like this but I'd never get it because it doesn't fit into any of my builds. I'd really only use this for a dueling build.

Preparation – This is so huge for PvP.

Dirty Deeds – This is key for a good stunlock build.

Hemorrhage – Fantastic for stunlocks but not so great for damage.

Master of Subtlety – This is one that you really need to get with a Shadowstep build. It really boosts those big ambush openers and will apply to backstab if you can get it off within 6 seconds after the ambush.

Deadliness – This is almost a must for a hemo build to help offset its weak damage. The problem with this is that 99.9% of the time that you're hemo it's for PvP. If you have any PvP gear at all, you are sacrificing a lot of AP for stamina and resilience. So it's not like you have 3000 AP with raid buffs. You probably have 1200-1500 AP. 10% of crap is crap.

Enveloping Shadows – Never. It's not completely void of value but I'd never get it over other talents in the tree.

Premeditation – This is huge for doing big eviscerates almost immediately after opening with a cheap shot. In any case, the extra combo points don't suck. Also considering your shortened vanish cooldown and preparation, you're very likely to use this more than once in a single duel or arena match.

Cheat Death – When we first got this talent, I had high hopes for it. After testing it pretty thoroughly, I would never use it unless maybe it was only one point.

Sinister Calling – Unfortunately, our gear in BC is based much less on agility than it used to be. At level 60 my agility was well over 400. I'm not much higher at 70 in tier 5 and in my PvP gear my agility is significantly less. So 15% of crap is crap, especially for 5 points. The truth is that you would only even consider this talent if you were going Shadowstep.

Shadowstep – Fun as hell but it's crap. I'm actually happy that the days of two hitting people are over. That's not PvP. Even with every talent that goes well with shadowstep and ambush, it just doesn't devastate your opponents like it used to now that everyone and their mother has more than 11K HP and 250+ resilience in their PvP gear. The 41 point talent in Subtlety should be something that overall offsets the poor damage that the tree gives or gives us a significant amount of survivability or control in PvP. So in my book, Shadowstep equals a cool factor of 8 in being able to blink around from time to time but a usefulness factor of a 1.

THE 5-MAN INSTANCE ROGUE (non- heroic)

Finding Groups

First off, you have to find groups. Even players who are in large guilds have a hard time doing this. I offer you two pieces of advice:

1) Make a name for yourself as someone who gets the job done.

2) Make friends. Be on the friends list of 100 people on your server.

WoW is a multiplayer game. If you play a lot, chances are you're not in the bars or at parties polishing your social skills. But social skills in an MMO are every bit as important.

You're going to play with morons who can't play their classes at all, jerks who are nearly impossible to tolerate socially and you will deal with ninja-looters. You might be in a group where 3 out of the 5 are a nightmare to group with. Show them all that you are the better person. You will earn a lot of respect for coming out of this terrible group without lashing out at the morons in it.

Here's the goal: eventually you will have so many on your friends list and so many people will be on yours that you can pick and choose. People love grouping with you. THIS is where you want to be and it's all about attitude and performance.

There's nothing wrong with the rogue class. If you can't find groups, look into fixing your personality bugs, not asking Blizzard to fix class bugs/imbalances. I'm not saying that there is something wrong with you because you have trouble finding groups. I see a LOT of rogues make terrible mistakes though and the biggest one is just not putting in the effort. First off, spamming LFG in guild or trade channels is not the answer. Form your own groups. Find a warrior, then find a healer and fill in the gaps from there.

If everyone is busy, try to schedule them. "How about tomorrow at 6:00 pm server time?" You will find a lot of groups this way.

Kill Order and Assisting

If you are the group leader, mark your targets. Let your group know what symbol is to be sheeped, which you are sapping and which you are killing first. Be good at this. Why should it be you? It doesn't necessarily need to be but if you do it, it will get done and you will be regarded as someone who runs good groups. If you don't want to do this, try to get someone else to.

As far as kill order goes, I usually like to kill the healer first. On some pulls there is a mob that fears. Most warriors don't pull back nearly as far as they should so the fearing mob might be a smart thing to kill first. It's bad to have this fearing mob crowd controlled (sheep, sap or seduce) as it can surprise you with an early break and tends to fear as soon as it gets to the group. Next I kill casters and hunters. Letting them sit in the back and pelt away at the healers is a bad thing. These aren't hard and fast rules for me. There are pulls in some instances where the melee types of mobs are so dangerous that you need to take at least one of them out immediately.

I wish that instead of putting Lucky Charms over the heads of mobs that Blizzard would give us number icons. Then the leader could more easily dictate a kill order.

As a rogue, you should be the main assist. Everyone should be killing whatever you are targeted on at any given time. It is nearly impossible to get a pug to assist you. This is why marking targets is important. At the very least everyone will know what to kill first and what to kill last. But if you can get them to assist, even better. As a main assist I try to get those in my group to understand that if I make a mistake and pick the wrong kill order that we all need to make that mistake together. The main assist is always right, even when he or she is wrong. It's up to you to inspire people to follow that mindset.

Ideally, your tank should have aggro on anything that you are attacking. This will NOT always be the case. In fact, by design you might come into situations where you keep a mob stunned while the tank handles everything else. Does this make you an off-tank? It absolutely does not. The difference is assisting. If everyone assists you then by my definition you are just burning a target down quickly rather than you actually performing an off-tank role which I see as something that is done to handle dangerous targets for extended periods of time with no DPS assisting you.

Stuns

Many argue over how much a rogue should stun in a 5-man instance. On one hand, the more you stun, the less damage others take. This is a good thing. On the other hand, when you stun a target, the tank isn't building much rage off of it and can't move it into position during the stun. This can be a bad thing. I tend to stun in a few key situations:

1) One or two people in the group have died (especially a healer) and I want to minimize how much damage the mob does. This is rare. Sometimes in this situation I will instead choose to burn the target down.

2) Ranged DPS or healers pull aggro on a mob and it starts to run back to them. A kidney shot is all they usually need to invis, fade, feign or soul shatter. If not, it buys some time before that ranged class gets potentially one hit. In a good group this won't happen much.

3) Kick is down and I have to interrupt a spell. I don't make it a point to interrupt every spell that a mob casts but big damage spells and heals are pretty important to interrupt.

4) I pull aggro and vanish isn't up. This shouldn't be often if you mind your threat. A kidney shot in this situation can buy you the time for the tank to build threat but you need to stop attacking for him to do so. Just keep in mind that every time you stun you are spending combo points and/or energy that could be spent doing damage instead.

Damage

I cover this a lot more thoroughly in the raiding section, but here are some thoughts with 5-man instances in mind.

The best advice I can give you in terms of PvE builds is to go with a classic, tested, proven high damage build. Don't come out of a 2v2 and go into a 5-man group with 30/0/31. I'm going to get a lot of people screaming about that statement. But the truth is that we are a damage class and should do everything that we can to maximize our damage. This is how we get groups, this is how our perception is made to the community and this is what we should focus on. Some people will say that in normal 5-mans that there aren't many fights that are so DPS-centric. That might be true to an extent but if you are still doing non-heroic 5-man instances, your gear is probably WAY below the curve where casters are still doing a lot more damage than us. 50 gold is incredibly easy to make. Some of you only PvE to gear up for PvP. I respect that, but do your groups a favor and spec for the occasion.

More DPS equals faster kills equals less tanking equals less healing. In all of the forums I frequent there are often posts where rogues are claiming that "Damage meters are only about e-peen". The rogues that make these posts are looking to justify not having to drive for excellence at what their class was designed to do. Is e-peen really just overcompensation for self-esteem? It might be in a lot of cases. Is too much emphasis on the damage meters counter productive? Yes, it can be. But if you're not specced properly, enchanted and gemmed from head to toe, don't run damage meters or SW:Stats and don't put a solid effort in pumping out damage, then don't wonder why you're not getting invites.

Blade flurry and adrenaline rush are amazing for putting out great damage. But use these skills wisely. When I completely demolish two mobs at the same time it is with every intention of vanishing in the middle of it. Give your tank plenty of time to get threat and tear it up. Evasion will probably get you through it but vanish is what you should expect to do. Obviously, if you have an amazing tank, you can get away with a lot more. Just use it wisely. Top rogues use BF/AR as often as possible but safely. Besides, it's fun as hell. :)

In general, you don't ever want to pull aggro. TBC is a lot more brutal about it in the sense that pulling aggro in general far more often equates to dying than it did pre-BC. This makes watching the threat meters a LOT closer very important. I find myself watching this closer than I watch health, combo or cooldown bars. The important thing is to wait. You want to pump out good damage but a couple of extra seconds won't kill you.... literally. I almost never use feint. The only time I do is when I see myself high on the threat meters by jumping in too early and too hard (like an idiot) and not having vanish up. This is rare for me. You need to know your limits. This means knowing how well your tank generates threat and how well you DPS in that situation. Against some tanks on some fights, I hardly wait at all. In other situations, I wait 30 seconds and still have to vanish half way through. It depends on how much the mob or boss drops threat and how good your tank is. You need to know both.

Dagger rogues have to be even more careful about pulling aggro. Not only does this equate to death but it means you're doing less damage when you can't get behind a mob. Yes, you can stun them to get behind them but that's a finisher that could be doing damage instead of giving you position on a mob. If you have problems with aggro, try combat daggers for awhile. Nothing teaches threat control like daggers do.

HEROIC INSTANCES

At some point doing heroic instances becomes your standard non-raiding run. My guild almost never does non-heroic instances except to gear our alts.

The big challenge here for rogues is that when you pull aggro, you usually die. What makes that even more challenging is that putting out big damage is important too, so you really need to push that threshold. Using BF/AR is suicide but you need to do it. Rogues have a harder time getting into heroic instances than a lot of classes. We need more healing than ranged DPS, we can only apply sap once and putting up good damage in comparison to mages and locks is challenging. The challenge with damage in 5-man instances in general is that we don't really get the time to get our combo cycles going and our procs need time to kick in. The problem with this is that mobs die too quickly for us to take advantage of this. As a general rule, rogues do more damage on longer fights.

Survivability is a huge issue. Positioning is a major factor in this. What makes staying behind mobs challenging is the fact that warriors have to move around to keep aggro on multiple mobs. This will get you in cleave range for short periods of time and it only takes one cleave to take you out. You should try to anticipate this. If your tank is on two mobs at once and he loses threat on the one that you're not on, be ready for some movement. If you're on the mob that gets pulled by ranged DPS or healing, be ready for it to go to you if your tank isn't all over it.

It's also not uncommon for me to burn down a mob that isn't being tanked. This is necessary on some of the big 5-7 pulls. Some mobs hit so hard that a warrior can't tank 3 of them. In this situation I will open with cheap shot on a caster mob, build up 5 points and kidney shot it while everyone else helps me burn it down. Most caster mobs only melee hit for about 2500 or so. That isn't so bad but a crit is 5K and a couple of big hits like that is game over for most rogues. The worst part is that your tank is probably taking so much damage that your healer(s) will need to focus on him and you won't get the heals that you need. This is where stuns, kick and evasion are key. I'm not suggesting that you go into heroic instances with 13K HP and 200 resilience. You just need to be smart.

THE RAIDING ROGUE

If it weren't for raiding I would be bored with this game a very long time ago. It's not for everyone but for those of you who raid now and those who are looking at getting into raiding, I have provided a lot of guidance.

Time Management

The number one problem that people have with raiding is time management. The first problem is that many have the perception that if you want to raid, you have to live in your parents' basement and play 50+ hours a week. This is completely untrue. Even some of the most hardcore guilds in the world don't require that you to play that much. My guild raids for a total of 12 hours a week and moves through content very quickly for the time that we put in. I have a ton of responsibility in and out of game. My wife, kids, career and being a guildmaster are extremely taxing on my time. I am able to make all of my raids despite all of this because I am very good at time management. I can speak for just about every raid leader and guild leader when I say attendance is a major factor in getting into raids. A lot of people just don't get that. "Why didn't I get an invite?" "Because there are 5 people that play your class that have better attendance than you do" Time management is how you establish a solid attendance record and raid leaders want to gear people that show up every day.

The first thing that you need to do is maintain a regular schedule. This isn't possible for everyone. If you work for a retailer that requires that you open and close and you can't negotiate a set schedule then raiding probably isn't in the cards for you. This is a bit more manageable for you who live on the East Coast and raid on West Coast time but it does require that you stay up to 1am if your guild raids until 10 pm PST. All of this falls into the realm of making real life choices to accommodate your social life. I've never asked a guildmate to make those choices. That's for all of you to make for yourself. A company would have to offer me an insane amount of money to take on long hours and a long commute that gets me home late at night. That's my choice. My game experience is a large part of my social life and that is important to me when trying to maintain quality of life as I define it.

Next you have to pick and choose when you take care of your responsibilities in and out of game. This might mean doing your homework as soon as you get home. It might mean waking up a half hour earlier than normal to farm gold/herbs before going to work/school. It might mean never playing on Saturdays so that you can spend time with your wife/girlfriend/friends/kids. I have hard rules that I don't break and I try to be mindful of all of the things that I have to do. It's also unhealthy to neglect leaving the house to spend time with your friends. This will help in keeping you from getting burned out. I've known 100's of people who have quit the game or quit raiding from "burnout". This doesn't have to be the case. There are a lot of hours in the week. You can take care of everything and still raid.

And finally you need to pay your dues and set the expectations of those around you. My wife KNOWS when my raid days are. Any other time on any other day is fair game and she will not hesitate to interrupt me for something that she needs on non-raid days. It's not like I can just say, "Woman, do as I say or we will play a new game called Pimpslapmywifecraft". She respects my raiding times because I pay my dues in other ways. For some of you it might mean bringing home decent report cards or taking your significant other out to dinner once a week or helping around the house more or just blocking out quality time. But you have to be clear. "I will do XYZ and in return I want these times to myself". Everyone asks for time from the people around them. Some husbands play golf, some teens want to hang out with their friends 24x7. It's no different with gaming.

I honestly don't get why some people have such a hard time with time management. As a mindless time killer I play a simple but incredibly addictive web MMO called Fallen Sword. Someone in my guild there hadn't been around in awhile and he indicated that he was busy with his new job and didn't have time to play. This game can be played in an hour a day at your leisure. I just don't get how someone can't slip 30 minutes into their lunch and another 30 minutes into some downtime before they go to bed. Life is short folks, time management adds a lot of leisure time to our stressful lives.

Raiding Builds

I'm going to list three builds for raiding. I'm not going to cover alternative builds or hybrid PvP/PvE builds. If you're reading this guide to become a better raider then you should be focusing on the top 3 damage builds. Can combat/hemo or SF/combat put up decent damage? Yes. But they will come up very short of what I consider the top 3, so I'm not recommending them. I don't believe in coming up with a build that is really good for PvP and PvE at the same time. If you're going to be serious about either, spec for the occasion. 50 gold is too easy to make in BC for you not to.

Combat Daggers

The number one question that rogues ask is what the top damage build for raiding is. This is it. A lot of rogues don't like dagger builds because they don't like having to get behind mobs. You don't have much of a choice anymore regardless of your spec. Just about everything in TBC cleaves for a ton of damage, so you really have to stay behind mobs no matter what your build.

Daggers or not, you should always strive to be in that zone that is directly behind your opponent. There is a small margin there where you cannot be blocked or parried.

Assassination (15 points)

Malice - Rank 5/5
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%.

Murder - Rank 2/2
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin targets by 2%

Improved Backstab - Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of your Backstab ability by 30%.

Relentless Strikes - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

Lethality - Rank 4/5
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, Shiv and Hemorrhage abilites by 24%.

Combat (41 points)

Improved Sinister Strike - Rank 2/2
Reduces the Energy cost of your Sinister Strike ability by 5.

Lightning Reflexes - Rank 4/5
Increases your Dodge chance by 4%.

Improved Slice and Dice - Rank 3/3
Increases the duration of your Slice and Dice ability by 45%.

Precision - Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%.

Improved Sprint - Rank 2/2
Gives a 100% chance to remove all movement imparing effects when you activate your Sprint ability.

Improved Kick - Rank 2/2
Gives your Kick ability a 100% chance to silence the target for 2 sec.

Dagger Specialization - Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with Daggers by 5%.

Dual Wield Specialization - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 50%.

Blade Flurry - Rank 1/1
Increases your attack speed by 20%. In addition, attacks strike an additional nearby opponent. Lasts 15 sec.

Aggression - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage of your Sinister Strike and Eviscerate abilities by 6%.

Vitality - Rank 2/2
Increases your total Stamina by 4% and your total Agility by 2%.

Adrenaline Rush - Rank 1/1
Increases your Energy regeneration rate by 100% for 15 sec.

Combat Potency - Rank 5/5
Gives your successful off-hand melee attacks a 20% chance to generate 15 Energy.

Surprise Attacks - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves can no longer be dodged, and the damage dealt by your Sinister Strike, Backstab, Shiv and Gouge abilities is increased by 10%.

Subtlety (5 points)

Opportunity - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage dealt when striking from behind with your Backstab, Mutilate, Garrote, and Ambush abilities by 20%.

What makes this build so much better over other dagger builds? Surprise attacks and combat potency are big. The top build in beta was SF/Combat daggers but that's when surprise attacks was only a 5% damage boost. When they eventually moved it up to a 10% damage bonus, a 41 point combat dagger build became king.

Combat Swords

Are swords better than fists or maces? It's certainly more damage than maces and very close to fists. You can easily switch this build to reflect the weapon specialization of your choice. A combat swords build isn't quite as effective on the meters as combat daggers but it's not so far off that it's subpar. Even with maces I have topped the meters over combat dagger rogues.

Assassination (19 points)

Improved Eviscerate - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage done by your Eviscerate ability by 15%.

Malice - Rank 5/5
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%.

Ruthlessness - Rank 3/3
Gives your finishing moves a 60% chance to add a combo point to your target.

Murder - Rank 2/2
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin targets by 2%

Relentless Strikes - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

Lethality - Rank 5/5
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, Shiv and Hemorrhage abilites by 30%.

Combat (42 points)

Improved Gouge - Rank 3/3
Increases the effect duration of your Gouge ability by 1.5 sec.

Improved Sinister Strike - Rank 2/2
Reduces the Energy cost of your Sinister Strike ability by 5.

Improved Slice and Dice - Rank 3/3
Increases the duration of your Slice and Dice ability by 45%.

Precision - Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%.

Improved Sprint - Rank 2/2
Gives a 100% chance to remove all movement imparing effects when you activate your Sprint ability.

Improved Kick - Rank 2/2
Gives your Kick ability a 100% chance to silence the target for 2 sec.

Dual Wield Specialization - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 50%.

Blade Flurry - Rank 1/1
Increases your attack speed by 20%. In addition, attacks strike an additional nearby opponent. Lasts 15 sec.

Sword Specialization - Rank 5/5
Gives you a 5% chance to get an extra attack on the same target after dealing damage with your Sword.

Weapon Expertise - Rank 2/2
Increases your skill with Sword, Fist and Dagger weapons by 10.

Aggression - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage of your Sinister Strike and Eviscerate abilities by 6%.

Vitality - Rank 2/2
Increases your total Stamina by 4% and your total Agility by 2%.

Adrenaline Rush - Rank 1/1
Increases your Energy regeneration rate by 100% for 15 sec.

Combat Potency - Rank 5/5
Gives your successful off-hand melee attacks a 20% chance to generate 15 Energy.

Surprise Attacks - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves can no longer be dodged, and the damage dealt by your Sinister Strike, Backstab, Shiv and Gouge abilities is increased by 10%.

Subtlety (0 points)

None

Mutilate

I will personally never use mutilate as a raiding build ever again. That is, not unless Blizzard does something about the stupid poison component or makes everything in the game vulnerable to deadly poison or at the very least hunter stings. There are too many poison-immune mobs and bosses in raid instances for me to sacrifice so much damage. What you and your raid leader come to an agreement on is between the two of you. I am the guild and raid leader of my guild. I make choices as to who goes to raids and I do it in an unbiased manner. As a rogue, it is my job to show everyone how viable we are. If I sit in the middle of the meters on Hydross and Void Reaver (etc etc etc) then I am not holding up my end of the bargain. Mutilate also has a limited benefit from windfury totems. WF only affects your MH. You lose a lot of benefit in comparison to a SS or BS build.

I've been reading a lot of posts where rogues are claiming to be number 2 and 3 on the meters against poison immune bosses. They're either full of it or are surrounded by people who suck at DPS. Again, it's not up to me what build you go with but that's where I stand with it after plenty of testing.

Here's your build:

Assassination (41 points)

Improved Eviscerate - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage done by your Eviscerate ability by 15%.

Malice - Rank 5/5
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%.

Ruthlessness - Rank 3/3
Gives your finishing moves a 60% chance to add a combo point to your target.

Murder - Rank 2/2
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin targets by 2%

Relentless Strikes - Rank 1/1
Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

Lethality - Rank 5/5
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, Shiv and Hemorrhage abilites by 30%.

Vile Poisons - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage dealt by your poisons and Envenom ability by 20% and gives your poisons an additional 40% chance to resist dispel effects.

Fleet Footed - Rank 2/2
Increases your chance to resist movement impairing effects by 10% and increases your movement speed by 8%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.

Cold Blood - Rank 1/1
When activated, increases the critical strike chance of your next offensive ability by 100%.

Quick Recovery - Rank 2/2
All healing effects on you are increased by 20%. In addition, your finishing moves cost 80% less Energy when they fail to hit.

Seal Fate - Rank 5/5
Your critical strikes from abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point.

Vigor - Rank 1/1
Increases your maximum Energy by 10.

Find Weakness - Rank 5/5
Your finishing moves increase the damage of all offensive abilities by 10% for 10 sec.

Mutilate - Rank 1/1
Instantly attacks with both weapons for an additional 101 with each weapon. Damage is increased by 50% against Poisoned targets. Must be behind the target. Awards 2 combo points

Combat (20 points)

Improved Gouge - Rank 3/3
Increases the effect duration of your Gouge ability by 1.5 sec.

Improved Sinister Strike - Rank 2/2
Reduces the Energy cost of your Sinister Strike ability by 5.

Improved Slice and Dice - Rank 3/3
Increases the duration of your Slice and Dice ability by 45%.

Precision - Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%.

Improved Sprint - Rank 2/2
Gives a 100% chance to remove all movement imparing effects when you activate your Sprint ability.

Dual Wield Specialization - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 50%.

Subtlety (0 points)

None

Crushing the Meters in Raids

First off, let's get past the whole stigma of the damage meters. Is our position on the meters the most important thing when raiding? No. There are plenty of other things in most raid encounters that are so vital that failing to do so will result in a wipe like spell interruption, target selection, situational awareness and survivability. But we are a DPS class and putting up big damage is what we do. We also take more damage than ranged classes. We require more healing and that means that we need to justify our existence even more. A lot of people say that killing bosses is the only important factor when doing damage and that trash is meaningless. This is completely untrue. Blizzard is extremely trash-happy. The faster you kill trash the more attempts you get on new content. If you think that trash isn't important, you haven't been in Serpentshrine Cavern or The Eye.

Here are some tips to improving your damage:

1) Don't be a "Clicker"- A clicker is someone who doesn't hotkey their attacks and uses their mouse to click on icons instead. This is CRITICAL. You have to hotkey your attacks. Split second reactions are everything. I can respond to something by hitting an attack with less than a quarter of a second response time. If I had to do this with my mouse I'd add a second to that response time. This is a TON of lost damage. I still recommend a Nostromo. My damage went through the roof when I started using it. My PvP skills improved as well.

Let's go beyond that. You really need to hotkey everything conveniently. Are you reaching to the 7 key on your keyboard for slice and dice? Is expose armor in a premium spot because you PvP a lot? I run a different setup in PvP than I do for raids. Your mouse should be used for turning, not your keyboard. When you turn you need to do it quickly. Watching people slowly spin in their axis from using the keyboard to turn makes me crazy.

2) Combo Cycles- I'm not going to micromanage how you handle your combo cycles. The key is to keep SnD up constantly without wasting points or time. This means not doing a 5 point SnD just before Gruul does a ground slam. This means not falling asleep at the wheel and letting 10-15 seconds go by without doing SnD again. A lot of this comes down to making good choices at the end of your SnD timer. This is why I use SliceWatcher. When I build up 5 points my big choice is whether I want to do another SnD because the timer is low or eviscerate and do a one point SnD afterwards. Ideally you want to always do 5 point finishers to guarantee relentless strikes procs but slipping the eviscerate in there is how we really make the most of our combo points. Eviscerate isn't exactly the core of our damage but if you and I are in the same raid with the same gear and spec and you get 5 more eviscerates in than I do on every single boss while keeping SnD up the whole time, you will probably crush me on the meters. Maybe I'll gain a few more combo points than you will because I tend to do more 5 pointers but you will ultimately do more damage.  It's also not a crime to let a couple of seconds pass to get more 5 point finishers up.  Just make sure that you don't fall asleep at the wheel when it comes to SnD.

And while we're at it, let's talk finishers. When you're not doing SnD, what finisher should you use? It depends on how much armor your target has and whether or not you have a feral druid in your raid.  Envenom can be partially resisted, so in most situations it's not a viable finisher.  If you have a feral druid in your raid, rupture in most cases will out damage eviscerate. 

3) Gear Up Out of Raids - I see WoW as a game of "ones". Every point counts. Yes this new item is ONLY one more agility but ones add up very quickly. A huge mistake that a lot of raiders make is waiting for epic gear to drop from raid instances rather than doing everything that they can to improve their performance today. This goes for enchants and gems too. "Is it worth it for me to put mongoose on my blue weapon?" ABSOLUTELY! Every slot should have the best enchant possible. This goes for head, legs and shoulders. Get revered with Cenarion Expedition and Aldor/Scryer. Most mages are too cheap to get the Sunfire enchant. The mats are expensive for an extra 10 spell damage. Screw that. I'd do it in a heartbeat.

4) Use Your Timers - Any timer that increases your damage or survivability should be used as often as possible. Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush are key. How much you use those skills and how wisely you use them are a MAJOR factor in how much damage you do in raids. Let's say that your guild kills 5 bosses in 4 hours with no wipes. How many times do you use these talents in that time? It's nice to save blade flurry for when you have multiple mobs in a cluster but it's better to use it on one mob than to not use it for 20 minutes straight. It's not just about BF and AR though. If I know I went in early and strong, I might use vanish before I pull aggro. I might use evasion in a volatile situation if I feel it's worth the risk to stay in during a whirlwind. Sprint is big too. I move from one mob to the next and it's 60 yards away. Sprint gets me there faster. If you get there 3 seconds before me, you will do maybe 3000 extra damage and get that extra time on the mob or boss to get your procs and combo cycles going. 3 seconds could equate to a lot more than 1000 DPS (for example) times 3.

5) Perception – No, I don't mean the human racial skill, I mean perception of time. This is the core of how someone performs well and maintains focus and concentration. Have you ever played your rogue and felt like your finishers were just coming in one after the other? That's not good. Have you ever played your rogue where you felt like each tick of energy seemed to take a long time in anticipation? That's a good thing. It means that you are “in the zone” and so focused that time seems to pass slower for you.

Let me put it to you another way. Have you ever seen the first Spiderman movie where Flash Thompson and Peter Parker get into a fight at lunch by the lockers? There's one scene where Flash throws a punch at Peter and it seems to go into slow motion for him. That's where you want to be with your rogue. Many serious martial artists dedicate their lives to achieving this on a consistent basis in real life. Some call this Ki, others call it total enlightenment. The trick to doing this ingame on your rogue (which is a hell of a lot easier) is to find a balance in your concentration. You don't want to be so intense that your eyes are bugging out of your head with your face right in front of your screen. That intensity will cause you to lose focus and will eventually emotionally stress you out. You want to be relaxed. If you're too relaxed you will have time just slip by you and you will miss a lot of things that happen around you. You want a balance of intense concentration and relaxed confidence. I don't mean to get all Quai-Chang quantum physics on you but this is the best way I can teach concentration in a guide.

6) Computer Performance - It is extremely important to have a good frame rate if you want to put out good damage. There was a time where I struggled to get over 8 FPS while raiding pre-BC. This destroyed me on the meters. It also hurt my survivability. I intentionally downloaded a huge torrent file while in SSC recently. I was at 5 FPS and although I was using my energy as fast as I generated it, my damage was in the toilet. Do not take this lightly.

Here are some things you can do to improve your performance:

Addons – Keep it light. I don't care if you have the best computer in the world. One “must have” addon is PerformanceFu. This will tell you your ping, FPS and amount of memory that you are using for addons. What's important about this is that you can click on the display; it will dump the memory garbage. Most addons are written very poorly and have memory leaks. This means that they will use a certain amount of memory to perform a task and when it's done it doesn't free that memory up. You might have your addons using less than 30MB which is good, but over time they will get to the point where they use more memory than you have allotted or even have available. I click on PerformanceFu before every pull. This one is huge.

Clean Your Addons – From time to time you need to delete your WTF folder and your interface folder. There are things that get stored in your saved variables file that can lag you out. It's kind of like the Windows registry. It needs to be cleaned and in this case it can only be done by starting fresh. When you do this, download all of your addons. Don't just copy your old stuff back in. That defeats the purpose of starting fresh. It's common that when people update their addons from one version to the next that the new addon doesn't install properly over the old one. The authors of these addons rarely make updates to their addons with upgrades in mind. Some of them even recommend that you delete the old one before installing the new one. Deleting you saved variables files and folders is not enough. I was getting poor performance recently and deleting my saved variables didn't fix it. Deleting all of my addons and WTF folder did.

Clean Your Computer – Defrag your hard drive from time to time. I even format my computer about once every six months.

Run Light - Get rid of programs in the background that you don't need. You don't need to scan for viruses while raiding. You don't need to send instant messages while raiding. Close your browser too. When I raid, I only run WoW and Teamspeak.

7) Follow the Rules – The more my guild follows my lead as a guild leader, raid leader and main assist, the better we do. I don't just mean from a single encounter perspective but from our overall progression. I don't always pick the right targets for assisting and my strategies aren't always the smartest but when my guild follows me off a cliff, we do exceptionally well. We learn from our mistakes and they follow me when I lead them in the right direction too. This type of behavior is extremely contagious. I'm not suggesting that you be a bunch of mindless cool-aid drinking zombies. I'm just saying that the more you follow those who lead you, the better you will become. Even if they suck as a leader, you following them off a cliff teaches them to be better MUCH faster. “Wow, we wiped because they did EXACTLY what I told them to do. I'd better not screw that up next time.”

8) Know the Strats – One of the difficulties of performing well in new content is confidence. The more you know the strategies behind new bosses (and trash) the better you will perform from the first attempt. Don't just know your role. Know everyone's role. Bosskillers is an awesome collection of strategies for nearly every boss in the game. Not all of these strats are well written. I've read some of these and am confused as to what their message is. But the more you know, the better you will do. Sometimes I misinterpret these strats and when I explain the strat to them before we pull guildmates will send me a tell, “No, dumbass, we have to move away from the whirlwind” to correct me when I'm wrong. This doesn't happen often as they know I don't like being hammered with tells when I'm leading raids but overall, those who know the strats well going in ALWAYS perform the best.

What is the Best Raiding Spec?

I have seen endless posts where people argue this out.  Below is where I rank each build (100% being the highest damage build possible).  This is based on single-target damage against poison-vulnerable bosses and level 73 mobs.

Combat Daggers - 100%

Combat Swords - 99%

Combat Fists - 98%

Combat Maces - 97%

Mutilate (41/20/0) - 93%

Mutilate (Opportunity) 89%

Hemorrhage - 84%

These numbers are not the result of crunching the numbers.  They are merely my approximation of where each build stands.  What does this all mean?  First off, it means that any proper 41-combat build will be a solid build for potential top DPS.  What weapon specialization you choose isn't a night and day difference.  If I'm combat daggers and you're combat maces, will I crush you on the meters?  Maybe, but it won't be my spec that does it.  Not by much anyway.  A lot of top rogues through practical application and mathcraft are arguing that combat swords is scaling better than combat daggers when you get into the realm of tier 6.  Does this mean that we should hoard our DKP for swords?  Heck no.  Where you start putting yourself out of the realm of top DPS is when you start moving into Mutilate (Opportunity) and Hemo.  Yes, mutilate fans, I know that you're all pissed off about my saying that you're 93%.  Considering that there are a lot of poison-immunes in raid instances, that you can't pad the meters on multiple mobs and get jack from Windfury, I was being kind.  Maybe mutilate is better than 93% in terms of single target DPS, but I've yet to see it consistently in a competitive DPS environment.

GEAR

Picking the right gear for your rogue is very important. The most important factor in this is that you have a good balance. On paper from a damage perspective, a certain amount of attack power is equal to a certain amount of critical strike rating. It is possible to load up on one stat and completely ignore others but this is a very bad idea. All of the AP in the world is meaningless if you can't hit your targets. The same goes for stamina. You don't want to be a glass cannon. It's been said a million times; a dead rogue does zero DPS. There are fights where I put on my PvP gear because I take so much damage despite the fact that I have some of the most amazing healers in the world in my guild.

I'd like to take a moment to personally thank Shadowpanther (Zodar) for what is hands down the best resource for rogues to select what gear is best for them. His site can be found at www.shadowpanther.net. His data is based on variations of the AEP system. AEP stands for Agility Equivalence Points. This system was originally made popular by a rogue named Ming.

The basic AEP system works like this:

1 point of agility = 1 point of stamina = 2 points of strength, etc etc etc.

There are a lot of spreadsheets at Shadowpanther. There are three that I want you guys to focus on.

AEP – This is the formula for selecting PvP gear. It puts more value behind stamina and resilience.

DAEP – This is the basic PvE formula. This is the chart that you should be using to select your raiding gear.

MAEP – This formula is almost completely based on effective damage.

Using this site is very simple. Every chart lists items by slot and in order from best to worst. Next it's up to you to figure out what the best item on the list is that you have access to. Your guild isn't raiding, you aren't on an arena team, you don't have much gold and you're not attuned for heroics, so by looking at the PvE armor chart (DAEP) you will find that the “best” item for you would be the Wastewalker Helm. This helm has a value of 113 DAEP. Now if you were to look at this item on the MAEP chart, you will see that the Helm of the Claw is worth 7 more MAEP but is only one DAEP less than Wastewalker. I could put these two items under the microscope all day long but at the end of the day, they are pretty much a wash. As a raider already in full epics I would tend to go towards the item that increased my damage the most because most rogue epics have a lot of stamina on them. But if you are choosing between these two helms, you are probably hurting pretty badly on hit points.

Some people argue that this system is over-simplified. Simplified, yes, over-simplified, no. There are spreadsheets out there that allow you to plug your gear into it and get detailed information on how much damage you will do. I've played with these quite a bit. It's a huge pain to plug all of the data in and at the end of the day; Shadowpanther is accurate enough to point you in the right direction 99.999% of the time. If you don't believe me, test it for yourselves by downloading these spreadsheets from the fine folks at Elitist Jerks. This is also an exceptional place for you to get info on combat mechanics and mathcraft.

People often ask me about haste. This is a nice addition to the game that increases the attack speed of your weapons for the purposes of white damage (normal attacks). There is no point in stacking haste. It adds only so much damage. I honestly haven't delved into the math on it but at the end of the day it is only one more component to increasing our damage. If the best items that you can obtain in the order that they are listed on Shadowpanther happen to have haste then so be it.

How much hit should you have? Hit has a value in comparison to other damage boosting stats like AP and crit. Hit has significantly more value when you have a combat build because of combat potency. I'm not going to give you a number to target. If you PvP, hit is a lot less important. If you're just getting into epic raiding gear, you might have to give up a lot of hit. Are Shoulderpads of the Stranger better than Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless? God yes. Plug it into any DPS calculator and it's not even close. The cap for hit is 402.9. With precision that brings it down to about 324. Weapon skill effectively increases your hit as well. It's not much but it's a factor. With precision and weapon expertise/mace specialization the hit cap is 308.1. Do you need to maintain the hit cap? No. It's nice to go after but I wouldn't make every sacrifice in the world to get it.

Weapons

Shadowpanther has charts for weapons as well. But that won't cut it will it? Not a day passes where people don't ask a million basic questions about weapons, so let's take a step back and cover some weapon basics.

There is a game mechanic called normalization that has a very big impact on how damage is formulated. It affects most special attacks (sinister strike, shiv, ambush, backstab and mutilate). It does not affect ghostly strike or hemorrhage. Hence if you are using hemo as your primary combo point generating attack, you will want the slowest weapon possible. A 3.0 speed sword (which doesn't exist) would be ideal and a 1.4 speed dagger would be horrible. Attacks that are affected by normalization have a static speed value. So although your dagger might be a 1.5 speed, it will be normalized to 1.7 for the purposes of calculating backstab damage.

Here are the formulas from Wowwiki:

damage = base_weapon_damage + (weapon_speed * Attack Power / 14)

Currently, the normalized weapon damage for instant attacks is:

normalized_damage = base_weapon_damage + (X * Attack Power / 14)

where X is:

• 1.7 for daggers

• 2.4 for other one-handed weapons

• 3.3 for two-handed weapons

• 2.8 for ranged weapons

So what does all of this mean? It means that you should never use a dagger for sinister strike and that you should use a very slow weapon for hemo.

A lot of people ask me, “What is better, swords or daggers”? To this day I am dumbfounded by this question. It's a matter of preference. You should try both and see which you like more. As I stated in the talent portion of the raiding section, combat daggers is the highest damage build. But it's not by much over combat swords. With the recent changes it's probably only a 1% difference. The longer the fight, the better daggers are and the shorter the fight, the better swords are. So if you're raiding and killing bosses that take 10 minutes to kill, daggers will dominate. If you are doing 5-man non-heroic instances, swords will do just as well as daggers will. It's not by much though. I have been specced combat maces a lot lately and I have been beating rogues that are combat daggers on long fights but not by much and I am a little better geared than they are.

Offhand weapon selection seems to be a big question lately. As a general rule of thumb you want the fastest offhand weapon that you can find. Fast weapons proc poison more and proc extra energy when you are specced for combat potency. I did some testing on weapon speed in terms of combat potency. I tested the difference between an extremely high DPS but slow weapon vs. a mediocre DPS fast weapon while specced with combat potency. The faster weapon won hands down.

Here is a chart for determining how much energy per minute you will gain with combat potency:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Combat_Potency

This demonstrates the importance of weapons speed and hit rating.

GEMS

Jewelcrafting added a nice twist to gear selection. What I like about it is the fact that I can balance out my stats. I'm replacing pieces of gear nearly every week. In that process, I see my stats change a lot. At one point I was insanely heavy on hit, then it was AP and now it's crit. In the process of these changes, sacrifices are made. So while my crit is really high right now, my hit was taking a beating, so I swapped out some AP gems for more hit.

Socketed items have socket bonuses. I recommend that you try to get these bonuses as often as possible. But it's not the end of the world if you put a red gem in a yellow slot to maintain some balance in your gear. Most socket set bonuses aren't that fantastic. Just keep in mind that if you forgo these set bonuses on all of your gear, you will be passing on a lot of stats. I think I'm giving up +3 hit and +3 crit for a really good balance.

Then we have meta gems. These offer some nice bonuses but most of them are pretty PvP-centric. Just make sure that you meet the meta gem requirements.

I'm not listing every gem and making recommendations. There are too many and some people have access to more gems than others. Wowhead has a good listing of every gem.

Enchants

Head – Cenarion Expedition exalted

Shoulders - Scryer/Aldor exalted

Chest – 6 to all stats

Hands – 15 agility/26 AP

Wrist – 24 attack power

Legs - Cobrahide Leg Armor or even better Nethercobra Leg Armor

Back – 12 agility

Feet – 12 agility, Surefooted or Cat's Swiftness

Weapons – On your MH, Mongoose is your best bet for PvP or PvE. I also like it on my OH for either but in PvP I use a steel weapon chain.

An Ideal Blue Setup (PvE)

This is a listing of what I consider the best piece for each slot with PvE in mind. None of these items require raiding, PvP, faction grinding or heroic instances. This would be the best setup to prepare for raiding.

Head - Helm of the Claw

Neck - Natasha's Choker

Shoulder - Mantle of Perenolde

Chest - Hauberk of Karabor

Belt - Naaru Belt of Precision

Legs - Fel Leather Leggings

Feet - Fel Leather Boots

Wrists - Spymistress's Wristguards

Hands - Handgrips of Assassination

Finger - Ravenclaw Band and Longstrider's Loop

Trinket - Hourglass of the Unraveller and Abacus of Violent Odds

Back - Cloak of the Inciter

Thrown - Felsteel Whisper Knives

In Ideal Blue Setup (PvP)

This setup assumes the same as with the PvE set. As you gain honor and arena points, see what upgrades on Shadowpanther provide the biggest upgrades in terms of AEP.

Head - Helm of the Claw

Neck - Bone Chain Necklace

Shoulder - Mantle of Perenolde

Chest - Chestguard of the Prowler

Belt - Shadowstalker's Sash

Legs - Oilcloth Breeches

Feet - Boots of the Shifting Sands

Wrists - Spymistress's Wristguards

Hands - Handgrips of Assassination

Finger - Ravenclaw Band and Conquerer's Band

Trinket - Hourglass of the Unraveller and Darkmoon Card: Madness

Back - Cloak of the Inciter

Thrown - Scout's Throwing Knives

I'd put a lot of Solid Stars of Elune in these sockets. Get your stamina as high as you can. As I mentioned before, try to go after your socket bonuses when you can but there's no crime in putting what you want in those sockets if it makes more sense. The shoulders for example have two red slots in them. The bonus is +3 dodge. I'd put Elunes in that all day long.

CREDITS

Krollin: Thanks for proofreading my guide. Your knowledge of the rogue class is amazing and your service to the rogue community is unending.

Hershey (Sotero): Thanks for helping me get my PvP career started up again. And stop cuddling with your dog you sick freak.

Unholy Legion Officers: Without your help in running our guild I'd be writing a guide about UBRS.

WWN Community: Thanks for your endless support of my writing. Together we have built what is hands down the best place for rogues to come to ask questions without fear of getting hammered on by forum trolls.