Updated Rogue Guide [01/15/07]Follow

Supplimental Reading

I'm linking all this stuff at the top so it's nice and easy to find. Some of this is linked later in the guide (in the section where it makes the most sense), but this reference will stay up at the top.

If you just want to know how to spend your first talent points, or don't care about the finer points of the class just yet, go here. You'll find a lot of the very basic stuff there, along with a lot of answers to the more simple questions. Consider it a "Hold you by the hand and walk you to level 40" guide.

Osiris has also written a new guide, which can be found here. The more you read, the more you'll know, and consequently the better you will be at the class. I encourage you to read his guide as well.

Demea wrote a very nice build guide (which has replaced the guide here). It's linked in the build section as well.

EonSprinter also wrote a nice guide on keybindings and other such things (vital to PvP). It can be found here.

Theophany has a nice writeup about building a good user interface, including images of his current setup. A good UI is essential to enjoying the game, in my opinion, so I highly recommend giving it a read and playing around with your UI.

How to: 12 Minute BRD. A guide (with video) on how to farm Blackrock Depths for Large Brilliant Shards. Requires a level 70 Rogue with 225 Enchanting.

Introduction

Since 2.0.1 has launched, much of the information contained in the old Rogue guides has become out of date. Hopefully, this guide can help answer the dozens of questions we get every day asking the same questions. This guide will by no means answer all questions, but it's a good place to start on the road to self reliance, and self reliance is the first step in becoming a contributing member of the community. This will be targeted mostly at people very new to the Rogue class, and even those who haven't even created their Rogue yet.


What do Rogues do?

In PvP, our job is to be sneaky and fight when our opponents are least prepared. Killing an enemy when they are already nearly dead and/or out of mana is perfectly acceptable as a Rogue. If you are concerned with your personal honor, the Rogue class isn't for you. Blizzard has chosen to give Rogues very little in the way of survivability in combat with the excuse that Stealth is powerful enough.

In PvE, what we do is very simple. We kill things. We have a few skills to help groups, but for the most part, we're all about doing damage. If you like seeing big, pretty crits and being on top of the rest of the group in damage, Rogue is what you're looking for.


Races

For the most part, the actual stats on each race don't really matter. At 60, the difference in stats will be negligible compared to the gear you're wearing, and even more so at 70. We will instead be comparing racial abilities and traits.

Alliance

Night Elf
- Racial Ability: Shadowmeld. Basically a watered down stealth that doesn't let you move. Also increases your effective stealth level. This is why most Allies choose Night Elf for their Rogues.
- Racial Traits: Quickness (1% increased dodge), Wisp Spirit (50% increased movement speed while dead), Nature Resistance (+10 Nature Resistance)

A solid race to pick for Rogue. Their racial ability can be very nice when fighting other rogues.

Human
- Racial Ability: Perception. Increases stealth detection for 20 seconds. 3 minute cooldown. Also very nice for fighting other Rogues. It goes without saying that you must know the Rogue is there for this to be useful, so don't consider it gank protection.
- Racial Traits: The Human Spirit (5% increased Spirit), Diplomacy (10% bonus to reputation gain), Sword/Mace Specialization (Increased Sword and Mace Skill by 5)

Another solid race. The increased weapon skill is nice for combat, and Perception is nice in PvP. If I were Alliance, I'd have chosen Human.

Gnome
- Racial Ability: Escape Artist. Removes all movement impairing effects. 60 second cooldown. Very nice PvP tool. Quick cooldown makes for very effective use in BGs.
- Racial Traits: Expansive Mind (+5% Intellect), Arcane Resistance (+10 Arcane Resistance), Engineering Specialist (+15 Engineering Skill)

Not the best race for a Rogue, but a good race in general. Escape Artist will save you in PvP more often than you think.

Dwarf
- Racial Ability: Stoneform. 8 Second immunity to poisons, diseases and bleed effects, as well as 10% increased armor. 3 minute cooldown. Nice to use before a Vanish so you don't get knocked out instantly due to Warrior/Rogue DoTs. Not much other use for a Rogue.
- Racial Traits: Gun Specialization (+5 Gun Skill), Frost Resistance (+10 Frost Resistance), Treasure Finding (activate to show treasure chests on the minimap, no cooldown)

Probably has the least useful abilities and traits for Rogues, though any race can make an effective Rogue.

Horde

Orc
- Racial Ability: Blood Fury. Increases Attack Power by 6 + (your_level -1) * 4 for 15 seconds. 2 minute cooldown. That's 242 Attack Power at level 60, and 282 at 70. Decreases all healing effects by 50% for 15 seconds. 2 minute cooldown. This adds a very large amount of damage while it's active, and is a very powerful ability in PvE. Also useful in PvP, but to a lesser extent.
- Racial Traits: Hardiness (15% stun resistance), Command (+5% pet melee damage), Axe Specialization (+5 Axe Skill)

A good choice for a Rogue. The stun resistance will save you against other Rogues very often, and occasionally against Warriors. Blood Fury makes you a PvE powerhouse, where you can throw out 2500 damage Eviscerates in raids when your cooldowns are ready. The best PvE choice for a Rogue.

Undead
- Racial Ability: Will of the Forsaken. Removes all Fear, Sleep and Charm effects, also grants a 5 second immunity to said effects. 2 minute cooldown. An extremely useful PvP ability. If PvP is your primary focus, this alone should be enough to make up your mind, as classes that can Fear repeatedly often give Rogues the most trouble.
- Racial Traits: Underwater Breathing (Stay underwater 4 times longer than other races), Shadow Resistance (+10 Shadow Resistance), Cannibalize (consume a nearby Humanoid or Undead corpse to restore 35% of your health over 10 seconds).

The best PvP choice for a Rogue. People constantly complain about how overpowered Will of the Forsaken is, so enjoy it.

Troll
- Racial Ability: Berserking. Increases attack speed by 10% to 30% for 10 seconds. The lowest benefit is obtained at full health, and vice versa. 3 minute cooldown. Not a bad ability, but if you're just looking for a damage increase ability, Orcs are better.
- Racial Traits: Regeneration(10% increased health regeneration, 10% health regeneration allowed in combat), Beast Slaying (5% increased damage against beasts), Throwing Weapon Specialization (+5 Throwing Weapons Skill), Bow Specialization (+5 Bow Skill).

Not really a very good Rogue race compared to the others available. Trolls were designed more with Hunters in mind.

Blood Elf
- Racial Ability: Mana Tap. Activate to drain 50 mana from your target and charge yourself with arcane energy for 10 minutes. Stacks 3 times, 30 second cooldown. Scales with level.
- Racial Ability: Arcane Torrent. Silences all enemies within 8 yards for 2 seconds and restores 10 energy/12 mana per Mana Tap affecting you. Scales with level.
- Racial Trait: Arcane Affinity (+10 Enchanting Skill), Magic Resistance (+5 all resistances)

Promises to be a very powerful PvP race. With the new post-60 silence effects Rogues are getting and Improved Kick, it would be possible to keep a caster silenced for an extended period of time, while still dealing decent damage.


Choose Your Weapon!

A very common question these days. Rogues can use a great many weapon types, so it's completely understandable to want to know which you should use when you first start. The answer, however, is not quite so simple. You ultimately must make the decision yourself, but I can help you to do that by explaining what each weapon excels at.

There are four weapon types (excluding ranged) that you can use as a Rogue. One-Handed Swords, One-Handed Maces, Daggers and Fist Weapons. Each type has its strengths, though most Rogues either use Daggers or Swords. Maces are less common, but still more or less mainstream. Fist Weapons are rarely used at all, as good ones are hard to come by.

Daggers

A very popular choice. Daggers excel at doing a lot of damage in a very short period of time. Ambush, Backstab and Mutilate have ridiculously high base damage, along with exceptional crit chance for the first two. Daggers, however, have been plagued by poor Combo Point generation, which made the talent Seal Fate a popular pick. With the addition of Mutilate (the single most energy efficient CP generation), this is no longer such a huge problem for Dagger builds. Daggers also have the highest crit chance of any weapon, as the Dagger talents such as Improved Backstab/Ambush and Dagger Specialization add crit chance, and lots of it. I'm personally nearing 40% with full raid buffs as Combat Daggers. Daggers make for excellent raiding builds, and decent PvP builds. Mutilate is a very nice jack-of-all-trades build, and also happens to be superb for raiding at level 60, and not a far off second to Combat Daggers at 70.

Swords

Probably the best weapon to use with PvP, as it allows for high instant attack damage without having to be behind your target or stealthed. Particularly slow swords (2.8 or slower) combined with a high attack power (in the 1800+ range) can be used with Hemorrhage with great success. Swords are also the strongest grinding build, as you are not reliant on stunning your target to do high damage instant attacks.

Maces

A close second in grinding power if you can find a good one. The Mace Specialization stun effect is extremely useful in all situations. Aside from the Mace Specialization talent, you can treat these exactly as you would a sword. There are some very nice maces out there, but Blizzard really needs to show Maces and Fist Weapons a little more love.

Fist Weapons

Think of Fist Weapons as Swords with the Dagger Specialization talent. Their Damage and Speed is about the same as a Sword (they're a little bit faster on average), but Fist Weapons have the added bonus of having some very, very fast weapons should you desire that in your offhand. An excellent weapon type plagued by poor itemization (that means there aren't many good ones). If you've got a nice set, by all means use and enjoy them, but don't go out there expecting to be fist specced from the start.

Main Hand versus Off Hand

A very common question, and for good reason. The question of what weapon type seems to be the most common, and the answer is very simple. If you're not Mutilate specced, your offhand weapon type makes absolutely no difference aside from the Combat talents that effect only one weapon type.

That being said, what you actually do put in your offhand is a bit more involved than that. Your offhand weapon does 50% damage (75% with Dual Wield Specialization maxed out), so getting higher damage weapons will have a much lower effect than doing so on your main hand. This applies to attack power bonuses as well. The off hand weapon is not used for instant attacks, aside from Shiv, either, so that frees up all damage range considerations entirely.

Now, the end all, be all answer. All other relevant stats equal (DPS, base stats, attack power, etc), faster is better for every build except Mutilate. There are three reasons for this.

1. Poisons are a set proc rate, and are not normalized to weapon speed like Enchantments are. This means that if Weapon A is exactly twice as fast as Weapon B, Weapon A will proc your poisons exactly twice as often (on average, though I realize an exact average is an oxymoron).

2. More swings means more spell interrupts. Most classes get talents that reduce this chance, but frequent interrupts can be the difference between life and death in a very close match. Granted, it's not a big difference, but if the stats are identical between weapons, why not take any advantage you can get?

3. Combat Potency. If you're combat, each offhand hit gives you a chance to gain energy. More attacks means more energy. More energy is more damage. More damage means a better Rogue.

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Combat

This tree has remained more or less unchanged in principle since launch. This is all about increasing your damage with skills you already have. You'll gain a new skill here and there, but their point is to enhance skills you started out with. You will see a great deal of "Improved X" and "Y Expertise" talents here. If you want raw damage output without really changing the way you play, Combat is where you need to go.

Improved Gouge: 0 Points in Combat Required
3 Point Talent, increased the duration of Gouge by 0.5/1.0/1.5 seconds. Seems pitiful, but after 5 seconds of not being in combat, you can restealth, and use another opener. This means that with at least 2 points, you can restealth after a Gouge, though due to lag you'll need to run off a bit first. A very nice talent for PvP, be sure to get 3/3 if you plan to PvP much.

Improved Sinister Strike: 0 Points in Combat Required
2 Point Talent, -2/5 Energy cost of Sinister Strike. Another one that seems kind of bad, but is amazingly useful. That extra 5 energy will stop you from being able to use a third Sinister Strike after one tick of energy, and will continually eat into your energy unnecessarily. As a rule, if you're not specced into Mutilate, Improved Backstab or Hemorrhage, you need both points into this. I'd still recommend getting 2/2 in everything but a Hemorrhage build.

Lightning Reflexes: 0 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, +1/2/3/4/5% chance to dodge. Complete waste of points, you don't need this for any reason, forget it exists. Looks nice, but in fact does not really do anything you'll ever notice. In Raids, you shouldn't be getting hit. While soloing, this might save you an attack or two a minute. In PvP, it's minimally useful, but there are better PvP tools you could be spending these points on.

Improved Slice and Dice: 5 Points in Combat Required
3 Point Talent, Increases the duration of your Slice and Dice ability by 15/30/45%. One of the best talents you can have for raiding. Pretty useless in PvP. If you plan to raid a lot, try to find a way to get this, though it might be hard since Mutilate is basically the new Combat Daggers raiding spec. Stacks with Blade Flurry.
Synergy With:
Blade Flurry, Relentless Strikes, Ruthlessness

Deflection: 5 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, +1/2/3/4/5% chance to parry. Pretty useless if you're not picking up Riposte. It just so happens, however, that Riposte is amazingly useful in both PvP and solo play, so it's common to see this in most builds that go into Combat farther than the second tier.

Precision: 5 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, +1/2/3/4/5% chance to hit with melee weapons. This is one of the best talents Rogues get, for a couple reasons. First of all, you have a base 5% chance to miss against mobs with a defense skill equal to your weapon skill (essentially, mobs of equal level). Dual wielding also incurs a 19% increased chance to miss on all non-instant attacks, so this helps with the massive amounts of misses you see. Very nice talent for all purposes.

Endeurance: 10 Points in Combat Required
2 Point Talent, reduces the cooldown of your Evasion and Sprint abilities by 45/90 seconds. Good if you like to farm BGs and blow cooldowns a lot. Not really much other use for this, since you shouldn't be needing those abilities all that often.
Synergy With:
Improved Sprint

Riposte: 10 Points in Combat, 5 Points in Deflection Required
1 Point Talent, Instant Attack available only after parrying an attack, 6 second cooldown, 10 energy. Deals 150% weapon damage and disarms the target for 6 seconds. Extremely useful when soloing against mobs that carry weapons and against melee classes in PvP. Worthless in raiding, since if you're getting hit, you're not doing your job properly. If you're going very far into combat, it's probably a good idea to go ahead and get this, since it's basically a Sinister Strike for 25% of the energy that disarms, but doesn't give CPs.

Improved Sprint: 10 Points in Combat Required
2 Point Talent, your Sprint ability has a 50/100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects. Must have for PvP if you're in Combat already. Helps immensely against mages and other classes that like to snare you or otherwise try to kite you. This will not clear Daze.
Synergy With:
endeurance

Improved Kick: 15 Points in Combat Required
2 Point Talent, your Kick ability has a 50/100% chance to silence the target for 2 seconds. Nice against casters in general. I've never been a huge fan, since two seconds is relatively short, and you should be keeping your target stunned as much as possible anyway.

Dagger Specialization: 15 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, +1/2/3/4/5% chance to get a critical strike with Daggers. Another amazingly useful talent. Crit rate is good wherever you can get it, and 5% is a lot. Not much else to be said here.
Synergy With:
Improved Backstab, Improved Ambush, Seal Fate

Dual Wield Specialization: 15 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, +10/20/30/40/50% damage to all offhand attacks. Applies to instant attacks that use the offhand as well as normal attacks. Very nice for a scaling DPS bonus. *NOTE* This brings the damage from 50% to 75%, not to 100% as it would seem (multiplicitive effect, not additive).
Synergy With:
Mutilate, Improved Slice and Dice

Mace Specialization: 20 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, +2/4/6/8/10 Maces Skill, +1/2/3/4/5% chance to stun your target for 3 seconds when struck with your mace. This makes Maces a very powerful tool, though poor itemization makes it hard to use Maces in general. If you've got a good set of Maces, pick this up and be amazed at how much it helps.

Blade Flurry: 20 Points in Combat Required
1 Point Talent, 2 minute cooldown ability, +20% attack speed, all your attacks hit one additional nearby target as well, 15 second duration. This is the skill that makes Combat the best build to grind with. This essentially doubles your damage output for 15 seconds, on top of increased white damage speed. Must have for anybody this far into Combat.

Sword Specialization: 20 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, +1/2/3/4/5% chance to get an additional swing when dealing damage with your sword. Another nice grinding talent. Combined with a slow, hard hitting main hand sword, you can do some massive damage in a very short period of time, It can proc off itself. You will occasionally go on crazy proc sprees and get five or six extra attacks in a row, which will completely destroy most mobs while grinding, and severely wound other players.
Synergy With:
Proc Based Weapon Enchants

Fist Weapon Specialization: 20 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, +1/2/3/4/5% chance to get a critical strike with fist weapons. Basically the same as Dagger Specialization, but you don't get the amazingly powerful instant attacks daggers do. Poor itemization plagues Fist Weapons as much as Maces. If you're in Combat, and are using some nice Fist Weapons, go ahead and pick it up. Crit is always nice to have.

Blade Twisting: 25 Points in Combat Required
2 Point Talent, 10/20% chance to daze your target for 8 seconds when striking with Sinister Strike, Shiv, Gouge and Backstab. Worthless talent, probably the most worthless one Rogues get. Crippling Poison II procs more often, slows more, lasts longer and doesn't require talents. The only benefit this has it that it can't be cleansed, but it's so unreliable that it doesn't even matter. Don't get it.

Weapon Expertise: 25 Points in Combat Required
2 Point Talent, +5/10 Weapon Skill with Sword, Fist and Dagger weapons. Weapon Skill makes you get parried less, miss less, get blocked less and crit more. A very nice bonus for only two points. Pick it up if you're this deep in.
Synergy With:
All Weapon Specialization talents except Maces

Aggression: 25 Points in Combat Required
3 Point Talent, +2/4/6% damage from Sinister Strike and Eviscerate. A good talent to pick to get higher in the tree, but not a whole lot else. 6% damage is nice, but you'll likely only pull off 2 Sinister Strikes and 1 Eviscerate while grinding, which is basically what Combat is best at. Assassination and Subtlety both do better in raids and PvP now.
Synergy With:
Improved Sinister STrike, Improved Eviscerate, Surprise Attacks, Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry

Vitality: 30 Points in Combat Required
2 Point Talent, +2/4% Stamina, +1/2% Agility. Depending on how high your stats are, this could be either be amazing or completely worthless. This one is really hard to say whether you should get it or not, because it's so dependant on what kind of gear you've got.

Adrenaline Rush: 30 Points in Combat Required
1 Point Talent, +100% Energy regeneration rate for 15 seconds, 5 minute cooldown. This is an absolutely amazing ability. Toss this up with Blade flurry and watch everything in the general vicinity explode. If you've got more than 26 or so points into Combat, go ahead and get this too, it's that amazing.
Synergy With:
Blade Flurry, Improved Backstab, Improved Sinister Strike

Nerves of Steel: 35 Points in Combat Required
2 Point Talent, +5/10% resistance to Fear and Stun effects. Great for PvP. If you're this far into Combat, and are going to PvP, pick it up. That stun or fear resist could very easily be the difference between winning and losing in PvP.
Synergy With:
Orc Racial Trait: Hardiness

Combat Potency: 35 Points in Combat Required
5 Point Talent, your offhand melee attacks have a 20% chance to generate 3/6/9/12/15 energy. With a 1.5 Speed offhand weapon, this will generate 2 Energy per second on average. The faster your offhand, the better this is. That 15 energy could also easily let you fire off your Eviscerates significantly earlier. An interesting talent, though not the best choice for all builds.

Surprise Attacks: 40 Points in Combat Required
1 Point Talent, your finishing moves can no longer be dodged, increases damage done by Sinister Strike, Backstab, Shiv and Gouge by 10%. A powerful talent, though I still think it needs a bit of a buff to really be on par with the other 41 points. It's got both PvP and PvE potential. Kidney Shots being undodgeable will help against other Rogues a great deal, and the flat 10% damage bonus is very nice, especially with good high damage weapons to maximize the actual damage benefit.

Edited, Jan 15th 2007 12:05pm by Nooblestick

Building an effective...build

This section will no longer be updated. Demea has written a very good, well thought out guide to Rogue talent specs. You can find it here. The general advice here will always remain true, but specs become outdated, and talents change, so check Demea's thread for up to date info on specific builds.

Now that you have read the section that explains all the Rogue talents (hopefully), many of you probably have some ideas for a buid you might want to make. Before you run out and respec, take the following advice to heart.

1. The most important part of any build is synergy. While Talents A and B might both be good talents, they might not work together as well as A and C might. For example, Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry is a very powerful combo that can devastate several targets at once, while Blade flurry and Preparation are not nearly as powerful together.

2. Some talents rely on a specific weapon type. While it's possible to swap out weapons mid battle to perform attacks such as Backstab, it penalizes you by resetting the global cooldown each time you do (1 seconds of doing nothing but white DPS and moving). If you want to use Daggers, pick a Dagger spec. You can only do so much, and trying to do too much will only make you worse all around.

3. Certain talents excel in PvP or PvE, but not both. For instance, Blade Flurry is very nice in PvE, but is hard to effectively use in PvP (that's not to say it doesn't have its PvP uses).

4. Don't be afraid to ask for help, but be as specific as possible. Include a link to your build that you've created with a talent calculator, and describe what you want your build to do. A little humility goes a long way. If somebody criticizes you heavily, don't overreact, think about what they said, and if you don't understand something they suggested, ask for clarification.

5. Respecs happen. To be the most effective, it's wise to put your first two points into Combat (Improved Sinister Strike), the next several into Assassination (Malice, Improved Eviscerate and Remorseless), and then continue putting points into combat until 40. Once you hit level 40, you have access to 31 point talents, so it's wise to respec and put all 31 points into Combat to get Adrenaline Rush (the best grinding talent). It's ok to respec once or twice on the way if you realize you've made a mistake, too.

Sample builds.

Pre-60 Builds
Level 22 Assassination. Since you don't have access to the deeper Combat talents, this is the best bet to level quickly. Remoreseless gives you stronger crit power after each kill and keeps you going fast. Improved Eviscerate helps kill things that much faster. This build is pretty simple, just kill things as fast as you can.

Level 35 Daggers. A fairly potent build. With Remorseless and Improved Ambush, you can achieve ~100% crit chance on Ambush, guaranteeing that your targets start at very low health. Improved Backstab was skipped because stuns are required to use that while soloing, which is not efficient solo play. Much less boring than the standard sword build, and more potent in PvP as well.

Level 40 Combat Swords. This build is the basis of a Combat Swords grinding build, which is arguably the most efficient method of leveling. It's highly advisable to get a pair of strong swords at 40 and respec to this to help you on your way to 60. Stacking Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush will completely destroy 3 or 4 mobs that are within melee range. Intentinally overpulling with the assistance of Evasion every 5 minutes really racks up the experience.

60+ Builds
Level 60 Mutilate Grinding. Mutilate isn't a terrible build for solo play. This build allows for heavy burst damage and a good deal of control. Improved Kidney Shot combined with Find Weakness makes it not a waste of combo points/energy to stun during solo play, as it massively increases your next round of attacks' damage. Not the best grinding build, but not a boring one either.

Level 60 Combat Swords. Basically the same as the level 40 version, but with more toys and damage increasing talents. It was the best to 60, it will probably be the best after 60, though I cannot presume to know what I have not yet experienced.

Level 60 ZOMG ONESHOT Build. This worked for me on the test realm, but the damage talents in the Subtlety tree are not working properly at the moment. In my experience on the test realm, I was getting close to 3,000 damage Ambushes, which was more than enough to one-shot many mid 50s mobs. My personal planned build post 60 if the talents are fixed.
*Note* Talents have been fixed *Note*

Level 70 Builds

WEll, with enough experience with several builds at level 70, I've decided to add this section finally.

Combat Mutilate. This is one of the best raiding builds out there (probably second only to combat Daggers). Played the same as pretty much any other Mutilate build, but your finishers will differ. Your sheer CP generation power will allow you to cycle between Slice and Dice and Envenom to push your damage to new heights, while maintaining Slice and Dice 100% of the time.

Hybrid Mutilate. Similar to the above build, but the last 7 points in Combat have been moved to Subtlety. This gives higher damage on your Mutilate, but lowered white damage output. You also pick up Imp. Sap (which will be removed next patch anyway). A very strong 5 man build, when Imp. Sap is required, and when battles don't last long enough for the increased white damage to matter as much.

Subtlety Mutilate. Another strong 5 man build. The points in MoD can be moved to Camouflage if you wish, and the last 4 points could really go anywhere you want. Improved Stealth, more of the Assassination goodies, Imp. Gouge if you want to PvP with it. Pretty much anything you like to have. The main selling point of this build is Imp. Ambush and Initiative. This means 3 CP Ambushes (occasionally), which are very nice.

ZOMG ONESHOT (level 70). You won't really be one-shotting much at 70, but the build is an extension of the level 60 one where that is indeed possible. There are many variations on this build that I won't list, as most changes are personal preference. Plays pretty straightforward. Amp up, blast your target with a huge Ambush, and finish them with stuns and Backstabs. A ridiculously overpowered build against clothies, as Ambush -> Blind -> Amp -> Shadowstep Ambush will do 7-8k damage, while the person has only the duration of the global cooldown to respond.

Adrenaline Rush/Prep. A powerful solo build, and a powerhouse in the Arenas as well. Increased stamina, fear and stun resist make you harder to stop, and Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry and Preparation make you a force to be reckoned with. The points in Dual Wield Spec can be moved to a weapon spec of your choice.

Combat Daggers. I have limited experience with this build, so it's likely not optimum, but this isn't a bad build either. Will do tons of damage in raids, not so much in 5 mans (things die too fast and this build is geared towards longer battles). Your only finisher is going to be Slice and Dice. Weapon Expertise was skipped because, well, it sucks after the changes made to weapon skill. The points in Deflection can be moved there if you really want, but you won't see a difference in damage (a few tenths of a percent maybe).

[http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=f0ebovZGcqbbVzx0Got]Combat Swords[/link]. A simple "smack them until they stop moving" build. Simple to play, high damage output. Replace Sword Spec with the spec of your choice if you don't want to use swords. Good raid and solo build, decent in arenas, pretty bad for other PvP.

Don't like my builds?
By all means experiment. If you want to see how the pros do it, look up the best raiding guilds in the armory, see how their rogues are specced. Chances are they're better than I am, and you can take their specs to the bank, so to speak.

Still have questions?

By all means, ask away, but before you do, check this post out. It contains some general guidelines for effectively getting help, as well as links to many sites where you might be able to quickly answer the question for yourself.

Quick Links
Rogue Lockpicking Guide
Rogue Poison Guide
Old Rogue Guide (Some or all of the information might be outdated)


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Edited, Jan 22nd 2007 3:20pm by Nooblestick

Edited, Apr 30th 2007 2:57pm by Nooblestick

Edited, May 20th 2007 5:01am by Nooblestick

Edited, May 24th 2007 11:25am by Nooblestick

Edited, Jun 29th 2007 4:37pm by Nooblestick

Aen's Lockpicking FAQ (I did not write any of this)

This give you some ideas on where to level up your lock picking and what level certain items are to open.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.asp...276&P=1

Found a chest that is 100-175 (goes gray). Its south of ratchet on the boats where all those pirates are.

Here is the post
______________________________

Hi, since it's been asked so many times I was hoping to compile a list of what items require what skill in lockpick and when they become trivial. This is still not complete, I NEED input from everyone.

Q. How do I get the skill lockpicking?
A. A rogue trainer (a major city one) will give you a quest at level 16 that gets you thief tools (for free) and teaches you the skill.

Q. Okay, I have the quest, but my skill is super low I can't complete the quest, what now?
A. In the same area as your lockpicking quest, there should be some chests you can level up on. These chests are orange at skill level 1 (see below for color explanation) and don't go grey until about 100. Also, see down below for a 1-300 skillup guide.

Q. What do these colors mean? Red? Orange? Grey? I'm colorblind!
A. Every lock you pick has a 'skill level'. Just like with tradeskill items, they are color coded.
Red = can't pick the lock at your skill level
Orange = guarenteed skill up
Yellow = good chance for skillup
Geeen = low chance for skillup
Grey = no chance for skillup
There is a list down below for commonly items and their skillup numbers in reference to lock difficulty.

Q. Do I have to visit a trainer to get journeyman/artisan/safecracker rank in Lockpicking?
A. You don't. Your skill scales with level: every level you gain as a rogue translates into 5 extra points to your lockpicking cap.

Lockpicking Guide from 1-300
1-100 - Keep picking the instant respawn chests near the lockpicking quest.

100-175 - You can pick the Polly quest chest (Horde LP Quest chest), OR you can use either of the chests in the Poison quests (Alliance OR Horde) you get at later levels. You will have to click on your lockpicking skill first, then click the chest. (If you have the reading and inference skills of a legaly "mentally deficient" person: YOU HAVE TO READ BELOW IN THE TRIVIAL LIST.) (I have just insulted retarded people everywhere, I've seen mentally retarded people with more smarts than half the people in this board.)

For the Polly/Poison Tower chests: You NEED to activate (CLICK) your lockpicking skill icon first, then (CLICK) on the chest as your cursor will not change automatically like it did during the quest or before it.

175-225 - Pickpocket mobs for Sturdy Junkboxes. Several mobs drop them, check thottbot and pick the best location for you. I recomend mobs in instances, that way you can pick it clean, reset the instance, then go to town again. You can also pick doors in instances at this range. I personally picked the door in the Scarlet Monestary cathedral from 180-225 one day by repeatedly resetting the instance.

225-280 There is no real easy way that I've found to skill this range other than to keep doing junkboxes. You can use the gates in the NE corner of Searing Gorge, but there is no reliable way to reset them (see notes below for more information). Also opening lockboxes in your faction's major city will get you skillups.

280-300 There are 3 doors in Blackrock Depths that are very close to the zone in that you can use to skill up this.


Trival list
If your skill is lower than "orange" number, you won't be able to pick the lock (It won't even let you try). If your skill is higher than the "grey" number, you won't get a skillup from that item. A "?" marks information that might be wrong, multiple "???" mark missing information.

Pickpocketted stuff:

Battered Junkbox (Orange: 25? Grey: 100?)
Worn Junkbox (Orange: 100? Grey: 175)
Sturdy Junkbox (Orange: 175 Grey: 275?)
Heavy Junkbox (Orange: 250 Grey: never?)

Dropped Chest - These are extremely random, so don't try to camp them.

Please see note above

Heavy Bronze Lockbox
Ornate Bronze Lockbox
Iron Lockbox (Orange: 75? Grey:???)
Strong Iron Lockbox (Orange: 125 Grey:???)
Steel Lockbox (Orange: 175 Grey: ???)
Reinforced Steel Lockbox (Orange: 225 Grey: never)
Mithril Lockbox (Orange: 225 Grey: never)
Thorium Lockbox (Orange: 225 Grey: never)
Eternium Lockbox (Orange: 225 Grey: never)

Doors:

Doors in the normal world (aka not in instances) are usually on some sort of timer. In other words, you can't repeatedly pick the same door over and over again for skillups. The mechanism of the timers are not well known. Some people say if you pick something else (anything else) inbetween attempts that it will reset some timers. Others say that if you pickpocket a mob, or kill a mob, or so something else, that this will reset the timers. It may be different for every door. Suffice to say that reset an instance always (to my knowledge) resets any doors inside, so use that method when you can. I am leaning towards the pickpocketting theory for now.

Gnomeregan (Orange: 150? Green: 200)
Scarlet Monastery (Orange: 175 Green: 226 Grey: 275?)
Searing Gorge Gate (Orange: 225 Grey: never)
BRD Shadowforge Gates (Orange: 280 Grey: never )
BRD Prison Cells (Orange: 250 Grey: never )
Scholomance (Orange: 280 Grey: never )

From Fishing:
Battered Chest
Small Locked Chest
Reinforced Locked Chest
Sturdy Locked Chest
Ironbound Locked Chest (Orange: 175 Grey: 250?)

Other Stuff:

Most of these are chests used in quests that you can pick after you complete the quest. Note that you will probably need to activate your picking skill first, then click on the item as your cursor will not change automatically like it did during the quest or before it.

Insta-chests from respective lockpicking quests (Orange: 1 Grey: 105)
Main chest in lockpicking quest (Orange: 75 Grey: 175)
Poison quest chest (Orange: 90 Grey: 175)
Polly chest (Orange: 90 Grey: 175) (See note 5 below)
Engineered Practice Locks (Green: 1 Grey: 90?) (You can only pick these ONCE, so they are WORTHLESS)
Cozzle's Lockbox (house by the Venture Co. STV, it's on a ~20m timer) (Orange: 150? Grey: 250?)

Links for lockpicking quests with respective insta-chests:
Alliance: http://thottbot.com/?q=1165
Horde: http://thottbot.com/?q=799

List of things that increase Lockpicking:
Dark Leather Gloves (+5 LP) (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=5538)

Various notes and other information:

1. Alliance rogues using the Klaven tower (Posion quest) chest: I just did this at 39, go to Westfall to where the poison quest is at, top floor, Klaven can take me down to half health at 39 if I don't dual-ambush so he kinda hurts. Hopefully you can also be outside his aggro range to practice. To do this just go behind his table (after he spawns he walks around the top of the tower, wait until he is done and ends up a bit away from you), there should be two chairs, jump over the chair closest to the chest and from behind the chair pick the lock. Don't worry about Touch of Zanzil: a death or Jungle Remedy from STV or cure poison from a high enough player should make it all good.
You must be of a high enough level not to aggro Klaven!

2.You can skill up 8 times on the doors to SM, there are 4 doors, 2 inside instances and 2 outside. They are on timers which can be reset.
(See confirmed information 1, above)
Only about half the chests are pickable and are trivial at 175.

Library: Chest in a cubby before the Gallery of Treasures, guarded by 3 mobs. Another chest that spawns in one of the hallways close to Doan himself, guarded by typically 2 mobs + one roamer.

Armory: Chest either in the Training Grounds (guarded by 2 mobs + 1 roamer) or inside the first part of the armory (guarded by 2 mobs + 1 roamer.) Can't remember location of other chest off the top of my head.

Cathedral: Chest on either the left or right side of the fountain. Another chest that spawns either by the monk guarding Fairbanks' hiding spot, or spawns on the other side of the cathedral (guarded by 3 mobs + 2 that roam close but may or may not aggro.)

5.South of Ratchet along the coast a short way is a beached pirate ship. No pirates around ship, they are camped south of it. Bit tricky getting the jump up onto the prow of the ship so you can get onboard, but can try repeatedly with no hassles. The chest is by itself downstairs in the back. Just keep opening it til you hit 175. No fuss, no muss and NO FIGHTS! (This is the location of the Horde lock picking quest and is in Horde controlled territory. Not recomended for Alliance characters on a PvP server).

Thanks to: Too many people to list so I thank: The Rogue Board!

You should thank Tyknee because he has like 10x more patience to deal with you guys than I do and reworked the whole post so that it's really idiot proof.

Thanks for the sticky Blizzard


For the Polly/Poison Tower chests: You NEED to activate (CLICK) your lockpicking skill icon first, then (CLICK) on the chest as your cursor will not change automatically like it did during the quest or before it.


Original Post

Edited, Jan 15th 2007 12:19pm by Nooblestick

Added some nicer formatting and added the Poison FAQ and Lockpicking FAQ. Feel free to post any questions or suggestions.

Thanks for the encouragement. The part I wrote (not the poisons and lockpicking section) was just under 16 pages long. Took the better part of 3 days to write.

/rogue community bows before nooblestick

awesome guide! really really like your explanation of talents, no more wasted gold on respecs (the synergy you add at the end help a TON).

Edited, Jan 16th 2007 1:56am by Tallysien

Wow Nooble, you have really outdone yourself with this one...how are you going to beat this

Fantastic! Nice one mate! :)

Thank you all very much for the praise. It's a nice feeling to know that your hard work is appreciated.

Updated the guide, by the way. Added a section to explain off hand weapon choices, which is one of the most common questions we get, and ironically I completely forgot about it.

aww...my rogue mentor..i am confused..i specced mutilate and love it..then, low and behold, FIST WEAPONS!! OH NO><:)DUH TIME...i dont understand how to consider fist weapons..are they considered daggers?..swords?...both?.well you get the picture..can you explain for me please..can i keep my mutilate spec and use fist weapons?.off hand? or do i sword spec for them?..HELP.!!

Nooblestick, your guide is great. I learned a lot of things I should be considering. I never would have thought about much of this stuff until I had to scramble for an answer.

Actually, speaking of scrambling for answers... that's what brought me here in the first place. You see, I am having trouble pickpocketing people. I can't seem to find a valid target.

I have only tried to pickpocket friendly targets. I have only tried one target that was lower level. He was two levels below me, is that not enough difference in levels? Am I targeting the wrong type of npc? I play on an RP server, if that makes any difference. I can't imagine why it would, but there were lots of things I couldn't imagine before I started playing this game.

The only thing I can think of is that I need to target neutral npc's. Am I close? Please help. It will be a while before my rogue makes it to neutral terratory, I'd just like to know if that's what I'm doing wrong. So, thanks in advance if you find time to answer my questions.

You have a talent for explaining things. So is there any possibility of you creating a Rogues Guide to Thievery? If you did, I bet it would be awesome.

Now I understand perfectly where I was making my mistakes. Not that I've tried to pickpocket any of the wildlife, but I also didn't try to pickpocket anyone neutral. ;-)

My thanks, again, Nooblestick.