Many people are intrigued by the concept of the rogue, a lightly armored fighter who makes use of subtlety, misdirection, and speed to win a fight or accomplish their goals. The rogue class in World of Warcraft, described in this WoW rogue guide, is a Stealth-based class that strikes suddenly from the shadows, or slips past defenses to accomplish their goals with a minimum of combat, depending on your preferences. Rogues also have some of the highest melee damage potential in the game.
When acting as part of a group for a dungeon or battleground, a rogue’s role is set in stone as a damage class. Rogues are too poorly armored and have too little health to tank, even if their damage might be enough to hold threat, and they have no way to heal themselves or others unless they take First Aid as one of their secondary professions. Rogues are masters of hit and run tactics, and if a fight starts going against them, this WoW rogue guide recommends retreating to fight another day.
Rogues bring utility beyond damage to the groups they accompany, however. In PvE dungeons and raiding situations, their Sap ability can be used for limited crowd control, though many creatures are immune to it. Sapping one opponent of a vulnerable type will lower the odds a bit and is often the prelude to clearing a group of trash mobs. Lockpicking can give access to some areas as well as opening chests or lockboxes gained along the way, and, as WoW rogue guides note, has been improved.
This WoW rogue guide notes that rogues have a lot of utility in PvP as well. Besides their ability to backstab, Ambush, or otherwise put enemy spellcasters and healers out of action, since their powers work exceptionally well on cloth-armored targets, they can also serve as “booby traps” to intercept flag carriers, or to sneak past guards to capture an unwatched resource node. Sprinting with the flag in Warsong Gulch or Eye of the Storm has turned the tide in many a game.
People prefer Combat spec for leveling because it is a bit tougher than the other specs, and can maintain a steady rate of medium-high damage throughout a fight rather than having a single huge spike followed by weaker damage. The numerous energy regeneration abilities of the spec allow these rogues to keep using their special attacks over the course of a longer fray, and such talents as Adrenaline Rush and Aggression are “must haves” for successful use of the spec.
Combat rogues have higher survivability and can also maintain a consistently high damage rate throughout a fight. Subtlety opens with a spike of damage, then does less damage, as this WoW rogue guide describes; Assassination opens weakly but builds towards a crescendo of poison damage; but combat starts out with moderately high damage and can maintain it for the full course of a battle.
PvP is the focus of Subtlety, which is very weak in PvE content due to the difficulty of “setting up” a perfect attack on a raid boss monster. Subtlety can be used for leveling, but is somewhat shaky there as well because it lacks the basic survivability of combat specced rogues. The whole concept of Subtlety is centered around the Ambush, with most kills made either by the Ambush or within a few seconds with a follow-up Eviscerate, or not at all. They make superb flag carriers because they can Sprint twice in a row by refreshing this ability using Preparation.
Assassination is the PvE damage spec, though this WoW rogue guide does not recommend it for the fastest leveling or the most effective PvP. For best effect, these rogues should use two daggers. The main hand dagger should be as slow as possible, and coated in Instant Poison, which will cause large amounts of damage when the signature move, Mutilate, is used. The offhand dagger should be very fast, and coated in Deadly Poison – build five stacks of this poison on the foe, then use Envenom.
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