by Zach Yonzon
Rogues. Those sneaky little bastards could be anywhere. Out of all the classes in the game, there is perhaps no class no more feared for their PvP prowess than rogues. Rogues gain a fearsome reputation by virtue of the nature of the class alone — they can Stealth. Because of rogues, everyone has to literally watch their backs. No place is safe because a rogue can be lying in lurking in some dark corner waiting to strike at the proper time. Through years of leveling in a PvP server, there is no sound in the game more unsettling than the low humming whoosh of a nearby stealthed rogue. In fact, rogue (and by extension, feral druid) stealth is the single biggest reason why I don’t PvP with music on.
And for rogues, it’s all about timing. In the Battlegrounds, it isn’t uncommon to find rogues preying on the weak, those low on life, the defenseless players eating or drinking. They can’t help it. It’s in their nature. The class encourages foul play through Stealth and a wonderful repertoire of attacks from behind. Rogues are at their best when catching their opponents off guard and are extremely capable of doing so. After the jump, we’ll take a closer look at the basic things to expect when fighting a rogue regardless of their spec.
Stealth
As mentioned, Stealth is a rogue’s defining ability. Learned at Level 1, every rogue learns to sneak around and pounce on an opponent. It’s their single biggest trump card, the ability to remain unseen. In Arena play, it’s critical for the rogue to get the opener, as some of her most powerful attacks require her to be stealthed. Taking a rogue out of stealth removes the element of surprise so it’s important to be on your toes. If you see a rogue from a distance entering stealth, always be on the ready. While it is practically impossible to get the jump on a very good rogue, the good news is that there are quite a lot of mediocre rogues who get too close to an opponent assuming their stealth will keep them undetected.
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Rogue Guide (Last updated 2/13/2010)
By Uhohuhoh, Undead Rogue @ Ensidia
US – Bleeding Hollow
Being a good rogue is considered one of the easiest things to do as a World of Warcraft player – compared to being good at other classes. Rogues are known to be a two button (Mutilate, Envenom) class with some wicked survivability tricks. All of this might be true if your simply running dungeons and trying to hit an 1800 arena rating. However, being a truly good rogue – one who truly excels and PvE and/or PvP – requires a lot more than what most people think. Being a good rogue requires dedication, patience, skill, and understanding. The goal of this guide is to help explain and debunk some rogue myths, as well as help you understand what it takes to be a good rogue, and how to get there.
To better organize this, I will be dividing it into two major sections, Combat and Mutilate, and each of these sections will have their own respective sub-sections. If someone would like to write a PvP section for this, I would be happy to put it up.
Raiding as a rogue, you really only have one goal and purpose for the raid: To do as much damage as possible. Rogues have no buffs and a weak debuff (compared to other classes). While this is not always the case based on the fight and how Blizzard changes WoW at any given time, rogues, on a static fight, should be the top damage doers in the raid. Please note, I am making a clear difference here between DPS (damage per second), and damage (overall damage done). Rogues generally will not be on top of the DPS meters even if they are on top of the damage meters, because casters (such as arcane mages) generally have much higher DPS. However, since they are limited by mana, they cannot dps during the entire fight, and need to take breaks to regenerate their mana. This is part of what allows rogues to be highest on damage and yet not highest on DPS.
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By Dinaer @ Forever a Noob
The fourth boss in ICC (and the last one available as of the date of this post) is by far the most challenging. He has an interesting fight mechanic that will challenge your raid’s awareness and control.
The primary mechanic in this fight is the boss’s Blood Power. You can see it in the boss’ unit frame where his mana/rage/energy bar would be. It starts at zero, and it will increase during the course of the fight. Saurfang gains Blood Power every time either he or his minions do damage to anyone in the raid.
For each point of Blood Power he gains, his size and damage will increase by 1%. As if that wasn’t bad enough, if it reaches 100 (a full bar) then Saurfang will place a Mark of the Fallen Champion on a raid member. That raid member will take continuous damage. The Mark cannot be dispelled, and even persists through death. Not only does the Mark do damage, but that damage will also contribute more points to Saurfang’s Blood Power gain. His Blood Power returns to zero when he casts Mark of the Fallen Champion, and the process starts again.
As you can see, the key to this fight is to avoid damage as much as possible to minimize his Blood Power gain. No matter how good your tanks and healers are, if there are too many Marks of the Fallen Champion on the raid then the fight is lost.
Here are the ways he does damage (and gains Blood Power):
- Boiling Blood – a debuff cast on random raid members. Its unavoidable and can’t be dispelled, although a priest’s Power Word: Shield.will block the damage on you (and prevent Blood Power gains). Don’t waste your CoS trying to get rid of it – it won’t work. (I don’t think it even prevented the damage ticks – can anyone else confirm this?)
- Blood Nova – this is only cast on players at range, so it shouldn’t have any impact on us rogues. The person with Blood Nova doesn’t take damage himself, but does damage to anyone within 12 yards. Ranged players must stay spread out to avoid this.
- Rune of Blood – cast only on the tanks, so rogues won’t get this either. The target with this takes debuff extra damage, and the damage heals Saurfang for 10x the amount dealt. For this reason, tanks will swap during the fight. Be aware of that in case it causes threat issues.
- Summon Blood Beasts – he will summon minions (2 on 10-man, 5 on 25-man) who give him a point of Blood Power each time they hit someone. It is imperative that no one gets hit by them. They are mostly immune to AoE damage, so they must be focused down. They can be slowed and snared.
The most important, and most challenging, part of the fight is to prevent the Blood Beasts from hitting anyone. If your players can do that, then Saurfang’s Blood Power gain, while inevitable, will be slow enough that you can kill him before his Marks overwhelm the raid.
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for starters, all this information is about level 80 PvP, as a rogue.
Talent Build: Mutilate/Prep 41/5/25
Stats:
AP: This is your highest priority, you want burst.
Crit: This goes along with AP, not as important but take it where you can.
Hit: Try and be close-ish to the PvP hit cap, which is 5%.
Expertise and Haste: Don’t worry about it, doesn’t hurt though.
Armor Penetration: Nicer than Exp/Haste, but still don’t focus on it.
Resil: Resilience is a tricky balance. You want to have enough you won’t be bursted down in a few GCDs, but it shouldn’t be needed to get a lot. Try and be in the range of 400-500. A bit more or less will probably be ok, but if you have less you may have to play more defensively.
Gear:
You want a balance of PvE and PvP gear. Enough PvP to be in the ideal resil area, and enough PvE to be able to burst people down. This really depends on how far progressed you are in both, so just go for as much AP and crit as you can within the resil range.
Always gem offensively:
Red/Prismatic(eternal belt buckle) sockets – +AP
Blue sockets – +Stam/AP
Yellow sockets – +Crit/AP
(AP, attack power, is your friend!)
Misc. Gear:
There’s a few pieces that aren’t too hard to get you should aim for.
Titan-Forged Rune of Determination – Replace your “regular” PvP trinket with this, easy to get.
Darkmoon Card: Death – Your other trinket, can cost a bit (usually 800-1200, depending on your realm) but trust me, it’s worth it. High proc rate, 45s internal cooldown. So it’s pretty much +2k damage to your opener.
Direbrew’s Shanker 2.0 – Not absolutely needed, but since it’s brewfest you shouldn’t have too hard a time getting one. I use this along with Sinister Revenge and it’s 2.0 speed is really outstanding, more damage from your mutilate, even though it’s lower DPS.
Enchants:
If you are an engineer, congratulations! It’s about to pay off. Rocket gloves are amazing, use them for that extra bit of burst. The nitro boots are the best foot enchant as well.
If you aren’t, don’t worry.
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this requires you to have a rogue, and have the skill Cloak of Shadows.. Its semi useless, but only in a few situations.. Its worked in the three places ive tried it…
What it does: After popping CoS the debuff does not apply again after CoS is over.. Good for exploring some situations…
What you do:
All you have to do is stand in the lava and pop CoS… For as long as your standing (Or swimming) in the lava (And a few other AOE textures.) This has been tested in the lava in OS 10 and 25, and in the Sludge in the boss room of Thadius… At no time can you jump out of it or walk out, you will gain the debuff again.
Kinda makes people think for a second..
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I’ve played rogue since 2005-2006 and only PvE, and I like to keep my gems, enchants and specs up to date and such. Also known as min-maxing.
So I got this idea to make a rogue guide, for people inexperienced with rogues to go after.
Specs, Glyphs and Poisons:
Mutilate: Talent Calculator – World of Warcraft Pretty much the only spec you should use in PvE.
Combat: Talent Calculator – World of Warcraft What you MUST do with this spec is replace Sword Spec to your current weapon spec.
Poisons:
Mutilate: Instant (MH) Deadly (OH)
Combat: Wound (MH) Deadly (OH)
Gems, enchants and stat priorities.
Basically for Mutilate assuming you have 99 hit: AP/Agi > Expertise > Hit > Crit > Haste > ArPen.
If you are having a hard time with Mutilate, try some Expertise gems instead of AP/Agi.
Combat assuming you have 99 hit:
Tier 7 level: Agility > AP > Armor Penetration > Hit/Expertise.
Tier 8 level: Agility > Armor Penetration > AP > Hit/Expertise
Tier 9 level: Armor Penetration > Agility > AP > Hit/Expertise
Now, let’s get on to gems. Basically you want the BEST gems you can get.
So I will suggest you to get epic gems, as gold is not hard to get these days *hint* botting *hint*.
Adjust my gems below to the list above, as I will use tier 9 gear level.
Red socket: Armor Penetration for combat, Agility for Mutilate.
Blue socket: Nightmare Tear (10+ stats) in the BEST blue socket. IF the socket bonus justifies 10 agi/arp loss then use a blue gem there. Else use a red gem.
Yellow socket: 20+ Hit if you’re under 99 hit. Else you’ll go for 10 Agi/10 Crit as Mutilate and Combat. Unless the socket bonus is crap. Then go for a red gem.
Meta socket: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (21 Agi 3% crit damage.)
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lately I decided to finally pull myself together and get full lockpicking. It took about 2 days with casual grinding. What i’m gonna include in this guide is:
Please note this guide is for alliance only from 1-170. After that horde can use it too.
1: Before we begin.
2: 1-70 – Redrigde Mountains.
3: 71-150 – Hillsbrad Foothills.
4: 151-225 – Badlands.
5: 226-250 – Tanaris
6: 251-300 – Eastern Plaguelands.
7: 301-350 – Zangarmarsh.
8: 351-400 – Icecrown.
9: Credits.
Before we begin.
Glyphs
To improve downtime and be more efficient what you wanna do is go to the Auction House and buy 2 glyphs.
1st one is called Glyph of Pick Lock. This will reduce casting time on Lock picking to instant. (Get this or regret it later 
)
2nd one is called Glyph of Pick Pocket. This will increase range on pick pocket by 5 yards. (This will become very usefull once you get to Northrend.)
Talents
Also I recommend you respecc, if not already is Assasin/Sublety as main or off spec.
This means 6 seconds lower CD on stealth, 15% faster movement in stealth.
And another 15% from 2/2 Fleet Footed
And Ofc master of deception. (Makes you less noticeable in stealth). 
Macros
Trust me this one you’ll never replace again, a pickpocketing macro:
#show pick pocket
/cleartarget
/targetenemy
/cast pick pocket
Basically you can just run past mobs spammin’ this and it’ll pick pocket em. (Remember to turn on auto loot).
When your out finding Lockboxes spam this macro on EVERY mob, not only will you get lockboxes which can increase your skill too, but you also have chance of getting BoE epics and greens
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I was doing 2v2 arena with my rogue partner the other day and the match ended up as a 1v1. My partner the rogue vs a prot pally healer. As u can imagine the match started to drag out.
Anyway at one point my partner blinded the pally, stealthed up and started cannibalizing the enemy hunter’s corpse to regain some health. As the blind finished and the pally came over to concecrate on the hunter’s corpse my mate sapped him while still channeling cannibalize. The act of sapping while channeling cannibalize didn’t stop it from channeling and it kept going until the channel time was up.
Not sure how helpful this is but I just thought I would put it out there. Maybe you can pro it up in arena too
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After you have used Trix of the trade on a player you can deal damage with bombs such as saronite bomb and frag belt (have not tried other bombs) without triggering the 6 seconds buff and it will have the same effect as if you would have pulled with a ranged attack like throw and shoot, this means you can pull a group of mobs and still have the buff left to transfer threat for 6 sec when you start attacking for real.
Misdirect report addons will not announce if you pull like this.
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Sap is not spammable anymore , boohoo. Well, here is your solution!
Simply make this macro:
#showtooltip Sap
/targetenemy
/cast Sap
Spam this in arena, and it will sap anything stealthing around you (it targets it and saps it).
This also works in BGs, but because of the great many people around you, the /targetenemy may screw things up.
Happy Sapping.
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