Rogue Guide

Evasion- It’s time for me to contradict myself a bit. Why on earth would a rogue need to dodge if he keeps his opponent stunned? If I can’t be hit because my opponent is stunned from cheap shot, gouge, blind and kidney shot, then there should be no reason to use evasion. The truth is, stunning isn’t always very efficient in solo PvE. While I can stun a mob quite a bit, energy prevents us from being able to maintain this stun. Also, when solo grinding, stuns aren’t everything. Just kill the mobs as fast as you can and move on to the next one. When I get low on life and take on a new mob or am pretty full and get an add, evasion is my savior.

With evasion on you will take a very small fraction of the damage you would normally take in PvE. So why not use it all the time? The cool down is 5 minutes. This is a medium length cool down. That makes it very hard to stay on top of it. If it were 60 seconds we would use it almost every fight. If it were 60 minutes we would use it only in extreme emergencies. With 5 minutes you really have to keep your eye on that cooldown. Otherwise, you end up only using it in emergencies.

I like to grind elite mobs. Because of that I use evasion often. Some elites can’t be soloed by a rogue without it.

Sap- Under rated or over rated? I find sap to be one of our most important abilities. Any rogue that has been a sapper in upper BRS will tell you that sap is incredibly hazardous to your health. But it is absolutely a necessary evil. I find it to be extremely important for PvP as well.

When sapping in solo PvE, try to let the mobs separate as much as possible. If you sap the first mob and attack the second one from far enough away you can kill the second mob and immediately come out of combat. This will allow you to go back into stealth to take the sapped mob.

Make sure you are cautious with sap. You can get detected out of stealth, you can miss and you can fail to get back into stealth. Any of these things happening can mean a rogue’s instant death. More on all of this later.

Sprint- It makes you run fast. Not much to say about it. Sprint can be used in stealth, so make sure you have it on your stealth toolbar. A level 60 rogue in stealth and no points in camo can outrun a hunter with aspect of the cheetah while he is sprinting. In solo PvE sprint is a nice way to escape a bad situation. I STRONGLY suggest you use sprint first and vanish second. No sense in wasting a flash powder against a melee mob that you can get away from in seconds.

Also note that some long jumps can only be made with sprint on. Speed makes a gigantic difference when it comes to jumping distance. It doesn’t affect height though.

Slice and Dice- In terms of cool factor I give slice and dice a “10”. In terms of effective damage on a full combo finisher, I give it a “3”. The increase in speed just doesn’t translate into that much damage. A lot of that has to do with how much we miss. If Blizzard does indeed reduce miss rates of melee then Slice and Dice will deserve another look.

In the meantime, to get the most of SnD, I suggest a few things. Daggers in both hands, get the talent blade flurry and ALWAYS use poisons. All three of these things are why I don’t like SnD. I’m not a fan of the combat tree, I’m not a big fan of dagger builds and any rogue grouped with a shaman will have a big hit taken from them because of wind fury and flame tongue totems. They take poison off the main hand. I don’t think Blizzard sees that as a bug.

Do not activate SnD if you think that you’ll be gouging your opponent any time soon.

Kick- Kick with silence a caster for the entire school of magic of the spell being cast if they are kicked while casting it. If you kick a mage in the process of casting a fireball, then for the next 5 seconds they will be unable to cast any fire spells. Very handy in PvE. It’s not so great in PvP against mages as they tend to cast instant cast spells.

You need to have outstanding reflexes to use kick. Some spells have a VERY short casting time. It also has to be anticipated. If you know you’re fighting a spellcaster then you will have to keep some energy in reserves so you can kick whenever you want.

Sounds like a pain? It kind of is. But kick is a very important weapon. It is one of those things that separates a great rogue from all others. Make it second nature.

Expose Armor- I don’t use it. I haven’t even trained it in retail and don’t really plan to. You can’t use it in instance groups. Doing so prevents a warrior from being able to sunder armor. He will hate you for that as it is one of his best means of generating hate from a mob so it will stay on him. There’s no sense in using it in solo PvE as mobs drop too fast for it to make a difference. Most mobs I fight that are my level will be at about 25% health when I do my 5 point e