World of Warcraft: Rogue Builds

by Oreo

The Rogue is primarily a melee damage dealer. This section lists common talent builds for both dagger and sword. But in my opinion the most fun class to play with. I personally while leveling went for a triple-spec combat hemo with two daggers and the starter gear and then respected to ShadowStep Build for some really fun PvP.

Just a warning although rogues are a fun class to play with one miss click or a wrong move can just spoil the whole attack and you can be bait for the other faction’s player but it isn’t that hard to master the rogue.

Dagger Builds

Combat Daggers – 15/41/5 - PvE

Combat Daggers is a PvE build for high raid damage. It depends on Backstab and maintaining Slice and Dice to do most of its damage. Before the Burning Crusade expansion it was the highest damage build available, but currently is roughly equal to Combat Swords/Fists. Due to the nature of Combat Potency, overall regen is largely determined by the quality and speed of your offhand dagger 1.3-1.5

Mutilate – 41/20/0 – PvE focus

If your focus is PvE with some PvP thrown in on the side, you’ll need to improve your sustainable dps with combat talents. Dual-wield specialisation is the key here, in addition to a solid increase in white damage, it will actually improve your mutilate damage as well. Also, you can never go wrong with improved slice and dice and precision. The same rules apply to you as to combat rogues: white damage is king. Don’t ignore your hit rating and AP.

Mutilate – 41/20/0 -PvP

This build is widely regarded (post 2.3.2) as the top Mutilate spec. Combining the burst and stunlock of mutilate with the damage increase from DW spec and the mobility of Imp Sprint. Taking Endurance as filler will allow you to use sprint twice for those longer arena matches. Also there are points to redistribute, if you wish, between Vile poisons, Imp EA and lethality to taste.

Mutilate – 43/0/18 - PvP

If your focus is PvP, taking subtlety talents will give you some nice defensive talents and improved ability to stunlock. Having 3/3 Initiative, and 5/5 Sealfate makes it very simple to stock up on combo points. Just open up with a cheap shot and mutilate and you’re ready to kidney shot. You can then use cold blood and mutilate to quickly generate more combo points for an eviscerate or envenom. Using Imp EA on clothies when combined with the passive armor penetration on S3 armor and you’ll have a target with zero armor.

Seal Fate / Premed – 30/0/31

This is a versatile build that takes burst damage and combo point generation from Seal Fate and adds cooldown management with Prep. You get increased sap range and decreased energy cost for sap and blind with Dirty Tricks. Premed and Initiative offers the ability to open with 5 CP for huge opening and CB for high finishing damage. Imp Ambush with CB for big openers, and Serrated Blades for armor pen and rupture damage increase for plate and bears. These advantages make it a great PvP build but with cheap CS/Garotte and solid combo point generation.

On the assassination side you have Imp EA to reduce armor further and fleet footed for mobility help. QR is solid for dodged finishers and to make it easier on your pocket healer.

ShadowStep Build – 20/0/41 - PvP

This is a PvP build that features extremely high burst damage. It gives you use of all of the good subtlety talents and just enough of the assassination ones to give you the extra power you need. It also provides +10% Attack Power and +15% agility.

Sword/Fist/Mace Builds

Combat Swords – 19/42/0

Combat swords are currently recognized as, and are mathematically, the best DPS build. You can proc an extra MH attack from sword specialization with either hand. Aggression and Surprise Attacks boost the damage of your Sinister Strike while BF, imp slice and Dice & Dual Wield spec increase your white damage. AR gives you a nice boost in yellow damage every 5 minutes. Surprise Attacks also makes your finishers unable to be dodged. With Precision and stacked hit rating, as long as you are behind a target, your finishers cannot miss or be dodged which means they will always connect.

Going with Mace spec and some better pvp talents also make for a great build. The DPS in raids is not as strong as swords and fists, but still respectable. With some slight changes this can also be a decent pvp build.

Tri-spec Combat Hemo – 11/28/22 - PvE

This build was developed mid-2007 as a test spec and had some early success, but later was found to be inferior to combat. With the hemo changes of Patch 2.3 this changed. In theory, this build should have increase raid DPS more than your personal DPS lost by not speccing into combat. In reality, this never came to pass as the hemo debuff was bugged and spells were removing charges and not ticking the extra damage. This bug was not fixed until 2.3.2 came out.

Another variant of this build is to move 1 point from your weapon spec to finish off Dirty Deeds to increase damage against those under 35% health. The difference in DPS vs 11/28/22 is negligble at best and because of raid conditions and variable situations you’d never be able to tell the difference. Mathematically though, the DPS is slightly higher.

Another version of the tri-spec is 11/21/29. This spec shifts the talents out of the weapon specialization and over to deadliness. Unfortunately, the DPS of this spec is slightly lower than the DPS of 11/28/22 or 11/27/23 even when you lack swords. 5% crit with fist spec and the increased crit damage of mace spec are still mathematically better than 4 in deadliness.

When 2.3.2 came out and hemo was nerfed, these builds became mathematically poor vs combat in all aspects. These builds are now obsolete vs combat and shouldn’t be used if you are wanting to achieve your full DPS potential.

ShadowStep Swords – 18/0/43 - PvP

This build has only been around for a very short while following the Shadowstep buffs (patch 2.3) and especially after the HARP (Hemorrhage/Adrenaline Rush/Preparation) build was altered to only allow one Adrenaline Rush at a time (patch 2.3.2). It focuses on increased mobility and subtlety with more sustained damage over burst damage as in Shadowstep dagger builds by eliminating talents which increase burst damage. This is a PvP build only and Maces and Fists can be used as well.

ShadowStep Swords (Combat) – 0/20/41 - PvP

This build is a solid PvP build. Overall damage will be decent because of Hemo + Sinister Calling + Serrated Blades. Prep helps immensely and if you happen to get into a longer arena match, Endurance could come into play. You have the ability to Ghostly Strike/Evasion which will yield over 100% dodge and Cheat Death for some survivability. Overall, this build has been popular and used with success in sub-1900 arenas.

AR / Prep – 0/31/30 - PvP

This was “THE” build of 2.3. Post-2.3.2 this build is less attractive because AR was removed from Prep. Maces are the key to this build with the added mace stun effect. This was also a solid build before the hemo buff of 2.3 and many used it with SS. If you do choose to move some points and us Sinister Strike as your primary attack instead of hemo, picking up Blade Twisting for the daze effect would be wise. Improved Kick for the silence is also a nice bonus.

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