The Following is an awesome introduction of the rogue class that i borrowed from the Something Awful Warcraft forums… It is a great read for all aspiring rogues.
Rogues: those sneaky, under-handed, poison-using, vanishing-into-smoke motherfu*kers who can and will appear out of nowhere and stab you in the back when you least expect it.
Rogues are, primarily, in both PvP and PvE, damage dealers. We hit sh*t hard, boyee. That’s about it, and man are we good at it. At least, one at a time; you can’t really be king of PvP and PvE. That wouldn’t be fair. Oh, and you’ll never really be king of PvE DPS, despite not having a single other useful benefit to offer parties. You’ll have to share the throne with mages and warriors, and increasingly, hunters, warlocks, druids, shadowpriests, shamans and…uh, well, at least you won’t have to worry about paladins.
Sarcasm and cross-class whining aside, rogues are a major source of PvE and PvP DPS. If you want more than that, look elsewhere. Simplicity of class role aside, rogues are relatively unique among the classes due to several features:
The Energy System
Energy is the yellow bar that appears below a rogue’s health bar. Energy is the source of all our special attacks. Without it, we can do nothing. With it, we can do a hell of a lot. The unique feature of the energy system is that it replenishes itself at a constant rate. Every two seconds, we receive an extra 20 energy, with the maximum amount of energy ever available being 100 (110 or 120 depending on talents and/or gear). Energy is primarily used as a means of dealing damage via our four primary attacks (two of which are gained via talents). Some attacks serve no purpose beyond simply damaging the opponent, others incapacitate and silence our enemies. Additionally, some of these abilities can generate Combo Points, or CP.
Combo Points and Finishers
If you ever played the Diablo 2 expansion class, the Assassin, you should have a vague idea of how the rogue class works. By consuming energy to use various abilities, a rogue generates up to 5 CP. The more CP the rogue has, the more powerful the rogue’s Finishers become. Finishers scale in effect based on the number of CP a rogue has on a given target (unlike the Assassin, the rogue cannot carry CP from one target to the next). Finishers, like special attacks, vary in utility. Some deal damage directly, others stun attackers, or speed up future attacks.
Rogue Races
So, who can be a sneaky mother-fu*ker, and which is best? This is a pretty dumb question. Pick a character and appearance you can stand looking at. If you want him to be ugly as sin pick an ugly one; just make sure you won’t get sick of looking at it in a week.
That said, these are the classes that can be rogues:
- Alliance:
- Humans: Sword/Mace Skill and Perception. Expertise is pretty awesome especially since most of the best PvE builds revolve around Sword Specialization, and it’s presently bugged so that if you use both Sword and Mace you get 10 Expertise due to the weapon racials no longer being associated to one type of weapon, though it’s unlikely that will last. Perception is handy for rogue v. rogue fights, but kinda sucks in open BGs since you don’t always know if a rogue/druid is there until it’s too late. You also gain rep faster, which is quite handy.
- Gnomes: Escape Artist and being fu*king tiny. Both are great for PvP, the latter being arguably better, the former also helping out with annoying mobs that use snares to get range on you.
- Night Elves: Shadowmeld and Wisp Form! Shadowmeld is pretty nice as it gives not only a second stealth (though only usable while immobile), but it boosts the effective level of Stealth by the same amount as one level of Master of Deception. They’re also fruity as hell.
- Dwarves: Stoneform is a great ability since it wipes away numerous bleed and poison effects, of which there are quite a few in PvE, not to mention PvP. Plus you can track chests!
Horde:
- Orcs: Blood Fury and Hardiness. The other two racials are utterly useless to rogues (we don’t get axes and we don’t get pets). Blood Fury is like having a third trinket slot that simultaneously pisses off healers! Hardiness, a 15% stun resistance, is also great as stuns play a large part in PvP and have some use in PvE.
- Trolls: Berserking is a great talent for DPS as it stacks with Slice and Dice and Blade Flurry. The one downside is the fact that it requires you to be at low health to be really good, and being at low health isn’t usually the best time to boost your DPS. The 5% damage vs. beast racial is nice, but kinda gimmicky. It does affect druids in animal forms, which is always amusing.
- Undead: One of the two Horde races that people complain most about, and for one single reason: Will of the Forsaken. A two-minute ability that removes Fear, Charm and Sleep effects. This is a fantastic ability for rogues especially against warlocks. In combination with Cloak of Shadows, an undead rogue is a warlock’s worst enemy. Cannibalism is also quite handy for leveling since it’s like a free bandage on a seperate cooldown. My current rogue is undead, and I’m quite happy with him, despite never knowing the joy of pants. 😦 And, if they ever add underwater raids/BGs/Arenas, undead will have another advantage!
- Blood Elves: The second Horde race that gets bitched about, and for two reasons. First, Arcane Torrent; an AoE, 2 second silence that is pretty vicious for PvP and also has decent usage in PvE where rogues are often relied upon to silence casters (especially healers). Mana Tap, the second ability they get drains a target’s mana pool and then returns it as Energy (or Mana for every other Blood Elf class) when used with Arcane Torrent, which is also pretty damned nice.
Rogue Gear
Like most classes, weapons are our fetish. We go nuts for weapons. Experience tempers this fact by acknowledging the important of armor. Armor is great, and comparatively, it gives us far more than any pair of weapons can. However, no matter how good your stats are, they act by multiplying the power of your weapons.
First off, here are the weapons a rogue can use and where they can train to use them:
Daggers
- Core ability, you don’t need to train this one.
Swords
- Horde: Archibald, Undercity; Duelist Larenis, Eversong Woods; Ileda, Silvermoon City
- Alliance: Handiir, The Exodar; Woo Ping, Stormwind City
Maces
- Horde: Ansekhwa, Thunder Bluff
- Alliance: Buliwyf Stonehand, Ironforge; Handiir, The Exodar
Fist Weapons
- Horde: Sayoc, Orgrimmar
- Alliance: Ilyenia Moonfire, Darnassus; Buliwyf Stonehand, Ironforge
Throwing Weapons
- Core ability, you don’t need to train this one.
Bows
- Horde: Sayoc, Orgrimmar; Hanashi, Orgrimmar; Duelist Larenis, Eversong Woods; Ileda, Silvermoon City
- Alliance: Ilyenia Moonfire, Darnassus
Crossbows
- Horde: Archibald, Undercity
- Alliance: Bixi Wobblebonk, Ironforge; Handiir, The Exodar; Woo Ping, Stormwind City
Guns
- Horde: Ansekhwa, Thunder Bluff
- Alliance: Buliwyf Stonehand, Ironforge
There are number of primary DPS stats for rogues: AP, Crit, Hit, Expertise, Haste and Armor Penetration. There are two ‘special’ stats, Attack Speed and Damage Range, more on them below. All of these stats are equally important and need to be raised at roughly equivalent rates. The only exceptions are Hit and Expertise both of which can be capped (363 Hit Rating and 64 Expertise Rating assuming a non-Human with 2/2 Weapon Expertise, once you reach these points any further Hit or Expertise is worthless) and attack speed which is an innate stat on weapons can only be modified via certain high-level items (which has no effect on instant attacks). Virtually all other stats only have the effect of adding to or otherwise modifying these stats. Agility boosts both crit and AP (and dodge, but this is usually a secondary concern), Haste Rating affects attack speed, Armor Penetration negates armor reduction, etc.
- AP: AP functions in the following fashion, for every time you can divide your AP by 14, your DPS goes up by one (AP/14=+DPS). So, at 1000 AP, your weapon gains a flat 71.4 DPSp; at 1400, it goes up by 100 and so on. This benefits not only your white damage, but also specials since the DPS bonus is directly applied to the damage range of your weapon, making instant attacks hit harder as well.
- Crit: Critical Strike Rating (called crit for short) gives you a chance to strike for 200% of normal damage.
- Hit: Hit decreases the odds of an attack missing. The basic formula is 5% chance to miss an instant attack against an even-level opponent. The same applied to using one-weapon (which you don’t do after level 10). When wielding two weapons, the miss rate increases drastically to a whopping 24% for both hands. Against higher level opponents (which maxes out at [yourlevel]+3 for bosses) you need a minimum of 5.6% to never miss. Missing is different from Dodge/Parry/Block, so you still lose damage to those. Or you would if not for the next talent:
- Expertise: The new replacement for Weapon Skill. Functionally, the talent change for rogues is a global nerf, however this new stat is so good it makes up for our talent nerf. Every point reduces the targets chance to dodge/parry/block by .25. With most monsters having a 5% chance to dodge/parry/block (though Block/Parry only applies from the front) you need 20 Expertise, or 10 from gear if you have the Weapon Expertise talent.
- Haste: Haste rating has the effect of reducing attack speed for the purposes of white damage attacks but has no effect on instant attacks which are all normalized to a flat numeric modifier. This is a good stat for raid DPS, but kind of lacking since its overall value was reduced.
- Armor Penetration: This stat has rather weird scaling, but is generally very powerful. At incredibly high armor level the damage reduction per point of armor is negligible, however, the lower armor goes the more valuable this stat becomes. Essentially, this stat only gets stronger the more of it you have, however finding the cap can be quite difficult given the fluctuation of armor from target to target, and any armor penetration beyond the amount necessary to bring a target to 0 is essentially wasted.
Why wasn’t attack speed in that list? Because it’s a bit more complex in nature, and I’ll go into more detail below. Now the reason these are all equally important is that a rogue with 100% crit and 0 AP will always hit for double damage, but the attack won’t have much damage to multiply. Similarly, a rogue 2000 AP and 0% crit is bad for situations where you need more burst damage. Hit operates independently of these, but in an equally important fashion: if you always miss, you’re even more worthless than the other two rogues.
In addition to this, there are two other factors that are worth noting:
- Damage Range: Damage range is the xxx-yyy you see when you look at a weapon. This range is obtained by multiplying the DPS by the attack speed. By doing so you get the average attack value. The people who make weapons slide this value around, making the range wider or smaller to create a wider variety of items for various specs, but is ultimately based on the value of [weaponspeed]*[DPS]. A general means of determining the value of a weapon’s damage range is to figure out what the average value will be, since that’s the area you’re most likely to see. Two weapons might have 70 DPS, but one has a damage range that’s 50 higher than the other. The caveat there is that the weapon the higher top-end damage probably also has a much lower bottom-end damage.
- Speed: As I mentioned, AP boosts the raw damage of an attack when divided by 14. The exception to this rule is instant attacks. In patch 1.8 normalization was added to balance instant attacks such as Sinister Strike and Backstab. Normal white damage isn’t normalized because it relies on a swing timer before attacking. Instant attacks function by performing the the AP/14 equation somewhat differently. The equation now becomes ([weaponspeed]*AP/14). Weapon speeds are ‘normalized’ because now the [weaponspeed] variable is based on a flat modifier rather than the actual weapon speed in order to prevent slower weapons from eclipsing faster, higher-quality weapons. For rogues, the important values are: Daggers, 1.7 speed; Swords/Maces/Fists, 2.4 speed.
There’s an EP (Equivalence Point) list for all of these stats listed in the very complex (and much more raiding oriented) Roguecraft 101 guide on the EJ Forums.
Now that you have a somewhat better idea what the stats on a weapon mean, here is a general guide to what kind of weapon you want depending on your spec.
As a general rule, for offhands, if you have one Weapon Specialization or another, you should try and use the same kind of weapons in both hands if possible. Testing has not proven conclusively whether Specializations benefit offhands of a separate type, but Blizzard has stated that the benefit should not be applied to an offhand of the incorrect type, so don’t be surprised if you’re not getting the benefit you thought you might be getting.
- Sinister Strike Builds: Swords, maces or fist weapons. Daggers are a bad idea for SS as they’re too fast, which results in lower damage, no matter the damage range. For SS, you want a low-speed weapon (2.6-2.7) and a good damage-range; most SS builds rely on both SS and white damage, so don’t sacrifice five or six DPS for a slightly higher damage-range. Also be aware that your primary concern should be the average value of a damage-range. A 2.4 speed weapon with a range of 60-80 is better than a 2.4 speed weapon with a range of 40-120 because the average is 70 instead 60. Your offhand should be fast (keep it below 2.0 if possible; 1.4-1.5 speed is ideal), and the actual type of weapon is not set in stone. You want a fast weapon for proccing poisons which are percentage based and scale exclusively with speed and for proccing Combat Potency (if specced for it).
- Backstab Builds: You want a slow dagger for your mainhand (since only daggers can be used to Backstab) and a fast offhand of whatever type for proccing poisons and Combat Potency.
- Hemo builds: Hemo is no longer unique among instant attacks as it is has been normalized. Because of this you no longer want a slow weapon (though they still tend to have the best DPS and damage range). Follow the same rules as SS builds, but keep in mind that slower is usually better. You want to focus on damage range and speed, the higher the better in order gain the most from the 125% damage increase. DPS becomes a secondary concern as Hemo builds work by using stunlocks to kill things while retaining full control of combat (though this is much harder to do due to changes in the nature of PvP, particularly the PvP trinkets). Do not ever use a dagger for Hemo. If you do, stop playing the game, walk to the kitchen and stab yourself with the nearest knife. Daggers are simply too god damned fast. The slowest daggers have damage ranges much, much lower than even the weakest swords/maces/fists. DO NOT USE FU*KING DAGGERS. DON’T. STOP. Shadowstep builds are typically considered Hemo builds as it is their primary attack, the exception being Shadowstep Daggers which uses Backstab,
- Mutilate builds: Similar to Backstab, only now you might want a slow offhand to match your mainhand, since the offhand is now part of the instant attack and a slower weapon deals more damage. Note, however, that while using a slow offhand will net you more damage on Mutilates, using a mid-range/fast offhand (1.4-1.6) isn’t a bad idea because the damage loss from to the offhand is compensated by lower-energy cost on Shiv (which is absolutely essential for PvP ) and a higher chance at applying poisons. Conversely, after the AP bonuses are added in, the damage range difference becomes somewhat negligible.
Stat Conversions
At level 70, in order to give you an idea of how much a rating will help you, I give you these:
1 Expertise = 3.9 Expertise Rating
1% Chance to hit = 15.8 Hit Rating
1% Physical crit = 22.1 Critical Strike Rating
1% Haste = 10.51 Haste Rating
1% Crit = 40 Agility
1% Dodge = 20 Agility
A simpler system would be to pick up the Ace mod RatingBuster, which does all of this in game.
Poisons
At level 20, a rogue can complete a quest to learn how to make and use poisons. There are a total of six poisons:
- Instant Poison: Direct damage, nature-based. One-shot of damage. Your general use PvE poison.
- Anesthetic Poison: Exactly like Instant Poison, however, it deals less damage while generating no threat. This might seem tempting, but is really pretty stupid as no rogue will ever pull aggro due to his poison damage. Poisons rarely make up more than 3-5% of a rogue’s total damage.
- Deadly Poison: Damage done over time. Theoretically, this does more damage than Instant Poison, however it suffers from several flaws. The main issue with this is that it stacks every time it gets applied, up to five stacks. Should a new stack fail to be applied within the twelve seconds that the poison lasts, all stacks disappear, forcing you to start again from nothing. This makes DP almost worthless on trash as most mobs will die before it can stack up high enough. However, on bosses this is almost always ideal as you will have enough time spent on-target to keep this fully stacked at all times.
- Crippling Poison: Your standard PvP poison. A major problem in PvP is that we require that our target be in range. Should our target out-range us, we’re dead meat. Crippling grants us the snare we need to keep our prey from running. Normally you should make sure it’s on the mainhand, or you may have trouble getting it on when you need to, but with the advent of Shiv, placing this on your offhand gives you an almost guaranteed application of Crippling (it will always hit, but can be resisted).
- Mind-Numbing Poison: A secondary usage PvP poison, this one increases the casting time of spells. Just about every boss you might consider using this on, with a few exceptions, are immune. It suffers from limited usage since of the classes you’d use this on, most can remove poisons. It does have use against poison-cleansing casters such as Paladins, in combination with a stacking poison like Deadly or Wounding as stacking poisons take first priority in cleansing.
- Wound Poison: This is another stacking poison, but this time it has been buffed. Instead of a flat numeric reduction it reduces by a percentage per stack: 10/20/30/40/50%. This is now an incredibly effective poison against healers and WSG flag carriers. For a short period this stacked with Mortal Strike for a massive 75% reduction to healing taken, but was deemed overpowered for PvP and no longer stacks. Still damned nice even if you have an MS warrior (keep in mind that MS will actually remove this from the target, for some dumb reason, consider using Mind-numbing poison if you’re constantly assist-training with an MS warrior), though of virtually no use in PvE.
For PvE, your best poison choice is Instant Poison on your main-hand and Deadly Poison on your offhand. A fast offhand will have no issues keeping Deadly stacked to five leaving your mainhand free to proc Instant as often as possible. If you have a shaman in your party scream, howl, and rave for Windfury. Windfury is basically a broken totem. It’s just not right how powerful it is, and it keeps on scaling with gear. In that case, switch over to Windfury main-hand and Deadly off-hand.
For PvP, you will always have Crippling on one weapon, usually the offhand for Shiv. Your mainhand will then be either Mind-numbing or Wounding. Wounding is nice if you’re dealing with healers and have no MS warriors around, though they can often remove it too quickly for it to be a major hindrance. In high-end arena play some rogues will have Mind-numbing on one weapon and Wounding on another and swap to the Mind-numbing weapon to apply it before switching back in order to keep all three poisons on the target. There may also be cases where you’ll be used as a pseudo MS warrior by shivving Wounding for the whole match. The advantage to this is that Blessing of Protection won’t remove Wounding Poison.
Lockpicking
(Thanks to everyone in the thread who helped flush this thing out. I wrote this after both of my rogues had level 300 lockpicking for a good eight months. Feel free to post any comments or mistakes)
Like poisons, at around level 15 you’ll receive a quest to learn how to lockpick crap. Lockpicking requires two things: 1) A level of lockpicking that is high enough to pick the door or box (indicated by colour coding) and Thieves’ Tools. Thieves Tools are sold from Poison Vendors (or Shady Dealers) and I believe are actually given to you during the quest. They’ll sit at the bottom of your bags and collect dust, much like a Shaman’s totems; you can forget they’re there, but you better bloody well remember them when you’re going into a zone like Shattered Halls (to save a bit of time) or any other instance since most 60+ instances have chests that quite often are locked and can have blues in them. They’re also used for disarming traps, both hunter and NPC-based.
Lockpicking levels function in a similar fashion to weapon skills, [yourlevel]*5=max skill level. Ie; 100 at level 20, 300 at level 60.
Here’s a simple guide on how to level lockpicking, and for god’s sake, level it. It’s no worse than any other trade skill, and it does have its uses.
With the recent macro scripting changes, it is now possible to pickpocket with great ease. In addition to a little bit of change, you can also get lockboxes which can be of great use in leveling lockpicking.
***WARNING: Pick Pocket can be resisted and in such an event will knock you out of stealth without using Sap/Cheap Shot. Keep this in mind in places like Shattered Halls or any Heroic instance***
code:
/cast Pick Pocket; /stopcasting; /cast Cheap Shot
code:
/cast Pick Pocket; /stopcasting; /cast Sap
In order for those macros to work (and they do work) you need to go the the Interface Options and turn on Auto-Loot, or you’ll Pick Pocket then complete the next action before you have a chance to loot it manually. Also, I can completely assure you, these macros work. 99.9999% of the time, when you fail to actually loot the monster before Cheap Shotting, it is due to lag. The game has a microsecond in which to auto-loot the monster before you leave stealth. If your system is too laggy (300+ ping), you won’t auto-loot fast enough.
- 1-100: Chests at the original lockpicking quest zone. This would be a lumber mill northeast of Lakeshire (Alliance) and a boat in the Barrens (Horde).
- 101-170: The Polly Quest, started in Ratchet. You have to go kill a parrot on a different boat in the Barrens. You can pick this chest over and over (it respawns slower than the other chests), or you can wait until you can easily kill the Poison Quest NPC (in the northeastern section of the Barrens for Horde, a goblin at the top of a tower; a Mage at the top of a Tower in southern Westfall for Alliance) and pick his chest over and over. (Note: You can’t just right-click the chest, you have to push your Lockpick button either on a bar or in the spellbook, then click the chest.)
- 170-225: Go to Angor Fortress in the Badlands. The dwarves aren’t hard to kill and drop Silk and some Mageweave. Just wander through the place looking for chests. Be advised that in the basement section there are a few chests that are much higher level, and usually near the Elite fire elemental. Alternatively, you can go to the Sartheris Strand in Desolace, though I believe some of the lockboxes are underwater, which may slow you down.
- 225-270: At the Pirate encampment in Tanaris there are an insane quantity of chests ripe for picking, just be sure to use crippling if you plan on engaging any pirates (and you probably will have to). I breezed through this section in about an hour and a half at level 55.
- 271-300: This part can be tedious. You can stay at the pirate camp all the way to 300, but the skillups become very slow around 270-275. What I recommend is going to Blackrock Depths and picking the initial three doors (and if you’re cocky, the huge pulley that closes the big door; at level 60 you can safely unstealth in the right spot, pick the lock and restealth, but watch out for a patrolling fire elemental). If you do this, you can get 15 levels in a very short time (5-10 minutes at most) by walking in, picking everything, walking out and resetting the dungeon, then going back in. Alternatively, you can try Tyr’s Hand in the Eastern Plaguelands, but it’s much riskier for a fresh 60, and there are few locks (though they’re guaranteed to be orange). If you’re truly, and utterly lazy, just get to about 275 and sit in Ironforge/Orgrimmar shouting and hope people bring you Thorium/Eternium lockboxes to pick.
- 301-330: Lockboxes at the Feralfen Camp in south-central Zangarmarsh. The lockboxes spawn quite quickly and are within close proximity of one another.
- 331-350: The Kil’Sorrow encampment in south-eastern Nagrand has a fair number of lockboxes that remain orange even at 350.
Rogue Roles
In PvP rogues have one of two roles: to screw with opponent by stunlocking them from 100% to 0% without them moving a finger, or by loading on as much damage as humanly possible within the shortest time possible. With the changing nature of PvP and Arenas, the former has almost entirely fallen out of use, with the latter being what virtually every rogue worth his salt uses in arenas (though, sadly, most of the really hardcore rogues have all rerolled to another class since rogues are pretty useless in high-level 5v5 arenas, the equivalent of end-game raiding for PvP).
For PvE purposes, and to be most effective, you have more to do than just spam Sinister Strike and then Eviscerate. The most important things to keep track of are:
Energy and Combo Points – These are the two traits that make rogues unique. By micromanaging available energy, incoming energy ticks and CP while planning ahead, you can make the most of any situation. The DPS Spreadsheet (linked below) has a page inside it called ‘The Cycle Sheet’ which produces an ‘ideal’ CP cycle to maintain in a raid scenario.
Slice and Dice – Never, ever let this go down when you’re actually fighting. This offers a flat 30% increase to white DPS. As rogue gear increases, white damage increases, whereas yellow damage remains relatively static. A combat-specced rogue will have 50-60% of their damage coming from white damage. However, there are situations where you just won’t be able to keep up a constant cycle of SnD, because some bosses will force you away via annoying gimmicks or massive PBAoE, but as a general rule this is the best finisher we have, and it is unlikely it will ever lose its spot as PvE Top Dog.
Rupture, Eviscerate, and Envenom – These three finishers are our damage dealing finishers. While Slice and Dice offers a 30% increase to weapon speed, Eviscerate will lay out damage right here and now. Rupture on the other hand is a DoT effect, very useful for long, aggro-sensitive boss fights with mobs that cannot be taunted. In such cases, an unlucky Eviscerate crit vs a Rupture could spell the difference between you splattered on the floor and you continuing to poke the monster with your knife. Rupture is also quite nice for longer fights where you have a Druid using Mangle (30% more from Bleed effects) and no Warrior for Sunder, or fights against monsters with very high armor. Envenom is a new ability in The Burning Crusade: by consuming currently applied stacks of Deadly Poison this ability deals a chunk of unresistable nature damage. The downside is that it forces your Deadly Poison to start from scratch, but deals unmitigatable damage (meaning armor won’t prevent any loss of damage, like Rupture, but can still crit).
Feint and Vanish – These are your best friends in raids. Feint is equivalent to dealing -1000 damage to the enemy. Vanish is a threat reset. All damage dealt, and thus, threat earned, is gone in a poof. Feint should be used frequently, almost every time it’s up, at the beginning of a fight. In aggro-sensitive fights you should use it liberally. Once you’ve used Vanish though, you’re generally so far behind the tank that you won’t need to worry about much at all and can go balls out. Before using abilities like Adrenaline Rush on a boss it’s usually a good idea to Vanish, just so you don’t have to worry about grabbing aggro again (though it’s also nice to blow all your cooldowns before a Vanish so you have even less of a chance of catching up again).
Also, while a rogue does have a number of ways to control his aggro, it can still become an issue: you have potential to generate far threat than Feint (and even Vanish) can keep up with; a properly played rogue can, will and should be generating greater threat per second than a tank (though obviously you shouldn’t be ‘aiming’ to pull aggro). Still, as my personal philosophy, it is better to push to your limit, and maybe pull aggro and die now and again, than to twiddle your thumbs and not even know if you’re going as hard as you can.
A final thing to remember is that most of this is very subjective. It’s nice to be able to say the ideal CP usage for a sword rogue on a boss is 3 CP SnD > 5 CP SnD > 5 CP Rupture > Repeat, but being able to adapt to a given situation is far more useful than just blindly following a given rotation.
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