For both builds…

• Daggers only
• Slow main, fast off-hand
• Instant poison in main, deadly in off, crippling is applied via deadly brew
• Wpn DPS > Agility > Mastery/Haste/Expertise > Crit

Level 85 Assassination Rogue DPS Build (31/2/8)

This build is aimed at maximum DPS, not max suvivability.

Assassination (31 Points)

• Coup de Grace – Rank 3/3
• Lethality – Rank 3/3
• Ruthlessness – Rank 3/3
• Quickening – Rank 2/2
• Puncturing Wounds – Rank 3/3
• Deadly Brew – Rank 1/2
• Cold Blood – Rank 1/1
• Vile Poisons – Rank 3/3
• Seal Fate – Rank 2/2
• Murderous Intent – Rank 2/2
• Overkill – Rank 1/1
• Master Poisoner – Rank 1/1
• Cut to the Chase – Rank 3/3
• Venomous Wounds – Rank 2/2
• Vendetta – Rank 1/1

Combat (2 Points)

• Precision – Rank 2/3

Subtlety (8 Points)

• Nightstalker – Rank 2/2 – In theory this will allow for more “attack from stealth” situations.
• Relentless Strikes – Rank 3/3
• Opportunity – Rank 3/3

Glyphs

• Prime – Glyph of Mutilate
• Prime – Glyph of Rupture
• Prime – Glyph of Backstab
• Major – Glyph of Tricks of the Trade
• Major – Glyph of Feint
• Major – Glyph of Sprint
• Minor – Glyph of Safe Fall

Level 85 Assassination Rogue PvP build (32/2/7)

Think of this build as a starting point and adjust to fit your game. For example, if Improved Expose Armor doesn’t work for you then change it.

Assassination (32 Points)

• Coup de Grace – Rank 3/3
• Lethality – Rank 3/3
• Ruthlessness – Rank 3/3
• Quickening – Rank 2/2
• Puncturing Wounds – Rank 3/3
• Deadly Brew – Rank 2/2
• Cold Blood – Rank 1/1
• Vile Poisons – Rank 3/3
• Seal Fate – Rank 2/2
• Overkill – Rank 1/1
• Master Poisoner – Rank 1/1
• Improved Expose Armor – Rank 2/2
• Cut to the Chase – Rank 3/3
• Venomous Wounds – Rank 2/2
• Vendetta – Rank 1/1

Combat (2 Points)

• 1. Improved Recuperate – Rank 2/2

Subtlety (7 Points)

• Nightstalker – Rank 2/2
• Relentless Strikes – Rank 3/3
• Opportunity – Rank 2/3

Glyphs

• Prime – Glyph of Mutilate
• Prime – Glyph of Rupture
• Prime – Glyph of Vendetta
• Major – Glyph of Blind
• Major – Glyph of Kick
• Major – Glyph of Garrote
• Minor – Glyph of Distract
• Minor – Glyph of Poisons
• Minor – Glyph of Safe Fall

More details here: Assassination Rogue Guide

Note that you need 31 points to grab talents from the other trees, but you do not need to have the top talent in whichever tree. Mastery happens at 80.

Sub. did about 24-2500 DPS on the 83 target dummy and Assassination was close to 4k.I’m not claiming to be an expert anything, but that’s a pretty big difference. I didn’t even have Vendetta up on the Assassination test, showing what a nub I am.  Before 4.0 it was about 2k DPS or so with an Assassination build and the same gear.

• Mongoose on both daggers
• Instant poison on the MH, Deadly on the OH
• No other buffs
• About 4562 Gearscore (I know, it sucks.)

Assassination build (4.0:)

1. 3/3 Coup de Grace
2. 3/3 Lethality
3. 3/3 Ruthlessness
4. 2/2 Quickening
5. 3/3 Puncturing Wounds
6. 1/2 Deadly Brew
7. 1/1 Cold Blood
8. 3/3 Vile Poisons
9. 2/2 Seal Fate
10. 2/2 Murderous Intent
11. Overkill
12. Master Poisoner
13. 3/3 Cut to the Chase
14. 2/2 Venomous Wounds
15. Vendetta
16. 2/3 Precision
17. 3/3 Relentless Strikes

Prime glyphs: Mutilate, Backstab, Rupture

Major Glyphs: Feint, Garrote, Fan of Knives

Minor Glyphs: Whatever. I have Pick Lock, Poisons, Safe Fall

Subtlety Build for 4.0

1. 2/2 Nightstalker
2. 3/3 Improved Ambush
3. 3/3 Relentless Strikes
4. 1/3 Elusiveness
5. 2/2 Waylay
6. 3/3 Opportunity
7. 2/2 Initiative
8. 2/2 Find Weakness
9. Hemorrhage
10. 3/3 Honor Among Thieves (will probably lose this. Your group gets the extra crit rating, so it’s useful for group fights, but it seems to be bugged right now.)
11. Premeditation
12. 2/3 Cheat Death
13. Preparation
14. 2/2 Sanguinary Vein
15. 3/3 Slaughter from the Shadows
16. Shadowdance
17. 3/3 Precision
18. 1/3 Coup de Grace

More DPS?

1. Drop Nightstalker and Elusiveness for 3/3 Energetic Recovery (more energy)
2. Drop Cheat Death for 2/2 Serrated Blades

Glyphs:

• Prime: Hemo, Evisc, Backstab
• Major: Ambush, Garrote, Cloak of Shadows
• Minor: Safe Fall, Blurred Speed, Poisons

Macros:

Opener macro, since I can never remember to hit that Premeditation button. The pickpocket is in there for when you’re not fighting players:

#showtooltip Ambush
/cast Pick Pocket
/cast Premeditation
/cast Ambush

#showtooltip Eviscerate (or change to Envenom)
/cast  Cold Blood
/cast Eviscerate (or change to Envenom)

Ambush is looking really brutal in PvP. Glyph for Ambush (adds range) and Eviscerate (adds crit chance to Ev.) Ambush gives 5 combo points with the above build, then Evisc/Rupture

Leveling

At this moment in time all the trees are good for leveling. Combat has better consistent DPS than the others and Subtlety has the huge opener. I haven’t leveled Assassination yet, but it should be between the two, at first guess.

If you’re leveling a Rogue then take a glance at our Rogue leveling page.

• Broke 1k gold on day 7, 2k on day 13, and 3k on day 18

This is on a new server, no 80s, no rich friends, no gold buying, no transfers, and the highest character so far is a 31 Rogue. Stop scoffing, I’m slow, Ok?

So when people are yammering about their money woes in trade or guild chat, I’m scratching my head and says, “WTF???” I used to offer suggestions, but no one is interested, so I just read the stuff and smile (or sigh.) Someone’s buying those three man mounts and nice raid purples (for 6-10k) on the AH and it ain’t them (don’t have the mount, but I’ve bought some of those purples.)

In the off chance that you are interested, I’ve been doing a day by day accounting of what I’m doing, here: 1k Gold in 30 Says, from Scratch

I’ve been reading the blueprint forums where people logged their speed run results. This little pocket change stuff I’m doing is silly low. No wonder no one’s interested. Ah well, it’s fun for me.

Cataclysm

The 4.0 patch, as you all know, is bringing major changes to the talent system and a few other areas, as well. That patch will be released before Cataclysm hits. I don’t have an exact date, but I’m sure everyone’s seen the “…downloading data…” note on the launcher.

You can see the test realm patch notes here.

I’ve put up a 4.0 Rogue guide and will have the others up as soon as I can get my act in gear. The rogue guide includes remarks on Mastery, leveling builds, and a few other things. Let me know what you think.

I linked to it here, The Craft of War: Blind, but that link died. The new link is, where else?, to YouiTube.

Check it out, here.

Hey Bliz! A few buffs please. I want my Rogue to be able to do that.

1 -  Know how to re-stealth

If you can’t re-stealth in combat, you are drastically reducing your survivability. The main techniques for acheiving this are to

1. blind and wait to leave combat
2. gouge/kidney shot your oppenent and run out
3. get your oppenent crippled and sprint away
4. vanish

Here’s the rest: Top 3 Rogue PvP Tips

So I prodded a friend, who does raid a lot, into writing an article on Rogue Raid DPS which I found quite useful. Now it’s time to start playing around with some of this stuff and see what I can come up with and see if I can get to the point where my Rogue is useful.

My first raid was 25 Man OS (no drakes) and I beat most of the healers for DPS output. I was running a PvP mutilate build and had no clue so didn’t respec.

More browsing brought me to the ElitistJerks.com Roguecraft Spreadsheet which factors in a huge amount of stuff. It includes a Mutilate build and various defaults for maximum DPS.

I specced into that build and hit 2k DPS on the Orgrimmar practice dummies, so maybe there’s hope for cracking the top 20 of a 25 man raid?

Anyway, here’s what I’m working with for now:

Mutilate Build Details

Here’s the build on WoWhead

Note: this is a dagger build and assumes use of instant and/or deadly poisons. Lev 80 (non elite) mobs go down real fast with this build.

Assassination:

1. 5/5 Malice – more crit chance
2. 3/3 Ruthlessness – more combo points
3. 2/2 Blood Splatter – Adds to your DoTs
4. 3/3 Puncuring Wounds – +15% Mut crit, +30% Backstab crit
5. 5/5 Lethality
6. 3/3 Vile Poisons – Greater chance to actually apply poisons
7. 2/2 Fleet footed – Moved faster while stealthed and spend less time being rooted
8. 1 Cold Blood – add this into a macro with your favorite strike. I add mine to Eviscerate.
9. 5/5 Seal fate – Use less energy
10. 3/3 Focused attacks – gain energy from crits
11. 3/3 Find Weakness – All damage increased by 6%
12. 1 Mutilate – Your bread and butter attack
13. 3/3 Turn the tables – Adds 6% crit chance to bread and butter attacks. lots of arguing going on over whether to choose this or 3/3 Master Poisoner. Comments?
14. 5/5 Cut to the chance – lets you keep Slice and Dice up permanently.
15. 1 Hunger for Blood – More damage, Rarr! Edit: Will be changed (improved?) when the 3.1 patch hits.

Combat

1. 5/5 Dual Weild Specialization – More DPS
2. 5/5 Precision – Your Dual Weild gives a major “to hit” penalty. This compensates somewhat.
3. 3/5 Close Quarters cbt. – More crit chance

Subtlety

1. 5/5 Relentless Strikes – Restores energy
2. 2/2 Opportunity – +20% damage to your bread and butter strikes.

Weapons I’m using right now. Both drop off the Auction House.

1. Main – Titansteel Shanker
2. Off hand – Librarian’s Paper Cutter

Enchants:

• Exceptional Agility (+26 ag) on Main hand
• Titanium wpn chain on off hand (+28 hit rating)

I’ll be playing with some weapon choices, poison combos, gems, etc. to see what I can do to boost DPS.  Your comments? Thoughts? Changes? What do you have to say?

Edit 4/9: Joined a PUG into 10 man OS. Hit almost 2400 dps on the trash (#2 on the DPS list,) but the group disintigrated before the first drake. No one died, but people suddenly realized they had to wash their socks, so poof. All of a sudden I’m raid leader with two people in the raid.

The Recount addon said I had a miss rate of almost 15%, so I guess I need to look for more Hit ratng. Might try the Titanium Weapon Chain on the main hand as a start and swap an Ag gem for a Hit gem.

Changed off-hand to Namlak’s Supernumerary Sticker

Mongoose provides better DPS than Exceptional Agility and Berserking is better still, but Mongoose is over 400 gold (and Berserking is a lot more.) I’ll see if I can get better weapons before blowing that much cash on Berserking.

Rogues, Stormwind, Nobility pwning their lessers…

Actually, what this really is is an awesome video. The creator says he’s a professional animator and this is his first real, personal, piece.

This is only the second personal creative work I’ve ever posted so I’m a bit nervous about it. The first being an image I painted years ago which…um… we don’t talk about. It’s a bit nerve-wracking to post creative work for others to judge.

With over 500 comments , all along the lines of, “Dude, this is Awesome!” I don’t think he has anything to worry about.

This will probably spoil you for other WoW videos and you really need to see it in High Def, which is why I’m not posting the YouTube version here. Check it out, now:

The Craft of War: BLIND

Credit where credit is due, I found this on Jame’s Blog.

The woman with the staff is here

update 8/31/10: Above link was broken. Click here for the HD YouTube vid.

The daggers I’m using (which dropped off the AH at a decent price) are:

1. Saronite Ambusher
2. Saronite Shiv

To make the best use of that talent you might want to have some Thistle Tea on hand, a Glyph of Vigor, and gear that adds energy, such as the Gladiator set.

Ok, here’s the (dagger) build and I’m using it to level. Feel free to comment. I don’t claim to be any great shakes at PvP, the 3.0 patch killed any thoughts of competence that I might have been having. I’m sure that experienced PvPers will roll their eyes at some of my choices here:

• 5 points Malice: Gotta love the crits.
• 5 points Dual Weild
• 5 points Precision: More hits = more DPS
• 5 points Relentless Strikes
• 3 points Master of Deception: Great for PvP
• 2 points Opportunity
• 2 in Dirty Tricks: The extra range is surprisingly useful, especially since you can now sap almost anything living.
• Ghostly Strike: Instant strike, more damage, more dodge, and a combo point to bot. What more could you want?
• 3 pts in Serrated Blades: Lead-in to Hemorrhage
• 3 pts in Setup: If you have a decent dodge skill this will add a useful number of combo points.
• 3 pts in Initiative: More combo points.
• 2 in Improved Ambush: +50% to crit. ’nuff said.
• Preparation: Kindof the “Get out of Jail Free” card.
• 2 in Dirty Deeds
• Hemorrhage
• 3 pts in Master of Subtlety: More damage attacking from stealth.
• 5 pts in Deadliness
• Premeditation: I stick this in a macro with my openers, so I get those 2 points a lot.
• 5 points in Sinister Calling:+15% Agility, yummy.
• 2 pts in Waylay: More for PvP
• 5 points in Slaughter from the Shadows: I Ambush and Hemo alot, so this is good.
• Shadowdance
• 2 pts to spend elsewhere (at lev 79 & 80,) which I may stick into Improved Eviscerate.
  

Here’s the full level 80 build on WoWhead.

If you open with Ambush (or Cheap Shot or Garrote) you will,much more often than not, see an immediate 5 combo points ready to go. So you do Opener and Finisher, bang bang, such as Ambush + Eviscerate. Get a couple of crits there and you open with some nice damage.

If you use Eviscerate then check out a Glyph of Eviscerate.

Here’s what I’ve been experimenting with:

1. Ambush + Eviscerate
2. Shadow Dance
3. Cheap Shot and move behind
4. Ambush
5. Eviscerate
6. gouge and move behind…

Fighting more than one mob?

1. Sap one
2. Cheap Shot another
3. Blind the 3rd
4. Shadowdance
5. Gouge one and move behind
6. Ambush
7. etc.

Here’s the opener macro that I use, which I found on Arena Junkies (lotta macros there.)

#show premeditation
/cast Premeditation
/cast Pick Pocket
/cast Cheap Shot

Swap Cheap Shot for Ambush or whichever opener that you use. The Pick Pocket will keep you in healing potions and lockboxes as you level.

It might be a good idea to put your Shadow Dance hotkeys on a second action bar, and swap it in when you do the dance. Here’s a macro to switch action bars when you do just that, also taken from Arena Junkies.

Set up bar 2 to be your main bar with Sap on it, Ambush instead of Backstab, Cheap Shot instead of Kidney Shot, and Garrote over Rupture. Hit the Shadow Dance macro once to activate, and a second time to swap your bar back to normal.

#showtooltip
/cast Shadow Dance
/swapactionbar 1 2

Comments? Besides the obvious ones about my newbishness.

New Rogue Changes Coming

First of all, I think every other class needs to send Blizzard a thank you card for the following change to Mace Specialization. As a Combat Swords Rogue (and as a Resto Druid), I’m pretty excited to see it myself. This should make Mace Specialization a bit more attractive for raiding as well.

Mace Specialization (Combat) no longer stuns enemies, and instead increases critical damage bonus by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Here’s the rest: WotLK Beta 8820 Rogue News

You’ll want to look at the comments, too. As usual with something like this there’s a wide differing of opinion.

One of the comments points out that resilience pretty much negates the crit bonus. Still, not everyone in PvP is running around with 400+ resilience or s4 gear. For leveling the damage bonus might be better than the rare stun proc.

Keep in mind that this is still in beta test and the final numbers may well be somewhat different. I’m sure that no matter what change Bliz make there will be whoops of praise and howls of outrage.

I think a lot of the Glyphs look pretty nice. What do you think?

Edit: Azande, in the comment, has some interesting stuff for the rading Rogue and more remarks on the raiding potential of Glyphs.