Wielding daggers or swords and clad in leather armor, slipping through the shadows in search of an undefended back, rogues are a subtle class of World of Warcraft with a very high melee damage potential. Their ability to go into Stealth, which is mimicked only by the cat form of druids, their special skills with poisons, their capacity to Sap opponents and thus keep them stunned, immobile, and out of action for up to a minute, and many other skills mark them as one of the most unique classes in the game, as any WoW rogue guide will inform you. Rogues are damage dealers, pure and simple. Their role in any dungeon or battleground is DPS (damage per second), and they have absolutely no healing or tanking ability at all. They rely on surprise attacks for some of their highest damage potential, and must often use Vanish to escape if they cannot kill foes quickly, since most specs are ill-suited to a long, drawn-out brawl.

Rogues are damage dealers, pure and simple. Their role in any dungeon or battleground is DPS (damage per second), and they have absolutely no healing or tanking ability at all. They rely on surprise attacks for some of their highest damage potential, and must often use Vanish to escape if they cannot kill foes quickly, since most specs are ill-suited to a long, drawn-out brawl.

The utility functions of a rogue include crowd control, lockpicking, and scouting. In PvE situations, rogues can provide single target crowd control with their Sap ability, which can immobilize one of a group of monsters for much of a fight. Lockpicking to complete dungeons is much less common than it once was, but treasure chests and strongboxes may still need to be opened thus for looting.

This WoW rogue guide notes that rogues have a lot of utility in PvP as well. Besides their ability to backstab, Ambush, or otherwise put enemy spellcasters and healers out of action, since their powers work exceptionally well on cloth-armored targets, they can also serve as “booby traps” to intercept flag carriers, or to sneak past guards to capture an unwatched resource node. Sprinting with the flag in Warsong Gulch or Eye of the Storm has turned the tide in many a game.

Combat spec is the premier leveling spec, an idea this WoW rogue guide backs because of the large number of experienced players who have found this to be the case. This is the only spec of rogue which benefits more from using two swords, axes, or maces than from using two daggers, which should be the case with the other two specs. Due to a large number of energy-regenerating talents, combat rogues can maintain their damage over a whole fight, making them more “swashbucklers” than “ambushers”.

Combat rogues have higher survivability and can also maintain a consistently high damage rate throughout a fight. Subtlety opens with a spike of damage, then does less damage, as this WoW rogue guide describes; Assassination opens weakly but builds towards a crescendo of poison damage; but combat starts out with moderately high damage and can maintain it for the full course of a battle.

Subtlety rogues are a damage-dealing spec best suited to PvP, thanks to their extremely high damage spike due to Ambush and the talents which enhance it. Subtlety rogues must wield two daggers in order to be effective and use their talents to any effect, and have many skills which tend to “front load” their damage. The usual technique is to use Premeditation to add two Combo Points to an opponent, Shadowstep behind them, Ambush them (adding three more Combo Points) and immediately make a 5-point Eviscerate, which is enough to kill lower-health foes almost instantly.

Assassination is the PvE damage spec, though this WoW rogue guide does not recommend it for the fastest leveling or the most effective PvP. For best effect, these rogues should use two daggers. The main hand dagger should be as slow as possible, and coated in Instant Poison, which will cause large amounts of damage when the signature move, Mutilate, is used. The offhand dagger should be very fast, and coated in Deadly Poison – build five stacks of this poison on the foe, then use Envenom.

Leveling a Rogue using a great Questhelper is the very fastest way and you can watch one of the best in action in this WoW Leveling Guide video.

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