Rogues are one of the most complicated classes in World of Warcraft (WoW). This is due mainly to the fact that they have skills that work in nearly every imaginable situation. The most important thing to remember when playing a rogue is that you are meant to deal insane amounts of damage while taking as little as possible. Rogues wear leather items and even if you were to concentrate on increasing your defensive values, it would only be about 1/5 as effective as the designated tank classes (Warriors, Druids and Paladins). You need to understand what the class can and cannot do to stay alive. So, what is it that’s good and bad about a rogue?
The Good
●The highest damage dealing class in game
●Able to explore better than any other class
●Poisons are rogue only
●Can unlock nearly any lock in game, removing the need for almost every key
●Pick pocketing can double your cash income
●Great at intial crowd control
●Multiple Get-Out-Of-Death skills
The Bad
●High dependency on gear
●Requires precise timing for various skills
●Medium hit points and armor
●Some skills are weapon-type dependant
●Lack of effective range attacks

Races And Racial Abilities
When you first step into WoW and decide to create a rogue, there are a few things you need to take into account. The racial selection doesn’t matter as much as faction. If you select Horde then you will not be able to interact with any Alliance members and vice versa. In fact, if you’re on the PvP server you’re going to be a target for the opposing faction your whole life.
Dwarves, Gnomes, Humans, Night Elves, Orcs, Trolls and Undead can all choose to become rogues. Each race has a set of racial abilities that make them different than others. These differences are noticeable but do not make or break the class.

Blood Elf
●Mana Tap (Active)
oActivate to reduce target’s mana by (50+Level) and charge you with Arcane Energy. Can stack 3 times. 30 sec cool down, 30yrd range
●Arcane Torrent (Active)
oSilence all enemies within 8yrds for 2 seconds. Gives 10 Energy for each charge of Arcane Energy. 2 min cool down
●Arcane Affinity (Passive)
oBlood Elves get +10 to Enchanting
●Magic Resistance (Passive)
oBlood Elves get +5 to all Resistances
Dwarf
●Stoneform (Active)
●Activate to gain immunity to poisons, disease and bleed +5% AC bonus – Lasts 20 sec – 3 min cool down
●Gun Specialization (Passive)
●Dwarves get +5 to Gun Skill
●Frost Resistance (Passive)
oDwarves get +10 Cold Resistance
●Treasure Finding (Active)
●Activate to see treasure chests on mini map – lasts until cancelled
Gnome
●Escape Artist (Active)
●Activate to break out of a Root or Snare effect – 1.5 sec cast – 1 min cool down
●Expansive Mind (Passive)
●Increase Intelligence by 5%
●Arcane Resistance (Passive)
●Gnomes get +10 Arcane Resistance
●Technologist (Passive)
o15 skill bonus to Engineering

Human
●Perception (Active)
●Activate to increase stealth detection radius by 10 yards – lasts 20 sec – 3 min cool down
●The Human Spirit (Passive)
oIncrease Spirit by 5%
●Diplomacy (Passive)
●10% bonus to faction point gain
●Sword Specialization (Passive)
●Humans get +5 to Sword Skill
●Mace Specialization (Passive)
●Humans gets +5 to Mace Skill
Night Elf
●Shadowmeld (Active)
●Activate while immobile and out of combat to enter stealth mode – lasts until canceled – no cool down
●Quickness (Passive)
oDodge chance increased by 1%
●Wisp Spirit (Passive)
●Become a wisp when dead with movement speed increase of 50% (25% faster than normal ghost)
●Nature Resistance (Passive)
●Night Elves get +10 Nature Resistance
Orc
●Blood Fury (Active)
●Activate to increase base melee attack power by 25% but healing is only 50% effective– lasts 25 sec – 2 min cool down
●Hardiness (Passive)
●25% resistance to stun and knockout effects
●Command (Passive)
●Pet melee damage increased by 5%
●Axe Specialization (Passive)
●Orcs get +5 to Axe skill
Trolls
●Beserking (Active)
●Activate when “Wounded” to increase melee and spell casting speed by 10% to 30% - lasts 20 sec – 2 min cool down
●Regeneration (Passive)
●10% health regeneration bonus, 10% active in combat
●Beast Slaying (Passive)
o5% damage bonus to Beasts
●Throwing Weapon Specialization
●Trolls get +5 to Throwing Weapon skill

Undead
●Will of the Forsaken (Active)
●Activate to become immune to fear, sleep and charm effects – lasts 20 sec – 3 min cool down
●Cannibalize (Passive)
●Increase health regeneration by 200% while consuming a corpse – lasts 15 sec – 3 min cool down
●Underwater Breathing (Passive)
●Underwater breath increased by 4x
●Shadow Resistance (Passive)
oUndead get +10 Shadow Resistance
Now to clear up a few of the questionable racial abilities. Shadowmeld, though listed as an active skill, works as a passive ability as well. It works both while stationary and while moving. In fact, it works just 1 level higher of stealth (ie the difference between a 59 and 60 rogue). A more complete description would be if a Dwarf and Night Elf with the same skills, levels and talent selection were in front of each other, enabled stealth and walked backwards, the Dwarf would lose sight of the Night Elf before the opposite would occur. With this example, you can see that Shadowmeld is a very powerful racial ability. It gives Night Elves 1 level of Stealth above all other races, which is a very important. Since so many Rogue skills need Stealth, the more improvements you can make, the better.
Beserking is an interesting beast. At full health, you gain a 10% increase in combat speed. The lower your hitpoints are when you activate the skill, the higher your increase, up to 30%. I would only use the skill when solo though, to avoid generating too much hate and death, unless that is, you’re adept at controlling the hate. Numerically, let’s say you have a weapon with a 2 second swing timer. 30% increase in speed means you’re going to 1.4 swing speed. A good weapon with 35DPS changes into a great weapon with 50DPS. The difference only becomes larger as the quality of your weapons increase. Two similar weapons can see an increase of 20DPS, nothing to ignore. The downside is you need to be low on life to get the most out of it as 10% increase in speed translates to only about 6DPS increase.

Blood Fury was originally a pain to use. In its current form and the way that attack power calculates into damage, it’s a very powerful skill to have. Let’s say you have a base of 1200 Attack Power, a 25% gain increases it to 1500, or an increase of 21DPS.

Considering that the some of the current highest level weapons do 80DPS, it’s a noticeable increase and it affects all attacks. If you have a heavy AP build, then this gets even more deadly.
PvP wise, Gnomes and Undead have very nice racial skills that can get you out of a jam. Dwarves also have a decent skill that stops bleeding. These traits are also available through certain trinkets in the game, so they should only bear fruit until you acticvely starting doing PvP and gaining honor points. Blood Elves have a nice instant silence attack that can also recharge Energy. It’s only on a 2 minute timer as well, so it makes rogues a very deadly adversary in PvP. The rest of the racial abilities are not worth mentioning again and do not impact the rogue in any serious way.
There’s at most a 7pt difference between starting statistics of all the races and they make no difference once you’re at level 60. If you were to select the Alliance race with the highest advantages though, it would be Night Elf since they have the highest starting Agility and the Shadowmeld ability. The bonus that Humans receive to weapons can be gained from items in-game but their 10% bonus to faction gain is something you might want to consider. The best Horde race would be the Orc. Blood Fury is hard to ignore and will only get more powerful as rogues accrue more and more Attack Power. Trolls come close but their ability only works when you’re low on life, not something you typically want to be doing.
Energy
Rogues have their own version of mana, called Energy. At any point in a rogue’s life, they will have 100 Energy at maximum. Well, a certain talent and some items allow you to get a 10 point increase, but that will be seen later. As a general rule though, you can only have 100 Energy max at one time. As you use skills, they each have their own Energy cost to perform and your balance will adjust accordingly. If you miss an attack, you will spend less Energy than if you succeeded. There are talents that decrease the Energy cost of certain skills as well. Energy management is very important. You don’t want to set a target up for an attack only to not have enough Energy to perform the move.

Energy regenerates are a 20points per 2 seconds. There is no known way to increase this rate. You can purchase/create an item with cooking called Thistle Tea that will fill your Energy by 100points and it has a 5 minute cool down. There are also some items that can fill your Energy level.
Openers, Finishers and Combo Points
Similar to the Assassin character in Diablo II, the rogue in WoW uses combo points on their targets to unleash more devastating attacks. You can only have a maximum of 5 combo points at a time. Any attempt to acquire more will simply be wasted. The main difference is that combo points are “stored” on a target and not on the rogue. This means that if you change targets, all combo points that were on the original target are lost. The same goes for when a target dies; if you have combo points on it, they are lost as well.
You accumulate combo points by performing Openers. These give you 1-2 combo points per skill use that connects. These skills are Cheap Shot, Ambush, Garotte, Backstab, Sinister Strike, Gouge, Mutilate, Shiv and Hemorhage (talent). Some talents allow you to get more combo points per attack. With these talents, you have a chance of getting 3 combo points from a single attack.
You spend your combo points by performing Finishers. These attacks are scaled on the amount of combo points you have available. You cannot use a finisher unless you have at least 1 combo point. These skills are what the rogue is all about. Having a 5point eviscerate crit at level 60 can get do well over 2000 damage. The skills are Eviscerate, Expose Armor, Slice and Dice, Kidney Shot, Envenom and Rupture. Knowing when to time a finisher can make the difference between a dead target and a target that wanders into a group of his friends.
Weapons
Rogues have access to many weapons. They initially start with the ability to use Daggers, Unarmed and Throwing Weapons (some races start with other ranged attacks). As you progress and reach the capital cities (Ironforge, Stormwind and Darnassus for the Alliance. Ogrimmar, Undercity and Thunder Bluff for Horde) you can train into different combat skills. The cost is 10silver per.

Alliance
Darnassus – Bow, Fist
Stormwind – Sword, Crossbow
Ironforge – Gun, Mace
Horde
Ogrimmar – Bow, Fist
Undercity – Sword, Crossbow
Thunder Bluff – Gun, Mace
There is a lot of debate about which weapons a rogue should use. Bows, Crossbows and Guns are all more damaging than thrown weapons but they in turn require ammo. Fist weapons are semi-based on the unarmed skill but there are about 20 fist weapons in the game before 60. An important fact is that if you do not use daggers in the main hand, you cannot use Ambush or Backstab, two very powerful skills. Similarly, if you don’t have a dagger in your main hand and one in your off hand, you cannot use Mutilate. You will find a greater breakdown of item usage later in the guide, in the Tricks of the Trade section.