Rogue Talents, Rotations, Glyphs, and Gems.

[Kelzs]

Hello! I have not posted anything in quite a while, so give me a break. Might have some typos, mess-ups etc. in here. (Please Post them). I'd really like to get the contrib rank, so I figured I'd try to contribute =P. Anywho, On to the guide.


Rogues - Talents, Rotations, Glyphs, and Gems.
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Subtlety

Subtlety is a purely PVP Tree. You will never do good DPS in a raid with this spec. Its horrible.(For PVE) However, for PVP it is very fun and pretty good for arenas if you can play it right.

[In this and the ones to come, I will go in this order: Talents, Rotation, Glyphs, and Gems.]

Talents

This is the best (as far as I have found) sub spec for Normal BG'ing, Very fun if you get the hang of it.

12/5/54 - You can find it here> Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.

Rotation

There's not much of a rotation for Sub, its a pvp spec. Which means you will end up changing it for your needs per battle. A quick 'Cheap Shot' , 'Shadow Dance' and spam 'Ambush' usually kills non-pvp geared clothies. 'Hemorrhage' is your friend in this spec, and should be used to get up your combo points. 'Rupture' works best against plate.

Glyphs

There's some choice here in sub, really you get to pick whatever you think is better... Being a PVP spec, its hard to cover Sub, but doing the best I can. The best combo in my opinion would be: 'Glyph of Shadow Dance' , 'Glyph of Hemorrhage' and 'Glyph of Ambush' (That 5 yards may not seem like much, but when they are running away from you after you blow shadow dance, you will be glad you have it.)

Gems

Subtlety is all about attack power. With the exception of some (Meta, and to meet meta's requirements) you want to gem full [Bright Cardinal Ruby]'s (40 AP), In every slot. The more AP, the more your ambush will hit for, and the more your ambush hits for, the quicker your opponents die. As for meta's, you want to get the Enigmatic or Impassive Skyflare Diamond.

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Combat

Combat is the 'All Around' PVE DPS Spec. It is a more balanced and steady DPS, Built for fights like Lady Deathwhisper, where you have to change targets constantly, and is also my favorite.

Talents

You don't have much choice here. To do the best DPS, you need to get the right spec, which can be found here

Rotation

The rotation is fairly simple. At the start of the fight, most rogues stealth. If your combat, you do NOT Stealth. Open with a single 'Sinister Strike' , (1 pnt) 'Slice and Dice' , Use 'Blade Flurry' , and any other haste/speed increase buffs/pots (Engineering gloves, Berserking (Troll) , Potion of haste, etc.) Then, 'Tricks of the Trade' to the tank and use 'Killing Spree'. (This should be done in around 5 seconds). After this use 'Adrenaline Rush' , Get a 5 point 'Slice and Dice' up and then spam 4-5 point 'Eviscerate' s while making sure that you keep 'Slice and Dice' up. Using cooldowns when they are up. Losing 'Slice and Dice' will mean a big drop in DPS, so keep it up! (NEVER use Adrenaline Rush and Killing Spree at the same time. Huge DPS loss). It may sound complicated, but its really quite easy.

Glyphs

This is simple. Get these three Glyphs.
-Glyph of Killing Spree
-Glyph of Sinister Strike
and
-Glyph of Eviscerate

Gems

As a combat rogue, most of your dps comes from auto melee attack. What most combat rogues (and me) stack in their gem slots is full [Fractured Cardinal Ruby] (20 Armor Penetration). Your main stat you will be going for is Armor Penetration. You want it on your gear, your weapons, and everything you can possibly fit it onto. For me, losing 100 Armor Pen meant losing about 2k DPS in a 25m raid. Again, this isnt counting meta and the gems you need in order to make it work. The Meta you will need to use is a [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond]. And for your blue which you need to make the Meta work, use a [Nightmare Tear].

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Assassination

Assassination is the best "Single Target" DPS Spec in the game. If you are standing still on a boss with gear equal to a combat rogue next to you. The assassination rogue will win. However if you have to move, even just for a little bit, and have to stop dpsing, even for a second, your dps will drop quickly.

Talents

Again, Like with combat, you MUST Have the right spec, which can be found here

Rotation

The Assassination Rogue (Also known as Mutilate) does the best DPS when sitting on a tank and spank boss.
The rotation is VERY Simple. Open up with 'Garrote' , use 'Hunger for Blood' , 'Mutilate' to 5 combo points, get a 'Slice and Dice' Up and Spam 4-5 Point 'Envenom' s till you are blue in the face. Your 'Envenom' s will refresh the timer on 'Slice and Dice' so you don't have to worry about it unless you somehow let it fall off. Refresh 'Hunger for Blood' when its got about 5 seconds left. If you don't have a person in the raid/party with a 'BLEED' Effect on the target, use one of your 4-5 point's to put a 'Rupture' on the target. (Hunger for blood requires a bleed effect on the target to use). This effect lasts a minute, and is relatively easy to keep up. Keep that up and spam 'Envenom' s in-between and you will do pretty decent DPS for such little effort.

Glyphs

The three glyphs you will need to use in this spec are:
-Glyph of Mutilate
-Glyph of Hunger for Blood
and
-Glyph of Tricks of the Trade (See end of post for an Explanation)

Gems

Most of the damage you do will still come from melee, but less than combat.
Other than melee, the main damage will be coming from your Envenom and Mutilate. In all your red gems you should be putting in a [Bright Cardinal Ruby] (40 AP). In all your yellow a [Stark Ametrine] (20 AP 10 Haste), and in your blue a [Nightmare Tear] (10 Stats). You can only use one Nightmare Tear, so every other one put an additional [Bright Cardinal Ruby]. You will use the same Meta gem as a combat rogue, the [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond].

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Additional Info:

The 'hard' hit cap for all melee is 9%.

The expertise cap is 27/27. (Correct me if I am wrong. Because I am not 100% sure)

The poisons any PVE DPS rogue should be using are : INSTANT POISON in the main hand weapon and DEADLY POISON in the off-hand weapon. No exceptions.
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Tricks of the Trade for Assassination.

Smart rogues use tricks of the trade on each other in raids to increase their dps. The ToTT Glyph used by assassination rogues increases the duration of ToTT by 4 seconds. The reason for using it is that it increases all damage done by 15% for X Seconds, and the threat transfer is canceled out if two rogues do it at the same time to each other. This makes a big difference in DPS for any class.

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Ok people, I just spent about an hour or two on this guide. TELL ME IF I MESSED UP. Any typos you see, point them out, any errors, anything Im not saying correctly, any bad information. TELL ME So that I may fix it.

Enjoy!

[Grif]

Basicly, you summed up all the clishe about the specs, talents and glyphs, without going in to it a bit more. But i quess it can be called a decent novice guide.
And you are trying to contribute, so +Rep from me.

[themaster]

Lol what a rough made guide.. few things:
Sub: You took Puncturing Wounds, but you don't talk about Backstab at all, only about Hemorrhage. Really you should use backstab instead hemo and use hemo to get the last CP. Besides that you say to stack 40 AP gems as sub, which is kinda the worst thing you can do as sub atm because for pvp you need to stack ArPen gems. If you got no 60% + Armor Penetration you will hate your life as sub against plates.. besides that if you think im talking bullshit go to Arenajunkies and read what top rated Rogues like Litreocola have to say about it.
As build i'd take this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft <-- Because you need to keep Slice and Dice up as sub to have sustained damage + this build gives max damage. Yes no Waylay because Waylay is not necessary since you use crippling poison. And no Heightened senses because sub isnt a specc made about who-gets-first-opener.

Assassination: You use Instant poison on your OH (Fastest Weapon) to benefit from most instant poison proccs. Opener should be : Garrote > HfB > SnD > mutilate till 4-5 CP and use Envenom. There is no point getting 4-5 CP first to get Slice and Dice up since Envenom will refresh the one used from 1 CP (9sec SnD).

I hope that this info will help.

[Termus]

You definitely want to go with Instant on your slower weapon for Mut, and Deadly on the faster one, as Shaw said. The reason for this is that Deadly Poison, once there are 5 stacks on the target, will also force an application of the poison on your other hand whenever it reapplies itself, and Deadly Poison has a fixed proc rate, and not a PPM like instant, so it procs more on faster weapons.

Also, Shaw is completely correct in saying that the TotT glyph is better than Eviscerate for a combat rogue; if there is no other rogue in the raid then you should still tricks another dps every cooldown, especially since you have (if not you are fail) 2pc T10 so your TotT is a straight dps gain for you as well.

The "hard" hit cap is not 9%, the "soft" yellow hit cat is 8% for all classes, this is the point at which your special moves no longer can miss, however they still can be dodged or parried. For rogues, this means you need 4% hit or 99 Hit Rating to be yellow capped.

That said, with the current state of the game, and the power of poisons, we actually need to hit the poison hit cap, which is 5/5 Precision +315 Hit Rating.
The 315 Hit Rating can be reduced by Heroic Presence (if Alliance) and by either Misery or Improved Faerie Fire.
Poison Hit Cap:
No Raid Buffs 315
With Imp FF/Misery 237
Heroic+Imp FF 210

Also, on the subject of the threat redirection from TotT, so long as you click the buff off yourself after it starts working (so after you land a blow) the target will keep the dps gain for the full 6(10) seconds, but you will not transfer any threat, thus not endangering them which matters if they are not a rogue and thus can't TotT back.

[Shameless]

Following what Termus said about poison's etc, your MH should always be your slowest weapon, and OH your quickest.

Secondly, depending you your spec for Combat PvE, Wound MH can do alot more damage than Instant. This has been an arguable case in many forums, but personally i think its correct as you dont have the extra talents to apply instant more often etc.

Finally, I also fine Combat to be a good PvP spec if played right, but you must stack ArP for it to become effective. I've played Combat Rogue/Protection Warrior in 1.8k+ Arena, and yes that may be low, but its a high rating for such an unseen combo. The amount of stuns the warrior had, paired with the MASS ArP i had stacked and 2 Slow Weapons, KS was sure to get one of the other team close to death.

Either way, as you have attempted to contribute, +Rep from me
~Shame

[Termus]

Shameless, sorry to contradict, but Wound was ahead until your DP applications started also applying the poison on your other hand, which makes IP pull ahead because it does more damage per application.

Also, the MH should not be your slowest in all situations; for a combat rogue, you should be MH slow, OH fast, but for Mut whatever dagger has the highest DPS (not damage) goes in the MH, and your second highest goes in the OH. If you have identical dps daggers with different speeds, then the slower one goes MH. If you have 2 fast identical daggers there is a SLIGHT dps gain to be had from putting DP on the MH weapon instead of the OH, but if you have different speeds as previously stated DP goes on the faster weapon in all circumstances.

[SprayPlaster]

especially since you have (if not you are fail) 2pc T10 so your TotT is a straight dps gain for you as well.

Nice points you made in this post, but why is not having 2pc T10 = fail? Newly dinged alts?

[Termus]

Certainly there are circumstances like newly dinged alts, however I assumed that was a given, we all wear suboptimal gear when freshly dinged, whatever we could get our hands on while leveling, and then whatever we can get quickly with triumph.

That being said, it was intended as a comment on geared raiding characters, if you choose to not have the 2pc because you don't like using TotT since it is "too complicated" (this is an argument I've heard) ignoring such a powerful set bonus because you don't want to learn how to use the ability and thus ignore both one of the most powerful buffs a rogue offers, and arguably the best threat stabilization tool in the game, you are doing it wrong.