Rogue PvP Guide

[akamaz]

Professions

The only professions that help you for PvP are Enchanting, Jewel Crafting, Engineering, and Blacksmithing. Blacksmithing is the weakest of these professions, but it will give you a jumpstart while gearing your rogue from scratch. In the long run, the blacksmithing weapons have already been outpaced by arena gear, so I don’t recommend this. Right now Jewel Crafting and Enchanting are the best arena professions because of the extra stats they give you. However, Engineering is GREAT for world PvP, duels, and BGs and is due for a buff.

Enchanting: You get to add either +4 all stats OR +2 weapon damage on each of your rings. Being able to disenchant is also really nice for making gold, but it doesn’t affect PvP.
Jewel Crafting: You get access to a couple epic unique BoP gems. The useful ones for a rogue are currently one 24ap gem and one 18stam gem. From what I’ve seen there may be more of these gems coming out in the future as well. In addition, you can get the Nightseye Panther trinket Thottbot World of Warcraft: Figurine - Nightseye Panther This is a really nice trinket as it is useable in stealth and gives you +5 stealth.
Engineering: Lots of fun stuff, but mostly unhelpful for arena. The Goblin Rocket Launcher Thottbot World of Warcraft: Goblin Rocket Launcher is a nice trinket and useable in arena, but its cast time is interrupted by any damage so it’s only really useful for 1v1 other than the 45 passive stamina. The Gnomish counterpart, Thottbot World of Warcraft: Gnomish Poultryizer is not useable in arena. The stealth detection goggles are useful, but since gear swapping has been disabled in arena because of crybaby warlocks, it’s hard to take advantage of them in arena. The Nigh Invulnerability Belt Thottbot World of Warcraft: Nigh Invulnerability Belt is useable in arena, and is very powerful when it doesn’t backfire. And I guess the Deathblow Goggles are worth a mention as they are on par with the season 2 helm and can save you some arena points as you gear up Thottbot World of Warcraft: Deathblow X11 Goggles

You can’t go wrong picking any 2 of those 3 professions for PvP. Whatever floats your boat. Personally, I would take Engineering and then choose between JC and Enchanting.

Gearing Up
Rep:
I advise you to grind Aldor rep for lvls 68-70 so you will be exalted when you hit 70. This will get you a nice starter sword, and very solid ring, and the shoulder enchant that you will be using.
Honor:
TBC has made gear decisions pretty simple for PvPers. Basically, there are no decisions. You just gather all the PvP gear as efficiently as possible. The way you do this will depend on how hardcore you are when it comes to honor farming. I hate farming honor so personally, I would farm the vindicator honor pieces first. After that any extra honor I could muster would go toward the season 1 weapons, and then toward season 1 arena gear. If you don’t mind farming honor, you might want to get the weapons first, because you probably won’t be upgrading them for a while (S3 weapons are expensive and require 1850 personal rating).
Arena:
Make sure you start doing arena as soon as you hit 70. Even with @@*%ty ratings, there is a big difference between 300 points per week and 0. The first piece of gear you should buy is the gloves. They are the cheapest piece and the deadly throw bonus on them is a must have. After that, the legs, chest, and helm are the best pieces stat-wise. So get them in whatever order replaces your worst items first.
Gems:
You can’t afford to gem offensively until you’re gear is at about full season 2 level. This is because you need to maintain a certain level of HP and resilience to survive burst. You don’t have to go all out with all 12 stam gems either though, just matching your socket colors with balanced gems will be fine. You need to maintain 5% hit (~79 hit rating) so that your specials don’t miss. This is very important. Hit rating caps at 5% for specials, after that it only affects your white damage. So the first 79 hit rating that you get are the most valuable stats you can pick up. It is a common mistake to neglect this, even among “top” rogues. Because of this, most of your yellow slots will need to be +8 Hit gems until you get the hit rating from season 3 legs, helm, and chest. Here is a good example:
Head: Balanced Nightseye/Powerful Earthstorm Diamond
Neck: Rigid Dawnstone
Shoulders: Balanced Nightseye/Rigid Dawnstone
Chest: Balanced Nightseye/Balanced Nightseye/Rigid Dawnstone
Bracers: Rigid Dawnstone
*when your hit rating allows it, replace Rigid Dawnstones with Wicked Noble Topaz (offensive) or Steady Talasite(defensive).

Enchants:
Helm: +34ap, 17hit (Cenarion: revered)
Shoulders: +30ap, 10crit (Aldor: exalted)
Chest: +15 resilience
Bracers: +24ap
Gloves: +26ap or +15agi(for builds with 5/5 sinister calling)
Legs: +40stam, 12agi (Nethercleft leg armor from leatherworking)*
Boots: +9stam, minor runspeed increase (Boar’s speed)
Weapons: Mongoose/Mongoose is the best if you have deadliness and sinister calling(138agi +16ap). Without those talents the mainhand enchant can be Mongoose or Executioner and the offhand can be Mongoose or Adamantite Weapon Chain.
*The nethercleft leg armor (40stam/12agi) is better than the nethercobra leg armor (50ap/12crit) stat budget-wise. A lot of rogues are starting to take the nethercobra for max offensive stats, but you can’t afford to do that until you reach ~season 3 gear level.

Talent Builds
17/0/44 ShS Hemo Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
31/0/30 SF Hemo Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
11/26/24 Combat Hemo Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
0/33/28 AR/Prep Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
41/20/0 Combat Mutilate Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Filler points can always be changed as personal preference; there are also poison heavy variations of each build because druids are overpowered. I like to have at least 2/3 imp gouge so I can use my Rocket Launcher or bandage during gouge. In most sub builds, you need to choose between Master of Subtlety and Deadliness. Master of Subtlety is the safe choice until you reach about 1500 attack power. At that point it will depend on the teams you play on [do you need burst(MoS) or sustained damage(Deadliness)?]
I see a lot of rogues pass up Enveloping Shadows. This is a mistake. ES is an amazing talent. In conjunction with Heightened Senses, you have a 19% chance to resist AoE, including frost novas, warrior shouts, and fears. Make sure you fit this into your build.

My build is 16/2/43 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
It is both fun and viable. Most of the strategy in this guide will be written from the PoV of this build, although I will try to provide multiple perspectives where necessary.

*Note about Ghostly Strike:
This attack is not normalized. In short, this means that your weapon speed is multiplied by a factor of your attack power when the damage is calculated for this ability. The slower the weapon the harder it will hit. Because of this, many rogues use it as a damaging attack thinking that the damage per energy is more efficient than hemorrhage. This is wrong, or at least partially so. First off, it doesn’t out damage hemo by much unless your weapon is 2.7 or slower. But the main thing to consider is this: when hemo fails to land (dodged, parried, missed), you get an energy refund. I believe the refund is something like ~80%. But when Ghostly Strike misses, it is still considered a successful attack because of the 15% dodge bonus. So you’re out 40 energy. This makes it an inefficient damaging attack for most practical purposes. It’s ok to use it for damage during a stun where it can’t be dodged or parried but otherwise think of it as a defensive move and always use it when you evasion.

Finishing Moves
This is just a basic overview of the finishing moves and what they are best for. There are of course exceptions, but these things are generally true for most situations:

Kidney Shot- This is your bread and butter, it’s a stun.
Eviscerate - Instant burst to finish players off or pressure healers into using cool downs (like nature’s swiftness)
Expose Armor- If you are going to be on your target for the next 30 seconds, this is a good move against anyone without a shield (the lower their armor, the more effective this is)
Slice n Dice- Very good finishing move if you have dual wield spec, but most PvP builds do not. For other builds, this finisher is good for applying poisons quickly or dumping combo points before switching targets.
Rupture- Good against high armor targets and to keep rogues from getting away.

1v1
This is fundamental PvP. Bad players (even some good players who are just stupid) will tell you that duels don’t matter. But master each class individually and it will go a long long way in carrying over into all other types of PvP.

Stunlocks:
1) Cheapshot, hemo, hemo, kidney shot, hemo hemo... (This is the most basic stunlock. It is best for situations where you don’t want to put your gouge/sap on diminishing returns)
2) Cheapshot, hemo, gouge, kidney shot, hemo, hemo, gouge, rupture (Best stunlock without cooldowns if their pvp trinket is down)
3)Premeditation, cheapshot, expose armor, hemo, gouge, vanish, garrote, hemo, kidney shot *if you have the goblin rocket launcher you can use it during your 1st gouge and then restealth instead of vanishing.

Blinding and PvP trinket:
Generally, there are 2 types of players when it comes to the PvP trinket. There are aggressive, anxious players who will trinket your kidney shot every time (maybe even your cheap shot). And there are discipline players who will save their PvP trinket for your blind. Making someone eat a full duration blind is huge. It gives you:
*Full energy regeneration
*Full bandage
*Free restealth, which in turn gives:
*A sap to reset diminishing returns on all stuns
*10-27.5 seconds off your cooldowns (clos, blind, shs)
* And of course an opener.
So knowing how to take full advantage of this is key. Regardless of the kind of player you are fighting, you can virtually always get them to eat a blind. If you are fighting someone who will trinket your kidney shot, just open with stunlock 1, blinding as soon as they trinket. Then sap to reset your stun DRs and repeat.
If you are fighting against the disciplined trinketer, take advantage of the full kidneyshot that he will allow you and then toss a blind early on anyway. You can use it to interrupt a cast or just toss it up as trinket fodder. With elusiveness, you have a 90 second blind cooldown vs their 120 second trinket cooldown. This will give you a 20 second window for a full duration blind after your cooldown comes back.

Many times you will have combo points on your enemy when it is time to blind. Since your restealth opener will give you as many combo points as you need, you should find a way to dump these combo points so they aren’t wasted. If you didn’t have time to slip an expose armor or eviscerate before blinding (you usually don’t unless you know when you’re going to blind ahead of time), you can use these for Slice n Dice. Here’s how:
*Blind and restealth,
*At the end of blind, sap and immediately unstealth yourself.
*Your stealth cool down will come back up after 5-6 seconds depending on talents and now you can use slice n dice before restealthing again for your opener.

But what if they have a pet?

Players with pets (Hunters and Warlocks) will ~always trinket your kidney shot because they don’t think you can make them pay for a blind like you can to other classes. This is true in that you won’t get the bandage or a sap to reset DRs but you can still get the full energy regen and a fresh opener out of it. Here’s how:
Blind the hunter/warlock and run away from him, drawing his pet away for about 3 seconds. Now gouge the pet and run back toward the hunter. Just as gouge wears off, but before blind is over, you have a small window of time to restealth and open up during the time it takes for the pet to catch up to you. Since you don’t get to take advantage of sap here, it is good to wait until your kidney shot will be off of DRs before you apply this technique.




Matchups:

VS Warrior
PvP trinket
Him: The warrior should be saving his PvP trinket for blind. If he trinkets a
kidney shot, blind him the first chance you get without bleeds on you.
You: Unless you are undead you should save your trinket for his fear. However,
most warriors aren’t disciplined enough to truly make you pay with a fear if
you trinket an intercept since damage, including bleeds break his fear. If you
really respect the warrior you’re fighting, try to save trinket for fear.
Otherwise, use it on an intercept.
The Fight:
As ShS, this can be a really fun fight if you get good at a couple techniques. Namely 5-8 kiting and then dipping to 9 yards to bait the intercept and ShS it. This just swaps you, and most of the time the warrior will think you vanished and start looking for you, buying you a restealth.

Without anything fancy though you can just use cooldowns:
*Sap from max range and move away out of shout range(if he zerks out of it just wait for it to end then resap)
*Once hes sapped, premed ShS garrote, rupture, vanish (again make sure u get out of shout range)
*Regen your energy and let the dots tick a bit, so that there are only 4 seconds left on them
*Move back in for cheapshot into KS (If they land, he will probably trinket KS. If he does, blind him for a restealth and go back to step 1)
*After these openers, use evasion and ghostly strike and toe-to-toe him, try to end evasion with 5 combo points and almost full energy
*Just as evasion ends, ShS KS him.
*Most warriors are totally fk'd by now
*If you're fighting a pro warrior and don't know how to 5-8, prep to basically just repeat everything over again or even just to evasion tank him a 2nd time.

5-8 kiting:
This involves staying too far for him to melee you but too close for intercept. It really just takes practice and eventually it becomes second nature. Stay close to the 5 and don’t worry about the 8. Back up until you are just out of range for your own auto attacks and use twitchy back/forth movements to maintain that distance. Just make a mental note to help visually remember the distance ("cool my head is 1 inch away from the circle at his feet") Practice, practice practice.

Shadowstepping intercepts:
The most reliable way to do this is to bait the intercept. Back out to intercept range and as soon as you see him switch into berserker stance, hit shadowstep. Better too soon than too late on this one.

VS Mage
PvP Trinket:
Him: He will use his trinket for your kidney shot. If he does, keep it in the back
of your mind, but realize he can still ice block out of blind.
You: Save it for sheep until you take enough damage that he won’t want to sheep
you. If you do get sheeped, don’t trinket right away, a good mage will
anticipate this and double sheep. If he isn’t going to get a cast off within 6
seconds of sheeping you, you can trinket restealth (pro move that you can do
against rogue blind as well)
The Fight:
Since this is one of the fights that is completely different as shadowstep, I am going to give a quick AR/prep strat as well so that you have your bases covered: Rogue vs Mage is a very fluid fight, so it is hard to give a complete pre-canned strategy, but I will try to cover the most general scenarios.

Non-ShS (AR/prep here)
*Sap the mage (this lets you cheat a global after garrote because garrote doesn't break sap immediately)
*Garrote shiv, you'll get frostbite or novad and he will probably blink. If he does:
*imp sprint and use your blade flurry on your way to him.
*when you get to him, hemo->KS. Now he will most likely trinket, so be ready to shiv.
*Try to save CloS for after IB, use vanish to break a nova before you resort to cloak.
*He will summon his pet, blind it immediately.
*At this point, feel free to use trinket for nova. Just don't do that too early or youre vulnerable to sheep.
*If he iceblocks with his pet blinded, bandage to bait him out of IB and then gouge (this can be hard, but with practice youll get a good feel for it)

Ideally at this point, you still have cloak and AR up (possibly even vanish), so pop your AR after IB and use cloak to stay on him, prep sprint, vanish as needed for snares. He shouldnt survive to 2nd IB.

ShS:
The principles of the fight are still the same, but as shadowstep you have an advantage and he needs to counter all of your cooldowns instead of vice versa.

*Open with Premed, cheap shot, gouge. If you time your gouge right, he will blink at the same time and be gouged at the other side of his blink. You can now simply walk up and kidney shot him. This opener puts you way ahead in the fight as you still have shadowstep for his next blink.
*If the mage is running around AoEing, sap him to make things easy on yourself and don’t worry about gouging his blink. Just open with premed, cheap shot, shiv.
*When he blinks, use shadowstep kidney shot. Hesitate before using your next global as he will probably trinket the KS, and if he does you need to shiv immediately.
* When he summons his pet, you have 2 options. If you are ahead in the fight, it is best to blind the pet and keep pressure on the mage. If you have taken heavy damage, save your blind and use clos to kill the pet and then vanish to reset the fight. This way you can get a blind bandage AFTER the mage iceblocks (during hypothermia).
*Again, after you’ve started taking significant damage, feel free to use trinket on a nova. It’s also ok to trinket a nova if you know you can otherwise prevent a polymorph via kick, vanish, clos.
*With the mage’s trinket down, you are basically trying to keep combo points up on him to make him eat a big ShS kidney shot after blink.

Note: another way to deal with the pet (especially if he summons a 2nd one while you’re out of gas) is to vanish and wait it out. It is best to gouge the pet before vanishing so that the mage can’t use it to frost nova you out. I’ll also mention here that distract interrupts people from drinking as it makes them stand up.

VS Hunter:
PvP Trinket:
Him: He will trinket a kidney shot.
You: Save trinket for freezing trap.
VS Beast Mastery:
Your goal is to bait the Beast Within cd and then get a vanish off to wait it out. This is easier said than done with our broken ass vanish. As ShS you can shadowstep to something right before you vanish to avoid auto attacks. ie. sprint away from flare/traps then shs to the hunter as you vanish so the pet doesnt auto attack you out.

If you can land a sap at the beginning of the duel, you can kill his pet during sap/blind even if though he'll trinkets one. This requires gear on your part though. With his pet dead he can't use his God-mode. I’ll also note something interesting here about disarm trap. If you right click a trap it will disarm, but you need to be within 5yds, an unrealistic requirement in most situations. However, if you use the actual disarm trap skill from your spell book to click the trap, it has a 12 yard range despite the 5yd range stated on the tooltip.

VS Marksman:
Keep him shived and try to anticipate freeze traps with cloak. If he trinkets to get distance on you (alot of them will), blind him and run a few yards the other way, then gouge his pet and run back to him. If you do this right you can restealth for an opener on him before the pet gets back to you. This isn’t a very hard fight as shadowstep, just stay on top of the hunter and you will out-muscle him.

VS Rogue
PvP Trinket:
Him: He should be saving it for blind, but he will probably use it on KS.
You: Save trinket for blind unless you are going to die during a stun, or can end
The fight before you get blinded.
The Opener:
The biggest advantage you can have in a rogue vs. rogue duel is the opener. The most reliably way to get the opener is to get yourself a stealth advantage. You can do this through a combination of +stealth items and +detection items, so here is a list of them.
Trinket: Nightseye Figurine (+5 stealth), requires jewel
crafting.Figurine - Nightseye Panther - Items - World of Warcraft
Boots: Master’s Treads (+5 stealth), BoE world drop
The Master's Treads - Items - World of Warcraft
Silent Strider Knee boots (+5 stealth), Heroic Ramparts drop
Silent-Strider Kneeboots - Items - World of Warcraft
Cloak Enchant: Enchant: Stealth (+5 stealth), find an enchanter
Formula: Enchant Cloak - Stealth - Items - World of Warcraft

Head: Catseye Ultra Goggles (+18 detection), Requires engineering.
Catseye Ultra Goggles - Items - World of Warcraft
The Night Watchman (+8 detection), BoE world drop.
The Night Watchman - Items - World of Warcraft
Deathblow X11 Goggles (+5 detection), Requires engineering.
Deathblow X11 Goggles - Items - World of Warcraft
Hyper-Vision Goggles (+30 detection 15sec use) Requires engineering.
Hyper-Vision Goggles - Items - World of Warcraft
Spells: Perception (+50 detection for 20 seconds)
Vanish (+100 stealth for 10 seconds)
Paranoia (+30 detection aura from warlock pet)
Shadowmeld (+5 stealth passive)
Master of Deception (+3 stealth per talent point)
Heightened Senses (+3 detection per talent point)

So as you can see, it is possible to stack up a pretty decent stealth advantage through items, especially if you have engineering. Even if you are at a disadvantage (like vs. a human), you can vanish preemptively to give yourself +100 stealth while you look for them. If you do this, you should probably sprint also because you need to find them within 10 seconds.

Another thing you can do to ensure the opener in a fight vs. someone with a similar stealth level is to use sap. Only do this if you don’t think you can get the opener without it, as it puts your gouge (and sap) on diminishing returns. The sap spell from your spell book doesn’t search for targets the way cheap shot does so you cant just spam it to find people. However, I have a macro that does and it is listed in the macro/addon section of this guide.

The Fight (with opener):
With the opener, you don’t even need to let him touch you
*Open with cheap shot, hemo, hemo, kidney shot.
If he trinkets here, blind him immediately then sap to reset DRs, and repeat.
*After KS, build some combo points with hemo and make sure to leave yourself enough energy to rupture before the stun ends, even if it is only a 2 point rupture.
*With your opponent bleeding, vanish just as kidney shot ends.
*Stay close to him while he runs around bleeding and sap as soon as your rupture ends.
*After sap, re-open and restart this process. Try to kill him with rupture, since most rogues have cheat death now. You don’t want to proc cheat death with a big eviscerate or he will have a lot of health left after its done.

Without opener:
There are some rogues that (aside from chain stun resists) you will never beat without getting the opener. I am one of them, and after mastering the tips in this guide, you will be one of them. However, this is not the case when fighting 99% of the rogues out there. They will allow you a window to turn the tables and you need to capitalize.
*Do not trinket stuns unless you are going to die, save it for blind.
*Try to gouge him after his kidney shot wears off, and then vanish (restealth if you think it’s possible) and open on him. If you get this off you can play it just like you would if you had gotten the opener, just realize your gouge/sap are on diminishing returns.
If your gouge didn’t land, do whatever you can to get an opener on him to turn the tables. Make sure you have distance before you try to vanish, as it is very easy to get auto-attacked out. Sprint or ShS coupled with Cloak of Shadows to get rid of crippling poison are good ways to create distance for a Safe vanish.
*If a rogue uses evasion on you, use shiv to build combo points then ShS kidneyshot him. Shiv cannot be dodged or parried and ShS will put you behind him for the KS so he can’t dodge it. Evasion also has no effect on attacks coming from stealth such as cheap shot, nor does it work while they are stunned. So you can still stun lock and rogue who has evasion up.

To sum up this fight, your goal is to stun-lock the rogue and chain your stuns together with bleeds so that he never has a chance to get away and re-open on you.

Vs Warlock
PvP Trinket:
Him: He will trinket KS.
You: Trinket death coil and kick fear, or just wait out death coil and trinket the
Fear that follows.
Soul-link warlocks can be a tough fight, but you should be able to beat them with this strategy. Basically you are breaking the fight into 2 parts. The first part is to deal some dps and get him to use his trinket. The 2nd part is to recover and finish him off.
*Open with premed cheap shot, expose armor, hemo, gouge into a kidney shot.
*He will most likely trinket this, but if he doesn’t, put a rupture up and vanish before KS ends. Then wait for rupture to tick out and open with garrote, shiv, hemo KS again to get him to trinket.
*Once he’s trinketed, just dish out as much dps as you can while tanking his damage.
*When you get to about 40% hp, get a 5 point rupture up (so he can‘t bandage), gouge his pet, and vanish.
*Now wait for the rupture to tick off and regen your energy.
*As soon as rupture ends, sap the warlock, blind his pet and bandage before restealthing for a stun lock.
*Now just rush him down. His only instant CC is death coil into a fear so either trinket the DC and kick the fear, or eat the DC and trinket the fear. Either way he shouldn’t be able to get fears of other than that.

Vs Shaman
PvP Trinket:
Him: He should save his trinket for a blind.
You: He has no CC, so you can trinket a frost shock to catch up to him.
Vs Elemental/Enhancement:
These two variations of the shaman should be easy to beat in a duel. Just stun lock, use clos for elemental, and evasion for ehancement. Other than common sense, there is nothing else to this fight.

Vs Resto:
A good resto shaman is probably your hardest fight 1v1. They are very durable and now that they get part of their bonus healing for free as damage… well its an uphill battle. You need to control the pace of this fight to utilize cloak, blind, bandage as often as possible.
*Use constant stun locks
*Kill totems during gouge (with auto attack and throw) in this order of priority:
1) fire totems
2) poison totems
3) mana totems
*Use cloak of shadows at the end of stun locks to anticipate frost shock.
*You just slowly run him out of mana, controlling the pace of the fight the best you can.
*Run away and restealth for a sap bandage if you need to, it’s a tough fight.

Vs Druid
PvP Trinket:
Him: He will probably save it for blind unless you can really pressure him into
Using it on a KS.
You: Trinket a cyclone.
Vs Feral
There aren’t many feral druids around and the fight is just a combination of rogue and warrior, so I will give the strategy for that quickly.
*If he starts in cat form, the fight should be very easy as long as you get the opener. Just treat it as rogue vs. rogue.
*He will probably start in bear form though. Open just like you would vs. a warrior; premed, sprint, garrote, rupture vanish. Let your bleeds tick out and get ready to ShS cheap shot as soon as he shifts into caster form to heal. If you catch him in caster form he will have to trinket the kidneyshot which puts you in a good situation.
*The fight is a lot like vs. warrior, you need to 5-8 kite constantly and save your kidneyshot for when he shifts into caster form.

Vs Resto
Resto druids are currently out of control, so this can get pretty ridiculous vs. a good one. The strategy is basically the same as it is vs. feral druids as far as how to handle bear form, and stun locking him in caster. The difference is that he won’t be pressured into trinketing KS because he is still very durable in caster form. You need to make use of gouge/bandage, blind/bandage, and blind->sap bandage often to wear him down.

Vs Priest
PvP Trinket:
Him: He will save it for blind.
You: Trinket the 2nd fear.
Vs Discipline
Most rogues have trouble with this fight, but this strat is pretty solid.
*Open with garrote, shiv, hemo, KS
*Build combo points but don’t spend them yet. Just as KS ends, use cloak of shadows to anticipate his fear. If you resist his fear here, you are way ahead of the fight. Shiv mind-numbing poison on him with your shiv macro.
*If he didn’t fall for the cloak of shadows, get 5 combo points on him and eat the full fear, then sprint back to him or ShS.
*Now you have full energy and 5 combo points, perfect time to start your rush-down. Put up 5-point expose armor and go all out on DPS, but be careful not to just spam buttons and use up all your energy, you still need to kick heals.
*He will get another fear off before you can kill him, which is why you saved your trinket. So trinket that and keep applying pressure. If he is still alive by the time his fear is coming up again, kidney shot him just before it is up, and then cloak at the end of it. If he resists the temptation to fear into your cloak here, blind him before cloak ends. If he still has trinket up, be prepared to vanish as soon as he uses it.
*Keep in mind there is a good chance you’ve already killed him by now, but if you havent he is low on mana and you are safely vanished. As soon as he drops out of combat, sap him and bandage up.
*If the fight has lasted this long, you need to transition to a more controlling style of play, use lots of gouges and stuns to draw it out and run him out of mana while you get optimal use out of your cloak cool down. Cloak/blind/bandage whenever his trinket is down and your blind is up. If his trinket is up, use gouge/bandage.

Vs Shadowpriest
You can play this the same way as you do vs. a discipline priest, its just a little more volatile but generally easier. Depending on how much damage you are dishing out, you may want to trinket the first fear to deny his damage and kill him quickly.

Vs Paladin
PvP Trinket:
Him: He will probably trinket KS.
You: Trinket Hammer of Justice.
*Open with a stun lock and blind if he trinkets KS. If he doesn’t, use cloak of shadows just as KS ends to anticipate HoJ. Similar to the priest fight, you are way ahead if you resist the HoJ.
*Mindnumbing shivs are good here.
*Before your clos ends, get a rupture up and vanish. At this point the will start to heal so be ready to ShS back in for a garrote silence.
*If he didn’t try to HoJ during your cloak, he’ll get you with one now, so trinket it and kick his heals forcing him to bubble.
*When he bubbles, just run away and restealth but pay attention to what he does. Some paladins are way too offensive during bubble and don’t leave enough time to heal if you get back on him as soon as it ends (Natur EnemyCastBar addon helps here).
*After the bubble, just start over in the same way. When your blind comes back up, use it at the end of a stun lock. If he trinkets blind, gouge and run away to restealth.
*Fairly straight forward fight, if you need to run away and restealth then sap/bandage.

Addons
I don’t use a lot of addons but there are a few that I find very helpful for PvP:
Natur EnemyCastBar: This tracks all of your opponents cool downs and the diminishing returns that are currently effecting them.
Natur EnemyCastBar | World of Warcraft Addons | World of Warcraft @ Curse.com

FocusFrame: When you set a target as your focus, this addon will add their portrait to the side of your actual target. Very helpful for monitoring their casts.
FocusFrame | World of Warcraft Addons | World of Warcraft @ Curse.com

Proximo: This is a helpful addon for arena that tracks your targets and puts their clickable names in a little box. Very nice for quickly scanning the classes you are up against and for easy targeting.
Proximo | World of Warcraft Addons | Curse

Macros
Here are some helpful macros that will really improve your game:

Hemorrhage/Auto-attack
#show hemorrhage
/startattack
/cast hemorrhage
*This will turn on your auto-attack when you hit your hemo button. Helpful for switching targets when you don’t have enough energy to hemo.

Find stealth/sap
#show sap
/cleartarget
/targetenemy
/cast sap
*Normal sap does not search for targets the way cheap shot does, so it can be hard to sap stealthers. Not only will this macro search for targets but it will constantly look for the closest target to sap, so you can mash it while looking for an enemy rogue.

Improved Vanish
#show Vanish
/stopattack
/cast vanish
*Vanish is broken as you’ll soon find out. With this macro, you can at least alleviate some of the problem by preventing your own auto-attacks from breaking vanish.

Poison-specific Shiv
#show Merciless Gladiator's Shiv
/equipslot 17 Merciless Gladiator's Shiv
/cast shiv
*Make multiple versions of this macro with the weapon names of each offhand weapon you carry in your bag. Then poison each one with a different poison and bind the macros to different buttons and VOILLA you can now shiv whatever poison you want.

Blind Focus
/cast [target=focus] Blind
*Blind your focus target without switching targets. Keep in mind you can make all kinds of focus macros. Just replace “Blind” with “shadowstep” for example and you will shs to your focus target for a kick 

Throw/Deadly Throw
#show deadly throw
/cast deadly throw
/cast throw
*This will cast deadly throw when you have combo points, and regular throw when you don’t. Saves you a hotkey.

Keybinds
These are my personal key binds. Feel free to copy them or use your own 

Movement
W= forward
S= Back
Mouse thumb button 1= strafe left
Mouse thumb button 2= strafe right
Shift+A= turn left (this is just so I can move with the keyboard if I’m eating a sandwich)
Shift+D= turn right (this is just so I can move with the keyboard if I’m eating a sandwich)

Stealth Only
1= distract
2= disarm trap
3= pickpocket
Q= sap
A= find stealth/sap
F= garrote
D= cheap shot
Mousewheel down= premeditation


Out of Stealth
1= kick
2= evasion
3= rupture
Q= kidney shot
E= eviscerate
A= ghostly strike
D= hemorrhage
Z= distract
X= stealth
Shift+X= shadowmeld
C= cloak of shadows
V= vanish
F= gouge
G= preperation
T= blind
Shift+T= blind focus
R= shiv
Shift+R= shiv mind numbing
Ctrl+R= shiv deadly poison
Alt+R= shiv wound
Shift+Q= slice n dice
Shift+E= expose armor
Shift+mouse button= deadly throw/throw
Middle mouse= PvP trinket
Shift+Mousewheel down= 2nd trinket
Mousewheel up= shadow step
Shift+Mouse wheel up= healthstone
`= bandage
Shift+V= show enemy name plates
F1= set focus



-Ultimus <-- Creator
<Rogue Trainer>
<Black Dragonflight>

[Catmeister]

Great guide, found it very useful particularly the binds and macro's.
Thanks for taking the time to do it

[GanjalfTheGreen]

I've read lots of rogue guides for both pve and pvp and i personally find that the way i play(my own style) beats almost all of them, then again 90&#37; of rogues have no clue how to play thier class, +1rep for the indepth guide

[Stinja1]

great guide, im def. going to come back to this guide when i get my rogue to 70 +rep

[kierz]

thanks alot

[popoxb]

haha u stole it. Are u sure there arent a copyright?

[Diavol]

Lots of valid points in here most rogues dont know. Worth the read.

[kd85]

nice thread the tips on beating the different classes helped alot

[Murlock.]

Nice Guide! +Rep!

[Yuseh]

Nice guide for rogues, +rep!