In this article, we list your Combat Rogue (WoW MoP 5.2) core abilities and how they should be used together (rotation). We also explain when to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that playing a Combat Rogue will face you with.

The other articles of our Combat Rogue guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Dryaan, one of the best Rogues in the world, who raids in Envy.

1. Single Target Rotation↑top

• Combo Point builders (by order of priority)
  1. Cast Ambush when you are in Stealth.
  2. Cast Revealing Strike only to keep its debuff up.
  3. Cast Sinister Strike.
• Finishing Moves (by order of priority)
  1. Apply and maintain Slice and Dice, with 5 Combo Points preferably.
  2. Apply and maintain Rupture with 5 Combo Points.
     • There are cases when you should not maintain Rupture (see our Rupture section).
  3. Use Eviscerate with 5 Combo Points.

Dropping Rupture from the rotation simplifies it, but it sacrifices about 1 or 2% of your DPS.

2. Multiple Target Rotation↑top

If there are 7 or more enemies in a small area, you should abandon your single-target rotation and spam Fan of Knives instead. When you reach 5 Combo Points on your target, use Crimson Tempest to spend them.

Otherwise, turn on Blade Flurry (even if there are only 2 enemies) and proceed with your single target rotation on one of the enemies. Note that Rupture is not transferred by Blade Flurry, so dropping it will affect your DPS even less than against a single target.

If your main target will die in less than 1 minute and you have chosen Marked for Death as your Tier 6 talent, then use it on cooldown.

3. Poisons↑top

Your Lethal Poison should always be Deadly Poison.

Your Non-Lethal Poison should be Leeching Poison. If you chose a different Tier 3 talent, then use Mind-numbing Poison.

Refer to our Poisons section for detailed explanations about poisons.

4. Cooldowns↑top

You have four main DPS cooldowns. As one of our readers once put it, a rule of thumb for cooldown management as Combat Rogue is to use them often and early.

• Adrenaline Rush greatly increases your Energy regeneration for 15 seconds. It should be used on cooldown. Do not hesitate to stack it with Bloodlust, Heroism, or Time Warp, as you will still benefit from the increased attack (but the increased Energy regeneration will, for the most part, be wasted).
• Killing Spree performs a series of attacks against nearby enemies. Use this ability on cooldown and make sure that you are low on Energy before casting it, as you will not be able to spend any Energy while Killing Spree is active.
• Shadow Blades increases your Combo Point regeneration for 12 seconds, on a 3-minute cooldown. Use this ability whenever you can. Do not hesitate to use a macro to combine it with Adrenaline Rush (their cooldowns have the same duration), this will enable you to make numerous casts of 5 Combo Point Eviscerates.
• Vanish makes you enter Stealth. Use this ability on cooldown, immediately followed by 1 or 2 casts of Ambush (depending on whether Subterfuge is your tier 1 talent). Also, you can use Preparation to reset the cooldown of Vanish.

Because of your Restless Blades passive ability, the cooldowns of Adrenaline Rush, Killing Spree, and Shadow Blades is reduced by 2 seconds every time a damaging Finishing Move consumes a Combo Point (i.e., 10-second reduction for each 5 Combo Point Rupture and Eviscerate).

In addition, you can use Redirect in fights where you have to fight different enemies is a DPS gain. See our Redirect section for more details.

Also, Sprint can give you more uptime on the boss, which translates into a direct DPS increase. So, you can use Sprint as a DPS cooldown in some fights (in addition to its obvious survival role).

Finally, you have a number of survival cooldown, such as Feint, Cloak of Shadows, Preparation, Evasion, etc. Do not hesitate to make regular use of them.

5. Mastering Your Combat Rogue↑top

The guidelines above should enable you to play your Combat Rogue with near perfection. That said, if you want to excel at playing your character, you need to understand, among other things, how your Combo Points and your Energy are generated, and what Bandit's Guile does and how you can benefit from it.

5.1. Combo Points and Energy

As a rogue, most of your abilities need Energy to be used. Your Energy bar has a capacity of 100 Energy and refills at a rate of 10 Energy per second. Your energy regeneration is increased by:

• your melee haste (Haste Rating + haste-enhancing buffs);
• your Vitality passive ability, which increases Energy regeneration by 30%;
• your Combat Potency passive ability, which grants your off-hand melee attacks and Mastery: Main Gauche attacks a chance to generate 15 Energy;
• your Relentless Strikes passive ability, which grants your Finishing Moves a 20% chance per Combo Point to restore 25 Energy;
• your Adrenaline Rush cooldown, which temporarily increases your Energy regeneration by 100%.

The faster you regenerate Energy, the more casts of Eviscerate you can fit between your refreshes of Slice and Dice and Rupture.

Note that, whenever you are in Blade Flurry, your Energy regeneration is reduced by 20%.

Some abilities add one or several Combo Points on your target, up to a maximum of 5 Combo Points (10 with Anticipation). Other abilities, called Finishing Moves, consume up to 5 Combo Points on your target. The more Combo Points a Finishing Move consumes, the more powerful its effect is.

Your Combo Point generation is increased by the debuff that Revealing Strike applies on your targets This buff lasts 18 seconds and causes, among other things, Sinister Strike to have a 20% chance to generate an additional Combo Point.

5.2. Poisons

As a Rogue, you have Poison spells that you can use to give your weapon strikes a chance to deal more damage and/or apply a debuff/effect. This chance is fixed, which means that slower weapons will have a smaller chance of applying your Poison effects than faster weapons.

Poisons are either Lethal or Non-Lethal. Lethal Poisons are your damaging Poisons while Non-Lethal Poisons provide crowd control and utility. You can have one Lethal Poison and one Non-Lethal Poison active at the same time.

Deadly Poison and Wound Poison are your Lethal Poisons. Deadly Poison will be your Poison of choice. Wound Poison will only be used when you need the healing reduction that it provides.

Your Non-Lethal Poisons are listed below. Using Shiv will apply on your target a concentrated version (i.e., a more potent effect) of your Non-Lethal Poison.

• Crippling Poison reduces your enemy's movement speed.
• Mind-numbing Poison reduces your enemy's casting speed.
• Leeching Poison (Tier 3 talent) heals you for 10% of the damage dealt.
• Paralytic Poison (Tier 5 talent) stuns your enemy.

Note that Fan of Knives has a chance to apply your poisons on every target that it hits.

5.3. Bandit's Guile

Bandit's Guile is an important mechanic for Combat Rogues. It causes your character to cycle through different buffs of increased damage dealt to your current target:

• no buff: 0% increased damage;
• Shallow Insight: +10% increased damage;
• Moderate Insight: +20% increased damage;
• Deep Insight: +30% increased damage.

Attacking your current target 4 times with any combination of Sinister Strike and Revealing Strike will cause the cycle to progress to the next buff. For Shallow Insight and Moderate Insight, you need to make one attack every 15 seconds at least, otherwise the buff will drop and the cycle will restarts from 0% increased damage. Deep Insight cannot be refreshed and at the end of the 15 seconds, the buff drops and the cycle restarts from 0% increased damage.

Switching to a new target does not reset your cycle of Bandit's Guile.

Bandit's Guile is largely out of your control and the cycle will repeat itself as the encounter progresses. That said, you can try and time your cooldowns so that they are used during one of the buffs, possibly the highest one. Also, thanks to Anticipation, you can save Combo Points and use them for Bandit's Guile. We detail this in the next sections.

5.3.1. Delaying Cooldowns for Bandit's Guile

It can be viable to delay Killing Spree slightly so that it benefits from a higher Bandit's Guile buff. We believe that Adrenaline Rush should not be delayed for Bandit's Guile.

Because of Restless Blades, the real cooldown on Killing Spree and Adrenaline Rush is much lower than what the tooltip indicates. Depending on your Energy regeneration, it should be between 40 seconds and 1 minute for Killing Spree and between 1 minute and 1 minute 30 for Adrenaline Rush.

These abilities will therefore often be available and delaying using them can be a DPS loss.

• For Killing Spree, we advise you to delay using it, if you will gain a higher buff of Bandit's Guile in the next 3 or 4 seconds. Otherwise, use it immediately.
• For Adrenaline Rush, we advise you to use it as soon as it is off cooldown, in order to benefit from the increased Energy regeneration as often as possible.

5.3.2. Anticipation and Bandit's Guile

Thanks to Anticipation, you can save Combo Points for Deep Insight. To do so, use your finishing moves when you reach 4 or 5 stacks of Anticipation. Once you enter Deep Insight, use the extra stacks of Anticipation to cast Eviscerate more times while Deep Insight is active.

5.4. Revealing Strike

Revealing Strike afflicts your target with a 18-second debuff that you will need to strive to keep up. This debuff is important because, while active, it increases the effectiveness of your offensive Finishing Moves against the target by 35% and it causes your Sinister Strike to have a 20% chance to generate 2 Combo Points.

5.5. Rupture

Rupture should only be refreshed at 5 Combo Points and after it has dropped, as otherwise it is not a DPS gain over Eviscerate.

In this case, Rupture is better than Eviscerate, but only because it costs. less Energy to cast. In periods of high Energy regeneration (i.e., when Energy is no longer the limiting factor), so during Bloodlust / Heroism / Time Warp, Rupture should not be refreshed.

5.6. Tricks of the Trade

Tricks of the Trade was originally designed to be cast on tanks in order to help them keep aggro. With the changes that threat generation has undergone in WOTLK and Cataclysm, it is now more beneficial to your raid if you use Tricks of the Trade on one of the best DPS players in order to increase their damage done.

Note that you can (and most often should) cast Tricks of the Trade on the tank at the pull, before switching to a different target when refreshing it.

Tricks of the Trade costs you a global cooldown to cast and costs 15 Energy. The damage bonus that it grants to your target is so beneficial, that it is well worth the sacrifice of a global cooldown and 15 Energy.

Please refer to our Macros and Addons page for a Tricks of the Trade macro.

5.7. Using Redirect

Redirect is a very convenient ability for Rogues.

This ability transfers your existing Combo Points to your current target. Note that when you kill an enemy, your unused Combo Points remain on it, which means that they can be transferred through Redirect. Moreover, your Combo Points on a dead enemy are removed when another enemy dies with unused Combo Points.

Redirect is very useful in two situations:

• when you switch target and want to start on your new target with the Combo Points you had on your previous target;
• when you engage a boss and you want to start with as many Combo Points as possible (by transferring the Combo Points of the last trash mob that died).

6. Changelog↑top

• 19 Mar. 2013: Removed paragraph that recommended pooling Energy for Revealing Strike.
• 19 Mar. 2013: Added advice for saving up Combo Points with Anticipation for Deep Insight.
• 19 Mar. 2013: Added a Rupture section to give more information regarding when and how to refresh Rupture.
• 11 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Updated mention of Preparation being a Tier 4 talent (it is now baseline).
  • Added a mention of Marked for Death in the multiple-target rotation section.
  • Updated description of Vitality, which now increases Energy regeneration by 30% (was 25%).