In this article, we present you the viable talent and glyph choices for your Combat Rogue (WoW MoP 5.3). We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.

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. Talent Choices↑top

• Performance-enhancing
• Survival
• Crowd Control
• Movement
• Utility
• Situational

There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to Dust of Disappearance (and Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90). You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.

2. Tier 1 Talents↑top

Tier 1 talents improve your Stealth.

• Nightstalker increases your movement speed by 20% and the damage that your abilities deal by 25%, while you are stealthed.
• Subterfuge causes Stealth to break 3 seconds after dealing or receiving damage (rather than instantly, without the talent).
• Shadow Focus causes your abilities to cost 75% less Energy while in Stealth.

Shadow Focus is the best choice here. It gives you a nearly-free Ambush at the start of each encounter and every 2 minutes after that through Vanish.

While Nightstalker can be useful in certain situations (e.g., for the weekly solo Gold Run scenario in Isle of Thunder), it will never be taken over Shadow Focus in any raid environment.

3. Tier 2 Talents↑top

Tier 2 talents give you the choice between crowd control and survival talents.

• Deadly Throw is a Finishing Move that reduces the movement speed of your target by 50% for 6 seconds. It also deals damage based on the number of Combo Points it is cast with. Finally, if you cast it with 3, 4, or 5 Combo Points, it will also interrupt and silence your target for 4, 5, or 6 seconds respectively.
• Nerve Strike causes your successful casts of Kidney Shot and Cheap Shot to also reduce the damage your target deals by 50% and the healing it does by 10%, for 6 seconds.
• Combat Readiness causes you to take 50% less damage from melee attacks. The damage reduction builds up gradually by stacks of 10%, until you have 5 stacks. Each enemy hit grants you a stack. The effect lasts 20 seconds, but it is removed after 10 seconds without receiving melee attacks.

These talents will not impact your DPS as a raider.

Combat Readiness should be the default choice and will prove useful when you will have to tank something (e.g., Will of the Emperor, Ji-Kun, or Dark Animus).

Nerve Strike should be taken in any encounters where you will have to stun an add (e.g., Spirit Kings, Tsulong, Lei Shi, or Ra-den).

Deadly Throw will mostly be useful in PvP, against healers and casters.

4. Tier 3 Talents↑top

Tier 3 talents provide you with various means of improving your survivability.

• Cheat Death causes an attack that would otherwise kill you to instead reduce your health to 10% of your maximum health. Then, Cheat Death reduces the damage you will take by 80% for 3 seconds. This effect has an internal cooldown of 90 seconds. However, it can only absorb up to twice your maximum health.
• Leeching Poison grants you a new Non-Lethal Poison that afflicts your target in such a way that your melee attacks against the target heal you for 10% of the damage that they do. When using Leeching Poison, Shiv provides an instant 5% heal.
• Elusiveness causes your Feint ability to also reduce all damage taken by 30% for 5 seconds. Against AoE damage, the damage reduction is 65% (50% from Feint plus 30% of that from Elusiveness).

All three talents are viable here. Elusiveness is a must-have in any situation where you have to use Feint extensively to mitigate damage (most encounters) or when the additional 15% AoE damage reduction is needed for a particular mechanic (e.g., soaking sparks in Will of the Emperor).

In situations that do not require Elusiveness, Cheat Death should be the default choice, as it can be used to entirely bypass encounter mechanics (not to mention it can save your life on many occasions). Leeching Poison's usefulness is very debatable, as the healing it provides is rather weak (when it is not overhealing).

5. Tier 4 Talents↑top

Tier 4 talents give you the choice between abilities that improve your survivability or your mobility.

• Cloak and Dagger causes Ambush, Garrote, and Cheap Shot to have a 30-yard range and to teleport you behind your target.
• Shadowstep causes you to teleport behind your target, which has to be within 25 yards. It then increases your movement speed by 70% for 2 sconds. This ability has a 24-second cooldown.
• Burst of Speed increases your movement speed by 70% for 4 seconds. If you happen to be afflicted by movement-impairing effects, then this ability will also remove them (with the exception of rooting effects) and prevent their reapplication for 4 seconds. Burst of Speed has no cooldown, but costs 30 Energy.

Shadowstep should be the default choice here, as it allows you to easily reposition yourself behind your target, whether it is a friend or an enemy. Besides its numerous uses in most encounters, it always provides a DPS gain, as it will increase your uptime on your target.

Burst of Speed is useful in PvP or while questing, but its use in a raiding environment will be very occasional, due to its Energy cost.

Cloak and Dagger is useless for raiding.

6. Tier 5 Talents↑top

Tier 5 talents give you more utility or crowd control.

• Prey on the Weak causes enemies incapacitated by Kidney Shot, Cheap Shot, Gouge, Sap, or Blind to take 10% increased damage from all sources.
• Paralytic Poison causes your melee attacks to stack a debuff on the target. Upon reaching 5 stacks, the target is stunned for 4 seconds. When using Paralytic Poison, Shiv will snare the target for 4 seconds.
• Dirty Tricks removes the energy cost of Gouge and Blind and causes their effect to no longer be broken by damage from your Poisons and Bleeds.

Paralytic Poison can be useful in PvE content, especially for fights where you need to fight many adds and where you need to use Cheat Death as a Tier 3 talent (hence freeing the Non-Lethal poison spot occupied by Leeching Poison).

Similarly to Nerve Strike, Prey on the Weak should be taken in any encounters where you will make use of Cheap Shot or Kidney Shot.

Dirty Tricks do not really have any PvE implications.

7. Tier 6 Talents↑top

Tier 6 talents provide you with performance-improving abilities.

• Shuriken Toss is a ranged attack that replaces Throw, costs 20 Energy, and awards 1 Combo Point. If used against targets further than 10 yards away, it deals twice more damage and it causes your melee attacks to throw shuriken. These shuriken have a 30-yard range and poison your target with your Lethal Poison.
• Marked for Death instantly adds 5 Combo Points on your target. This ability has a 1-minute cooldown, but this cooldown is reset when the target dies.
• Anticipation basically grants you a maximum of 10 Combo Points, of which only 5 can be consumed with Finishing Moves. So, if you have 8 Combo Points and you cast a Finishing Move, you will be left with 3 Combo Points.

Anticipation is a small DPS gain and makes it easier to execute your rotation, as it prevents a waste of Combo Points.

Marked for Death is a bigger DPS gain than Anticipation, even on single-target fights, as it scales very well with Restless Blades, but it is more tedious to use than Anticipation. That said, you need to keep in mind that Anticipation scales much better with gear than Marked for Death does, so there will be a point (not yet reachable) where Anticipation will be better than Marked for Death. To give you an idea, at item level 530, a Combat Rogue gets twice as much benefit from Anticipation than at item level 510.

Shuriken Toss can be used in fights where the boss will be out of melee range for a long time. There is currently no encounters where it surpasses Anticipation or Marked for Death.

8. Major Glyphs↑top

Glyph of Adrenaline Rush is the only mandatory major glyph. It reduces the global cooldown of all your offensive abilities by 0.2 second, making it easier to fully benefit from the increased Energy regeneration that Adrenaline Rush provides. This is an important DPS increase.

Several of your major glyphs offer you increased survivability.

• Glyph of Cloak of Shadows causes your Cloak of Shadows ability to also grant you a 40% physical damage reduction while it is active. With this glyph, Cloak of Shadows becomes a powerful damage mitigation tool that you should use whenever necessary.
• Glyph of Evasion increases the duration of Evasion by 5 seconds, making it last 20 seconds in total. It can be useful if you ever need to dodge attacks for longer than 15 seconds.
• Glyph of Feint increases the duration of Feint by 2 seconds, making it last 7 seconds in total. It can be useful if a damaging AoE ability from a boss lasts more than 5 seconds. Given the extensive use you will make of Feint, this glyph very often is a must-have, as it increases your DPS by making you spend less Energy and Global Cooldowns refreshing Feint.
• Glyph of Smoke Bomb increases the duration of Smoke Bomb, a major defensive raid cooldown that Rogues provide to their raid.
• Glyph of Sprint increases the movement speed bonus provided by Sprint, which is very useful in encounters during which you use Sprint to increase your uptime on the boss.

Finally, a few other major glyphs might occasionally come in handy.

• Glyph of Debilitation causes your Eviscerate ability to also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Glyph of Expose Armor causes Expose Armor to immediately apply 3 stacks of Weakened Armor. This will be extremely useful if the task of maintaining this debuff falls to you.
• Glyph of Kick effectively reduces the cooldown of Kick to 13 seconds if you successfully interrupt a cast.

9. Minor Glyphs↑top

Glyph of Safe Fall, which reduces the damage you take when falling, and Glyph of Poisons, which causes you to apply your poisons faster, will probably be prime choices.

Glyph of Blurred Speed, which enables you to walk on water while Sprint is active, might be situationally useful.

Glyph of Killing Spree causes Killing Spree to return you to your original location. Some encounter mechanics may make this glyph beneficial.

10. Changelog↑top

• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3: nothing to change ( Shuriken Toss buff has no impact in PvE).
• 20 May 2013: Dryaan's second review of the guide.
  • Improved explanations regarding why Shadow Focus is the best Tier 1 talent.
  • Improved explanations for your choice of Tier 2 talents (added examples of bosses where talents are useful).
  • Emphasized the fact that Elusiveness is a must-have, under certain circumstances. The rest of the time, Cheat Death should be taken.
  • Reworded explanations for Tier 4 talent choices.
  • Added a mention that Prey on the Weak is sometimes useful.
  • Improved explanations for choosing Marked for Death.
  • Emphasized how beneficial Glyph of Feint can be.
• 25 Apr. 2013: Updated advice for choosing Tier 4 talents ( Cloak and Dagger is not nearly as useful as we made it to be).
• 19 Mar. 2013: Added Glyph of Smoke Bomb and Glyph of Sprint to the list of potentially useful glyphs.
• 19 Mar. 2013: Added a mention regarding the usefulness of Paralytic Poison in PvE.
• 11 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Updated description of Shadow Focus (now reduces Energy cost by 75%, was 100%).
  • Updated description of Deadly Throw.
  • Updated description of Nerve Strike.
  • Added explanations for Cloak and Dagger, the new Tier 4 talent that replaces Preparation.
  • Removed mention of Preparation, as it is now baseline for Rogues.
  • Updated description of Burst of Speed.
  • Updated description of Shuriken Toss.
  • Added explanations for Marked for Death, the new Tier 6 talent that replaces Versatility.