TBC Classic Rogue DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents

In this portion of the guide, we will cover six different specs that are commonly used and breakdown the notable talents you gain. Your talent build will be entirely dictated by whichever weapons are available to you, in addition to whether your guild wants you to Expose Armor or not. The most common specs will be the Combat Swords specs. The Combat Mace/Swords specs will be quite common early on, due to the strength of Dragonmaw as a pre-raid BiS and T4 weapon.

• Blade Flurry is a great single-target, as well as multi-target, ability. This gives you the ability to cleave for the entire duration and will give you significant burst when paired with other abilities.
• Adrenaline Rush increases your Energy regeneration rate by 100%. This is hands down your strongest DPS cooldown and should be paired with as many procs and buffs to maximize the damage.
• Combat Potency is arguably one of your strongest talents as Rogue. Off-hand swings give a 20% chance to give 15 Energy. This is one of the reasons why a 1.4 or 1.5 speed off-hand is ideal for Rogues.
• Relentless Strikes provides a very powerful boost to your Energy regeneration, as you will essentially get 25 Energy returned with most finishing abilities,depending on how many combo points are stacked.
• Improved Expose Armor is one of the strongest raid DPS talents in the game. Improved Expose Armor will yield a total of 3075 armor reduction, as opposed to Sunder Armor's 2600. This will give 475 armor penetration for all physical DPS in the raid. However, if your raid runs multiple Rogues, then only one will need to use this talent. In terms of physical damage increase for running this, the entire raid will gain roughly between 3-4% bonus physical damage, depending on boss armor.

• Improved Sprint is one of the sleeper talents that is quite strong. There are many encounters or trash fights where you will be rooted and you will want to be able to break it. This is a great talent to pick up.
• Endurance is an alternative to Improved Sprint.
• Lightning Reflexes will normally be given 3/5 points, but you can also move it to Improved Gouge. There will be times where you may have aggro on a mob or a whirlwind mechanic happens where the extra dodge would be useful. The increased gouge duration is nice for quality of life, trash or open world combat.