TBC Classic Rogue DPS Spell Summary

Rogues have many abilities that can be broken down into a few categories. The first category is your combo point builder, such as Sinister Strike. These are generally spammable moves you can use to build combo points throughout a fight.

The second is openers; these are abilities you can only use in stealth to open on an enemy. These are generally unnecessary in PvE, but can still have situational uses.

The third type is finishers, abilities that require a mix of Energy and combo points to execute and get more powerful depending on how many combo points are used.

The final category is utility abilities, such as Sprint and Vanish.

• Sinister Strike instantly hits the enemy with your main-hand weapon and deals bonus damage on top of that. This is your bread and butter ability. You will be using this as your main combo point builder and it will be responsible for a large portion of your DPS.
• Shiv instantly strikes the enemy with your off-hand weapon and applies the current poison on it. This ability costs less Energy based on how quick your off-hand is. This is a very situational ability that can be used when you need to keep stacks of Deadly Poison active on your target if it is about to fall off. It can be very handy if you are swapping off-hands to apply Mind-Numbing Poison or Crippling Poison to a target as well.
• Gouge incapacitates the enemy for 4 seconds (5.5 if talented). Any damage done during this will break the effect. Gouge can build combo points as well, but is more of a utility ability, used as a pseudo-interrupt or to crowd control an enemy briefly.

Opening abilities are very situational and most likely will only be used on trash or in the open world.

• Garrote is an opening ability that causes a bleed over 18 seconds and silences the target for 3 seconds. This is a great opener against Mages in PvP because they are unable to Blink. This ability only rewards one combo point and costs more Energy than Sinister Strike, so you generally do not use this in a raid situation. Instead, when you start a fight, you will begin with a Sinister Strike.
• Cheap Shot is a great opener for Heroics or solo gameplay. This opener awards two combo points and stuns the target for 3 seconds. It has a different diminishing return than Kidney Shot, so you can easily chain together stuns on a target with the two abilities.
• Sap is a Rogue's main CC ability. This ability is only usable on humanoids that are currently not in combat and will CC them for up to 45 seconds. You can utilize this in dungeons or while leveling in order to make more difficult pulls managable. This can also be used to incapacitate a mob or player while you loot an objective.

Rogues build combo points on targets as another resource. Combo points can stack up to 5 and finishing abilities scale harder depending on the amount of combo points on your current target. Your most common finishing abilities you will use in raids are Slice and Dice, Expose Armor, and Rupture.

• Slice and Dice is the most important personal DPS cooldown to keep up. This finishing move increases your attack speed by 30%. Your goal every fight is to keep as close to 100% uptime as possible on this ability. Letting it fall off results in a large DPS loss.
• Expose Armor is a Rogue finisher that reduces the armor of the enemy by up to 3075 if talented and used with 5 combo points. Many raids will opt for Rogues to spec into Improved Expose Armor for its added utility. This talent increases the overall effectiveness of the ability by 50%, making it stronger than a 5-stack Sunder Armor. Despite what many may think, the personal DPS loss from Exposing instead of using Rupture is very minimal. If your raid is using this ability, you will want to keep as close to 100% uptime as possible, as it is extremely important this never falls off.
• Rupture is a finishing ability that puts a bleed on the target. The length and damage of the bleed is dictated by how many combo points are on the target. This is your best ability to use for a personal DPS increase as a finisher.
• Eviscerate is your basic finishing ability that does direct damage based on how many combo points are on the target. A 5 combo point Eviscerate hits hard, but deals less damage overall than a Rupture. It is a strong choice for if a target is going to die too quickly for Rupture to be effective or if you have extra combo points between refreshing Rupture and Slice and Dice.
• Envenom is your hardest hitting finishing move. This consumes all your poison stacks on the target and deals extra damage per each stack and per each combo point. So a 5 combo point Envenom with 5 Deadly Poison stacks on the target will deal massive burst damage. This is a very situational move but is recommended towards the end of a fight when the boss or mob is right about to die.
• Kidney Shot is a finishing move that stuns the target based on how many combo points are available. This can be useful on many types of TBC trash mobs.

Rogues have a number of other defensive or utility abilities that can help them survive or give them an edge in DPS.

• Evasion increases your dodge chance by 50% and reduces the chance ranged attacks can hit you by 25%. This ability is very useful on a Rogue in a few key fights. An example would be Reliquary of Souls in Black Temple, where Rogues are often used to tank the first phase enrage. Other uses of this are to greed boss mechanics, such as whirlwinds. With your high Agility and Evasion added on, the chances any melee attacks get through are slim to none. Though it is very dangerous, you can use Evasion to squeeze some extra damage out on fights like Leotheras the Blind or High King Maulgar.
• Sprint increases your run speed by 70% for 15 seconds. You can also use this in stealth. Plan this out in PvE fights to maximize uptime on high movement fights. Talented, this can break roots, which is also a very nice utility.
• Vanish is an ability that instantly puts you into stealth and grants you improved stealth for 10 seconds. During these 10 seconds, you are much harder to detect. This is useful if you are going for risky Saps and do not have the talent, allowing you to stand right next to the mob.
• Distract is a great situational ability. You throw a rock to distract the enemy, causing them to face the area thrown. This is useful for getting difficult Saps or for stopping patrolling mobs from moving.
• Blind is an instant-cast crowd-control ability that disorients a target for 10 seconds. It is a great CC to use that can help save the day. Any damage done to the target will break the effect.
• Cloak of Shadows is the signature Rogue defensive ability in TBC Classic. You wipe all magical debuffs off of yourself and have 90% chance to resist all magic abilities for the next 5 seconds. You can use this to save yourself from many different mechanics in TBC Classic. You can also use this to resist abilities as well. Be careful though, as you still have a small chance for the spell to go through cloak and hit you.
• Feint reduces your threat by a large amount. Use this ability if you are having issues pulling threat.