Rogue Poison Guide

This rogue poison guide will aim to explain the different scenarios where a particular poison should be used as a rogue. A rogues poisons are just as important as your weapons or armor. So it’s of the utmost importance we get the poison selection correct.

Rogue Poisons – PvP

First, let’s start with the PvP application for rogue poisons. Generally speaking, we want to have wound poison on the main hand and crippling poison on the off hand for pvp and arena. This will maximum the wound poison to be applied to the target, while not hindering our ability to continually snare the enemy with shiv.

In some scenarios you may choose to swap this poison combination, going crippling poison on the main hand, and wound poison on the off hand. The only situations where this is typically a valid strategy is when your opponent is going to be spam dispelling your poisons (typically, only very good druids). This will allow you to shiv 5 stacks of wound poison up, which in turn increases the chance of your crippling poison staying up, since there will be a total of 6 potential poisons that must be dispelled.

The only real exception around this rule is the case of some warrrior + rogue or rogue + rogue teams. Either way, in a pvp situation someone has to take care of the healing debuff. In these cases it may be viable for you to main hand deadly poison and off hand crippling poison, allowing you to drop some envenom bombs.

Rogue Poisons Quest

The rogue poison quest is the first major step in taking your rogue to the next level. Both factions can attain this quest at level 20 from their rogue trainer, though to solo the quest you’ll typically wan to be between levels 24 and 26 (or get help from some friends).

For horde, the tower where the quest takes place is located in north central barrens, for alliance it’s located in south eastern Westfall. Both these quests are lengthy chains and will take some time to complete. If you’re level 24+ the quest is very easy. Simply follow the instructions, head to your faction’s tower.

Once there you quite literally kill your way up the tower. Loot the head off the boss at the top as well as the chest and head back to your rogue trainer.

Rogue Poisons – PvE

Rogue poisons for PvE are quite different from those in PvE. Unlike with PvP, there really is no “end all be all” poison combination. The type of encounter will determine what type of poisons you should use. As a general rule of thumb you should always carry a stack of every poison, so you are prepared should anything come up.

For DPS purposes we’re going to go with instant poison on the main hand and deadly poison on the off hand. We use instant poison on the main hand simply because of deadly poisons high proc chance. if we hav deadly on the main hand it’d quickly reach 5 stacks, at which point we are no longer gaining additional benefit with each additional proc (expect continued DoT damage).

For this reason it’s better to use instant on your main hand so you gain increases benefit as your weapon speed is increasing. In addition, having deadly poison on the off hand allows us to use a slice and dice + envenom finisher rotation.

Rogue Poison Macro

Some of you may be thinking, “what the hell” poison macro!? Well, why they certainly are not common amongst most players I still find them quite effective in the right situation. Generally speaking that situation is going to be a PvP scenario, but there is also some application for PvE as well.

To use this strategy we’ll need 2 macros, I’ve listed them both below. (for more rogue macros check out this, rogue macro guide)

Macro #1
/equipslot 17 Vengeful Gladiator’s Bonecracker
/cast shiv

Macro #2
/equipslot 17 Merciless Gladiator’s Shanker
/cast shiv

What this allows us to do is have 2 separate buttons for shiv. In this way you can have, let’s say crippling poison on your bonecracker weapon and mind numbing poison on your shanker. Using this type of dual macro shiv strategy we can easily apply 3 separate poisons to a target.

To use these macros simply exchange the name of the weapons I’ve listed above for your own off hand weapons, then you’re good to go!

Related posts:

1. Priest / Rogue vs. Druid / Rogue 2v2 Arena Strategy
2. Rogue Macro Guide
3. Double Rogue 2v2 Arena Strategy
4. Shadow Priest / Rogue vs. Rogue / Druid 2v2 Arena Strategy
5. Rogue / Rogue 2v2 Arena Strategy