Rogue Talent Builds
Determining the best rogue talent build for you is no easy task. It takes time to determine which rogue talent build will work best for both your individual playstyle and your preferred game type (PvP, PvE, Leveling, Etc). Rarely will you find a rogue talent build that works well for all of these criteria, which is why I’ve split up my rogue talent builds into various sub categories based on game type.
Please note that these rogue talent builds and specs are all baseline specs. As I move forward with my talent build guides I’ll be expanding the complexity and number of talent specs listed on these pages. If you have any suggestions or comments regarding these specs or specs you’d like to see more of please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
Rogue Talent Builds – PvP & Arena
- Mutilate PvP Build – 42/5/24
- Shadowstep with Cold Blood PvP Build – 27/0/44
- Shadowdance PvP Build – 16/0/55
- Combat Swords PvP Build – 17/51/3
Rogue Talent Builds – PvE & Raiding
- Mutilate Raiding Build – 51/13/7
- Combat Daggers Build (backstab) – 17/51/3
- Combat Sword Spec Raiding Build – 15/51/5
Rogue Talent Builds – Leveling
- Mutilate Leveling Build – 44/15/10
- Combat Swords Leveling Build – 18/53/0
- Rogue Arena Talent Specs
- Mage Talent Builds
- WotLK Rogue Changes – Beta Build 9038
- WotLK Rogue Murder Talent Explained
- Rogue Leveling Guide
Yes, I expect a nerf in the near future, but you forgot HAT spec.
Hmm. I think you should make space for Remorseless Attacks in your mutilate leveling build. +40% crit after every kills seems pretty significant, at least, I’m enjoying it on my rogue.
Thats the good thing about leveling builds: you can really make them your own and do just as well. I had a variant of zuggy’s to level with too, and the thing to remember for everyone, particularly with mutilate, is that you want to kill things as fast as possible, so take bursty talents, not bleed or slice and dice stuff.
However, if you’re thinking of running a particular build in groups, arena or raids once you hit 80, I recommend you work toward that build, at least getting all of the special attacks you will gain from talents, and start playing around with them early so your transition after level 80 is smooth. Its never fun to pug with someone who doesn’t know what they are doing and can’t even break 1000 DPS, when that should be easily doable by any class in quest rewards and greens. (Yes, at level 80. I’ve seen several warlocks and hunters who couldn’t break 800 dps. Its a sad day.)
You could certainly swap points around and get remorseless attacks. That was just my baseline mut leveling build.
Master Poisoner < Turn the Tables
No one should ever take Master poisoner over turn the tables.
Turn the tables is up roughly 100% of the time and is a 6% crit boost.
Have you actually tested this theory Bloodleaf? Lets consider this:
Master poisoner: Increased crit chance of all attacks made against targets you have poisoned vs
Turn the Tables: increased 6% critical chance on all combo moves
I a raid or 5 man instance, both should be up nearly 100% of the time, so lets look at how the mechanics work. Turn the tables says it works for all combo moves, which I assume means both combo point generators and finishing moves, but I have never gotten confirmation on that.
Master poisoner affects all damage you are putting out. Since the prevailing strategy is to put the fastest weapon possible in your mainhand for instant poison procs, the extra damage you will get from crits there plus your white damage attacks all have to be considered.
My choice in picking MP over TtT came from my weapon choice. In PVE I am running a 1.3 speed weapon MH and 1.5 weapon offhand as the math seems to suggest that gives the best DPS. For anyone that doesn’t know instant poison now scales with your attack power (I have had a lot of rogues asking me why I have a 1.3 speed weapon in my MH as mutilate, so I figure some people might be interested.) For this reason, rogues see a DPS increase by putting the BOE librarian’s paper cutter (best rogue mainhand mutilate dagger outside of naxx 25) in their mainhand with instant poison on it, because the extra poison procs from it being on a mainhand plus the fact that all finishers count as a mainhand attack really increase your dps on a stationary target. You use a pretty fast dagger in your offhand, in my case, the blacksmithing titansteel shanker, to keep 5 deadly poisons up all the time, so you can envenom to 1) refresh S&D and 2) increase the chance to apply instant poison for 6 seconds after envenoming.
However, if you were using two slower 1.8 speed weapons, I could see that Turn the Tables would probably be more in your benefit. Have you tested out the two options and can give some empirical evidence, or did you overlook the fact that TtT does not affect all damage?
it’s just simple math…
turn the tables is 6% increased critical chance on combo moves
master poisioner is 3% increased critical chance on all damage
we can assume that both of these will be up virtually 100% of the time due to the nature of their proc chances.
Generally a rogue’s white damage is going to range from 50-65% of the overall damage output. So say you did 100,000 damage with ToT. 40% of the damage was combo moves and 60% was white damage.
65,000 + 35,000(0.06) = 102,100
vs.
100,000 damage with MP. 40% damage was combo moves 60% was white damage.
65,000(0.03) + 35,000 = 101,950
…hrm, this isn’t exactly coming out the way I wanted it to. Hah, well, after looking through the numbers here, which admittedly swayed more towards proving my own point, it looks like you’re probably correct. The 65/35 split is the old combat white / yellow comparison I always used to use, but mutilate is certainly much closer to a 50/50 split than combat ever was.
So, I concede this battle to you Bloodleaf. Thanks for the comment.
personally arena wise i went with a combat spec based around hard hitting base damage ie. calamity’s grasp and the hand of nerub, i use these in arena and no joke push one button, killingspree. this spec is similiar to a warriors arms spec which is to slow your target and then bladestorm but unlike bladestorm killing spee is undodgeable and cannot untargeted by a vanish. vs mutilate it is a very viable spec but it fails in pvp such as bg’s when the ks is on cd but even with the glyph its still 1.25 cd
Uhm, i was just wondering, how come in the pve builds nobody takes lightning reflexes, i mean isn’t the 12% melee haste increase good at all?