Rogue (World of Warcraft)

The Rogue in World of Warcraft is a character class focused on dealing damage quickly and stealthily. To draw an analogy from the animal kingdom they are like panthers, striking without warning, but lacking in the protection that would allow them to win long fights.

Overview

The Rogue class is the stealthy, assassin class of World of Warcraft. They are available to all races in the game except for Tauren and the upcoming Draenei. They can wear leather and cloth armor and may wield daggers, one-handed maces, one-handed swords, fist weapons, crossbows, bows, guns, and thrown weapons. The Rogue's primary attributes are Attack Power, Agility, Strength, Stamina.

Instead of the mana the other World of Warcraft classes use (except the Warrior), Rogues use energy. The energy meter starts with a maximum value of 100 and replenishes itself by 20 points every 2 seconds, making it a much more rapidly depleted and replenished than other classes' mana. Virtually all the Rogue's special abilities consume energy (between 20 and 65 energy, depending upon the ability), meaning the Rogue's energy bar is constantly fluctuating in combat.

By default rogues can use daggers and throwing weapons and can learn to use other weapons from a weapons trainer. In order to perform a number of their special abilities (e.g., backstab or ambush), the Rogue must have a dagger in their main-hand. However, it's not uncommon for players to forgo these actions in order to equip different weapons and adopt a different play style. At level 10 rogues learn to wield two different weapons at the same time and, at level 20, they gain the ability to poison their blades. The blade poison can inflict extra damage or cause other harmful effects on enemies.

Stealth

Rogues have the ability to go into stealth mode and move around the landscape almost undetected (albeit at a reduced speed). While in stealth mode rogues also have a wide variety of special combat moves available that allow them to deal a large amount of damage at the start of a fight, or gain combo points, stun, etc. They can also use the ability "Sap" when stealthed, which incapacitates a humanoid enemy for an extended period of time. While incapacitated a target cannot move, but as soon as they are attacked they will revert to normal. This will take a Rogue out of stealth (unless compensated for with talent points). A Rouge also has the ability to Vanish (with a cheap regeant from certain vendors) at level 22, this ablility, unlike stealth, can be used in combat to go into a immediate improved stealth for 10 seconds, allowing the rouge to escape a group encounter, or to throw out another stealth move for fun, the ability however has a 5 minute cooldown, so best to use it wisely.

While in stealth mode, the Rogue can also pick the pockets of some classes of monsters for extra money, as well as, on occasion, other forms of loot (some required for Rogue quests). Picking pockets can be somewhat tricky as you must be close but not too close to the target for the attempt to succeed.

Stealth does not make the Rogue immune to detection. Enemies (player or NPC) of a higher level than the Rogue can detect them with greater ease than those of the Rogue's own level. The higher the enemy's level relative to the Rogue, the harder it is to avoid detection. (The opposite is also true.) Further, some classes have abilities that enable them to detect a stealthed Rogue (e.g., the Hunter's "Flare" ability) and Humans even have a racial move (Perception) for just this purpose. But, regardless, stealth remains one of the Rogue's greatest assets.

Combo points

A common role of rogues in a group is to simply damage enemies as much as possible. This is made possible with the use of combo points. Combo points are created when a rogue executes certain special attacks. A rogue can accumulate up to 5 combo points. Combo points are used when a rogue executes a finishing move. After a finishing move is executed, the rogue has zero combo points (unless a talent is invested in) and must gain at least one more combo point before they can use another finishing move.

Finishing moves

All finishing moves have an effect that varies proportional to the number of combo points a rogue has accumulated. After using a finishing move, all of the accumulated combo points are lost.

Eviscerate is an instant attack that causes an amount of damage to a single enemy varying directly by number of combo points.
Slice and Dice increases the rogue's melee attack speed by 20% for an amount of time, varying by number of combo points and invested talent points. At higher levels the increase in attack speed is 30%.
Rupture causes variable amount of bleeding DoT to a single enemy. Combo points determine how long the DoT lasts (not how much each tick damages) and thus total damage over time.
Expose Armor An instant attack lowering the armor of the target for 30 seconds. The amount of armor reduced varies based on the number of combo points used and talent points in improved expose armor. (Does not stack with Sunder Armor.)

Poisons

Rogues have the ability to apply poisons to their weapons. Only one poison may be on a weapon at a time. The poisons include an instant damage poison (instant poison), slowing poison (crippling poison), a poison that slows the casting time of your enemy (mind-numbing poison), a poison that weakens healing effects on enemies which stacks up to 5 times (wound poison), and a poison that does damage over time (deadly poison).

Talent Trees

Assassination: This tree consists of some very handy +combo point abilities, like a 20% chance per combo point to gain 25 energy after a finishing move or a instant ablility to land a guaranteed critical hit on the next use of a certain ablitly.

Combat: The Combat tree has a bunch of fun add-ons like a better dodge talent, new disarm and damage abliltiy, and a good way to get the load of energy you need quicker.

Subtlety: This tree contains a ablitly to gain speed in stealth and reduces the cooldown of stealth, bigger critical chance for certain stealth ablilities and a debuff that adds damage to the target for a small ammount of time for you and the party, even adds a cheap combo point for you.

Strengths

Rogues can sneak up on enemies
Rogues can sap a humanoid target stunning them for a period of time (higher level saps stun the target for longer)
Very high DPS (damage per second)

Challenges

Only Leather Armor is avilible to the rouge.
Managing Stealth detection.
Maintaining crowd control in certain times.

Gallery

Male Forsaken

Male Forsaken
Female Orc

Female Orc

External links