Rogue guide for WoW Forever

The rogue is leather melee damage with energy that regenerates at a fixed pace and combo points that build on the target and are spent on finishers. Add stealth, poisons, stuns and the best ability in the game to pick its fights: a rogue decides when combat starts and, with Vanish, when it ends. It does not heal or tank and all three trees are damage, so the choice is one of style.

Assassination (damage)

The poisons and crit tree: Seal Fate turns every crit into an extra combo point, and Backstab demands a dagger in the main hand. It scales the most with crit and hit and is the most gear-demanding.

Combat (damage)

The Sinister Strike and swords tree: a slow main hand to hit hard, a fast off hand for procs and poisons, and talents that improve dual wielding and survival. It is the leveling and dungeon spec, because it depends on neither position nor weapon type.

Subtlety (damage)

The stealth tree: Ambush, Opportunity and everything that rewards striking from behind while invisible. It is the most fun in PvP and in the open world against a single mob, and the worst at multi-mob pulls.

Time to be honest: the rogue has a single documented change in the beta notes, and it is a bug fix. Sap now correctly flags the rogue for PvP when used on flagged targets. No new talents, no adjusted ranks, no renamed abilities in the class change list of build 1.60.1.70009.

That does not mean the Forever rogue is identical to Classic's: from the systems we know talent trees keep the Classic structure and add a 16-point milestone, that melee hit and crit are separate stats from their spell counterparts and that there are two class presets for leveling. We also know, from the build's known issues, that poisons cannot be tracked in the Cooldown Manager and that the Personal Resource Display does not show combo points yet. What we do not know is which specific talents changed inside the three trees, because Blizzard has not published it. When it does, this section fills itself in.

What does affect the rogue this build comes from outside the class: the gnome racial Eureka becomes a 10% discount on energy abilities for every class.

Recommendation: Combat from 10 to 60. It is the tree that best handles leveling with whatever drops: Sinister Strike works with any weapon from any angle, its dual-wield talents make two green weapons perform, and its survival talents let you chain mobs without eating between each one. Assassination needs daggers and crit you do not have at low levels; Subtlety is a delight against one mob and a nightmare against three.

Recommended talent order, broadly:

• From 10 to 20, the Combat talents that raise Sinister Strike damage and energy. The 16-point milestone arrives around 25-26; if you would rather not think, use one of Forever's two class presets.
• Then dual wielding and the specialization for the weapon you use: swords if you will pick up quest rewards, daggers if you own good ones. Do not marry a weapon type until you own two blues.
• From 40, with the mount (it comes with the riding skill), spread into Assassination for Seal Fate if you already carry daggers and crit. A reset costs 1 silver in the beta.

Pacing:

• No level scaling: the rogue is among the classes that handle orange mobs worst: you miss more and have no armour. Yellow, always.
• Poisons from the moment you learn them: they are free damage and do not depend on your gear.
• Use stealth to skip trash, not to hit from behind: the time you save is experience.
• Campsite before every dungeon to sell greys, repair and take the three one-hour buffs. Wailing Caverns, the Deadmines, Blackfathom Deeps and Shadowfang Keep are your four leveling dungeons with level-20 BiS pieces.
• Legacy Points: each character spends them across three trees (Professions, Adventure and Resourcefulness). The only perk shown so far is Well Rested, more rested experience; we will not guess what the rest do.

Agility ahead of everything (1 agility = 1 attack power plus crit and dodge), and hit with a huge weight because dual wielding adds an extra 19% miss chance and poisons miss too. Crit is worth more for Assassination thanks to Seal Fate. For weapons, Assassination and Subtlety want a dagger in the main hand for Backstab and Ambush; Combat wants a slow main hand (more damage per Sinister Strike) and a fast off hand for procs. Strength is worth half as much as agility and stamina just enough for dungeons. In Forever melee hit and crit are their own stats: ignore the spell ones.

At level 20 the rogue shares pieces with the hunter: all three trees equip five dungeon items and two from Leatherworking, with the rest being pieces of unknown source for now. From Wailing Caverns come the Glowing Lizardscale Cloak (Skum) and the Gloves of the Fang; from the Deadmines, the Blackened Defias Belt from Captain Greenskin; from Blackfathom Deeps, Doomspike; and from Shadowfang Keep, the Assassin's Blade for Assassination and Subtlety or Shadowfang for Combat.

On the way up, the Scarlet Monastery has four BiS pieces for the class (Ghostshard Talisman, Ebon Vise, Ironspine's Eye and Ironspine's Fist), Maraudon three and Blackrock Depths two, among them the Doomforged Straightedge. The new beta dungeons have no loot in our database yet. The BiS per level and slot, with alternatives, is on the rogue BiS page.

The rogue gains no new combination among the Classic races (humans, dwarves, night elves and gnomes for the Alliance; orcs, undead and trolls for the Horde), but it does gain the Skyborne of both factions, with their starting adventure on Zephras Isle and two active and two passive racials not yet detailed. The only racial changed in this build that affects it is Eureka, which makes gnomes 10% cheaper on energy abilities. Beyond that, choose by faction and looks; Classic's racial differences remain small.

Skinning + Leatherworking crafts the two recipe pieces of the level-20 BiS and uses everything you kill from stealth along the way. Forever adds more than 600 new recipes and a passive bonus per profession, so Leatherworking performs better than in Classic. If you want gold, Skinning + Mining: the rogue passes through places nobody else reaches and can gather without fighting.

First Aid is mandatory: you have no heals and bandages are used between pulls. Cooking for the small experience bonus of crafted food and because the campsite sets up a workbench. Each profession's leveling path is in the profession guides.

• Leveling with daggers and no dagger talents. With Combat and swords you level just as fast without depending on position.
• Forgetting poisons. They are free damage; keep them on both weapons and carry spares.
• Going for orange mobs. Without level scaling you miss more and leather armour does not forgive. Yellow and green.
• Opening every fight with Ambush. Unless you are Subtlety, opening with a stun and chaining Sinister Strike performs better and leaves you energy.
• Spending energy without combo points. Always finish with points; a five-point finisher is worth more than two loose hits.
• Skipping Wailing Caverns and the Deadmines. Your best level-20 pieces are there, and in Forever you can walk in with the three campsite buffs.
• Looking for talent changes that do not exist yet. Blizzard has published none for the rogue in this build; do not copy lists from other sites that make them up.
• Sapping nervously in PvP. It now flags you correctly; use it knowing it flags you.