Rogue Advice (Weapons, Talents and Professions)

Weapons

As you level more so than for a lot of other classes it is vital that you upgrade your melee weapons as soon as you are able. A lot of fights as a rogue are not about if the mob can kill you or you can kill it, but who will kill the other first, therefore your dps needs to be as high as possible.

Daggers are linked to a great number of rogue abilities but do not feel limited to this weapon as some talent builds are actually more effective with swords or fists or maces (see more later).

The choice between bows, crossbows, thrown and guns are largely irrelevant as a rogue rarely does a lot of damage with their ranged attacks and you will likely gain more from the bonuses your ranged weapon provides than from its actual damage. However you will want to be able to finish off fleeing enemies from time to time so it is worth investing some time ensuring your skill with your ranged weapon is reasonably high. Thrown weapons have one advantage in that you do not have to keep ammo, but this is countered by a significantly shorter ranged, if you do go for a weapon that needs ammo do not buy a quiver/ammo pouch as the loss of bag space is not worth it.

Main hand weapons should be your weapon with the highest damage range – people often say your slowest weapon, which is broadly true, but due to inequalities of weapon quality from drops, especially while leveling, this may not always be the case. The reasons for this are simple - a lot of the damage a rogue produces comes from abilities like sinister strike which cause damage based on the main hand weapon and these strikes are instant regardless of the speed of the weapon. Additionally the off hand weapon even with full Dual Wield Specialization (from the Combat tree) will only produce 75% of its damage. The only ability rogues have that particularly uses the off hand weapon is Shiv and here you definitely want your fastest weapon.

Talent Trees

Assassination

This tree is largely focused on crit chance, powerful single blows and poisons. As a result the Assassination tree’s mutilate builds generally have the highest dps capabilities against single targets with high hit points (raid and instance bosses). The counterpoint to this is that against low hit point or multiple mobs these builds can be less effective and very wasteful in terms of energy. Due to the number of assassination talents that grant bonuses where an enemy is poisoned the Shiv ability (automatically applies the off hand weapon poison) is particularly useful to builds for this tree. In addition lot of assassination’s bonuses are to abilities that require daggers (backstab/ambush) and mutilate requires daggers making a very strong case for using these weapons in builds from this tree.

Combat

Combat focuses on producing a great number of attacks, reducing your miss chance and recovering energy. Combat is a little behind assassination in terms of pure dps against bosses but not so significantly to make it unplayable, but makes up for this with its usefulness outside instances as it is able to deal very easily with low hit point/multiple mobs. While the Combat tree does provide the opportunity to specialize your skill with swords, maces and daggers/fists I highly recommend dual wielding matching weapons where possible to save the talent points for other bonuses. Due to the number of additional attacks that combat can provide, weapons with higher damage ranges such as swords and maces are better suited to this build, even if you have to sacrifice the backstab and ambush skills (though there are weapon switching macros which will let you continue to use them regardless).

Subtlety

This tree makes a number of your core skills more effective, provides you with ways to increase a party’s damage against foes and improves your survivability. Behind both combat and assassination in terms pure dps this tree will provide additional damage to your allies through Hemorrhage and increase your likelihood to survive with not only a talent that prevents killing blows from killing you, but also quicker and instant cool downs on your evasive abilities. This tree also provides significant improvements to your non-combat abilities such as stealth, sap and pick pocket. With a number of talents that improve ambush this tree leans towards daggers as a weapon choice but is not as bound to them as assassination.

It is worth noting that each of the trees has a talent at its starting level that can easily be added to a build using another tree which will significantly improve your character. These are:

• Malice – improved crit chance
  
• Dual Weapon Specialization – improved off hand weapon damage
  
• Relentless Strikes – finishing moves to re-generate energy

Examples of rogue talent builds can be found here: Rogue Builds

Tradeskills

Gathering skills (Herbalism, Mining, Skinning)
The core reason for choosing one of these is to compliment another skill by providing materials, however in a number of cases materials can sell for more than finished items so these can be an effective money making option in their own right

Creation Skills (Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Engineering, Inscription, Jewelcrafting Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting)

• Tailoring I would generally avoid with a rogue as one of our key hp recovery methods is first aid and a two skill drain on your cloth resources can be difficult to manage. Additionally you will not want to use the vast majority of items you can make.
  
• Alchemy and Inscription are less useful generally to a rogue than other professions, Inscription primarily needed for glyphs which if you spec correctly you should only need to replace occasionally and with the potions a rogue really needs (healing) now part of the pick pocket loot, Alchemy becomes less useful. In addition both these professions command relatively small AH prices for the consumables they produce, though you are likely to be able to sell them constantly.
  
• Blacksmithing, Engineering and Jewelcrafting are all very helpful in part for a rogue. Blacksmithing provides a cheaper way to upgrade your weapons though you cannot wear any of the armour you can make. Engineering provides some excellent goggles and jumper cables cannot be beaten for improving the love you get in an instance. Jewelcrafting provides some excellent trinkets, rings and necklaces as well as gems for late game items. All of these also command high prices in the AH for completed items.
  
• Leatherworking is the most obvious choice for a rogue as it provides items for armour and armour improvement. Unfortunately a fair number of items are of mail which you cannot use and Leather items generally command lower prices in the AH.
  
• Enchanting is an odd skill as by and large it provides the materials for itself. In addition a lot of the disenchanting loot command high prices. Added to this you will be able to upgrade most of your equipment as you replace it and the trade chat almost always contains people looking for Enchantments often providing high tips. The downside of all this is that leveling up can prove very expensive. While you will be able to use old items or unwanted quest items to produce materials for this you will often find yourself buying or making items simply to disenchant for materials (or buying the materials themselves) and of course you do not have the income from selling the old/quest items.

Other Skills (Cooking, First Aid, Fishing, Lockpicking)
All of these are useful but as a rogue you should definitely skill up Lockpicking and First Aid as much as possible.

Guides to skilling up your professions can be located here: WoW Professions