World of Warcraft - Rogue Raiding Guide

Chances are, if you started a rogue, you’ve either chose this particular class because you’re an evil mofo that wants to gank at every corner from your stealthy shadow, or you’ve started it because well, rogues are the kings of melee DPS in PVE. Since we’ve discussed rogue PVP in a different article, let’s take a lookise at how a rogue behaves (or should behave) in a PVE raid environment. First off, you’re a DPS whore, your main job is to smash your opponents. Everything you can do to increase DPS, you should do it. Your job is pretty much the most straight forward of all melee classes and for the most part, all you’ll be doing in a boss fight is getting your DPS cycle in, managing aggro correctly, using poisons and occasionally interrupting spells. I won’t go into the whole “which DPS class is the best” discussion, because it gets old real quick and because it’s pointless. However, as a raiding rogue, with decent gear and some skill, you’re bound to end up high on the damage meter, unless you’re doing some boss that requires you to run around a lot, which would give ranged DPS a better chance to compete with you. Talent wise, you have a couple of choices, my recommendations being (in this order) that you go combat swords, combat daggers or mutilate. Many guides will tell you that combat swords is the definitive PVE rogue spec and I partly agree, but I also found that each rogue has his own playing style and you need to be able to wrap your talent build around it, as well as around your gear. As far as UI goes, always try to keep a close eye on your threat meter of choice. Personally, I prefer to set it up right over my “cast bar”, close to the center of the screen where I can keep track of both my abilities cooldowns and threat in the same eye-scan. Using the right poison for the job is critical. Instant poison gives you an extra DPS oomph, with added threat. Crippling is used for snaring and slowing down opponents, very useful when kiting adds, or in emergency situations where an add runs away from the fight and there’s a chance he’ll aggro his buddies. Mind numbing makes casting slower for the target, a great one to use on bosses that need to be interrupted for example, to give interrupters more leeway into getting their shot. Deadly is another crowd favorite, a stacking dot that can give you quite a handful of DPS (just make sure who you DoT with it, as it often happens to unintentionally break CC targets with it). If you want to stack it up quickly, use Shiv to get it on the target, then go for your normal cycle. Last but not least, Anesthetic poison is a good alternative to Deadly or Instant poisons if the fight you’re in is very threat-tight, or if you’re up with a new or inexperienced tank that can’t produce the amount of aggro you’d need.