TBC Classic Combat Rogue Guide (Phase 3)
About the Class
Combat Rogue is a melee dual-wielding fighter in leather armor. It deals very high single-target damage and brings noticeable value to the raid. The Combat tree is the best PvE choice: it has two powerful offensive cooldowns, 
Blade Flurry and 
Adrenaline Rush, and its talents are entirely focused on damage.
Strengths
Weaknesses
- Hard to level and quest solo.
- The rogue is weak in heroic dungeons, which makes gearing up before raids harder and finding a group more difficult.
- No multi-target damage aside from Blade Flurry.
- Heavily dependent on gear.
- Few raid spots: usually a single rogue is taken, or none at all.
Stat Priority
- 1Expertise Rating
- 2Hit Rating
- 3Agility
- 4Haste Rating
- 5Critical Strike Rating
- 6Armor Penetration
Talents
Ability Priority
Sinister Strike ×2 — the first two global cooldowns for 2 combo points
Slice and Dice — right away at 2 combo points, then keep it up without a single gap- Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush,
Haste Potion and trinkets — right after the first Slice and Dice 
Rupture — at 5 combo points- Slice and Dice — refresh at 1–2 combo points if you have 2 pieces of the T4 set, otherwise at 2–3
Shiv — instead of one Sinister Strike if the stacks of 
Deadly Poison VII are about to fall off
Eviscerate — on spare combo points; overall weaker than Rupture
Envenom — only on a target that is about to die: it consumes all poison stacks
Priority with Improved Expose Armor
- Sinister Strike ×2, then Slice and Dice at 2 combo points
- Cooldowns and potion right after Slice and Dice
Expose Armor — at 5 combo points, as soon as they are gathered- Expose Armor — refresh at 5 combo points before the debuff falls off: if it drops, the whole raid loses 3075 armor penetration
- Slice and Dice — at 2–5 combo points, prioritizing uptime
- Rupture — at 2–3 combo points in free windows
Building 5 combo points from scratch takes about 16 seconds — keep that in mind. The better your gear, the more energy Combat Potency returns and the more short
Important Abilities
Haste Potion and 2-minute trinkets like Bloodlust Brooch; on fights under 2 minutes wait for 
Bloodlust and procs, on long ones press it at the start — an extra use is better than a perfect oneSpell Ranks
The main resource is energy: 100 maximum, 20 every 2 seconds. Bank it rather than spending immediately: in the Combat tree you must not go above 65 energy before a tick and above 85 right after a tick, or the regeneration is wasted. Keep in mind that Ruthlessness returns up to 25 energy from a finishing move. The most convenient time to bank energy is before refreshing Slice and Dice: wait until the last second and enter the next cycle with a reserve.
Best in Slot Gear (BiS)
Best in Slot Gear (BiS)Tier 6 Set — Slayer's Armor
Tier 6 Set — Slayer's ArmorEnchants, Gems, Consumables
Enchants
Gems
ConsumablesRaces
Mana Tap — up to 30 energy.
Best Professions
One of the best options for all of TBC. Rocket Boots Xtreme are only available from T5, but on top of them there are bombs and the 
Gnomish Battle Chicken — a trinket that gives the whole group a chance to gain 5% melee haste.
Ring enchants give +4 to all stats each — a simple and steady damage increase.
A good choice: your own epic gems at the start, and by Sunwell Plateau — the 
Hard Khorium Choker.
A classic mandatory TBC profession. Because of the Ear Ringing debuff, drums can no longer be rotated around the raid, so a leatherworker is needed in every group. Besides drums, the profession provides the Primalstrike set — one of the strongest pre-raid gear pieces for a rogue.
A strong option at the start. The crafted mace takes a long time to farm, but it farms reliably and stays in the main hand throughout the early stage. By T5, the 
Talon of Azshara surpasses 
Dragonstrike.
Author
Fouren
Fouren has been playing World of Warcraft for over 15 years. He is an active player with 12 Cutting Edge achievements under his belt, and has reached the top 1% and 0.1% multiple times on various classes. His main classes are healers, particularly Holy Paladin.
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