Audience

This is a basic guide to raiding as a combat rogue. Although the majority of content here is designed to provide general guidance to rogues looking to improve their DPS and overall performance, certain aspects of the guide -- most notably, the discussion of Armour Penetration -- are targeted at rogues in T9 and T10 content. In addition, this guide does not, at present, cover performance optimizations for AOE-heavy fights.

Looking for a quick update on what's new with combat in 3.3? Jump right to the What's New in 3.3? section!

Guide

Overview
This guide is divided into five parts:

1. Talents and Glyphs
2. DPS "Cycles"
3. Cooldown Usage
4. Numbers to Know: Hit Caps, ArPen Caps and Crit Caps
5. Beyond DPS: Rogue Utility
6. What's New in 3.3?

I. Talents and Glyphs
There are two standard specs for combat rogues:


Rupture-based Combat
Spec: 20/51/0
Major Glyphs: Killing Spree, Tricks of the Trade and either Rupture or Sinister Strike
Description: This spec, based around the use of both Rupture and Eviscerate as damage-dealing finishers, takes 2/2 Blood Splatter and 3/3 Ruthlessness. Use of the Rupture Glyph will yield higher DPS on sustained, single-target fights, while use of the Sinister Strike glyph will yield better performance on fights that require frequent target-swapping or restarting of cycles.


Ruptureless Combat
Spec: 20/51/0
Major Glyphs: Sinister Strike, Killing Spree, and either Eviscerate or Tricks of the Trade
Description: This spec, which uses Eviscerate as its sole damage-based finisher, takes two points from Blood Splatter and one point from Ruthlessness to gain 3/3 Improved Eviscerate. This spec favours fights that require frequent target swapping or burst damage.


How do I decide if I should use a Rupture-based spec or a Ruptureless spec?
As a general rule, Rupture-based specs will yield higher DPS than Ruptureless specs. However, Rupture-based combat demands high Rupture uptimes which are often hard to achieve on fights that require frequent target swapping or high levels of movement. Furthermore, Rupture, as a damage-over-time finisher, lacks the burst of Eviscerate, which makes it less potent against targets that die quickly (or need to die quickly). So which spec, then, should you choose? The answer is, "It depends on what you value -- or what your guild needs most." If you prefer to put out higher DPS on single-target fights at the expensive of damage on fights that require target swapping, you'll want to choose a Rupture-bases spec. Alternatively, if your guild is having difficulty with fights that require high burst damage (Lich King, for example), Ruptureless combat may serve you better. If you're indecisive (and don't PvP or don't require Mutilate as your secondary spec), considering having two combat specs and switching between them as the situation demands.

II. DPS "Cycles"
In early-Wrath (and indeed, throughout previous expansions), rogues used fixed DPS rotations consisting of a static cycle of Slice and Dice and damage-based finishers. In the current tier of Wrath raiding, however, combat rogues no longer utilize such rigid rotations. Rather, combat cycles are now predicated on a simple set of rules that dictate the size and timing of all finishers. Although using a rule set may sound more complicated than using a static rotation, in actuality it's surprisingly easy. In this section, we explain how these rule sets operate in practice for both Rupture-based and Ruptureless combat specs.


Rupture-Based Combat
Rogues running Rupture-based combat specs will be utilizing a "High Rupture" rotation. High Rupture cycles are three-finisher cycles (Slice and Dice, Rupture and Eviscerate) that call for high Rupture uptimes. Rupture are performed with five combo points and Slice and Dice is frequently clipped to ensure maximum uptime on Rupture. Eviscerate is used sparingly to burn spare combo points. The rules for this rotation are as follows:

• Don't let Slice and Dice drop.
• Maximize Rupture Uptime.
• If Slice and Dice is about to drop, refresh it with 3-4 combo points.
• If you have 7-10* seconds left on Rupture and have at least 2 combo points, throw an Eviscerate.
• Else, build to five combo points and refresh Rupture as it drops.

Ruptureless Combat
Eviscerate cycles are two-finisher cycles (Slice and Dice and Eviscerate) predicated on five-point Eviscerates and minimal Slice and Dice clipping. The rules for this rotation are as follows:

• Don't let Slice and Dice drop.
• Throw as many 5-point Eviscerates as possible.
• If you have 5 combo points and 3-5* seconds left on Slice and Dice, pool energy as high as you can and use those combo points to refresh Slice and Dice.
• Else, refresh Slice and Dice with as many combo points as you can just before the previous Slice and Dice drops.

*NB: In these situations, the exact number of allowable seconds left on Rupture and Slice and Dice is unique to your individual stats. To determine the precise number for you, enter your gear and spec in Aldriana's Combat Spreadsheet and look for the values of m and n, respectively, under the "Cycles" tab.


How can I tell if I'm doing my cycle right?
The best way to evaluate your DPS cycles is to upload your raid logs to be parsed by sites like World of Logs or WoW Meter Online. Look at your performance on single-target, low movement fights like Saurfang. You should expect your Slice and Dice uptime on such fights to be as close to 100% as possible (97% or higher is excellent). The uptime on Rupture should also be high, although the random number generator makes it virtually impossible to maintain near-100% uptimes. Depending on your luck and crit rate, Rupture uptimes in the range of 85%-95% will be considered good.

If you're interested in comparing your real-world DPS to your theoretical maximum, you can use a spreadsheet to tell you the latter. Aldriana of the Elitist Jerks community has made an excellent spreadsheet available here. It is important to note, however, that your spreadsheet DPS will likely be higher than your actual DPS, as it models single-target DPS under "perfect" conditions (e.g. 100% debuff uptime, no latency, etc.).

III. Cooldown Usage
Combat is distinguished from other rogue specs by its powerful cooldowns: Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush and Killing Spree. These three abilities -- used together or separately -- provide combat rogues with the ability to produce on-demand, burst damage, which is frequently useful in hardmode fights. The following are guidelines for using your cooldowns as effectively as possible:

Blow Your Cooldowns Early And Often
As a general rule, cooldowns should be used as early as safely possible and every time they're up thereafter. What this means in practice is that you will typically want to use all three cooldowns at the start of a given fight (watch your threat!), and then immediately as they come up again throughout the encounter. An exception to this rule occurs on fights where you need to use your cooldowns to provide burst damage early in the encounter, and using them at the start of the fight will result in them not being up in time. In these situations, you should save your cooldowns to ensure they're available on demand. Fights that may benefit from saving cooldowns include Saurfang (soft enrage), Putricide (Volatile Oozes and Gas Clouds), and Lich King (Val'kyr Shadowguards and Vile Spirits).

If possible, initial cooldown usage (and subsequent usage) should be timed to coincide with your trinket procs. The DPS boost from, say, using Killing Spree while a Deathbringer's Will proc is active is far from insignificant, and most proc-based trinkets will trigger a few seconds into a fight, thus making it easy to align your initial cooldowns with them.


Stack Your Cooldowns Whenever Possible
When certain cooldowns are used in together, their efficacy can increase. As a general rule, you will get the most benefit from stacking Killing Spree with Blade Flurry, as the additional attacks granted by the latter will be active during the duration of the former. This combination can be particular powerful in conjunction with Heroism/Bloodlust. Using Blade Flurry with Adrenaline Rush is also an effective pairing (albeit less so than Blade Flurry and Killing Spree together), and can be quite powerful when used with Fan of Knives for situations that demand heavy AOE damage. Adrenaline Rush should never be stacked with Killing Spree, as it will result in energy capping.

Despite the damage boost that results from stacking cooldowns, its rarely (if ever) efficient to wait for all your cooldowns to come up in order to use them at the same time. That is, despite the powerful synergy between, say, Killing Spree and Blade Flurry, you should not wait an extra 45 seconds for Blade Flurry (2 minute cooldown) to come up so that it may be used in conjunction with glyphed Killing Spree (1.15 minute cooldown). This is because delaying the use (in this example) of Killing Spree by 45 seconds will result in an overall loss of opportunities to use the ability -- and thus a loss of DPS -- over the course of the entire fight.


Think About Positioning
Because of the multi-target nature of Blade Flurry and Killing Spree, it is often practical to time the use of these cooldowns around "cleave" situations -- that is, situations in which your attacks can hit more than one mob. In many cases, such situations may be obvious: for example, your off-tank may stack an add on top of the boss, thus allowing you to hit both mobs at once with Blade Flurry and/or Killing Spree. In other situations, clever positioning (standing at max-hitbox, standing off to the side instead of directly in back, etc.) may allow your incidental attacks to hit mobs that are being tanked near your location. Pay close attention to your surroundings and the location of other mobs in proximity to you; if you find yourself in a position where you can "cleave," use your Blade Flurry and/or Killing Spree cooldowns appropriately. Be mindful, however, of your threat in such situations: adds and other off-tanked mobs are frequently not locked-down as tightly as boss targets, so you may run the risk of your incidental attacks pulling aggro.


Help Your Tanks!
The powerful burst potential of combat's cooldowns make them excellent tools for helping tanks establish or lock down threat. When used in conjunction with Tricks of the Trade at the start of a fight, a single rogue using Killing Spree and/or Blade Flurry can help the tank gain a crucial early threat lead on the target. The ability for Blade Flurry to hit multiple targets at once can equally be used to great effect when combined with Tricks of the Trades in order to assist an off-tank in establishing aggro on recently spawned mobs. This threat-aid is particularly useful for fights in which the off-tank may need to lock down adds quickly so that the DPS can AOE them down in a timely manner.

IV. Numbers To Know: Hit Caps, ArPen Caps and Crit Caps
As a general rule, there are few specific stat caps that rogues "must" obtain. That is, rather than specifically gemming or gearing to reach a certain amount of a given stat, rogues frequently make decisions about gear or gems based on the answer to the question, "Does the spreedsheet say this is a DPS upgrade?" This is because when a given stat increases, the relative value of other stats increase or decrease in proportion to it. As a result, it is often difficult to say, "this piece of gear is an upgrade," without first seeing how the stats on it interact with your overall stats.

That said, there are some specific "caps" that are generally beneficial for rogues to obtain -- most notably, the yellow and poison hit caps, and the Armour Penetration (ArPen) softcap. The follow sections, then, set out the values of these caps for quick reference. It is important to remember, however, that these numbers are only provided for reference. To determine which stats values you specifically should prioritize, consult Aldriana's spreadsheet.


Hit Caps
There are three "hit caps" relevant to rogues: yellow, poison and white. The yellow hit cap indicates the point at which yellow (special) attacks can no longer miss, while the poison hit cap marks the point at which poisons can no longer miss. White attacks equally can be capped through high levels of hit rating, however as these values are largely unobtainable, rogues generally do not focus on reaching them. All three rogue hit caps can be reduced through talents (specifically, Precision) and raid buffs. The following chart sets out the value of the hit caps with respect to the most common rogue talents and buffs:

Skill Ranks and/or Buffs	Yellow	Poison	White
5/5 Precision	99	315	722
5/5 Precision w/ Imp. FF/Misery	99	237	722
5/5 Precision w/ Draenei Aura and Imp. FF/Misery	66	210	689

ArPen Caps
At present, Armour Penetration is hard capped at 1400 ArPen rating -- the point at which physical attacks ignore 100% of target armour. While amount of ArPen rating required to reach this cap is quite high, the ArPen-heavy itemization of T9 gear and the viability of combat maces has allowed many raiding rogues to come close. Moreover, the availability of powerful ArPen trinkets such as the Mjolnir Runestone has allowed rogues to actually reach the ArPen hardcap when the trinket procs. It is this latter ability that has caused many rogues to focus on reaching the ArPen "softcap" -- the static amount of ArPen rating which, when combined with the proc from the Mjolnir Runestone (or similar trinket), pushes one's total ArPen rating to 1400. Since there is no benefit to having ArPen rating beyond 1400, rogues attempting to reach the soft cap must carefully monitor their total ArPen rating, lest they go over. The following table sets out the softcaps for the most common ArPen trinkets and specs:

Trinkets and/or Spec	Soft Cap
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	722
Mjolnir Runestone	735
Mace Spec	1190
Mace Spec w/ Mjolnir Runestone	525

Crit Caps
Beginning with the emergence of the crit-heavy Dark Matter trinket in late Ulduar, theorycrafting rogues began turning their mind to the possibility that, at high-end gear levels, you could accumulate enough crit rating to actually reach a point where you had "maxed out" your ability to crit. This limit -- termed the "crit cap" -- represented the threshold at which a rogue's cumulative miss, dodge/parry and glancing blow percentages prevented the rogue's white crit rate from increasing further. While so-called crit capping was rarely a problem in T9 content, the large quantities of Crit and Agil on T10 gear, coupled with the relative low amount of Hit on the same gear, has made cripping capping a reasonable concern.

How, then, can you tell if you're at the crit cap? The answer, unfortunately, is, "It's complicated." Because the crit cap fluctuates with the amount of Hit and Expertise you have at any given time, there is no single "hard" crit cap the way there is, say, a hard expertise cap. Further, trinkets like Death's Verdict and Deathbringer's Will that temporarily increase your Crit via a proc make it additionally difficult to judge how close you are to crit capping simply by looking at the numbers on your paper doll. Fortunately, the newest version of Aldriana's spreadsheet includes a feature to warn you when you're crit capping. If the box on the sheet containing your crit rating turns red, it means you've surpassed the crit cap and you should either swap in Hit/Expertise gear, or swap out Agil/Crit gear to compensate.

V. Beyond DPS: Rogue Utility
Despite the fact that rogues are cast in a "pure DPS" role, the class has a number of often-overlooked non-DPS abilities that, when used smartly, can provide a great deal of utility in raiding situations. This section, then, attempts to highlight four useful (but frequently-ignored) abilities that a rogue can (and should!) use to assist the raid.


Dismantle
What is it?: A brief, 10-second disarm.
Why is it useful?: Certain mobs have weapon-based abilities that, when used, may cause high levels of damage to their target. For example, Onyxian Lair Guards employ "Ignite Weapon," which causes their melee attacks to do an additional 17,500 fire damage. Other mobs have whirlwind-type AOE abilities that can devastate melee or anyone else in melee range. By using Dismantle, you can mitigate or prevent the burst damage caused by both types of abilities.
Where to use it:

• Deathbound Wards (Marrowgar trash);
• Deathspeaker Zealot (Deathwhisper trash); and
• Cult Fanatics (Deathwhisper).

Feint
What is it?: A 6 second self-buff that reduces your AOE damage taken by 50% and lowers your threat.
Why is it useful?: Many fights involve unavoidable, raid-wide AOE damage which, in hardmodes, can be particularly devastating and can kill you if not at full health. By feinting before such an AOE occurs, you not only help keep yourself alive, but also assist your healers by allowing them to use their healing bandwidth elsewhere.
Where to use it:

• Bone Storm (Marrowgar);
• Vengeful Spirit explosions (Deathwhisper);
• Mark of the Fallen Champion (Saurfang);
• Pungent Blight (Rotface);
• Volatile Ooze Explosions (Putricide);
• Empowered Shock Vortex (Blood Princes); and
• Infest (Lich King).

Expose Armour
What is it?: A debuff that reduces the target's armor by 20% (does not stack with Sunder).
Why is it useful?: Any class that does physical damage benefits from a reduction in target armour. While major armour debuffs are traditionally applied by warriors in the form of Sunder Armour, there are many raid situations where Sunder may be unavailable (e.g. when no warriors are on your target), or where Sunder may be inefficient (e.g. burst damage situations where a warrior may not have time to apply a full stack of Sunders). In these situations it is both necessary and practical for a rogue to provide the major armour debuff, as Expose Armour not only reduces a target's armor for the same amount as Sunder, but also can be applied immediately via a single combo point.
When to use it: Anytime that Sunder is not being applied to your target, you should use Expose Armour. Other situations where Expose Armour are useful include:

• Volatile Oozes (Putricide);
• Gas Clouds (Putricide);
• Dreamwalker adds (Dreamwalker); and
• Val'kyr Shadowguards (Lich King).

Mind-Numbing Poison
What is it?: A poison that reduces target casting speed by 30%.
Why is it useful?: On interrupt-heavy fights where mobs cast quickly, Mind-Numbing Poison provides an excellent safety net to ensure that interrupts are not missed. Moreover, when applied via Fan of Knives, a rogue can debuff a large number of targets significantly faster than a warlock can apply Curse of Tongues.
Where to use it:

• Corrupter tentacles (Yogg P2);
• Any caster mob on Faction Champions; and
• Nerubian Burrowers (Anub).

Anesthetic Poison
What is it?: A poison that removes one enrage effect on the target and does a small amount of nature damage.
Why is it useful? Many mobs (remember Magmadar?) have an enrage ability that, when active, causes increased damage their target. A rogue with Anesthetic poison on the off-hand can quickly dispel the enrage with a single shiv.
Where to use it:

• Enraged Swarm Scarabs (Anub);
• Gormok; and
• Enraged Shambling Horrors (Lich King).

VI. What's New in 3.3?
With the introduction of Patch 3.3, rogues received a significant boost to their damage in the form of a new mechanism that causes an additional poison proc when the Deadly Poison stack on a target has reached five. The result of this addition, coupled with an additional beneficial change to the Improved Poisons talent, was a non-trivial shift in some of the fundamentals of rogue theorycraft. This section aims to provide a succinct overview of the changes rogues will need to make now that 3.3 is live.


Poisons
Due to the fact that combat rogues now take the Improved Poisons talent, you should use Instant Poison main-hand and Deadly Poison off-hand. You should not use Wound Poison any longer.


Gemming
Early in ICC or at lower levels of ArPen, Agil (red) gems, Agil/Hit (orange) and Hit (yellow) are the primary gems of choice. As combat rogues accumulate more ArPen-heavy gear later in ICC, they may find it beneficial to push to the hard ArPen caps by using ArPen gems for red sockets instead. Expertise gems should be used with Hit gems to avoid crit capping. You should always refer to a spreadsheet before gemming you gear.


Speccing
Because of the increased proportion of damage coming from poisons, its is now optimal for combat rogues to pick up points in 4/5 Improved Poisons and 1/3 Vile Poisons. Refer to the full section on specs for more details.


Consumables and Enchants
Due to the increased potency of poisons, Greater Speed will typically surpass Major Agility as the non-engineering/tailoring cloak enchant of choice. AP food (Fish Feasts) has become the optimal food consumable, although Hit food (Snapper Extreme) may be an option in to avoid crit capping. You should check your spreadsheet to determine what's best for you.

Notice an error? Have a question? Please feel free to leave a comment under the "Comments" tag for this article! You can also contact me directly via Private Message here on StratFu.

Acknowledgments: Thanks go to Almahym, Gokesy and Lolipokicake of Fusion for their editorial comments, and Edalia and Piralyn at deadlycupcakes for being my sounding board. This guide would not have been possible without the work of the diligent theorycrafters at the Elitist Jerks rogue forums.

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