Today I’m going to discuss a rogue PVP Combat build that I use and explain why I believe it is a viable build in the current climate of World of Warcraft. The build I use is a killing spree/setup build (0/53/18).
PvP can be a touchy subject for a lot of players, so I would firstly just like to say that this is an interpretation of my ideal PvP Combat build. To be totally honest I have only recently started back doing 3v3 Arenas and I am definitely not saying that it is the best build for everybody or that it will work best in all Arena situations, just that I have found it quite effective working my way up the 3v3 Arena rankings. I’m sure rogue players will be making small alterations to this build in order to suit their playstyle. Also please note that this build is more focused on Arena usage, but world PvPers and Battleground enthusiasts should find this info useful aswell.
Also please understand that while I’m talking about a Combat PvP build here, Mutilate/Preparation (41/5/25) is definitely considered as the bread and butter of PvP builds currently. You just have to look at the top rated Arena rogues in the Armory. They are all mut/prep rogues. And why wouldn’t they be? The build addresses the heavy reliance rogues have on cooldowns with Preparation, and with Overkill and the Mutilate Glyph it can pump out crazy amounts of damage without sacrificing mobility or defensive capability. Now as good as all of that sounds I have never been a dagger rogue and always preferred going toe to toe with my opponents using maces or swords. I find that playstyle suits me more and I have more fun with it.
So lets look at the Combat tree. Where the other two trees focus on openers and high burst damage, the Combat tree focuses on consistent white damage to provide high sustained DPS. This is what allows you to have an easier time going toe to toe with mail/plate wearers. Your main goal should be survivability (even though Combat also pumps out great burst damage with talents such as Adrenaline Rush and Killing Spree). So don’t bother with the extra crit in Malice. Crit is important for high burst Mutilate rogues but not so important for a consistent damage build like Combat. With decent gear you should have near 30% crit which is sufficient.
I think the majority of my build is self explanatory so I will not be discussing damage talents in great detail. The talents I will be discussing will mainly deal with Survivability, Mobility and Crowd Control.
Combat Tree
Deflection vs Precision
My first choice was between Deflection and Precision. Here I choose Deflection as the bonus to parry improves survivability and I have already reached the “PvP hit cap” of 167. Putting points in Precision in my case would be a waste as the only benefit would be the 5% poison hit chance, which I don’t think is worth the 5 points when I can just use Shiv. Deflection also allows you to get Riposte, a handy and very cheap energy skill (10 energy) that does good damage.
Endurance and Improved Sprint
With rogues probably being the most cooldown dependant class in the game grabbing talents like Endurance that lower your cds is vital for your survivability. Endurance will reduce your Evasion and Sprint cooldown by 60 seconds and give you a nice 4% stamina increase. Another big issue for rogues is mobility. Combat rogues especially have issues with getting snared and can be indefinitely kited by ranged classes due to the lack of a distance closer. So it goes without saying that Improved Sprint is an essential talent to grab.
Nerves of Steel
Many people believe that rogues die too quickly in Arena when CC’d or stunned and we are too squishy.Well in comes Nerves of Steel. A great survivability talent that reduces damage taken by 30% while affected by stun and fear. Definitely grab this one.
Improved Slice n Dice
I thought I would mention this one as a lot of people believe that this is purely a PVE talent. How wrong those people are. Regardless if you get this talent or not, you should always try and have Slice n Dice up (especially against mail/plate wearers) as I think the 40% weapon speed increase is priceless. Imp Slice and Dice saves you one or two combo points by making the SnD duration much longer, it also allows you to potentially apply poisons faster to your target (i.e wound poison).
Why no Improved Gouge, Improved Kick, Weapon Expertise, Blade Flurry or Throwing Specialization?
Firstly with Improved Gouge I just feel these 3 combo points are better spent elsewhere. 1.5 extra seconds or 3 talent points into something more useful? Even if I took talent points in Camouflague which would allow me to restealth after an imp gouge, theres not a lot of chances you can restealth in Arena anyway. With Improved Kick, I think 2 talent points would be wasted here as 2 seconds is over before you know it. Similarly I feel the 2 points spent in Weapon Expertise are more valuable elsewhere. Most of your attacks should be from behind ensuring your opponents cannot dodge, block or parry. Blade Flurry doesn’t seem very useful in an Arena scenario as its very rare that you will get the chance to hit two targets at once. Throwing Specialization was omitted due to the recent 3.3 patch nerf which removed the talent’s interruption ability.
Subtlety Tree
Master of Deception
The increase in stealth that this talent provides is a definite requirement for PvP. You get detected very easily without it in my experience. Aggressive hunter pets and humans (which have Perception) for example have very good stealth detection and will more than likely see you without MoD. And of course it is invaluable against druids and other rogues. But please note that most dagger rogues will have Heightened Senses so they will more than likely get the opener on you first.
Dirty Tricks
The added range to Sap that this talent provides is vital in PvP. It definitely makes your life easier with CC’ing. In fact you will land very little saps without it in my experience. Also increases the range of your Blind.
Elusiveness
What a great talent. Reduces your Vanish and Blind cooldown by 60 sec (down to 2 mins) and Cloak of Shadows by 30secs (down to 1 min). Similar to Endurance, any talent that lowers your cds is worth grabbing.
Serrated Blades
Quite an effective talent against clothies. It pretty much takes their already minimal AC to next to nothing, meaning that you’ll have a much easier time taking them down. The 30% rupture damage bonus is also nice against those troublesome plate wearers.
Setup
Combo points are not as easy to come by for Combat rogues as they are for Mutilate rogues, so getting a talent like Setup is a smart idea and goes hand in hand with Lightning Reflexes. Although Setup has been nerfed ( CP generation is only from your target) I believe it is still a worthwhile talent. You are more than likely to face another melee class in Arena, and with Evasion activated your CP generation should be quite good and may give you the edge over your opponent. Setup also has a magic resistance portion which is a good little bonus but only applies to full resists.
Why no Sleight of Hand or Camouflage?
SoH looks good on paper but in reality the 2% crit reduction on ranged and melee is like adding 80 points resilience against your physical damage. So if you think that you have enough resilience (at least 500 to start with) skip this talent. Putting points in Camouflage when specced Combat, I believe is somewhat of a waste. You are not a subtle assassin but rather a confrontational in-your-face melee, so your reliance on restealth should be a small part of your gameplay as compared to the dagger builds.
Well that’s it. If you have any comments on this build or have a PvP Combat build of your own that you enjoy and have had success with please let us know. Stay tuned for my next post about key bindings and how they can improve your gameplay dramatically.
(6 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Well what kind gems should i socket then? 40 ap? 40arp? plz answer me ty:)
Hey there,
Unfortunately that is a complex question that doesn’t really have one correct answer as there are lots of things that effect a rogues dps. In general the way combat rogues seemed to have been gemming before the lastest patch (last Tuesday) is stacking arp once they get some decent gear (T9).
The best advice I can give you is to use a spreadsheet at eltistjerks.com it does an excellent job in determining what stats are more important to gem/enchant for with your current gear.
Hello there! First I’d like to say thanks for posting this, some very useful information.
I’ve been playing Rogue since the release of TBC, and always prefered swords/maces infront of daggers. My current Arena knowledge is not that high, so my question is to you:
Whats the best 2v2(2xdamage-dealers) combo at the moment? As combat that of course.
I’ve been thinking of starting to do some Arenas again, but muti is not my way to go. Maybe a feral druid would work? Cause I guess we wanna get one target down ASAP, with my ToT on him and my killing spree we can actually down a target within 3-5 seconds.
And also:
What way should we play as dual dps? Lets say the opptents are a Arms warrior, and holy paladin. Should we try to burn the warrior down without using any cooldowns and force the paladin to bubble him, cyclone him when he got the blessing of protection, make sure we survive, and when it has expired just go straight for the warrior again with CC on the paladin, blind,cyclone, warstomp etc and use our cooldowns? Imo if I stack Mind-numbling posion with Fan of Knives on the paladin, or just shiv him once. I think there won’t be any possible way he can outheal, adrenalin rush, killing spree, blade flurry, berserk, tricks of trade +15% damage.
What kind of poisons would you use on MH & OF?
For PvP I use wound on MH and crippling on OF. Both these poisons are essential for slowing your target and limiting a healers abilities.
For PvE with the new poison buffs I would definitely recommend instant on MH and deadly on OF.
Hey Andreas,
To be honest I haven’t really been concentrating on Arena this season as my guild is concentrating on ICC currently. So I can’t really comment on what the best combo is currently.
Rogue/Disc Priest or Rogue/Holy Paladin was always a great combo in my experience. Before WoTLK came out I did some 2’s with a hunter and found it quite hard to progress over 1800 with him.
So yeah playing as a dual dps team has always be quite hard to play in my experience… especially against heavily armored teams with a healer like a warrior/pally combo. I think the best way to tackle this team is get the pally to bubble as soon as possible by both hitting him initially. Once he bubbles keep warrior cc’ed, cyclone/blind him, then vanish and sap if need be. Smash down the pally (both of you should be able to get him down relatively fast). The rest is simple. Also make sure you use Wound and not Mind-numbing posion to reduce his healing.
I am wondering, what’s your setup in 3v3, and are you socketing arp or AP? And are you using full pvp gear?
Hey Fahrtwind,
Like I said to Andreas, I haven’t had a chance to do Arena this season. But I used to run with a resto druid and mm hunter. The top 3v3 team last season on Bloodlust consisted of a prot warrior, mm hunter and holy pally.
In terms of gemming, it really depends on your gear and spec I think. As a combat specced rogue I gemmed agility for the extra survivability. If I went a mut build I would probably gem ap because mut relys on burst damage and ap directly increase the damage you do. I have never tried arp, but I have heard it can work quite well. Might be worth testing it out if you have an arp trinket equipped aswell.
In regards to gear alot of the best pvpers have used a mixture of pvp and pve gear for arena. Just make sure you have a good amount of resilience (over 800).
Hey Andreas!
If you’re going for two damage dealers, I’ve found rogue/frost mage to be extremely good… It makes it a pain in the ass for anyone to heal (wound poison+that one mage debuff), plus the VERY high defensive/offensive abilities of a rogue and a mage cause very high burn. Not to mention the large variety of CC’s you can pull out. I highly recommend this combination. The only problem we run into is when my cordless phone interrupts the router signal and DC’s me xD
hey just wondering what gems youl be using for this spec as i know most combat rogue’s use arp for pve but what about pvp ?thanks
Hey condemed,
As I mentioned to fahrtwind, I gemmed agility for the extra survivability. I have never tried arp for pvp but I have heard that it is quite effective. If you try it let me know how it goes.
so skorne hows the spec going im currently bored of mutilate and shadowdance is shit imo so looking for a new spec might try a hybrid spec out lemme know ty
Hey Condemned,
I actually haven’t had a chance to try it out in Arena yet (and I probably won’t to be honest), but if you’re reasonably geared then it’s alot of fun in bgs, especially when coming up against ret pallies and fury/arms warriors. Bu in saying that I have reverted back to Mutilate for my occasional bg fix. After trying a Combat pvp build I’ve come to realize that Preparation is an invaluable talent and the burst that Mutilate provides is just too brutal to pass up.
This is an awsome post thumbs up for this articel i feal mutilate is aboselte with its 8 minute cd on prep for bgs . this arcticel realy realesed me of the fealing “am i the only one that feals combat is so much better in most situations” i modified ur spec a bit with shorter cooldown on stealth as it proves very usefull also i dont totaly agree with blade flurry being useless as i find it very usefull vs Warlock and Hunter u can down that pet without having to stop your dps on your main target x) thx alot for the awsome post !
Heya, great post gonna try it out, altho I’m wondering why you didnt take blade fury, is it because it can break a cc? second of all I’m kinda wondering if I should take two 2.60’s or use one slow and one fast weapon, please let me know, cheers.
Hey youknow,
The reason why I didn’t take blade flurry is because in my experience I don’t find it very useful in a pvp environment. I think it is very rare that you will get the chance to hit two targets at once. However PabloDeluxe makes a good point about it having some use against lock pets. So I guess it is really up to the individual. In terms of weapons I use a fast OH for quick poison application.
Hello, great blog and great post. I’m new in Wow and this is my first rogue, I was wondering, with this talents, which would be the best weapons for an orc rogue? A fast dagger and a good axe? In which hand should I equip the weapons?
Thanks, and sorry for my English level
Hey Blitzer,
Have a look at my response below to itson. He asked pretty much the same question. In short you should use a slow weapon for your main hand and fast OH weapon (1.5speed) for a Combat build.
You’re right, I didn’t read the last post. Then should I use a less powerful axe (because of Axe Specialization)over a more poweful sword/mace/fist weapon, or at the end it doesn’t matter?
Hey Blitzer,
Firstly swords and axes are interchangable (fall under the same specialization) so you can use either. Secondly I would recommend you specializing in the best weapon type that you currently have and use those for both MH and OH.