Learning the Combat portion of a Rogue

With the last post out of the way, i can finally get into the little nitty gritty on playing my rogue.  This is not a guide, nor is it a primer of any sort on helping anyone learn the rogue class.  this is just my experience so please, if you think im doing this wrong, please say something. =D

My initial experiences with rogues are that they are sneaky, elusive, and most of all, annoying.  Ever level through Ashenvale, running from questgiver to objectives, only to be interrupted by a rogue who's bored?  Ever read local defense and see that Cross Roads is under attack?  its usually a rogue.  Ever run around tarren mill, turning in quests and finding out that a rogue is having a great time sapping people?  Ever enter a cave full of ogres and fighting through the ogres just to get to that one Khorium deposit but having it ninja'd by a rogue as you fight the mob guarding the node?  Not too many good experiences with rogues i tell you. 

But as i leveled my rogue, i find that they offer a pretty niche type of gameplay.  The energy and combo point system makes playing a rogue a lot more complex while questing and significantly while in dungeons.  The combo point system allows me to save up combo points for stronger finishers.  The mob's health, their numbers, even their spell selections will determine which finishers i will have to use. Not only that, but the energy system is the only system in the game where timing is absolutely necessary.  Spamming attacks isnt the rogue way.  And rightly so, it shouldnt be since the whole character of being a rogue involves planning, timing and finesse.  Button smashing might not be the best form of play.  That is, unless you're playing shinobi. 

Everyone knows the basics of a rogue.  or at least i believe everyone does. 

Energy:  Rogues use energy to attack.  Energy is used up when performing attacks.  Energy replenishes at a certain rate.  Missed attacks can refund a % of energy back.

Combo points: Rogues have two basic categories of attacks. One to produce combo points and the other to spend combo points.  Both use up energy.  Missed attacks can refund a % of energy back.  Ideally, rogues will want to maximize their combo points (being 5) before using a finisher.  Each finisher has its own effect (some do instant damage, others do damge over time, others make the target more vulnerable to melee damage, and still others cause your own attacks to speed up. 

The basic combo point maker for Combat:  Sinister Strike (SS) and Revealing Strike (RvS). 
Sinister strike is your bread and butter attack.  I use this attack more than any other attack.  Revealing strikes are tossed in between, at least once per 5 point stack prior to an Eviscerate or Rupture.  Revealing strikes will not do anything for Slice and Dice so using it before slice and dice is not essential.  Although, if you use it as your 5th combo point move before slice and dice, revealing strikes will still be up since it has a 15 second duration.  It basically buffs your finisher by 30%, so use once before you Evis or Rupt.  Using it twice will do nothing but add another combo point (which SS can do) and reset the cooldown for Revealing Strike buff to 15 seconds.  The 30% incraesed bonus to finishing moves does not change.

The basic finishers for Combat: Slice and Dice (SnD), Rupture and Eviscerate.
Slice and dice cases you to attack faster.  use this first and always try to keep it active. some rogues start off with a 1-point SnD, which gives them a good 30 seconds or so.  5 points will give you 40 seconds of SnD.  go with 1 point SnD. it ends up pretty easy to maintain. 
Rupture causes a bleed on the target for a certain amount of time.  the time is fixed, but the damage is different based on the number of combo points.  with revealing strikes buff, it also ticks for more.  Use this on bosses, or on long lasting mobs.  there is no other benefit for this spell besides that you can keep doing damage while you're running around avoiding fires. 
Eviscerate is often preferred over Rupture.  The point is that many fights will have phases that take the boss out of the fight (basically immune) while we take care of adds, fires, dance, whatevers.  in these instances, just Evis instead of Rupt.  Getting all the damage at once may be more beneficial than going for a DoT that may not be allowed to last its whole duration. 

The special finishers for Combat:  Expose Armor, Recuperate, Kidney shot.
Expose armor is one of these spells that many other classes can do better.  Plus, its only useful for physical damaging dps that having one magic dps in the mix will make this ability pretty much useless.  you'll get more benefit if you just evis.  Other classes can do it better because they dont have to waste too much of their resources to place this debuff on. Overall, this ability is very situational and almost never used.
Recuperate helps a lot when in high damage fights.  Although you'll miss out on a finisher, it does make it easier for your healers to heal you.  Finally, Kidney shot is one of those spells which i love to use on casters, especially the healing type casters.  Open with cheapshot.  When they come to and cast a heal, i kick.  Then they cast another heal, i can blind.  then i can kidney shot and basically finish them off.  its not a stun "lock", as it was before, but it does keep the mob incapacitated long enough so that dps can kill him off. 

Cooldowns for Combat: The two major offensive cooldowns for combat are Killing Spree (KS) and Adrenaline Rush (AR).
These two abilities are my two favorite reasons to go combat.  It took me several levels of practicing and playing around to really figure out how these buffs work.  but when i finally got them to work well, they became the "candy" to this whole fighting system. 
Killing Spree causes me to jump from one mob to another (if one mob, then it just jumps five times to the same mob) doing pretty good damage.  It seems to last about 3 seconds, but in those 3 seconds, it is amazing.  added bonus to this is that the auto-attacks are still going.  True, you might only get 3 auto-attacks off, even with slice and dice on, it doesnt change the outcome--dps boost.   Of course, being that auto-attacks still goes off while KS is up, it makes it doubly fun to time it just right (ie. during slice and dice, while my energy is zero. Also, KS also works with Blade Flurry, so if there are two or more mobs in the fight, KS will also hit adjacent mobs, as well as the sped up auto attacks.  So like i said, its candy.
As for adrenaline rush, this spell speeds up my energy regen, thus allowing for more SS, RvS, Evis, etc. during its duration.  Much like Killing Spree, time it after SnD and when your energy is low (you dont want to be energy capped).  You can use these two cooldowns back-to-back.  It might not be as effective together, as KS will not produce combo points and the time you're jumping around through the shadows, you may end up being energy capped. 

Utilities for Combat:  Other utilities are Tricks of the Trade, Shiv, Feint, blind, Evasion, Cloak of Shadows and Vanish.
I suppose Recuperate can be utility but do keep in mind that it does require combo points. 
Tricks of the Trade, or Tricks, or TotT is used prior or during a pull to redirect threat to someone else, usually the tank.  Not only does it redirect threat, it also gives the target an increase in dps.  this can be utilized several ways, but the most important way is to Tricks the tank.  Upon tricksing the tank, the rogue will basically pull for the tank, or pull a stray mob to the tank.  This is almost identical to the Hunter's Misdirect, where they use misdirect to pull for the tank.  The second area where this is useful is during fights where you want to buff the main dps.  Sure putting tricks on the tank will buff his 5k dps.  but tricksing the hunter who's doing 10k dps will ultimately produce twice the damage from Tricks than the tank.  Finally, two rogues can simply Tricks each other to give each other a damage buff.  since the tricks is on each other, the threat transfer is almost transparent. 
Shiv removes enrage. Shiv also adds poisons instantly and cannot be dodged. Although this ability does add combo points, i did not include this as a combo point ability.  We use this ability more for the two reasons stated above--the combo point is an added bonus. One more thing to add about instantly applying poisons, this ability costs less the faster your offhand dagger is.  so in a pinch, if you're seeing 5 stacks of your poisons about to expire, this ability may be preferred over waiting and gambling on your next offhand attack (or Main Gauche) to hit.
Feint is awesome.  Say it with me, Feint is awesome! It reduces a lot of the AoE damage, 50% to be exact, that can cause a lot of fail and healer stress.  This ability not only reduces your threat it increases your healer's love towards you.  Please use it often to avoid those nasty AoEs, especially on boss fights where tanks dont know how to move mobs out of dark fissures, etc. 
Blind is basically a stun for 10 seconds.  Also interrupts casting. Kick is on CD?  blind.  Mobs is running for the healer and your Tricks is on CD? blind.  Similar to a hunter's scattershot.  We have a lot of similarities, dontchaknow?
Evasion, cloak of shadows, vanish.... they all have their uses. Evasion is useful when you grab aggro, or have to grab aggro for a while.  Cloak of shadows will remove harmful debuffs (slows, poisons, dots) and Vanish will allow you to stealth immediately, even in combat.  When you do have some kind of debuff on you, like say, a disease or faerie fire, use cloak of shadows first, then vanish.  the disease ticks will break your stealth if you dont remove it first (you can tell i want to end this post already since this section is so short!!).

Blade Flurry:  An ability that allows you to hit two targets instead of one but in return your energy regeneration slows.  the ability can be glyphed so that energy regen doesnt take as big a hit, which is often a must if you're doing dungeons.  for raids where much of the damage is to a single boss at a time, blade flurry may be useless.  in any event, it is up to the player to decide whether blade flurry should be used, assuming more dps is always better, even on trash, or left out altogether.  if you use blade flurry often, do consider glyphing.  Blade flurry also works with Killing Spree.  The reason this ability is set aside and mentioned on its own is because this is spell does not fall into any of the above categories.  It's just an ability any rogue can turn on or off and any time really.  in dungeons, i have this on after my first slice and dice.  then i turn it off when there is only one mob remaining, or when there are two mobs who are not standing right next to each other.  in these situations, the cleave effect will be wasted.  (Cleave effect = hitting two or more players at once with a single hit or cleave or swipe).  Overall, this is a very handy ability.  Remember to tricks often, as the cleave can cause unwanted aggro.



Other tricks, tips, or corrections?  please comment so i can improve.  I've only played combat for the past 10 levels, but during those 10 levels i've actually figured several things already mentioned above.  To summarize, i cant spam attacks. there is a basic category of spells but what makes rogues particulary fun to play are the utility spells, timing of cooldowns and weaving of differnt combinations and abilities.  This is the major reason why i enjoy the rogue. my favorite classes are usually melee classes with the occasional healer (of course, druid healing preferred), so finding another fun melee class to play is motivational indeed.   the only other melee class i think i still havent played is the enhancement shaman.  one day i hope to write about it as well!

Note: not all spells and abilities are mentioned.  either i havent found a reason to use them or they do not apply.  If there are other abilities that i should also consider, or if the abilities i've mentioned can be expanded on, please comment. thanks!