Rogue in WoW Classic Season of Discovery is quite good in PvP and has a few builds you can run. I’m going to over all of them and show all the talents or gear you might need, depending on the spec you choose. Those specs are going to revolve around Backstab, Sinister Strike, or maybe even Saber Slash or Mutilate if you want to try those out. Let’s start with the Sinister Strike Talents.

Sinister Strike Talent

Sinister Strike Talent is mainly focused on doing rogue damage, kind of like you’re doing a PvE encounter, which is why the talents are actually exactly the same as when you do PvP or PvE. The only real thing I’d like to fluctuate here is if you wanted to take points out of Improved Slice and Dice here, which you probably should for PvP, and you can either put them into Improved Eviscerate or maybe Lethality. But because I don’t like respeccing, I prefer just to run the normal PvE DPS spec.

The three points in Improved Eviscerate or Lethality aren’t going to be that huge because most of the damage you’re doing is going to be from your auto attacks and your Sinister Strike in PvP. And to combo that with the runes, the ones you’re going to want to run are here at the bottom: Quick Draw, Shadowstrike, and Between the Eyes. There’s really nothing you can really change here. The only thing you might want to change is Shadow Strike.

Saber Slash Talent

You can change to Saber Slash. I prefer the utility of having Shadow Strike because I hate being kited. Whenever you’re getting into a fight with a hunter, even a priest or mage—anything that can crowd control you and get distance from you—they can kite you. So what you’re going to want to do is you can vanish Shadowstrike on top of them and get back on the target. And you get a lot of utility out of having Shadow Strike. So to me, unless my weapons are complete dog, I would always run Shadowstrike over Saber Slash.

Backstab Talent

The Backstab build, which we have here, I prefer to have Improved Sinister Strike because if you’re not able to get behind the target—if you’re slowed or something—being able to use less energy with a Sinister Strike is going to be helpful. And then you go Improved Backstab for two points and that way you can unlock Improved Sprint. The last points that I put here in Opportunity, you can actually take out if you would like. You can put them in Endurance and then put the last two into Opportunity. Or if you feel like it, you can put the last two into Master of Deception.

However, because I like more damage and because a lot of the people you’re fighting are going to have high armor, I prefer just to have the points in Opportunity. Then you will lose the utility of having a 3.5-minute cooldown Sprint because you lack Endurance. But even still, I do like having Opportunity for extra damage. But the build you can do can vary. If you want to have Endurance or Master of Deception—anything you would want there. The runes are going to be exactly the same as the Sinister Strike build. But because we’re using Backstab, we’re not going to use Quick Draw. We’re going to use Slaughter from the Shadows.

Mutilate Talent

You can do the exact same build if you’re running with Mutilate. However, again, if you’re going to want to run with Mutilate, you’re going to lose utility, just like if you were to run Saber Slash, where you could run Quick Draw and then Mutilate. But again, you’re going to be losing out on Shadowstrike, meaning you can get kited more often. And you won’t have the vanish Shadowstrike gap closer, kind of like a warrior would if they were charging. You’re going to lack that gap closer.

So there’s going to be a lot of times if you’re running Mutilate where you can’t get back onto the target, and you just simply die because we lack Prep, we lack Blind; we lack stunlock. And because of that, we’re more likely to be kited. So be aware of that. You can try Mutilate.

Gear

Now we can actually talk about the gear. Here, and I have it planned out here, and just like with PvE, where you want a lot of gear, it’s going to be coming from the raid. As you can see here, we’re going to want three of the tier set, which are going to be the Twilight Slayer's Cowl, the Twilight Slayer's Tunic, and theTwilight Slayer's Footpads. And then the other gear you have is going to have high stamina.

I’m going to have gear with stamina on it. So we have the Glowing Fetish Amulet, the Sentinel Pauldrons, which have 10 stamina on them, which are wonderful. The Sergeant’s Cloak, which has a ton of stats, which are really nice. The Bindings of Serra'kis, which have high armor and high stamina, a little of AP mixed in there.

You’ve got to have the Epic Gloves, which are the best you can get in the entire game. So you can get them if you want to make them as a leatherworker. In a quick note, you actually don’t need to be a skinner to be a leatherworker because leather is really cheap at the auction house, and you can get to level 100 with Leatherworking extremely fast without dropping even a gold. So make sure you have enough WoW SOD Gold. Then you can craft the gloves pretty easily. Then we have the Honed Darkwater Talwar, which if you’re running Sinister Strike, then you would get this one.

If you’re not and you’re running Backstab, then you can run the Chipped Bite of Serra'kis. And if you’re running Mutilate, you can run the Chipped Bite and Meteor Shard. If you’re not, you can also use Gusting Wind on the off-hand, which is another raid weapon. Cord of Aquinus, high stamina, high agility, significant item. The Troll's Bane Leggings, which you can replace with the Leggings of the Fang if you don’t want to buy those. That’s what I’m currently using, the Leggings of the Fang.

The tier set item, of course, Protector’s Band, which you get from Ashenvale Honored Rep. And The Seal of Wrynn, which you get from the Stockades questline. Avenger's Void Pearl, which is another quest item from the last boss of the raid. Finally, the Insignia of the Alliance, which you buy from a PvP vendor when you’re ranked two.

The only proper weapon you can get that’s valuable in any way is the gun with six agility on it from the raid. That is going to be the gear set you go for. You’ve been raiding every lockout, and you’re getting a lot of gear. If you’re not, what you can do is find gear that has of the monkey on it that’s near level 25, and any gear that has stamina on it. But don’t undervalue just pure stamina items because having a lot of HP is really important in PvP and might actually be better than just having pure damage stats. Outside of that, that is going to be my main build and gear for PvP in phase one.

Rotation

Let’s actually talk rotation about how to play Rogue in PvP. What you’ll be doing is you’re going to be running double Crippling Poison unless you’re grouped with a Feral Druid or a Shaman who has Wind Fury active, in which case you don’t want to put anything on the main hand; you can just put Crippling on the off-hand. Whenever you’re engaging in a fight with another player, you can use Shadow Strike to close a gap on them if you would like. But if you have time, you’re going to want to use Gouge if you’re running the Sinister Strike build or Ambush with a dagger build because it’ll give you a lot of opening damage for very little energy, and it’s very good for winning a fight if you can do it like that.

Then you want to do the complex rotation of spamming Sinister Strike or Backstab over and repeatedly because that is where most of our damage is going to come from. For the finishers, I actually will go for a five-point Slice and Dice. It’ll allow me just to DPS race the enemy faction until I win the fight. But if you’re fighting somebody with high armor or you’re in a 1v1 situation, you could actually try to go for a bleed because armor did not reduce. So a five-point Rupture on a single target is actually quite good as well. The last thing you’re going to want to take notice of is you’re going to want to save kick for Penance whenever you fight priests because they’re super OP, and everybody’s playing one at the moment.

Whenever you’re fighting a priest, always try to pull energy a bit. That way you have time to kick them and you don’t let them get a heal off. Other than that, all the runes we have with Shadowstrike, Quick Draw, Between the Eyes, you’re going to want to use those to close the gap or lock down a target without having to blow up a five-minute cooldown like a rogue would have to. We’re a very gear-dependent class right now. But if your gear is good and you have some raid gear, then go out there and PvP and just stick onto the enemies like a raid boss and kill them and DPS them down.