Mists of Pandaria Classic Combat Rogue Guide

Combat Rogue consistently performs as a strong melee DPS that offers a unique take on playing Rogue. As a Combat Rogue your goal will be to maximize the amount of Combo Points you spend to benefit from Restless Blades and maximize the amount of cooldowns you are able to use per encounter. Restless Blades reduces the cooldown of our Adrenaline Rush, Killing Spree, and Shadow Blades cooldowns which are all massive parts of our damage profile as a Combat Rogue. Combat will also task you with maximizing your Revealing Strike up time in order to increase the efficiency of your Energy spent.

Yes! All three Rogue specs in Mists of Pandaria can be played but Combat has by far the most unique due to the massive emphasis put on cycling through Combo Points to benefit from Restless Blades. In Mists of Pandaria Rogue now also has a considerable amount of utility it had been lacking in prior expansions. Smoke Bomb places an area of effect that reduces damage taken by all people within it by 20% while also obscuring those inside of the Smoke Bomb, this has unique benefits that can help entirely nullify mechanics from encounters. Rogues now also provide Swiftblade's Cunning which increases the Attack Speed of your group by 10%.

Strengths

• Scales incredibly with gear, especially Haste.
• Reworks to Bandit's Guile allow for easier target swapping.
• Powerful defensive cooldowns like Cloak of Shadows.
• Provide the raid with buffs in the form of Master Poisoner and Swiftblade's Cunning.
• Changes to Killing Spree making it easier to use single target.

Weaknesses

• Struggles at low gear levels.
• Lower damage output than the Assassination or Subtlety.
• Reliant on constant up time on a target.

As Horde, you have six different options; Pandaren, Troll, Orc, Blood Elf, Goblin, and Undead. Undead and Orc both offer unique benefits in the form of Will of the Forsaken and Blood Fury, but will fall behind Troll or Pandaren. Troll is our default pick due to the strength of Berserking. Haste is our strongest secondary stat by a considerable margin due to how it interacts with Combat Potency and Mastery: Main Gauche, so having access to a large amount of on-demand Haste is a no brainer. When fighting Beasts (quite prevalent throughout Mists of Pandaria) you will also benefit from Beast Slaying, which is just a flat 5% increase to your damage done when fighting a Beast. Pandaren offers Epicurean which doubles the effectiveness of our Food buff. While this bonus Agility is a considerable damage increase the benefits of Berserking slightly outweigh it and in any situation you are fighting a Beast the increased damage will put Troll firmly ahead.

As Alliance, you will have six races to choose for your Rogue; Gnome, Human, Worgen, Night Elf, Dwarf, and Pandaren. Similar to Horde Pandaren is a great choice and as Alliance is your best option by a considerable amount as the increased Agility granted from Epicurean will yield in the largest damage increase. Worgen is another race to consider but again struggles to compete with the bonus Agility provided by Epicurean and the nature of Critical Strike being a lower priority secondary stat than other options. Darkflight is a great cool down but can be made a bit redundant by abilities like Sprint or Burst of Speed. Human can be a solid choice due to Will to Survive but will fall behind in PvE.

1. Engineering — Engineering is a great choice as Combat. Synapse Springs is great to pair with our Killing Spree and Shadow Blades cooldowns, while the focus of the spec is maximizing the frequency of the casts of our cooldowns its also important to boost the potency of them when possible. Nitro Boosts can also be very situationally useful if you find yourself without access to Sprint allowing you to quickly close the gap between you and your target or possibly avoid an incoming boss ability.
2. Tailoring — provides us with Swordguard Embroidery which greatly increases our Attack Power. As Combat we will constantly be using our DPS cooldowns like Killing Spree due to their reduced cooldown thanks to Restless Blades so you will likely be able to pair a well timed Swordguard proc with one of these cooldowns to deal even more damage.

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