Mists of Pandaria Classic Combat Rogue Rotation and Cooldowns

If you have not already, we recommend reading the Spells Summary page first. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.

Combat Rogue in Mists of Pandaria has a very simple rotation that is based entirely on maximizing your Deep Insight up time while also using as many Combo Point spending abilities as possible to benefit from Restless Blades and get your cool downs like Adrenaline Rush and Killing Spree off of cool down as quickly as possible.

Your poison usage as an Combat Rogue is quite simple, we will always use Deadly Poison as our lethal poison. For our non-lethal poisons you have a few choices to make Leeching Poison will cause a small amount of self-healing and will often be the best choice but also consider Mind-numbing Poison to slow casting speeds on your target and Crippling Poison to slow the targets move speed.

As a Combat Rogue your focus is to maximize your up time on Deep Insight and reduce your cool downs as much as possible by casting Combo Point spending abilities to benefit from Restless Blades while also focusing on maximizing our Slice and Dice and Rupture up time. Bandit's Guile causes you to gain an 'Insight' buff, this buff progresses after the fourth cast of either Sinister Strike or Revealing Strike, our goal is to progress through these insights as quickly as possible to achieve Deep Insight for the maximum damage increase offered. We will also focus on using Revealing Strike to increase the effectiveness of both our Combo Point spending abilities and our Sinister Strike ability. Highlighted below is a list of priorities to follow in order to maximize your DPS as a Combat Rogue.

The priority order is as follows:

1. Keep Deadly Poison active;
2. Make sure to prepot using Virmen's Bite;
3. When exiting from Stealth open with Ambush;
4. Cast Killing Spree if you will not Energy cap during it. Keep in mind it is more important to get as many uses as possible of Killing Spree so using it on cooldown will be recommend. When it happens to line up with Deep Insight its great but not worth the risk of losing an extra usage of Killing Spree to make sure it lines up every time.;
5. Keep Slice and Dice active at all times;
6. Keep Revealing Strikes buff active at all times;
7. Maintain Rupture on the target ideally with 5 Combo Points
8. Cast Eviscerate if you are at 5 Combo Points and Slice and Dice and Rupture are already active;
9. Use Vanish when in Deep Insight and cast Ambush;
10. Cast Sinister Strike to generate Combo Points

Your AoE rotation as a Combat rogue will depend largely on the number of targets you are currently fighting.

When fighting against 2-7 enemies following the single target rotation highlighted above with Blade Flurry active is our goal. Make sure to get Slice and Dice active as quickly as possible to benefit from the spread auto-attack damage. Do not worry about casting Rupture while fighting multiple targets as it will not benefit from Blade Flurry. Make sure to use Killing Spree if its available!

1. Keep Deadly Poison active;
2. Keep Blade Flurry active;
3. Keep Slice and Dice active;
4. Cast Killing Spree on cooldown;
5. Keep Revealing Strikes buff active at all times;
6. Cast Eviscerate if you are at 5 Combo Points and Slice and Dice is already active;
7. Cast Sinister Strike to generate Combo Points.

When fighting 8+ we want to make sure Blade Flurry is still active but we will shift from our single target Rotation to now casting as many Fan of Knives and Crimson Tempests as possible. Neither of these abilities benefit from Blade Flurry but our auto-attacks do so we want to keep it active. Keeping Slice and Dice active is our single highest priority though but any excess combo points should be spent on Crimson Tempest.

1. Keep Deadly Poison active;
2. Keep Blade Flurry active;
3. Keep Slice and Dice active;
4. Cast Killing Spree on cooldown;
5. Cast Crimson Tempest if you are at 5 Combo Points and Slice and Dice is already active;
6. Cast Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points

Combat Rogue has several cool downs that greatly increase our damage dealt, they can be a bit tricky to pair with other cool downs due to the nature of Restless Blades but highlighted below is a breakdown of how each functions and how best to use them.

Killing Spree causes you to attack your target seven times in quick succession dealing damage with both of your weapons and increasing all damage dealt during it by 50%. This is ideally paired with Deep Insight but the biggest increase to your damage will be using it on cooldown. Trying to save your usage for a later state of Bandit's Guile can result in missing a use that will be a considerable loss over the damage gained by being in a later stage of the buff.

Shadow Blades causes your auto-attacks to deal Shadow damage and causes your Combo Point generating abilities to generate an additional Combo Point. This is a great tool to both maintain Slice and Dice and Rupture but also allows for us to cast more Eviscerates with the bonus Combo Points. If possible pair this with Adrenaline Rush to maximize the amount of Combo Point generating abilities cast while it is active.

Adrenaline Rush increases your Energy regeneration by 100% and your Attack Speed by 20% for 15 seconds. This ability greatly increases the amount of Combo Point generating abilities we can cast and allows for quicker cycling through the Bandit's Guile insight stages. It is important to use this ability when you are confident you will have up time on the target for its entire 15 second duration. Try to pair this with Shadow Blades if possible to benefit from both the increased Attack Speed for more Shadow damage but also the increased Combo Point generation.

Vanish causes you to instantly return to Stealth letting us once again cast a powerful Stealth based ability. Your ideal use of Vanish is when you already have all of your buffs and debuffs like Rupture and Slice and Dice active on the target and you will not exceed the Combo Point cap by casting a Stealth ability.

Smoke Bomb obscures anyone inside of it from outside targets and reduces damage taken by 20% while inside of the Smoke Bomb. This ability has many unique interactions with various mechanics in dungeons and raids so make sure to coordinate with your group when this is best utilized.