Mists of Pandaria Classic Combat Rogue Talent Builds

Combat Rogue has only a few talent choices to make unlike previous expansions. While talents have been greatly simplified and many of the effects of previous expansions talents have been made into passive abilities it is still incredibly important to understand each tier of talents and the options available to be best prepared for any given encounter.

Below is a rough breakdown of each choice available for each tier of Talents. In Mists of Pandaria you will unlock a new row of talent selections every 15 levels, starting at level 15.

This tier of talents is focuses on maximizing the benefit of your Stealth ability and augments some of your abilities while Stealthed.

• Shadow Focus reduces the Energycost of all of your abilities by 75% while Stealthed. This will be our default choice as the limiting factor on your damage out put especially at lower gear levels will be the availability of Energy and pairing this talent with Vanish and Preparation will save us a considerable amount of Energy throughout an encounter. As Combat the more Energy available means we can generate more Combo Points and having more Combo Points allows us to trigger Restless Blades more often resulting in more uses of our DPS cooldowns.
• Subterfuge causes your Stealth to break 3 seconds after dealing or taking damage as opposed to breaking instantly. This allows for more casts of Stealth abilities throughout an encounter. Unfortunate Energy can be a limiting factor making this talent a bit difficult to fully utilize.
• Nightstalker increases your movement speed by 20% while Stealthed and increases your damage done by 50% while Stealthed. While this is a considerable increase to our damage done again our primary limiting factor will be the availability of Energy so we will often opt for Shadow Focus instead, in a situation where you need to quickly kill a low health priority target this could be an option to consider.

This tier of talents focuses on ways to mitigate incoming damage in very different ways.

• Combat Readiness reduces incoming damage by 10% each time you are hit stacking up to 5 times. This is a great option that can help mitigate incoming damage but can at times be difficult to gain its full benefit.
• Nerve Strike causes the target of your Cheap Shot and Kidney Shot to deal 50% less damage for 6 seconds after the stun fades. This is a great way to mitigate outgoing damage in a situation where the target is able to be stunned but is a situational choice at best.
• Deadly Throw consumes Combo Point to deal damage, slow and interrupt the target. It is incredibly difficult to build Combo Point if you are not in melee range of your target so this ability has limited uses in PvE but can be quite helpful interrupting a ranged target or kiting in a situation where you cannot apply Crippling Poison.

This tier offers a few different ways to increase personal survivability.

• Cheat Death causes an otherwise fatal attack to reduce you to 10% of your maximum health and reduces damage taken by 85% for 3 seconds. This is an incredible way to avoid an attack that would otherwise kill you. Due to the nature of cooldowns Rogue has available like Cloak of Shadows this should be your default choice as the room for error this talent allows will allow you to take more risks and potentially increase your damage output.
• Leeching Poison can be used as a non-lethal poison causing your attacks to have a 50% chance to heal you for 10% of the damage dealt to the target. While this will yield a decent amount of healing throughout the duration of an encounter its often better to have a cooldown to mitigate large sources of incoming damage as very few encounters will have constant incoming damage.
• Elusiveness causes your Feint ability to reduce all incoming damage by 30% while it is active. This is another strong choice in a situation where you can plan out the incoming damage in an encounter. This also stacks with Feints existing damage reduction granting us 65% reduced damage taken from AoE abilities.

This tier of talents is centered around mobility and maximizing our uptime on the target through a few different options.

• Shadowstep instantly teleports you behind your target and increases your movement speed by 70% for 2 seconds. This should be your default choice due to its short cooldown and your ability to close gaps to your target instantly. It is important to know that this can also be cast on friendly targets.
• Burst of Speed increases your movement speed by 70% for 4 seconds and removes any slowing effects. This is another great option in a situation where you are constantly moving. When paired with Shadow Focus this ability also becomes nearly free.
• Cloak and Dagger causes your Ambush, Garrote, and Cheap Shot to teleport you behind your target. While this has more range than Shadowstep the Stealth requirement to use these abilities can make it difficult to use. Compared to the other two specs we will spend even less time able to cast abilities that require Stealth so the value of this talent is extremely limited and struggles to compete with Shadowstep.

This tier of talents increases the effectiveness of your crowd controlling abilities and allows you an entirely new way to stun your enemies with Paralytic Poison.

• Prey on the Weak causes the target of your Kidney Shot, Cheap Shot, Gouge, Blind, or Sap to take 10% more damage for the duration of the effect. This allows you to deal more damage against crowd controlled enemies and while its rare that we will be able to benefit from this any situation you can increase a targets damage taken by 10% will be a noticeable increase for everyone in your group.
• Paralytic Poison is a utility poison that causes you to stun your target upon reaching 4 stacks. While this extra stun can be helpful not many mobs are able to be stunned in Raids and this effect can be quite unreliable, so its value is quite limited when tools like Kidney Shot exist.
• Dirty Tricks causes your Gouge and Blind to now be free and no longer break from your periodic damage dealt by bleeds like Rupture or your poisons like Deadly Poison. This is a great tool for PvP as it allows us to use Deadly Poison without having to worry but in PvE its uses are quite limited.

The final tier of talents offers unique ways to increase your damage done.

• Anticipation causes any excess Combo Points generated on a target to be converted to a buff that stacks up to 5 times. Using any of your Combo Point spending abilities will then apply the Anticipation charges to the target granting you that amount of Combo Points on the target. This greatly simplifies and makes it considerably more difficult to waste Combo Points allowing us to cast more finishing abilities throughout the course of an encounter. As Combat the ability to cycle through even more Combo Point spending abilities to trigger Restless Blades is incredibly important so not having to worry about them especially when Shadow Blades is active is great.
• Marked for Death marks your target with a debuff, instantly generating 5 Combo Points on the target. If the target dies while this debuff is active it instantly resets the cooldown of this ability. While the instant addition of 5 Combo Points to the target is a great way to increase your damage done this ability will only really shine in a situation where you are constantly killing enemies and able to get multiple resets of the cooldown. As Combat these extra Combo Points are even more valuable due to their interaction with Restless Blades but again unless you are constantly killing enemies the benefit of this talent is quite limited.
• Shuriken Toss is a ranged attack that instantly deals Physical damage to your target. If the target is farther than 10 yards away it will cause you to start auto-attacking with these shurikens from ranged applying your currently active Lethal Poison and generating 1 Combo Point. This is an incredibly niche talent that will not have many practical uses as it will almost always be better to just close the gap between you and your target and resume your melee rotation.

Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria have had their power scaled down considerably, Prime Glyphs have been removed and we will now only have to focus on Major and Minor Glyphs. Major Glyphs will have considerable impact on your Damage and ability to survive an encounter while Minor Glyphs will mostly be for cosmetic and quality of life purposes.

As a Combat Rogue there is only one truly required Glyph and that is Glyph of Redirect. The reduced cooldown of Redirect makes target swapping much easier and with other changes made to Combat like the reworking of Bandit's Guile target swapping, which was one of your biggest weaknesses as a Rogue is made much easier. Listed below are some other Glyphs to consider to fill out the other two slots.

• Glyph of Cloak of Shadows causes your Cloak of Shadows ability to reduce incoming physical damage by 40% while Cloak is active, this allows us to mitigate even more incoming damage in a situation where you do not need Cloak to mitigate some type of Magical effect.
• Glyph of Expose Armor causes your Expose Armor ability to instantly apply all 3 stacks to the target granting you the full effect of Weakened Armor. This should be a default choice if your group does not have another source of Weakened Armor.
• Glyph of Smoke Bomb increases the duration of your Smoke Bomb ability by 2 seconds. The extra 2 seconds of damage reduction can be a make or break on some encounters so this is a great option in group content especially.
• Glyph of Feint increases the duration of your Feint ability by 2 seconds. In any situation where you are constantly using Feint this is a great option.
• Glyph of Sharpened Knives causes your Fan of Knives to apply 1 stack of Weakened Armor to any target hit. This can greatly increase the damage dealt to targets in AoE situations if you are with other physical damage dealers.

Minor Glyphs as mentioned above will only offer you quality of life or cosmetic benefits in Mists of Pandaria. Listed below are the options that will have impacts on your game play.

• Glyph of Blurred Speed causes your Sprint ability to let you walk on water while it is active.
• Glyph of Safe Fall greatly increases the effectiveness of Safe Fall.
• Glyph of Poisons increases the speed you apply Poisons to your weapons by 50%.