Mists of Pandaria Classic Combat Rogue Stat Priority

The stat priority for Combat Rogue is as follows:

1. Agility
2. Hit Rating to cap (7.5%)
3. Expertise Rating to cap(7.5%)
4. Haste
5. Mastery
6. Critical Strike

Hit and Expertise caps are your number one priority when gearing your Rogue. If an ability misses or is parried than you will not only not deal any damage but you will also not generate Combo Points and waste your Energy. Hit and Expertise are both soft capped at 7.5%, this soft cap meaning your abilities will no longer miss but any additional Hit rating will increase the chance of your Melee attacks hitting as you can still miss Auto Attacks at 7.5%, but reaching the Auto Attack hit cap of 27% is much less valuable than increasing our other secondary stats.

Agility increases the damage done by all of your damage dealing abilities as well as your auto-attacks. Each Agility equals 2 Attack Power and increases our Critical Strike chance. You will rarely have to choose Agility over any of the secondary stats listed here but generally speaking your goal while gearing is to maximize the amount of Agility available on your gear.

Haste our best secondary stat as a Combat Rogue by a considerable margin. Haste both increases the rate at which we regenerate Energy allowing us to cast more Combo Point generating and spending abilities and it also increases the frequency of our Auto Attacks, which as Combat is a major part of our damage profile. The increased Energy regeneration allows us to get through our Bandit's Guile quicker leading us to more time spent in Deep Insight resulting in considerably more damage dealt by all our abilities and more uses on our cooldowns like Shadow Blades thanks to Restless Blades. The increased Auto Attack frequency is also a considerable factor as Combat as Combat Potency will be a considerable part of our Energy generation throughout an encounter. It also increases the amount of our Mastery: Main Gauche procs as each Auto Attack will increase the likelihood of this proccing. 425 Haste rating grants 1% Haste.

Mastery: Main Gauche is your Mastery as a Combat Rogue. This causes your main-hand weapon attacks to have a chance to proc an additional 120% main-hand attack on the target granting is a virtually free damage increase as we will already be Auto Attacking your target. Mastery Rating does not increasing the effectiveness attack but increases the frequency at which it occurs. This pairs incredibly with Haste Rating due to the increased frequency in Auto Attacks. 300 Mastery rating grants 1% Mastery.

Critical Strike is our least valuable secondary stat as an Combat Rogue. Critical Strikes cause both our auto attacks and abilities to deal 200% damage which is a considerable increase to your damage but unfortunately pales in comparison to the other two secondary stats as various effects like Restless Blades and Combat Potency will have major impacts on our rotation allowing us to generate considerably Energy and Combo Points as well as reducing the cooldown of some of our major damage dealing abilities like Killing Spree. Consider Reforging it towards another stat especially to reach Hit/Expertise caps and maximize your Haste.