WotLK Classic Combat Rogue Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

If you have not already, please read the Spell Summary page. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.

Your main role as an Combat Rogue is to simply put out as much damage as you can, with massive amounts of burst damage available during Adrenaline Rush windows.

Your rotation will vary slightly depending on whether you have a Warrior in your group or not.

If there is a Warrior in your group or another Rogue applying Expose Armor, then you will not need to use it yourself.

In this case, your rotation will consist of juggling the Slice and Dice buff and Rupture debuff. Maintain both of them while using Sinister Strike to generate Combo Points.

If you have any additional Combo Points and do not need to refresh Rupture, and are in a rare situation where you do not have energy to spend on Sinister Strike but you should rarely be using Eviscerate.

If you do not have anyone else to apply the Armor debuff, you will need to simply maintain the buff and use your Combo Points on it rather than Rupture or Eviscerate if it is going to fall off. Ideally, if you do not have the glyph, you should use it and maintain it with 4 or 5 Combo Points, but if the buff is about to drop and you have fewer, you should use it anyway.

If you have the glyph for Expose Armor, you should apply it with 1 or 2 Combo Points.

If you are fighting 1-2 enemies, you should continue using your single-target rotation, with the exception of prioritizing Eviscerate over Rupture while Blade Flurry is active.

If you are fighting 3 or more enemies, or 2+ enemies if you are using the Glyph of Fan of Knives, you should use Fan of Knives, and should use almost all of your Energy on this. The only other thing you should aim to maintain is Slice and Dice, but do not try to keep 5 Combo Point versions of it active. Simply refresh the buff when you can, regardless of the number of Combo Points available.

The most important cooldown for Combat, at least in cleave situations, is Blade Flurry (BF) and the timing of it.

If you are in a cleave situation, you want to unload all of your damage potential into your BF window, including Adrenaline Rush. This will see your damage soar due to the damage from Blade Flurry.

In most other situations, such as single-target fights, you simply want to bundle your cooldowns together for higher burst potential.

When you use Killing Spree, you will not be able to use any other abilities for the next two seconds. If you use it as the same time as Adrenaline Rush, you may reach maximum Energy and potentially waste Energy regeneration. A good cooldown sequence is Blade Flurry, followed by Killing Spree, and then Adrenaline Rush.