Season of Discovery Combat Rogue Tank Talents and Runes

At level 50 we have many more options with the talent points available, while Adrenaline Rush is a great option we opt to spend our talent points in both the Subtlety and Assassination tree on some other talents like Opportunity and Relentless Strikes that make threat generation much consistent over the course of an encounter. This build is focused primarily on doing as much Damage as possible and generating as much threat as possible.

• Gloves — Mutilate
• Pants — Blade Dance
• Chest — Just a Flesh Wound
• Waist — Shadowstep
• Feet — Rolling with the Punches
• Head — Honor Among Thieves
• Wrist — Unfair Advantage

Mutilate is a great choice to maximize the amount of damage we deal to maximize our threat output. Main Gauche is another great option for this slot but at this point with the content available the focus on maximizing threat generation outweighs the added avoidance from the Parry rating that Main Gauche provides.

Blade Dance will be our primary combo point spender as a Tank Rogue, with the focus on being mitigating as much damage as possible this is a great way to maintain active mitigation. It also works great paired with Rolling with the Punches and Just a Flesh Wound in situations where we are not able to avoid an attack.

Just a Flesh Wound is essential as a Tank Rogue as it greatly reduces the amount of damage taken while Blade Dance is active, reduces your chance to be critically hit by 6% and massively increases the threat generated by all of your abilities. It also allows us access to the ability Tease which acts as our taunt.

Shadowstep is an incredible mobility cooldown that teleports you behind your target and increases your movement speed by 70% for 3 seconds. As a Tank it is crucial to maintain as much uptime as possible and this is a great tool in a situation where you may have lost aggro on a mob running to another party member or just closing the gap to maximize up time. AoE threat Rogues single greatest weakness, even with Blade Flurry so should you find yourself in a situation where consistent AoE is required definitely switch to Shuriken Toss.

Rolling with the Punches increases your health whenever you Dodge or Parry an attack, this creates a great buffer for when you are unable to avoid incoming damage or may be facing a spell caster you are unable to interrupt. This rune synergizes incredibly well with Blade Dance as the more you are able to avoid the more uptime you will have on your bonus health.

Honor Among Thieves greatly increases the amount of combo points you will have access to allowing you to more easily maintain Blade Dance and Slice and Dice. While the extra energy granted from Combat Potency may yield more DPS if you find yourself in a group with classes that do not often Crit the combo points generated from Honor Among Thieves allows smooth out the rotation and allow for easier maintenance of your Honor Among Thieves and Slice and Dice buffs.

Rolling with the Punches is a great passive damage increase. As a Rogue tank you will always have a considerable amount of Dodge rating thanks to the amount of Agility found on gear. Carnage is another great option but finding the combo points to maintain Blade Dance, Slice and Dice and the Rupture you would need to activate Carnage can be difficult to manage for what may not even be a damage increase depending on your Dodge chance.

More engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Rogue.

Riposte while not all enemies are able to be disarmed Riposte is a great tool both to generate threat and lessen the damage output of an enemy that can be disarmed.

Blade Flurry increases your attack speed by 20% and your attacks will strike an additional nearby enemy. AoE threat is the single largest issue as a Tank rogue so the added cleave from this ability greatly helps resolve this. It also pairs incredibly with Adrenaline Rush as you will be able to use even more abilities thanks to the added energy generation while Blade Flurry is active.

Opportunity greatly increases the damage dealt by your primary energy spending ability Mutilate, this also pairs incredibly with Improved Backstab which greatly increases the Critical Strike chance of Mutilate.

Relentless Strikes gives you finishing abilities a chance to return 25 Energy allowing you to cast even more Mutilates.