Forever Combat Rogue Melee DPS Guide

The not so subtle of the Rogue specializations, Combat still offers a unique and exciting way to play one of World of Warcrafts most iconic damage dealers. Combat focuses heavily on dealing as much damage as possible with combo point generating abilities like Sinister Strike and combo point spending abilities like Eviscerate.

The focus of this guide is to cover your gameplay experience through Level 20, the first level cap of the World of Warcraft Forever beta. This is written primarily with leveling and PvE in mind, so if your goal is to PvP it is likely to be useful but not optimized specifically for that experience.

Listed below are some rough scores as to how Combat Rogue will perform in some specific categories with the Level 20 cap in mind. Please remember that Combats strengths and weaknesses will change significantly in later levels.

Overall Performance Leveling Dungeon Utility Mobility

Relatively Simple With Considerable Damage Output

At this very early stage of the leveling process Combat rogue is an incredibly simple class to play and to optimize damage. Your rotation will consist primarily of two buttons, Sinister Strike and Eviscerate with a handful of utility abilities to help you out should you find yourself in danger, but despite the fact this rotation is incredibly simple you will also deal considerable damage making it quite easy to deal with most enemies, especially if you find yourself with a hard hitting sword.

Solid Leveling Experience

As highlighted above, you will be dealing a lot of damage compared to most classes especially at this leveling bracket. While as a Rogue of any specialization you lack the ability truly self heal it is rare outside of fighting a group of mobs or an elite that you will need it as you will be able to quickly dispatch of most enemies. You are also equipped with many utility spells like Evasion or Gouge that add another trick up your sleeve should you need to disengage.

Struggles to Offer Anything Unique

Outside of being one of the few early game classes with a true interrupt in the form of Kick Rogue struggles at this level to offer anything unique in a group setting. You are likely to offer competitive DPS and the ability to apply short form crowd control but do not provide the same kind of buffs and utility as some other melee DPS at this level.

Lacks Many Late Game Tools

While abilities like Gouge and Kick are incredibly useful, your personal utility at this level struggles. Later levels see highly impactful abilities like Sap and Blind but in the early level ranges you will not offer much outside of your ability to do considerable damage.

Powerful Cooldowns, Lack of Consistent Boost

Sprint is one of the very few mobility cool downs available to any class at this early stage of the game and is incredibly powerful at not only traversing the map but quickly allowing you to disengage from unfavorable encounters. Rogue does however lack a consistent mobility boost like travel form from Druids but it is hard to discount how powerful of a tool Sprint is especially at these early levels.

Please keep in mind that the leveling tips and information listed below is assuming that you are participating in the Level 20 capped version of the World of Warcraft Forever beta, so we are missing a considerable amount of abilities and talents that will later greatly impact the way Combat is played.

If you decide to play Alliance for your Combat Rogue, Gnome is likely to be the default choice. Eureka offers a massive boost of damage for your next three abilities allowing you to quickly deal with enemies. Escape Artist is also an incredibly powerful tool especially at lower levels when we are lacking abilities like Vanish. Being able to remove and gain a brief immunity to slowing/snaring effects will make a massive difference in sticking to your target in both PvE and PvP.

If Horde is more your preference, then Orc is likely the best choice for your Combat Rogue. Nearly ever racial ability for Orc does something to make your experience smoother as a Rogue, and especially as a Combat Rogue. While not super common throughout the leveling process Axe Specialization provides increased Critical Strike chance if we end up using an axe. Blood Fury provides an on demand increase to our Attack Power, making it even easier to quickly deal with enemies. Shatter Curse grants a brief immunity to Curses and Banes while also reducing our incoming Magic damage taken allowing for even more up time. Hardiness reduces the duration of Stun effects allowing us to remain active on our target.

Up time is king. The biggest mistake people make while leveling is focusing too heavily on what the optimal way to gain experience is. Your focus at all times should be on constantly gaining experience, so maximizing your up time is your absolute number one priority.

In agreement with the first point, do not hesitate to use cooldowns. Abilities like Evasion are great to save for difficult monsters or elites, but it is important to make sure you are trying to use your cooldowns on cooldown. Doing so allows you to more quickly either defeat your opponent or minimize time you have otherwise spent having to eat food to regain your health.

Keep your poisons active. This may seem like a silly or obvious point, but do not forget to keep your poisons active, in World of Warcraft: Forever poisons both have a duration and an amount of charges, so if you are consistently fighting enemies you are a lot more likely to run out of charges of poisons on your weapon than you are to reach the end of their duration.

You can have two Primary Professions in WoW Forever, with the two ideal picks, especially at this point, being be Skinning and Leatherworking.

Skinning is a relatively simple profession; pick up a skinning knife and use it to harvest leathers and materials from all types of beasts and monsters you find throughout Azeroth. These materials you gather are a key component to many of your crafts with Leather Working so being able to find your own supplies will greatly reduce the cost to make many of the new and exciting recipes added in World of Warcraft Forever.

Leatherworking is a bit more in-depth. Leatherworking allows you to make leather gear that can help strengthen your character for your journey through this new version of Azeroth. One of the largest differences we have learned about World of Warcraft Forever is the inclusion of hundreds of new crafting recipes so there are undoubtedly going to be many great items you can craft throughout your leveling journey that will not only bolster your characters performance but likely be able to add utility to your groups.

It is also critically important to pick up First Aid, which is a secondary profession. As a Rogue of any specialization you lack the ability to heal yourself so being able to bandage can sometimes be the difference of surviving an encounter or not.

The goal of the talent build listed above is to maximize your ability to deal damage. At Level 20 the options are quite limited and there are some choices we have made to ignore talents that offer us more defensive stats, specifically Dodge and Parry. At the level bracket we are currently playing at it is unlikely that they are ever to be necessary.

Improved Sinister Strike is our first choice, reducing the cost of our most used ability Sinister Strike allowing us to more quickly generate combo points to spend on a finishing ability like Eviscerate.

Next is Improved Eviscerate which increases the damage dealt by our Eviscerate ability. Eviscerate will be the primary spender of combo points so increasing its damage dealt means we can more quickly dispatch of our target.

Precision increases your chance to hit the target, missed attacks, and abilities deal zero damage. Minimizing our chance to miss is the single largest way you can ever increase your damage output.

Puncturing Wounds is not only a massive increase to the critical strike chance of our Backstab ability, but also gives a chance to generate an additional combo point. Your single largest limiting factor while leveling a Rogue is the amount of energy you have available so any chance to gain a free combo point will greatly increase your active time.

The Rogue DPS rotation at this level is incredibly simple, begin each encounter in Stealth and open with Ambush, then your primary focus is casting Backstab if you are able to position yourself behind the enemy. If not, cast Sinister Strike to generate combo points to eventually spend on Eviscerate or Slice and Dice once we have reached 5-combo points. Listed below is a rough order of priorities to take into consideration for each encounter.

It is also incredibly important to understand Energy. Energy is your primary resource as a Rogue to use abilities, you have a set amount of energy that is constantly regenerating. In World of Warcraft Forever your energy bar is constantly refilling, so your goal is to never allow yourself to remain at a full energy bar, thus wasting the opportunity to be gaining more energy.

Combo Points are the resource that allows you to use several skills. You have abilities that generate combo points like Sinister Strike and abilities that spend combo points like Eviscerate. Abilities that spend combo points become stronger based on the amount of combo points that are spent on them. In World of Warcraft Forever your combo points will persist on a target even if you swap to another, but you cannot at this point transfer your combo points from an existing target to a new one.

1. Make sure Instant Poison is active on both of your weapons before entering combat.
2. Enter Stealth, use Ambush to exit stealth and begin the encounter.
3. Cast Backstab to generate combo points if you are able to get behind your target, if not cast Sinister Strike
4. If your target is able to survive its full duration, at 5 combo points cast Slice and Dice.
5. If Slice and Dice is active, or your target will not live long enough for the duration of Slice and Dice and you have 5 combo points cast Eviscerate

And it is crucial to remember even though they are not true damage dealing abilities, spells like Gouge and Kick have massive impacts on combat, being able to incapacitate your target or interrupt spell casting will do a massive part in both mitigating incoming damage but also improving your groups odds of survival.

There is at this moment in time not much information on what gear will be available in World of Warcraft Forever, so it is impossible to compile a true list of things to look for. Listed below is a stat priority to help you decide what to look out for to optimize your damage.

Weapon damage is king as a Rogue. Many of your abilities have multipliers directly based off of your weapons damage so your primary focus when deciding on if an item is an upgrade or not should be the weapons damage. A massive part of your damage is also your auto attacks so having a harder hitting weapon will also amplify each auto.

Hit Chance is crucial especially while leveling because your attacks do zero damage if they do not land. In a leveling context, hit chance is even more valuable as the level difference between you and your target has significant implications on your chance to hit. Being able to consistently land your attacks can be the difference between being able to kill a higher level monster or not.

Agility is your primary source of Attack Power which increases all of your damage dealt by not just abilities but also auto attacks. Agility also gives a slight increase to your Critical Strike chance.

Critical Strike greatly increases your damage, dealing 200% of a normal attack, which makes this an incredibly valuable stat.

Strength increases your Attack Power, but unlike Agility does not improve your Critical Strike chance. This makes it a great stat, but not something we will prioritize.

Stamina increases your health. While being able to survive is very important, it is not a focus in gearing as your primary role in most content will be dealing as much damage as possible. We only need as much health as it takes to survive, so we will not focus on maximizing our stamina.

It is impossible at this time to know what all consumables will be available to us in World of Warcraft Forever but this section will quickly be updated as the Information becomes available.

There are however a few key things that we know you will need in your adventures through Azeroth. As a Rogue you lack the ability to self-heal so it is important to have at least a couple of stacks of food in your inventory to regain your health between encounters. Bandages from first aid will also help to both mitigate downtime between fights or even save you mid encounter.

Sellin

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Sellin, a former top 10 US raider and current season and several time Gladiator, long time WoW Player and passionate about all things Warcraft and Theorycrafting. You can follow him on Twitter and watch him on Twitch.

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