How To Improve As Outlaw Rogue — Shadowlands 9.2.5

Since all of Outlaw's damage is tied to resources, it is important to waste as little of them as possible. You should make sure you do not find yourself being Energy capped or casting Combo Point generating abilities when at maximum Combo Points.

Another big downfall is the incorrect use of temporary buffs that might affect your rotation. While your Sinister Strike has a chance to grant you Opportunity procs, you might not want to use them immediately. You should always make sure to not over-cap your Combo Points before using it. If you are specced into Deeper Stratagem and already have 5 Combo Points, you would not use your Opportunity proc, instead casting a finisher before using Pistol Shot in order to not overcap Combo Points. The same logic applies to all your finishers when you have Broadside active.

The only requirement for using Adrenaline Rush correctly is to not use it when you are already very close to capping energy. In these cases, you will want to dump energy for 2-3 global cooldowns, and then use Adrenaline Rush.

The same concept applies to all your other abilities that have a cooldown. Ghostly Strike, Between the Eyes, Blade Rush, and Dreadblades should all be used on cooldown as much as possible, as you would otherwise waste the benefits of your Restless Blades cooldown reduction.

Depending on your Covenant and Legendary choices, your priorities might shift slightly. For example, as a Venthyr Rogue you do not want to use Blade Rush during Flagellation unless you are unable to cast Sinister Strike.

When playing Weaponmaster you do not want to use Opportunity procs unless you are below ~60-70 Energy. Being talented into Quick Draw means that you should consume your Opportunity procs immediately.

When playing Kyrian with Invigorating Shadowdust, you will want to slightly delay Vanish if your other cooldowns are already available to benefit from the cooldown reduction.

With Blade Flurry being on a 30-second cooldown, but only having a duration of 12 seconds, it is vital that you do not accidentally use this cooldown at the end of an AoE pull. Since its cooldown is reduced by both Restless Blades, as well as True Bearing, it might be better to hold onto it as the remaining enemies are about to die. Otherwise, you run the risk of using it and being unable to generate and spend Combo Points during its duration while you are between pulls. The next group of enemies will then see you with Blade Flurry still on cooldown and you will spend the first 5-10 seconds recharging it while doing almost no AoE damage.

It is impossible to correctly play and optimize a Outlaw Rogue without using Raidbots to sim your own character, there are simply too many variables involved to intuitively figure out what gear to wear and so on without simming it first. Generally speaking, a simulation should be the first and final say in the gear you end up wearing for any given situation.

On top of this, simming is now very easy with no need to understand SimulationCraft APLs or installation yourself. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn, and the Raidbots website. Below you can find a video on how to sim your own character using the website.

When it comes to identifying and improving your mistakes, we strongly recommend the website WoWAnalyzer — it will analyze your logs and give you a report detailing how you did on the problems above and more.