WotLK [PvE Guide] Rogue weapon choice of cuttlery for all the situations

[Rughar123]

Hello. If you are looking for the guide how to play Combat or Assassination rogue in PvE in WotLK, there are very good guides here on warmane forum already. I decided to write a small guide about weapons preference since its not very clear from guides here how weapons really works and what to use in the end.

This is me https://armory.warmane.com/character...daeron/summary you can meet me on the Loarderon server.

I assume you play on Loarderon or Icecrown warmane server where you are progressing Icecrown Citadel and Ruby Sanctum instances (and have access to weapons from there).

Essential rules

Optimal choice of weapon with the Instant Poison.

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A weapon with the Instant Poison has a higher chance to aply this poison per weapon hit. However the weapon itself has less hits per second regard to its longer swing time. These two facts together gives you the same average Instant Poison proc per second no matter of your weapon speed for your autoattacks.

The situation is different for your abilities. Abilities like Sinister Strike or Mutilate which may proc Instant Poison applied to your weapon, has a higher proc chance for this poison, however your speed rate of ability cast (how often you cast the ability) do not depend on the swing timer of your weapon. It means slower weapon has better Instant Poison rate for your abilities.

Since Instant Poison rate does not matter on poison procs from autoattacks but do matter on your procs from abilities, it is better to use the slowest possible weapon on your Instant Poison weapon.

Optimal choice of weapon with the Deadly poison.

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Deadly Poison has the same proc chance no matter of weapon speed so the situation is much easier here. The fastest weapon is better becouse it simply has more swings thus more chances to aply the poison.

Optimal choice of weapon for your autoattacks dmg.

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Faster weapon usually has proportionaly lower dmg per swing. This means weapon speed is not important here and best choice is simple the highest weapon ilvl.

Optimal choice of weapon for your ability dmg.

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Some abilities (Sinister Strike or Mutilate) has its dmg derived from the base dmg of your weapons. These abilities do more dmg with slower weapon but you dont cast less of them becouse of higher of swing time. So for the same reason as it is effective for your Instant Poisons, the best choice is the slowest possible weapon.

The Fan of Kinves exception.

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This ability is more powerfull if you use it with daggers. It causes 105% of weapon dmg instead of 70% if its used with daggers. This means daggers may do the same dmg output or even better for the Fan of Kinves ability even they are faster weapons. That means you have to reconsider conclusion from the previous section. It is still better to use the slowest possible weapon, however the dagger with speed 1.8 counts as 2.7 speed weapon

1.8 * 105 / 70 = 2.7

which makes it better than many slow weapons that are usually 2.6 only.

Conclusions

Now when you know how the weapon speeds affects severeal dmg outcome, lets talk about conclusions and what weaspon actually choose in typical situations.

Before I start I need to mention that I assume of using Instant Poison always applied on your main hand and Deadly Poison always applied to your offhand unless it is explicitely said there is some change about that.

Combat rogue, single target dps.

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The talent choice between Hack and Slash talent (boosts your axes and swords) and Close Quarter Combats talent (boosts your fist weapon and daggers) is quite simple. The first talent choice for axes and swords has slightly better bonus. And (more importantly) the best ingame axe is simply better than the best ingame fist weapon. Note daggers are out of the game for your main hand since there they are too fast and dmg output from your Sinister Strike ability too low for any dagger in the game. So you are comparing

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=5...ordaeron-kings
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=50692/black-bruise

where Havoc axe is the winner (better dmg + better stats with compare to the Black Bruise ability) for your main hand.

For your offhand, there is a battle between

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=5...geborne-waraxe
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=50621/lungbreaker

There is completely same raw DPS, completely same stats the only difference is weapon speed and weapon type. Dagger is slighty better becouse sligtly higer speed (=> more Deadly Poisons and more Combat Potency talent procs) however, axes are still more polular over fist weapons and deggers still becouse of the Havoc and Black Bruise comparison and becouse Hack and Slash talent is sligtly better than Close Quarter Combats talent. The Scoourgeborne waraxe is the winner for your off hand.

Combat rogue during Killing Spree.

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This ability is specific becouse it strikes the enemy not just with your main hand but with your off hand weapon too. Again, slower weapon do more dmg but the same amount of hits becouse I am talking about an ability (not autoattacks). For that reason its better to swap your offhand weapon for some slower weapon which could be

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=5...oodvenom-blade

or another Havoc axe. After your Killing spree ends, swap back your offhand to the faster axe. This part is questionable by many pro rogues. The dps gain is quite straight if you are talking abut the ability dmg output, however there is a cost becouse weapon swap causes reset of your autoattacks timer when you swap weapons back. Its not very clear if this cost is higher than dps gain from the ability itself. But it is clear that any possible boost of your usual Killing spree with something like Blade Flurry definetly worth to swap for slower offhand weapon, if you cast Killing spree against multiple targets. The typical situation is Valkyres during the Lich King fight.

All in all it is better to swap for the slowest possible weapon for your offhand during the Killing spree ability.

Prepare the Instant Poison for your weapon you will swap as your offhand if you assume the targets will die relatively fast and you are more or less sure that you will use Killing spree against multiple targets. A good example is spikes on Marrowgar fight. But probably there is no other situation when it is good idea to do it. If you are true minmaxer, you can prepare two variants of slow weapon for your offhand. One with Deadly Poison when you cast Killing spree against single target and one with Instant Poison when you cast Killing spree against targets which are dying fast.

Combat rogue during Fan of Knives

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The concusion is really the same as in Killing spree. It is recommended to swap into the the slowest possible weapon for your offhand if you spam Fan of Knives. It is not recommended if you just cast one FoK only but it worths when you spam AoE dmg against higher number of targets.

There is one special weapon

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=2...f-the-sun-king

which is a good offhand variant, but only against 15+ targets which barely happen. It has use in Ulduar season but that is not the case of Iccecrown citadel anymore

Assassination rogue, single target dps.

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There is a limitation for assassination talent tree that Mutilate can be used when you have daggers as your both MH ond OH weapons. For that reason the weapon choice is very straight and it is the slowest possible dagger for your MH and the fastest possible dagger for your OH. An obvious choices for that are

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=5...-thousand-lies
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=50621/lungbreaker

Assassination rogue during Fan of Knives

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Here is a completely different strategy becouse of talent Focussed Attacs talent in assassination tree. As I told already in essential section,1.8 dagger perform better than 2.6 fist weapon becouse of better efficiency of Fan of Knives when used with dagger. However your main hand weapon still have an Instant Poison which means 2.6 fist weapon will outperform 1.8 dagger for your main hand. In that case it is better to swap for

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=50692/black-bruise

The ability of this Black Bruise fist weapon is growing stronger with increasing number of targets. Becouse more targets there are the more proc chance you have for the Necrotic Touch. So for the main hand, the clear winner is the Black Bruise fist weapon.

For your off hand it is better to swap the slowest possible dagger which could be one of these two

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=5...-thousand-lies
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=12590/felstriker

The first choice of LK weapon is an obvious choice of the best 1.8 dagger in the game. The second choice of Felstriker is really tricky. It is a low level weapon from classic. Low dmg. No stat bonus. But the spectial ability here is so powerful that it worth to use it for assassination rogue if the number of your targets is 8+. This is actually very real situation in Ruby Sanctum Heroic fight against Halion and its Living Embers ads. The power of Felstriker has synergy with Focused Attacks talent from the assassination tree. Note you cant use Berserking enchantment for the Felstriker becouse the lvl of the item is to low. You can use Mongoose there.

The concusion is to use the slowest dagger or the Felstriker dagger for 8+ targets for your offhand.

Assassination rogue Fan of Knives openner

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There is a trick how to boosts your assassination aoe even more. No matter what is your offhand, use this main hand when you starts AoE

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=50641/heartpierce

with Deadly Poison. Yes this poison on main hand so you have Deadly Poison on both your weapons. Use the Heartpierce dagger for the first three Fan of Knives and then swap your MH to Black Bruise with Instant Poison as previous section says.

You do this for two reasons. First one is to build as fast as possible 5 stacks of Deadly Poison on your multiple targets. And the second reason is the ability of the Heartpierce dagger. Against mutiple target the chance of proc is quite high and also the buff for the energy remains on you even if you swap the Heartpierce dagger for other weapon.

Dead ends.

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This is just a section describing some ideas which may looks like a good idea but they are actually not. If you are part of the classic wotlk community you may observe some of these videos https://www.youtube.com/@SimonizeShow focusing on playing rogue. I agree with many interseting ideas there but I need to mention that classic wotlk is now on Ulduar progress (the time I wrote this guide) so they have no access for the icecrown citadel loot yet. That means if you are thinking of any use of

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=4...eel-spellblade
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/item=3...s-paper-cutter

they have no longer use in any possible situtation on warmane becouse iccecrown loot is simply too good over them.

Before I continue with AoE hybrid build it would be nice to mention what it means. Its a talent build described here

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent...1xrp11qf521xrr

It is a special build for the AoE dmg. Its not optimised for the huge horde of ads similar to Whelps in Onyxia fight but it has very good performance in fights against 10-12 targets which is Ruby Sanctum Heroic 25.

Since this is not a guide how to play rogue but only tips about what weapons to use, I am going to say what is different with this build. Essentialy it uses the same weapon choices as assassination described above for any situation with one exception:

Hybrid AoE rogue, single target dps.

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Same as in assasssination single target section but use the Black Bruise fist weapon for your MH even for single target.

[ZanarkanLaw]

All useful stuff, especially as a new rogue player, thanks for the effort!