Maximising DPS when raiding as a rogue (WoW)
Posted by blink on Tue, 14 Aug 2007.
Unfortunately, rogues offer little to a raid, other than pure DPS. Sap may be used as a crowd control, but that’s pretty much where your utility ends, so to become a better rogue, all you have to do is improve your DPS
Poisons:
Usually you would take Instant poison on your mainhand, and deadly poison on your offhand to maximise DPS. If you are mutilate, you may wish to use 2 poisons that give a debuff, eg deadly poison X2, but I dont think this is necessary if you have the correct poison talents.
Positioning:
When attacking a mob from the back, your attacks cannot be blocked or parried, so standing behind trash or bosses, regardless of your build, will increase your DPS.
Finishers:
Slice and Dice should always be active, most builds will take improved slice and dice from the combat tree, this should probably be your first finisher to use, theres no need to build up 5 combo points, 2/3 should do to begin with. Of course, attacking faster will increase your DPS a huge amount, as a huge % of your DPS is from white damage.
Rupture should also be active contantly, on bosses mainly. It gives damage that is unaffected by armour, so your DPS shouldnt slump when meeting a boss with huge armour.
Envenom/Eviscerate should be used when your other finishers are active. These give a nice burst of dps, and it may be worth considering using envenom if you are mutilate specced and have the increased poison apply rate, or if you find eviscerate to be doing poor damage against bosses. I am yet to experiment to see if more DPS is gained from using eviscerate and letting deadly poison tick over, or using envenom and re-appling the poisons.
Another note is that if you are maxing your possible DPS, you might need to watch your aggro. Its advisable to feint before unloading some cooldowns, for example Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry, as the last thing you want is being beat down by a boss because you spammed all your cooldowns at once. Vanish can be used to wipe aggro in some circumstances, which resets your aggro, allowing for you to DPS as hard as possible for the rest of the fight, without worrying about aggro.