Gearing Up while Leveling Up
Rogues wear leather and gain attack power from Strength, Agility, and Attack Power. So any leather with any combination of those stats plus Stamina is beneficial. Since Rogues are not spellcasters there will never be a time where you’ll want to downgrade your gear to cloth. At higher levels seek out Hit Rating and Expertise (level 60+) along with Critical Strike Rating. These three stats can help push you over the edge in combat and make you one monster of a killing machine.
Expertise lowers the chance an enemy will dodge or parry your attacks (one point of Expertise decreases the chance by 0.25%). Hit Rating determines the tiffany chances your melee and poison attacks will actually hit. These two stats can make a world of difference against enemies of equal or slightly higher levels. If your attacks connect most of the time then you’ll be able to really strike them down.
Heroic and Raiding Gear to Look For
Let’s talk weapons first, since Mutilate and Combat require two different weapon types. Combat Rogues will want to look for swords or axes which currently have the best talent (Hack and Slash). You’ll be able to easily find swords in heroics, on the vendors, and all over the place. You can do Mace Specialization, but it’s all up to you. Mutilate specs will need daggers,buy wow gold, for obvious reasons. In Combat, Rogues will need a slow main hand and a fast offhand weapon, while Mutilate just needs a fast offhand.
Combat Daggers/Fists has not been viable for a long time, so if you’re looking to snag some daggers then head over to the Mutilate side of things. That isn’t to say that you couldn&rsquo,wow gold;t do it, but as you get better gear the bonuses from going Swords & Axes or Maces will be much higher. You can also read our combat article for more details.
As for gear, you’ll want to look for and socket Attack Power, Haste, and Hit Rating for Mutilate builds. Combat is a bit more forgiving on what to focus on, so you’ll want to gear and stock for Hit, Armor Penetration, Attack Power, and Haste. Melee DPS leather from the emblem vendors, your tier pieces, and most Melee DPS leather will automatically have most of these stats on it.
As for what emblem gear to pick up, you can’t go too wrong with just grabbing the tier 9 232 set and mixing in some 245 offset pieces from the vendor (shoulders are a good choice) then doing heroic ToC and The Frozen Halls to pick up more offset pieces/trinkets/etc. That’s by far not the optimal path, but the gear itself will provide enough stats to dominate in heroics and for entry level ToC/ICC raiding.
Enchanting
Enchanting is very subjective and is based heavily on your spec. If you look at the above best stats you may find yourself wanting to enchant fortiffany something else. The following is a general baseline that most Rogues will find viable no matter their build.
Head: Arcanum of Torment (Knights of the Ebon Blade)
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Axe (Son’s of Hodir)
Chest: Powerful Stats
Legs: Icescale Leg Armor
Feet: Icewalker
Bracers: Greater Assault (or any form. of Attack Power)
Gloves: Crusher (or any form. of Attack Power)
Cloak: Haste
Weapon: Berserking
Gems
In our gearing up section we went over the best stats for each spec. Those stats are what you should gem for. To recap:
Mutilate: Attack Power, Haste, and Hit Rating
Combat: Hit, Armor Penetration, Attack Power, and Haste
Hit rating is important until you hit poison cap (and still important even past there), you can see our basics guide for more info on hit caps. You can NEVER go wrong with Attack Power and Haste no matter what build you have. Armor Penetration has very good returns in Combat specs.
Relentless Earthsiege Diamond should be your meta. socket. At 21Agility and 3% increased critical strike damage you can't really go wrong.
____ Tears are good for hitting the blue requirement on the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond. Nightmare Tear is the highest level example.
Consumables
Flask: Endless Rage (Attack Power)
Food: Fish Feast, Poached Northern Sculpin, Blackened Dragonfin, or Mega Mammoth Meal. They all offer 80 attack power.
Potion: Speed Potions are pretty good, although healthbuy wow gold potions give equivalent DPS if they keep you alive.
Glyphs
Combat
Sinister Strike
Killing Spree
Eviscerate
Mutilate
Hunger for Blood
Mutilated
Tricks of the Trade or Fan of Knives
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Vanish
Glyph of Safe Fall
