Rogue talents

Rogue talents are divided into the three trees: assassination, combat, and subtlety. While rogues are always high burst DPSers, the talents for them allow them to choose their own path to DPS. Assassination allows combo points to be gained fast and high burst damage, combat focuses on normal damage every second, and subtlety allows sneak attacks for high amounts of damage.

Rogue talent points always offer a way to increases damage output and enhance their survivability in some way, talents also increase melee stats for their better future.

Assassination
"A deadly master of poisons who dispatches victims with vicious dagger strikes."

This is a tree based on large amounts of burst damage, in contrast to the sustained DPS found in the combat tree. It makes your poisons less resistible and enables you to rack up more combo points in combat, allowing you to unleash more finishing moves. It's very effective end game in both instances and PvP due to larger, more frequent crits and more effective poison applications.

Combat
"A swashbuckler who uses agility and guile to stand toe-to-toe with enemies."

Whereas the other two trees tend to focus on openers and high burst damage, the combat tree focuses on consistent white (auto-attack) damage to provide sustained DPS. Rather than requiring stealth and relying on powerful openers, you can simply run up to most targets and quickly hack away at them. As such, combat tends to be the best tree for fast leveling, since you can move quickly from one enemy to the next with very little downtime instead of trying to sneak up on enemies.

It also features a great number of early skills such as Precision and Improved Slice and Dice that can complement other builds. In addition, while the two other trees are often limited to use daggers because of their dagger-requiring abilities, combat rogues may also utilize fist weapons, maces, swords and axes in good favor. Finally, because of the abilities Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry and Killing Spree, Combat is the best tree for producing AoE-damage and attacking multiple enemies at the same time.

Subtlety
"A dark stalker who leaps from the shadows to ambush  unsuspecting prey."

The subtlety tree complements rogues who like to stay in the shadows. The tree is based on moving fast and staying hidden while racking up as many combo points in the opening move as possible, and providing more options for escape when things go wrong. With Initiative and Premeditation you can open combat with 4 or 5 combo points racked up, giving you an excellent edge at the start of a fight. Patch 1.12 greatly improved the appeal of the subtlety tree with the addition of Serrated Blades and Deadliness, and the pre-expansion patch 2.01 introduced Shadowstep as a high level talent.

The subtlety tree is generally regarded as the optimal PvP and battleground spec for rogues, with many talents designed for sneaking up on players and stacking high opening burst damage to dispatch them before they have a chance to react. However, with the addition of Honor Among Thieves in 3.0, Subtlety has also become a desirable spec for DPS in dungeons and end-game raids.

= PvP =

Key talents
This section outlines talents to really look out for. You won't be able to get them all.


 * Nightstalker (Subtlety, Tier 1) reduces the movement speed penalty for Stealth.
 * Improved Ambush (Subtlety, Tier 1) grants bonus critical strike chance on Ambush.
 * Preparation (Subtlety, Tier 5) resets most ability cooldowns; e.g., enabling the use of Vanish two times in a single fight.
 * Improved Sinister Strike (Combat, Tier 1) decreases the energy cost of Sinister Strike.
 * Improved Slice and Dice (Combat, Tier 2) increases the duration of Slice and Dice, allowing rogues to maintain the buff at all times.
 * Puncturing Wounds (Assassination, Tier 2) increases the critical strike chance for Backstab and Mutilate.
 * Cold Blood (Assassination, Tier 3) guarantees a critical strike on the next offensive ability and grants 25 Energy.
 * Seal Fate (Assassination, Tier 4) gives you an additional combo point on critical strikes from abilities that give combo points.
 * Cut to the Chase (Assassination, Tier 6) allows Eviscerate and Envenom to refresh the duration of Slice and Dice.

Talent discussion
 Factual information on specific talents should be added to the specific talent page

 Discussion on Strengths and Weaknesses should be saved for the talk page