Rogue Combat Abilities

combat abilities

Gouge
Causes 75 damage, incapacitating the opponent for 4 sec, and turns off your attack. Target must be facing you. Any damage caused will revive the target. Awards 1 combo point.

This move is possibly one of the dagger Rogue’s most important abilities. The stun is guaranteed to last 4 seconds, 5.5 seconds with talents, and provides the Rogue with an opportunity to easily get behind the enemy for a backstab. However, in PVP it has far more utility than to simply guarantee positioning. The gouge can be considered a combo linker, with its improved time you can regenerate 60 energy, more than the cost of the gouge, enabling you to extend your stun lock or damage combos just a little farther. Gouge is also extremely useful to give you breathing room, time to think even, or just a chance to run away out of range. It can even be used just to cancel spell casts or temporarily incapacitate someone when you are fighting 2 enemies. The usefulness of this ability is ultimately up to the creativity of the Rogue. As an added bonus, this attack adds a combo point, which assists greatly in stun lock combos. It's important to note the 10 second cooldown of this ability, however, so when you time your stun locks or whatever you use it for make sure you allow the stun to linger at least long enough to have it back up when you’ll next need it.

Kick
A quick kick that injures a single foe for 80 damage. It also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 5 sec.

An incredibly useful tool against casters, kick gives the Rogue another counter against timed casts by being able to cancel it outright for a minimal energy cost. Kick not only cancels the spell being cast but also makes it so that all spells of that school are instantly set to a 5 second cool down. What this means that, if you kick a mage casting a fireball he will be unable to cast any fire spell for 5 seconds. However, he will still be able to cast ice and arcane spells. Similarly with priests, you may kick cancel a shadow spell only to find them still capable of casting a heal. Be weary of casters with offensive spells from multiple schools, particularly mages and warlocks because some players who are acquainted with the Rogue’s abilities may try to trick you by casting a different spell, allowing you to kick them, and then casting from the school they want. Even trickier druids and shaman will occasionally cast their hearthstone, pretending to be casting a nature spell.

Blade Flurry
Increases attack speed by 20%, in addition, attacks strike an additional nearby opponent. Lasts 15 sec.

This attack is another defining characteristic of the combat Rogue, as it can only be obtained through a talent high up in the combat tree. With its low cool down, this ability will find considerable use both in PVP and PVE since it will effectively double your total damage output for 15 seconds, albeit spread out between 2 targets. While that might seem to be more a PVE advantage, the effect will be extremely noticeable in group PVP situations where the enemies usually have significantly less hit points. Ideally you should pair this ability with your most damaging combos so that the total damage is also dealt to the additional target.

Adrenaline Rush
Increases your energy regeneration rate by 100% for 15 sec.

The 31 point talent for the combat tree, this ability provides huge ability use potential for 15 seconds. Essentially the 20 energy tick becomes a 40 energy tick, which plainly means you can sinister strike once every tick without running out of energy. The important thing to keep in mind about this ability is that any energy tick over your maximum is wasted energy, so it's important to keep your energy at 60 or lower throughout the duration of this ability. Do this either through damage abilities like sinister strike or various stuns and DOTs. This ability simply provides the Rogue with the means to “go nuts” with his abilities, which is where a lot of creativity will come into play.

Feint
Performs a feint, causing no damage but lowering your threat by a large amount, making the enemy less likely to attack you.

First off, it should be stated that this ability only has an effect in PVE combat. So if you have a preferred hot bar setup for PVP this ability doesn’t belong on it. What this ability does is permanently lower your threat by a set amount. This means that once used the monster is more likely to drop aggro on you in favor of someone else, or will be less likely to aggro you in the first place. However, this ability can be blocked or dodged just like any other, in which case if you were relying on this threat reduction you may need to ease your damage output to prevent getting aggro.