Rogue Solo PVE Technique

Solo PVE Technique

In solo play, your goal is to dominate your opponents and kill them as quickly as possible to avoid taking more damage than necessary. You’ll usually want to enter a fight stealthed and use a stealth opener like Cheap Shot, Ambush, or Garrote; from there, you can build up your combo points with your combo moves and get your finisher in when appropriate. Gouge and Backstab work well as a kind of combo-squared, with Gouge awarding you a combo point and allowing you to get behind the enemy for a Backstab, which adds another combo point. Most normal mobs will drop quickly after getting in an opener and a four or five combo point finisher.

Unfortunately, rogues are unique for a melee class in that they have few ways to heal themselves and can’t take much damage due to their armor limitations. Thus, you’ll need to be careful not to draw extra adds. You do have a limited amount of crowd control in the form of Sap, but this will force you out of stealth mode when you use it, meaning that any other nearby mobs will automatically attack you. (The Improved Sap talent can help here, if you’re building yourself up along the Subtlety tree.) Your ability to stealth yourself should help you bypass groups of mobs, though, and size up the opposition before finding a solo mob and taking it down.

When you reach level 20, you’ll be able to start buying and using poisons. These are typically coated onto your weapon, and will last for 30 minutes or until you use up the given number of charges. Each time you hit an enemy after coating your weapons, you’ll have a chance (usually 20% or 30%) to dish out the poison effect, which can slow your enemy, increase their casting time, deal extra damage, and so on. Poisons are a large part of your versatility in later levels, but they can be expensive, so you may want to use them only when you’re sure that they’ll be necessary to take down mobs.

Rogues are one of the best casting-control classes; they have a number of abilities that will let them stun an enemy or interrupt their spellcasting. Kick, Gouge, and Kidney Shot all work well for these purposes, so be sure to use them when you spot an enemy preparing to cast a heal!

If worst comes to worst, rogues are among the best classes at escaping from danger. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed, you can attempt to Gouge an enemy to distract them (in the case of small groups) or Vanish to disappear completely (in the case of large numbers of foes), then either run or Sprint to get the heck out of Dodge.