The Class : Rogue

Rogues are World of Warcraft's premiere melee damage dealer and especially effective in PvP. They have access to a wide range of special abilities, which depend on their constantly refilling pool of energy. Unlike other classes, such as the hunter who has the ability to deal physical damage from a distance, rogues must be in close.

The primary rogue class advantage is their ability to stealth, preventing other players from seeing them unless the rogue is very close and in a 180 degree arc in front of them or much lower level.

The primary rogue attribute is agility. For PvP rogues, stamina is needed for staying alive. For a rogue, agility is always preferable to strength or attack power. Agility gives both attack power and crit chance to a rogue, while strength only gives attack power. A rogue uses no mana, so intellect and spirit are completely useless.

At later levels, most rogue-oriented gear will also include a lot of Attack Power. Other gear bonuses sought by rogues are Crit, Hit, Haste, Mastery and Resilience. High Crit gives burst damage, High Hit increases chance to hit, mitigating dual wield penalty and enhancing dps, high Haste enhances an already high dps, high Mastery provides different bonuses depending on spec, and Resilience, which is only desirable for PvP, gives the rogue more ability to survive.

Rogues can only wear leather or cloth armor, are unable to use shields, and can only wield one-handed weapons (daggers, swords, maces, fist weapons and more recently, axes) and ranged weapons. They can dual wield one-handed weapons upon creation, in a way compensating for their lack of ability to use two-handed weapons. At level 10, they gain access to poisons that can be purchased from poison vendors. It is no longer required to complete a quest to gain the use of poisons.

Rogues acquire the passive ability to be able to Detect Traps , which can be very valuable in PvP situations with a hunter, or be valuable in dungeons where traps can be found, such as Icecrown Citadel (instance)

Rogues are best suited for players who like to sneak up on enemies and dish out large amounts of burst damage.