Combat is the Rogue's dual-wield damage spec. Energy refills at a steady 10 a second in Forever, and you spend it on Sinister Strike for combo points, then on Slice and Dice, which gives 30 % attack speed, and Eviscerate. Adrenaline Rush doubles that refill for 15 seconds, and Blade Flurry adds 20 % attack speed and copies your hits onto a second enemy. Forever's new Hack and Slash gives each weapon type its own bonus, so your race and weapons go together. On a one-minute single-boss fight the Combat build in this guide reaches 761.3 DPS, 13th of 25 damage specs.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• Short fights. Adrenaline Rush comes back every 5 minutes, so it covers a quarter of a one-minute fight. It is worth 8.5 % of your damage there and 3.3 % on three minutes. That puts Combat 13th of 25 on a one-minute single-boss fight.
• Two or three bosses. For 15 seconds, Blade Flurry deals every melee hit again to a second target, Eviscerate included. On a one-minute fight against three bosses those copies are 24.1 % of your damage, and Combat ranks 12th.
• Your abilities are easy to hit-cap. Sinister Strike and Eviscerate stop missing at 9 % hit. The pre-raid set reaches 13.2 % with Precision and the Devilsaur pair's 2 %, so every point of hit past that goes to your white swings.

Weaknesses

• Long single-boss fights. You get one Adrenaline Rush and one Cold Blood in three minutes, and nothing like an execute phase. Combat falls to 20th of 25 on a three-minute single-boss fight. Blizzard's designers have said Rogues should do the most single-target damage in the game on a standing boss, so either the beta data or our model is still short of what they intend.
• A Shaman's totem does a large share of your damage. Windfury Totem's extra swings are 17.4 % of it on three minutes. Without a Shaman in your group, that share is gone.
• Weaker poisons than Classic. Forever's Instant Poison VI hits for 76 to 100 (Classic's hit for 112 to 148), and a stack of Deadly Poison V ticks for 23 instead of 34. Deadly Poison does 4.5 % of your damage and Instant Poison 3.1 %.

On every fight

Combat climbs on one-minute fights and against several bosses, where Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry, your potion and your sapper cover more of the fight. On long single-boss fights those cooldowns sit idle. Pick a fight in the table and every page of the guide follows it.

Races

On a one-minute single-boss fight the Horde's top race is Undead. Undead win every fight but one through Touch of the Grave: 5 % of your hits drain 5 % of your maximum health from the boss as Shadow damage, 2.8 % of your damage on three minutes. Orcs take the one-minute fight against three bosses, where Blood Fury's 10 % attack power lands on top of Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry.

For the Alliance, Human and Night Elf trade places. Human Sword Specialization is 2 % crit with a sword in either hand, and the Human set holds one: Humans lead the two- and three-minute single-boss fights. Night Elves lead on one minute and against three bosses for one or two minutes. Their Elune's Light, 10 % crit for 15 seconds, covers a quarter of a one-minute fight. Dwarves trail on most fights: Mace Specialization needs a mace, and most Alliance sets hold a sword and a dagger.

What a Rogue brings to the raid

Expose Armor is the Rogue's raid debuff. At 5 combo points it takes 2,250 armor off the boss, the same as five stacks of a Warrior's Sunder Armor. The two don't stack, but in Forever a Warrior can keep pressing Sunder Armor for threat on a boss that has yours. The benchmark keeps one of them on the boss from the pull, so the rotation never casts it. If your raid makes you its Expose Armor rogue, expect less damage than this guide shows. The simulator doesn't measure that cost.

Changes

Each row is a re-run of this build after an update to the simulator or to Forever's data. Each update is described on the Updates page.