Rogue tanking question

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

so . . SoD, rogues can be a tank. they seem pretty viable at the higher levels by the looks of forums and what I hear. so a few questions

  1. can rogues tank lower level dungeons as they level up, or are they reliant on tier gear to modify threat.

  2. if not reliant on tier gear modifiers, is it doable in greens? or do you need to heavily overgear

  3. what types of rune setup would be used? some of them look pretty cut and dry but not all seem clear. my thoughts look like this

helm - all energy and cp gain. Honor among thieves and focused attacks feel like they would do great at later levels when crit becomes consistent. with combat potency being good at the lower levels? focused probably relies on a FoK build?

Chest - Just a Flesh wound is absolutely required. basically a tank stance.

waist - shuriken toss seems a clear choice here as well. 5 target hit with 5cp on a 25s cd. that can be used at range, getting blade dance up before you even reach melee.

legs - blade dance. also the only choice here paired with the chest.

feet - rolling with the punches. max health increase? idk if that also heals you for 6% or just increases max. if it’s also a heal then it’s very good, if it’s just max health it kind of feels akward unless the duration is very long.

gloves - main gauge, your Single Target threat generator. while I like saber slash more, the forcing one dodge (especially on bosses) is considerable. and lowering energy cost on SS, while also making it and evis do 50% more dmg. paired with some of the other CP/energy generators would create a fluid ST rotation in ST. the issue looks to be AoE

wrist + back - this is where I’m kind of uncertain.

option 1: Crimson tempest + carnage - this pair seems to be pretty solid. especially if you use honor among thieves with a heavy crit party allowing crimson tempest to be high on uptime without jeopardizing blade dance combo points. a self sustaining tank so long as rupture does enough damage.

option 2 unfair advantage + Crimson tempest - this one just makes no sense for a pair. CT + BD don’t take a lot of combo points to maintain. unfair advantage paired with your helm slot would generate more than you can use, and I don’t see any other AoE finisher. and CT without the increased healing on it doesn’t seem that effective?

Option 3 FoK + unfair advantage - you would be so overloaded with combo points you can’t spend them fast enough. and without Crimson Tempest as a spender since it’s tied to the same slot as FoK, you would struggle to use them all. also seems reliant on the helm slot with focused attacks and high density to generate enough energy for FoK, as it seems very energy intensive.

the issue, is synergistically a rupture + carnage makes the most sense. but FoK doing one auto from each weapon onto each target seems like it would cause the most damage and also threat. and unfair advantage turns your high doge/parry into offense with reflect, but also generates combo points. Combo points that you have no spender for, so it kind of conflicts. maybe the boots slot could become the way to bridge it? move carnage to the boots slot maybe? but idk if CT is still usable when FoK seems so required. and adding CT + FoK together likely imbalances dps rogue. so hard to say

2

At level 60 you can get the tier 1 tank two piece bonus and that makes aoe tanking a lot smoother. It does something for fan of knives to make it cost less energy and do 100% more threat

3

how good is it at lower levels? they also don’t have tier amplifying their damage yet, but a 100% increase is considerable

when playing as a tank, i favor leveling as one.

4

Don’t know, I play a warrior tank. That’s the extent of my rogue knowledge is that post above. I have a rogue dps tho but that’s a different day

5

very. Generally if a rogue spec can be a tank i’ll play it. vdh for retail, riftwalker in rift (before it became p2w). so it’s certainly on the cards for me. so long as the rotation isn’t cursed. FoK hits everything, can’t have it + CT at once may become janky? not sure till i play it. it’s ST looks to be fleshed out at least. right now i’m reading the very long rogue tank document. but it uses terms I don’t know. like MG and SSL, while not explaining what either of those are beforehand.

if it’s reasonable I’ll play it. if not I’ll play something else. and i’ll determine that long before max level or BiS. how something plays when leveling and gearing has a fair bit of weight for me. if it requires a tier set to even function comfortably baseline then that’s a design flaw. tier sets can enhance but shouldn’t be the requirement for functional gameplay

edit: SSL is saber slash and MG is main gauge. so different rotations (MG being SS related)

6

Rogue tanks WERE the meme spec until about phase 4.

Rogue tanks are very viable now. People still don’t give them the time of day. But rogue tanks continue to prove people wrong.

Rogue tanks have the best physical single-target avoidance/mitigation. Rogue tanks take almost no damage against physical bosses. Healers get bored. They’re the best tanks for hateful strikes against Patchwerk. Plus, they have really good single-target threat.

They are also now the best scourge invasion boosters now too.

Don’t let people that have never played rogue tank tell you rogue tanks suck.

1 Like
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If you have a higher level, run the Scourge Invasions for Remnants of Valor, send them to the rogue alt and corpse run to Light’s Hope. Assuming you can talk to the vendor below 60, you can exchange 50 Remnants for 1 Agent Dawn valor token. Five of these will get you a shoulder glyph with a single set bonus (ie the 2pc tier 1 bonus)

AFAIK, the shoulder glyphs have no level requirement for the gear or the player level.

8

I haven’t played as tank but I ran ZF with a rogue tank while leveling and the group was so strong we ran full Mara twice afterwards. He was average-geared. Seemed strong from that experience.

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9

Hello, I’m a main tank rogue in SoD. Early on as most people mention, we lack AoE Threat. Endgame, we still do, but it’s better than leveling once you have access to two piece Core-Forged (you may end up doing some gear swaps for specific purposes, like right now I have 2 piece Core Forged Bloodfang and Draconic Bloodfang Belt/Bracers for this purpose until I complete my Bonescythe set for Naxx).

Our shoulder enchants (souls) also really add some spice to AoE Threat as you can get access to 4 min CD off your Adrenaline Rush, which allows you to spam FOK for good aoe threat every 1 minute, otherwise Blunderbuss is your bread-and-butter snap threat for single target and up to 5 mobs. Keep in mind though some mobs have hit boxes that are too large for this ability (like dragons), so in some cases you’re better off to use Crimson Tempest if you want to dump some CP for that (it’s rare I do). You can also solo the spider boss in Kara with CT + Carnage self-healing, which is fun.

For raids, we’re excellent single target tanks, as we have great avoidance, and best single target threat of all the tanks. We’re probably almost the worst at aoe threat, but not down and out once we hit raid tier. In dungeons leveling, you’ll just end up doing a lot more tab targeting than you’ll want to.

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so the class design requires tier to function? i’ll level as normal rogue then. which is fine, but a little sad (raid leveling seems to be less of a thing right now, with excursions being a thing).

no I don’t already have a 60 to gear me. Curious though, if you take blunderbuss then you can’t take stuff like CT or FoK. is the threat it does sufficient enough to not need more AoE threat? tab target threat can get weird with how rogue CP work. feels like you’d want to use a finisher at 3 cp before tabbing to the next (Redirect has a 10s cd).

when I was doing deadmines earlier. que’d as dps but did a little tank stuffs while we waited on the tank. and the main issue I seemed to run into was energy starvation (no hat yet) when trying to maintain both Crimson Tempest and blade dance. Shuriken toss cooldown is very long. if it was at 10 seconds I don’t think there would’ve been any issues. one toss to gather the group + Blade dance. and subsequent uses to get up Crimson Tempest.

11

To be honest, Crimson Tempest isn’t the greatest for AoE threat. You’re better off using blunderbuss in about 99% of cases as it also doubles for huge single target threat on bosses, especially with 2pc Core Forged (which is really simple to get when you hit 60). As for before 60, you might now be better off tanking either one of two ways:

Don’t spec into Just a Flesh Wound and just go Slaughter from the Shadows and Cutthroat. You do so much damage while leveling, you’re more than likely to pull threat using this. I know this was the case the second time around with a rogue. You can still take Blade Dance for mitigation, plus the added 100 AP from the ring rune from defense spec so long as you’re defense capped.

Alternatively, they have made some good changes to Main Gauche, so it’s probably become a bit more viable, you’ll Main Gauch for the buff to sinister strike, which will reduce it’s cost, then do tab Sinister Strikes for threat generation. Running JAFW with this, you should be pretty well off with threat between this and Blunderbuss.

The only thing to note, is sometimes you have to get clever with LoS’ing pulls to group them up in some dungeons, so you can maximize the potential of blunderbuss.

I wouldn’t rely on Saber Slash for tanking if this is what you are doing currently.

12

i’m not relying on saber slash. I went with mutilate as i had all the backstab talents in the tree by then, and it gave 2 CP. so i was using throw shuriken to get BD active, and mutilate > crimson tempest. things died too fast for CT to really do much.

Once we were all there (tank included, and i was back to backstab setup), nothing lived that long. we went from pack to pack in less time than my stealth would be off cd (if i used it), much less the 20s on shuriken throw or 15s on blunderbuss. which is when I came to the conclusion that i may not be able to tank at low levels, but we didn’t really even need a tank with how fast stuff died. just a healer and someone to take the focus on bosses.

I can see taking threat with a backstab setup. but wouldn’t that struggle on AoE? without a threat modifier, even tabbing backstab on 2-3 targets with a blunderbuss would that hold? I guess maybe i’m too caught up on CT or FoK as the agro tool. since CT does do more than blunderbuss but takes time and they can be used almost whenever I need, and don’t have to wait 15 seconds for. FoK did feel like it hit very weakly, though I didn’t have poisons at the time yet.

I have tried MG just in the open world. I don’t mind how it plays, so long as I’m willing to add another keybind (if I do play it, i’ll likely macro it with SS and take the potential hit to a missed dodge before raid). Didn’t like Saber Slash, for the same reason that mutilate seemed to cause issues. the cost of 40 energy seems pretty steep. where MG if tab targeting between (or backstab with 30 energy less) doesn’t seem to have that issue. as the energy costs kind of match your ticks, so it felt easier to maintain.

I havent’ really fully tanked a dungeon yet. the little stint i had of it, the AoE felt too slow for a fast paced run. But probably ok for one with 15-20s between pulls, rather than like 5-10 seconds between where not even my energy has recovered (we were just chain puling, including entire rooms of like 10 mobs). so most of what I’ve done is chain pulling mobs in open world while questing/grinding to get the feel for it.

13

Rogue tank is perfectly playable right from the get-go for dungeons/level up raids and is extremely powerful as well. The main piece of kit they get at 60 for tanking QoL is just a 100% threat increase on cloak rune (T1 2P) but that is often not needed while leveling as just your standard threat bonus + aoe does the trick.

Build wise I am a proponent of Sub spec as serrated blades and prep are insanely underrated talents and ghostly strike dodge doesnt get nerfed by the chest rune wording (as it is an aura not agi or gear based) but for QoL you absolutely need relentless strikes/SS discount. I would go 11/2/X with the CT/Carnage build as you level and then duck back to assass for increased SS damage when close to 60 (19/2/30 final build)- this gives you the ability to solo pretty much any dungeon once you are an appropriate level for it just from the self-healing (3/3 Serrated blades goes nuts).

Things to remember/weak points: Rogues biggest weakness (ironically opposite their dps specs) is openers, applying main gauche and blade dance and/or CT do not apply any meaningful threat on the button press itself so you will be often in a position of trying to get 2-3 seconds on your targets before the dps or using taunt on pull- this also means other tanks in raid will likely have momentary threat lead on you for bosses though your single target will catch up around 8-9seconds in. Rogue also suffers from having mostly avoidance-based defense (though there are phys reduction armor equivalent builds at max) so they are weak to stun- recommend carrying stoneshields and/ or FAPs if you can afford em.

Rune TLDR: You keep pretty much everything static except Cape/Bracers/Belt and swap them around based on what your current talents support (PK single target, Shuriken dungeon, shadowstep for knockback or charge required bosses) and then usually Unfair advantage/blunderbuss for combat builds vs carnage bleed build for sub. If you dont plan on dpsing I highly recommend making dual builds (18/33/0 & 19/2/30) so you can have access to anything in the kit you need just through talent/rune swaps. FoK & Focused attacks is admittedly the highest dps aoe build however it suffers from having a pretty hard requirement of 6+ targets for decent refund- it can be pretty nice in certain spots but you often won’t use this combo for more than a single pull.

14

Thanks for this bit right here. I’ve been interested in trying rogue tank since they got some more tools to play with in p4. Got a friend that swears up and down that rogues can’t tank dungeons and I kinda want to prove them wrong.

15

Rogue tanks can definitely tank dungeons lol. But…you just need a few tools to do it is all.

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16

If you go Engi, you could probably make good use of bombs, tho it may get expensive.

That would also be fun due to the linkage between rogues (ninjas) and throwable explosives as a matter of general history and RPG lore.

17

useful information overall.

right now I’m a combat build for leveling as dps. 2/17/5 rn i think (70% crit from mob to mob is nice, so long as I remember PK consumes 40% of it)? leveling through incursion dailies while i prep for retail raid/m+ season, leaning heavily into anything that pushes backstab forward. I do eventually plan to dps as well so one of my specs will be tank, the other dps. though I won’t be able to have dual spec for quite awhile, maybe close to 60. Retail prep should be done in a day or two, which will put me close to 40 at mount from dailies. if I level mostly through incursions i’ll make a 2nd rogue sometime later to test the leveling dungeons a bit more thoroughly. I don’t even know classic dungeons well enough to know tanking routes soo, theirs that little challenge to approach. Likely more forgiving than HC though

I do agree on the sinister strike cost reduction. took those points early on for stuff like sabre slash or MG. Which of those is better? I’m kind of leaning MG just because i can spread the SS around between targets easier. Roughly 1 global per 2 second energy tick (before helm energy procs). where SSL wants to be on one target, and the energy cost of it seems a bit prohibitive on changing targets. I was using mutilate at 40 energy for 2 combo points strictly because i had daggers, and improved dagger. Both because i can fronststab at 60% increased strength, but also alliance sword progression is nothing to write home about until 40+) but the SS energy reduction from MG seems like it would fit in nicely for spreading threat.

Engi i’d considered but first toon so not really at an influx of gold. I do have some that was gifted for me, but that’ll likely go to mount. Given the inflation i saw when looking at the AH (weapons that are like 50s in HC classic are 3-4g+ in SoD for greens at low levels). I’m assuming engi isn’t an option for me for a good while. which is fine.

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Honestly even for leveling I would recommend sub. Carnage/CT/3/3 Serrated means the average mob will heal you more than it damages you (maybe not inc elites)- enabling you to pretty much chain pull an entire zone while questing or doing incursions as long as you keep blade dance/bleeds up. Also 11 points in Assassination for refund on fishers is basically required for levelling as rogue- I would prio those and the 2 on SS discount regardless of what talent build you intend to go for since basically all of them include those talents.

Re: MG vs Saber- MG will be better in just about every circumstance for the sheer versatility, when you have access to T2.5 it also becomes a 2-target ability which you will come to really appreciate. Saber Slash CAN be used on fights but they usually need to be bosses where you can stand still to tank and spank for 1.5+ minutes (though it will likely see a comeback at really high seals in a few weeks as tanks become able to use dps T3 dps 4/6P)

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ya after leveling with it a bit and testing things out (tis quite nice that respec costs dont’ scale too extremely fast). i’ve found what I’ll go with for now. as I can’t reach both serrated blades and relentless strikes.

My intent right now is

combat 11+ picking up 3/5 LR | 2/2 imp. SS | 5/5 Deflection | 1/1 Riposte | work down towards Blade flurry after assassination. going into dual wield spec, endurance, and imp sprint.
assassination 11 - 5/5 malice | 3/3 imp slice n dice | 2/2 murder | 1/1 Relentless strikes.

Likely respec shortly after that for the serrated + deadliness + Relentless strikes. Or is it better to just respec once i have serrated + relentless without deadliness? With the 11/11 sin/combat and playing MG. This gives me a baseline 15% parry 3% dodge before agi or evasion is even taken into account. The forced parry on MG gives me a free riposte, and a counter attack with unfair advantage. and turning Evasion into an offensive and defensive cd to pull 3+ mobs back to back. while also limiting my downtime. that’s before I even add blade dance into the mix

Kind of took hardcore classics build where you play around riposte, and added in the energy economy and forced parry with MG. Swords are also fairly cheap on the AH as everyone is playing daggers, letting me keep up on weapons easier and not blocking me from daggers should the drops come available. it’s doing more than the pure backstab build was for me dps wise, and considerably more tanky with less downtime. gonna do some chain pull tests with that same build and carnage as well. feel it’d do well

edit: does better with carnage over unfair if i wanna do 2-3 mobs at once. but unfair better at bursting a single target