PVP Only: Gearing your rogue
So Burning Crusade is started and there’s a bunch of guides everywhere telling you to optimize yourself a ton, craft Dragonmaw, farm heroics, and raids, etc. but you are just here to enjoy rogue for the PVP side of things with a big lack of time to spend in dungeons to grind gear and reputations. What’s the plan?
In this guide, we’ll develop a bit more what strict PVP players must do once they hit level 70.
Last update: July 07 by Bigbizzle
Farming and using your honor and arena points
If you plan to be a full PVP rogue, then you are going to farm your gear through two activities:
– your Season 1 gear parts (4 parts at least) with arena points (around 8250 points for 5/5 sets and 3750 points for weapons (MH: 2625 and OH: 1125)) which brings you more resilience, and a bonus of +10 energy that is very very needed.
– and your Season 1 off-set in battlegrounds.
Then, if you keep farming honor, you’ll be able to buy more set pieces while farming your arena points if you want, but they might be replaced in the next weeks so keep this at the bottom of your priorities. Stacking honor for the next phase is probably your best option once you’ve got the whole S1 offset needed for phase 1. The same applies to arena points.
As for the arena rewards (to buy your set and weapons), you’ll need rating for shoulders and weapons during Phase 1.
– 1850 rating for the weapons,
– 2000 rating for the shoulders
The rest of the gear has no rating requirements which means that everyone can get it
Also, bear in mind that 5v5 gives more arena points than the 2v2 bracket. For this reason, 5v5 is very popular early on to allow people to grab their gear as fast as possible. Nonetheless, you have to know that 5v5 is quite unfriendly with rogue due to the insane amount of AoE and high armored targets. This does not mean that it is hard to find a team, but you have less utility in 5v5 than in 2v2 and 3v3.
Assuming that you farmed Battlegrounds during the pre-patch for honor and marks, you’ll need to farm a lot of Eyes of the Storm to get the marks required for your off-set (around 90 marks needed).
| Honor points | BG Marks | |
| Boots | 17 850 | 40 ES |
| Bracer | 11 794 | 20 WS |
| Belt | 17 850 | 40 AB |
| Cloak | 11 794 | 20 AB |
| Neck | 15 300 | 10 ES |
| Ring | 15 300 | 10 AV |
Below are the prices for the set but we’d recommend prioritizing the offset while farming your set in arenas and only buying the set part that you are not going to buy immediately through arenas (for example shoulders if you are not able to go over 2000 rating instantly)
| Honor points | BG Marks | |
| Head | 20 081 | 30 AV |
| Shoulders | 12 622 | 20 AB |
| Chest | 20 655 | 30 AB |
| Gloves | 12 622 | 20 AV |
| Leg | 20 655 | 30 WG |
What you can get even before entering your first BG
Most of those items are coming from open-world or dungeon quests. We did focus here on stamina, agility, attack power, and enough hit rating to get you started. You can find more information and options in this Gearing during the Outland leveling guide.
Some of those are just temporary and you will replace them very early in BGs or later in arena when the others might be good for the whole Phase 1.
Some tips to have in mind:
1. The 2 part bonus of the Assassination set is very powerful. It is not “mandatory” but it is very nice if you can grab them along the way.
2. There are two BOE items in this list:
– Chestguard of the Dark Stalker which is just a nice and very affordable one (there is no good questing chest out here)
– The Master’s Treads is the best boots that you can keep for the whole phase 1, thanks to the stealth bonus. Depending on your server’s economy they might be expensive (especially early on), but this is a great investment.
update July 2021: you should find them for approximately 200-300 gold, in your AH.
3. Do not forget the Steady Talasite that are not expensive at all and will boost your resilience and stamina early on.
4. You need to grind only two reputations for PVP
– Revered with Cenarian expedition (for your head enchant) which should be easy considering how much quests there are in the world on the top of very few dungeons runs.
– Exalted with Aldor (for your Shoulder enchant): this one can be done with either buying items from the Auction House (around 1k-1k5 gold total) or can be farmed, even before your level 70, at Legion Hold in Shadowmoon Valley.
The thing is, it is a boring grind farm (or will cost you money) but you will have to do it eventually, and doing it early will bring you a nice ring, but most importantly Vindicator’s Brand which is more than a good starter weapon and will allow you to spend your arena point directly in your set instead of focusing on the weapon (and that will definitely help you to grind your way up anyway).
How to spend your honor points
Now that you are doing battlegrounds and starting arena, it is time to look at what battleground gear you will get:
1. The most important one is the PVP trinket, by far. The 2 min CD is a must-have even if a lot of matchups tend not to last over 2 minutes, some arenas especially as healer /DPS could last longer, especially for 1v1.
2. Then you will want to get your blue PVP gloves, for the interrupt on the Deadly Throw which is really powerful, not to say mandatory.
If you are doing well in arena and know you will get gladiator’s gloves very fast you might skip this, because, as you know, grinding honor is quite slow… but if you are doing a lot of battlegrounds, the blue PVP shoulders could be a great pick up to unlock the +35 resilience bonus.
– No matter your gear setup you want Marshal’s Leathers Bracers after that, indeed they are very close to even the best PVE bracers and will get you some resilience
– The last one should be the belt: quite a lot of resilience and stamina on it, but it might depend on your gear setup as we will see later (if you play with the engineering belt then you don’t need to buy the PVP one for example)
If you get all of this, you will be around 150+ resilience which is quite a nice amount early on to do some serious business.
How to farm honor in the most efficient & laziest way
You’re not part of premade, have limited playtime, or just don’t want to spam battlegrounds for hours? The best tip would be to go for the daily BG victory quest which will grant you a 419 honor bonus when winning the specific bg. If you are not too unlucky you should get around a fairly good amount of honor and few marks in less than an hour and you will end up with enough honor to have got few off-set pieces that are enough to compete in arenas as we, rogue, don’t need as much resilience as other classes!
Different degrees of gear
There are several mindsets to consider regarding the will of avoiding any PVE content in order to enjoy PVP.
There are players with absolutely no interest at all for PVE including dungeons, the ones that just want to avoid raiding (raid10/25), and the ones that preferably would not have to raid twice a week to unlock their gear.
For this reason, there are three subsections corresponding to these three mindsets.
PVP Gear with z.e.r.o PVE
As you can see, the gear is pretty straight forward with most of the parts being obtained from PVP and a few of them by questing in Outland.
For the trinket, If you’re a pure PVP’er then you’ll have to choose between Core of Ar’kelos (which works like a mini Bloodlust Brooch) and Terokkar Tablet of precision (if you want more hit) but we’d recommend picking Core of Ar’kelos, to be honest.
There are few others items that we should talk about and might change your gear setup:
– Figurine – Nighteye Panther: if you play human you will care a lot less about this one and the next one, but if you are not, this is an amazing reason to pick Jewel crafting as a profession because increasing your stealth level is always helpful.
– The Night Watchman: this one is a BOE and can be very expensive, but it will cancel out both the Master’s thread and Nighteye Panther stealth increase of another rogue. Not necessarily BIS but quite interesting and worth mentioning.
– Hyper-vision goggles: this one comes from engineering, and you lose even more stats than the previous one compared to having the arena helm but some rogues love it.
– Nigh-invulnerability belt: another interesting engineer item, this might backfire on you but this might save you the day!
PVP Gear with the least of PVE possible (few dungeons runs)
Maybe you are not that lazy, or maybe you feel like you need a bit more to push higher (note that at this gear level you are already fine to get quite high, and skill will always be more important, but if you want to push for titles, having a bit more gear will be important).
From dungeons & heroics
There are 3 items coming from Badges of justice that are of interest:
– Choker of vile intent (25 badges) just a great neck, basically an improved version of the one you already got.
– Bloodlust Brooch (41 badges) if you are not going jewel crafting, this one is amazing and will last you at least until phase 4!
– Searing Sunblade (50 badges) this one is quite long to farm and you should get it if you love doing heroic and have a lot of badges to spend (note that you might keep those badges since there will be amazing PVP gear to get with them in later phases) but it is the second-best offhand after gladiator’s shiv, and you will use it a long time as poison swapping weapon.
The best Heroic dungeons to farm for Badges of Justice
Slaves pens
A very easy and quick one, you will have no trouble finding a group for it, and since you are already revered to Cenarian Expedition by now you got the key to enter it (honorable mention to Midnight Legguards that drop on last boss, not BIS but super solid. You might even decide to skip Gladiator’s legs).
Auchindoun dungeons
If you have been doing quests only during your leveling, you might not be revered with Lower city yetn but there is a good reason to farm those dungeons:
– The Band of the exorcist which cost 50 spirit shards dropping from Auchindoun dungeon bosses when you got the towers around it (both normal & heroic). Great stats for PVP, and will bring you a bit more hit rating that you do need.
This will take you a bit more than 6 runs of Shadow Labyrinth to get this ring, and you will be revered at lower city meaning you can enter heroic auchenaï crypt which is another very easy and fast heroic.
Remparts
If you have cleaned all the quests from the first area, you will need around 5 runs of Shattered Halls to get revered which will allow you to go to heroic Rempart, which is also an easy one. The bonus is that you might get Feltooth Eviscerator which is quite a nice offhand for Shiv with thanks to its 1.4 atk speed.
From Karazhan
Accessing Karazhan is not very hard. There are plenty of guides out there that will tell you how and when you get access to it. Also, it is quite easy to find a pick-up raid to do it, and you might even find it easier and more enjoyable than farming some heroics.
This raid provides you with nice offset pieces. Here are the one of interest:
– Violet signet: this one is guaranteed since it comes from the reputation farmed through Karazhan runs, and will improve at each stage. Even the honored version that you will get after only two runs (!) is great!
– Garona’s signet: even better than violet signet and will bring you all the offensive stats you want for PVP.
– Worgen claw: basically the same as the one from badges of justices, but it allows to spend those badges for other things!
– Drape of the Dark Reavers: a very nice cloak that you’ll keep until phase 5 easily!
(mention to Farstrider Wildercloack that drops from the Prince. Nice if you already have enough hit rating)
– Spiteblade: the absolute BIS PVP Rogue weapon. If you are lucky enough to get it, you won’t bother getting the arena main-hand.
– Skulker’s Greaves: probably the hardest one to get since hunters want those, but this is the best PVE piece to rock with alongside 4 piece gladiator’s)
PVP Gearing FAQ
FAQ #1 BIS weapon for Arenas: Dragonmaw or Spiteblade?
I’ve often read this question: Should I pass on Spiteblade if I already got Dragonmaw?
My answer is no. If I was able to get both, I’d chose Spiteblade.
Reason 1: Stats.
If we strictly compare the stats, Dragonmaw has roughly nothing to offer in comparison to Spiteblade which provides A LOT of great stats for your rogue. More stamina (which is always good for PVP, especially during P1), but also more Attack power: (14 agility + 46 attack power).
Reason 2: Effectiveness
Dragonmaw isn’t better, because you’re not gonna make the most out of your weapon procs, you could be controlled when it procs or disarmed, or simply kited. You could be forced to swap your killing target and not even benefit from the proc because running to the other target. The meaning of this is that you do not decide when it happens, and in PVP you want to know/decide when you’re going to burst.
| Dragonmaw | Spiteblade | |
| Attack speed | 2,7 | 2,7 |
| Damage | 172-320 | 165-308 |
| DPS | 91,1 DPS | 87,6 DPS |
| Stats | +9 Stamina | +14 Agility |
| +16 stamina | ||
| Bonus | Proc chance (212 haste for 10sec) | 46 AP |
So if you’re an arena player with Dragonmaw, and get a chance to loot the Spiteblade. Yes, take it.
FAQ #2 Should I gem hit? Resilience? AP or agility?
About hit: As we explained in several pages of the website, such as the Gem guide, and Hit & Expertise guide, for example, your priority is to reach a minimum of 5% hit.
Chose wisely your gear part, but it should not be that hard if you’ve got some questing gear and use a few hit gems. Once you’re done with this stat you can think about the others. In the strict PVP Gear, there are several items picked because they come with a bit of hit to help you go to 7% or more.
Resilience: Resilience naturally comes with your PVP gear, but also with gems and enchants. Now the question is, should you stack resilience in season 1?
There are two factors:
– Your team composition:
Resilience is a defensive stat that has no value in terms of AEP. If you are teaming up with a healer, going for resilience makes sense as it passively supports your partner’s healing (receiving fewer crits, and reduced crits). As double DPS, you usually go for optimizing your damage and naturally avoid part of the resilience gear from PVP in order to optimize your stats with PVE/prof/reputation parts.
– Your playstyle:
There is no rule set in stone about resilience. If you actually want to pump as a rogue mage with big ambushes and a fast cooldown usage, then resilience won’t be your priority.
Attack Power vs Agility: In the early stage of the game, Attack Power is your go-to stat because it scales a lot better when having pretty low stats.
Note that this will boost your Deadliness effectiveness. So once you get your hit around 5-7%, you can stack Attack Power.
FAQ #3 Should I use the Assassination Armor set?
The Assassination Armor set is a pretty good starter gear indeed if you started playing Classic with Burning Crusade.
However, we’d recommend using only two pieces of this set to unlock the first bonus (Your Cheap Shot and Kidney Shot attacks grant you 160 haste rating for 6 sec.), and it has to be anything else than the gloves because you’ll need the PVP gloves for the silence effect that it provides to you Deadly Throw.
If you do not intend to get to a 2000+ rating in arenas, you can start with the shoulderpads of assassination dropping from Talon King Ikiss in Setthek Halls, alongside another piece.
Then you’ll have to obtain two parts of the PVP set to gain defensive stats (to build your resilience and get more stamina) but also critical strike. The two-set bonus will give you a bonus of +35 resilience that is mandatory. if you’ve got the PVP gloves, then you have one more part to pick.
Finally, we’d recommend replacing your Assassination Armor parts once you can buy S1 gear.
FAQ #4 Do I need to PVE to succeed as a PVP rogue?
Honestly, not raiding isn’t that much of an issue for a good rogue player.
However, not raiding will always put you below a rogue that practices PVE in terms of damage output. Rogue really benefits a lot from PVEing and if you cannot spend much time in raid, at least try to farm your Badges of Justice in Heroic dungeons to get your Bloodlust Brooch, and a good neck.
What matters a lot is the type of arena team composition you will play (healer/DPS or double DPS).
– As Healer/DPS, you’d prefer optimizing your gear with PVE to compensate for the fact that you are the only DPS.
– If you’re just doing double DPS arenas, world PVP, or battlegrounds, then you can eventually choose the “full PVP” road. This ain’t gonna be easy, but still doable and enjoyable.
Not having Dragonmaw or Spiteblade is also okayish if you can get the season 1 weapon (1850 rating). You’ll just have to accept to receive your BIS weapon a bit later than the other players that preferred crafting Dragonmaw or got lucky to get Spiteblade in their first Karazhan raids. Until S1 weapons, you should consider going exalted with Aldor for Vindicator’s brand (main hand), and eventually farm Black Morass for Latro’s shifting sword (off-hand). Besides these two things, we’d recommend going revered with Cenarian expedition to unlock your helm glyph, and if possible farm heroics for your trinket.
Once you’ve done these things, you can spend the rest of your time doing PVP completely fine.
FAQ #5 Is engineering mandatory for P1?
No, it’s not.
…But since engineering is extremely interesting during P2 for PVP rogues (for the epic goggles), you might want to level up your prof during phase 1 anyway.
In addition, and depending on your arena team composition, you may appreciate using the Nigh-invulnerability belt in arenas.
Update: Belt is considered as mandatory now that the meta is strictly relying on that item (and others vanilla gadgets such as MQG, skull, or even silent fang)
It is possible to enjoy your playtime as a strict PVP’er rogue. However, you have to understand (and accept) that, early on, raiders will benefit a lot from their PVE gear while you are still farming your season 1 arena gear and farming honor in battlegrounds to buy your off-set. So you may have a few weeks of pain before enjoying the PVP in a more fair state (gear wise).
That being said, if you’re a strict PVP rogue, we’d recommend farming 5v5 to gain more arena points every week. If you plan to stick to 2v2, you should play double DPS with a partner that does raids. This way, you’ll be able to focus on controls to allow your partner to do the damage part.