Editor’s note: Our WoW Outlaw Rogue guide has not been updated for Patch 8.3. Until it is, we highly recommend Wowhead’s Outlaw Rogue DPS Guide, which was written by Mystler, a Rogue class theorycrafter and Ravenholdt veteran.

Welcome to the guide for Outlaw Rogue in 8.2. If you’re looking for a good introduction to playing Outlaw in Battle for Azeroth PvE, you’ve come to the right place.

Please note that things are subject to change as discoveries are made, hot fixes happen, and balance is under way.


Introduction

Outlaw may have lost some of its pirate flavor when it comes to theme, but mechanically Outlaw still plays much like it did in Legion. It still is the one true burst cleave spec rogue has. In general the spec was slowed and normalized slightly when it comes to energy regeneration, so it plays more smoothly.


Talents

Outlaw talents are much closer to each other with Battle for Azeroth and the rework to our talent tree. These may be the best talents, but picking the “wrong” one is not as much of a damage loss as it has been in the past. This also means minor changes through azerite can push a talent to being better than its competitors.

Single Target

  • Level 15: Quick Draw
  • Level 30: Optional
  • Level 45: Vigor, Marked for death, or Deeper Stratagem1
  • Level 60: Optional
  • Level 75: Optional
  • Level 90: Alacrity
  • Level 100: Blade Rush

Multi Target(f.ex 5 man instances)

  • Level 15: Quick Draw
  • Level 30: Optional
  • Level 45: Vigor, or Marked for death, or Deeper Stratagem1
  • Level 60: Optional
  • Level 75: Optional
  • Level 90: Alacrity
  • Level 100: Dancing Steel

1: The choice here depends on the content you are doing as well as your gear. Use Vigor, if you cannot take advantage of continuous resets on Marked for Death in AoE or dungeons. Deeper Stratagem is the default for ST, and becomes better in dungeons or AoE with 3 Ace Up Your Sleeve traits.


Gearing & Stats

Gearing in Battle for Azeroth should be more straight forward. Blizzard is trying to make item level always be the primary deciding factor and limit your ways of obtaining loot by having only personal loot, and not allowing trading of all pieces. We still have our preferred stats, but they should not be as decisive as in legion.

“Stat Weights,” is a term you might have heard many times. What is actually being discussed, is scale factors, because they usually change the moment you change a piece of equipment. This is why we recommend that you sim your character to compare items rather than relying on weights.

For stats you should be aiming for the following:

Single Target

  • Agility
  • Critical Strike
  • Versatility
  • Haste
  • Mastery

Multi Target

  • Agility
  • Haste
  • Critical Strike
  • Versatility
  • Mastery

For your food buff you should the food for the secondary stat that you’re scale factors says is highest.

For potions you should use Potion of Unbridled Fury for single target, Superior Battle potion of Agility for 2-3 targets, and Potion of Empowered Proximity for larger target counts

For your flask you should always use Greater Flask of the currents.

For your ring enchants you should use the secondary stat that your scale factors says is highest.

For your weapon enchants you should use Force multiplier on one weapon then a secondary stat enchant matching whatever your scale factors says is the highest. The handedness of these enchants does not matter.

Azerite Powers and Essences

These are some of the powers you want to aim for for the respected encounter styles. Keep in mind this list is only intended to guide you towards pieces to aim for and that you should sim your character for optimal gearing choices. For essences this list represents their general relative power at rank 3, and should be used as a way to determine what essences to collect. Additonally while I have not listed their effects here every Major essence also includes the Minor effect associated with it.

Single Target

Major essences

  • Condensed Life-Force: Call upon a Guardian for 30 seconds who impales your target every 2 seconds. Every 8 seconds the Guardian launches a volley of spikes dealing AoE damage. This major should be used on cooldown.
  • The Crucible of Flame: Blast your target, dealing instant fire damage, then 75% of the damage done over 6 seconds. Each cast gives a stacking buff increasing the damage of your next cast reseting on every 3rd cast. This major effect should be used on cooldown, however with rank 3 unlocked you will have 2 charges and should attempt to cast it during periods of low energy without capping on charges.
  • Blood of the Enemy: Deal shadow damage to all enemies within 12 yards. Gain 25% crit chance for 10 seconds against the targets struck, and gain increased critical strike damage by 25% for 5 seconds.

Minor essences

  • Memory of Lucid Dreams: When you spend Energy there is a chance that you will regain 50% of the energy spent, and gain Versatility for 8 seconds.
  • The Crucible of Flame: Your attacks have a chance to inflict fire damage over 10 seconds stacking up to 3 times.
  • Conflict and Strife: Your spells and abilities have a chance to grant Versatility for 12 seconds, stacking up to 8 times.

Outer Ring Azerite traits

  • Ace Up Your Sleeve: Between the eyes deals additional damage per combo point spent and has a 2% chance per combo point to refund 4 combo points.
  • Deadshot: Casting between the eyes causes your next pistol shot to deal additional damage.
  • Brigands Blitz: Adrenaline Rush increases your Haste every second stacking up to 10 times. This effect ends when Adrenaline Rush does.

Inner Ring Azerite traits

  • Overwhelming Power: Your damaging abilities have a chance to grant you 25 stacks of Overwhleming Power. Each stack grants haste. A stack is lost every second or whenever you take direct damage.
  • Gutripper: Your damaging abilities have a chance to deal physical damage to the target. This occurs much more often against targets below 30% health.
  • Heed my call: Your damaging abilities have a a chance to deal nature damage to your target, and additional damage to enemies with 3 yards of the target.

Multi Target

Major essences

  • Blood of the Enemy: Deal shadow damage to all enemies with 12 yards. Gain 25% increased critical strike chance against those targets for 10 seconds, and 25% critical strike damage for 5 seconds. This effect should be used on cooldown or saved for important upcoming AoE.
  • Essence of the Focusing iris: Channel for 3 seconds dealing fire damage to all enemies in front of you. This effect should be used on cooldown or saved for important upcoming AoE.

Minor essences

  • Memory of Lucid Dreams: When you spend Energy there is a chance that you will regain 50% of the energy spent, and gain Versatility for 8 seconds.
  • Vision of Perfection: Reduces the cooldown of Adrenaline Rush, and grants a small amount of versatility.
  • Conflict and Strife: Your spells and abilities have a chance to grant Versatility for 12 seconds, stacking up to 8 times.
  • Purification Protocol: Your abilities have a chance to instantly deal Fire damage to any enemy within 8 yards and heal you over 8 seconds.

Outer Ring Azerite traits

  • Keep Your Wits About You: Each time an attack is copied by Blade Flurry, Increase the chance for sinister strike to strike again by 3% until Blade Flurry ends. Additional strikes of sinister strike deal extra damage. The additional damage on this trait happens whether Blade Flurry is up or down. You only need 1 of this trait for maximum effectiveness since the additional sinister strike chance does not increase with additional ranks.
  • Deadshot: Casting between the eyes causes your next pistol shot to deal additional damage.
  • Ace Up Your Sleeve: Each combo point spent on Between the Eyes increases the damage and grants a 2% chance to gain 4 Combo Points.

Inner Ring Azerite traits

  • Overwhelming Power: Your damaging abilities have a chance to grant you 25 stacks of Overwhleming Power. Each stack grants haste. A stack is lost every second or whenever you take direct damage.
  • Heed my call: Your damaging abilities have a a chance to deal nature damage to your target, and additional damage to enemies with 3 yards of the target.
  • Gutripper: Your damaging abilities have a chance to deal physical damage to the target. This occurs much more often against targets below 30% health.

When in doubt, run a simulation for your character and the item(s) in question.


Rotation

Pre-Pull

  • 18 seconds on the pull timer, Marked for Death when talented
  • 2 seconds on the pull timer, use Roll the bones If you cast marked for death
  • 1 second on the pull timer, Adrenaline rush, Potion then Stealth.

Pull

  • Ambush
  • Vanish
  • Ambush
  • Blade Rush

CoolDowns

  • Killing spree on cooldown at low energy level
  • Adrenaline Rush on cooldown at not capped energy
  • Blade Rush on cooldown at not capped energy
  • Vanish on cooldown at 60+ energy. Note that if you have any amount of Keep Your Wits About You this is no longer worth doing, and Vanish can be saved for utility.
  • Marked for Death on cooldown at low combo points unless you can quickly reset it via a dying mob.

Finisher priority at 5(4 with Broadside or Opportunity) Combo Points2

  • Refresh Roll the Bones at less than 3 seconds.
  • Between the Eyes, if you have either of the Azerite traits Deadshot4, or Ace up Your Sleeve.
  • Reroll Roll the Bones, Following the Reroll logic that is applicable for your current Azerite traits(see below).3
  • Between the Eyes, if you have Ruthless Precision up.
  • Dispatch

2 and 3: More details about this can be found in the FAQ.
4: Do not cast BTE again if you have not yet consumed the buff from Deadshot.

Building combo points

  • Pistol shot with opportunity up
  • Ambush
  • Sinister Strike

Cleave

  • Activate Blade Flurry
  • Be sure to save a charge of blade flurry for Killing spree/Blade Rush if talented.


AddOns & Macros

There isn’t really any hard requirements for AddOns you should use. You should look into using Weak Auras and/or an energy bar AddOn.

Weak Auras

You can find a number of Weak Auras available on wago.io.

Macros

Mouse over Marked for Death: Useful for applying Marked for Death to a dying target you are not currently attacking. Especially useful for applying Marked for Death to ranged targets.

#showtooltip
/cast [@Mouseover,harm][] Marked For Death

Pre-pull Adrenaline Rush: Since we are using 3 different buttons in the pre-pull it is easiest to macro them as such. Keep in mind that the macro should be copied as seen here as Adrenaline rush needs to be used before Stealth.

#showtooltip
/cast Adrenaline Rush
/cast Potion of Unbridled Fury
/cast Stealth


Frequently Asked Questions

When to Re-roll Roll the Bones

  • The base optimal logic for single-target is to re-roll for 2 buffs, or Ruthless Precision, or Grand melee. However with Ace up Your Sleeve or Deadshot you no longer keep solo Grand melee.  At 1 snake eyes trait use your other traits to determine reroll strategy, reroll normally if no other traits apply. With 2 or 3 snake eyes traits re-roll for 2 buffs, but do not reroll if snake eyes has 2(1 with broadside up) or more stacks left.
  • During Blade Flurry if you have at least 1 rank of Keep Your Wits About You then keep Grand Melee, Ruthless precision, and any 2 buff combination that is not Skull and Crossbones plus Buried treasure or True bearing.
  • Keep in mind that for situations of extremely short AoE with no AoE in the immediate future you may want to forgo rerolling altogether for additional AoE damage, this is generally only relevant on short lived add waves during otherwise single target bosses.

Weapon types, and daggers

  • Both combat potency and ability damage are normalized so that the attack speed of your off-hand does not matter. This means despite the fact that daggers do not drop for Outlaw we can use one in the off-hand with no loss of damage. A sword/axe/mace/fist is still required in the main-hand to cast Dispatch.

When to use a finisher

  • Baseline we use our finishers at max combo points. However this changes if you are speced into Quick Draw(the suggested Tier1 talent). If you have broadside or opportunity up you reduce that amount by one. So if you are playing with Quick Draw and you have Broadside up or you proc Opportunity, you finish at 4(5 with deeper stratagem) combo points.

Rolling Dice

  • The benefits of rerolling do not change no matter how bad your luck has been so far. This means there is no point where rerolling becomes not worth it due to bad or poor luck. Due to this you should always continue to reroll until you get the buffs appropriate for your current situation.


Changelog

I’ll make a note of any changes to the guide and the date it was updated here if you want to come back in the future to check for changes.

Last updated: Tuesday, 12th November – Re-ordered Azerite recommendations.

Monday, 29th July – Adjusted reroll logic for AoE situations.

Wednesday, 3rd July – Added initial Essence information.

Wednesday, 17th April – Added reroll logic for AoE situations.

Saturday, 9th February – revised azerite list.

Friday, 21st December – Re-ordered azerite list, and refined 8.1 changes.


Author

This guide has been written and is maintained by Loktark. Loktark is a Community Figure of the Ravenholdt discord and has mained Outlaw for all of Legion.

If you have questions, please visit Ravenholdt Discord.