Talent Strategies
With over 65 talents available it can be quite daunting to find the ones that best fit your rogue. The strategies you will use with talents depend largely on the type of rogue you play as. Are you using daggers only? Are you planning on a lot of PvP? Do you use poisons? All these questions and more decide on the utility of talents to your play style. We’ll go over the talents once more with more detail to see how they affect the rogue. Some are quite apparent, others less so. I will list my personal rating, out of 5, for each talent.
Assassination Tree
Improved Eviscerate (5/5)
Eviscerate is the 2ndnd most used skill for a rogue, second only to Sinister Strike. This talent increases the base damage by 15% when maxed. Might not seem like much but when you consider that with this talent and a critical strike, you’ll be hitting for over 2000 damage. 15% of 2000 is 300 damage. That’s a pretty big chunk.
Remorseless Attacks (2/5)
Guaranteed critical hit after you kill something. This depends obviously if you use daggers or not. If you’re in a group, you need to deal the killing blow for this talent to come into effect. Leveling with daggers, this is a great talent. Anything else, you’d best spend your points elsewhere.
Malice (5/5)
5% increase in critical chance? Considering there is no class that attacks as fast as a rogue, this is a great talent. If you have 2 weapons that have a 1.5 second delay (typical daggers) you’re swinging 20 times in 8 seconds, at least 1 critical with 5% chance in that sequence. That’s only counting auto attack. Fact is, the rogue demands a high critical hit chance with its skill set. This talent is great for such little investment.
Ruthlessness (3/5)
60% chance of getting a free combo point after a finisher. Sounds great, as combo points are really useful. In practice though, it’s not all that often where 1 combo point makes the difference in a battle. It does make some battles go faster though and is a great place to spend talent points if you’re working to go down this talent tree.

Murder (3/5)
2% increase to overall damage on various target types. All player characters are considered humanoid. The undead type is the only major type not listed but pretty much anything you attack will be humanoid, giant, beast or dragonkin. This talent gets better as you get better. 2% increase gets very noticeable when you start doing 400dps.
Improved Backstab (2/5)
If you use Backstab, this talent is essential. This increases your chance of a critical strike by 30%, so you’re looking at 50-60% chance of a critical hit. In groups where you use Backstab, this translates into a ton of damage. If you don’t use Backstab, this talent is obviously useless. And really, if you’re in this tree and have daggers, you’ll be getting Mutilate.
me and my pal are playing dual rogues so we wanted a good build, but couldnt find one that actually worked good enough. So we decided to make our own...this is what we came up with:
Relentless Strikes (3/5)
25 Energy if you use a 5pt finisher. It’s not a whole lot of Energy back but it is practically the cost of an eviscerate. Since the cost is 1 talent point, it makes a good place to put a point to move down the tree. This does make a 5pt Slice and Dice free.
Improved Expose Armor (1/5)
Expose armor loses nearly all use past level 30. The max it will do with this talent is 3075 at level 70. Now to put that into perspective, paladins and warriors will have around 8000-10000 armor. NPCs will have even more. Compared to Kidney Shot where you completely eliminate all chances of you getting hit for 6 seconds it offsets the increased damage you’d get from this talent. Considering it’s a skill you won’t ever use in a group that has a warrior, it’s not worth it.
Lethality (4/5)
Increase opening move critical strike damage by 30%. Very useful since you will be using openers all the time. I personally spam Sinister Strike in battle and the damage I get from this skill is my bread and butter.

Vile Poisons (2/5)
Increases the damage dealt. On paper, this talent sounds really useful. In practice though, it isn’t. It’s one of those things you only find out by playing. The 15% increase in sporadic damage is not worth the point investment. Well, that is if you use Instant Poison instead of Deadly Poison. If you use both, this talent does gain some merit. The bonus to Envenom is nice but you won’t be using that skill as heavily as others.
Improved Poison (4/5)
Increases chance of connecting with all poisons. It doesn’t seem like much at first but this talent makes a very big difference in total output. Poisons can account for 10-15% of your total damage in a fight and the more often it hits the better. A great talent and a perfect spot to spend talent points if you wish to move lower in the tree
Improved Kidney Shot (2/5)
More damage when someone is stunned is a good thing. Unfortunately, the targets where this would give the most bosses can’t be stunned, making this talent used nearly exclusively in PvP where it’s rather low in the tree to acquire. If you are going the Mutilate route, then this is a talent you will be using.
Fleet Footed (1/5)
Movement impairment is very rarely a PvE concern that I’m not quite sure why this is in the Assassination tree. Very little reason to spend points here as there are better places to spend, even if you are PvP minded.
Cold Blood (4/5)
Critical hit on command. This talent is great for PvP and useful in PvE. With preparation and proper control of your rogue, you can hit for over 5K damage in 15 seconds with this talent. Obviously more useful to do that much damage in PvP where your opponent’s hp is lower but even in PvE situations, it’s good to have on hand if you want to get a finisher off on a high level creature. If you’re at this point in the talent tree you NEED to select this talent. It is not however, the be-all-end-all talent some people make it to be.
Quick Recovery (4/5)
If increased healing effects was the only bonus, this would be a good talent. Saving more energy on missed attacks is just a great addition. 20% gain to healing effects is well worth the investment at this point and only gets better as healers can heal more per cast.

Seal Fate (5/5)
If there was a talent you were aiming for in this tree, this would be it. Considering you’ll be hovering near 20-30% chance of a critical strike, you’ll be getting combo points like a madman. With the Initiative talent, starting with Cheap Shot and Sinister Strike, you can get 5 combo points in 2 moves. Unleash a 5 point Eviscerate in under 4 seconds. Every 3-4 Sinister Strikes will give you 2 combo points. 3 points for a critical Mutilate. This talent is amazing and only gets better as your critical chance goes up.
Master Poisoner (1/5)
Increased poison resistance is good, especially in certain dungeons. Decreasing the chance of opponents to resist is also good, but this is a really small number. If the overall percentages were higher then this would be a decent place to spend points. There are better options.
Vigor (1/5)
10 extra Energy is not a lot, since it only adds to your available pool at the start of a fight. The only reason to take this talent would be if you’re already at this point due to Seal Fate and only have 1 combo point left or you’re working towards Mutilate. It is by far the worst 30pt talent.
Deadended Nerves (1/5)
Remember all those times I said you shouldn’t be getting hit? Well, this is the talent that goes against that, hence the lower score. In solo work, sure, you’ll take some damage but 5 points to save 5% is not worth it. If you’re healing every 6-8 fights, you would see a gain after about 100 fights. Onto the next talent.
Find Weakness (4/5)
Now here is a good place to spend points. 10% increased damage on all finishing moves for 10s after a finisher? Similar to the Slice and Dice, you can keep this buff up nearly all the time while in combat. A great addition to your skill set. The only downside is that you need to invest heavily into the tree.
Mutilate (4/5)
One of my favourite skills and probably the safest way to level post 40. The catch is that you need 2 daggers, crippling poison and the target’s backside. The combo looks something like Ambush, wait, Gouge, wait, Kidney Shot, Mutilate, Mutilate, Eviscerate. Kidney Shot will activate Find Weakness long enough to get both Mutilates off. In groups

this outshines Backstab. 2-3 combo points, more damage and the same energy cost. Of course, for all of this the price is a very large hate generation.