Rogue

Source: View source Version: Announcement / preview (2026-09-16) Review: Source checked Last reviewed: 2026-09-17

Preview guide · reviewed 17 September 2026. The mechanics below come from BlizzCon preview sources. They have been source checked, but have not been tested by this wiki in a release build. Talent articles distinguish recorded ranks from estimates and missing text.

Rogue — The Rogue preview uses Energy and combo points, with poison, weapon, and stealth interactions distributed across Assassination, Combat, and Subtlety. Talent names familiar from another edition can have different positions or effects here.

Browse all 53 Rogue talents with icons, ranks, prerequisites, and individual source notes.

Choose a reading path

The following is an editorial route through the preview, not a recommended point allocation.

Talent tree	What to compare	Start with
Assassination	Poison application and finishers, including a dual-weapon attack. Read the weapon and poisoned-target conditions before comparing damage.	Improved Poisons, Mutilate, Seal Fate, Venom
Combat	Weapon attacks, off-hand damage, and weapon-family bonuses. Hack and Slash gives different effects for different weapon groups.	Puncturing Wounds, Dual Wield Specialization (Rogue), Hack and Slash, Adrenaline Rush
Subtlety	Stealth access, openers, bleeds, and conditional follow-up attacks. Distinguish effects that require Stealth from effects that remove that requirement temporarily.	Initiative, Hemorrhage, Cutthroat, Thousand Cuts

Abilities and changes worth checking

These are summarized from the pinned community demo transcription. Baseline spells and talents are identified separately where the source supports that distinction.

• Mutilate. A preview talent, not a baseline ability: its description combines both weapons, adds combo points, and gains a benefit against poisoned targets.
• Venom. An Assassination finisher that improves poison behavior for a duration related to combo points. Check the article’s evidence label before relying on exact values.
• One-handed axes. The export identifies axe use as a change, supported by the Axe/Sword grouping in Hack and Slash. Do not infer two-handed weapon access from that grouping.

Plan a first beta session

These are suggested checks for learning the class and collecting useful evidence; they are not claims about the strongest build.

• Compare weapons against the actual Hack and Slash branch they activate, not only the item’s damage range.
• For poison builds, distinguish application chance, poison damage, and the conditions on Mutilate; these are separate moving parts.
• For Subtlety, track the Energy cost and Stealth requirement of the follow-up attack after a proc rather than assuming it remains unchanged.

Race choice

Use the Rogue race list to separate officially announced additions from the broader preview roster. Follow the linked race guides for recorded racials; a racial tooltip does not establish a universal best choice.

How the preview plays

Talent evidence: These examples explain the source's preview descriptions. A description remains an estimate unless its individual rank is explicitly labeled source-confirmed in the linked talent article. Exact values and the interactions inferred from them remain provisional until checked for that rank and build. Source checked means the references were reviewed; it does not mean the mechanics were tested.

Icy Veins highlights different relationships between weapons, poisons, and bleeds in the three trees. The following examples use the recorded Forever talent conditions rather than its predictions about final damage rankings.

Assassination: separate poison setup from spending

Mutilate grants two combo points and deals additional damage when its target is poisoned. Venom spends combo points on a temporary poison benefit, with a longer duration for more points. That makes the state of the poison, current Energy, and remaining buff time useful things to track. It does not establish that every finisher should be Venom.

Improved Expose Armor changes both Energy cost and the combo-point refund after a five-point Expose Armor. The source estimates a one-point refund at rank 1 and a two-point refund at rank 2; neither rank is source-confirmed in the catalog. Read the selected rank instead of assuming a single refund applies at every investment.

Combat: check which attack activates the benefit

Puncturing Wounds names Backstab and Mutilate; it is not a critical-strike bonus to every attack. Restless Blades requires damaging finishing moves to reduce the remaining cooldowns of Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry, Evasion, Sprint, and Vanish. Spending combo points on a non-damaging buff is not enough under that wording. The tooltip describes cooldown reduction, not an immediate reset.

Hack and Slash changes its effect with the weapon family. A weapon swap can therefore change the kind of benefit you receive even when your talent allocation stays the same.

Subtlety: watch Rupture and temporary opportunities

Hemorrhage improves the Rogue's Rupture damage on its target. Rupture ticks can then build Thousand Cuts reductions for the next Hemorrhage or Backstab, with a stack cap and a ten-second use window. Cutthroat instead starts from Backstab and can make the next Ambush usable without Stealth for a limited time. These are two distinct effects to watch; a Rupture tick does not itself trigger Cutthroat.

Control and preparation

The demo spellbook still records Blind using Blinding Powder, and its control ends if the target takes damage. Plan reagents and target selection accordingly. Demo characters can also have talent-granted buttons in their spellbook: seeing Blade Flurry or Adrenaline Rush there does not make either ability baseline.

What remains unresolved

This guide does not establish a final poison mix, weapon ranking, leveling allocation, or optimal finisher sequence. Those require combat observations and a recorded build.

For corrections, record the game build, character level, spell or talent rank, and the observed interaction. Follow Project:Data policy and compare against Rogue talents before replacing preview information.