Rogue

The rogue is a lightly armored class that specializes in melee damage. Rogue combat centers around using instant attacks to build combo points, which are used to unleash more powerful finishing moves on the target. With their distinctive  [Stealth] ability, rogues are capable of sneaking through the shadows unnoticed, dispatching their foe in a whirl of attacks, then vanishing from sight. Rogues can also stifle their opponents with a variety of poisons, bleeds, stuns, and other disabling effects. Rogues are renowned for their elusiveness, having a number of defensive abilities that make them adept at escaping combat when the odds turn against them. Many of the rogue's abilities depend on their ever-replenishing pool of energy.

The rogue's primary attributes are agility and stamina, but also place great value in their secondary stats (haste, critical strike, mastery, and versatility). Rogues can wear only leather or cloth armor and are unable to use shields. They can only wield one-handed weapons (daggers, swords, axes, maces, and fist weapons), but are able to dual wield two of these weapons at a time.

Assassination
Much of an Assassination rogue's toolkit is based on heavy damage over time through poison effects, rapid auto-attacks (assassination rogues require daggers in both hands to utilize many of their abilities), and abilities that cause bleed damage. Combat centers upon maintaining and managing bleed effects on your targets, focusing on the amount of time left on each bleed and maximizing your damage output by ensuring that they are constantly in effect. The use of poisons is exclusive and central to the assassination spec, forming a significant part of its damage output.

Outlaw
Outlaw rogues focus on consistent weapon (auto-attack) damage and cleave damage in multi-target situations to provide sustained DPS. Rather than requiring stealth and relying on powerful openers, you can simply run-up to most targets and quickly hack away at them, building combo points while maintaining personal buffs; these enhancements are random and will either augment the characteristics of some of your abilities, reduce your cooldown times, or boost your secondary stats. As such, Outlaw tends to be the best spec for fast leveling, since you can move quickly from one enemy to the next with very little downtime instead of trying to sneak up on enemies.

Subtlety
Subtlety rogues like to stay in the shadows. This spec is based on moving quickly and staying hidden, choosing to strike at the most advantageous moment. Once they have initiated their attack, a subtlety rogue focuses on accumulating as many combo points as possible in a short amount of time, relying on high burst damage at the beginning of combat and pooling energy to maximize damage as a fight progresses.

Subtlety is the archetypal (and infamous) PvP rogue spec, appearing from nowhere to overwhelm and defeat a player in a matter of seconds using a combination of incapacitating abilities and deadly damage. Subtlety rogues try to avoid a straight fight; their greatest strength is centered on their ability to catch their prey by surprise, and if they are unable to defeat the opponent in their initial burst, then they will often slip back into the shadows before their opponent is able to rally.