A Lazy Rogue’s Guide To Raiding
by
Updated 8/15/08
I’m a lazy rogue, that’s how I’ve always described my play style. Sneaking around takes too long, I just walk up and hit the mob. Stunning, moving behind, backstabbing, repeating involves too many keys, I just spam the same key or two until the mob (or myself) dies. I'm not an inconsiderate rogue, I let tanks get aggro in raids and I'll sap when additional crowd control is needed, but after all that I'm right back to: walk up, hit, spam. I'll spell interrupt if needed, but I only use my big cool downs for boss fights or emergencies (who wants to keep up with all those countdowns for hours on end?).
Yet, despite my laziness, I've also been a strong DPS in raids. In fact I'm usually the top damage dealer in a T5 raid guild. I've never been accused of not doing my job or my fair share, I've never been booted from a raid or guild for slacking off. Obviously I'm performing well, but I'm not having to put a lot of effort into it. So now I'm sharing my experience with other lazy rogues out there.
I think people who play rogues as their main character tend to be lazy. Come on, you know it's true. Ever used stealth to bypass quest guarding mobs, even if you could of beaten them in combat? Ever sapped a low level mob next to a herb or ore instead of fighting it? Do you stealth in group to better hide your AFK tag? See, you're lazier than you thought. Being lazy doesn't mean you don't do what the raid needs you to do, it means you do what the raid needs with the least amount of effort on your part. After all, rogues are the only class that offer zero buffs, a mostly useless (in raids) CC, and almost no other useful utility. We need to DPS well to justify our raid slots. Being lazy won't lead to your maximum DPS potential, however. If you want to get every bit of DPS out you're looking at the wrong guide, because that involves way too much work for me to write up.
As a final note before we begin, it takes a decent amount of effort before you start raiding so that you can be lazy while raiding. The preparation is worth it, better to plan everything out of game on your own schedule than stress out during the raid on which button is the most efficient one to push. This guide will get you through all of that preparation so that when it is finally time to raid you can just sit back and relax.
