How To Improve As Outlaw Rogue — The War Within (11.0.5)

Since all of Outlaw's damage is tied to resources and cooldowns, it is important to waste as little of them as possible. You should make sure you do not find yourself being energy-capped or casting combo-generating abilities when at maximum Combo Points while trying to use all your cooldown-based abilities as soon as possible. You will often find yourself presented with multiple cd-based abilities available at the same time, and prioritizing them in the correct order is key to maximizing your DPS output.

While this generally holds true, it is important to note that the current iteration of Outlaw has no way to avoid overcapping multiple Combo Points or Energy in certain situations, i.e., when you receive a lot of extra procs.

Due to the very high uptime on Adrenaline Rush, you are almost permanently playing with a sub-1-second GCD. As a result, you might want to spend more time thinking about what button to press than is good for you. It is better to make minor mistakes by ensuring you are using abilities on the GCD than sitting on your abilities to play a "perfect" rotation.

The only requirement for using Adrenaline Rush correctly is to not use it when you are already very close to capping Energy. In these cases, you will want to dump Energy for 2-3 global cooldowns and then use Adrenaline Rush.

The same concept applies to all your other abilities that have a cooldown. Ghostly Strike, Between the Eyes, Blade Rush, and any other DPS cooldown affected by Restless Blades should all be used on cooldown as much as possible, as you would otherwise waste the benefits of your Restless Blades cooldown reduction.

Vanish is a particular outlier here, as you do not want to use it without Adrenaline Rush active.

With Blade Flurry being on a 30-second cooldown but only having a duration of 12 seconds, you must not accidentally use this cooldown at the end of an AoE pull. Since its cooldown is reduced by both Restless Blades, as well as True Bearing, it might be better to hold onto it as the remaining enemies are about to die. Otherwise, you run the risk of using it and being unable to generate and spend Combo Points during its duration while you are between pulls. The next group of enemies will then see you with Blade Flurry still on cooldown, and you will spend the first 5-10 seconds recharging it while doing almost no AoE damage.

It is impossible to correctly play and optimize an Outlaw Rogue without using Raidbots to sim your own character, there are simply too many variables involved to intuitively figure out what gear to wear and so on without simming it first. Generally speaking, a simulation should be the first and final say in the gear you end up wearing for any given situation.

On top of this, simming is now very easy, with no need to understand SimulationCraft APLs or installation yourself. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn and the Raidbots website. Below, you can find a video on how to sim your own character using the website.