With reputation of being shadowly assassins and with gear style of ninja, rogues will definitely be attractive to many players and you might be one of them.
Anyway, before you start your journey as a rogue, you might want to explore more about races that have best abilities to combine with these masters of stealth.
So, without further ado, here is a list of the best races for the rogue class:
7. Gnome
Gnomes are popular rogues due to the size of their body, especially in PvP where they can be tricky to spot or focus.
However, compared to the other races, gnomish racials are simply not good enough for the rogue class.
Since rogues do not have any use for mana nor intelligence, passive ability Expansive Mind, which increases intelligence by 5%, is totally useless to them.
Bonus of 10 points to the arcane resistance, which they get from the other passive ability called Arcane Resistance, is also pretty much useless, since there are only few hostile units which use this type of magic.
In general, we can even say that arcane resistance is the last one in the group of resistances that you need to worry about while playing Classic WoW.
Third passive ability of the gnomes is Engineering Specialist, which increases engineering skill by 15, if you decide to try out this profession! This bonus does not give gnomes any advantages over other races with engineering skill once they hit its maximum of 300.
However, it can save you some money while leveling it, since engineering is not cheap on the Classic.
At last, active ability known as Escape Artist is the only one that can be useful, if despite everything that we mentioned, you decide to play as a gnome rogue.
When activated it will remove any immobilization or movement speed reduction effect, which can be pretty handy, especially in PvP situations.
Good to know is that this racial has casting time of 0.5 seconds.
In most cases this passes unnoticed and with short cooldown of 1 minute this ability can truly guide you in surviving.
6. Night Elf
As a night elf rogue, you will naturally be gifted with high points of agility which is rogue’s main stat, but even with this bonus you might wanna skip this race once you find yourself in front of the character creation screen.
Compared to the gnomes, elves do have some nice racial bonuses.
First, let’s mention their active ability Shadowmeld, which allows you to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence.
While it can be life saver to other elvish classes, for rogues it is meaningless since they train stealth at the very beginning of leveling.
Passive skill known as Wisp Spirit, which transforms night elf into a wisp upon death increasing movement speed by 50%, is handy to have due to the distance between graveyard and corpse that can be pretty long on the Classic WoW.
So not completely useless, but still there is no benefit while playing as a living character.
Next two passive skills are actually the reason why you could choose this race for your rogue.
First one will provide you with 1% bonus to dodge, and it’s called Quickness.
Nice one to have, if you are lazy player who does not want additional active abilities beside trained ones.
The second one is Nature Resistance, which increases the same resistance by 10.
It does not have important role within PvP borders but in some dungeons, especially in the Temple of Ahn’Quiraj can make a difference.
5. Dwarves
Some players would put dwarves rogues much closer to the number one since they possess one of the best racials for PvP.
However, here we speak in general, not focusing on the PvP or PvE only.
From two first racials, rogues almost do not have any use but still, in some rare occasions they can be of use.
First one is Find Treasure, which would allow you to track nearby treasure, by making it appear on the minimap.
This visual bonus is actually nice one to have.. treasures like chests can bring you some decent gear while leveling and also some materials which can be sold.
However, in the pin-bar that lies next to the minimap, you can put only one ability, and usually there goes some ability that comes with the profession, like Find Minerals that comes with the Minning.
So you could be changing that continuously but that’s certainly not very viable.
The second one is Gun Specialization, and due to it all dwarves have bonus of 5 skill to the guns.
But as a rogue, even if you equip a gun, it would be only because its stats.
Off course, in rare situations you will probably have to use it and this skill would then provide some minimal bonus.
The dwarves also have increased frost resistance, thanks to the racial with the same name.
This is nice upgrade for Classic WoW end-game raiding in the Naxxramas.
The last racial ability of the dwarves is Stoneform, which activated will make your character immune to bleed, poison, and disease effects.
In additionaly, armor will be increased by 10%.
With the cooldown of 3 minutes and lasting of 8 seconds, this one is definitely one of the best racials for PvP that classic WoW has to offer.
If you are diving in as a PvP player, you should definitely think about picking this race for your rogue.
4. Human
For your rogue, human race will provide some decent racials for both PvE and PvP.
First, there is passive skill Diplomacy, which provides reputation gain by 10%.
This will be nice to have because you will probably find yourself in hunt for few factions reputations as soon as you hit level 60 and that might happen even before the final level.
The Human Spirit, also a passive skill, which increases spirit by 5% is worthy of mentioning since it will increase your health regeneration, but generally it will not have a big impact on the gameplay.
Now, humans have two very nice passive abilities.
One is called Mace Specialization, which increases skill with maces and two-handed maces by 5, and second one is Sword Specialization that does the same, just for the swords.
If you want to know the reason why these two are good skills to possess, you must understand term “Glancing Blows”.
In short, the higher your weapon skill is in comparison to its target’s defense the more damage you will do trough these glancing blows.
This alone is good enough but it will also slightly increase your chance to score critical hit, decrease your chance to miss and decrease your opponent’s chance to block, parry and dodge.
For glancing blows we can say that they are just normal attacks that do less damage than others.
Effectively, you can consider weapon skill to be inverse of the defense skill.
Skills that we are speaking of are reason why some people consider humans to be the best melee race for classic wow, at least when it comes to the users of swords and maces.
Last racial skill of humans is Perception, which will dramatically increase your stealth detection for 20 seconds while activated.
It has cooldown of 3 minutes and it would give you good advantage against feral/cat druids and other rogues.
3. Undeads/Forsaken
Besides three other racials, undeads, like dwarves, possess skill that is considered to be one of the best racials for PvP.
Their passive skills Underwater Breathing and Shadow Resistance are handy skills to have.
First one will make your underwater breath to last 300% longer than normal, and second one will add 10 point to your shadow resistance that will increases your defense against shadow spells while confronting warlocks and shadow priests, but will also be useful in some dungeons like Scholomance, Stratholme, etc.
Then, there is active ability called Cannibalize, which will regenerate 7% of total health every 2 seconds while activated near humanoid corpse.
It lasts for 10 seconds and has cooldown of 2 minutes, which makes this ability fun and also good, especially in PvP.
Powerful racial of the forsaken, the one that has been mentioned before, is Will of the Forsaken.
When activated, it will provide immunity to charm, fear and sleep.
It will also remove them if it is activated while your character is under such effect. It have cooldown of 2 minutes and lasts 5 seconds.
Thanks to this ability, many players will decide that forsaken is the best race for their rogue, especially if they are diving more into the world of PvP.
2. Troll
With racials damage boosters, etc. Trolls are almost number one race that you could pick for your rogue.
Their passive racials are Beast Slaying and Throwing/Bow Specialization.
Beast Slaying, which increases damage against beasts is a nice upgrade, especially while leveling, since many zones, like Stranglethorn Vale, are almost entirely covered with beasts.
Due to the Throwing/Bow specialization, you will get 5 bonus points on the throw and bow.
Most of the time you will be wearing those two because of stats that they provide.
However, from time to time you will use them to strike down that cowardly alliance player which was just trying to run away with almost empty health bar.
Troll’s first active ability is known as Berserking will increase you attack speed by 10% to 25%.
At full health the speed increase is 10% with a greater effect up to 25% if you are badly hurt when you activate Berserking.
It lasts 10 seconds and has cooldown of 3 minutes.
In combination with rogue’s ability Slice and Dice, it makes great pair of damage dealing improvement.
The second active racial of trolls is Regeneration, which increases health regeneration rate by 10%, and 10% of total health regeneration may continue during combat.
While it’s not anything special, it still can be last stand in order to survive.
1. Orcs
Orcs are number one race that you should pick for your rogues, at least if you are going after every minimal detail that can be added to your advantages.
From first two passive skills called Command and Axe Specialization, rogues do not have any upgrade.
Command increases damage dealt by hunter and warlock pets by 5% and Axe Specialization increases skill with axes and two-handed axes by 5.
This one actually would be great bonus to have, but we speak about Classic WoW where rogues can’t use any kind of axes.
Now, let’s talk about powerful racial abilities of the orcs.
The first one, known as Hardiness, will provide your rogue with 25% additional chances to resist the stun effect.
While it is semi-decent in PvE, in PvP this can drastically increase your chance of victory.
The second one is called Blood Fury, which will increase your base melee attack power by 25% for 15 seconds by cost of reducing healing effect on you by 50% for 25 seconds.
It has 2 minutes of cooldown and as such it is a nice booster in both PvE and PvP.
However you would need to watch out for that healing reduction.
Also, this ability is not effecter by gear, provided melee attack power depends only on the base attack power.
