There are three main trains of of thought when building a Rogue in Blizzard's World of Warcraft: Sword, Dagger or Fist. Barring some weird Rogue build, these three are the most prevalent and for some time "Fist" and "Dagger" Rogues have been winning out. With patch 2.1 however, the swordies may have a new lease on life.

While Sword Rogues are not inherently weak, some tweaks had to be made to make them more competitive. In an article on World of Ming, they pointed out two of the major sword buffs in 2.1: extra attack resetting auto timer bug fix and off hand attacks are now considered "yellow damage." While this may not mean a lot to non-Rogues out there, these two buffs can actually make the difference between living and dying.

First up, we have the bug fix. Now, the guys at Ming gave a very good example: if you are 0.5 second away from swinging your MH, and your sinister strike generates an extra attack, you get the full benefit of the extra attack, and your normal swing comes out right after. In a class where DPS and massive damage is your forte, this is just awesome.

The second point is the "Yellow damage", while extra attacks can only be dodged and parried, the Rogue no longer suffers from dual wield penalties. Add this to the fact that offhand sword procs trigger main-hand attacks and we have a winner.

Of course, these are not the only reasons that the swordies are back on everyone's radar. You can read more about it by clicking on our read link. We don't know about you guys, but we are beginning to consider the sword specced Rogue as our next project in PvP.