See Poison for the dispel type.

Poisons is an ability that enables Rogues to coat their Main Hand, Off Hand, or Ranged weapon with poisons. When a poisoned weapon strikes an enemy it has a chance of applying a debuff that damages, slows, or otherwise hinders the enemy, depending on the poison applied. Learned at level 10, Poisons are a core part of the Rogue class and their use is required to maximize effectiveness.

Poisons are considered a temporary (1-hour) weapon enhancement. Poisons do not stack with other temporary weapon effects such as a Blacksmith's sharpening stones or weightstones or Alchemist's oils. Only one such temporary weapon enchantment can be active on a weapon at a time.

Some Rogue talents and abilities, most of which are found within the Assassination tree, enhance the effectiveness of poisons.

Contents 1 Poisons 2 Abilities, talents, and items 3 Weapon speed 4 Historical 5 Quests 5.1 Alliance 5.2 Horde 6 In Mists of Pandaria 7 References 8 Patch changes 9 External links

Poisons

Poisons are automatically learned. These are the poisons with a very brief description of their basic function:

• [Crippling Poison] (snare)
• [Deadly Poison] (DoT)
• [Leeching Poison] (talent; leeches health to heal rogue)
• [Mind-numbing Poison] (increase spellcasting time)
• [Paralytic Poison] (talent; paralytic)
• [Wound Poison] (reduces healing effects)

Abilities, talents, and items

The following abilities, talents, and items directly relate to Rogue poisons:

• Shiv: Instantly applies the poison on your offhand weapon to the target and dispels an enrage effect.
• Mutilate: Damage is increased by 20% against poisoned targets.
• Envenom Consumes 1 stack of Deadly Poison per combo point on the target, dealing additional damage per point, similar to Eviscerate but ignores armor and deals Nature damage.
• Bloodfang Armor: Tier 2 (level 60) gear with 3-set bonus that increases the chance to apply poisons to your target by 5%.

Weapon speed

Faster weapons do not always increase the rate at which you apply a poison: unlike the other poisons (which have a fixed chance per hit), Instant and Wound Poison use PPM (proc-per-minute) mechanics. This means that even on a very slow weapon your Instant or Wound Poisons will add the same amount of DPS (damage per second) as on a fast weapon. Note that without Improved Poisons, Wound Poison's DPS is higher than Instant Poison's due to its higher PPM.

The argument for using slower weapons is this: based on your weapon speed and your poison's PPM, an average proc chance is calculated that will be used every melee swing. However, your special attacks (Sinister Strikes, Mutilates, etc.) can also deliver your poisons, and they use this very same calculated proc chance. So equipping a slow weapon results in an increased chance of applying poison with your special attacks, which, of course, are not restricted by your weapon speed. The difference in damage is rather minimal though, so people often just follow the "slow MH, fast OH" because they could always put Crippling/Deadly/Mind-Numbing on their OH without much reduced effect.

Historical

Prior to Patch 3.0.2, Rogues made their own poisons using a Poisons skill. Poison ingredients were purchased at Shady Dealers or reagent vendors, found in junkboxes obtained through Pickpocketing, or gathered with Herbalism. Once you had the Poisons skill, you had to level it like a profession. You had a skill level that you could increase by making poisons that still gave skill. Unlike professions, you did not need to purchase the ability to skill up beyond the 75, 150, 225, and 300 limits. Instead your current skill limit was simply five times your current level. There was no poisons trainer; instead you learned new poisons from the Rogue trainer, subject to meeting the level and skill prerequisites. Poisons did not count towards your two-profession limit, despite its similarities to other professions.

Previously Rogues could buy Anesthetic Poison, which was used to dispel enrage effects. In Patch 4.0.1 the ability to dispel enrage effects was built into Shiv, making this poison obsolete. It is no longer sold by common vendors, although you can still buy a non-functional version from Jeeves (likely a bug).

Quests

Formerly, the quest chains detailed below were required to access Poisons—this is no longer the case and the ability becomes available for purchase upon reaching level 10. The quests remain, however, as Rogue-only quests.

Alliance

Go to the Old Town in Stormwind. Master Mathias Shaw at SI:7 headquarters offers the first quest in the chain, [20] Mathias and the Defias. The quest takes you to a tower on the southern border of Westfall near Stranglethorn Vale, along the river, and requires a skill level of 70 in Lockpicking to complete. After completing [24] Klaven's Tower, the second quest in the chain, you will gain the ability to buy poisons.

Horde

Go to the Cleft of Shadow in Orgrimmar and complete [20] The Shattered Salute. The Horde quest chain is difficult to solo at level 20, but two level-20 characters or a solo Rogue around level 23 should be able to complete it. The two main quests (including [24] Mission: Possible But Not Probable which requires a skill level of 70 in Lockpicking to complete) in the chain take you to a tower in the northeast corner of the Barrens. When the quest objectives are completed, the Rogue will be poisoned with a very slow-acting poison debuff. After turning in the quest at the Cleft of Shadow, the Rogue travels to Tarren Mill in the Hillsbrad Foothills, where s/he will be cured of the poison debuff (though the poison is easily curable through a variety of other means as well) and gain the right to buy poisons.

In Mists of Pandaria

This section concerns content exclusive to Mists of Pandaria.

Poisons were re-worked in the Mists of Pandaria expansion to have one damage type poison and the rest being utility poisons in order to give more reason to use utility poisons without feeling like using them would be a damage loss.^[1]

Now only only one type of Damage and one type of Utility poison can be active at a time. Here are the poison types:

Damage poison

• [Deadly Poison] available at level 10: Coats your weapons with a Lethal Poison that lasts for 1 hour. Each strike has a 30% chance of poisoning the enemy for varies Nature damage over 12 sec. Subsequent poison applications will instantly deal X to Y Nature damage.
• [Wound Poison] available at level 30: Coats a weapon with poison that lasts for 1 hour. Each strike has a 30% chance of poisoning the enemy, which instantly inflicts X to Y Nature damage and reduces the effect of healing received (-25%) for 15 sec.

Utility poison

• [Crippling Poison] available at level 20: Coats your weapons with a Non-Lethal Poison that lasts for 1 hour. Each strike has a 50% chance of poisoning the enemy, slowing their movement speed by 50% for 12 sec.
• [Mind-numbing Poison] available at level 28: Coats a weapon with poison that lasts for 1 hour. Each strike has a 50% chance of poisoning the enemy, increasing their casting time by 50% (25% on player targets) for 10 sec.
• With talent: [Leeching Poison] at level 45: Poisons an enemy for 10 sec. Subsequent weapon strikes against the poisoned target will heal the Rogue for 10% of damage dealt.
• With talent: [Paralytic Poison] at level 75: Coats your weapons with a Non-Lethal Poison that lasts for 1 hour. Each strike has a 20% chance of poisoning the enemy for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times on a single target, and upon a fifth application, the enemy will be stunned for 4 seconds.

References

Patch changes

 Patch 4.0.1 (2010-10-12): Many class talents, spells, and abilities have been overhauled, added, or removed.

Rogues now learn Poisons at level 10 (down from level 20), Rogues can now poison their Ranged weapon, Anesthetic Poison has been removed (Shiv now dispels Enrage effects), poisons no longer have multiple ranks and now scale with character level, several abilities and talents related to poisons have changed, Glyph of Poisons added.

 Patch 3.0.2 (2008-10-14): Damaging poisons now scale with attack power.
 Patch 3.0.2 (2008-10-14): Poisons skill removed. All finished poisons are available on vendors rather than created by the rogue.
 Patch 2.3.0 (2007-11-13): All poisons will now enchant the weapon for 1 hour, increased from 30 minutes.
 Patch 2.1.0 (2007-05-22): Poisons: The difficulty of dispelling these is now based off the level of the player, not the level of the weapon the poison is applied to.
 Patch 2.1.0 (2007-05-22): Rogue poisons no longer have charges.
 Patch 1.11.0 (2006-06-20): Temporary item buffs (e.g. poisons, sharpening stones and shaman weapon buffs) will persist through zoning or logging out.
 Patch 1.11.0 (2006-06-20): A number of items have had their stacking limits increased including leather, enchanting dust/shards and rogue poisons/reagents among others.
 Patch 1.10.0 (2006-03-28): Applying Rogue poisons will no longer break Stealth.

External links

• Wowhead
• Thottbot
• WoWDB