Below is a more detailed breakdown of these enchants explaining what is better and why they’re the recommend/best enchants for pve rogues in phase 4.
Weapons
Crusader
No brainer really. Crusader beats everything else mainhand as swords. If you’re cheap or using a temporary weapon you could potentially use Fiery enchant as a cheapie, but you definitely want crusader on your bis weapon.
Crusader
A great mainhand weapon enchant for both swords and daggers. Can’t really argue against +100 str when it procs and it’s fairly consistent with proccing on mainhand. The only real downside being it takes up a buff slot.
Superior Striking (+5 to weapon)
A slight 4-5 downgrade in pve dps vs. Crusader, but a boost in pvp burst damage. A lot of rogues (myself include) who do both pvp and pve will prefer this for their weapon.
4-5 dps isn’t much to give up for rogues who want to see big crits with their dagger in pvp.
Basically pick crusader if you only pve, but if you do both you should strongly consider Superior Striking.
You have two options:
Crusader (again)
Crusader is just a great enchant because 100 str is huge and it can double stack to 200 str if both mainhand and oh proc. If timed with your cooldowns it can be a nice burst of extra damage.
However many rogues are moving to the following enchant on their offhand:
Enchant weapon – Agility (+15)
There’s 2 main reasons why some prefer agi on their offhand…
Reason 1: Crusader takes up a buff slot
Buff slots for raiding rogues are getting more and more precious as the phases continue and we get more world buffs to collect. If you get above 32 buffs in a raid you start getting your older buffs pushed off.
Rogue buffs can be very deceiving because you may seem fine at first with a decent margin before you reach the 32 buff cap, but then suddenly a priest hits you with a shield, shaman weaves full totems, you pop evasion/sprint, you use slice and dice, you use vanish (which counts as 2 buffs) and suddenly your entire free buff space disappeared and your onyxia buff gets pushed off.
It’s rare for it to all happen together but I’ve personally seen it happen to rogues on my raid before, and losing buffs ruins your chances of getting good parses for that raid. This is why some rogues prefer agi because it’s 1 less buff slot.
Reason 2: Agi is more consistent damage and you don’t worry about rng procs
Crusader offhand is more damage when it procs. However it has to proc at the right time for that to happen and fights in a good guild can be very short.
Procs also happen less often in your offhand vs. mainhand, which only adds to the problem of it proccing too late at times. This doesn’t mean crusader OH is bad (you can still hope for an ideal proc and get a really nice damage boost that beats agi), just that +15 agi is way more reliable and consistent damage overall.
Personally I prefer +agi to offhand for consistency and not having to worry about proc timing, but that’s up to you to make the choice yourself.
Armor:
Death’s Embrace
This enchant comes from ZG from turning in a rogue class ‘punctured voodoo doll’ plus a ‘Primal Hakkari Idol’ (you get 2 of these per ZG run assuming you kill both Jin’do and Bloodlord Mandokir).
Be prepared for mages/hunters to get prio on the ZG idols in guild runs due to their enchant being better than everyone elses. The rogue enchant stats still aren’t too bad though, and the 1% dodge isn’t completely wasted as it does help for those of you who do Blackrock Depth’s solo pick pocket/kill runs for gold.
Zandalar Signet of Might (required exalted ZG reputation)
This requires 15x Zandalar Honor Tokens (you get these completing various quests and from destroying Bijous found in ZG) and exalted reputation. It’s a simple reputation reward much like the Argent Dawn resistance enchants.
Lesser Agility (+3 agi)
Not great, but there’s no other real options for enchants here besides fire resist for your fire set (but most people stacking FR would put it on their onyxia cloak anyway).
Greater stats (+4 to all stats)
One of the pricier enchants due to the fee charged by most owners of this enchant (unless you have a guildy with it). Most rogues will probably skip this enchant until they get their bis chest (Bloodfang Chest).
Here are two cheaper alternatives for those waiting/too cheap to put +4 on non bis gear.
Stats (+3 to all stats)
Major Health (+100)
Superior Strength (+9 str)
It’s either str or sta here. Most rogues pick str for their pve set (bloodfang/bracers of the eclipse for most) and sta on their pvp set (typically nightslayer).
Greater Agility (+7 agi to gloves)
Some sims actually show 1% haste doing very well/better compared to this +7 agi enchant, but sims tend to overvalue +haste due to being unable to properly add in the haste value.
+7 agi to gloves is what you want for hands.
Why is haste enchant overvalued in some sims?
It’s a bit complicated to explain, but basically it adds extra attacks to try simulate the 1% more haste in fights, but in actual in-game fights the 1% more haste is so small that you won’t get any extra attacks from it in most fights.
You might swing a little faster and get closer to getting an extra attack, but if you don’t get enough haste to actually get the extra attack then you’ve gained zero dps from the enchant.
Minor Speed (+8% run speed)
This may seem odd to some, but movement speed it the bis enchant for most people. Not only is it a quality of life upgrade for general WoW, but time to engage and moving quickly are important factors in PvE.
You’ll get much more out of running faster than a small +7 agility.
However there is 2 cases where you may want to use the following enchant…
Greater Agi (+7 agi to boots)
Some rogues do manage to pick up a second pair of their raid tier boots, meaning they can have one enchanted with minor speed and another with +7 agi for static fights (such as vael in BWL).
Another use case is for rogues who will always pick up the ZG 2 hour world buff in Booty Bay or the 2 hour ZG potion (costs 1 ZG honor token per potion and requires revered reputation).
Movement speed does not stack, so when you have either of these buffs your +8% run speed on boots does nothing. If you’re someone who min/maxes and rarely dies, you could potentially enchant +7 agi to boots and rely purely on the ZG buff to be your movement speed.
Ranged enchant really doesn’t matter, but you could put a +7 scope if you really want to enchant your ranged.
If you want to go untested theorycrafting then try this:
There is potential guessing that because blind counts as a ranged attack, you could potentially put a 2% to range atk on your bow to help with reaching 5% hit cap for blind in pvp. This hasn’t been tested properly though, so do this at your own cost.