There’s an old rogue tactic that I’ve referenced in a couple of posts (including the one I’m about to post) but never really written about.
As usual it’s situational, and requires preparation (and yet another weapon in your bag), but for 1v1 in arenas (or BGs), it can tip the odds in your favour. There are times when you’ll want to sap until your target’s Ice Barrier or PW:S wears of, so if you’re going to be standing around idle you might as well get a couple of free combo points! Camouflage helps, as you’ll be able to restealth quicker.
The trick revolves around how your autoattacks only work on targets in a 90° arc infront of you, while special attacks work in a 180° arc.
No it's not a Pokemon ball...
The trick is to sap your target, then rotate so you can use cheapshot without your autoattacks connecting. For some reason cheapshot does not break stealth, so you can cancel your autoattack and leave combat before sap wears off. Once you are out of combat, you can restealth and benefit from the two combo points you now have on your target.
Unfortunately there’s a catch. It is possible for your mainhand poison to proc on the cheapshot, breaking the stealth. The only way to avoid this is to, yep, use a weapon without a poison on it (or use mind-numbing if you’re feeling flash). Just remember to swap back to your regular weapon afterwards!
If you’re having problems with positioning, I have a macro I wrote that interrupts the autoattack by starting to craft a bandage, but tbh it’s not hard to get the hang of, just keep trying! Unfortunately you won’t be dropped out of combat if you try this on regular mobs, but you can still get used to rotating away from your target.
nice idea….. but maybe we can improve this by having macro at the start, and when cheapshot is on the target macro again for the original weapon, the macro have also the auto attack disabled and when cheapshot hits it will turn on……….
I can macro together the weapon swaps, but even with “/cast cheapshot; /stopattack “it still auto-attacks once :/ The only way I’ve found to stop the attack is by starting to craft a bandage. I’ll add the macro when I get home tonight
There is a little addon called “shadowdancer” which with the right configuration swaps your weapons automaticly depende of the action, button or button you pressing or after an action or pressed button. Worth give it a try and see if fits your gamestyle.
Thanks, I’ll try it out in tomorrow’s daily BG (slacking tonight irl, meh!)
How did it go?
1. Find a weapon that does 1-3 dmg with 3.0 weapon speed. ex. Horde Lance
2. Make a macro ex. /equip slot 16 Horde Lance /cast cheapshot /stopattack
No angles needed just cheapshot from any direction
This is about sap needing to be used from a certain angle, rather than cheapshot.