Rupture: The damage-over-time component of this ability can now produce critical strikes.

Talents

Subtlety

• Filthy Tricks: Now Reduces the cooldown by 5/10 seconds and energy cost by 5/10 of Tricks of the Trade, Distract and Shadowstep abilities, and reduces the cooldown of Preparation by 1.5/3 minutes.
• Ghostly Strike: If the rogue has a dagger equipped, this ability now deals 180% weapon damage instead of 125%.
• Hemorrhage: If the rogue has a dagger equipped, this ability now deals 160% weapon damage instead of 110%.
• Slaughter from the Shadows: Now adds 1/2/3/4/5% damage to all attacks in addition to its current effects.
• Waylay: The debuff from this talent can now be caused by Backstab in addition to Ambush.

Interesting stuff I’ll have a play around tomorrow when I’m less sleepy, but this may add a bit of variation to the standard 44/2/25 builds. Hemo looks a bit weak still (if you factor in the 4 talent points needed to spec into it), but in RS/RLS where I get focused a lot, putting a point into Ghostly Strike looks a bit more tempting.

With Slaughter from the Shadows giving the same DPS gain as unglyphed HfB and Waylay replacing crippling poison, maybe this will breathe life back into subtlety PVP?

Patch 3.3.2 is bringing about a change to the way healing functions in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and Wintergrasp. We have applied a debuff to all players in these zones which will decrease the effectiveness of all forms of healing by 10%. This includes heals from items such as Healthstones and potions, however, it will not affect defensive shields or auras. This change is being made to balance the effectiveness of healing against the recent buff we made to the damage reduction component provided by resilience. Rest assured that we will be closely monitoring the effects both the healing and resilience changes have on Battleground, Wintergrasp, and Arena PvP game play to ensure that fights last a reasonable amount of time without overtly skewing the effectiveness of any class, role, or team combination.

A 10% zone debuff is a clumsy way of addressing a problem that hasn’t really been tested in a serious arena environment, but at least Blizzard seem to be trying to fix things (rather than ignore problems until Cataclysm).

Rogues have escaped the nerf bat for the time being – that almost makes up for 5yrs of bugged vanish

Full patch notes are here.

They haven’t released information of the stats just yet (or indications of what will be coming from Wintergrasp) but seeing the graphics is a good start at least.

Good to see that after 3 tiers of crap looking PVE gear, Blizzard are still making pretty mean looking PVP armor, without having to fall back on recoloring previous sets.

Nice to see envenom has escaped a nerf (at least temporarily), though for some reason balance/elemental/destruction are getting increased damage buffs to several of their spells.

We are currently in the process of applying a hotfix to buff resilience. While some modifications may be made, we intend to have this buff in effect for the remainder of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

The change will double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players. So depending on their current amount of resilience, characters might experience a 10 to 20% decrease in damage taken from other players. The critical strike chance and critical strike damage reduction components of resilience will remain unaffected by this change.

We are also aware of the possibility that this change will make healing in PvP too difficult to counter. While we are not making any immediate changes to address this issue, we have prepared some further changes that will allow us to quickly deploy a PvP-only healing adjustment if we feel it is warranted.

We will be applying this change very soon while we are between Arena seasons so we can evaluate how it works in multiple PvP scenarios for the upcoming Arena season, and as we continue to prepare for Cataclysm. As we have mentioned previously, one of the goals for Cataclysm is to have a PvP environment where it is harder to regularly achieve so much damage and healing in relatively few global cooldowns compared to what we currently have in the game.

Not quite as subtle as some of the proposed changes (like 1resil also giving upto 10hp), but this should force some of the more PVE dependent classes (mages/warriors etc) into PVP gear, at least until heroic ICC25 opens. It will be interesting to see if some of the new gear will come with stats like ArP to cover this shift from PVE>PVP equipment. At least we know why Blizz have been dragging their heels over releasing info of the new sets!

Good luck if you’re waiting to see if you made the glad/duelist/rival cut, especially those who stayed online pushing until the last minute.

Hopefully during the week Blizzard will release information about the upcoming gear – I’m interested to see whether the delay is down to a reworking of stats (emergency measure to increase mitigation, perhaps after watching the MLG final), or if the graphic designers have just been slacking with recolouring/sticking spikes onto the current gear. Hopefully it won’t be the latter, and all classes will see more benefit from running mostly PVP gear.

There still hasn’t been any news about upcoming WG gear, other than speculation that it’s probably about the time when new trinkets are added. Fingers crossed this will be the case; as a non-raider I’m getting a bit bored with using Darkmoon Card: Death for the 4th season in a row!

We are currently planning to end Arena Season 7 as early as January 19. At that point we will go through our normal process to determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards. This process should take approximately one week. It’s very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for the arena-specific titles and/or Relentless Gladiator’s Frostwyrm to refrain from transferring their character to another realm until after Arena Season 7 ends.

The following Arena Season will not begin for at least one week after the current season ends. During this time between seasons, all rated matches will be turned off and only skirmishes will be available. When Arena Season 8 begins, all team ratings, personal rating, and arena points will be wiped, but matchmaking rating and honor points will remain.

It will be interesting to see if the daily battleground quest still gives arena points during the week after the end of Season 7. Theoretically there’ll be at least 175 extra points available during the hiatus so if you’re still saving for gear and are a few points short on the 20th Jan, don’t waste them all on honor tokens

Hunger for Blood now increases damage by 10% instead of 15%. We wanted to increase Assassination rogue damage, and we were succesful, but we overshot the mark. We buffed Hunger for Blood back when Assassination needed a damage boost, so we’re more than happy that this talent won’t account for such a huge dps increase. Because of the nature of hotfixes, it is unlikely the tooltip will change to 10% right away.

On the positive side, it could have been a lot worse. At least 44/2/25 and 42/5/23 builds will remain as strong as they current are, so for the majority of PVPing assassination rogues, this is one PVE fix that won’t floor us.

Murder changed to affect all targets – will give 4% damage increase vs resto druids

Improved Poisons buffed, increasing Deadly Poison proc rate to 50%

Deadly Poison will now also proc your second poison for each application after five stacks

Preparation cooldown reduced to 8 minutes, or 5 minutes with 2/2 in Filthy Tricks

I’ll be trying to fit 5/5 Improved Poisons into my envenom build somehow. Most likely it will be at the loss of Deadened Nerves, Improved Eviscerate or a couple of points in Lethality. I won’t be removing Eviscerate from my bars just yet, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to heavily reduce the number of times I have to use it.

The other changes that stand out this patch are the shared cooldown on Will of the Forsaken/PVP Trinekts, the buff to Arena sets and the free 175 Arena Points a week.

Will of the Forsaken now shares a 45-second cooldown with similar effects, including the Medallion of the Horde, Titan-Forged runes, Insignia of the Horde, etc.

The two-piece set bonus for all Wrath of the Lich King Arena sets now provides 100 resilience and 29 spell power or 50 attack power. The current four-piece bonus will remain, however it also now provides 88 spell power or 150 attack power.

All level 71-80 Battleground daily quests will now award 25 Arena points in addition to their current rewards.

The nerf to WotF looks quite major for rushdown teams – I’d be interested to hear from Undead rogues about how they feel. The racial always seemed noticable when playing alliance RMP/RP vs full undead mirrors.

There hasn’t been an ETA for the end of Season 7, but looking at the lengths of previous seasons it’s probably safe to guess at early January.

Bmx:
Hey There Keatstwo, thank you for allowing us to interview you. First of all could you introduce yourself to our readers?

Keatstwo:
Hi there Bmx, my current main is Keatstwo, a rogue which i started playing last season,
before that i mainly played paladin (Keats, duh) but got sick of it and quit partway though s5.
Like most people who quit I ended up coming back and decided to roll rogue because, well,
I guess it just looked like fun! Been playing pretty much since launch and I’ve enjoyed PvP ever since BGs were introduced.

Bmx:
Sounds like quite a WoW history. Why did you pick the rogue class to roll after your comeback?

Keatstwo:
Well, I enjoyed paladin, but it always seemed a bit dull. I used to watch quite a lot of PvP vids
and most of my all time favorites were rogue movies by Buddhist, Mahiko, Akrios, Happyminti etc. etc.
So thought I’d give it a shot!

Bmx:
Haha. So after rolling your rogue and trying to be like the people you looked up to. How did you do in arena?

Keatstwo:
Well I was a bit shaky to start off with, but whilst playing my paladin I made some pretty good friends who’ve been doing consistently well in arena since the early days, they were kind enough to play with me despite my lacking gear and inexperience
as a rogue. I feel I’ve learnt alot by playing with really good players and getting the chance to play against
some of the better players on our BG.

Bmx:
You sure sound like a lucky one to me. After playing with these players what setups do you prefer for 2v2 and 3v3 and why these setups?

Keatstwo:
Well I can’t say i’ve played an overly wide variety. Focused mainly on priest / rogue in 2v2 last season, which was a pretty fun and versatile setup. Played a bit of rogue / rogue and rogue / mage, which were fun too, but I’d have to go with priest / rogue as it’s a much more forgiving comp. Don’t really play 2s very often nowadays though

as for 3v3…
I’ve played some pretty wierd stuff, the wierdest would have to be rogue / rogue / resto druid, or maybe rogue / priest / moonkin, which were fun but never overly competative. I’ve only played a little RMP but as everyone knows that’s a solid comp and i’d like to play more of that someday. Currently im playing priest / ret / rogue, which is a bit zergy, but it’s quick, fun games, and my partners really know what they’re doing, so for now that’s my fave 3s comp.
(sorry for the wall of text).

Bmx:
No problem. On to the next question which is an easy one. What do you think the easiest and hardest encounters are for rogue in arena?

Keatstwo:
Well in 3v3 right now there aren’t that many hard counters. RMP is countered pretty hard by beast cleave, but most rogue comps are pretty versatile and can deal with a wide range of comps. Double healer teams are always a pain though, and no matter how well you play there’s always the chance a wizard cleave will global you or a TSG will kill your healer in a strangulate / bladestorm ^_^

Bmx:
Have you got any hints or secrets you want to let our readers know regarding rogue pvp?

Keatstwo:
Umm, lets see. If you aren’t using them, focus macros help alot (focus kick, blind, dismantle etc.) If you play with a priest try calling for a PWS before you vanish to reduce the chance of getting knocked out. You can start out of stealth then immediately stealth on most arenas, this brings you up on your enemy’s gladius so they won’t know immediately when you open. If you’ve got kidney up and an enemy rogue is in evasion it’s always worth gouging him, if it lands you can kidney him without fear of wasting it. That’s all i can think of off the top of my head really!

Bmx:
Allright your really being helpfull here! Are there any shoutouts you’d like to make?

Keatstwo:
Um, big shoutout to my guild <Daycare> Chromaggus EU. Also big XOXO to Pettan, Roth, Aletank and Lilim and co.
Also, Cornedbeef is terrible ^_^

Bmx:
Well thanks a lot for allowing us to interview you! We wish you the best of luck in arena and are hoping to hear from u again soon!
In the meanwhile, keep checking http://www.lastrogue.com for our weekly interviews!

Deadly Poison: In addition to its existing effects, when a rogue applies Deadly Poison to a target which has already reached the maximum number of applications, this will also trigger the poison which the rogue is using on his or her other weapon.

Improved Poisons: Bonus chance to trigger Deadly Poison from this talent increased.

I’m guessing this is aimed at encouraging PVE rogues to not bother ‘exploiting’ poison procs with a weapon swap script – it’s a shame Improved Poisons isn’t really viable for PVP, but hey a bit more burst vs plate sounds more fun than the previous rogue changes promised in 3.3. I was excited to see another ten changes mentioned for the rogue class, but alas they’re just updates to tooltip info.

Meh, have had a bad week in arenas – played a total of two games. Our mage has gone offline for 6months and my 2v2 partner is having some well deserved time-out. Hopefully next week will be better, if not I’ll try and get over my fear/hatred of 5v5s. Otherwise, it’s either TOGC25 or levelling my 5th rogue (Lastrogue, thought I’d give levelling a Subtlety tailor a try, based on this Slice’n'Dice guide).

Firstly, where did the vanish fix go? Guess it’s still WIP, I would have liked to have given it a try on the PTR before it was removed, but oh well. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but since transfering server and starting playing again, I’ve not had vanish fail when it shouldn’t have done.
Rogue changes for the next patch are a bit crap, but hey, at least we’re not being nerfed?

• Dual Wield: Rogues now know this ability upon logging into the game at level 1.
• Stealth: This ability no longer has multiple ranks. While active, the single rank of this ability (available at level 1) allows rogues to move at 70% movement speed.

Game breaking

Secondly, looks like WotF is in for a hit.

Will of the Forsaken now shares a 45-second cooldown with similar effects, including the Medallion of the Horde, Titan-Forged runes, Insignia of the Horde, etc.

With nearly half of the top 100 players rolling as undead at the moment (and 67/100 undead rogues), I’m not surprised Blizz are nerfing Will of the Forsaken (considering how quick they were to nerf fear/blind combos after a few days of priest+rogue domination).

Is the change justified though? In 2v2s WotF hurts, but since Blizz is supposed to be balancing arenas for 3v3/5v5, is this just a knee-jerk reaction to a popular race choice? I’d be interested in seeing what percentage of high-rated undead were top100 players before they changed race.

Lastly, there’s this semi-trivial change coming that I hadn’t noticed at first;

• Top-level helm and shoulder faction-related enchants are now available as Bind-on-Account items that do not require any faction to use once purchased (they still require the appropriate faction level to purchase).

It’s come too late for me, but this is pretty cool for anyone levelling up an alt to PVP with – no more mindless rep grinding with pointless factions

I’ll be back on track now, will try and get more “Know Your Enemy” notes uploaded as soon as I can.

*Moving house, losing internet, transfering server to Chromaggus, losing internet again, getting roped into some raiding, being very busy at work and having to start up 2v2 and 3v3 with new partners…. it all adds up to a lot of downtime :/

Blizzard have released the notes for patch 3.3 here. While as usual there’s no ETA, we can at least look forward to a more reliable vanish (or at least have only ourselves to blame if it breaks prematurely).

Rogues
Dual Wield: Rogues now know this ability upon logging into the game at level 1.
Stealth: This ability no longer has multiple ranks. While active, the single rank of this ability (available at level 1) allows rogues to move at 70% movement speed.
Vanish: For the first second after this ability is used, neither Vanish nor Stealth can be broken by taking damage or being the victim of a hostile spell or ability.

There’s nothing much else to report yet (unless I’ve missed something major while skim reading it), seems to just mention bug fixes and buffs to levelling.

• Feral Druid – Instant cyclone nature spell after every 5pt finishing move. Not looking forward to this change :/
• BM Hunter – 33% reduction of ‘The Beast Within’ duration but +10% extra damage. Sounds like a debuff as far as PVP goes…
• Arcane Mage – Changes to some spells beginning with “Arcane”, I won’t pretend to know what this will mean to PVP but I can’t imagine it will make an arcane mage more troublesome than a frost mage.
• Prot Palas – Slight reduced survivability and an extra 10sec CD on their stun.
• Elemental Shaman – The benefit from the current Flame Shock glyph has been added to the unglyphed spell. They also get even more spell damage bonus for their Lava Burst and Lightning spells (ouch).
• Death Knights – Increased CD on their pet’s stun.
• Rogues – Fan of Knives damage reduced by 30%, no longer able to silence when talented.
  Bonus damage from AP increased by 10% for a 5pt Envenom (2% per combo point)
  3/3 Master Poisoner will prevent Envenom from removing Deadly Poison

What I really want to see is how this affects the typical ‘cookie cutter’ rogue spec of 41/5/25. We’re already getting some interesting variants showing up in S7 (and apparently back in S6 on the Koreans servers), so I’m guessing these two changes are going to have a big effect on what’s considered a ’standard’ mutilate PVP build.

The main drawback with this nice envenom buff is, “where do we get those 3 extra points for Master Poisoner from?”. Annoyingly the talent is positioned on the same tier as mutilate, so we can’t reallocate points spent in the assassination tree. Realistically there are only two possible options; losing points in Dual Wield Specialization, or dropping Heightened Senses.

Personally I’ll drop Heightened Senses* (I can always use Hyper-vision Goggles for those rare times we queue vs rogues all night) and play with 4/5 in DWS – however if rogue teams do start to become a pain (and possibly even ferals once they get instant cyclones), I guess 2/5 DWS wouldn’t be too much of a sacrifice to make.

Quite an interesting patch really, with a lot of potential for changing what has become quite a stagnant class!

* I have two rogues – my second one PVPs as 51/6/14, and in all honesty it’s not too much of a problem playing without Heightened Senses.

Compared to the Furious Gladiator’s Leather set, the 5-piece Relentless set gives;
+103 agility
+118 stamina
+111 attack power
+72 crit rating
+70 resilience

Fan of Knives: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 30%.
Throwing Specialization: This talent no longer causes Fan of Knives to interrupt spellcasting.

I guess this might go live at the start of Season 7 – seems a bit silly for Blizz to PTR this as a separate patch before the next medium-sized update. Blue post here.

After Season 6 ends we have a short grace period to buy gear, then team/player ratings and arena points will be turned off. However, MMR will be unaffected – I only play 2v2 at the moment but have a 3v3 team lined up for next season as soon as our Death Knight returns from EVE (any day now supposedly).

Original blue post is here.

If you haven’t done already, get your background downloader up and running – unofficially the patch will go live Tuesday/Wednesday. No completed patch notes yet, but hopefully not much will change from the PTR Patch Notes.

Season 6 WILL NOT end tomorrow, but will instead overlap with the patch. The 2v2 changes to rating won’t come into play until Season 7, so still time to hopefully pick up furious weapons from just a 2v2 rating.

There’s a lot more PVE content coming in, with very nice DPS weapons – I won’t get the opportunity to check these out (apart from when I’m getting hit by them, expect plenty of whining as soon as the bosses are unlocked!). I can’t wait to try out the resilience changes and shrug off the damage from PVE geared classes. Oh, Death Knights should be good fun as well. Might need to change DKEmoter to /pat and /pitty rather than /spit and /glare.

No note-worthy changes to rogue spec or talents (ok, we get axes, and?), just lots of PVP related ‘goodness’ to hopefully enjoy.