Warriors will be affected by a lot of changes in today’s patch, something the class does not seem too happy about. One effect of the patch will be an increase in the number of Fury warriors you’re likely to run into. While a lot of PVPing warriors are staying arms for the control/survivability, others will be attracted to the high damage potential that Fury offers. However, this damage can be controlled to a large extent by dispelling the mechanism that gives them their burst – enrage. Whenever your target enrages, a gentle shiv will instantly calm them down (and may even transfer the rage to the player IRL instead).

There are several enrages that you need to keep an eye open for, a couple of which are available to both Arms and Fury specs. Either keep checking their buff bar, watch their character animations, or run a third party addon like Afflicted3/Parrot/IceHUD/Natur to track the procs.

Berserker Rage

Berserker rage grants the warrior rage and gives them immunity to fear. This may not sound too dangerous for a rogue, but it does allow them to use abilities that rely on them being enraged. Enrage effects allow the warrior to use Enraged Regeneration for some impressive non-dispellable self healing, as well as the hard-hitting Raging Blow (if they have a Fury spec). Enraged Regeneration can’t be dispelled, but you can try and stop them from using it in the first place.

Death Wish (Fury tree)

The 20% damage buff from the fury talent ‘Death Wish’ would put this ability on a par with Vendetta, if it wasn’t for the longer CD, 5% increase in damage taken and the fact it can be dispelled with a 20-energy shiv.

Enrage/Wrecking Crew

Both Fury and Arms warriors have access to talents which can proc an enrage buff. Arms warriors rely on Mortal Strike crits, while Fury warriors have a chance-on-hit. Regardless of how it is generated, you may wish to dispel it (especially vs a Fury warrior).

Recklessness (not dispellable)

The increase in damage taken during Recklessness cannot be negated through glyphs or talents. Recklessness cannot be dispelled through shiv, so you will need to control the warrior with stuns/disarms instead.

Enrage effects aren’t limited to just warriors and tanks – Feral Druids and Unholy Death Knights also have buffs that you can remove.

Unholy Frenzy (Death Knight)

As well as providing an increase in damage output, Unholy Frenzy also prevents the Death Knight (or whoever they cast it on) from being sheeped/blinded. I’ve seen some DKs cast it onto their pet during Dark Transformation – if you see the ghoul suddenly flash red/purple you may want to throw a shiv at it to take some pressure off your healer.

Enrage (Druid)

It seems common for feral druids to put points into King of the Jungle – dispelling their enrage will remove the 15% buff this gives them and also reduce their energy regen.

Frenzied Regeneration (Druid)

While a warrior needs to enrage before being able to use their undispellable self-heal, a druid’s self heal is actually an enrage effect in its own right. Get rid of it quickly.

Savage Roar (Druid)

Savage Roar is a finishing move – wasting five of the druid’s combo-points for the cost of a 20 energy shiv is a worthwile exchange.

Paladin

Paladins have been affected by several unusual changes, which seem to be causing a fair bit of drama. Retribution paladins are having survival issues (they can no longer dispel magic), while Protection is just generally terrible in PVP. Retribution/Assassination/Priest looks like it could work as a rush-down comp, but I don’t know how viable it will turn out to be once teams start stacking up on PVP/resilience gear. The general consensus seems to be either PVP as a holy paladin or reroll to a different class.

Guardian of Ancient Kings

At level 85 paladins will be getting a pet whose function depends on their spec. As Holy, the pet will assist with healing on team members and as Retribution it will assist with DPS. The Protection version will reduce the damage taken by the paladin, but you probably won’t encounter too many of these except in world PVP.

Word of Glory, Templar’s Verdict & Inquisition

Paladins can now generate a girly version of our butch Combo Points called ‘Holy Power’. This is used for several ‘finishing moves’ giving instant heals or damage.

Even though they are still reeling from the nerf to ‘Bubble and Hearth’, expect paladins to recover in time for the next PVP season.

Priest

Priests get a couple of new abilities that look quite useful in a PVP environment. Inner Will, when combined with Inner Sanctum will give a 16% movement speed – 1% faster than a rogue with the Quickening talent. Their level 85 spell, Leap of Faith is a ‘friendly’ version of Death Grip. Amongst other things this may prove to be a neat way of getting a friendly player into your Smoke Bomb aura.

Chastise

This three second stun from the Holy tree does not break on damage and does not appear to share diminishing returns with other forms of crowd control.

Additional

Inner Fire no longer has charges, so priest’s damage mitigation will remain relatively high considering their cloth armor.

Warlock

All three Warlock trees appear to be viable this season so expect to see a lot of variation. At level 81 they will pick up Fel Flame, which will enable them to extend the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Other changes to the Warlock class include;

Chaos Bolt

The Warlock’s hard hitting Chaos Bolt has had it’s mechanics changed – it can now be defended against with Cloak of Shadow.

Hand of Gul’dan

Hand of Gul’dan looks like the Demonology equivalent of Chaos Bolt. Despite looking like an AoE attack, this is a single-target spell that you cannot run away from. It goes without saying that the aura it leaves on the ground should be avoided!

Hellfire

With the Demonology talent ‘Inferno‘, this aoe can now be channeled whilst moving, so don’t be surprised if Warlocks attempt to use it to get you out of stealth.

Warrior

By the looks of things Arms will remain the primary PVP spec for warriors, as Protection is failing to put out the same levels of damage as it did in Season 8. Warriors are picking up three new 81+ abilities, with Sweeping strikes plus Bladestorm is here to stay, but with the massive Cataclysm health pools, they won’t be as devastating as before (watching Hydra instantly drop 100>0 thanks to a recklessness bladestorm was a scary sight indeed).

Throwdown

You’ve probably noticed this ability in battlegrounds since patch 4.0 went live. Yes, that Arms warrior is actually doing as good a job at stunlocking as you can do. The 45 second cooldown may be more than double that of Cheap Shot, but once you’ve added Intercept/DR, just like Cheap Shot/Kidney Shot.

Note: I was up till 5.30am in Cataclysm, so appologies if none of what I typed makes any sense! Good luck with the levelling – you’ve got a week before the new PVP season starts!

Death Knights

With Blood being the dedicated tanking spec, we’ll yet again be facing a mix of Frost and Unholy Death Knights. The way things are looking at the moment it’s likely to be Unholy spec for Arenas (due to the controllable pet) and Frost for Rated Battlegrounds/5v5 (potentially crazy AoE from Howling Blast).

On top of their new patch4.0+ spells, DKs will be getting Necrotic Strike and Dark Simulacrum. Dark Simulacrum is looking evil, but no direct threat to rogues (unless next patch they start stealing our Shadow Steps!).

Necrotic Strike

The healing absorption this gives can stack, theoretically giving upto 9 applications per Death Knight. At the moment the absorbs are in the region of 5k damage – my initial reaction to this was “oh crap, up to 45k damage absorption from 9 strikes?!”. However, it’s important to remember that health pools will be dramatically bigger than in WotLK.

Sudden Doom

Expect to see many more Death Coils flying around, especially since the following ability relies on them.

Dark Transformation

This gives a large boost to the DK’s pet’s damage. The new abilities this grants them aren’t too scary, pretty much extra damage and the ability to Huddle without stopping attacking.

Additional

One of my favorite changes to DKs this patch is that Death Grip can now be countered with Cloak of Shadows. We now finally have a chance of not getting pulled off the edge of Dalaran Sewers.

Druids

Druids are looking as strong as ever with three viable specs. Their new abilities include Stampeding Roar and the rather bizarre Wild Mushrooms

Tree of Life

If you’ve been wondering why you haven’t seen many trees around recently, this is why. ToL is no longer a stance/form that can be switched to at will – instead it functions like a Warlock’s Metamorphosis. On the good side this means that Druids will no longer be able to start an arena match in an unsappable form, but it means that they no longer have to drop form to cast Cyclone. The mechanic has also been changed to prevent them from being banished in tree form.

Stampeding Roar

This new ability is yet another reason why Assassination specced rogues are suffering with mobility issues (as if losing Preparation wasn’t enough!). A 40% movement buff to your target is not what you want to happen when you’re slowed.

Glyph of Entangling Roots

A glyph to turn Entangling Roots into an instant cast spell with an annoyingly short cool down. This is really painful to encounter, especially when the druid is feral and throwing around instant cyclones.

Hunters

With buggy pets that follow you through vanish (still), the fatally annoying Flare ability and what feels like a massively improved stealth detection, hunters are still pretty much the anti-rogue DPS class in my eyes. Their already considerable arsenal has been enhanced by the following new abilities.

Counterattack

Wing-clip on steroids, this will snare you for five seconds. Your only defense is to get lucky and never get parried.

Camouflage

Unless the hunter is using Trueshot Aura, this stealth ability is going to make it quite tricky to guess an arena team’s comp when the gates open. This differs from Shadowmeld as it is not castable in combat. The hunter is totally immune to being opened on while Camouflage is active.

Aspect of the Fox

While I’d have loved this to have been some sort of X-Files reference, all this new aspect does is allow the hunter to run around casting Steady Shot and Cobra Shot (which have been altered to give a hunter Focus).

RIP Volley

Volley has been removed from the game, so hunters do have one less way of knocking you out of stealth. Unfortunately their improved stealth detection does seem to counter this loss.

Additional

Flare has been changed so that it doesn’t take effect until it lands, which should (with a bit of luck) enable you to shadowstep+kidney shot the hunter in between two consecutive flares.

Mages

Season 8 hinted at the end of mages only PVPing in Frost spec, and Cataclysm seems to reinforce that idea with the increased viability of Arcane spec mages. At level 80 Arcane Barrage is hitting hard enough to one-shot PVE geared players and the instant-cast nature of the spell makes it very appealing in PVP.

Ring of Frost

Mages get yet another snare in Cataclysm. While it is somewhat balanced around people being able to avoid it, this could be very tricky when slowed, polymorphed or feared. The ability to protect areas of a map with a giant freezing trap will really shine in Rated Battlegrounds. Additionally, the ability to preceed the tooltip with ‘Anal’ will keep trade-channel spammers amused for hours.

Arcane Missiles

This anti-pillar humping spell is no longer available on demand, so running out of LoS will be slightly more effective vs mages in Cataclysm.

Timewarp

Blizzard have introduced another Heroism/Bloodlust mechanic as the new level 85 mage spell. Luckily, it won’t stack with the Shaman spells.

Flame Orb

A slow-moving ball of fire or frost, depending on spec. This can be talented with Fire Power to detonate when it expires.

Warning, pre-cataclysm content detected!

This article was written before patch 4 went live and will contain information that may no longer be relevant.

While not as troublesome as frost mages or resto druids, hunters have more than enough tricks up their sleeves to make things pretty hard for you. Without your cooldowns, rogue vs hunter is not only virtually impossible to win, it’s also mostly impossible to escape from. A hunter has a lot of defensive abilities on short cooldowns so you may need assistance from your team mates to be able to actually stay within melee range.

The following is a breakdown of the more troublesome hunter abilities.

DEFENSIVE ABILITIES

Deterrence

While at first glance deterrence might appear to give a hunter 100% immunity to damage, they are still vulnerable to a couple of attacks.
Firstly, it is impossible to parry a rogue’s opening moves. Ambush, cheap-shot and garrote will all hit through deterrence, so if the hunter uses it at the very last second, there’s still a chance of a kill. It’s usually best to open with a cheap-shot since a stunned hunter is unable to parry your attacks, regardless of the deterrence buff. Unfortunately, good hunters will cast flare when they use deterrence, stopping you from restealthing. If this happens, you can use backstab to continue attacking, since its positional requirements seem to over-ride the chance of being parried. The other attacks that the hunter is vulnerable to are an engineer’s Hand Mounted Pyro Rocket and your shivs.

Disengage

Unless the hunter is BM spec, the cooldown on disengage can be as low as 16seconds with talents and a glyph. It’s common for a hunter to jump just before they cast it, so try and use this early warning to land a gouge just before they disengage. It may break early due to a dot, but every second that you can slow a hunter down will help in the long run.

Freezing Trap

This is the trap that turns you into an iceblock. Cloak of Shadows can protect you from this, but be careful using it since it will not stop you from triggering the graphically identical Frost Trap.

Frost Trap

Personally, I absolutely hate being kited. As far as raging goes, I’m always a lot calmer when I’m CC’d than when I’m walking through a Frost Trap at a fraction of my normal speed. There’s not much you can do about this snare, cloak won’t affect it and the aura lasts for 30seconds (enough time for it to come off cooldown again). Grin and bear it, though try to take the fight away from the aura if possible.

Freezing Arrow

A ranged version of freezing trap which shares the same cooldown as the hunters other frost traps. In arenas this will often be used immediately after a scatter-shot on your healer. Ideally when my healer is hit by scatter-shot, I try and move ontop of where the trap lands so I get to eat the freezing trap instead – most of the time it either breaks cause I’m dotted/autoshot. Easier said than done, especially when you’re on the other side of the map, so try and convince your healer to stay close to you.

Snake Trap

In arenas, this trap can be a blessing as well as a curse. If the snakes spawn and switch to your partner, the deadly poison that they inflict can function as a cc-breaker (very useful for negating wyvern sting, freezing traps and scatter shots) and will give mana back to shamans through their water shield ability. The snakes have poisons similar in ability to your crippling, deadly and mind-numbing poisons.

Feign Death

This ability is easily the biggest cause of lost combo-points I’ve encountered. If activated during a snake trap, or when their pet is attacking you, you’ll probably lose your target and start mutilating the wrong enemy. The fastest way to recover from this is to either bind your tab key to “target nearest enemy player”, or rely entirely on target macros (arenas only).

Flare

Flare is another spell that is available for use the second it wears off. CloS will not protect you from losing stealth – getting a cheapshot through a flare when the hunter is standing in the aura’s middle is extremely risky (though possible). I might be mistaken, but flare doesn’t seem to work on ticks/pulses. If you need to vanish after being caught, watch the flare debuff icon – it can stay up a few seconds longer than you’re in the flared area.

Scatter Shot (Survival, Marksmanship)

While this is in the Survival tree, it is also taken by Marksmanship hunters (BM hunters skip it and take Aimed Shot instead). There’s nothing you can really do about being scatter shotted, other than hope there are dots ticking on you. Take care if you’re hit by this on the edge of a bridge/platform, you’ll come out of the scatter-shot facing a random direction.

Wyvern Sting (Survival)

A 10 second CC on the same diminishing returns as freezing trap. Both WotF and Stoneform racials will remove this sting if available.

Readiness (Marksmanship)

Preparation for hunters, well, Marksmanship hunters. Annoyingly this resets the cooldowns on both Disengage and Deterrence, and there’s no Hypothermia-type debuff to stop hunters using them straight away.

Hunter’s Mark

I always like to activate stealth just after the gates open, but the one potential downside to this is that a hunter may be able to drop their Hunter’s Mark onto you before you can stealth. You can cloak the mark off (get out of line of sight to avoid the 10% chance the hunter will reapply it), vanish it (terrible waste of a cooldown) or have it dispelled by a priest, paladin or fellhunter. The last time I can remember being caught out by this was on Nagrand Arena – luckily the hunter sent his pet in to attack me so we nuked it behind a pillar before he could pull it out of combat…

Concussive Shot

Yet another snare, this time undispellable (with the exception of vanish or a paladin’s Hand of Freedom spell).

Wing Clip

Another 60% snare, though luckily it does not stack with the freezing trap debuff.

Track Hidden

Hunters do have a slightly higher stealth-detection level than other classes (for a breakdown of stealth/detection levels, read this post). Be extra careful when moving around hunters when in stealth and stay behind them whenever you can.

OFFENSIVE ABILITIES

Kill Shot

Evil 10k+ crits at the worst possible time. With a 30k health pool, you’re in danger of Kill Shots at the 6k hp mark. If you have a glyphed Cloak of Shadow, you can perhaps survive the hit long enough to LoS the hunter or receive a heal. Perhaps.

Aimed Shot

An undispellable healing debuff. You can try and time your evasions so that they are activated just before aimed shot runs out, but there’s only a 25% chance the next aimed shot will miss.

Steady Shot

A hard hitting shot with a short cast bar. Try not to embarrass yourself by kicking it (especially if using a kick-announcing addon… whoops) as it is uninterruptable. It is however a good time to stun/gouge/disarm, since the hunter is unable to dodge or parry any attacks while the cast bar is ticking away.

The Beast Within (Beast Mastery)

Ten seconds of CC immunity on a 1min40 CD. The only way of cutting down their damage is through a disarm. Positioning is vital so make sure you either get behind them before you try, or catch them in a steady shot if they start casting one. While it would be funny if Anesthetic poison dispelled Bestial Wrath/Beast Within, it doesn’t.

PET ABILITIES

Web, Venom Web Spray and Pin

Two ranged snares and one melee snare, on 40-second cooldowns (or 27-second cooldowns for BM hunters). These count as magic effects and can be dispelled or cloaked if needed.

Intimidation (Beast Mastery)

Limited to only BM hunters (thank god), on a one minute cooldown.

Additional Tactics for Rogue vs Hunter

Rogue vs Hunter is one of those encounters where it’s worth using double wound-poison. You’ll struggle to keep crippling poison on your target otherwise and the chances of keeping deadly poison ticking on a hunter is pretty low. Also, using double-wound will let you gouge when needed. Keeping crippling applied is a necessity – if it does drop off you can use Deadly Throw as a temporary replacement, though it’s not a great alternative since the movement reduction of Deadly Throw is less than that from Wing Clip/Frost Trap. In a BG/duel situation, do whatever you can to stay in range of the hunter, up to and including the use of blind as a gap-closer.

Hopefully some of that information will be of use – there’s no magic pve-style rotation to ensure a kill on a hunter, it’s more a case of perseverence and keeping your fingers crossed. Try not to get too frustrated when being kited (damn I need to practice that) and if you’re in an arena, try and look at the situation as a whole before deciding it’s pointless to chase the hunter and making a switch to another player. It may look and feel that you’re having no impact, but by sticking on the hunter you are limiting his damage and hopefully letting your partner/s work miracles

Footnote

I have an 80 hunter but haven’t tried to play it seriously in arenas so I’m only really aware of one side of the fight – if I’ve made any glaring mistakes please let me know!

Warning, pre-cataclysm content detected!

This article was written before patch 4 went live and will contain information that may no longer be relevant.

Like, but this with ice

Frost Mages. One of the thorns in a rogue’s side since TBC, these icy vending machines still prove to be a worthy counter to our class. Arguably a skilled mage will be able to take down an equally skilled/geared rogue, but with a bit of luck and focus you can still score kills. As well as mastering your own class, you do need to understand the mage class and be able to anticipate their actions/cooldowns.

The following is a breakdown of a typical frost mage’s repertoire.

PASSIVE ABILITIES

Ice Armor

Expect this self-buff to be active all of the time – as soon as you start unloading damage onto the mage you will be affected by the chilled debuff. Due to unusual game mechanics, this will happen before your Deadly Brew procs crippling poison, so remember to keep running forwards to try to compensate for this.

Frostbite

Unless the mage forgot to assign their talent points, expect them to have this tier1 talent. Any spell that puts the ‘chilled’ debuff onto you has a 15% chance to freeze you in place for 5 seconds. Spells that can trigger this are Ice Armor, Cone of Cold, Blizzard and Frostbolt.

Ice Barrier

With decent spellpower plus the Ice Barrier Glyph, this will absorb 5-6k of your damage. The mage will reapply this when it wears off, so expect to see it a couple of times. If you are lucky enough to be able to pick the moment of your opening move, don’t attack until the moment the mage reapplies this (you want to smash through it quickly, leaving it on cooldown for as long as possible). Keep an eye out for the buff icon, it’s the same one as Cold Blood.

Shattered Barrier

As soon as you put out enough damage to destroy the Ice Barrier, you will be frozen in place.

DEFENSIVE ABILITIES

Brrrr

Ice Block

If a paladin’s bubble is the mother of all defensive cooldowns, Ice Block is its crazy middle-aged auntie. Unless you lock them out of their frost school by kicking a frost spell, this can be used to cancel all CC (except cyclone) and silencing affects. With the right glyph, this will reset the cooldown on Frost Nova. I’ll come back to Ice Blocks later, there are a few things you should/shouldn’t do when faced with one.

Frost Nova

Another AoE snare. If you’re chasing down a mage who you’re expecting to cast a frost nova, try to jump just as you get in range. You’ll still be snared, but you’ll continue to travel through the air, maybe ending up a few more feet. The phrase “Nerf gravity!” has appeared in a couple of frost mage threads on forums for just this reason

Blink

A very self explanitory spell, and the reason why you shouldn’t open with a cheap-shot. Only use your cheap-shot/kidney-shot when this spell is on cooldown, or if you wish to force the mage to use this. Wasting 5 combo points on a 0.2sec stun is a good way to lose a match/duel. Using a 1combo point stun when the mage is facing a wall/side-edge of a bridge can occasionally cause them to waste their blink (quite common to see in games played at low rating).

Invisibility

Similar to vanish, but with a slight delay before it takes effect. This will break on damage, so dots/fan of knives will cancel the invisibility.

Cold Snap

Preparation for mages – resets frost spell cooldowns, including Ice Block (but hypothermia will prevent a double iceblock for 30seconds).

CROWD CONTROL

Polymorph

Sheep, pig, rabbit.. the effect is the same no matter what you’re turned into. I asked a mage-playing friend if the chosen animal symbolised any sort of sexual preference – apparently it does, but I need to level a mage before he’ll tell me.

Deep Freeze

Only usable when you are frozen, which unfortunately is hard to predict (due to the random nature of frostbite procs).

AoE

Arcane Explosion

A mage’s number #1 anti-sap spell – makes getting a sap risky, but the longer you can keep a mage using this the better. I like to drop a distract behind an AoEing mage as soon as he sits down to drink, as it tends to keep him on his toes (and hopefully encourages him to waste a bit more mana with some more arcane explosion spam).

Cone of Cold

This is a decent retaliation to your vanish – better than an arcane explosion as it will reapply the chilled snare that your vanish just removed.

OFFENSIVE ABILITIES

Mirror Image

One of a mage’s more confusing spells (especially when combined with a 180° spin+blink combo), this can cause targeting problems if you’re not paying attention. It’s a good habbit to change your keybindings – I have tab set to ‘target enemy player’ and shift-tab to ‘target enemy’. If you do this and clear your current target with the escape key, you’ll be able to cycle through enemy players without having to flick between the mirrors/totems/pets.

Frostbolt

Nothing too special about this spell other than its ability to apply the chilled debuff.

Ice Lance

Forming part of the deadly ‘Frostbolt/double ice lance shatter combo’, this instant spell is lack-lustre until you find yourself frozen (at which point you’ll suddenly see over a third of your health vanish). You can be kited with this spell, which is frustrating, but at least it doesn’t cause a chilling debuff.

OTHER ANNOYANCES SPELLS

Time for a Gouge

Evocation

Interrupt, interrupt interrupt. This is a channelled spell, but do NOT rely on just your damage breaking it. If the mage has Ice Barrier up at the same time, he will absorb all the damage and the spell will not be interrupted. Gouge is a life saver here, even blind can be used in an emergency. With the normal combination of PVP glyphs, evocation will also restore 60% of their HP… interrupt it!

Summon Water Elemental

Not a massive source of damage, this 45-second summoned pet has one outstanding ability – Freeze. This is another freezing snare, but with the added bonus to the mage of being able to cast it from 45yards away using his pet as the point of origin.

Arcane Missiles / Fire Blast

An instant cast and a chanelled cast that you will sometimes see. Arcane missiles cannot be LoS’d once the spell begins, so ducking behind a pillar will not prevent you from taking damage.

Additional Tactics for Rogue vs Mage

The Opener

In a situation where you can decide when to start the fight, wait until the moment that the mage reapplies ice barrier. You want to destroy it and leave it on cooldown for as long as possible.

If you can safely avoid the inevitable arcane explosions, a well timed sap can help you move in close to open with a garrote. Due to the unusual mechanic of the Deadly Brew talent, your crippling poison won’t proc immediately, meaning you will be effected by the ‘chilled’ ice armor snare before the mage is slowed by your poison. To counter this, try and run through the mage in anticipation of him also running forward.

Your garrote will give you three seconds to put out as much damage as humanly possible. A double mutilate+coldblood eviscerate (with pyro-rockets if you have them) will smash through the Ice Barrier and cause at least some damage to the mage. By this point you will most likely be frozen in place from either Frostbite or Shattered Barrier – this is the mage’s cue to blink from you. In a duel/1v1 scenario you will need to vanish as soon as possible, otherwise you will eat a Deep Freeze.

Now that blink is on cooldown, you can open up with a cheap shot. This is likely to trigger either a trinket or an Ice Block.

The Ice Block

With the mage tucked safely away in his block of ice, you will need to reassess the situation. Are you clean of dots, and don’t have his partner/pet hitting you? If so, dropping from combat to restealth will possibly give you another opportunity to open up with a garrote/ambush. Bear in mind that if you run off, you might find the mage cancels Ice Block early and lands a Fire Blast on you, keeping you in combat. If you can’t drop out of combat, you need to position yourself infront of the mage. If his Water Elemental is shooting at you, don’t be tempted to switch to it and start attacking. Ignore the damage and wait for the Ice Block to expire.

By now the cooldown on blink will have worn off, so the mage will want to use it the second Ice Block wears off. While they can blink out of cheap-shot and kidney-shot, they cannot escape from a gouge. If you land your gouge at the right moment, they will blink through it, and appear on the other side of the arena in a gouged state. Even with the ‘chilled’ debuff, you’ll have time to catch up to the mage to unload more damage (unfortunately, you’ll have to beat through another Ice Barrier as the cooldown will be off by now). Ideally you’ll still have Cloak of Shadows / PVP Trinket / Preparation / Sprint available – use them to apply more pressure when needed.

Gouge the Blink

When trying to gouge a blink after an Ice Block, the best technique for this I’ve found is to focus on the actual mage character on the screen rather than watch his Ice Block buff timer. Regardless of whether the Ice Block expires normally or is cancelled prematurely, the mage has to sit through a split-second animation of it fading. You need a decent conenction, but it is when the ice turns from white to blue that you need to quickly hit gouge. If the mage doesn’t blink, wait until you’ve got your energy back from gouging before launching into an attack (ice block will clear any dots, so it will be a full duration gouge) . Fighting good frost mages is all about maximizing the damage you can do to them during the brief moments you get to sit on them, so pool your energy!

It’s also possible to gouge after your initial garrote, but only if you manage to get infront of the semi-snared mage before the garrote silence wears off (harder than it sounds).

Footnote

I hope that is of some use – if there are any glaring mistakes, please let me know and I will fix them or add anything useful that’s been missed off.

Paladins are pretty much good at anything they do … dps , healing and even tanking. I am going to give you hints on how to beat this class in 1v1 and I hope this will help you get them down in 2v2 as well. (The tactics I’ll be supplying you with won’t matter that much in 3v3 imho.)

The ret pala has quite a few abilities you want to watch out for.

Consecration

An 8 yard AOE on the ground.

Retribution Aura

One of the many auras paladins have but this one is a pain in the butt. Every time you hit the paladin you will receive damage yourself.

Avenging Wrath

The paladin pops his Avenging Wrath and all his damage and healing is increased by 20% for the next 20 seconds.

Divine Storm

An instant weapon attack that causes 110% of weapon damage to up to 4 enemies in an 8 yard range. (This will knock you out of stealth if you are close to him!)

Hand of Freedom

This will (if specced correctly) remove your stun effect from the paladin. It can be cast while he is stunned so watch out!

And of course he has his bubble, HoP , Repentance and a few more tools. So… how do we beat a retri paladin?

It is fairly easy. Lets say you are dueling a retri paladin, here is what I do:

Duel starts in 3…2…1

Okay lets wait for a few seconds shall we? The paladin is likely to use 1 or 2 aoe abilities while hoping to find you. Wait till he has used at least his consecration. As soon as that has been used sap him.

Now here is where quite a lot of people do the wrong thing. I barely ever open on a paladin with cheap shot. As soon as the consecration fades I garrote the pala and get a quick mutilate in. 4/5 CP and then Rupture him. As soon as you have both those dots up use cloak of shadows if needed and vanish!

Now one of the following things is going to happen ->

1. The paladin tries following you in an attempt to knock you out of stealth.
2. The paladin starts healing himself.

If the paladin follows you in an attempt to find you just keep running from him for another 3-4 seconds and then you may open on him. If the paladin starts healing himself get back in there and open right away!

So how do you open after getting your dots up? That is correct! You cheap shot him!
Go back in there CS -> Muti x2 -> Did the pala use Hand of Freedom? -> Yes, kidney shot. -> No, Eviscerate.

The paladin should be about half his health and probably even lower now. You have forced him to bubble most likely. If he does bubble just sprint and restealth. If he doesn’t bubble disarm him and pop your evasion if you feel like it. Some more mutilate spams and you should have him down!

Good Job!

I hope you enjoyed my wall of text. This is the first article I have ever written and I did not want to mess up by not giving enough info on how to beat the retri paladin.

Hints on how to give you better write ups are welcome! Just comment!

Morale: On plate such as warr/pala/DK -> Open with garrote/rupture! It’s a great headstart

Death Knights in PVP – What to Expect

Death Grip
If you are chasing down the DK’s partner, expect this every 25-35 seconds. If you are trying to escape from the DK, expect this every 25-35 seconds. The cooldown depends on the DK’s spec (Unholy DK gets -10secs off the cooldown)and costs zero runic power/runes, so unless you can CC the DK out of the game, expect to spend a lot of time flying backwards and forwards through the air.

Chains of Ice
While it’s common to see DKs cry out “CoI isn’t spammable!”, theoretically it is on a 5 second cooldown making it a very effective way of locking down a rogue. A common tactic it seems is for the DK to Death Grip you then immediately cast Chains of Ice (unless it is an Unholy DK, more on that later). Vanish/CoS/Escape Artist/Improved Sprint will clear this debuff, but only until the next application – there are no dimminishing returns from CoI whatsoever.

Raise Dead
Summons an undead pet (vulnerable to shackle/turn evil). The strength of the pet depends on the spec of the DK. Unholy DKs have a pet that can stun every 20 seconds which they can resummon/resurect every 30seconds (not worth killing unless you play with a healer that needs to drink). A Frost DK’s pet is easier to kill, dies after 1 minute, does less damage and has a 3minute resummoning CD.

Death Pact
An instant heal for 40% (20% with wound poison) of the DKs health in exchange for sacrificing their ghoul/gargoyle. For an Unholy DK this is pretty much a free heal every 2 minutes.

Icebound Fortitude
Stun resistance and damage reduction for 12 seconds (18 seconds for a Frost DK). A DK with IBF up can be sapped, blinded and gouged so use this to your advantage if needed. I find that DKs tend to ignore me and tunnel my partner instead (priest), saving their IBF for when my partner is in trouble.

Mind Freeze/Strangulate
While this won’t affect you directly (unless the DK has gotten over excited and mashed the wrong button), it’s useful to know that a DK can silence your partner for a long time, especially when using Gnaw as well.

Death and Decay
A cross between consecration and distract, this low-dmg spell can be cast upto 30yards away. This will take you out of stealth if it lands where you are standing so try not to stand anywhere ‘obvious’ if you can help it. If you play with a priest, a PW:shield will prevent DnD from unstealthing you. Otherwise, wait until it wears off – it lasts for 10 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown.

Death Knight Specs

Frost Death knights

How to spot them: Duel wielding,
Strengths: High dps, massive damage mitigation
Weaknesses: Still trying to find one

Abilities

Hungering Cold
A 10-yard AoE freeze that allows diseases to continue ticking on you.

Lichborne
This will make the DK immune to charm effects, though it cannot be used to break them. When under the effect of Lichborne, the DK will be vulnerable to anti-undead spells such as Shackle and Turn Evil. Be careful not to confuse the ability with a trinket – if a DK uses Lichborne to break a fear you will not be able to blind him afterwards. Using the Gladius addon helps avoid this confusion.

Unbreakable armor
This defensive ability can be using at the same time as IBF and Lichborne, creating a hard hitting almost untouchable killing machine. When this happens, ‘gouge’ and ‘disarm’ are good friends to have.

Unholy Death knights

How to spot them: 2-Handed weapon, leaping pet,
Strengths: Massive dps, high damage mitigation
Weaknesses: See Frost DK weaknesses

Bone Shield
Easy to spot, this takes the form of several bones spinning around the DK. Try and knock it off with white damage while your energy regens, rather than using a mutilate.

Desecration
This ground-based aura procs automatically from a couple of a DK’s offensive melee spells. There’s not much you can do about it as it is relatively easy for the Death Knight to keep it active (no internal CD).

Summon Gargoyle
Does exactly what it says on the can. An additional minion that throws out a lot of damage for a maximum of 30seconds. Priests can shackle it and paladins can fear it, and as it now flies close to the ground, it might be worthwhile gouging it if you’re keeping gouge/deadly poison ticking on the Death Knight.

Shamans in PVP – What to Expect

Totems

Shamans can put down four totems at once – there are 23 different totems, but the most problematic ones available to all specs of Shamans are as follows;

	Cleansing Totem (Water)	Cleansing totems will attempt to remove one poison off each party member every 3seconds.
	Earthbind Totem (Earth)	Reduces your movement speed by 50%, 10yard range. Luckily this totem has a 15second CD so can’t be spammed.
	Manaspring Totem (Air)	Restores a small amount of mana every 2seconds. Not as powerful as the Mana Tide totem, but worth destroying nonetheless.
	Magma Totem (Fire)	This totem pulses an 8-yard AoE every 2 seconds. If this hits you it will remove your sltealth.

The other totems generally give party buffs so it’s a good idea to destroy them if you get the chance. If you play with a healer, try and convince them to either wand or melee down the totems whenever they get a spare few seconds between heals. The Shaman will most likely keep dropping them, but this costs mana and gives them a GCD. Unfortunately totems can no longer be targeted with macros, but your partners can use a [target=mouseover] macro to help wand/petattack them without changing target. AoE has no effect on totems, so don’t waste energy trying to FoK them down.

Bloodlust/Heroism

A 40second buff that increases all enemies melee/ranged/spell casting speed by 30%. I normally try and keep some defensive abilities in reserve for this as it’s not uncommon for the other team to combine this buff with their other DPS cooldowns.

Hex

A strange form of CC that lets you continue to move normally, but unable to cast/attack. You can still activate sprint/stealth, so it might be worth using this as on opportunity to get out of combat and re-open on someone, rather than just hopping around behind your target waiting for it to run out.

Kiting

With the changes to Ghost Wolf last patch, it is now quite hard to keep on-top of a Shaman if they are trying their hardest to get away from you. Crippling poison/deadly throw won’t decrease a Ghost Wolf’s movement speed to less than 100% and they can combine this bonus with Frost Shock, Tremor Totem and even Thunderstorm to keep away from you.

Shaman Specs

Restoration Shamans

How to spot them: Check their partners for an Earth Shield buff
Strengths: Able to kite
Weaknesses: Can struggle with mana compared to other healing classes

Abilities

Earth Shield
Each time you hit someone who has Earth Shield active, you will heal them for a small amount once every second. As a rogue there is nothing you can do about this (other than trying to LoS your target from the Shaman) but if your partner can keep dispelling it you will hurt the Shaman’s mana. Dispelling Earth Shield only removes one of the stacks.

Mana Tide Totem
Kill this as soon as you see it – it will restore 24% of the other team’s mana over 12 seconds. It’s quite easy to spot as it has a pulsing animation.

Nature’s Swiftness

Converts a Shaman’s timed heal into an instant cast. If you are partnered with a Mage they can spell-steal this buff if they are quick enough.

Tactics

In 3v3 Resto Shamans seem very easy to burst down and our tactics generally involve opening on the Shaman as hard as we possibly can and swapping if needed. In 2v2 playing as rogue/healer it’s a different story – even when I’m in Mutilate/Prep spec I struggle to stay on top of a good Resto Shaman. Instead we concentrate on out-lasting them which seems relatively easy as long as we kill the Mana Tide totem and stop them from drinking. Playing as double-dps in 2v2 probably gives enough burst to kill them so it might be worth experimenting with.

Elemental Shamans

How to spot them: The buff from their Totem of Wrath. Using caster weapons and shields/caster offhands
Strengths: Insane damage if left alone
Weaknesses: Low survivability

Abilities

Thunderstorm
While this isn’t as annoying in arenas as it is in BGs (especially in EotS and AB), it can still get in the way when you’re trying to burst down an Elemental Shaman. While it’s possible to use Cloak of Shadows to preempt the knockback, it’s a better idea to always makes sure that you position yourself properly. If you think they might use a Thunderstorm (often when they are low health and stunned), try and make sure your back is facing a wall/pillar if possible (to reduce the distance you are thrown backwards). Whatever you do, don’t let the Shaman use it to knock you off the bridge in the Blades Edge Arena or off the platform in Dalaran Sewers. If a shaman kites you behind the boxes in the sewers, expect them to use thunderstorm, so try and predict the cast and dodge backwards behind the corner of the boxes (easier said than done!).

Lava Burst
If you have the DoT from Flame Shock ticking on you, this 2-second cast spell will have a 100% crit chance. Expect to be hit for 5-8k damage every 8 seconds, unless you can keep interrupting.

Flame Shock
Used in conjunction with above, this guarantees a crit from a Lava Burst. However, if the DoT from Flame Shock is dispelled, you increase the Shaman’s casting time by 30%.

Tactics
Interrupt like crazy, avoid the knockback and nuke as fast as you can. Left to their own devices, Elemental Shamans can pull insane amounts of damage out of nowhere, so don’t let them stand there casting on you while you chase their partners.

Enhancement Shamans

Abilities

Feral Spirit
The two pets that this spell summons are fast moving and can each stun you for two seconds. 150% of their damage is returned as healing for both the wolves and the Shaman. They last for 45seconds so it’s worth saving evasion for this spell.

Shamanistic Rage
A 15 second damage reduction talent that allows the Shaman to regen mana whilst hitting you. If you are managing to keep the Shaman’s mana low you might want to play defensively while this buff is active by gouging and trying to conserve energy.

Tactics

Enhancement Shamans don’t seem very popular at the moment, so I haven’t played that many games against them. Shamans I have spoken to recommend going toe-to-toe Rogue vs Shaman as the lack of defensive cooldowns will become apparent after the Shaman has used all their Cooldowns.

A quick guide to some of a warrior’s more painful/annoying abilities

Key Offensive Abilities

Bladestorm

A six second aoe whirlwind that deals massive damage (90sec cooldown). When bladestorming, the warrior is immune to all* forms of CC and disarms. As soon as the warrior casts this, use feint to reduce the damage done by 50%. If you have Glyph of Cloak of Shadow you can reduce the damage done even further. A good warrior will use this while your healer is CC’d, and since you can’t counter it with a gouge/blind/stun, all you can do is lower the damage it will do to you. Luckily, unless it’s combined with a stun, that’s something you can do.
*Update for 3.3.3* Bladestorm can now be disarmed (not 100%, still vulnerable to dodge etc). Whether you save disarm for their shield wall or use it on the disarm should depend on how much damage bladestorm is going to do. It’s a good idea to disarm when the warrior is bladestorming your partners – as a rogue you have enough defensive CDs to negate the damage it does to you, but a priest for example isn’t as lucky.

Retaliation

12 seconds of pain – the next twenty of your hits will cause the warrior to immediately hit you back (for around 2000dmg). Either CC, swap target or take a single hit by gouging. It’s very noticable when they use it;

DO NOT TOUCH, OK?

Mortal Strike

Wound poison for warriors. This is likely to be on you at all times if you play with a healer.

Enraged Regeneration

There’s nothing you can do about this self-heal, other than make sure that wound poison is applied at all times.

Intercept and Intervene

While these two abilities have different uses, they can be grouped together into “annoying movement buffs”. Intercept is used aggresively to either stun you, or to get away from you by charging your partner. Theoretically you can kite a warrior by staying between 4-8yards from them, but doing so is a lot harder than it sounds.
Intervene is another dual-use ability – can be used to either get away from you or to get close to you and take some of the pressure off their partner.

Berserker Rage

This can be used to break an existing sap and will make the warrior immune to saps, gouges and other such cc effects. You can still cheap/kidney shot, but you will need to be quick as typically a warrior will try and get you out of stealth the second the sap breaks (often with Demoralizing Shout).

Disarm

Similar to dismantle (1min cooldown), but only affects your mainhand/ranged weapon. Continue to shiv though to build combo points and keep wound poison applied.

Damage wise, a warlock’s most devistating combo (the one you really need to keep on top of) is Immolate/Chaos Bolt/Conflagrate. Expect to see this combo hit for very high damage (16k+ from crits vs decent resilience is not unheard of, not bad for two cast spells and an instant).

Immolate

2.5second cast time, this deals initial damage, then puts a 15second dot on you.

Chaos Bolt

2.5second cast time, this will bypass CloS and Pw:S. Does 20% extra damage if you have an Immolate dot on you.

Conflagrate

Instant cast spell on a 10second CD. This will convert an Immolate or Shadowflame dot into instant damage equal to 15seconds/8seconds of the initial dot.

Unstable Affliction

A 1.5second DoT that will silence/damage anyone who attempts to dispel it. Can be CloS’d off safely, but don’t expect your healer to want to dispel you when this on ticking.

Metamorphosis

A 30second self buff with a 3minute CD. Transforms the warlock into a demon, giving +600% armour, +20% damage and a 50% stun/snare reduction.

Crowd Control

Howl of Terror

0/1.5second cast (depending on spec). An AoE fear similar to a priest’s Psychic Scream. 40second CD

Fear

1.5second cast, a 10 second fear with no cooldown.

Death Coil

Instant cast, 2minute CD. This spell is classed as a ‘horror’ rather than a fear and does not share diminishing returns with fear/psychic scream. Do not waste a trinket on this, it will only last for 3seconds and is often used by Warlocks to allow them to cast a 10second fear on you without having you interupt it.

Shadowfury

Instant cast, a AoE stun. Has a 20second CD and will naturally take you out of stealth.

Banish

A 1.5second cast that will lockdown elementals, other warlock minions and treeform druids.

Key Pet Abilities

Voidwalker – Consume Shadows

Gives a buff to all friendly targets, increasing stealth detection by 40 (highest ‘+stealth detection’ buff in the game apart from the Shadow-sight crystals). Lasts for 6 seconds.

Succubus – Seduction

1.5second cast, this is a channeled CC that can be interupted with damage to break the affect.

Felhunter – Spell Lock

24second cooldown, this will attempt to silence a target for 3seconds.

Misc

Demonic circle: Teleport

An instant cast teleport that will move the warlock to their summoning circle as long as it is in 40yards range. 30second cooldown, expect the warlock to kite away from the circle (careful in the Circle of Blood arena, you may find them trying to bait you into jumping off the bridge before they teleport back up again).