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?

Arena Historian

This is a very detailed addon that stores a lot of information about every game you play. As you can see from the screenshot below, it’s packed full of features and lets you create very specific searches, even down to your performance on individual maps.

ArenaLog3

While this doesn’t produce the detailed reports that Arena Historian does, it’s pretty light-weight. It doesn’t record the specs used by your opponents, just the class. However it does have a couple of nice features, such as being able to easily produce a summary of the last games you played (“/arenalog history 2v2 20″ for example).

Both tools are useful in their own way, you may even wish to run the two addons side-by-side. While you may initially think “oh, I know what I struggle against”, it can be quite surprising to find that certain setups are dominating you without you realising. Looking through the reports before making this post, I realised that we’ve gone 0-5 against Rogue/Shaman/Spriest without even realising it. I guess that’s one setup we really need to work on our tactics for

The best way of doing this is with focus macros. Firstly you need to focus the enemy that you plan on controlling. The most basic way of doing so is by binding a key to the ‘Focus Target’ ability in your WoW keybindings page. While this works fine, it can waste time (especially if the target you want to focus starts the game in stealth). If you need to change your focused target during the fight, you will have to go through the process of targeting/focusing the correct enemy.

A much smoother way of doing this is by using the arena1 arena2 arena3 notation. If you create a macro containing “/focus arena2″, when you press it your focus will automatically change to the second enemy target (use either Gladius or the ingame arena frames to see the order of your opposition).

Once you have sorted out a way of marking a target to be focused, you need to change your spell macros to take advantage of this. The syntax for casting on your focused target is;

/cast [target=focus] SPELLNAME

You may want to create focus macros for the following abilities – sap, blind, kick, dismantle, maybe even gouge if you have the space.

So, that’s another four buttons you need to bind to keys, several more if you include the /focus arena1 etc buttons. The least confusing way of binding these macros to keys is to bind them onto the same key as the non-focused versions, but using a modifier key. If your kick ability is set to ‘4′, then bind your focus-kick macro to shift+4 (you could use alt/ctrl instead, but shift is easier to hit with your little finger).

If you want to save space on your action bars, you can combine both the non-focus and focused spells into the same macro. Going back to the idea of using ‘4′ for kick, swap your kick spell for the following macro;

#showtooltip kick
/cast [mod:shift,target=focus] kick; kick;

“Mod:shift” refers to using the shift key as a modifier – replace ’shift’ with ctrl or alt where needed (or even rctrl/rshift/ralt for the version of the keys on the right-hand side of your keyboard).

I use shift+F1 for /focus arena1, shift+F2 for arena2 and shift+F3 for arena3. Not only does this let you continue to use the F-keys to select members of your own group, but it also lets you swap to a new focus then quickly blind them, without having to take your finger off the shift key.

You may want to experiment with using focuses in battlegrounds first. While focus techniques do offer a large advantage over manually targeting players, they do take a while to get used to. However, don’t let this put you off – it’s an invaluable tactic that will really make things easier for you. As well as being able to quickly interrupt/blind targets, you’ll also be able to see your targets cast bar, giving you a better idea of what’s going on around you.

I spoke to a rogue a while back who was using focus to let him ‘easily’ put Tricks of the Trade onto whoever he was doing arenas with. No no no no, please don’t! Create a macro targeting your partner through their name – such as “/cast [target=Lylla] tricks of the trade” – and use your focus for greater control of the opposition.

PVP Hit Mechanics – The Basics

All of your special attacks (mutilate, envenom, rupture etc) have a 95% chance to hit a target when you’re standing behind them. Increasing the amount of hit you have by 32.79 will increase your chance to hit by 1%. You initially need to have 164 hit rating just to make sure that you have no chance of missing your target with special attacks.

Hit Reduction Talents/Racials

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are several talents/debuffs/racials that affect your chance to hit;

• Quickness Passive racial skill of Night Elves, -2%
• Insect Swarm Even though this is a talent in the Balance tree, it’s not unusual to see Resto Druids with this ability, -3%
• Scorpid Sting Hunter ability, -3%
• Arctic Winds Mage talent, not widely used, -1% upto -5%
• Heroic Presence Draenei passive buff, +1%

In a worst-case scenario, you could be trying to hit a Frost Mage with insect swarm and a sting on you (they do stack) – without any hit rating you will have a 16% chance to miss. You could ‘fix’ this by taking 524 hit rating, but this would nerf your damage/survivability in the majority of games.

How Much Hit Rating for Rogues?

Ideally in 3v3 I like to run with between 6% and 7% as this is enough to counter some hit modifiers and also help lessen the impact of some of the more noticeable ones. In 2v2 there’s less chance to bump into a racial/class that will debuff your hit rating, so you may want to stick to 5% and trust your luck.

Where Should +Hit Come From?

You can reach 148 hit from the Season 8 PVP gear and a weapon chain;

• Wrathful Gladiator’s Pendant of Victory 60
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Cloak of Victory 60
• Titanium Weapon Chain 28

One of the following two rings can help increase your hit further;

• Ashen Band of … Vengeance 53 – 59
• Relentless Gladiator’s Band of Victory 50

If you’re really struggling, a Titan-Forged Rune of Accuracy will give a massive 95 hit rating. Also from Wintergrasp are the Furious-quality Titan-Forged Leather Legguards of Triumph.

Other options involve hitting the PVE content (or buying a Wodin’s Lucky Necklace if you’re rich), and as a last resort you can get another 12 hit by enchanting your boots with Icewalker.

Your Blind Missed?

Missing with your 5pt envenom can be annoying, but what can often be game-breaking is when your blind misses. Blind counts as a ranged attack, so if you’re planning to blind a target, there are a couple of additional modifiers. Retri Paladins can gain a -4% modifier from Divine Purpose and many rogues spec into heightened senses, which also gives the same hit reduction against your blind. That’s not too bad, it’s just one of those things you have to live with. However what some people don’t realise is that evasion works against blind, giving a 25% hit penalty. More likely than not your blind will hit rather than miss, but it can pay to remember the extra miss chance that evasion gives (especially in 2v2 when a double-dps team is bursting down your healer and trying to keep you CC’d).

There are plenty of ways of reaching the hit-cap, you just need to find a balanced way of doing so without hurting your other stats too much. If all else fails, maybe convince your partner to reroll as a Draenei!

Finally Season 8 has begun I’ll be playing rogue/destro-warlock in 2s and hopefully rogue/affliction-warlock/shaman in 3s (if we can find a willing shaman). We’re both pretty fresh to double-dps in 2v2, but it feels viable – just a case of sorting tactics out and getting used to being freaking fragile without a healer.

A lack of new PVP dps trinkets was a major disapointment – despite enduring several months of engame raiding I still didn’t get a replacement for DMC:Death so will be running it for the 4th consecutive season, swapping to a Pyrite Infuser for 3s. It’s also a shame there’s no new Battlemaster trinkets available as well – both the warlock and myself are still using the one from last season. When combined with a health stone it’s quite a life saver!

/use battlemaster’s rage
/use health stone

Depending on how rogue/warlock turns out, I might invest in a Corroded Skeleton Key, but spending 60 frost emblems on a trinket for 2v2 (when we’ll be focusing on 3v3) might be overkill.

Good luck to everyone this season, may all your vanishes be successful and none of your gouges be dodged

*UPDATE* Loving R/L/S at the moment – we’re still a bit squishy resilience wise, but the games are really enjoyable. We’re still at the stage of finding what works/what doesn’t work as far as tactics go, but there just seems like a huge amount of potential. Rated at 1892 atm, we’ll see how it goes. The team name comes from the mouse-over tooltip of ‘Arena Points’ in your ingame PVP tab. Fabulous darling, fabulous

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.

I searched around for ages, looking for a way of making three macros that would let me reliably swap. Unfortunately it just doesn’t seem possible, as equipslot/pickupitem macros failed to distinguish between them.

However, there’s an easy way I’d overlooked at first – the ingame equipment manager. This seems to be able to tell the difference between identical weapons; you just need to create sets where you only have the dagger selected for change (so you don’t have to recreate the sets when you upgrade your head etc). Do this for each of the weapons, then you can drag/drop the equipment-set icon from the manager onto your toolbars. Easy!

Mainhand Daggers

For the freshly dinged 80

Blood Weeper (Heroic Forge of Souls) Heartshiver (Normal Forge of Souls) Black Knight’s Rondel (Heroic Trial of the Champion) The Fleshshaper (Heroic Halls of Lightning) Traditional Flensing Knife (Kalu’ak reputation – revered)

For the 10-man Raider

Bloodsipper (ICC10 – Queen Lanathel) Icefall/Nemesis Blade (ToC10 – Twin Valkyrs)

Offhand Daggers for Envenom Spec

For non-mutilate spec, any of the mainhand daggers are suitable.

For the freshly dinged 80

Unsharpened Ice Razor (Trash drop in the ICC 5mans) Krick’s Beetle Stabber (Normal Pit of Saron) Balanced Heartseeker (Hierloom Weapon) Lightblade Rivener (Kirin Tor reputation – honored)

For the 10man Raider

Flesh Carving Scalpel (ICC10 – Putricide) Orcish Deathblade/Dirk of the Nightwatch (ToC10 – Jaraxxus)

The general rule of thumb for envenom rogues is to use a 1.8 speed dagger in your mainhand, with a 1.4-1.5 speed dagger in your offhand. Very high level 1.4 daggers work fine for your mainhand, but you would need an equal level offhand to make it work. If you’re not playing with the Master Poisoner talent, two 1.8 daggers are preferable.

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.

As I’ve talked about previously, if you’re having random lag or high latency try running through a proxy.There’s more information about that here. I’m down to 70ms now in arenas – compared to 250ms it’s ~very~ noticable (a good test is to use Fan of Knives and check the delay between the keypress and the animation/sound happening).

Once you’ve got your connection running as smooth as possible, it’s worth trying out a very useful addon called SnowfallKeyPress. By default, when you press a key you have a spell bound to, nothing happens until you release your finger off the key. This addon changes that, so as soon as you press a key the action takes place. We’re not talking about massive time savings here, but hey, every little helps!

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.

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. Nothing really special about either.

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 a opportunity 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 dual/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.

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!

* The base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood has been reduced from 10% to 5%.
* The bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons has been decreased. This applies to Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Wound Poison.

This is live as we speak, and as far as I can predict, pretty much kills the viability of HfB combos. Poison damage has been reduced by 10%, not a huge nerf and at least they haven’t touched envenom.

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

Assassination

Assassination Talents

Yellow Talents – Essentials (twenty-nine points)
These are the essential talents you can’t afford to skip when making an Envenom build.

Red Talents – six points
To unlock the later tiers, you’ll need to spend six points here. Theoretically you could assign more, but it’s generally regarded that the later talents are more valuable.

Improved Eviscerate – It’s a lot harder to keep Deadly Poison stacked on another rogue (thanks to their Master Poisoner, CloS and being kited) so you’ll probably be falling back on eviscerate to deal finisher damage. If rogue teams are hurting you, taking this talent and carrying a second dagger with wound poison on can help balance things out.

Ruthlessness – For back-to-back envenoms. This is a personal favorite of mine, as with a bit of luck you can envenom, then mutilate, then 4pt envenom again (thanks to the ruthlessness proc followed by a mutilate crit). Also nice for applying 1pt ruptures to rogues, with a 60% of another combo point after the rupture.

Lethality – Your mutilate/gouge will crit for more – not as powerful as it sounds, but a safe choice for three points.

Purple Talents – Four/Five points

Improved Poisons – The faster you can reach five applications of Deadly Poison (and keep them stacked), the faster you can start ripping into your target. I really recommend going for 5/5 in this talent, though several very good rogues are playing with 4/5 (and who am I to argue! ). A point saved here can be dropped into any of the following green talents.

Green Talents – Four points

Quick Recovery – Pretty essential for most comps other than double-dps in 2v2. Even if you’re rarely being focused, you’ll probably be taking damage from dots/aoe etc and the free energy gained vs rogues/warriors/prots is noticable.

Improved Kidney Shot – With a team that is capable of unloading extreme burst (for example, rogue/mage/priest with an aggresive priest) you’re looking at a lot of extra pressure from this talent. For 2v2 teams (or 3v3 teams with toothless resto-healers) you’ll likely be better off concentrating on increasing your own DPS rather than your partners, as you’re now bringing a lot of damage to the table in comparrison to the traditional 41/5/25 specs.

Deadened Nerves – For times when your survivability is an issue. I would rather increase my resilience than spend talent points, but if you lack the gear (or are getting rolled even with 1000 resilience) this will be a help.

Focused Attacks / Find Weakness – Two points in FW will give more dps than two points in FA in a PVP environment. Taking three points in FA makes it viable, but at the cost of a lost point.

Subtlety / Combat

Subtlety/Combat

Red Talents – Six points

Camouflage – Faster movement and quicker restealthing (useful for sap>cheapshot>restealth tricks).

Serrated Blades – As much as I try, I just can’t become enthusiastic about this talent. A reduction of 640 armor (when a large chunk of our damage bypasses it) is a very low buff. I only use rupture to stop rogues from stealthing so increasing the damage it does seems a trivial buff.

Ghostly Strike – I don’t know of any rogues who use this talent with an assassination spec, but I’ll be experimenting with it after christmas (as soon as I’ve found a spare keybinding!).

Setup – While the free combos can be great (especially for back-to-back envenoms), this can backfire and actually cost you points. Unless you play with mouseover dismantle/focus/blind macros, there’s a chance you will generate a combo on the wrong person, losing the ones you have on your target. You can get around this in the 2v2 bracket by always using focus macros, but in 3v3/5v5 you may need to manually switch target, risking the generation of a combo point on the warrior you were about to disarm.

Initiative – Assuming you’ve already taken Camouflage, Initiative is the best of a mediocre bunch. This is only a reliable bonus when you opening with garrote (as you’re likely to waste the +1 from Kidney Shot when your Mutilate crits), but hey, it’s better than a rupture buff or 2% crit reduction!

Green Talents – Four points

Heightened Senses – If you’re NightElf/Human, have a decent connection, and feel confident that you can avoid being sapped, skip this talent. Likewise, if your team’s tactics involve keeping you safely hidden until their rogue is forced to help his half-dead teammates, consider spending your last two points elsewhere.

Dual Wield Specialization – A flat damage increase to your auto-attacks and mutilates. The norm at the moment is to spend two points if you take Heightened Senses, or four points otherwise.

Deadliness – When you absolutely, positively got to maximise the damage from envenom, this is the way forward. A flat AP increase will benefit all of your attacks and poison damage, though theorycrafting is indicating that points in Dual Wield Spec will give higher dps. If you’re queueing against nothing but plate teams, I have a feeling that 4% increased AP will be more beneficial than mitigated extra damage from your auto-attacks/mutilates from DWS, but this is purely guess-work and I wouldn’t personally risk it.

Bootnote

As well as wanting to have a play with Ghostly Strike (I’ll skip Heightened Senses and go 3/5 in Dual Wield Specialization), I’m also considering trying 3/3 Find Weakness + 3/5 in Cut to the Chase, at the loss of DWS/HS.
I’m wondering if the 60% chance of refreshing S’n'D combined with lucky Ruthlessness procs will give enough extra haste/Deadly Poison procs to outdps the gains I’d get from +40% offhand damage. At the moment I only really use S’n'D for when we hard-switch targets and I’d like to see the difference 100% S’n'D makes in an arena environment.

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.

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.