Last Rogue

Patch 3.3.3 Notes for Rogues

Here. 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.... Click to read more .

Arena Reporting Tools

Here are a couple of addons, both very similar, that can help you to analyse your wins/losses and let you to identify which setups you seem to struggle against. 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.... Click to read more .

Basic Tips – Focus Macros

Being able to quickly throw a blind or kick onto the enemy you don't have targeted is a trick that needs to be mastered. It's possible to manually switch targets through either tabbing or clicking, but when you're trying to interrupt a fast spell, this can take too long (or even mess up completely). 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.... Click to read more .

PVP Hit Rating for Rogues

Looking at a random list of ten high-rated rogues, the amount of hit taken into arenas varies a lot - from as low as 169 (5.15 %) up to 264 (8.05 %). So, how much hit rating should you take, what will happen if you take too little and where should you get it from? 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.... Click to read more .

New Site Layout to Celebrate Season 8

To celebrate the launch of Season 8, lastrogue.com has had a long-overdue overhaul. If there's any glaring mistakes or display/formatting issues, please let me know and I'll fix them as soon as possible! I haven't been able to properly test it in all web browsers (my ie6 simulator doesn't seem to work in Win7) so there may be problems with transparencies that I've over looked. Finally Season 8 has begun :D I'll be playing rogue/destro-warlock in 2s and hopefully.... Click to read more .

Patch 3.2.2 – Healing Nerfed by 10%

Final Patch notes have come out, and it looks like healing classes won't be as strong as first expected. 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.... Click to read more .

Swapping Between Daggers with the Same Name

While gearing up my alt rogue for casual arena, I ran into a problem. Due to some lucky runs through the new heroic 5-mans, I found myself with three Unsharpened Ice Razors, which I promptly attached weapon chains to. The problem was, how to reliably switch between them in arenas when I wanted to swap poisons? 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.... Click to read more .

Rogue Starter Weapons for Season 8 – Daggers

I made a similar post back at the end of Season 6, but due to all of the new gear added in raids/heroics, it's looking a bit out of date. The following is a list of gear that's worth considering for a rogue fresh to PVP and unable to gear up from 25man content (mouse-over the links for item stats). 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.... Click to read more .

Season 8 Gear – Skins Released

After what feels like a lifetime of waiting, Blizzard have released artwork for the upcoming Season 8 armor sets. 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.... Click to read more .

Gouge the Blink, Kick the Penance, Fight the Lag

As a follow on the recent post about handling Frost Mages, I thought I'd touch on something I've mentioned before, along with posting about an addon that helps a little with interrupting fast casts. 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.... Click to read more .

Season 8 Delayed

Looks like we'll be spending another week looking at a capped-honor/marks screen - the word over at MMO-Champion is that patch 3.2.2 won't be coming for another week. 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.... Click to read more .

Know Your Enemy – Frost Mage

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.... Click to read more .

Resilience Hot Fixed!

As hoped, changes to resilience are incoming, and they look like they'll be quite noticable. 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.... Click to read more .

Season 7 Finishes on US Realms

After a week of speculation, Season 7 now appears to be over. Points have not rolled over as expected, indicating that they will be awarded after the servers come back online. 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.... Click to read more .

Hunger for Blood Nerfed, Again

Not content with reducing a 51pt talent from +15% damage down to +10% damage, Blizzard have decided that it's still an over-the-top buff. * 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.... Click to read more .

Season 7 Ending Mid January

Blizz have announced a likely date for the end of Season 7 - Jan 19th. 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.... Click to read more .

44/x/x – Which is the Best Envenom Build for you?

As well as giving excellent damage vs plate targets, the new changes to Deadly Poison (and Master Poisoner) also give you a large amount of flexibility with the point allocation. The typical point distributions are 44/2/25 and 44/4/23 though there is a fair amount of flexibility when it comes to the talents you pick, allowing you to balance your talent build around your team, your tactics and your gear. Assassination Talents Yellow Talents - Essentials (twenty-nine points) These are the.... Click to read more .

Breathe In, Sap, Cheapshot, Stealth, Breathe Out

There's an old rogue tactic that I've referenced in a couple of posts (including the one I'm about to post) but never really written about. As usual it's situational, and requires preparation (and yet another weapon in your bag), but for 1v1 in arenas (or BGs), it can tip the odds in your favour. There are times when you'll want to sap until your target's Ice Barrier or PW:S wears of, so if you're going to be standing around idle you might as well get a couple of free combo points!.... Click to read more .

Season’s Greetings Rogues!

Well it's almost time to open those gifts from Great-father Winter, so I just wanted to take the opportunity to say Happy Season's Greetings! It feels like I've already had my present from Blizz a bit early, in the form of the 3.3 Deadly Poison changes, but judging from all of the whining about our envenom damage I'm not sure how long it will last. Apologies for the slow updates this month - I apparently forgot to train Safe Fall and have been sulking/inactive with broken wrists. After a.... Click to read more .

Hunger for Blood Nerfed Hotfixed

Blizzard have announced a little bit of bad news for HfB rogues. 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.... Click to read more .