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/ret/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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#1 Gladius

Oh my freaking god, what a useful addon. This addon creates new unit frames for when you enter an arena. The frames show CC timers, trinket timers, and much more, all configured through the interface (/gladius ui). The addon also monitors trinket usage/cooldowns and enemy buffs (such as food/water), and gives messages to party chat, raid chat or raid warning indicating what is happening. Having a message pop up in the middle of the screen showing that the other team’s druid has sat down to drink really makes up for my lack of general observation. Use /gladius hide once you have positioned it to begin with, otherwise the examples frames won’t go away

#2 SpellAlerter

A really useful addon that gives you casting warnings for nearby enemies. Nice to have in arenas as you get to see what your non-targeted/non-focused opponents are doing. By default the warning message takes the format of ” [spell icon] ENEMY –> ENEMY TARGET” but this can be changed in the options to display the full name of the spell being cast (good if you never realised that the icon for Chaos Bolt looks like a turtle being sick).

#3 Natur Enemy Castbars

This addon is a bit overwhelming when you first install it, but after a bit of configuration you can get it to do exactly what you want. Some of the functionality overlaps with SpellAlerter so tbh I don’t use this to its full potential, but rather use it to give timers for my target’s buffs. Natur will let you track enemy cooldowns, casts, buffs etc. You can split the display bars into separate groups showing different information at different areas of the screen. Top addon!

#4 Icehud

One of the things I didn’t like about WoW when I first started playing was having to keep looking up at the top left corner of the screen to see how much health my target and I had. This becomes more of a problem the bigger your screen, but IceHUD can fix the problem quite well by placing a HUD in the middle of the screen, letting you check health/mana etc without taking your eyes off the action. There are several other addons that do similar things, but I’ve found IceHUD to be the most configurable/stable HUD addon out there.
This addon does need a bit of time spent on it setting it up, but it’s worth the couple of minutes you spent. it provides several class specific bars that you might want to turn on (HFB/Slice’n'Dice timers). The example below shows bars for my health, energy, and S’n'D on the left, and my target’s health on the right (along with debuffs I have applied). The pale yellow part of the S’nD timer bar shows what the timer would be refreshed to if I used a S’n'D with the combo points I had at that moment (combo points are displayed in the middle).

#5 Mik Scrolling Battle Text

This addon (shown above on the right side of the image) is a replacement for the ingame scrolling combat text. It is much more configurable and shows a small icon for each non auto-attack that you make or receive. Damage you receive is shown on the left hand side and any of your spells that come off cooldown are posted to the middle of the screen.

#6 Cutup

A collection of addons, which provide simple timer bars for HfB, S’n'D, poisons and rupture. Might make a nice alternative to IceHUD if you don’t want to use a HUD-type interface. This addon also lets you auto-pickpocket and blocks rogue specific error messages from annoying you, such as “Not enough energy” or “Ability is not ready yet”.

#7 Arenalog3

Keeps a record of all the arena games you’ve played in each bracket, and displays stats for each one. Useful for seeing what teams you need to work on tactics for, and lets you see just how bad your losing streak really is!

#8 Dominos

Replacement actionbars – you can really go to town customising the layout of your screen with this addon. You can adjust the number of bars that are visible, as well as their size, number of columns or transparency. Keybindings are a piece of cake to setup – activite keybinding mode, then mouse-over the button and press the key you want to be bound to it. I have all my bars shrank down and displayed in a box as below.

#9 AG UnitFrames

Fully customisable unit frames, though I only really use it as it lets me hide the default player/target frames. Very customisable with plenty of features.

#10 Cyanide Poison Reminder

I’ve only really included this to make it a proper “top ten” list, but it’s an addon I wrote which gives warnings when your poisons are close to running out.

Below is my current UI – I use Sunn Viewport Art to cover the bottom section of the screen, and Sexymap to change the style/position of the map (yes I know I have the map setup in a very un-sexy way – there are some fantastic visual effects for the map that you can use, but I prefer the plain square to save space).

When you put it together it looks a bit like this (click to open in a new tab/window);

OhNoesQueues

*** UPDATE ***
Another nice little addon is OhNoesQueues. It removes the Battleground description window from the battleground frame and replaces it with icons showing how many of each Battleground Mark you have. Left-clicking these icons will queue your whole party/raid if you are the leader, or queue you alone otherwise.

After a bit of playing about last night (faking afk and trying to get mages to jump me in WSG) it seems that using distract to spin a caster around before their spell cast completes is both doable and fun . In ‘real’ combat, I didn’t get an opportunity since everyone was constantly in combat and not distractable, but in an arena* it’s something that’s worth remembering and probably worth binding to a key if you have any left.

* I’ve been slacking with arenas since 3.2 came out as my 2v2 partner has been on holiday, but will be playing rated games as of tonight. After killing Death Knights in Wintergrasp with 2 tenacity buffs 1v1 I’m feeling hopeful that they’ve been hit hard enough to stop the bad ones beating us in arenas, but knowing my luck those were probably bots or something.

Hats off to Curse.com for not blocking the project in the first place. I dream of a day when five alliance all simultaneously /insult a DK in a battleground, just cause he chose to cast Icebound Fortitude. Childish I know, but it kept me sane and smiling!

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).

While a Mutilate/Prep build can offer a big increase to survivability and mobility through double vanish/evasion/sprint, against plate/healer teams it seems to struggle in terms of damage output. One alternative that we’re playing around with at the moment is a full Assassination build with emphasis on damage output and armor mitigation. This build relies heavily on you being able to take an absolute kicking at the start, so Deadened Nerves, high resilience and a competant healer are, to us, pretty much a necessity. We’re currently trying out 52/5/14, though we’ll be experimenting with using Ruthlessness to make Cut to the Chase easier to benefit from (maybe opening with Garrote, Hunger for Blood, then Slice’n'Dice, and hoping for Ruthlessness to give a free combo-point for a quick envenom/eviscerate).

Advantages

Damage, damage and more damage. With +18% extra damage on all attacks from Hunger for Blood (glyphed), +3% crit and the increased rate of procs from Master Poisoner, plus either a self-refreshing Slice’n'Dice or extra damage/energy regen from other talents, this spec has the ability to hit like a truck.

Disadvantages

Say goodbye to preparation and heightened senses. Unless you are suicidal confident enough to pre-vanish when the gates go up, you will definitely be at an initial disadvantage vs stealth teams. More times than not their rogue WILL find you if you leave it long enough. Without preparation you’re likely to have a rogue breathing down your neck constantly to begin with; a rogue able to dodge most of what you throw at him for 30seconds and who potentially has one more opener than you.

Tactics and Thoughts

Against rogue/X teams, it feels that the most important part is surviving the starting burst. If you can stay alive until after the other rogue’s second evasion/vanish, you’re home dry. Rather than trying to find their rogue, you may want to accept that you’ll be spotted first and just jump their partner instead. A garrote will let you use Hunger for Blood straight away and you should be able to knock some health/mana off the partner before the rogue has the chance to Cheap Shot you. Try and predict how far away the rogue is from their partner – as soon as you pop up waving your daggers around, expect their rogue to head straight for you. If you can time a lucky Fan of Knives… well you’ve just saved your healer a lot of work and cost their rogue a valuable opening move.

Against plate and trees, use Master Poisoner to your advantage. I usually run with deadly poison on my mainhand and wound poison for the offhand (so you can shiv crippling when needed).

Restofariann over on http://arenajunkies.com has a lot to say about this spec (from a resto-druid’s perspective) and his thread on the subject is a very good read (http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php?t=84046).

Weapons make the Rogue!

A pair of decent daggers will make quite an impact on your PVP experience. ‘Skills’ outperform ‘gear’, but the burst from dropping a pair of Sinister Revenge into your enemy’s back can’t be sniffed at.

Mainhand Daggers

For the freshly dinged 80;

• The Fleshshaper (Heroic Halls of Lightning)
• Titansteel Shanker (Blacksmithing BOE)
• Traditional Flensing Knife (Kalu’ak reputation item)
• Wodin’s Second-Best Shanker (Zul’Drak quest reward)

For the Naxxramas raider;

• Sinister Revenge (Kel’Thuzad Heroic)
• Anarchy (Kel’Thuzad Normal)
• Twilight Mist (Grobbulus Heroic)
• Knife of Incision (Anub’rekhan Normal)

Offhand Daggers

*Note: the previously mentioned Mainhand daggers can be successfully offhanded*
For the freshly dinged 80;

• Librarian’s Paper Cutter (BOE drop from Halls of Lightning)
• The Interrogator (Occulus Heroic)

For the Naxxramas raider;

• Murder (Sapphiron Heroic)
• Omen of Ruin (Naxxramas trash drop)
• Rolfsen’s Ripper (50 Emblems of Heroism)

Enchants

Mainhand

• Berserking (Prefered)
• Mongoose or Icebreaker (virtually same boost to dps, but large difference in price on many servers)

Offhand

• Titanium Weapon Chain

Facing a preparation-glyphed rogue without a weapon chain will see you disarmed for way too long in the first minute of combat. However, double-berserking is being used successfully by several serious rogues so far this season (as evident on the Shadowpanther site) so it can’t be ruled out just yet.

*edit – diminishing returns