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.

Blind now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Combat Readiness now lasts for 20 seconds, down from 30 seconds, but the Combat Insight stacking buff lasts 10 seconds, up from 6 seconds.

Crippling Poison now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Garrote now costs 45 Energy, down from 50.

Sap now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Smoke Bomb now lasts for 5 seconds, down from 10 seconds.

Stealth is no longer broken by enemies using Demoralizing Shout or Demoralizing Roar.

Assassination

Deadly Momentum critical strike bonus now lasts for 15 seconds, up from 10.

Combat

Blade Flurry is now a toggle that can be turned off by pressing the button again.

Main Gauche (Mastery) now provides a chance to deal an attack for 100% of main-hand damage. This attack can trigger Combat Potency.

Restless Blades now also reduces the cooldown of Redirect.

Revealing Strike now increases finisher effectiveness by 35% (45% glyphed), up from 20% (30% glyphed).

Vitality now increases attack power by 25%, up from 20%.

Subtlety

Elusiveness now reduces the cooldown of Cloak of Shadows by 10/20 seconds, down from 15/30 seconds.

Executioner (Mastery) has been increased from 2% to 2.5% per point.

Find Weakness now grants 35/70% armor reduction, up from 25/50%.

Preparation no longer resets the cooldown of Evasion.

Sanguinary Vein now gives a rogue a 50/100% chance for their own Bleed effects to not break their Gouge.

Shadowstep’s cooldown has been increased to 24 seconds, up from 20 seconds.

Sinister Calling now grants 30% Agility, up from 25%, and increases Backstab and Hemorrhage damage by an additional 40%, up from 25%.

Glyphs

Glyph of Garrote now increases the duration of Garrote by 1.5 seconds, down from 2.

Seriously? An increase in Shadowstep and CloS CDs? I wish I could hear the conversations that go on at Blizzard during PTR meetings…

Prime Glyphs

There are two essential choices for Assassination prime glyphs, two strong choices and a fifth option that can be worth considering with the correct talents.

Glyph of Mutilate

For some reason I really hate taking this glyph, but every time I try and find an excuse not to, I can’t. It’s a reliable 5-energy discount on your main combo builder, which should be more beneficial this season than previously (thanks to longer combat duration).

Glyph of Rupture

Even though rupture causes pretty embarrasing damage, it is still very useful for generating procs from Venomous Wounds and a longer duration will definitely be beneficial.

For a third prime glyph, the choice is pretty much down to either improving or Slice and Dice. I’m opting for Slice and Dice at this stage, as I’m yet to have a 30second Vendetta run out without either my target or myself dying, or the opportunity for a kill being wasted completely. An extra six seconds isn’t too game breaking when it’s often unnecessary. Increasing the duration of Slice and Dice, if only by three seconds, gives greater opportunity to turn a single point of S’n'D into a full-blown one.

The final option worth looking at is Glyph of Backstab. The only reason you should ever use Backstab (apart from spamming it through a hunter’s deterrence) is if you have chosen to take the talent Murderous Intent. I’m yet to fully experiment with this (due to holidays I haven’t even had the chance to get our 3v3 team rolling), but it could be a pretty sweet boost to an attack that already out-damages mutilate by roughly 50%. Assuming your target is below 35% health and you’re standing behind them…

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Garrote

This is by far my favorite glyph of all. Diminishing returns on our stuns have really weakened the potential of Cheap Shot as an opener, but a glyphed garrote can now lock down a caster for a full second longer than a Cheap Shot. It even has advantages when used against Death Knights and Warriors, as several of their abilites are restricted through silencing effects.

Glyph of Blind

This is another very useful glyph, especially when combined with trigger-happy warlock team-mates in rated Battlegrounds. Using a glyph slot for this should help prevent targetting mistakes – there’s not much worse then throwing a spur-of-the-moment emergency blind onto someone, just as a SW:Pain lands. I’d like to experment more in 3v3 and 5v5 before declaring this as an essential glyph, but I’m guessing it will open up more chances of being able to make target switches without making it too apparent that we’re letting dots run out on our fake target.

Glyph of Sprint

With mobility being such an issue for Assassination rogues, anything that can boost your movement speed should be valued. The extra 30% from this Glyph will help you close gaps even faster than before, hopefully before you’re hit by yet another Frost Nova type effect…

Other interesting choices for major glyphs are Glyph of Fan of Knives (nice in large-scale PVP when combined with Vile Poisons), Glyph of Tricks of the Trade (for boosting partner damage at the cost of just a GCD), and Glyph of Gouge. The gouge glyph is a strange one – I’ve been in a couple of situations where it may have been nice (rooted in place next to a Paladin with Aura Mastery up), but I’ve not generally had many problems with the positional requirement of gouge. Useful, but I wouldn’t want to miss out on the sprint Glyph to get it.

Glyph of Kick may be nice at low ratings, but any competent healer will be juking your kicks – being locked out of kick for an extra four seconds is not going to make you popular with your team mates.

Minor Glyphs

In WotLK the only minor glyph of any use to rated PVP was Glyph of Distract. With the arrival of rated Battlegrounds (and hopefully an increase in World PVP*), the two other minor glyphs are definitely worth the potentially extortionate price they sell for.

Glyph of Distract

While Distract may not seem to be a terribly useful PVP ability, it’s not one I’d risk playing without. I’ll happily admit that I played from the opening of AQ40 to the last boss of Tempest Keep without realising Distract can be used outside of stealth – I used to think I was so pro blowing vanish and running off to distract the incoming patrol, until I saw another rogue doing the same without using vanish.
Distract has three uses in PVP. As well as being able to briefly stop a running/mounted target, it can also be used to interupt drinking healers. The third use is something I found last season, but always forget to use. If your target is out of combat and starts casting on you, you have a small window of opportunity to drop a distract behind them, spinning them around before the spell completes (at which point the target will enter combat). Very situational, but potentially game breaking.

Glyph of Safe Fall

Being knocked off high ground (like the cliffs at the Lumber Mill) is sometimes unavoidable – the fall isn’t likely to kill you, but taking this minor glyph can heavily reduce the damage you take.

Glyph of Blurred Speed

While not as useful as a DK’s Path of Frost, this glyph still comes in useful in many Battlegrounds.

I’m currently using Glyph of Poisons, but this is down to constantly forgetting to check the auction house for Safe Fall glyphs. This glyph can reduce the aggro you’ll generate from team mates if your poisons run out, but if you’re that forgetful (and believe me, I am), it’s easier to use the Cyanide Poison Reminder addon I wrote.

*I’m hoping lots of people read the post Akrios made at roguerogue.com before retiring and are looking at World PVP with the consideration it deserves!

Blizzard have magically addressed the several aspects of PVP that almost everyone seems to feel are inbalanced at the moment (with the exception of the feral and mage communities on mmo-champion). Hats off to them for listening to their player base! Warrior damage and feral bleeds are likely to be nerfed (quite rightly so!) and priests should become more viable outside of Shadow Form. A reduced duration for Frost Nova and Ring of Frost should bring Mages back into line as well. What’s also nice to see is the horrible change to the cooldown of Every Man for Himself could be reverted – I’ve already faction changed my human rogue (part of the mass PVPer migration from Alliance to Horde on Terenas) but it’s nice to see that humans won’t be penalised in PVP any more. If I was feeling cynical I’d say that Blizz have just reached their ‘lets nerf humans so we get the big bucks out of Worgen race changes’ goal, but my New Years resolution was to be less sceptical and grumpy

The full class changes are as follows – these were posted a couple of days ago, but unfortunately I’ve been slacking in bed with broken ribs, ManFlu(tm) and a tooth infection. Several posts are lined up for this week, so the post-drought should be at an end Snowboarding in Germany was awesome, thanks for the well-wishes! Take care everyone!

PvP

The larger health pools, decreased impact of Mortal Strike debuffs, and slower healing are all having the desired effect in PvP. Burst damage has its place, but doesn’t determine the outcome of every encounter. There are several individual abilities that we aren’t happy with in PvP.

We’re keeping a close eye on dispels. We still like the design of making dispels more of a commitment rather than liberally sprinkling around dispel resistance or consequences for every class. Defensive dispels (removing a debuff) generally feel good, but we think offensive dispels (removing an enemy buff) feel too powerful, especially for DPS specs. In particular, Purge and Spellsteal will probably get nerfed.

We’re also looking at crowd control, interrupts, and self-healing in PvP. It’s possible we’ll reduce the durations of some crowd control effects, especially the area effect ones, and decrease the duration of interrupts.

Priests are a little weak in PvP, especially at mobile healing. We have made some changes to glyphs and talents to enhance their survivability and instant healing.

We also want to make sure the epic PvP gear isn’t too easy for just anyone to obtain, given that the PvE endgame content is more challenging than it was in Lich King. We don’t want the player base to just migrate to the most efficient epic delivery mechanism; we want you to participate in what you find most enjoyable.

Stats

We’ll make a pass to make stats that aren’t attractive (but are supposed to be) more attractive. For example, we don’t want Assassination rogues to dismiss crit or Feral tanks to dismiss haste. We are considering making some physical attacks such as Lacerate, Steady Shot, and Slam scale with haste.

Mastery is a new stat for us, and there are a few specs that don’t value it enough. In some cases (e.g. Combat rogues), the design for mastery is fine and we just need to buff the effects to make it more desirable. In others, we don’t think it’s possible to buff mastery enough in its current form. For example, the Retribution mastery, Hand of Light, is fun, but it doesn’t contribute enough damage. To make it contribute enough damage, the proc would need a very high chance, which then can cause paladins to devalue other sources of Holy Power. Instead, we are redesigning Retribution mastery to add a percentage of the damage of Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm as Holy damage (which also plays better with Inqusition). Because Hand of Light is fun, however, we are going to change Divine Purpose as a chance to proc Hand of Light instead of a chance for extra Holy Power (which will also remove a little of the randomness from the rotation). Unholy DKs are another spec for whom mastery just isn’t working out. Our current intent is to redesign their mastery so that their attacks cause more damage to diseased targets (in a similar manner to the Restoration druid mastery).

Potpourri

Some additional class-specific tweaks (keeping in mind this is not the full list):

Even after we fixed their mastery, Feral druid bleeds still do a lot of damage and are undispellable. We plan to shift some of that damage back to main attacks. They are also a little too hard to control. Given that they are already hard to root, snare, or polymorph, we think the fear immunity from Berserk is too much.

Arms warrior burst damage might still be too high in PvP, while we don’t have a great way to adjust their sustained damage for PvE. The Lambs to the Slaughter talent is a good place to address this. We also might nerf warrior stuns.

We think Arms and Fury warriors are getting too much damage out of Heroic Strike. We want it to be clear that it’s a rage dump and not make it the hardest hitting ability.

For Holy priests, we’re increasing Chakra’s duration and changing Surge of Light so it can now benefit from Flash Heal and Greater Heal and can crit.

We’re making some additional buffs, such as Pain Suppression and Barkskin, undispellable.

We’re buffing Wild Mushroom. It’s a cool spell that isn’t getting enough play.

Empowered Touch will now benefit from Regrowth as well. We’re also buffing the Glyph of Regrowth.

We are looking at Holy Concentration (after our most recent buff) and Omen of Clarity to make sure they don’t account for too much mana savings.

We are probably going to remove Drain Mana from warlocks. It is incredibly situational in PvE but causes problems in PvP. This might mean we need to evaluate Mana Burn as well.

Inferno will no longer increase the radius of Hellfire.

Shadow and Flame can now proc from Incinerate in addition to Shadow Bolt.

We want to redesign Improved Soulfire.

Censure will no longer break Repentance.

As part of the Marks and Beastmaster buffs, we’re buffing Aimed Shot, Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, and Kill Command.

To reduce mage control, we are discussing reducing the duration of Frost Nova and Ring of Frost.

We want to make it clear that Combat is intended to use fast off-hand weapons. We also want to polish Revealing Strike a bit.

We want to make sure Enhancement shaman avoid caster weapons.

We want to make sure Unholy DKs prefer two-handed weapons.

Necrotic Strike needs to be affected by resilience.

For Cataclysm, we changed Death Strike almost completely into an ability for Blood DK tanks, which is a bit unfortunate. We want to make sure it is still a useful button for Frost or Unholy DKs who need healing.

We also want to address DK mobility in PvP.

We think we overnerfed Every Man for Himself, and are reverting it back to a 2-minute cooldown again. We might evaluate other racials after we’ve seen more PvP.

Patch 4.0.6 will be coming soon – this will bring several changes to the Subtlety tree. Content here is not yet updated to reflect the changes it will bring.

Unless Blizzard dramatically alter the viability of the Combat tree, rogues currently have the option of chosing between their two other trees – the ‘mindless no-skill tunneling’ spec of Assassination and the ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a errr butterfly’ spec of Subtlety.

Despite lacking in damage, the Subtlety tree does offer a lot of utility and mobility as well as high survivability through Cheat Death, Preparation and Shadowstep. The alternative to Subtlety is the Assassination tree, which gives huge burst damage but severe mobility issues. Not too bad if you’re playing a Goblin Rogue alongside a Holy Paladin, but potentially very damaging for the rest of the time.

I plan on playing both trees this season – Assassination in rated battlegrounds and Subtlety in arenas. Here’s a quick guide to speccing into Subtlety.

Subtlety Tree Choices

 

There’s not much to debate about the essential Subtlety talents highlighted in red – there isn’t much flexibility with this tree and I’m yet to think of or hear a valid argument against taking them.

Point Allocation

Essential talents: 28
Secondary talents: 3-4 (or 5-6 if you want to skip points in other trees)

The only real decision comes down to which of the following talents you’d prefer to take.

Waylay
This isn’t a replacement for crippling poison, but a complementary talent to run along side it. Failing to apply crippling poison to your target really hurts the control you have of the fight, as does having it removed while you’re being kited. However, if you’re in a team with a class with a more reliable snare (such as a mage or a warrior), taking yet another snare mechanism could be considered overkill.

Honor Among Thieves
The cooldown of this ability is affected by the number of points you’re prepared to invest in it – you’re likely to be generating a combo per cooldown regardless of the spells rank. I’d recommend taking at least one point in HaT. The one thing you’ll need to be careful of is switching targets – you will lose existing combo points on your old target if you fail to Redirect them onto your new target before HaT procs.

Sanguinary Vein
If you’re playing with the Glyph of Hemorrhage, the bleed effect caused by the glyph is enough to give you the 10% extra damage from this talent. It’s not a bad boost to the mediocre pressure you can put out through raw damage, even if you’re relying on rupture for the bleed effects (don’t get me started on how pathetic rupture looks at the moment! A mere 500 damage dot against a target with a 120k health pool is nothing more than a joke).

Combat Tree Choices

I had originally made an image for this tree, but I won’t bother with it as there’s only one talent worth investing in. Improved Gouge has been buried so deeply that it’s not obtainable and you shouldn’t even have Sinister Strike on your bars. Wasting three talent points to negate the need to gem/gear for Hit is not worth doing, so that only leaves the new Cataclysm talent Improved Recuperate. A single point in it gives the equivalent of over 300 resilience, plus the HoT it grants, so it’s quite a bonus. Having Recuperate running grants you energy through Energetic Recovery so even if you’re not being directly attacked you should be using it. With buffs this will be healing for around 6000 per tick – what’s not to love about it?

Assassination Tree Choices

 

Point Allocation

Essential talents: 2
Secondary talents: 5-6 if you want to skip Improved Recuperate

The speed and healing buff from Quickening is the main target in this tree, so to reach it you’ll need to put at least 5 points into the first tier of talents. Deadly Momentum is more of a levelling talent than a serious option for PVP (even in battlegrounds with two pet healers) so points will need to be put into Lethality and Coup de Grace. With my backstabs hitting as hard as my eviscerates, I’m reluctant to buff eviscerate damage more than I have to, so personally I’d opt for 2/3 Coup de Grace and 3/3 Lethality. However, many highly respected Gladiators seem to be playing with either full points in both or 2/3 Lethality, so I wouldn’t waste any gold respeccing just to swap numbers around between these two talents!

Remaining points can be put into Puncturing Wounds for an extra 10%/20%/30% crit chance on your backstab. There are two other talents in the Assassination tree that are reachable – Blackjack and Ruthlessness. Since a lot of classes are either unsappable, healers, or have a ramp-up time on their damage, I can’t see Blackjack being useful in more than a handful of games. Ruthlessness lost its appeal when it was taken from a 100% proc to a 60% proc – with points in Premeditate and HaT you should hopefully enough combos already without having to rely on this proccing.

Main Hand Dagger

For assassination and subtlety specs you’ll be wanting a slow, hard hitting dagger in your main hand. There aren’t really that many great daggers to choose from for PVP – Season8 and IC25 daggers are better than the majority of what’s on offer from Cataclysm right now. The following daggers do offer a marked improvement.

When Gold is no Object – Elementium Shank

If you have gold to burn (and believe me this will cost a lot of gold at the moment), this Blacksmith-crafted dagger is the way to go. To craft one of these daggers you will need – 60 Volatile Air, 60 Volatile Fire, 60 Volatile Water, 16 Volatile Earth, 40 Elementium Bars and 18 Pyrium Bars. Ouch!

The Cheaper Alternative – Dagger of Restless Nights

A very worthy alternative, this will need revered reputation with a Tol Barad faction – Baradin’s Wardens for Alliance or Hellscream’s Reach for Horde.

For the Poor and Unloved – Windwalker Blade or Dimension Spike

The Windwalker Blade is a drop from Drahga Shadowburner in the new Grim Batol dungeon (on heroic difficulty). Fingers crossed it drops for you!

Alternatives – Lockbreaker Shank

Whilst not as good as Season 8 or IC25 daggers, this reward from the Deepholm quest ‘Question the Slaves’ is about as good as you can get for a Cataclysm green dagger.

Offhand Weapon

There is currently a ~horrible~ selection of decent fast weapons in Cataclym, with ilvl258 weapons from WotLK content being more viable than the pitiful selection we have been offered. Damage output seems higher with the 1.8 speed daggers listed above than from most of the 1.4 weapons that are available. If you don’t fancy playing as 1.8/1.8 and you have no decent daggers from WotLK, you could fall back on the following choices.

BOE Specials – Trek’s Shiv & Lhakaz’s Swiftblade

Lhakaz’s Swiftblade looks pretty good (and will help with reaching the hit cap) but currently seems to be selling for 2k-3k gold. Considering the short amount of time you’ll (hopefully) using this for, you may want to give it a miss!

For Those Who Slept through WotLK – Toxidunk Dagger

This random BOE drop from BRC isn’t too shabby – I’ve ran BRC once so far and saw it drop from one of the first packs of mobs.

For The Unlucky Looter – Gilnean/Goblin Slicer

If the Toxidunk dagger doesn’t drop (or if it’s need-rolled by a hunter from Skullcrusher), this quest reward is about as good as it gets. You will need to finish the ‘Prisoners’ quest in Abyssal Depths to receive it.

Main Hand Sword/Axe/Mace

I don’t intend to touch the combat tree for PVP this season unless things drastically change, but the following slow main hand weapons would be suitable for any rogue wanting to PVP with a combat spec. If you really don’t want to use mutilate or backstab, you can try these;

When Gold is no Object – Elementium Bonesplitter

Another blacksmith-crafted item of which I dread to imagine the cost.

The Cheaper Alternative – Ravening Slicer

Baradin’s Wardens and Hellscream’s Reach come to the rescue once again with this axe (requires revered reputation).

For the Poor and Unloved – Dragonsaw Boneblade

This bearable sword is awarded for completing the Deepholm quest ‘Resonating Blow’.

*UPDATE*

I’ve just noticed The Perforator. This level 83 BOE is a crafted item from Jewel Crafting which requires six blue-level gems.

Also, thanks to Majunor for pointing out these two decent daggers. Throat Slasher can be purchased for 950 Justice Points and The Twilight Blade is a lucky drop from lock boxes. I’d like to run tests on the Twilight Blade to see whether or not the proc is enough to make up for the lack of stats.

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.

I don’t have time to play both my rogues competitively, so I’ll be playing Dcruize, who I transfered and X-factioned to Terenas-EU as a human (I now have 5 black war bears in my bank…). In preparation for Catacylsm I’ll be changing to a shadowstep-daggers spec until 2.2k, then most likely shadowstep-swords afterwards. The few games we’ve played since transfering have been a bit scratchy, mostly down to me being out of practice I think. There’s a scary amount of Wizard-cleave teams around now and it feels like every cleave team is carrying at least one Shadowmourne – hopefully the extra mobility, cheapshots and slight survivability from a shadowstep spec will help counter the pounding I’m taking (100-0 in a deathcoil = ouch, just ouch).

On a sad note it appears that Akrios (roguerogue.com) has stopped playing. Old news I know, but it’s still a shame that another rogue has gone, although hopefully on to bigger and better things. Best of luck Akrios, I never spoke to you, but damn you had my respect!

I started writing lastrogue.com shortly after WotlK launched, at a time when the rogue population was falling rapidly – the name for the site came about after I did a “/who rogue 80 dalaran” and found that I was the only one there. Things have picked up dramatically since then and I’m certain that Cataclysm will breathe a lot more life into the rogue class, but it’s still a shame to see the rogue population decrease, even by one (especially when that ‘one’ was such a prolific figure in the rogue community).

I’ll be posting again very shortly, so until then, may all your vanishes be clean ones! And thanks for the duel Doby

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.

For a rough idea of PPM with the different weapon speeds, I spent 30mins auto-attacking a training dummy with three different weapons. The test is far from ideal as it doesn’t factor in time you spend kiting, (and I didn’t use Slice’n'Dice or Mutilate) but the results are enough to make me consider swapping my Mutilator for a Murder. The faster the speed the better, as your shivs will cost less energy and Focused Attacks will proc more often from the extra chances you get to crit.

1.4 speed – 12 procs per minute
1.6 speed – 9.2 procs per minute
1.8 speed – 6.8 procs per minute

If running with a 1.4 dagger means not having to shiv at all, it might be worth main-handing deadly and keeping wound on the offhand instead. This would give back the ability to shiv crippling when you’re peeling (or chasing form-switching druids), but unfortunately this is probably something better suited to high-level raiders, as there are no fast mainhand daggers available from PVP. If someone is able to try this out, please let me know how you get on with keeping 5/5 deadly doses applied!

All in all, I’m more than happy with the buffs to Master Poisoner and Envenom – with a full stack of deadly and plenty of combo points you can really burn peoples HP. Who needs ArP when you can put out 7k crits on plate!

Apologies for the wierd post I made earlier today – I was playing around with Spotify and accidentally created a tweet for a random album, which was picked up by WordPress and inserted into this blog……

Master Poisoner – Increases the critical hit chance of all attacks made against any target you have poisoned by 3%, reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 50%, increases the bonus chance to apply Deadly Poison when Envenom is used by an additional 45%, and gives Envenom a 33/66/100% chance to not consume Deadly Poison.

The ‘massive’ buff that has got me feeling pretty hopeful for HfB in PVP during S7 is the little amendment to the end. 100% chance to not consume deadly poison!

I play as HfB at the moment since it makes a very big difference against plate teams. Not only will this new buff mean more damage from having DP tick (and hopefully let you envenom much more often), all those doses of DP should help your wound poisons avoid being dispelled.

To make this even more attractive, damage from envenom is also being buffed a little as well.

Envenom’s scaling has been increased from 7% to 9% of attack power per combo point.

Expectations for this site? I couldn’t possibly guess! I’ll be aiming at posting thoughts and tips about the rogue class in PVP at a level suitable for a relative newcommer (if you’re focus-blinding your way to a 2800 rating, laughing off people’s attempts to juke you’ll probably already be bored here!). I’ll try and keep this site from becomming yet another fansite regurgitating content from arenajunkies, roguerogue and shadowpanther.

Myself? A confessed rogue junkie (who has finally come out of denial and stopped trying to level various hunter/paladin/priest alts). I’m currently playing on Terenas-EU as a goblin.