I have faith in blizzard that we will have our spot eventually, but when? Right now in heroic's everyone is saying how CC is king since trash pulls have about 3-5 hard hitting mobs. We have one CC, sap, which at least got a buff last patch to lose the heartbeat resists to give it some advantage but the fact that you need imp sap to make it useful, reach the target and not be revealed (pretty easy with mod I guess if you go the imp sap route) and cannot reapply it in combat really sucks.

Also it only works against one type of targets, humanoids unlike polymorph which work against humans, beasts etc. I never played the beta at a high level but how frequent are humanoid mobs in heroics?

We do have kidney shot for these trash pulls though, so we can save the tank some damage in humanoid instance after our CC, which is a good advantage id say.

Anyway, heroics will only last so long and then ere back to raiding and so far I dont see any rogue utility again. Kinda like how mages can slow the ironman boss (I think? forgot his name..) at the opera boss in Kaz by 10% each frost spell they do. I guess we'll wait and see, but I think I"ll just play my warlock which I always enjoyed in raids and which also brings more to a group in the form of CC, healthstones and soulstones.

As posted above the assassination tree looks great now, and I was surprised that mutilate actually held its ground in Nax, I just wish they could fix some of the stuff in the combat tree now, like blade twisting or even agression which always was so weak. More talents similar to combat potency, probably weaker but that add more fun to the class would be great.

Combat potency alone made me easely enjoy all my raids since 2.0, especially now in 2.0.3 where I can finally see the +15 energy procs in my combat log, sometimes I get a lot of procs together or sometimes none for a bit, lets me adjust my combo cycles on the fly while fighting and I love that.

Wow, i have been thinking this for a long time, but could never really put it into words and i totally agree with you on this. Honestly, does anyone here think the SnD/BS switch was a good idea on any level outside of PvP? Because the more and more i look at Backstab in that tree, the more and more i wonder why it is there. The assination tree was about finishers and combo point generation...

I think it was mostly to make shadow step viable, instead of finally "caving in" to all the zomgpvp rogues switch BS with SnD rogues. Can't say I particularly like the change but at least at some point when I get a dagger that beats GM/iblis (too lazy to get a gm dirk atm to "Try" a spec) I'll go shadow step while finishing my leveling to 70. Still wish it was like it was before though, I"ll spend a lot more time raiding then omg 2k+ ambush on cloth pvp/farm.

Ok, is it just me, or is the thread broke?

edit: ah, never noticed my reply here. so replies are still adding to page 114, but there's a phantom page 115 showing up with nothing on it. Odd, but not as broke as i thought it was.

We're having some minor hiccups, but Boethius and crew are on it.

I'll have to test Mutilate with 4pc Bonescythe again - I haven't actually specced since 2.0.3 because I'm pretty sure whatever I choose is going to have to be my leveling spec, and I'm torn between 41/3/7 and 46/0/5. :(

Schwaa?! I don't remember looking, but did they add Mutilate to 4 pc?

I've gone for 41/3/7 personally. Imp gouge mainly for pvp reasons, and imp sap because it's so amazingly useful for soloing and 5-mans (now that it's easy to reach and actually reliable, it's hard to pass up). Although i'm half tempted to spec back to a heavy sub hemo build - i was CoS pre-patch, and it's hard to go back to pvping without full stealth talents :(

Having already leveled to 70 on the Beta, I went 41/3/7 on live. The only thing I miss is improved sprint, and that's the path I'll take while leveling. Having a few more points in some poison talents is not as important as having an extremely useful tool (Imp Sap). As it has been said, it is invaluable for questing and 5mans, which is the majority of what we will be doing while leveling and for some time after hitting 70. Once raiding begins again, a 41/20/0 build will be excellent.

I wasn't getting Head Rush procs last night in Naxx, so no, pretty sure Mutilate still doesn't work with BS4.

This may or may not have been my fault. (It was).

One of the crashes of the DB (the performance problems we've all been seeing) resulted in a small problem with one of the tables, which basically orphaned some posts, which confused the forum software, as it saw 2060 replies, but only 2058 posters.

The blank thread was the result of that, but I've fixed that now.

If you see any other blank threads (you shouldn't, but just in case) - Please drop me a PM.

(Sorry for the diversion).

Pretty much quoted for the truth. A lot of the rogues out there just don't give a damn. That's why the latest update to rogues was basically just a PVP talent switch.

Every rogue you see that is serious about their role in raiding... there are 9 others asking about the perfect pvp build.

I generally dont find shadowsteps very good, since I dont use ambush very much in PvP cheap shot is in most situations superior & with the upcomming silence on garrote I'm pretty sure it will be better aswell, I only use it when targets are very low.

I'm really looking forward to TBC, both to PvP (Love the arenas) & PvE. But I must agree with you that we cant bring much to a heroic instance run if it's so CC based as people claim, wich will make rogues even less needed :(. But I love my rogue, and dont see myself changing main to one of my other 60 chars (got a warlock & warrior).

As for lvling build. I don't see myself grinding to lvl 70 with daggers, as I think it will be too annoying after a while (must say targets die extremely fast with multilate, but I prefer combat in 5man instances since you often "tank" offtank smaller mobs (at least in the current ones)). I will most likely spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fbe0oZGcEz0Vzx0uox

i myself as a rogue feel kinda abandoned by blizzard atm. i am happy i played my priest toon and got em some decent gear.
but worst thing happened today. The Raidleader went through his activity list and found that only 2 rogues were left for TBC... we are open for rogue recruitment :huh:

that really made me think. we had like 8 active rogues. we were up to sapphiron on naxx.... and ppl just stop because the class isnt fun anymore :(

I'm confused as to why combat is better for off-tanking than assassination. Between 5/5 seal fate and mutilate giving 2 combo points you can have so many points to work with. I'm far from the world's best rogue and I can solo equal level elites pretty easily (as long as they can be KS'd, gouged, and poisoned). That's not exactly off-tanking but, I think, a reasonable approximation.

What I meant with offtanking was in the 5man instances we got atm, when you got aggro from one of those it's not big deal and with Combat specc you can keep attacking like before since you use Sinister strike, while a dagger rogue would have to get it off him, use gouge or use gimped Sinister strike (with daggers). There will be a better alternative later on though (can't remember wich level), wich is the new shiv wich should be very good since it's normalised as a 2.4speed weapon (so get a fast offhand and take advantage of it), it cannot be parried/dodged from what I've heard + it proccs poison.

Shiv can be parried and dodged and uses a weapontype normalization, AFAIK.

(edit: and you get it at 70.)

I think a lot of people are not really appreciating the full strength of Shadowstep, 20 yard's is huge when it comes to melee'ing people and so long as you put some degree of thought into if/where your opponent is moving you can counteract lag fairly easily I find, though obviously if you an AUS player on a US server you're bound to encounter larger issues with it, similarly to say Charge or Intercept for warriors. Shadowstep + sap (if you're putting 41 points into the tree might aswell get imp. sap now since it's reliable in stealth terms) is pretty awesome for the start of an arena to get the sap in before people pick up combat flags and it's also very useful for getting back to or onto a target, especially when paired with vanish. Practicality aside it's also fun as hell, I use hemo so I'm not just using it to 1-2hit gank people and it's use / style for me is very enjoyable. I'll go as far as to say that I'm glad to be re-rolling Shaman if only to not have to respec combat and keep pvp'ing / farming on my rogue with a subtelty build (though I am aware some of the gear falls away for hemo and SS scales up damage wise faster).

I don't think people are not playing a rogue because it isn't "fun". Rogue's are a fun class, sure people who play a rogue for weeks / months / years get inevitably bored. For me and a lot of other rogue's who raid we're re-rolling because we're interested in a role that has some more depth to it's raiding aspect, where a rogue does not. Rogue's pretty much just sit around doing nothing until a go call is made then we just apply our cycle to a stated target from a given position and that's nothing really different to what we do farming tyr's hand, actually I apply less skill raiding since I can barely blind the mob's and they generally can't be pickpocketed. Though atleast before rogue DPS had a substantial weight whereas now, it is "allegedly" watered down a lot.

To get slightly more back into the real* topic of rogue abilities in TBC, does anyone know if the amount of silver / gold you gain pickpocketing mob is still directly related to the value dropped?

I think the formula (very basic estimation not based on a broad level range sample size) is currently based on something in the region of (n*2)+n=T with n being the amount available from pickpocketing and T being the amount gained from the kill. Speaking in relation to level 70 mobs this is. Example, currently 1s52c from pickpocket should equal between 1s52c and 4s56c.

Or better yet does anyone know of a better formula, the relativity being pickpocketing is a guide as to what mob's you gain max gph out of, ie. you can PP a low silver value mob in tyr's hand and decide against tagging it assuming the area's clear enough to be able to hunt other high silver mob's while someone unaware run's along kills the low one value one increasing gph efficiency. (more curiousity than for practical reason's)

*It's still a class ability even if some people treat it as little more than a jest!

Edit: Just to add, those value's are based around the elite's in Tyr's hand.

Does anyone know if the combat potency talent work off a ppm or a flat % considering offhand speeds?

After leveling with a quite strange build on beta witch I myselfe found quite interesting, I got quite suprised how well the potency proced.

For those interested, I used This build starting with hemo at 60, getting AR at 61, prep at 62 and then just fill up combat afterwards. I did this simply because I had Servo arm and castigator as my main weapons when I started and sine I got in to beta so late ther wasnt all that many I were able to party with, resulting on soloing and exploration to the max, making me love imp sap, all stealth abilities and a 2x AR were lifesavers for trashing down bosses on the recomended 3-player style quests. (allso as I saw my critrate drop horribly as I leveled I rather try and aim for burst non-crits then what I would get out off assasin tree).

The thing is, I knew that having a fast offhand have allways been a good thing, but not all that important before TBC (since it mainly only ment you got some more poison procs). but now that TBC comes Rogues have 2 new abilities that dictates that you should use a fast offhand.

1: combat potency (as I assume) giving more energy the more offhand swings you can give.
2: Shiv making fast offhands realy needed. (using shiv with the castigator (2.6 speed) made it crit for 150 at lvl 70, give a poison and cost 45 energy. Quite tragic actualy.

I allso noticed that T3 gear bonus of +5 energy realy went away fast simply because your crit deminishes so fast as a combatbuild (yeh I know I gimped myselfe even more losing the flat 5% from assasin), and at 70 I had no problems getting only slightly better gear simply because as a macerogue (would guess swords allso) I had no point in keepin the setbonus since my crit were so horrible with T3 gear.

All in all It was funny leveling with this build and I probably will use it when TBC goes live as well, but I must admit that I realy REALY hope that when we get better gear our viability improves, cus getting to 70, having Naxx gear made me feel like a gimped bug. Not one quest (I didnt manage to get the 5 men outdoor quets done, and I did see some upgrades there) gave me somethnig even viable to compare with my current gear, and practcly all blue questrewards I managed to do were druid gear.

Cant wait to get to 70 again with more people and having some real fun in the instances tho.

On a sidenote about Rogues on the wow forums, I totaly agree, I stopped having any faith about some proper conversations with anyone of importance on that forum for ages, since all it looks alike they are doing now are CC on the little kids.
I used to browse blue.cardplace for a while. but for the last month now I stopped that as well simply because over 80% of the blue replyes you can find there are to some idiot not capable of posting right, thinking he's the center of the univers and have a realy hard time understanding why not everyone stops and read HIS post.
This game is truly good, and I do think the Devs know what they are doing (even tho they sometimes forget where they are at (read blade twinsting being good before removing the talent that could use it, and then just forgetting its there). My wish for the future would be that the conversation towards the powers that be over there would be a bit better towards those that actualy have good stuff to say.

I've picked the pockets of many a mob in TBC and I've seen mobs drop less silver on the kill than I received from the theft.

From lvl 64-68 mobs the silver per pickpocket ranges from 8-13s (down to around 3s when I got a lockbox or 'fun' item).

Speaking of fun items keep your eye out for the Steamy Romance Novels :)

Talking purely about Raid-PvE I can see advantages for the following DPS-oriented specs:

41/20-Mutilate: Due to the swap you need three less "filler" points in the Combat tree, freeing up more points for - admittedly minor - DPS-talents in the Assassination tree. I do not deny that some of the fillers - e.g. Improved backstab for poison immune mobs - are at least situationally useful, but overall DPS is a little better due to the swap.

16/45/0-Claw-Dagger-Combat: Thanks to Combat Potency you want the fastest offhand you can get for a combat specs. And even though itemization has improved, the fastest offhands on every level will still be daggers. Before the switch you had the choice to either use a slower sword/fist weapon in the offhand or use a fast dagger and loose your weapon specialization for the offhand. Thanks to the switch you are not required to place "filler" points in parry/riposte, but are free to use those points to obtain dagger spec in addition to your mainhand spec.

Those are actually on the live servers now - I got one in Hearthglen yesterday, although i can't remember for sure what mob it was from. Also got a junkbox containing Maiden's Anguish (which is the replacement for Deathweed in higher-rank deadly poison, etc, i believe?) from High Protector Lorik.

sorry, but 2 weapon specializations? noWay...

there are swords and claws in the 1.3 - 1.6 speed range....

Latro's Shifting Sword http://thottbot.com/beta?i=15381
Scimitar of the Nexus-Stalker http://thottbot.com/beta?i=3118

Stormreaver Warblades http://thottbot.com/beta?i=15431