Lobotomy3yes

A couple things about both combat and hemo.

I keep reading people complaining about hemo being garbage and it leaves me shaking my head. First rule about hemo: unless you are shadowdance, YOU DO NOT USE DAGGERS! Daggers+hemo=fail. Calamity's Grasp+berserking+hemo=win. I am going to give Coldblood/Shadowstep a try when I switch to a new comp. I am combat at the moment, and I don't understand how people don't find it bursty enough. I think a couple of you are putting too much emphasis on Killing Spree. Sure it is a great burst, but it is not the real strength of combat. The true power is in AR. I macro my AP trinket with AR and unless my target bubbles, they will die. I frequently hit for 6k eviscerates, and sinister strike is a lot more powerful than people give it credit for (3-4k crits on average).

Combat also has a wide array of perks which can mean victory in a clutch. You gain a variety of interrupts and silences, and combining Unfair Advantage with Lightning Reflexes is simply amazing. When I was gemmed for agility I was was at 32% dodge. Gems and enchants are a bit tricky though. As prepilate, agil is the obvious choice. I don't have any problem dealing consistent damage with significant bursts, but I play a double dps team. Therefore I go with resil and stam. The main issue for combat is staying alive and using your CDs with near perfection. As we don't have 2 vanishes and evasions, we must figure out other methods of staying healthy. For funs I threw on double lifeward on my weapons just to see if it is any good. Take my advice and pass on this enchant lol. I heals for around 300-400 and not very frequently. I am definitely going to go with berserking.

In the end I don't find mutilate to do better damage than combat. Mutilate bursts are not very effective against high resilience. Keep in mind that the new patch is buffing resil to reduce ALL damage. I am sitting at around 800 resil and I can't remember losing a battle to a mutilate rogue. I play rogue/warrior (which is about the worst comp you can play, but I will get to that later), and with commanding shout I have 24k health and my partner has 30k. You simply can't burst that down without furious weapons, and even then it will be a challenge.

Now on to the real bullshit: Paladin/DK. Like I mentioned earlier, I am playing rogue/warrior with my friend. It is a pretty terrible setup, but we play surprisingly well against all teams but one: the holy/prot-holly pally with a blood DK. We are both pretty well geared, and it is damned near impossible to heal through our dps. Shamans and druids are no problem, but priests can be tricky. Our favorite tactic is what I like to call the KidneyStorm. I KS and he bladestorms. Now THAT is a healing nightmare haha. Paladin heals are good, but the problem lies in their stupid fucking bubbles. Really what bubbles mean is once per game both teammates gain 100% hp back while remaining completely invulnerable. Add heals and blood DK health regen on top of that and you have one of the top comps in the game. Now if I only faced this team every once in awhile I would not have a problem, but me and my friend are literally stuck at 1200 because of this comp. We pretty much beat every other team we face unless we fuck up, but there are so many goddamned pally/dk teams out there and we can't progress because of that.

I am actually glad Blizzard is nerfing 2s. The top teams are all cookie-cutter builds with no originality (PR anyone?). Now if a shitty comp can still beat almost every other team out there because of teamwork, shouldn't that be rewarded? One would think so.


But yeah, the odds of the new resil updates being broken are fairly good, so I am getting as much resil as possible. If it turns out to be broken, I want my fun before it gets fixed . Picture it: rogues who not only have 30% dodge but take 30% less damage too. Good god.

 

Rhysel

Hello great rogues of Warcraft,

I'm running cookie cutter pvp mutilate with a mix of Naxx25 and Uld10 gear for PVP, going all out DPS in a Feral Druid / Rogue 2v2. When I PVP I have 2x Twilight Mist (Instead of the TM/WD armory will show for pve) and I swap out deadly jerkin.

I'm having a pretty difficult time getting above 1200 with the new ratings, and my question is how much Resilience should I be putting on? I only have 109-161 right now, but I have enough leftover gear from upgrades to stick a lot of my old BiS Naxx25 gear with Resil gems and chants. Is the loss of DPS really worth the additional survivability? Or will I find myself a very hard to kill rogue that can't burn anything down?

I also have two Ulduar swords (razorscale and night etched) and am considering switching to combat swords to solve the burst problem.

Any thoughts?

 

Humbaba

If you're stuck below 1200 you aren't using CCs effectively at all. In a 2 dps setup you shouldn't care about resilience for a while.

 

Exsanguie

I am just beginning to experiment with arena as a rogue, and I was wondering what the current recommended assassination pvp spec is, along with the current recommended poison combos?

 

Linstar

Generally the cookie cutter mutilate build is 45/5/25 something like:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Some people put the points from focused attacks into imp kidney shot depending on the comp they run.

For poisons you should use wound/wound in just about every situation. You dont want your MS debuff to fall off ever and it also ensures you have crippling up on your target so you dont get kited.

 

Cos-

41/5/25
and I can't see a good reason to use initiative unless you do 2 dps 2v2. Setup is pretty awesome vs other rogues if you have a healer backing you up. 3v3 Id probably just go serrated blades.

 

Grunge

There's no reason why you would not take Serrated Blades as it's one of the few DPS talents in sub.

So the real question is Camo vs Initative vs Setup.
Most people go with Camo, but I can see the benefit of Setup, especially if you're facing heavy melee trains.

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

kripke

I'd like to comment about my experiences running a 25/0/46 build in a rogue/priest/warrior setup. My purpose is certainly not to brag but rather present an alternative spec to the very popular, and personally boring, mutilate.

It's primary strength is setting up the warrior, or any melee, to burst while keeping the target locked down. With talented and glyphed ToTT, the warrior is enjoying 10 seconds of +15% damage every 20 seconds. The perfect storm involves expose armor, followed by a 5 point KS during a ToTT bladestorm, as mentioned by a previous poster. The bladestorm usually gives me enough combo points through HAT to toss out a quick cold blood eviscerate for further pressure.

The other benefits of shadowstep are familiar to any rogue who remembers its prevalence during BC: catching up to druids and blinking mages are old favorites, while disengaged hunters and getting back on your target after a death grip are new advantages. Furthermore, with the resilience changes and associated longer matches, the reduction in the prep cd from filthy tricks might also come into play. On a somewhat less important note, nothing beats shadowstepping up to cannons in WG and SoTA and sapping people inside before any gates/walls are down.

Also, I believe my gear and tactical choices during 3's add another level of utility to the spec: I try to be obnoxious and i run with 1k resilience. While very few teams are likely to attack the warrior (double frost mage exception), many teams will try to get on the priest. Through early openers, disarms, and hopping around the arena I like to believe I incur enough ire to make other dps forget about the priest, at least for a bit. Through high resilience and glyphed evasion I can usually weather the beating.

The obvious disadvantage is the low dps compared to the standard mutilate spec, and without shadowdance this spec is unlikely to ever catch up. Of course many of the benefits described above could be had with 51 points in sub, I find quick recovery and fleet footed too good to give up.

I'm curious if anyone else has actively tried similar specs in arena, their successful strategies, and any comments would of course be appreciated.

 

Humbaba

This sounds pretty idiotic to me. Is this really better than combat?

 

Niug

Tricks of the trade doesn't stack with enrage / wrecking crew, so your 15% damage bonus is only actually a 5% damage bonus.

 

Grunge

I don't see how this can actually work beyond a "fun" factor.

You don't bring any actual utility and your dps is just abyssmal. 3.2 will reduce the viablity even more, as the fights become longer your lack of sustained dps becomes a greater and greater weakness.

A 5/54/12 FoK spam build has seen some use in the US though and I'm sure I'll try it out myself at some point.
It's mobility issues can be solved by playing with a ret and FoK forces people to scatter leaving one of them open for KS.

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

Serol

So im a raiding rogue and i do 2's w/ a destro lock in my guild. We've gotten to around the 1600s and then our rating starts to drop. Mostly i was the standard cookie-cutter 41/5/25 mutilate-prep build, but i got bored and went to Shadow Dance daggers. Im wondering which would be better for a dual dps 2s team, and also when i should start wearing pvp gear, if at all?

 

Valustria

Shadow Dance is pretty good in 2s if you are with a teammate who crits often and you can play it well. It's all about burst damage and you have a lot of tools for survival and mobility. With a Destro lock, I'd let him start on something, and when it's about half-dead, Premeditation -> Shadowstep -> Ambush -> Eviscerate -> Backstab -> Backstab. The target might not even live long enough for a second Backstab, and most people won't respond quickly enough to that kind of damage to save anyone. But, it all depends on the target. If they don't have a bubble, you might replace Eviscerate with Kidney Shot so the lock can unload while you Backstab reliably.

Man, I kinda miss playing Shadow Dance...

"In emptiness there is good, but no evil. Wisdom exists, logic exists, the way exists, and the mind is empty."
~ Miyamoto Musashi, The Scroll of Emptiness, The Book of Five Rings

 

Grunge

I play 2's as well with a Destro, and I'd have to say the warlock needs quite a lot of resilience for survivability, while you can go quite light on that side, since more often than not it's him who dies, since you can't leave a Destro free to cast.
That said, however you do want to wear some resilience, High-400, Low-500 is the number I've been using.

The problem I see with ShadowDance is that it lacks both sustained DPS and a viable means to burst outside ShadowDance.
Which means you're rather hard-pressed against paladin teams, unless you manage to catch them offguard and kill before the bubble.
Probably doable once or twice, after that they'll be expecting it.

A slight advantage over MutiPrep vs druids perhaps, but they're paired more often than not with classes that you must lock down so that your lock won't die (DK/Warrior), so in the big picture SD offers no advantage there.

MutiPrep isn't reliant as much on a single CD to provide the burst to kill someone and Deadly Brew allows you to OH Deadly vs druid teams which provides a much needed abolish protection.

ShadowDance I'd say is slightly superior to MutiPrep when you're paired with a Arcane (or Frost) Mage, since they don't need to be babysat as much.

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

wow

Consider playing Killing Spree (if you have a good non-dagger mainhand), it syncs very well with a Destro Warlock. All he has to do is tell you when he's getting a chaos bolt+conflag off so you can hit killing spree and pretty much anything will die to unhealable damage.

 

Jeddius

I just started running 2's with my mage friend and am new with my rogue. I'm wondering if I should be sub specced? My mage suggested it to me. Right now I'm Assassination, 41/5/25. I just picked a cookie cutter build from Arena Junkies. My mage mentioned shadowstep might help us, what do you guys think? Should I respec into Sub (or is it called Shadow Dance)?


The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Sealfon

I've only run Rogue/Disc and some RMP, so I'm not an expert on rogue mage. Most of the rogue/mage teams I see (only ~2k rating) are running 41/5/25 though. I'd guess Imp KS is a pretty big selling point, a shatter on top of it is huge burst.

 

Jeddius

I saw Imp KS (which I don't have), maybe I need to look into speccing that. Also, when you said Shatter which ability are you referring to? I looked over the trees a couple times and I'm not getting it.

 

Vayyde

He's referring to your mage buddy with the shatter. You drop an Imp. Kidney on the opposing player for the lock down and increased damage and your mage wrecks him with the shatter combo.

 

Sealfon

Yup, Vayyde hit it. Specifically, have your mage apply 5 stacks of Winter's Chill, then freeze them (frost nova, pet nova, lucky Frostbite proc, or Shattered Barrier popping) and nuke away. The extra 9% damage from imp KS, plus tricks, trinkets, IV, and the damage you're adding is pretty huge burst.

CCing one, and setting up that combo on the other is the R/M strat in a nutshell.

For reference, Shatter: Shatter - Spell - World of Warcraft

 

mofidik

Nothing against 1.8/2.6 for FoK. Crippling isn't normalised so a fast MH is beneficial for it proccing from auto swings and it doesn't matter much for FoK damage due to the 150% multiplier. The only real downside is reduced spree damage which one should use a swapped weapon with wound for anyway. If you want to try FoK when you have mut weapons, you're just a relatively cheap OHer away.

¬(-.-¬) maek stabs!

 

advanced

IMP KS in my honest is really not worth it, for example if everything goes to plan and you CC the target correctly 5-6 seconds is all it takes rogues can burst down on average 1-3k per mutilate along with initiative an instant eviscerate on open which obviously depending on the target can be from 3-9k, a mage who knows what he's doing stacks haste, after a deep freeze your above average mage can get off 5 ice lances which do up to 2k non crits?

99 times out of 100 your target dies, if it doesn't then you're most definately doing something wrong.
Alot of people see the imp KS debuff and trinket it to an early death/easy CC anyway i'd probably pick up something like blood spatter for the extra on druids that way you can drop serrated blades for initiative

 

DarKnightVIII

Blood Splatter is lackluster at best from everything I've seen and read. Not to mention, I don't believe I've come across any high ranked rogues that run it in a standard 41/5/25 spec.

My question is related to Serrated Blades. It was mentioned earlier in this thread that this is one of the few DPS increase talents in the Sub tree and worth taking. The tooltip reads as follows:

My question(s) deals specifically with the bold text. 1) How much is increased at level 80? I understand that ArP isn't worth gemming specifically for, as other stats are more important. 2) However I was wondering if the three talent points into SB would be worth taking?

Also, has anyone toyed w/ the idea (I looked up a rogue in <Vodka> to see what spec they are sporting), and Slyk <Vodka> is running a 54/5/12. Using Hunger For Blood as the primary point of the spec, and glyphed, it's an 18% increase in dmg. That's huge especially if you are running a double DPS team + TotT, your partner is getting an increase of 15% for the duration your opener.

Any thoughts?

 

liquidroyl

Re: Serrated Blades: Serrated Blades - Spell - World of Warcraft

The answer is 640 at level 80. It's really not hard to do some searches before posting questions like this.

Most players that played HfB play it with a healer because of the lack of stealth related talents; getting the jump in 2 DPS, or more importantly, not getting jumped, is a huge initiative swing. HfB has a non-trivial start-up cost that is alleviated the longer matches go, which again promotes you to extend matches. Let alone all of the defensive CDs you are giving up losing Prep that are invaluable in shorter matches but lose value as matches go long.

Not sure how ToTT is related to HfB. Things that increase damage don't necessarily just go together, particularly if you are losing a lot of openers and defensive abilities that allow you to play offensively.

 

dabadguy

I've started playing with my buddy again after his run last season to 2400 as Ret/Rogue. Playing Mage/Rogue for 2s now that 2s don't grant anything, and he's been talking about playing Sub.

Pros of playing sub:

1) Superior time on target. With Shadowstep and all the utility talents offered in the sub tree, he can provide a lot more pressure and lock down a target after he gets peeled by the opponent. Kiting is a much less non-issue.
2) Shadow Dance offers awesome burst for the whole 6 (or 8 talented) seconds that it is available. Chaining a CS after a Garrote on a healer during a burst is amazing for a quick gib.
3) Imp Gouge. The couple times that we've done games, he's been able to use the 5.5 sec gouge to get away from a pursuant and get a free stealth behind a pillar. 5.5 sec is close to the 6 sec limit that allows a player to go OOC, thus providing more opportunities to re-stealth w/o Vanish.

Cons:

1) Less sustained burst. He generally has to switch weapons out (slow MH, fast OH) if Shadow Dance is on CD. Generally, without Shadow Dance, it plays much like Shadowstep did at 70. Hemo < Mut when it comes to sustained DPS.
2) CP generation is low. Mut generates many more CPs than Sub does, and it shows in the number of finishers that he can use. Even with 30 energy Hemos, it's still much more energy-inefficient than Mut.
3) Loss of a couple offensive CDs. I count Imp KS as an offensive CD, since it can be timed to help with a huge burst. Cold Blood's loss is no small thing either.
4) As a Frost mage, I *have* to be on top of my CC. Sub lends itself to a longer game and sitting on a target, but Rogues are notoriously squishy out of stealth, so I have to be on the ball for keeping him freed up.


I think it just comes down to a different playstyle. I dunno where this is going to take us this season; we probably won't put too much time into it considering 2s isn't as rewarding as 3's anymore. Either way, with the way Frost is scaling in both PvP and PvE, it's going to take a considerable change before it comes to being level with some of the other classes/specs out there.

Rogue HAT spec:

Now, imagine the wall is my Eviscerate button.