enno

Hi guys, hope you can help me with some doubts about a new pvp spec.

Currently doing only 2v2, as myself combat rogue with a full pve resto druid. We do reasonably well with ~1800 ating and little to no gladiator gear (we only just started). Now our biggest problem is warriors.. I guess everybody has those as problematic but for us we have a fair chance vs anything at our rating except when there's a warrior that comes into play we might aswell afk out right then
If the warrior goes after me it's insanely hard for my druid to keep me out of execute range. Any healer that warrior brings can bring us into problems with paladin (stun) or priest (manadrain) or druid (cyclone spam).
If the warrior focuses on my druid we have a chance if i can finish of the warriors healer fast enough. A chance caus my druid does have alot of problems surviving warriors on him. (crap hp, inexperienced, no resilliance, and warriors overpoweredness)

Now reading up in here I see specs like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (spec a) and I do understand their merrit in as said before.. offensive pressure > defensive stats for 2v2 but seeing our specific problem with warriors what do you think about this spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (spec b)?

Is Heightened Sences any good? 4% miss-chance for all caster and hutners seems pretty nice to me considering pvp gear doesn't usualy have alot of +hit on them? Can it be better than say Dirty Deeds?
Would I loose too much dps over the normal 20/41 combat 'pve' spec to make a dent in those teams we now are able to beat?
Would the stun (10% more than spec a; 15% total if i use the stun metagem) help me with warriors and other classes?
The 'accepted' 0/31/30 spec doesn't include any weapon expertise.. why? Want the lesser dodge and parry help me land my kidney and cheapshots instead of being parried/dodged?
And why does the 'accepted' spec not include elusiveness? I would think 1m30s blinds would be pretty damn sweet.. to stop that pesky healer or even to get that pesky warrior of my back?

 

• LodeRunner

Blanket statements like this are not useful and should be avoided. Druids are pretty brutal counters to warriors, providing your Druid knows the basics of fighting Warriors. Root and Cyclone should be applied liberally, especially in the case of Warrior/Priest. You should be able to keep the priest locked down and unable to Mana Burn by yourself while the Warrior is stuck rooted or Cycloned. Warriors are, and always have been, the natural counters to Rogues. This doesn't mean they're unbeatable.

If the warrior is focusing on your Druid, the Druid can usually become a bear and outlast the warrior while you kill the warrior's healer. If the warrior is focusing on you, then your Druid should be doing everything possible to lock down the warrior while you attack the warrior's healer. It is also your job to get rid of the Mortal Strike debuff on yourself so your Druid can heal you. Evasion, Ghostly Strike, Riposte, and Blind are all very useful towards this end.

 

Ariashley

There is only one person known to have gotten that weapon from a pickpocketed lockbox across all servers. He made a post on the Roguecraft 101 forum in the last day or so about it. So, yes, it is confirmed that this weapon exists. There is a theory that it may be only available in pickpocketed lockboxes since that is the only one obtained thus far.

 

Neeklus

Just a quick question on gems now that 2.3 is live and s3 is imminent:
Considering I'll be converting to pretty much full s3 (atleast all the socketable pieces), what gems would you recommend for a AR/Prep pvp rogue?

I was considering full AP replacing crit simply because of the predominance of resilience in my opponents these days. But then I figured by going all out agility I'd gain not only AP, but dodge and crit as well. So my question is this: would it be worth stacking agility in regards to gems, or is it simply better to put a spread of AP, crit, resi, dodge etc or indeed focus on one area all together?

 

Mist

I'm also wondering what to do with socketting my S3. I have 75000 honor and 5000 arena points saved, already have the new pvp cloak, and I figure I'm going to have more than enough stamina and resil with all the accessory type stuff. I'm thinking about socketting the helm and chest offensively, 8 agi in the red slots and I don't know what yet in the yellow slots. This is primarily for 5v5 in a 4 DPS group.

 

axelle

Level 69 twink here.

hello everybody, once I can post on my account, i'll start a thread about rogue twinks.

for now you can check out my armory to get to know me

i understand that most people here are 70's, i hope there won't be too much hostility towards twinking.

 

Spoony

Allakazam (sp?) and mmo-champion both shows the item. They saw it with their own eyes and confirmed it. I also hopped onto the bearer's server and saw it myself.

 

Tower

Er, crit was never a good way to gem your gear for PvP. 4crit+6sta variety gems are shite, you're much better off socketing 4res+6sta gems in your yellow slots than those.

If you've got full season 2 gear, have the arena and honor to upgrade all slots mostly and are spec'd 0/31/30 I haven't seen much reason for you not to gem up fully offensive in 16/20AP red gems and 5crit/10ap yellows. You've got a lot of cooldowns to avoid taking focus fire, you need to get the job done before you're out of cooldowns, and that's most effective with AP stacking with 10% AP.

if you're combat maces/swords, I'd stick with 4agi/6sta for reds and 4hit/4agi for yellows. With your sustained damage and Combat Potency you're better off living a bit longer, assuming you've got incoming heals. Same with mutilate, although you can gem offensively as hell if you've got the right partners.

On a similar note, anyone managed to kill a damn disc priest 1v1 since the patch? I think I had one go afk and make a grilled cheese before he came back and killed me.

Note, I'm a lazy cheap casual who has yet to regem his gear from Combat Maces. I will slowly switch over when this season ends.

 

Warklaw

So reading through the forum I have not really seen much 2v2 strategy for this type of team. I am new to level 70 and am new to Arena, so far as geared (I'm not): I am mostly blue though I have the (Vet Band of Tri , Medallion, and Talisman). My soon to be partner is fully S2 geared. I am a 20/41 Combat Mace Spec.

Though I know the strategy can vary depending on the opponents I am curious as to what should be my main pupose in this partnership. I have to say I briefly teamed with decently geared Hunter and we got slammed everytime. They generally focused on him, and he fell fast, and it ended up me being one on two (sometimes one on one), afterwich I would fall pretty quickly.

I am hoping for some help with the following Questions:
- What should generally be the bread and butter opening moves (or what should I be looking to do)
- What are the best finishers to use (I heard Rupture is better that Evis, is this in all cases and all oponents?)
- What is the timing for blowing AR/Blade Furry (Should this be immediatly, or after stuns or after triggering the opponents trinket?)
- I will have 75k honor, at S3 start, what should be the first pieces of gear I get? I was thinking both Maces (as I just can't dish out a ton of damage right now) and gloves first.. Is this correct? If so what should I get after to give me the best chance of being able win some in the arena to start getting S3 stuff?
- And though I know gems are talked about constantly what type of gems should I focus on? (I thought I read anything with Resil + Stamina) for duribility.
- Also since you can no longer switch weapons for the (Shiv MN) what poisions are people generally picking? (Wound MH, and Crippling OH)?

Any info for an arena noob would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

Tower

You can still swap weapons in arena.

If you're that new to rogue PvP, finishers, etc - you may want to check the other rogue threads in the class discussion areas, and even the official rogue forums for a lot of beginner compiled information.

I run Spriest/Rogue though, so I can give you some pointers.

Roguecraft 101

That thread is PVe focused, but it's a good start.

 

Melnor

After having a weekend to fully try out AR/Prep in the 2v2 bracket only, the results of this week left a bad taste in my mouth. I found that more often than not, I would get CC'd during any one of the 2 AR's which nullified its use completely or I found that I often would use Prep in an offensive manner for the double AR but then would have desperately needed prep to reset other vital cooldowns at some other point in time. My consensus that using Prep as an offensive ability would often leave me as vulnerable as not having Prep at all. Although I liked being able to actually get a sap on players and having a quicker blind cooldown, I'm not sure if I can fully commit to AR/Prep in a 2v2 scenario. Even with using the kael mace that has an energy regen proc, I could still feel the lack of relentless strikes and ruthlessness. I probably need to gem more offensively but honestly I dont see where swapping a handful of gems is going to make up the dps difference that I felt. Maybe if I wore my pve set in arenas, I'd like the damage output of hemo. So as I switch from a warlock partner to a resto druid partner next season, I know I will be the only source of dps and I don't think I would want to be AR/Prep with a healer partner. I'm going to lean towards mutilate as I have renatakis and a well timed 5pt kidney into cb mutilate into renataki mutilate is more my style.

Anyone else care to share their experiences with the new de-facto pvp build or perhaps share some general strategies over the use of AR and Prep?

 

Spoony

In my opinion, AR/Prep falls for a bit of a 3 minute mage from one of my previous posts. However, the addition of prep makes survivability quite a bit more from that comparison. Wearing a PvE set would stress your healer a bit so I wouldn't recommend, unless you can still manage 300 resilience from regemming the pve gear. Ar/Prep is managing to find the most opportune time to blow it when you know you won't get focused as much, blowing your surviability cooldowns in most cases before you use your first AR to stress or gib one of the players. It works better for 2 dps/ all dps teams, compared to the goodness of relentless strikes and not as energy starved non AR/prep; it'd be like being a kitty druid without the mobility or heals. As for gemming for agility, I find it to be lacking in terms of scaling, even with sinister call.

Mutilate seems to be really lacking now due to the new GCD bug which is horrendous to a degree. If you get your hands on a ashtounge trinket or a wrath card I could see 34/0/27 work out in all brackets with improved kidney shots and a lot of combo points to spend.

Since you have a very nice kael mace (rated higher than s3 maces according to some sites), try playing it around and see how the proc rate caters to you. Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: look up happyminti's nerf sap 9 video. He used it before the whole hemo buff and it deemed nice with a lock partner for 2 dps. I dunno how well it still fares now with all the class changes of 2.3 though.

 

Cos-

Dealing with paladin after the healing > spell damage changes....How? I can't come up with a good way to deal with paladins when it degenerates into a 1v1 and Im stuck dealing with a fully healing set up paladin who might as well be an elemental shaman. I went shaman/rogue vs paladin/hunter and after the hunter died (my shaman was dead now that arcaneshot eats EShield) while the paladin ran off to drink I was stuck looking at my bandage timer. I ended up sapping/blinding to keep the paladin from ressing for about 2 minutes while I bandaged a couple times.

When I re-engaged it was basically me at full health with no timers and him at full mana. I lost HARD. I took a 1.5k hammer of execute hit while disengaging. 2k judgements etc. Wasn't pretty. Paladin feels like more effective damage/healing in 2v2s then shaman. Any ideas? I don't remember the last time I had an issue dealing with paladins but this guy didn't even have to use anything with a cast bar besides the hammer.

 

Warklaw

I have read Rougecraft 101 (its an awesome write up) my question there is what transitions (or is applicable to) to PVP focused rogues and what is purely PVE advice? I will really not be doing any raiding at all.

 

Candyflip

Well, I posted this question over at the WoW Rogue forums with no response, and I'm hoping you all can be a bit more helpful.

 

Tower

An extra attack does not equal the power of a 3 second stun. That is 3 seconds that player is doing nothing but taking damage. That player is not running away from you. That player is not meleeing you. That player is not casting a spell, if he was casting a spell, that cast has been cancelled due to the stun. Maces were better before the patch, and with +5% damage, they're even better.

If you have Warglaives, then yes, the power is undeniable, if you don't, maces are superior pretty much across the board.

I've been playing 0/31/30 and I'm loving it. And I've yet to resocket my gear for better AP potential. Up to like 2257 in 2v2 with a Spriest, I'm sure we could break 2300 as we've been demolishing the competition, but we're both casual players and he's been suffering from some common WoW crash issue (lost 27 points to a crash during a game) so we decided to call it for the season and secure Gladiator.

@Cos-
Paladin 1v1 without cooldowns is in his favor, even if he doesn't have a bubble. The best you can do is sap, mount up and always stay in range to be able to dismount + throw to keep him from rezin'g. Remember he just needs to be in combat, not CC'd in any way. You can consistently dismounted and spam a stealth+sap macro if he consecrates+rez in a spot. You'll get the sap off and be pulled out afterward. You need blind and another cooldown to kill a paladin, evasion works, sprinting away if/when he bubbles, blinding when he BOPs. 1v1 with a paladin is A LOT EASIER if you've poisoned a 3rd offhand weapon with Mind Numbing poison to shiv with, I highly suggest it.

 

Candyflip

Alright then, thanks.

 

Trazhenko

Can you still do that now that blind is a physical attack?

 

Louky

No, you cannot blind a bop'd target, because, like you said yourself, it's now considered as a physical attack.

 

Tower

Snap, guess I haven't blinded through BoP since 2.3, sorry for the misinformation!

 

Cos-

The main problem I faced was mindnumbing being effectively useless. The only thing he used that even had cast time to increase was hammer of gg. That's it. Holyshock + 1 crit judgement ended up being nearly 35-40% of my health. It was my bad for only having bandages, I won't be caught without food again. I could keep that match going for an hour if I'd wanted to but the problem was when the time comes to actually engage he destroys me. Evasion does nothing as he's not doing damage to me through melee, blinding to bandage is going to get trinketed/DSed and if I run he heals/drinks. If I run too far it's over when the hunter gets back up etc. The fight feels like a prot warrior defensively with the damage capability of a ms warrior. I despise good paladins like no one else now.

edit: Is there even vendor food that can be eaten in arena? or just the water.

 

Tower

You can only eat mage food, which requires your teammate being a mage.

I haven't dueled a good paladin since the patch, a holy or prot paladin (particularly dwarf) was an extremely hard matchup in the first place is he has both bubbles up + trinket. 2 good crits are 2 good crits, getting 11khp and 400 resilience is going to drop his ability to burst you with instants by a lot.

 

Spoony

I played my 2v2 earlier tonight and from my previous post on the state of blind, it's true. The change is horrific. I'd rather for it to stay a poison and reagent requirement. Blind + resap is now a not effective of controlling. The fact that polymorph is now included in the DR means the death for 2 dps in 2s, and with the pain surpression change rogues will be even less viable in 4 dps 5s. Coupled with the GCD change and I'm thinking of retiring my rogue or just WoW in general.

I am thoroughly disgusted by Blizzard and this patch. None of our core issues were bothered looked upon.

 

Tiiki

Unfortunately I still think that Paladins are the 'easiest' healers after the change. A good resto shaman (with spammable frostshock, earth shield and poison cleansing spell+totem is pretty much unbeatable, as is a good resto druid (abolish means you'll never have any poisons on a good one, and they can tank you in caster form in S2/S3 gear. I won't even mention Disc Priests...

Things got a LOT worse in terms of soloing healers in this patch. It's very noticeable even in AV, let alone arena. A solo healer guarding a Tower used to be GG, now it's a long long fight (if they're any good at all) and help often arrives before you're done.

 

Tiiki

Polymorph is included in what? If you think it's included in Blind DR, you're wrong. And if you're right, it's a bug. The only thing Blind should be on DR with is Cyclone, as stated in the patch notes. Blind is far far better now. Previously cleanse and poison cleansing totem (and stoneform, grr!) made it next to useless.

The only bug I'm aware of is that Paladins can actually BoP *themselves* out of it, which I hope has been reported as it's very annoying!

I used Blind->Sap many times just yesterday, so not sure what you mean? Mage/Rogue is still one of the strongest 2v2s.

I duelled a Disc priest and won with a clutch Blind->Sap->Sap->Bandage to let a SW:P run off me.