Shadowed

It's only a 10-12% chance to proc, if they're attacking in front of you and only melee classes which mostly means Rogues and Warriors, if the Rogue is Mutilate then thats even less time spent in front of you, just don't see it worth the 6 talent points required.

 

Perilous

I disagree. I can count a few times riposte has won the game for us. Its not for the disarm, its for that wierd time you are on their caster and the warlock pet is chasing you around to keep you from vanishing. 10 energy for another attack I find to be amazing.

And dont discount the extra 5 percent avoidance from parry vs warriors and rogues. With reflexes and parry I am at 98 percent avoidance with mongoose up. Without I am at 88 percent and the difference is remarkable for survivability.

But then I am one of those freaks that likes the 5/31/25 build...I find the extra evasion and AR are amazing if you mistime them. Maybe it just lets me be a bit sloppier, but its nice to be able to AR twice if I get feared off that warlock or kill the priest and need to get back on another target. Plus 2 vanishes and 2 improved sprints are godsends.

 

Shadowed

I've seen maybe 2-3 games that Warlocks have put there pet on me, the only time I've ever had any pet stay on me is when (on my Warrior) I'd AE taunt them this includes Hunters, they'll go onto a healer 99% of the time.

5% avoidance when you aren't stunned and they're in front of you, unless they've changed something so you can parry/dodge from behind.

My guess is you're on a burst damage team, since a prep build is incredibly weak once you've burned your cooldowns, and you lose most of your sustained damage.

 

• Wodin

Like Perilous, I actually find it most useful when dealing with pets. Unlike Perilous, however, it's entirely the fact that it neuters hunters that makes me keep it. The pets attack fast enough that they're guaranteed to allow me to Riposte every time it's cooled down, which is enough to keep the hunter permadisarmed.

There's also the fact that if you have a pet on you but are DPSing another person, you can "save" the Riposte proc to create a really nice spike.

I may end up going without it eventually and trying to get Vile Poisons or Imp. Expose, seeing as I use the latter more and more.

 

Perilous

Yeah, I put warlock pet in there, but it applies to hunter pets as well. A frenzied pet on you isnt doing much damage, but it allows you some nice burst and the hunter cant melee me.

As for my build, I lose lethality, relentless, combat potency and the 41 point combat talent. Or I lose quick recovery. I still have sword spec, adrenaline rush, dual wield spec, precision, improved sprint. I find lethality to be lackluster at best in a resilience rich enviorment. I miss lethality alot. Combat potency is great for sustained DPS, but in my pvp gear my hit is lacking anyway. I miss surprise attacks. Having a kidney shot dodged is painful. Quick recovery I dont miss at all surprisingly. My job is to avoid being a focus target, not tank and soak heals.

In return I gain armor penetration, hemo, prep, faster movement while stealthed, double vanish, double improved sprint and double AR. Being able to do 2 rushdowns in a match is amazing. Yes I do less sustained damage. I feel I have more control during a match, however and having a 35 energy instant is better then a 40 energy one for many reasons.

Our toughest matches are usually mirrors. Having better stealth and double the timers over combat rogues is almost an auto-win especially when I have most of the combat tricks.

 

Siddown

I didn't see a response to this, so I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring here.

No, this is not a good build, Seal Fate and Maces don't work together. Even against average opponents, you can expect 150-200 resiliance these days, which means you have just spent 5 pts for a ~20% chance for an extra Combo Point per Sinister Strike (assuming a 25% or so crit rate), which isn't very good odds. Also, with no Aggression or Surprise Attacks, you might as well go Hemo.

If you want to go Mace with Mace Spec, you are looking at 1X/4X or a QR Combat spec (which is 23/38 if I remember correctly).

 

Monkor

I hope you dont mind me breaking in here to ask a few questions.

I am looking for advice regarding a mace spec for PvP. I have been using daggers for over a year and am looking for something different and fun and am currently saving my arena points for a set of S2 maces. I would like to try maces because I have experienced first hand what the stuns can do to you in arena, but have a few concerns.

1) My major concern is how the mace procs could fit in or be diminished by a stunlock opener. For example, if I stunlock my opponent and over the duration of my CS/KS stuns my mace stun procs 2 times, I have not reaped the benefits of those stuns, which is the entire reason for going maces over swords. Now when my opponent comes out of stun if and when my maces proc again the diminishing returns will make it a pretty short stun. One way I could think to try to prevent this from happening is to wait for your maces to proc after a CS and not KS until the mace stun wears off, but I definitely think that basing your play style around a proc would lead to certain death. Do you mace rogues seem to have have a problem with losing mace proc effectiveness due to your stunlocks?

2) Does the lack of crit from being a sword/mace spec coupled with high resilience opponents reduce your dmg absurdly? Is this crit worth giving up for proccing stuns?

3) Warning: Noob Question:

I have searched far and wide and cannot find a good thorough explaination of mace diminishing returns. How long do the DRs on mace stuns last? Is it 20 secs? Does the duration of the DR end after the first proc or the most recent proc? For example if it is a 20 sec DR, will I get a full 3 second stun again on a proc 20 secs after my first proc or my most recent proc?

4) Aside from focusing players you would like to interrupt often, is there any special strategy to playing with maces or do you just play as if they were swords with a pleasant proc?

Also if anyone has done the switch from daggers to maces and has additional insight it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Vanadi

Vile poisons has been disappointing me more and more lately. I play 2 vs 2 alot with the rogue/shadowpriest combination and we are around top 5 from the Blackout-eu battlegroup (I am combat/swords). The main problem I found is that paladins that are capable of spamming cleanse at the start or druids who keep abolish poison up will dispell your poisons without any problems even with 4/5 vile poisons. Today I made the switch from vile poisons to improved poisons. So far I am enjoying this alot although I haven't had the months of testing like I had with vile poisons (I have been using that talent since half way season 1) but it seems very solid. I usually blow abilities like blade flurry+snd right away to force their healer into healing and if my DSt goes off early as well they got no chance at the rate I will be applying wound poison. Crippling getting dispelled hasn't been a real problem so far as I just shiv them immediately. I suggest you try both of these talents as they both have their advantages, I guess it depends more on what setup you play though. With the 2 vs 2 combo I use we rely alot on heavily dpsing one of our opponents and forcing them to play defensive right away, getting wound poison to stack is a big help in that.

 

Mana

I also tried out Vile Poisons and was disapointed. I am combat maces and have 4/5 in Vile Poisons and they still get dispelled like I dont have the talent. Next week I am planning on trying Imp Poisons as well to see if it works better.

 

Shadowed

I found it to be a huge difference having 5/5 Vile Poisons + 2/5 Imp Poisons + 2/2 Master Poisoner for Mutilate, the hard part was mostly getting past the first Abolish Poison once Wound Poison is up to 2-3 stacks it's typically not coming off unless you stop attacking them.

 

Nott

Uhh, I could be wrong here, but the hit cap for specials is just over 5%. I have 5.7% hit, and the only time I've noticed specials missing is attacking ice mages.

Its still 7% against level 73's, but I haven't noticed a ton of those in PVP.

 

Lucke

The hit rating has been an issue bugging me for quite some time as well. I currently have 99 hit rating and am starting to wonder if I need to up it just a bit more. My given strat is to use AR to generate fast points for an expose armor then SND, so white dmg becomes rather important. I will start going through my recap logs and see how the "misses" pan out; if i find anything sticking out, I will post it up.

 

Tower

I think Vile is just one of those talents you stick 1/5 in for the small chance you make a cleanser spend double his GCD to get your poisons off.

 

Tiiki

Going back to my previous Riposte question - I sacrificed 1/3 Imp EV, 2/2 Murder, 1/3 Imp SnD and 2/3 Aggression to keep it. Basically, I copied Xecks (famous PvP rogue(tm)).

I've only been Maces a week so I'll see how it pans out. I do REALLY like Riposte, and the extra avoidance from Parry, but maybe the 2 pts down in Aggression is too much. I suspect my Eviscerates really suck now. Then again, as Combat (with Imp Expose), how often do I Eviscerate? Not much!

Interesting points about Mace spec procs being wasted - yes they can be in opening stunlocks, but say you switch target on a bubble or BoP? You then get straight down to the business of stunlocking your second opponent when you can't Cheapshot and may not have KS for another full 15 seconds... That's why it's good.

DR works from the last Mace proc. So you only get the full stun time 20 seconds after the end of the last proc. I'm 75% sure about this.

I've JUST switched from Mutilate <3 to Maces but I haven't played anywhere near enough to comment yet. And I have a HORRIBLE matrix currently. [WTB cloth DPS on TVC, anyone?]

Have people read about Xecks current team? Resto Druid/Afflock/Afflock/Spriest/Mace Rogue. Boy would I love to try that!

 

Tower

I'd really love to see their druid in action, that has to be some hectic shit.

I've been toying around with my rogue when my mage's 5v5 isn't on but I still want to play, been playing 2v2 with my resto druid friend and we formed a druid/lock/rogue 3v3. We have very few top PvPers on the Blackhand server and even fewer druids who PvP, but dear lord it's a powerful class when played by a solid player.

There's certainly a lot more finesse to it than 2v2ing with a priest. There's some incredible synergy with Cyclone and druid's various stunning capabilities.

Wait for Mace Stun (3s CC) > Imp Kick (2s CC) > 5pt Kidney (6s CC) > Imp Kick once cooled then follow into a druid bash or Cyclone to prevent healing and allow your energy to regen. Definitely feel like Mace Spec is the best way to go for your introduction to roguedom.

 

Safid

Tower, I'm doing druid/lock/rogue as well for my 3v3 and I really love it. I still don't have the gear for maces so I'm stuck being mutilate. I find the druid pretty much invaluable in his ability to ranged interrupt/CC with cyclone or feral charge, and the UA + Root combo is pretty good against some not-so-great paladins who spam cleanse (note, only use once felhunter has eaten BoF).

I still feel like I'm the weak link though. I provide wounding and interrupts more than damage, and a mace spec could probably do that even better. I just can't spare the 4k points to 'try out' maces myself, which is a shame. Still it is nice to be more useful than a warrior, given that our healer does not have BoF or cleanse -- my ability to get myself out of roots and other CC is invaluable. I've found that soooo many paladins just like to stand there while I beat on them, ignoring my pretty lame damage. However that lets me build up CP and basically lock them down from doing anything but casting instants. Playing this style of heavy control instead of damage sounds like it would lend itself very well to maces, so let me know if you're experiencing the same sort of success.

 

Tiiki

Keep Mind Numb shivved on them. They won't just stand there then, since they won't be able to cast any heals at all.

Maces are also nice because no one can stand there and take an AR'd BF'd SnD'd burst without being able to heal themselves.

If you don't do the OH swap thing to shiv Crip AND MN, you really must!

 

Safid

Do you just set up two macros, one for 'swap to crip weapon, shiv' and one for 'swap to numb weapon, shiv'? How do you deal with the 1s GCD for swapping?

 

Tiiki

I just have Shiv on its normal key (A for me, using ESDF).

The macro, which I have bound to Shift-A (though I don't think that's optimal, it's just where it ended up), is something like:

/equip 11 Warp Splinter's Thorn;
/equip 11 Gladiator's Shanker

Where 11 is the off hand slot. I've probably got the number wrong, but you get the idea. You spam that macro a bit (you can't accidentally change twice because of the 1s cooldown), then shiv, then switch back, or not... I don't always immediately switch back, it depends which poison I'm more concerned with keeping on them. So it's a manual effort basically, but a very easy one.

If you have this macro bound on a toolbar somewhere, it will also light up (with a green border) when the first named weapon is equipped. The other easy way to tell is to look at your two weapon buff icons (to this end, it's probably best that your spare OH isn't identical (or doesn't have the same icon/graphic) to your regular one!).

I don't know if that sounds complicated, it shouldn't do, because it isn't. Shiv away Poison 1, press macro, Shiv away Poison 2, press same macro again to switch back. Continue as required. Hell, have a third OH ready and you could shiv Wound as well !

 

Safid

My offhands are both s1 gladiator shankers, but I'll give it a try. It would be nice to be able to stack mind numbing as well as crippling on someone.

 

Tiiki

Completely essential, I'd say, really.

Not sure a macro will even work with two identical weapons.

Do you not have an old, fast, blue you can use?

 

Safid

I could use my Malchazeen. That should work well enough since it's basically a PVE version of the s1 dagger.

I'll mess around with this over the weekend in some non-arena PVP as practice. Thanks for the tip.

 

Tower

Don't you suckas use ItemRack? I thought everyone did. Anyways, I highly recommend it. Can just make a profile for each offhand and keybind it. Downside is you'd have to make 2 sets of keybinds, one to switch and one to switch back. I got used to being daggers for so long that I had a set to equip daggers, equip a more SS friendly mainhand for grinding, a set for my other offhand with a separate poison and (for PvE) a disarm set to save on repair costs on a wipe.

I use my Night Blade for my mutilate MNP3 offhand and use heroic badge dagger for maces.

 

Tiiki

I do use Itemrack for PvE/PvP/Resist/Riding swaps and auto-swaps, but to be honest I didn't even think of using it for this, nor have I ever used its keybind functionality.

As you point out though, would require two keybinds... I quite like my toggling method

I use Malch/Shanker for Muti, with Warp-Splinter as swapper.

For Maces I use Glad Mace/Mace with Blackout Truncheon as swapper (and if you're lucky you can get a haste proc too, though I'm not sure if that goes on swap back!).

 

Safid

Space is at a premium for me. I hotkey ~-7 q e f and toggle them all with cntl. Though I think cntl-e is unbound (and E is shiv so it seems the logical place to keybind something to swap shiv weapons).

Usually I run MH Wounding, OH Crippling with 5/5 improved poisons. Being able to shiv a snare to me is more important than being able to shiv a wounding poison stack, but I admit it would be nice to have a way to easily and quickly change what I'm shivving people with.

Is ItemRack's keybound or autoswap smart enough to handle conditions like what set I am already in? I'll investigate.