He's Kuai on Mal'ganis now (Blue Garter transferred en masse).

Edit because I thought of an interesting question: have other rogues noticed lately that gouges are being fully blocked in PvP and thus the incapacitate effect is not resolving? Last night in 2v2 we were fighting a Warrior/Paladin pairing where the warrior was dense and was willing to let me stay on the paladin while he beat on my shaman buddy. At one point during the first match, I used a gouge to attempt a "stop the FoL spam, restealth cheapshot" pro rogue trick. Needless to say, I was rather surprised when I got a "blocked' back and the incapacitate didn't happen.

The specs are so situational. At the moment I use opportunity, which is a serious improvement when fighting other rogues or warriors. For a long time I mostly played 2vs2 with a resto druid, so everything needed to be optimized to tank warriors.


Now playing with a shadow priest I am barely focussed and tend to take out Parry, Riposte and Opportunity for Slice and Dice (Poison applications is really bad without poison talents or slice and dice). The spec should be a "catch-the-druid" variant.

Toe to toe:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

More control and better poison application "Catch the druid":
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

So do you open with a CS > SnD? Or CS > Hemo x2/3 > KS? I find that lots of people trinket the KS so I'm wondering if it's worth it given that CP generation isn't exactly the strength of the spec.

Do you just try to blow every cooldown you have before hitting prep or will you use it just to reset something key (say Vanish and Sprint if you're being kited and need to get on people NOW).

I've never had more than 5 points in Sub in my life and it shows. BGs are not great for training in how to use the spec, as I find that I'm unwilling to blow 20m worth of cooldowns on a single fight (and it's rarely needed), but I'm getting outplayed in arenas pretty consistently and I'm not sure why, exactly.

I'm almost positive that this has happened for a long time, you just didn't see it as often unless you were fighting tank geared warriors. I could very well be wrong, but I was always under the impression that if all the damage was blocked, the incapacitate didn't go off.

Yes, this is true of any attack like blocked kicks as well.

Depends on the situation. We start against warrior/druid like this: Shadow priest moves out of line to intercept, I knock out the warrior followed by Garotte, Hemo, Rupture, Ghostly Strike, Evasion, Slice and dice. I break that series once the druid starts healing. The Shadow priest attacks the warrior once I sap him. So the druid is forced out of stealth and I start sprinting. Sometimes the priest manages to fear the warrior in this situation, but it's rarely. I trinket the intercept at once. I pop AR und try to Vanish/CS the druid while Bleeding damage isn't ticking. Now the druid has the problem that a shadow priest is melting his warrior, while a rogue with AR and SND up and Preparation still to come is on him. If he gets distance I still have Blind, Second Sprint, Escape Artist, Cloak and a Vanish ready.

Also rarely I spot the druid first. Blade Twisting doesn't work with hemo, which is the biggest problem, so I have to use shiv quite a lot. The other one is a druid at 40 meter distance starting to heal, what makes catching him only with blind and double sprint possible.

Hopefully finally someone explains to me how stupid this strategy is and gives me a better one, but we had way better results with that one, than hoping to force the druid to come closer or just burn the warrior.

Locks own Mages, so against Mage/Rogue you should just try and get on the Rogue and let your Lock solo the Mage, I think. Try to get the initial sap off, in to blind. Exhaustion, Death Coil, Fears, Gouges.... just control the Rogue as best you can and try to wear the Mage down. You need to be superb with LoS/CoS and Felhunter CS to avoid being sheeped though. I'm not going to pretend it's easy!

Rogues get fairly owned by other rogues if they're not toe to toeing. Mainly your Warlock needs to improve his skills vs. Rogues. It takes practise but Warlocks should be able to get fairly good at kiting Rogues....

Hmm, thinking about it more, it's definitely a tough matchup, but the longer it goes on, the more advantages you gain, so maybe try drawing it out?

With the new ambush buff coming around, how do people feel about running a 5 rogue gimmick arena team, or even a 4 rogue 1 feral druid team wearing high end pve gear?

Lots of saps, lots of distracts, and lots of front end burst. Any thoughts on this?

I suspect you'd need awesome coordination for 5 rogue team to work well. Allowing any BoP would be brutal on you. After the open basically you have a one dimensional dps team with no healer, one cc each, and I suspect you are doomed even with a quick kill. It would be a lot of fun though and would test the opponent's coordination.
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What is the sequence an AR/Prep rogue should use when they get jumped by another rogue? The perception racial is completely unbalanced in rogue vs rogue matchups. Right now I vanish asap, cheap shot and start working as if I got the opener.

I'm seeking advice about a mixture of gear, spec and team combination issues.

I've recently started a new 2v2 team with a holy paladin, he's had experiance up to 1900 in S1 with a warrior, and is currently playing in 1/5 S3, Medallion of the alliance, and a mixture of T5/6 PvE holy gear. I'm playing as 33/28 AR/Prep, with 9.5k hp, 180 resilience, 190 hit, 23% crit and ~1600 AP - A mixture of 2/5 S1 and tier 5 DPS gear, with Merciless swords. I have experiance up to the 1800s as combat daggers in S1 with a shaman.

Now my first question is, what would be a reasonable rating to aim for concidering the circumstances (our gear)? I realise now almost any half serious team will have a full set of Arena S2/3 gear + honor stuff. I'm currently working on my S1 set, and am at 2/5, but I'm skeptical about the low DPS output I'm going to have as I pile on the PvP stuff, since burning a priest or druid down is a misson in itself already. Should I hold off the S1 set and keep using what I have until I can get enough points for S3 stuff, or should I atleast get full S1 before considering anything else?

...Which brings me on to another matter, weapons. Exactly how neccesary is it to use Maces in arena, considering the amount it would cost me to get S2 ones without actually gaining any stat upgrades. I do however have access to the BT maces (should they drop), are these worth going for despite lack of stats? Or are maces so important, that even the S1 maces should be used over my S2 swords?

Thirdly, when I'm trying to bring down a healer, what sequence should I use? I always seem to blow my AR right away to start piling on pressure but I'm beginning to wonder if I should wait it out a bit first. Should I CC the healer and bring down their DPS or vice versa, and depending on what set-up? How do I deal with a reso druid while being kited by a hunter at the same time? We lost alot of rating to a druid / hunter team and I just couldn't find a way to beat them, the hunter had complete control of me throughout, and if I reached the druid, the hunter would CC me in one way or another and the druid would get range again.

Since I'm not really that pro at PvP (atleast not to a high extent, I'm not bad by any stretch of the imagination) would there be any benefit in me going mutilate? I have Vashj's fang along with S1 dagger, I've heard this is weaker than AR/Prep, but I've always been a fan of the spec, and have seen quite alot of people do well with it.

Thanks for reading, am looking forward to replys. Any tips/ advice would be appreciated.

Save your AR for a bit. I'm currently waiting on S3 maces (gd, 1850 is so annoying to reach when facing anti teams all the way), but once I have them and spec 0/33/28 I'll be saving my AR's for times when my priest is able to dispel me, or when I am immune or nearly immune to at least one CC.

I see an almost 50/50 split between maces and swords on the rogues I fight, and the mace rogues annoy me much much much more. I'll be going maces because I think the stuns are far more likely to be game breaking than sword procs. (Although I did meet a warrior+sham with s3 sword this week, usually an easy matchup for us - warrior+wf+sweeping+sword spec did 10k damage to me in ~2-3s, without critting once, while he was attacking my priest, and did the same damage to him o.O) In particular, catching a druid, mace stuns in travel form into KS and vanish->cs will just be brutal, and then theres the chance of interrupting spells, unbeatable.

Hunter+druid is just bleh as a rogue. From the one fight i've had so far against that combo, it was even harder than war/druid. Couldn't stay on any target with scatter/traps/cyclone/abolish, priest mana drained to 0 with a pet that I couldn't kill (got him to 1% twice, but druid always saved it). I'm at a loss as to what to do here, could also use any pointers.

I'm going away from mutilate in S3, been it since the early weeks of S1, but its just so ineffective when you're being targetted, and when fights drag on like they tend to at high rating. In fights where i'm killing a rogue and he's killing me, the other rogue will end up doing 2x as much damage to me as I do to him. Very dangerous if his partner is a priest since your partner has to heal, his doesnt, so he can just mana burn to his hearts content.

Mutilate is probably fine in 4dps 5v5s, the burst it can put out is just evil, but for 3s/2s its really really sub-par compared to prep-ar

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a killrating?

I would like to hear opinions on which meta gem and trinkets are best for PVP for a hemo, mace rogue.
I saw that many rogues go for ap+runspeed meta gem and then enchant 12agi/surefooted on boots.

And about the trinkets I think that the -1k armor is the best one. What do you think ? (sorry if this questions were already answered, cuz I was searching and didnt find any)

I've never actually tried Shadowstep on my Rogue. I feel this is probably something I should change just to try it. Really this AB weekend was probably the ideal time to do that; maybe I'll do it next EoTS weekend. I'm curious how useful it is in chasing down runaway druids. Of course you'd never use it while the druid was actually running away, but when they turn to cast cyclone or roots or whatever and are briefly standing still. Is it viable to shadowstep --> kick (if trying to interrupt) --> Shiv? if needed, Hemo otherwise. Yeah that would waste the bonus damage from shadowstep but it would seem more important to stay on the druid if possible.
I'm als curious about something else. Since Shadowstep tries to put you behind your target, will that Line of Sight them if they're casting something on you?

Nevermind

I assume it's the same thing as "killing" your own rating, using alts, and then getting your personal rating high on your mains, due to facing very low rated teams because of your low rating.

Thanks for the pointers, looks like I'm definately going to have to get maces in 1 way or another. But what's your opinion on how I should go about doing this? Considering my PvP gear is quite lacking at the moment (info about my current status on post 486 of this thread) I don't know whether it would be more beneficial to gear up with S2/3 gear before going maces, due to their high cost? Or what about the BT maces? Syphon of the Nathrezim seems very attractive at 2.8 speed, but has a complete lack of defensive stats comapared to the S2(/3 maces, should I get that high). The S1 maces are always availible to me, but since alot of my armor upgrades are coming through honor, I don't know if it would be worth the drop in stats just to get the chance to stun.

You are aware Blade Twisting doesn't work with Hemo, and druids can shift out of the daze, right?

Often times if a Druid has successfully escaped your clutches and is far away your energy has had time to replenish.

Just my own speculation but I can't see Shadowstep ever being brought to the point where it breaks snares. They'd likely to increase the timer again to compensate, and the circus would continue. As far as the latter is concerned, I don't think that's a buff Rogues actually need. Yes, we all experience those times where we're forced to waste points by gouging/shivving someone at a crucial moment breaking our CPs on our main target, but most people just deal with it.

I think you could even live with the loss of Sprint's snare breaking. The biggest strike against Shadowstep for me is the inability to get mace spec. I've been meaning to talk to Kuai ingame about his Shadowstep build with the leftover points in Assassination, but haven't gotten around to it.

The Mace Spec thing is my biggest bugbear too. I think you can trade the BF/AR loss with 15% agi, cheat death, etc., but no Mace Spec is urgh.

I know ShS doesn't break snares, but you CAN use it whilst snared/rooted. So as long as you can get a shiv off (or even a deadly throw or at a push, 1pt KS) it clearly still vastly improves your manouverability. Is a sprint and then a later prepped sprint really that much better than a 30 second teleport?

I don't know either. Maybe I will bite the bullet and try 20/0/41 tonight

EDIT: Kuai- why 3/3 Imp EV over 3/5 Vile Poisons??

I haven't tried shadowstep since they made it usable out of stealth. What happens if you use it while snared? The snare moves with you (e.g. ice or roots still wrapped around your legs, but you just ported 20 yards)?

Yes, roots and snares stay. It is kind of nice getting out of fucking Frost Trap though.

After respeccing, but before writing here. I actually wrote it in the text. Still it's a 20% chance on shiv, which I use quite a lot because of abolish poison. But most likely I will take improved kick or Endurance after the next respec. I really hope they will change that.