Currently trying 21/0/40 -- first impressions in BGs are that it's a lot of fun, I do miss Imp Sprint and BF a lot, and Riposte which has been completely excellent since 2.3.
I love the CP gen though - I HATE not having those top 11 in Assass. It just feels so much smoother. 15% agi also gives insane stats. I'm gemmed for pure AP and yet I'm still at about 1750 AP/32% crit (and 411 resi / 11k HP). This means you get more burst in Dirty Deeds range, since the high crit rate affects your yellow damage, where the DW spec stuff and Precision doesn't at all.
I also picked up 4/5 Vile- we'll see how that works out in Arena on Thursday (I'm in a modified 2345- I suspect 31/30 is better, but it's early in the season so I can afford to experiment).
I do now see why Kuai picked up Imp Evis. I have more CPs than I know what to do with at the start. I have premed macro'd to CS and Garrote and even without the CP on Shadowstep (which will make it 6 (!)) I have 5 CPs on most openers. What do people think the best thing to do with them is? No imp expose so currently I'm going with a 5pt SnD (esp. since SnD is untalented with this spec)... but a full Imp Evis could me nice too to 'start' with ! Ditto a talented expose... though the poison app of SnD probably wins out. Thoughts?
Oh and Cheat Death, at least in BGs, is exactly as fun as it sounds! I'm rarely focused in Arena though, and probably will be less so now I have no AR...
My wife and I have some rogue alts we wanted to try out in pvp (BGs and 2v2), although it will take a while to gear them up for PVP.
What spec would you recommend for the two of them. They are both combat swords at the moment. Do you think AR/Hemo to stay on target or something with a bit more burst damage, or would it be better to have two different specs?
Respecced Shadowstep (from AR Prep) and loving it in BGs right now using just maces. AR/Prep maybe the best spec for Arenas, but you have to try SStep in BGs for the best value fun in WoW. The extra combo point coming with SStep will make up for a bit of the Hemo nerf too.
I look at Prep a bit differently now. I found I was very rarely using Prep aggressively in BGs, so I wasn't getting much out of the AR bit (my fault I know). I miss Imp Kick more than Imp Sprint. I mostly use prep/vanish to get out of snares before a shadowstep or to get a second evasion up if I get jumped by a rogue. Evasion/Vanish/Premed x 2 + Cheat Death is a tough match up for melee, not to mention the additional dodge and AP from the extra Agility.
I've always preferred a bit of finesse with my rogue play anyway. The sledgehammer approach never really fitted my play style. Post patch opening sequence against most classes will be :-
There will most likely be an extra CP or two from Ruthlessness in there too (16/0/44). The great thing about this sequence is that all can be done within Global Cooldowns because it has such a low energy cost per CP. Also, no gimp damage while waiting for energy and getting hit until the ‘coupe de grace’ below 35%.Using a weapon swap macro to be able to SStep > Ambush is just less effective in most cases imo. The 60 energy required makes it worthless as anything but a finisher in my estimation, but I haven’t tried it yet. Will get a S1 dagger and try it.
If they can't bleed you or get you out of stealth after Vanish they will struggle, because you can keep your distance waiting for when YOU want to re-engage. Ofc you can Prep and repeat the whole sequence if necessary.
SStep is also a replacement for Imp Sprint in may respects (and on a much shorter CD). It’s great for catching that kiting Warlock. Wait for him to stop and start casting > SStep > Shiv Cripple and Kick / KS etc away. Gets you away from the nasty doggy for a few seconds too. For the really thorough approach Vanish before SStep and go into a Premed/CS > KS sequence. They will struggle to get away. Likewise hunters become trivial once you can get in their face.
Use SStep as an escape mechanism also. Rogue beating on you with crippling ? Shiv cripple him, switch target and SStep to an enemy 15 yards away when he uses AR. If not bleeding, use vanish to escape. You can feel his pain.
No more climbing the towers/bunkers in AV. Just target in LoS and SStep right onto the top level. You don’t have to attack your target remember. You’re behind them so they can’t see you unless they turn (being human I can even use perception and SStep to a stealthed rogue/druid in some of the bunkers).
Cheat Death is the icing on the cake. So many clothies die because the zerg fails to take me down the last 15% quickly enough. Back they go to Iceblood gy while I res 20 yards away. So many warriors waste all their rage on execute only to see no effect on my health and no rage left to do anything about it. Just on auto-attack with me hacking lumps out of them with the Dirty Deeds bonus yellow damage.
As you can probably tell, I’m impressed and excited by the spec (sad I know). If you’re grinding BGs for S1/S3 gear then you really should give it a go. For arena AR/Prep is thought to be more effective and it probably is, but it is too CD dependent for most other PvP imo.
Yes I'm sure step specs are useful in Arena, but I have little experience of Arena as a rogue. It can take quite a bit of power away from AR Prep rogues too. The opening sequence used above can be delivered in 2 seconds (I think that's right...2 GCDs) and delivers a 3k+ damage of bleeds, a snare and a bit of melee damage. If you can get vanish and step off (onto a Focused target) before getting gouged, blinded or otherwise CCed you're in a strong position having denied the rogue any chance of re-stealthing (except a dwarf, but no bad thing to get him to use Stoneform early) and lost them an opener. I take the (rather weak) heightened senses and wear the engineering goggles so as to get the first shot at them in most cases. Plus I have Perception of course (imbalanced against other rogues to be honest). If you can get them to fire an AR before your step all the better. Unless they can get an abolish for the crippling they will waste most of it.
Stepping (after Vanish) to a focused healer for CS (>trinket) right into KS will force use of most of their CDs early too, especially if you got a sap into them before bleeding your first target. You can the re-Sap if they didn't trinket it (you still have a small window to step / re-Sap even if they do trinket) albeit on Dim Returns, 5 additional secs of stun on a healer are very welcome and they will often save the trinket for a blind (my main is a priest and I tend to wait through the sap and let ProM ping about). Second Sap would probably force me to trinket even knowing it was only 5 seconds extra leaving an opening for a full duration Blind. Whoever your partner/s they should have done a lot of damage by now. Druids are a pain though Un-Sapable cats.
If only I had the rogue skills to execute any of this I would roar in Arenas like little Simba in The Lion King.
Right now, I'm working up my rogue for PvP - which primarily means arenas. I know what the typical specs are these days and that almost everyone I see is using combat maces - but I hate them. I've always been a dagger rogue, I'm always going to be a dagger rogue, and I've been working on a... well, very odd spec, perhaps, but I'd like to post it anyway and see what you all think of it.
First, I will probably not be doing a whole lot of critical damage, and I don't want to rely on crits in any way. Therefore, Seal Fate goes out the window. I had to take Lethality just because it's the only decent place to put those points to move up the tree, and with Cold Blood and the occasional natural crit it does come in handy. I want to get my poisons on and keep them on, so full points in Vile Poisons, Improved Poisons, and Master Poisoner. Anything I can do to keep the healers busy and burning mana is good, in my opinion. Improved Cheap Shot is ludicrously valuable in my opinion simply because it's a blanket 9% - anyone I'm teamed with gets the boost too, and it stacks personally with Find Weakness.
Most of the other Assassination talents go without saying. I wanted Rapid Recovery, but the points just weren't there if I wanted to keep a few other things, and it's of limited utility.
As for Subtlety. I know that Combat is the usual partner to this spec, but I really like certain of my Subtlety talents, and I'm still hurting over having to give up Master of Deception. Still, I find it to be very limited in arena, sadly, even when stacked with other stealth improving effects. Camouflage, however, I absolutely love, always have, always will... it synergizes with Fleet Footed, it means I can keep up with my opponents while stealthed - and people do tend to jump around like crazy if they know a rogue is nearby, or even guess. Faster cooldown obviously means a faster restealth which can be extremely valuable in certain situations.
Moving on, 2/2 Sleight of Hand for survivability. 2% melee and ranged crit reduction for two points is a great trade, in my opinion. 2/2 Dirty Tricks mostly for the extra range on Blind, which I never seem to be able to get off reliably otherwise. The point in Ghostly Strike is a bit odd, but it moves up to the next tier, and it is handy against melee classes, especially other dual-wielders. 2/2 Elusiveness - Blind again, I want to burn that as many times a fight as I can, and naturally Vanish doesn't hurt either. Finally, 3/3 Serrated Blades for that extra DPS.... stacked with the S3 armor reduction and maybe an Executioner proc, I can pull a lot more damage on my targets.
Anyway, that is the theory behind it. Let the flaming begin!
Sleight of Hand is bad value at the best of times, even worse for a Dagger rogue, same with Ghostly, which is a waste of energy with Daggers. More importantly, you can't get away with Dagger specs in any line up where you expect to be focused by any melee anyway. Warriors eat Mutilate rogues alive (mainly because of hamstring), far quicker than Mace rogues (esp. ones with parry/riposte) who can toe to toe them much better.
Elusiveness is nice, but no Imp Sprint is the biggest killer with 21+/0/XX -- you have precisely one Vanish out of snares, then you're screwed: not viable.
Imp Gouge also is often underestimated in my view, and again, synergises best with Daggers. Not only is it a 5.5 sec mez with a 10s cooldown, but it enables you to get an extra energy tick before stabbing them. Pretty essential for Mutilate grinding too, as a sidenote.
Quick Recovery is the best talent in the whole Assass tree. Again- if you expect to be focused (cf. Ghostly / Sleight of Hand), how is Quick Recovery not INFINITELY better than those? 2% melee crit reduction vs. 20% extra healing (!). It's literally 10x better.
If you really want the serrated armor reduction, why not take imp expose? Expose synergises excellently with Mutilate's insane number of CPs (with Seal Fate anyway (!)), and Imp Expose is approximately equal to Serrated. When your KS is on cooldown, what finisher will you use? It's fairly easy to keep Expose up with a normal 41/20 spec...
And finally: you may have a lot of poison talents, but since you'll be so kiteable you wont be able to apply them very much anyway!
I'm afraid to say Dorque, Tiiki has it about right. You would be butchered in Arena if targeted. One vanish and one trinket just aren't enough snare avoidance (shouldn't even have to use trinket for snares to be honest).
Your only hope is to get some daggers that look like maces or swords in the hope that no-one will notice you're not a more survivable spec.
Or stay stealthed the whole fight.
If you insist on using daggers fulltime go Shadowstep with Improved Ambush and Improved Backstab or Mutilate Combat or even Combat Daggers. All are way better at surviving in Arenas.
I'm afraid to say Dorque, Tiiki has it about right. You would be butchered in Arena if targeted. One vanish and one trinket just aren't enough snare avoidance (shouldn't even have to use trinket for snares to be honest).
Hey, no worries, that is why I asked
Thanks for the advice folks, it's greatly appreciated. As is anything more I can cadge out of you all.
EDIT: Kuai- why 3/3 Imp EV over 3/5 Vile Poisons??
I like my spec to look clean. Also pure laziness of using evis against easy teams. I will probably go AR/prep this week as our warlock is UA again and my sustained and burst will be disgusting with full pve gear.
I like my spec to look clean. Also pure laziness of using evis against easy teams. I will probably go AR/prep this week as our warlock is UA again and my sustained and burst will be disgusting with full pve gear.
If you do that you won't have Cheat Death to save you from your lack of Resilience.
Alright, so at the moment I'm 4/31/24, but up until now all I've been doing is 2s with a frost mage. We do fine, and I doubt I'll be respeccing for that team any time soon, but I'm going to start doing some 5v5 as well and I was wondering if it would be a good idea to respec to mutilate. It seems like the burst from muti would be much more viable in 5v5 than 2 sets of cooldowns; I doubt I'd be very effective in a long game once all my cooldowns were blown.
So, people who are way better than me, educate me please.
If you do that you won't have Cheat Death to save you from your lack of Resilience.
Well I do mix in some pvp gear and sit around 250ish resilience with 4/5 slayer on. And if I am being focused it just leaves our SP and Warlock to wreck havoc while I can evasion+ghostly melees and cloak casters.
Yeah, it's a shame that I lamented in the PvP Mechanics thread- in many many setups where Rogues are most effective, we benefit hugely from PvE gear. Since my PvE gear is 115-128 ilevel and I as full PvP gear as you can get (141+ ilevel) I'm at a disadvantage compared to the Kuais and Wodins of this world. It's quite frustrating.
I was actually trying this with my Mage 2v2 partner last night but I'm having big doubts about this as a 2v2 in general. Lack of dispels means that any team with a Disc Priest is autolose, and teams with Druids are very very hard too. And arcane shotting hunters gib my Mage in seconds too. Any general tips for this? And yes, I realise switching back to AR/Prep would help! The problem with 20/0/41 is that it has no burst at all. Just decent sustained damage and reasonable mobility.
Here's another thing though: Cheat Death is great fun, but really, isn't enveloping shadows much much better? With Heightened Senses (a usual 2/2 take in this spec) that gives you a base 19% chance to avoid AoE fears, frost nova, etc., before you consider meta-gems, boot enchants and the 5% general spell miss rate that not all PvP casters fully remove...
Disc priests are virtually indestructible. I'm not sure an AR/Prep rogue could solo one down in time without a good equipment advantage. It just takes too long and he will be ProM and Renewing his partner and Binding Heal (heals them both) as well as dispelling on the run. Alliance Chastise Disc priests are even worse. Would suggest the Sap > Poly > Vanish Step Sap > Blind route, always knowing that he will trinket one of them. If your target fire subject is not down by then you need to leave it to the mage and get back onto the priest and stun/kick as best you can. Once the dps is down he will likely be fairly toothless. He might take some time to kill, but he won't be hurting you much either if you stay in his face. Don't let him Burn your mage's mana at any stage. If he isn't incapacitated you need to be on him while your mage burns down the opposing dps (preferably with your bleeds on and 15 secs dps from Sap > Poly end). The great thing about the bleeds is you can be somewhere else while they do their evil. Obvious I know, but you get the point.
Important thing is to get started on the dps partner right after the Sap goes off. Don't wait.
Tip with healing Priests. ProM only jumps 20 yards on damage. If you don't damage one of the targets it won't jump to the other. If you can seperate them by 20 yards it will use the one charge and disappear. With all 5 jumps it will heal for 5k from an instant cast. Far more than Renew. In 2v2 against a healing priest make sure you do damage to only one target unless they're seperated by 20 yards. Even worth thinking about turning off auto-attack after CS or KS on the priest if their dps partner is still up.
Regarding Cheat Death, I think it is immensely valuable if partnered with a healer (3 secs is a good time for priest to get off a binding heal, ProM / new Renew, Shield). Double dps teams it may not be quite so important. Enveloping Shadows maybe nice to avoid a Scream or Howl and also good to avoid a Frost Nova. I tend to think that diminishing returns and 2x Vanish, 1 Trinket and maybe 2x defensive shadowstep mitigate the need for it though.
Another major problem of 19/0/42 or similar variants is the loss of +hit we take, especially in PvP gear. Full PvP gear is what, 3.4% hit or something? Without those points in Precision I'd be missing specials, and I can't afford that. I'd either have to gem for a lot more hit or swap in PvE gear
I've perused this thread, but I haven't seen any discussion of mongoose vs. executioner. I'm a 0/31/30 rogue, and I hit 1850 on my 3s team this past week, so I picked up the season 3 mace. I'm having some difficulty deciding what enchant to put on it. My gut reaction is that mongoose provides a better overall benefit, but the armor ignore is SO nice. Has there been much talk about this that I've missed?
More poison procs through haste, more AP with Deadliness bonus from the AGI added, a ton more dodge and a bit of armor, and no DR on targets who are low on armor.
I really don't see any reason to switch to Executioner over Mongoose.
Another major problem of 19/0/42 or similar variants is the loss of +hit we take, especially in PvP gear. Full PvP gear is what, 3.4% hit or something? Without those points in Precision I'd be missing specials, and I can't afford that. I'd either have to gem for a lot more hit or swap in PvE gear
This is true, though I would get a bit more than that with Surefooted (10) and Glyph of Ferocity (16) before gems, giving 78 hit (=4.94%). Both of these I would take anyway. We need 7% to max hit with specials so I intend to fill some of those yellow spots with 8 hit gems to minimise the number of times specials can miss. There are 4 yellow slots for a further 32 hit bringing it to 110 if you want to, which is just shy of the 111 required (15.8 x 7). This is all theory as I'm still in S1 gear
There are some decent PvE drops that compare well for PvP according to Shadowpanther too e.g. Warp Spring Coil with 21 to hit, but I don't PvE my rogue much.
Missing finishers and openers is a major pain, but I can live with 1 or 2% miss chance for the extra utility. The alternative way of looking at it is that Cheat Death alone is worth more than any stam you might lose from yellow slots and the extra Agility from Sinister Calling more than compensates for any lost AP gems. All in my opinion of course.
I'm currently swapping in my Exalted Kara ring with my S2 ring (so Kara + S3 ring atm) to make up the defecit. Not going to re-gem until I commit to the spec-- and whilst it's fun, I don't see it being really truly viable...?
Tower is dead on with Mongoose. It's better, basically
This is true, though I would get a bit more than that with Surefooted (10) and Glyph of Ferocity (16) before gems, giving 78 hit (=4.94%).
How are you getting even that much hit? http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...n=Bonesjackson
That's my rogue. I will have 10 more hit rating in a few days after I pick up S3 boots and put Surefooted on them. Yes, I know I have both a runspeed meta and Boar's Speed, but I put on the Boar's Speed long ago and just recently picked up the hat with the intention of getting the new boots ASAP. Even then that's only 58 hit, and I've even got that crappy [Xavian Stiletto] equipped.
12/11/07, 7:28 AM
Un-Sapable cats.
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