guyincorporated

Interesting - I'm dusting off my former main (did the rogue->pally swap for TBC) and looking to make him an arena monkey (defintely a combat build; daggers never clicked for me). I was thinking my first purchase would have to be the mercliess offhand.

I'm also debating what weapons I want to be using - I was always a fan of fist spec, but with the addition of resiliance, seems like an extra sword swing would be more effective. That said, I'm also looking into maces and probably the most-useful spec. I imagine I'll mostly be using my rogue in 3v3 and 2v2, if that makes a major difference.

 

• Wodin

Maces.

 

guyincorporated

Could be worse. I always loved that hollow *thunk* sound from the 1-handed maces.

 

Grunge

While resilience is good, for rogues in arena's these days it's not really a must have stat especially if you play a "gib" setup. (Don't get me wrong, you want some but you don't need 496).

That said my thoughts on the matter:
You should pick up 2 pieces of s2 armor as soon as possible, unless you really don't have access to any epic weapons. (that's settled with Claw)
So I'd suggest Gloves+Pants or Gloves+Chest (Probably the latter, since there are no viable alternative epic chests from heroics or Karazhan, while there is Midnight/Skulker's, also shoulders are 1500 while chest is 1875. The stat difference between other obtainable items for those slots imo brings Merciless+Bladed Shoulderpads > Merciless Spaulders+Chestguard of the Conniver. ). However seeing how you already have 2 pieces of High Warlord... (one being gloves) you might consider saving up for chest+helm or chest+pants.

Mainhand. You want to aim for [Spiteblade]. Maybe eventually S2 or S3 but that's miles away.
Your offhand should be [Latro's Shifting Sword] / [Stormreaver Warblades] which is a bit slow or the [Searing Sunblade]. S2 one is nice but with s3 coming soon (1.5-2~~months) s1 weapons should be available for honor.

[Netherblade Facemask] is very decent, but you might consider S2 if you get lucky with either of the pants (I never saw Skulker's, got Midnight after 20 runs or so.)

[Choker of Vile Intent] is incredible. [Veteran's Pendant of Triumph] is a nice alternative, but you're really hit-starved when using pvp gear.

Either [Gronn-Stitched Girdle], [Girdle of Treachery] or [Girdle of the Deathdealer] (good luck with that last...) all serve as belt alternatives to [Veteran's Leather Belt]

[Veteran's Leather Bracers] are the best item for that slot until BT(think [Insidious Bands] ).

For cloak you can use either of the Karazhan cloaks [Drape of the Dark Reavers] or [Farstrider Wildercloak], with the Drape being better. Alternatives being [Delicate Green Poncho] or [Auchenai Death Shroud]. [Sergeant's Heavy Cloak] is decent but it's not that good.

Boots: [Veteran's Leather Boots] or [Edgewalker Longboots]. There's two pairs of +stealth boots, one is [The Master's Treads] mentioned above and the other one is [Silent-Strider Kneeboots], but I've never found them to be a necessity.

Rings. [Veteran's Band of Triumph]/[Ring of a Thousand Marks]/[Band of the Exorcist]+[Garona's Signet Ring] are what you're looking for. Magtheridon ring imho isn't that good.

The Trinket... It's worth getting sooner or later but if you have the 5min version then it's not such a huge upgrade. There are other things to spend honor on.
For your other slot "old-school" [Drake Fang Talisman], [Warp-Spring Coil], [Romulo's Poison Vial] (very rare though), [Bloodlust Brooch], [Dragonspine Trophy], [Bladefist's Breadth]. These are all viable.
Renataki is a must if you're daggers though.

I usually aim for 220-250 resilience, 10k health unbuffed for 2v2-3v3, 5v5 I sometimes go lower but I'm slowly beginning to like 4pc s2 more and more. Even thought 2pc t5 is so nice... Depending on how your stats end up you might consider 24ap and surefooted instead of 12sta on bracers/boots.

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

 

• Andeh

Grunge posted a pretty good breakdown, but keep in mind you should probably re-socket as you get more Gladiator gear. You are still fundamentally a DPS class, not a tank. This is especially true if you end up running in a 4 DPS lineup, where you are typically not targeted first.

I personally found the "10k HP rule of thumb" to work very well. Getting up to 200, and then 300 Resilience was also quite helpful. I didn't see much difference going over 11k, and up to 400 Resil, so I resocketed for more AP (1500). I found this to be quite helpful, especially paired with finally picking up a Bloodlust Brooch. I never bothered getting one, since I found better raiding trinkets quickly, but it is quite exceptional for PvP burst.

 

Macblade

I was hoping for some suggestions regarding gear.

I'm a raiding rogue first and foremost, but I've recently gotten into arena PVP more and more. The two serious teams that I run with are a 2v2 with frost mage and and 3v3 with lock and pally. I'm currently logged out in what should probably be PVP gear only by those with a sick sense of humor. I'm hoping to get the T4 legs off gruul at some point, in which case I would redo my current legs for PVP. I was thinking, celfthoof patch and still debating what to socket, +12sta X 3? Any suggestions on other gear to look for would be nice. Also a suggestion on what piece of arena armor to get first, given what I have, would be nice.

Regarding a MH, my guild hasn't had a spiteblade drop since I joined 3 or 4 months ago, we are almost to Tidewalker so I might get Talon before I get enough points for the S2 MH.

Thanks

Armory:
The Armory

 

Depry

I have a bit of a conundrum approaching.

I'm currently in 3/5 S2 + 1 blue honor (gloves) + eng helm. This has me sitting at 10534 hp and 351 resilience. (I got veterans boots today (finally) but still haven't enchanted them. Want surefooted, but so far not found anybody with it >.<, so i'm using stats for unenchanted.)

I'm really torn between the extra dps of 4/5 S2 + eng helm, and 3/5 S2 + 2/5 S1, or go to 5/5 S2

I'm 41/20/0 so while the +10e from 4/5 is nice its not as game changing as if I didn't have vigor. (Use of an arena helm assumes 18sta/5%stun res meta + 20ap pvp gem, eng helm is 18sta/5%stun res meta + 12stam)

So,

10674 hp, 363 res, 1329 ap, ~28.59% crit, 56 hit rating (4/5 S2, 1eng)
vs
10744 hp, 424 res, 1263 ap, ~28.55% crit, 45 hit rating (3/5 S2, 2/5 S1)
vs
10854 hp, 392 res, 1282 ap, ~28.99% crit, 45 hit rating (5/5 S2)

Typically I figure keeping my unbuffed hp between 10k-10.5k is enough, so all of these options will lead me to resocket/reenchant for more damage/resilience, but i'm not going to work all that out :p

We hover between 2k-2.1k in 3v3 as rogue/rogue/priest or rogue/mage/priest which is the only format I really play in, 2v2 gets played if we can't play 3v3 that week (which looks to be this week, priest with connection issues)

So what would you recommend?

 

Jaski

Well, atm I cannot play WoW till the 4th, I have been working on a list of things that I need to do. Does anyone have any suggestions for gear upgrades. Right now I am working on the S2 MH Mace or Fist, and the Bloodlust Brooch. I feel that I do fine with 9k hp, (10k when I 2v2 with my Priest buddy.) However I need to look at regemming some of my gear. And if anyone has anyideas of what I should regem or get gear upgrades please help me out. (Before I took a break at we hovered at 1700.

PS: For PvP I might respec back to 17/44 or Mut or 23/3/35 Hemo(I love Hemo fyi)

 

• Avair

Thanks for the advice guys. My first priority for Arena points is probably going to be the Season 2 mace, as epic mace's are hard to get, and my gear priority is for PvP (so mace's it is).

I'm running BG's as much as possible, and my guild is probably not going to be doing 25 man raids (which I'm pretty much fine with), so my epic's are going to be coming from Kara and BG's mostly.

 

Rads

Hi, I have a couple questions:

1. I read earlier in this thread that Lethality sucks. How much damage does it add for a combat mace build against high resilience targets? I may consider getting 5/5 Imp Poisons instead of 5/5 Lethality.

2. I think I read somewhere else that the [Abacus of Violent Odds] is better than [Bloodlust Brooch] for raid DPS. Since I am already using PvE skills/talents like SnD and Murder, would it also be superior for PvP DPS? Even if it's close, it may be a good idea to open with the Abacus for the use effect, then switch to the Brooch and use that 30 seconds later.

 

Tower

1. Lethality doesn't suck, no talent that increases your damage as a damage dealing class really sucks per-se. There are other talents that increase your dps more a rogue, particularly as sword/mace/claw combat, more per talent point than Lethality, but it is more about what you have to invest where to get access to those Talents. You can skimp on Lethality by going 3/5 4/5, or some Hemo builds put 0 in Assassination altogether, but I'm hard pressed to value them over a full Lethality build and heavy combat. So long story short, Lethality is still a damage increase and add's to burst, be it dagger or sinister strike.

2. For one, the next patch is eliminating gear swapping while in the arena, so swapping trinkets will not work. I'd guess most rogues, like myself, have both the Abacus on Bloodlust Brooch, however we use the Brooch for PvP and Abacus for PvE. The haste increase is down right nasty when you're Blade FLurring targets, or when you can keep them in melee. However you're constantly finding yourself fighting for melee range in arena, I'm hard pressed to value 10s of haste over 20s of about a 20% increase in attack power, particularly with the haste rating nerf incoming. Getting that powerful Sinister Strike in right before you're frost nova'd I think is a bit more valuable.

 

Jaski

I would use [Bloodlust Brooch] due to the fact that when you need to burst someone down you can use it. Also [Abacus of Violent Odds] might not proc at all the entire fight. I would go with [Bloodlust Brooch] (and because it stacks with Blood Fury.

 

◊ Kasi

Abacus is not a proc. It is a 10 second melee haste effect that's on use. Rads is also not an orc, so blood fury is not something he has access to. Also with stuns and the fact that its a limited window that you go for the kill, I wouldn't worry too much about the 20 vs 10s. You might be able to get a good amount of 10s on target. I don't think you'll be able to double that on a 20s use, and once you lose melee range it will be hard to get it back before you lose it. So to me the question would be in a 5-6 second kill window you have, what will help your dps more, haste or AP? I'm honestly not sure.

 

Jaski

Woops sorry for the misunderstanding there I confused [Abacus of Violent Odds] with [Hourglass of the Unraveller]. Which reminds me that I need to get it. And about the bloodfury I knew he was not a Orc just pointing it out.

 

Marieth

Yesterday we encountered our worst nightmare in an 5vs5 arena match.

Our team consist of an ms warrior (gnome), marksmann hunter, holy paladin and a holy priest (>300 resi, 13k hp buffed) and of course me, combat/swords.

Our opponents were two MS Warriors (one with deep thunder, the other with the mace from karathress), 2 holy paladin and a resto shaman.

We couldn't kill anyone of them before one of us dropped (mainly our priest). It was really frustrating, without magical damage, besides Expose armor our damage was shit.
We tried going for a warrior, then for a paly and the shaman, no luck.

After three loses, we decided to give up on that team and waited till they were in a match.


How would you try to approach that kind of setup?

I was doing my usual stuff, going for our focus, quickly building up 5CP to expose armor. Blind/Poisons were useless, with totem+double cleansing nothing lastet long.
Our Buffs were purged by the shaman, our priest was to occoupied to Massdispel/Dispell BoP, DS. I felt so useless in that matches, AR+BF isn't a good idea with to warriors. They always moved near me, when I blew it, so I provided them with extra rage and enrage proccs.

"...gone missing."

 

Depry

I eventually decided i'd go 5/5 S2 gear as I can resocket with pvp gems/8res and get excellent stats.

Now I have another question.

[Enigmatic Skyfire Diamond]
vs
[Powerful Earthstorm Diamond]

Seeing as a rogue's major problem is mobility, I was wondering if people think the 5% stun is a good tradeoff against 5% snare/root.

With mutilate (fleetfooted) and surefooted enchant, I'd have a 20% chance to resist hamstring/crip/frostnova etc. However, without the deep combat stun resist talent, 5% stun resist is all I can hope for, which isn't very much.

The loss of 18stam is a fair blow, but with 5/5merc+veteran honor gear its not a massive loss, and a +~.5% crit is always good for mutilate.

 

Tower

I prefer powerful, there are far more abilities, both self and supportive, to remove snares than to remove stuns. A snared rogue is certainly one that has his/her dps drastically decreased, but a stunned rogue when being focused is pretty much a dead one.

 

Rads

Your team would most benefit by replacing you with a mage or warlock. There really isn't much you can do against plate spam teams as a rogue, unless you're running 4 dps.

 

Melnor

I have a question regarding mace stun procs.

How much of an impact does having an offhand mace matter for mace spec? Like, how many mace stuns in a given battle are attributed to your offhand? When in pvp gear and DW spec, I probably have around 8% to hit. My gut feeling is that I could save some arena points and just use a mainhand mace and offhand sword and not really notice much of a difference in mace stunnage.

Am I way off base in thinking that?

 

Tower

You can't really map out how many stuns you're going to get in PvP, sometimes you're SSing your heart out, sometimes you're shiv kiting, sometimes you're autoattacking with SnD up waiting for a mace stun. You've got a 2.6 speed mainhand, and if you picked up a 1.5 speed offhand - you can see how much more often you're going to stun. I've had many offhand mace procs that seemed to generate via Shiv that I would deem game turning.

The offhand mace is invaluable, and so are the stuns that come with it, but I wouldn't use a blue offhand mace over a merc offhand sword.

 

Melnor

Yea, I wasn't sure if there was a mod that could detect OH vs MH or not. I planned on just picking up the season 1 OH for 9xx points anyways. Should be exciting to actually be on the giving end of the mace stuns.

On a side note, has blizz ever clarified whether their remark to warrior mace stun nerf would apply to only their talents or their weapon or would it trickle down to rogues as well?