mofidik

You probably want to get mark/honour capped before you ding, unless your faction has significantly better win ratios at 70. Mutilate is an absolute beast at 69 if you got the r14 daggers, but Shs is a fairly amazing spec at that point as well. Simply put, going from 0 to ~300 average resilience will be depressing, if you get capped at 69 you can buy the better part of S2 the moment you ding 70; meaning you're never really the underdog.

If you already dinged, sucks to be you :P

¬(-.-¬) maek stabs!

 

Luuca

Using the above quote from the PvE thread, and in an effort to start compiling information to edit a Rogue PVP Knowledge Base of similar utility, I pose the same question here.

Q: What do you feel are the are the 7(or 10?) Commandments for PVP Rogues?

What are the definate do's and don'ts? Are there any hard and fast "Never do" rules or "Always must" actions? You tell me....

 

Paislee

It's not that easy. PvE is highly predictable while PvP is not. There are simply too many variables to compile a concise list of "PvP Commandments." I suppose one could generate a list of general guidelines, but then again whether or not to abide by them is highly situational in a PvP context. From what I have observed, a big part of what separates the mediocre player (such as myself) from one who excels in arena is knowing exactly what to do to counter every single action the arena has to offer. That's a pretty long list.

 

djhbrd

1: I WAS WRONG AND I AM A BAD ROGUE. See Drumbum's post down the page for the real answer.

2: Kick and KS will be your most common interrupts. KS has a longer cooldown and can be resisted, so be careful the class and spec of the target you are using it on. KS is decent if you think the target is trying to fake casts on you, since even if they stop casting, KS will still take effect, unlike kick. As far as Blind I would only use that when I'm attacking someone other than the healer and need to Blind without switching targets (I use a mousover Blind macro). Deadly Throw is very good as well, in the 5 seconds where KS and Kick can both be down, just be ready to strafe off and quickly DT the target. I use this a lot when facing Shaman/Warrior teams since you can basically trust the Shaman to be spamming LHWs whenever not silenced/stunned/locked out. Gouge is also fairly good in that situation, but you have to be able to anticipate when you want to use it so that you a: have the energy, b: have gouge off cooldown, and c: aren't in a position where Ruptures/Garrotes will immediately break the Gouge, since it is not a silence nor a lockout and will allow them to immediately heal when they get out. I mostly use Gouge as a tool to refresh kick/KS since I can take 4 seconds off their cooldowns by using Gouge. Some people also use Vanish -> ShS -> Garrote to interrupt, sometimes using a focus macro, but I have not been a fan of that.

3: Again, this is situational. Sometimes being kited isn't a bad thing, if the healer runs off but your healer can keep them in combat through SW:P/Moonfire/Insect Swarm/etc. I like to use that time to put pressure on the opposing DPS. As far as avoiding being kited, there are three classes you really have to watch out for: Paladins, Shamans and Druids.

Paladins can obviously BoP and bubble, as well as BoF themselves to get away from you. Divine Shield can't be helped on my team, but my partner can generally land a quick Cyclone on the BoPed Paladin to waste their cooldown without getting heals off. For BoF, just be ready to stun them, especially if you have Judgment of Justice applied.

Shamans will keep Poison Cleanse totems down and spam their de-poison so you may never have Crippling on them. I just like to spam Shiv on them while they're on the move, so even if they pop into Ghost Wolf they won't be going very fast. The only time I have problems is if they get me in an Earthbind with PC Totem up and in Ghost Wolf, in which case I'll drop ShS.

Druids can be the best and the worst as far as anti-kiting. Spamming Shiv obviously helps, because it keeps them snared and builds combo points for a game-breaking 5 point KS while they're in Travel/Caster form. Nature's Grasp is fairly easy to avoid, whether by ShS, CLoS, or Vanish in the event that they don't have Faerie Fire applied. Unless the game is on the line, I generally will avoid using CLoS to break NG roots, especially against Druid/Warlock or Druid/Hunter, since being able to cleanse DoTs or run over a Freezing Trap unaffected.

Sprint isn't the best ability for anti-kiting, at least when ShS spec. The problem is that it doesn't cleanse roots, and it doesn't grant any immunity or resistance to future rooting/snaring effects. When PvPing as Combat I tend to use it a little more liberally since Imp. Sprint is amazing and I love it, but as ShS I end up using it to catch people around pillars or the Lordaeron tomb.

 

• LodeRunner

I don't know that Rogue 'commandments' would be all that different from other class guidelines from a PvP standpoint. More than anything it would depend on your group comp. You might have better luck nailing down specifics against certain class types. For example, what are important rules to live by when facing Warriors? Ok, now what about when facing Disc Priests? Shadow Priests? Other Rogues? However, that seems like the kind of information that should be readily available on a site like ArenaJunkies or the like.

 

drumbum

EA works great on low armor targets and sucks balls against high armor targets. It is often a good idea to EA a resto druid even while he's in bear form, but it's not because it counters bear form mitigation well (it barely nicks the armor of a druid in bear form). It's so that when you catch him in caster form, you'll be able to burst him for a lot more damage.

Also, priests don't have high armor. What are you talking about? IF might bring a priest up to 4-4.5k or so, which is about equal to a rogue. Not to mention you'll eat through his charges in a matter of a few seconds anyway.

 

djhbrd

I feel stupid, damn. Edited the above post. I've been doing these things for so long I've forgotten why I do them in the first place.

 

Shingen

Or you can just buy everything in preparation for dinging, bank space permitting. You don't need to be 70 to buy it.
I was going to do this on my Warlock, but found that queues are insanely long for my battlegroup for any 60-69 BG, Alliance-side.

 

Trojan35

1. Know your role.
2. Communicate.
3. Plan for their counter.
4. In rematches, plan for their adjustments.
5. Don't spam hemo, keep energy for kicks etc.
6. Spec to win, don't QQ about other specs being better.
7. Agil/2AP > crit/hit.
8. For non-mutilate, RED/Cat's or SSD/Surefooted.
9. Don't yell at your partners.
10. 79 Hit is requred w/o Precision. (Thanks Drumbum) Missing blinds is fail.
11. PvP Trinket is required. Save it for blind unless you're getting focused.

 

drumbum

Actually hit rating is a GOOD stat in PVP, even after reaching 5%. The belief that it isn't good is a huge misconception. There are a few things to consider here:

1. The effect of hit rating suffers essentially nothing from resilience since it has no direct relationship to crit. Even attack power and armor penetration are mitigated indirectly by resilience, but hit rating does not experience this same effect.
2. In many situations, specials can miss above 5% hit due to various buffs, debuffs, or talents -- Arctic Winds (frost mages) and Heightened Senses (subtlety rogues) being the big ones here. Heightened Senses doesn't affect melee special attacks, but it does affect Blind. Thus hit rating is still contributing to improving the chance for Blind to hit against most rogues, until 9% at least (and more if he has Evasion active).
3. Hit rating means improved poison application and more Hemo charges consumed.
4. And, perhaps most importantly, the DPS contribution from hit rating toward white damage alone appears to beat the increase to Hemo damage AND white damage contributed by crit rating. In other words, I believe 1 hit rating is superior to 1 crit rating for overall sustained damage. (This is based on my Shadowstep gemming spreadsheet that can be downloaded here -- feedback is welcome.)

Therefore, while I don't suggest gemming hit over attack power or agility, I do suggest gemming hit over crit, which is precisely why I use [Glinting Pyrestone] for my yellow gems instead of [Wicked Pyrestone].

Now, moving on to meta gems -- RED/Cat's, SSD/Surefooted, and RED/Dexterity may be great ways to go, but are far from being the only options. Most Mutilate rogues stick with [Enigmatic Skyfire Diamond] and Surefooted because snare resistance is crucial for someone who is more easily kited. [Potent Unstable Diamond] is actually pretty decent as well, although it's a little more work to both obtain and to socket for.

 

Trojan35

Being as good as crit does not make it "GOOD", you're only disagreeing with what I deemed good or not good. You should gem for AP/Agility, and choose gear with 2AP/1Agil over 1crit or 1hit, unlike PvE.

There is no misconception in my post, hit is not as good as Agility or AP in PvP and is an inferior stat for item budgets.

Edit: Thanks for the additions to mutilate. Although I don't agree with the snare thing for that build, I'll defer to those with more mutilate experience.
Edit2: Also, great spreadsheet. I use it a lot. I think the DPS numbers are misleading though. It assumes you're white hitting consistently, whereas often you stop white-attacks to kill a totem, or blind a healer, you get stunned/kited, or vanish/sap, but those activities don't change your hemos per second (I adjust this number for a few kicks/KSs etc) because you're still regenerating energy. I think it's overstating white DPS. Pretty hard to model this in a spreadsheet since every fight is so vastly different. But I love the sheet because it proves AP is more damage than Agility, but not much.

 

Adversity

I've recently been doing a lot of arena on my rogue main, I started out with a lot of my pve gear, and over time, I have acquired arena/honor gear and my hit rating has gone from 320 to around 140, and it's going down each time I acquire new gear. I'm an ShS specced rogue with points in assassination going upto 4/5 vile poisons (which can be seen in my armoury profile until I spec back to combat for raids).

My question is, what should be the approximate hit rating I should have if I dont spec into precision. Sorry if this has been asked but after having a glance through the above posts I couldn't see an answer to this. Thanks!

 

drumbum

Fair enough.

I also am not necessarily endorsing a particular meta gem for Mutilate, but rather just pointing out what many successful Mutilate rogues use in practice. I can certainly understand the benefit of 20% snare/root resistance.

As for the spreadsheet, yeah, I was very hesitant to add that combined DPS column, but it's hard to evaluate hit rating fairly without devising some sort of method for relating white and Hemo damage. In my latest personal copy (which I haven't posted yet) I took that column off because I agree it's too misleading. The original intent of creating the spreadsheet was to compare AP and agility gems though, so hopefully it's been useful for that much at least.

Keep above 5% hit (79) at all costs -- that's the amount you need to prevent specials from missing on most players. Other than that, it's usually fine to focus on other stats, as AP and agility are superior damagewise.

 

spankweasel

I have a few questions from a fresh 70 rogue regarding the Arena. My partner is a Disc priest with a pretty decent set of Arena gear. I'm spec'd 20/0/41.

- I have all of the reputation PVP gear from the Quartermasters (Opportunist's Battlegear) and I'm currently running right around 200 resilience. I know this isn't enough and I'm working on correcting this but I wanted to ask which stat I should focus my upgrades on first. For example, moving from my quest reward belt to the Guardian's Leather Belt nets me a gain of +30 res and +55 stamina but moving from the Opportunist's Shoulders to Merciless Leather Shoulders nets me +19 Agi. Which stat should I focus on first? If I focus on resilience, my damage output will suffer while if I focus on offensive gains, my survivability suffers.

- My team really struggled with Warrior/healer teams. The priest and I are unsure what to do against this set up. If I go on the warrior, I lose the dps race by a factor of 2:1 (or even more if the warrior is geared). If I go to the other healer, I'm so very easily kited due to not having the PVP trinket (It's the very next thing I'm getting and I should have it by this weekend at the latest) but I'm concerned that even with the trinket, catching druids and shaman will be next to impossible. Is this just one of those matchups where I'm forced to feed the warrior Rage and pray we can catch the healer with his trinket down and try to burst the warrior while the healer is busy (provided I'm not a red smear)?

Thanks for the help!

 

rehtonAesoohC

Here are a few tips from my observations on a disc/rogue team:

Get a PvP trinket! (The 2min one is only 8000 honor now). Against Warrior/Druid, you either have to kill the warrior or kill the druid, you can't start on the warrior and then switch. As you said, it just feeds him rage to destroy your priest. You will lose a mana war against a druid from pure healing. You either have to delay the fight long enough for you to find the druid in stealth and open on the druid, or you have to CC the druid enough to score a kill on the warrior. Try to set up a CC chain on the druid, putting in places you anticipate the druid to use his Trinket. For instance, this is what I have set up with my rogue partner (each next step assumes that the previous step was successful, and the CC is about to run out):

1) I fear
2) Druid trinkets out of the fear
3) You blind the druid
4) (When Blind has 3 seconds remaining) You shadowstep to the druid (or sprint over), vanish and sap him
5) I mind control the druid
6) (should be 27-28 seconds from the initial fear - s4 priest gloves reduce fear cooldown by 3 seconds) I fear the druid again
7) If you don't need too much healing, I can follow the druid around and mind control him again after the fear is about to run out
8) ???
9) Profit!

That's a potential total of 48 seconds of CC if you can pull off the chain. Your priest has to be willing to let you get close to death - CCing the enemy healer is the top priority, because if you can't CC the healer, you're going to lose anyway. Have the priest use power word: shield, renew, and prayer of mending where possible, and when not CCing the druid, have him help DPS the warrior.

As for your gear question, my philosophy is that you should get your end-game gear first. Guardian's gear on average will be a bigger upgrade than season 2 gear anyhow, so you could probably assume to go s4 before any s2 pieces, depending on what you're upgrading from. If the quality of gear that you're upgrading from is the same, it should apply. Of course, you could also create a spreadsheet listing the stat upgrades you'd get by slot comparison - that's how I decided my order of upgrading.

 

Calantus

I recommend getting the shoulders first because nothing says "train me" like not having S2+ shoulders.

 

djhbrd

This. I only have S1 shoulders right now, but I was getting unloaded on in 5s a lot with some much better targets on my team (Affliction Lock and Resto Shaman in particular). I put my Hydross shoulders on and people tended to leave me alone more.

 

Trojan35

Hmmm. Isn't it better if they attack you than attack the Affl lock? I mean, for you it's more fun, but for the team it's better.

 

djhbrd

I was dying too much when I got pressured. I only arena with ~225 Resilience, so I tended to die a lot. We have our Lock hit everything with DoTs as fast as possible, while the Mage/Priest single target and I lock down a healer. If our Lock dies, 95% of the time he already would have full DoTs up on most enemies, whereas when I died that opened up a second (or the only) healer for the other team.

 

moowalk

Number 2 isn't so easy!

First you need to realise that a good druid isn't going to trinket a fear unless he really has to. So you have to put him in a situation where he has to: Don't fear til warrior is below 100%, the lower the better. Dispel his hots before/as you fear. Co-ordinate burst with your rogue and pew pew yourself while the warrior while the druid's feared. You can also PI + mana burn into a caster form druid. This will often cause them to trinket.

 

Melador

What do most people do for poison swapping? It seems like I'm going to want 3 poisons (at least in 2v2 which I play):

- Wound for druids, and shivving on already-crippled targets vs typical healer-dps setups.
- Crippling to open with and periodically refresh on people who try to kite me.
- Mind-numbing for caster-heavy teams, especially dual-dps.

Do people just buy 3 OHs, put one poison on each, and swap them mid-fight? I'm just finished grinding EotS marks (yay for going 1-17) for another s2 mace, and the thought of losing 20-ish more EotS matches makes me want to cut myself, so I'm curious if people really have 3 OHs or whether they generally just use 2. Or use a random other offhand that's just briefly swapped to to shiv something like crippling and then switched away from immediately.

Or whether I'm totally off-base about poison usage.

 

liquidroyl

I just use 2 OHs and reapply poisons once I see the matchup as necessary (this is most easy if you play with a double stealth team like rogue druid obviously). In terms of order of acquisition for honor gear, if you're at the point where you're still acquiring < s4 gear to get geared up, I suggest not prioritizing a s2 OH. I have personally found the micromanagement of poisons to have some reward, but it is by no means necessary when you are starting out. I would probably fill out on s4 honor gear first, and then if I have anything left in my afk tank I could see going for a second OH, or hope that I'm at the point where I can acquire a s3/s4 weapon.

 

Melador

Well, I run 2v2 with a disc priest so I can't really reapply poisons on the fly. I have all the s3 honor gear, though I am wearing a s2 ring too. I don't have the personal/team rating to get the s4 ring, though. So there's not really anything that's a big upgrade, even if I had the rating for (which I don't).

It just seems like I'm a big disadvantage when I happen to have crippling on my OH when fighting a druid, or when I've got wound on it vs dual-dps.

 

Tiiki

Yes I have 2 other OHs in my bag and swap them as necessary. I have Mind Numb on a spare S3 OH I have, and Deadly on a spare S2 so that I can stack Deadly and Wound against abolish spam (and because I play r/r/d so that means we can do multiple different poison combos between us when on the same target).

 

V2Viper25

I play on a Rogue/Priest/Druid double healer 3v3 team. We have no problems with RMP and most teams with warlocks, but we just can't seem to deal with double melee teams. This isn't exactly a cookie cutter team so I don't know many strats. Any suggestions against double melee?