Alpharogue

Hi, I am trying to gather some thoughts/ideas regarding rogue/rogue comp. Season 1-3 I played M/R with one of my fellow raiders and we were only semi-serious about arena so our rating only spiked at 1810 max. This season however, I am trying to dedicate more time to arena and my goal is to get s4 MH. After taking a brief haitus from BG's/arena at the beginning of S4, I found myself another 4pc T6 rogue who shares my same ambition to get a high rating. What I am looking for is some possible gearing/spec advice for us. We both have a pretty good knowledge of the class, but there are some things I am unsure about. I have read on these forums that possibly 1 rogue will act as the tank, (opening first, wearing 400+ resil) while the other gears more dps. Our first night of attempts both of us used the hybrid 4T6, 2GLAD and we pretty much did okay, with the exception of the pali/warr combo that pretty much face rolled us (no surprise there), but we also got stomped by a few priest/x teams which was sort of surprising to me. This may just be a need to get used to issue, but if there is something else that we could be doing, your input would be appreciated.

Our current setup as far as spec/poisons goes is I have imp EA and 2/3 enveloping shadows while he is the cookie cutter 5/5 Vile spec. I run with mind numbing/crip and him with wound/crip (not sure if this is optimal either). I logged out in the gear im currently running with.

Thanks for the input ahead of time.

 

coukritix

Hi,

I have a question regarding EA and its talent improvement.

Would you consider EA use as regular and thus taking improved EA or not ?
If the answer is yes then would use it as soon as before rupture or later in the cycle ?

If this topic has already been explored would you be kind enough to redirect me ?

Thx

 

Cronjob

I'm certainly no expert here but I took imp EA and I began using it a lot on various classes on a regular basis especially if other people are banging on them. I took imp EA because it takes less points to get close to the same armor reduction of non imp spec so you seem to get more bang for buck. I use rupture first in most cases followed by a 2-3pt EA.

 

malthrin

Is there a list somewhere of how many points of EA you need to use on each class, given standard PvP gear?

 

ROJO

Just looking at your talents, personally, I would drop points from lethality to finish out Enveloping Shadows and pick up Master of Subtlety. Other than that, that is pretty much exactly how I am specced, with my rogue partner as the traditional 20/41 spec with full vile.

Personally, we never worry about a 'tank' rogue or anything like that. We both just open at the same time, I am the Imp EA bitch on the team, and my partner usuallly throws the KS or rupture when we open at the same time. Stagger your CS and KS and you can really lock someone down for a good amount of time. If you are the one using Imp EA, keep in mind that it is fairly effective against anything mail and below (except mail with shield). Also keep in mind that based on your passive armor pen, against mages especially a 3 pointer is really all that's needed to reduce them to 0 armor mitigation.

There honestly isn't a ton of strategy for this comp: most teams you fight will just be you both going balls out on one person to kill them while throwing sap/blind/blind/sap combos on the other person. Here are some specific combos strats we use in short:

Mage/Rogue: Find the rogue (hard for you since you're horde), blow him up before the mage can do anything. Works much better than you would think. Chain CC on the mage. You will have a hard time trying to kill the mage first because of ice block and the fact that you will be constantly snared between Chilled and the rogue shiv-ing you. This might be one instance where if you can't find the rogue, one of you opens on the mage, then you both switch to the rogue when he attacks. Sap/blind/blind on the mage is usually enough to kill the rogue, but feel free to trinket any CC thrown on you immediately. Time is not on your side in this fight (in fact, it really never is as rogue/rogue). Have a nice focus target cast bar and focus target target so you can see who is getting poly'd and you can cloak it. Try to save some CDs for the mage. Even with two rogues, if you don't have CDs, a good frost mage is still very dangerous.

Paladin/War: They pretty much have to really fuck up to lose to you. What you should try however, is CC the war (which will only net 7-9 seconds of CC, with zerker rage and a trinket on the first blind), and force the paladin to bubble. If you're lucky, and the warrior didn't manage to get a bleed on you, you can both vanish and reset. You now have to nuke the paladin down before forbearance wears off and he can BoP himself. Very hard to do with a competent warrior stunning and snaring you. Make sure to switch one of your off hands to mind numbing, since crippling won't do much in this fight anyways with BoF. Expect to get rolled by this team, but take solace in the fact that past 1650 or so, you really stop seeing them. This is your hardest counter.

Paladin/Anything Else: What you typically see here is paladin/warlock, which is not easy, but winnable. Each rogue take a target and shut them both down. This strains the healing of the paladin and totally neuters the damage of the warlock. Hopefully, you get a Bubble and BoP at the same time, cloak + vanish, and now just go nuts on the warlock while CC'ing the paladin. Once you are out of CC on the paladin, one rogue switches to him to lock his heals down. At that point the win should be yours.

Shaman/War: CC the war as much as you can, and blow up the shaman. This is great in theory, but bloodlust/heroism LHW spam is really hard to stop. What we do, is open on the shaman without blowing more than one blind on the warrior to force his trinket after he zerks the sap, and wait for heroism. With luck, you can vanish and wait out the duration of heroism. Once its gone, it will be much easier to take out the shaman, and the warrior will do significantly less damage to you. Whenever you fight a warrior, try sapping him as a test before you engage his partner, just to see if he is dumb and blows his berserker rage before you de-stealth. If so, wait for it to be over and resap before its off CD for another 10 seconds without him crushing your face.

Druid/War: Really easy here if you can find the druid. You should have an advantage finding any druid just from MoD, Camo and Heightened Senses, plus the JC panther if you have it. Once you find the druid, he will fall very quickly to two rogues, even with a warrior trying to peel for him. If he starts out in bear form because he knows its rogue/rogue, well, at least you know where he is now. Hit him with Imp EA while he is still in bear, and save your KSs for when he shifts out to another form. This comp should be an easy win 95% of the time.

Druid/Rogue: You can really kill either one here. I would open on whoever you find first and just blow the crap out of them. I prefer opening on the rogue if possible, because it allows you to lock his damage down pretty well, and honestly, with two rogues, a druid will have a hard time keeping up. Throw some blinds at the druid and you should be able to down the rogue if you time it right.

Priest/Rogue: Here I would go for whichever you think is a softer target....once again 2 rogues will take down an enemy rogue very quickly, and chances are you can do it through a priests healing. Cloak when the priest runs in to fear you.

BM Hunter/anything: Same strat as with a shaman and heroism - get him to blow Beastial Wrath, vanish, and wait it out. Then you are free to abuse the hunter with CC while you kill his partner (or vice versa, depending on who his partner is). The key here is you don't want to be out in the open while his wrath is up.

For every match, we start with wound MH/crip OH. Since you are both stealth and you can usually tell what combo you are fighting (except distinguishing between rogue/rogue and rogue/druid), you can tailor your poisons as needed. Shaman or Paladin healer? One of you should have mind numbing on your offhand and be shiv-ing it like its going out of style. Double DPS? forget wound, go instant on your MHs. We normally avoid deadly because it will fuck up your gouges and blinds if for some reason you need to CC a target you have already been attacking.

The one other thing to be aware of is the 1:30 you have before the shadowsights come up. You need to have some way of being alerted when they are coming up, especially if the other team is only 1 stealth class. We try to pick them up as they come up; since you are horde you can't shadowmeld right as you get one, you might have to blow your vanish here to get away from any nearby enemies in time. Be aware that they seem strongly bugged and half the time if you are in stealth sitting where they come up, you cannot pick them up. But if you have gone that long without opening, you need to try to get them, because they will royally fuck you over in the hands of the other team.

Communication is really key here. Talk to each other. Say you are doing something before you do it. Organize who will pretty much always throw the first blind. Coordinate your opening to avoid wasting CPs. Rogue Rogue is a ton of fun to play, once you get out of the dregs of teams around 1600 that can be practically any comp/specs in the world (double deep balance druid anyone?) you should have life a little easier. Make sure to pick up a spammable sap macro for finding other rogues if you don't already have one. I also certainly hope you have a focus blind macro.

edit: christ long post
double edit: and I assume you are going to, but hurry up and get some nethercobra on those pants

 

Grunge

I'd suggest going 2pc Brutal. 4pc T6 and 4pc Brutal are both in my opinion very overrated.

Since I assume you're not doing Sunwell here's what I used Pre-SWP:
Cursed Vision(Alternatively Brutal or T6 helm),
PvP Shoulders (Alternatively T6),
Dory's Embrace,
T6 Chest (Alternatively Brutal, P.S. I'd go for the socketbonus, you'd need it for the metagem)
Guardian's Dragonhide Bracers (Why Dragonhide? Red Socket, More crit, More resilience, More Agility (35 vs 33 on Leather) ).
Brutal Gloves
Guardian's Leather Belt
T6 Pants (Alternatively Brutal, but T6 is very solid, especially if you didn't do the "optimal-for-pve-dps" and put a purple gem in it.)
Guardian's Leather Boots (Alternatively Shadowmaster's if socketed with 10agi & 5agi/5hit, But imo Guardian's is better of the two).

For rings, definitely get Angelista's over Stormrage's. Imo Angelista+Signet is the best ring combo. The two rings have perfect stats for a rogue. + Angelista is better for PvE!

For trinket slot, Epic trinket is a very nice upgrade, an extra 25 resilience for "free" is nothing to be sneezed at.
In the other slot, I'd prefer Madness of the Betrayer, but since it's not a "optimal" trinket for rogues in PvE, get it only if you don't piss off your warriors/hunters/whatnot. Berserker's Call or Shadowsong Panther are very nice alternatives as well.

As for weapons, Infamy and Savagery are good enough (Especially since hemo is normalized, Syphon isn't as enticing anymore.), however do I'd suggest Mongoose on Infamy.

For gems, Red = 10agi, Yellow = 10resi or 5hit/5agi (People are often surprised when they inspect me and see 10resi gems, the reason for this is that while a "fullpvp" geared rogue has more than enough resilience, a rogue with heavy pve gear is quite squishy.), personal preference.

Since the only 2 blue sockets I had at the time were chest+pants I went for the socket bonus in both of them.
It's possible to socket a purple in a red slot, but it's inefficient.

Go with a 15 resilience enchant on T6 chest, compared to +6 all stats it's a great source for resilience.
If you're aching for more resilience, stick 2x 10 resilience gems in the yellow sockets as well.


Depending on your selections you should end up at around 275-320 resilience or so, which in my mind is quite enough when playing with a healer. If you need the extra oomph when playing double dps, feel free to swap out a few pvp off-set pieces for more damage, but in general going too low on resilience can be fatal. Literally. (Especially with the nerfed Cheat Death).

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

 

drumbum

This is kind of a misconception that a lot of the rogue community seems to have. Leather bracers are actually superior damage when socketed with a red gem. This is largely because crit takes a huge hit from resilience (and the Leather bracers have more AP).

You can justify wearing the Dragonhide bracers for its slightly superior defensive benefits, but its offense stats are slightly inferior. Although in reality the two are so close that it's a little ridiculous to even try to argue one over the other.

 

Alpharogue

To ROJO, thanks so much for your response. It seems to be really hard to find some good R/R strat advice as most of the games you will play will be based on your individual skill and team communication rather than the synergy between the classes, although a rogue benefits from EA really well. I must say that I never thought about taking the shadowsights when they popped because I was running low resil to begin with the increased damage taken would be detremental, but I can see it being the a HUGE advantage (I can recall being trapped behind a pillar by a mage doing Blizzard back and forth because their shadowsights were just wearing off and they saw me scurry back there) . As far as my brutal pants, I have not been using those in arena and just picked them up last week, (oh the wonders of outfitter always auto equiping as soon as you enter/leave the arena). I am using T6: Helm, shoulders, bracers, pants and S4: gloves with my old s3 chest. The off pieces are all BG items so my resilience sits around 250ish. Everything you said strat-wise makes sense and we will be using it tonight, one question though, last night we faced a few R/P teams and got owned simply by a TON of stun resists on the priest. Is this very normal? Pretty much those RNG resists just completely make a straight forward match a nightmare. Oh and Frost Mage/Ret palli...please tell me they wont be in the upper brackets...

There was a previous mention of a chart for expose armor calculations per class earlier on the thread, and I am planning on putting that together tomorrow, unless someone beats me to it. I think that would be beneficial to see and tailor your strat accordingly to it based on your passive ARP.

 

mobiusrage

Hi Alpha, I'm Rojo's 2's partner.

Priest/rogue: Racials are big here. Since I'm human, we usually find the rogue and sap him out of stealth, followed by a sap on his partner at which point we immediately open on the rogue with a 5 point rupture and start stunlocking (the rogue) and chain blinding the priest. If the priest is good, he will trinket and pain suppression his rogue immediately once he's blinded, if he doesn't get PS off you have plenty of time (around 16 seconds) to murder the rogue. Burn every single cooldown necessary to catch him and bury him, he will be doing anything to get away and you need to match that with shadowstep kidney shots and vanish-> cheap shots, and deadly throw to slow him down since he will be cloaking your crippling. Since you don't have perception, you can try waiting for the shadowsights and getting the rogue that way, but then if you both get the shadowsights that leaves you on opposite ends of the map and can be risky. Just try different strats and see which one you guys like the best, just know that killing the rogue is perfectly viable here, especially since you have PvE gear (we don't for the most part).

Mage/Retpally: Try and sap the mage, and blind him when get gets out of it. Meanwhile, fuck over the ret pally and force him to bubble, and then promptly vanish and gtfo so you don't get AOE'd out of stealth. Come back when his bubble is over and finish him off, ideally you still have a blind for the mage so you can try your best to not get shattered. The pally won't be doing much damage as you'll have evasion going pretty much the whole time. Oh, and fight them by a pillar too, so you can bring the ret pally out of LOS of the mage to avoid poly.

 

Grunge

Hence, why I suggested it. And also noted the reasons why I'd prefer it over Leather.
It's possible to socket Leather with a red gem, yes but you'd be giving up a beneficial socket bonus.

For a full-pvp geared rogue I guess it'd be better to get Leather.

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

 

Ticia

Does anyone have any experience with a Resto Shaman / Mutilate Rogue 2v2 team? My friend and I started playing it last night and I was pleasantly surprised by it's power. The Shaman I am playing with has been an alt for a long time, every now and then it gets into a raid, but he has a hodgepodge of T4/T5/T6/ZA/Kara gear, with very little PvP gear at the moment (69 Resil, 8500 HP).

Even with the severe lack of survivability from the Shaman, we were able to go 14-3 last night, with one of the losses due to a DC. The other two losses, while not necessarily caused by the low HP/Resil, would have been much easier if my Shaman was at 400 Resil and 11k HP.

We seem to do very well against Druid/Warrior and any team with a SHS Rogue. With 30% Chance to Resist Poisons + Poison Cleansing Totem + Quick Recovery, I can toe-to-toe another rogue very well. We're still getting experience (my friend doesn't really have any arena experience beyond the mid-1600's), but my Shaman is getting very good at controlling healers and knowing when to switch from turtle defensive to spam Purge + LB offensive.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any tips for fighting against more thinking players, as well as hard-counters to look out for, etc?

 

Ozzmar

I'm no Arena expert by any stretch, but you seem very succeptible to paladin/warrior combos. It'd be hard to CC either one of them as the warrior can BR out of your Sap, and the Paladin can bubble out of both Sap and Blind. An additional trinket to blow would make that tough. Seeing as they're both in plate, and the only counter you have for their high physical mitigation is pure survival and Rupture, it seems like it'd be a hellishly difficult match for you guys.

Just my thoughts.

 

Ticia

It's possible, we didn't really run into any really thinking players from what I could tell. Many of the games I was laughing on vent at the terrible choices some of the opponents are making.

That said, for one our team really only has Blind (and Sap at the start) as CC, so it's not like a Druid/Rogue comp that relies on CCing one person and bursting the other down in that window. It's a lot more about controlling the pace and forcing the other team to do what we want them to do. Also pallies only have holy shock as instant heals, so while they are hard to CC for a burst, they are very susceptible to Earth Shock + Kick (when they play awful and stand close). In addition, the shaman can purge off BoF and BoP fairly quickly, so they aren't as large of concerns.

The strategy we have used (successfully) against those teams has been for me to just stick to the warrior 24/7, rotating KS/SnD/Rupture as my finishers to keep up consistent damage but reduce the amount of damage I take. I also feel like I've gotten much better at toe-to-toeing warriors, between gouge and just pillar hump for a quick reset, etc.

Thinking about it a bit more, it seems like the hardest teams would be double dps, especially with my shaman's low life, but even once he gets geared, if the other team can get a good CC chain on him, I will drop. Specifically, Rogue/Mage and Rogue/Rogue who might be able to force NS on my shaman and then quick swap to me while CCing him.

 

Hildegard

I am a mediocre arena player. My best rating was 2289 at the end of season 2 when rogues were overpowered even without PVE gear. During season 3 and now in 4 I play between 1700 and 1900 with mostly a druid partner. My main problem is human rogues in a burst combo and we tend to lose about 90% to 95% of these matches while we score around 50/50 against paladin/warrior, druid/warrior or non-human rogue/mage, we even lose 50% against a elven beast master / human rogue team. With other words I really hate human rogues.

I tried many ways of dealing with them like pre-vanishing and sprinting but with time they know this approach and just use late perception. In most cases I get sapped and my partner druid gets crushed very rapidly.

I hate any kind of whining and so I search for a way to deal with human rogue burst teams. Any thoughts ?

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

mofidik

Being unpredictable always worked for us, ergo don't move to where people always move. Easier is to just Shs to the second DPS if you can though.

Your druid getting bursted shouldn't really happen souly due to perception though. Assuming you use a voice com. program or that he watches your debuffs he'll know you've been sapped, allowing him to pre-hot and go bear to nullify that CC the opposing team had going on you. Needless to say, perception is an amazing advantage, but you have a decent answer to their (not so) guaranteed opener. Rogue/DPS vs perception teams, now that's a different matter .

¬(-.-¬) maek stabs!

 

Fqubed

From playing my rogue in 2x rogues and rogue /war (for fun only) if you get sapped have your healer just go to a pilar and make himself seen, as said hots / bear and just make them either engage against a bear or wait the HoTs off and waste DR time on the sap. Both of you have to keep in mind though that if the 2 rogues are allowed free reign of their CCs you will be controlled the entire time that your druid is killed.

Your druid should either hide behind the pillar so they have to stop considerable dps time to walk away and blind you or he should have them close by so that after the first blind you can trinket vanish and cheepshot one /blind the other. They will trinket blind and the cheepshotted rogue will wait and trinket out of kidney shot if you go that route(so rupture). Regardless it should give your druid time to shift heal and go back to bear.

What I dont understand is why they dont try to just burst the rogue down, CloS any incoming cyclones and blind the druid while basicaly destroying the rogue in 2v1 with them getting the openers.

Ticia what do you do vs pally/war that play offensive? As in run in and JoJ the shaman, HoJ, intimidate etc? If you are running with a squishy healer?

 

Grunge

I recently re-rerolled from horde to alliance, and this was one of the reasons I did it. So best advice I can give you is to level a human rogue to 70 and switch when WotLK comes out.

If that's not an option, remember that perception isn't all powerful.
For example you can't see from one side of the arena to the other.
In Ruins, never go from the middle, hug the left or right wall or camp in the starting area.

Pre-vanish->sprint is one thing, but that means you must open on the rogues partner before it runs out.

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

 

panny

In my experience, people don't use Perception to full advantage. I'm not sure why more don't activate it before the match starts and rush out mounted.

Hildegard, does your Druid hide in stealth? I'm told alot of Resto Druids now spec Tree of Life and pre-roll Lifeblooms to mitigate the damage done by the initial stun lock. Failing that, they just start in bear.

 

Ashvael

Hello,
is there any discussion on these forums where the gemming for yellow sockets is discussed further? Basically if 5 agi / 5 hit or 10 ap / 5 crit is the best choice? If yes, I'd appreciate a link as I couldn't find one with the search function.

If not, what do you guys think about it? Does it really pay off to socket hit in PvP whether it's for just steady more damage or to counter the -x% hit from other classes? Does it come down to personal preferance or is one of the either far superior?

 

Fold

I think it's pretty hard to model damage in a PVP setting, but a main message in this thread is that successful rogue PVP is about control and burst at appropriate times. You're going to spend a lot of time unable to reach your target, which (arguably) lessens the value of +hit considerably. (There has been some discussion about this farther back in this thread.)

I think the deciding factor when socketing yellow gems for PVP (I only do it to qualify a meta) is not 5 hit vs. 5 crit, but rather 5 agi vs. 10 ap. If you're 20/0/41 or some variation of ShS, the Agility is considered more beneficial because it's modified twice by Sinister Calling and Deadliness and also offers some amount of crit and dodge along with the ap it provides.

 

drumbum

Hit rating is usually undervalued by many PVP rogues. I probably wouldn't give it too much attention if I wore a few pieces of T6, but since I don't, the added hit rating is more noticeable. When you're just above 5% hit rating in PVP gear, you will miss attacks against frost mages, which can really cause problems sometimes. It also helps Blind to land on rogues up to 9% (and beyond when Evasion is used). But perhaps most importantly, it improves poison application. With most rogues using Wound Poison on mainhand, it's nothing short of maddening to have a 5-stack of Wound Poison drop off your target even while you were attacking him nonstop. Not that 10 hit rating (the amount from 2 orange epic gems) is a huge amount, but every bit helps. It's also worth mentioning that crit rating is just terrible against a heavy resilience target (1 AP = 1 crit rating is a very close approximation).

As for agility versus attack power: I won't get too in depth in it because it's been brought up hundreds of time, but the fact that agility is benefited by two talents really is irrelevant because they aren't equal untalented. AP is always more damage than agility against high resilience targets -- this is true for every single rogue PVP spec. The benefit of agility is in its dodge and armor, but it is about 10% less damage (toward Hemo) with a Shadowstep spec.

 

Fold

This is a solid point, but at the same time it gets into meta game considerations like "are you going to be facing a lot of melee centric teams?" What bracket are you playing in? Who are your teammates? It's definitely not cut and dry, I play on a double melee team in 3s, where I know that we'll be also facing a lot of double melee teams, so I opt for a mix of Agility and AP when gemming and enchanting. If I know that I'm getting Battle Shout, or if I know that I'm getting WF or GoA and SoA it might change my decisions on my loadout.

Another comment on +hit, I think it's perceived value in PVP is incorrectly inflated because it's such a great stat for raiding, but that value comes from the synergy with Combat Potency. Most PVP rogues these days are not speccing Combat. I will qualify this by saying that if given a choice between +hit and +crit in equal values I would take the +hit every time. However, I think it's safe to say that a much larger portion of your damage in PVP is going to be coming from specials when compared to PVE. Your comment about Poison application with regards to Wound is also relevant, but there are tactics you can adopt to conquer those factors, such as macro/shiv with a different weapon to have two "on call" poisons available.

 

drumbum

This is really what I was trying to say, so I think we're in agreement. Since I prefer 5 agility over 10 AP, and also prefer 5 hit over 5 crit, the choice is easy for me.

Maybe what I should have said is that rather than hit rating being undervalued, I think crit rating is overvalued. I think most people realize that crit rating is hurt by resilience, but perhaps don't realize just how much. I think most people would still take 1 crit rating over 1 hit rating, although I don't know that for a fact.

It's also somewhat interesting to note that hit rating is entirely immune to the effects of resilience, and I believe it's the only DPS stat that behaves that way.

 

Tyrn

I've recently hit 5% hit on my Rogue, and I have noticed a HUGE difference in key actions like kidney shot and blind. The RNG monster bothers me far less than it used to. I look forward to a stable connection soon so I can see how far I can push my ratings.

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8412/tar2fv0.jpg

 

Grunge

It's nice, but there's still the problem with Mages and Rogues. 9% huzzah!

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