I actually missed Elusiveness and DD which is alot worse then HS. The power of HS depends alot on bracket and setup. The 20% to eviscerate in assasination is alot cheaper then 9% from the combat tree for the same ammount of points, tho we can get them as fillers (and thanks to 3 points LR)

With new LR you could go Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (should be named SHARP ). I suppose savage combat. is superior to imp. evisc. Can always move points from there and combat potency into boosting eviscerate damage.

I'd argue that Hemo in essence is inferior to SS. Considering Glyph, Aggression, Blade Twisting and SA.

I'm toying with the idea of trying out something like this: x/4x/25 with 4 points (6 if you don't take HS) left for any of the following: Savage Combat, Throwing Specialization, Unfair Advantage, Nerves of Steel, Improved Eviscerate, Malice.
Although from the list, I'd dismiss Throwing Specialization and NoS as somewhat inferior to the others and not really needed.
I didn't include WE in the list, due to SA making your finishers no longer be dodged and that's really all you'd need expertise for.

Also it's possible to go maces with this spec by not taking CQC (and spending 1 point on either ISnD or Deflection).
Depends on what they do with Macespec. Then again if you have access to Calamity's Grasp+WD/Murder...

I'd call this spec SSARP.

I noticed the lack of elusiveness but somehow failed to mention it. For me HS just feels like a necessity unless I want to get opened on in 2s (who doesn't right?). Yes you get more bang for your buck with Imp. eviscerate but the points have to go somewhere in combat and aggression is the best place for them so I would argue its about the same. Like you said they are somewhat filler points. Honestly I think I will be toying with a ShS build. I perfer the mobility.

If you're going with Hemo then yes, Imp Eviscerate is more bang for the buck.
With SS Aggression wins out.

I've been playing with the basic skeleton spec Grunge posted here for the last 2 weeks in 2s to modest success (currently cruising at ~1900). Here's my spec:

The World of Warcraft Armory

I like the framework for the heavy melee meta-game of 2s, where I see a lot of Warriors, DKs, and Rogues. I play with a Shaman healer who is fairly durable against melee, so I end getting focused frequently against those comps, and that is where the spec shines. The spec allows you to train healers fairly effectively against melee too, because you can Ripostes off on your primary target while tanking the peeler and you have better initial mobility with Imp. Spring. Blade Flurry while on a healer with a peeler on you is also a lot of pressure, obviously


Where the spec doesn't shine is when it comes to lockdown and peels - I shiv, a lot, and Tuskarr's Vitality != FF.

I tend to agree with Grunge that SS is just better than Hemo; the filler points you gain going Hemo over SS aren't super exciting, and you end up picking up incidental SS buffs through Blade Twisting anyways. The Glyph choices for SS is also more attractive imo.

I know this post is dangerously anecdotal, but I figured some amount of people saying "This spec works and doesn't suck that badly" will help generate some additional feedback.

On the subject of SSsub builds, I've been thinking about this particular spec, which is essentially a Sinister Strike HAT Build.

0/27/44

Basically I've been getting pretty sick of the lack of mobility in Mutilate and the recent nerf to it's burst has got me looking for something new. I was originally going to try an AR Prep build like those you posted, but HAT + SS Glyph giving up to 3 combos for a SS crit is very tempting, not to mention I haven't quite gotten over my Shadow Step addiction.

Anyway, I have yet to try this out, but perhaps soon...

If you want burst/mobility - i made a test with mutilate before respeccing to shadowdance(link). My backstabs were hitting for slightly less then the mutilates, gives 1 cp but only costs 45 energy - but with HaT and a decent setup you'll gain more combopoints then you did with mutilate.

Shadowdance requires more keybindings and macros for sure, but the talent is borderline overpowered. 80% chance to crit on ambushes that for 5-6k on leather with decent resilience, and with 130 energy you can do 3-4 on the fly. Not to mention neat tricks like sapping rogues out of vanishes, cheapshot to land a kidney on rogues with evasion up, or just using it as a 3rd vanish versus any target.

Having tried shadowdance for a few days now, i can't ever see how combat or any HaT/combat specc would trump what shadowdance/dagger specc has to offer - or why anyone would want to make a hemmospecc out of what essentially is the old mutilate with a free shadowstep and a swiss armyknife named shadowdance.

---

I'd love to see combat viable, but instead of giving it a passive melee haste they should have have given it some aid in the CP generation - which would have both boosted PvE dps and made it an option for pvp.

Hi all.

Firstly, I have been playing mage/rogue in 2s for the past 4 weeks. Rogue's having the standard Mut/Prep spec, 540 resilences with fairly good PvE gears (2xSR with double Wound). Mage's in the standard 20/0/51 Frost spec, 680 resilences with good PvE gears too (Turning Tide). Currently, we are sitting in the 1800ish range.

I will like some advices on the Ret/Feral combo, which we can never seem to beat and nothing works for us. The fight usually goes like this:

Mage goes 1v1 with Ret, while I spend a little time trying to look for the stealthed kitty. If I can't find him (usually, I wouldn't be able to find him), or mage can't get Freedom off the Ret, I'll quickly open on the Ret and we'll try to force the bubble.

Now, the trouble comes when I'm unstealthed. The moment I open on the Ret, I always get jumped on by the Feral, and they tend to just burst me down heavily. I pop Evasion early, and pre-Cloak just as Cheapshot runs out on the Ret, but still, I ended up taking a shitload of damages from them both. With Faire Fire and bleeds up on me, even if we managed to force the bubble, I find it hard to escape them both to try to get some health back. Mage, in the meantime, is trying hard to get the Ret to bubble while on the lookout for Feral's healing (rarely, but sometimes they do heal).

In the event that we switch our DPS on the kitty, he will just bear up and tank our damage. Even with the Ret being chained-sheeped, we are finding it hard to pressure the Bear before the Ret is immune and starts to own me hard again.

We are still trying to think of some decent strats against this combo. Any advices are much appreciated.

We usually just nuke the feral, at feral+healer comps too. If he switches bear, he takes less dmg, but does less dmg too, you can just evasion tank him for ~30 sec, CC the other guy, 30 sec should be enough to kill him against healer+feral, against dd+feral he will die fast.

What are the two best professions for a human rogue in arena?

Engineering/jewelcrafting probably.

maybe the druids in 1800+ dont do this but ive seen that if you switch focus from the druid (bear) to, in this case the ret pally, the druid sees the burst and tries to throw HoTs in caster form, you should be anticipating this and immediately throw a ks on him and burn him. the only problem i see with this is to burst the pally hard enough without clearing your CPs on the druid.

Now normally, any information on the cancerous boards that are forums.worldofwarcraft.com wouldn't be worth bringing to this forums attention but I found a particular gem that should be recognized.

35/5/31

Seems sorta silly until we think about the following: A pvp Shiv spec. Wounding Mainhand, Instant Poison offhand. I'm not sure if it would be worth speccing over the conventional Mut/Prep but from the basic match of how the Combat Shiv builds work in PvE and how much damage Shiving Instant is in relativity to Sinister striking, one would think this would be a fairly strong build until they inevitably nerf Shiv again.

The tradeoffs in my eyes:
+Easy poison application.
+Good damage upkeep, though maybe more constant less bursty.
+Keeps All the important Subtlety talents.
-Lack of 2 combo points per yellow hit.
-Lack of wound poison on OH.


Really I'm not seeing much of a downfall here, the damage seems to ignore army primarily which seems generally good in my eyes.

I have seen that some of you have said that you believe Subtlety might be a better spec for high bracket PvP and that Mut/Prep is better for low end(1500-1700 range). With the recent nerf to Mutilate do you still believe that Mutilate is the best option for low brackets? I know that Subtlety went almost untouched, so far, for patch 3.1 so I assume it still has the same viability but I wanted to know if Mut/Prep just lacked the burst effectiveness that it used to have.

Viable PvP build? Perhaps BG's only, but maybe it would work for arena's. I say this because it would increase damage on Garrote (which I think is underused in pvp), keeping rogue's from restealthing, silencing casters, and isn't mitigated by plate.

Not to mention the bonus mobility from ShS allowing you to, "Stay on target."

Bonus points if you can remember what movie that quote is from.

7/23/41

What'cha think?

Edit: Blood Spatter and Opportunity provide the synergy to allow this build to work.

No.

Hmm...based on you the build above from Rudegirl, I made an adjustment to allow for better CP generation (removed Puncturing Wounds, put 2 points into Ruthlessness, 1 point into Hemo). I think this build would perhaps work better because of using Backstab & Ambush, you would be using Ambush for Shadowdance exclusively, with Hemo as an "off-attack".

16/0/55 Shadowdance

How does that look? At the very least, I think it would be a blast in BG's.

Bonus points to Slickshoes for getting the Star Wars reference.

-Ruthlessness: For arenas you likely won't need the extra combopoint generation unless your doing 2's with a healer. HaT is as good as seal fate when your the only dps, and infinitly much better if you are teamed with another dps in 2's or 3's.
-Hemorrage: isn't really needed for anything but duels, it's highly unlikely that you'll be tanking down any targets in a "face to face" while doing arenas also.
-Waylay: It basicly does what crippeling does whenever you use shadowdance and ambush spam, the 20% attackspeed reduction is not worth the points as most melee in the game rely on yellow attacks to do damage anyhow.
-Master of deception: You need 3/3 for obvious reasons, those points are not something to play with for arenas.
-Initiative: You can likely drop those points as premeditation is on a 20 sec cooldown, just do one backstab after the opener and you'll have 5CP's anyhow. I suggest putting them into setup for better combopoint generation.
-Puncturing wounds: pick that up if you go for backstab (like you should), 30% crit with your main attack means you can drop alot of crit from your gear in favor of resilience and/or attackpower.
-Cheat death: You might aswell skip it, if you go low cheat death won't save you like it used to in TBC. All it does is mitigate the one attack that would normally kill you and then you die from DoT's/white hits 0,5sec later anyhow.

On that note, cheat death needs a serious buff as rogues are by far the easiest class in the game to instagib right now

As much as I would love to see Cheat Death become something from its old reverted state I highly doubt this will happen. However I do think it could use a rework and possibly just scale better with resilence.

From what I have seen, the downfall and why people do not choose this at higher levels is simply you blow your load from the beginning. Once that's over, if your target isn't dead, it's doing poor sustained damage and waiting on cooldowns.

However I did see changes noted today on MMO champion from a blue post that talks about a glyph to make shadowdance last an additional 4 seconds come 3.1.... That just brings energy starvation into play possibly though.

Hmm...I see your point(s). I'm going to try this out. Only problem I have is, I can't get the bloody Fleshshaper to drop. I'm stuck using Dagger of Betrayal MH, & Titansteel Shanker OH until/if something drops from Naxx or Heroic HoS. Damage on those two daggers is similar, but Shanker is faster for OH poison procs, is what I'm thinking. Poison setups for those with this build would be, Wound MH, Instant OH...with a macro for Crippling poison Shiv using my LPC (fastest dagger I have right now)?

Oh, and glyphs? I'm thinking Vigor, Evis, Backstab?

Any suggestions on a better weapon setup would be greatly appreciated. I just started a new arena 2's team last night, and unfortunately didn't get enough games in before my partner had to take off. Anyways, doubt I'll have a shot at any glad weapons any time soon.

Come 3.1, I'm prolly going to try out Mace Spec + Serrated Blades. Armor Penetration will be great, possible combo could make rogues a plate killer?

Dunno.

That will all depend on how they scale armor pen...