sithila

but the thing that annoys me is that resilience is such a backbone in pvp it seems that ccertain calsses that are in need of other stats (rogues in this case) are reduced down and forced (the point of the CD nerf) us to stack resilience as well. i stopped playing my lock because sitting there stacked w/ resilience and stamina got so boring but now rogues are forced to sacrifice damage for this nerf. but do u think this will change the settup of arena teams in 2's? as in what rogues would partner w/

or anyone thought of where those 3 points could be more useful if u still did the pve/pvp gear mix and left CD out?

 

Killme888

Wait what? Are you implying that druids can't shift of the daze? Only daze that druids cant shift out of is the mob daze, daze caused by players(piercing howl, blade twisting etc.) can be shifted out of.

If you meant something else, my bad.

 

• Tiiki

I'm very suprised by all the Cheat Death whining here. If you wear 400+ resi as I always did (not having any access to PvE gear), you don't notice the difference. The Hemo nerf at the same time wasn't needed, I agree, but I feel it's levelled the playing field for me at least because I never had the option of wearing PvE gear anyway (as I don't enjoy raiding anymore).

If you have over 400 resi there is basically no difference to before except when you avoided a massive Execute crit or Shatter combo at 20% HP, now you end up at 10%. But this is hardly a regular occurrence.

Interesting that lots of you are talking about speccing out of Cheat Death. The moment we suspect a Rogue doesn't have it, we'll ALWAYS focus him down in future games- so good luck with that.

 

Lucke

We tend to focus them now soon as we see any noticeable PVE gear.

 

Shawntlin

Quick question about enchants. I was glancing through the posts, but it was taking too long, and i didnt see anything about which weapon enchants a rogue should use. if i missed it, i'm sorry.

But should a rogue go executioner/mongoose or dual mongoose?

and if its exe/mongoose, exe on mh and mongoose on oh?

as a sub rogue, i have 980 armor ignore, so the executioner proc will leave clothies near nekkid (especially if theres a priest/shaman to dispel/purge a priests armor buff).

any suggestions/comments would be greatly appreciated!!!!!

 

Zyz

Most go with double mongoose, since executioner can get wasted.
If you expose a cloth and hes already at 0 armor, executioner does nothing.

 

Greymist1

It's still somewhat useful in 2s, provided that I wear 400+ res, but in 5s it feels like it might as well not be there no matter what gear I wear. Cheat Death's mechanics make even tiny scraps of stam extremely valuable for the duration of the proc. Guaranteeing that your health is no more than 10% at the start of the proc is a much bigger nerf than it might seem at first.

It may become necessary to use [Battlemaster's Determination] to survive most Cheat Death procs in any context other than 2s... which is a secondary nerf since many shadowstep rogues are accustomed to using a [Bloodlust Brooch] or [Berserker's Call] to make up for shadowstep's almost nonexistent native burst.

It nerfs your Hemo damage by the same percentage as anyone else, no matter the amount of PvE gear worn. The only nerf required to level the playing field was the change to Cheat Death's damage reduction, which was (if you ask me) more than enough by itself to get rogues out of PvE gear.

I may be overreacting but I'm pretty disheartened by this week of Arena games -- in 2s I can no longer put enough pressure on teams with good anti-rogue CC/kite to win very many games (and there are about a billion druid/X teams active right now), and in 5s the smart enemy teams were just assist training me as soon as I came out of stealth, even after I switched to my max resilience set. Haven't played any 3s yet.

 

• Tiiki

I don't play 5s (anymore) so I can't comment. But I agree, the 10% thing probably is a bigger nerf in that context. Then again, even at 'full power' I can't see how Cheat Death would help you survive a full assist train in 5s anyway, for very long.

You misunderstand me (my fault) on the second part. I was talking about two seperate things - I agree the Hemo nerf is 100% a bad/pointless thing, but I was saying that I liked the Cheat Death resi nerf as it puts everyone on a more level gear playing field. Rogues were about the only class that could get away with such low resilience numbers amongst DPSers. Perhaps Warriors can now, since the amount of caster teams out there is so greatly reduced (which is obviously bad for Rogues as much as it's good for Warriors, but hey...).

I'm mainly focused on 2s at the moment and Cheat Death still works nicely there (with my 413 currently worn resi).

 

LenniZ

Why is it that everyone seem to "hate" hit rating, for some reason? It seems like most people are ONLY interested in AP/crit once they hit 79 hitrating, which seems unreasonable to me. I mean, I'm not very experienced in arena, but I do think logically, and to me, hit rating have far, far more advantages than AP does, even in PvP.

Hit rating benefits over AP/crit;
- Guaranteed damage increase, unmigitated by resilience (In PvE crit rating is bad because it is so expensive, why should it be better in PvP, where it is even gimped by resilience?)
- Increased poison applications (woundpoison especially, having a full stack of wound fall off due to a streak of misses is bad)
- Increased chance to hit frostmages and rogues with interrupts and blind
- Less affected by scorpid sting or Insect swam if you happen to get debuffed by it

Especially after the hemo nerf, hit rating should become even more valuable. Any thoughts?

Edit: This is for the shadowstep spec, of course. I understand for mutilate or a build that cointans AR so you get more yellow attacks off, that stacking AP would be better. But as shadowstep, you do not have any controlled increased burst damage, you are still handicapped by having to wait for energy to pull off another attack.

edit2: And before anyone comments on my own gemming; I've stopped raiding/dailies completly a good while ago, so I would gem 10hit if I had access to it.

 

Unwielding

I have read this entire thread, and I see alot of back and forth about specs and the like. One question I had as is would daggers or a slower weapon sword/maces be better for ShS speccing.

I have seen a few people blasting people for using daggers in a ShS build, but maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, but I would have assumed back stabbing like crazy in a ShS build. Am I right in thinking that? Or just not reading the material right.

Sorry I'm new to the rogue class.

 

Doovad

Slower weapon for ShS assuming you have / use hemo. Daggers x105%(correct modifier now?) weapon damage modifier of hemo is much weaker, while using the damage of a 2.6 sword/mace x105% damage is much better. Hemo should be your bread and butter move. Daggers are ok if your going around ambush ganking lowbies or the such.

 

Halfdane

Hit rating is still pretty good, but is much weaker in PvP than in PvE.

In PvP, you spend a fair amount of a battle crowd controlled or snared, running after someone unable to hit them. During this time, you regenerate energy. Because of this regeneration, your energy regeneration per delivery time is much higher than in PvE. (In PvE, the models assume that you are always "on target", so you get 10 energy/second of energy regen/delivery time).

Because of this, in PvP, your yellow attacks (like Hemo) do more damage relative to your white attacks than in PvE. Hit rating past 79 does not effect the damage of yellow attacks (other than the relatively infrequent situations that you describe), so there is an inflection point where adding hit past 79 isn't as important.

I'm very interested in modeling this effect, however. Are there any addons out there that people would recommend for calculating white vs. yellow damage in PvP?

 

LenniZ

Well, true, that makes sense, but there is also the fact that it does cost energy, that you may have to use on gouge/blind/kick/DT etc. With additional hit chance you are able to keep pressure up without having to wait for energy. I cannot count the amount of times I've killed a target while still having enough energy for other important stuff. (Or do you never interrupt or blind anyone?)

I mean, it's not like white damage is no damage, just because you arent seeing as high hemo numbers as usual on your screen.

Edit: I have yet to see someone just TRY it for a while though, there is too much anecdotal evidence flying around on every bandwagon-rogues mind to try something else. (No offence).

 

• Tiiki

Another reason is scaling.

The assumption here is you're using mostly Arena/Honor pieces, so you have what hit rating they give you.

Past that, all you can do is gem hit rating. Except a 10 agi gem is 10%x15% more from talents in terms of AP and more in terms of crit, too. 10 hit is just 10 hit.

Plus it's burst that kills, not lots of steady white damage. Past the ~-10% crit (or is it 12.5%?) that a target gets at capped resilience, crit is all good. I'm currently at 36.7% crit unbuffed, which is ~26.7% against full resi targets. This is still a great crit rate and a crit chain is what can finish someone off. You want to maximise the chance of these occuring.

So overall, hit is fine, but really, Agi gems make the most sense.

Oh and the tons of dodge you get shouldn't be ignored either.

 

Jakani

The other thing to note is that hit rating scales with raid buffs, and AP does not. Unbuffed, AP is a better DPS increase than hit rating, and that's what you're looking at in pvp. Hit rating also does more for a combat spec with DW spec, combat potency, and sword spec. It's just not as useful for shadowstep as AP is. Shadowstep also brings Deadliness and Sinister calling to get even more out of those gem slots.

 

drumbum

@Tiiki

Hit rating DOES provide burst damage. In fact, it's arguably just as effective as crit rating (if not moreso) for burst damage.

Consider that hit rating changes misses to hits, while crit rating changes hits to crits. With RED, Murder, and against 450 resilience, your white attacks will crit for about 1.62 times as much as a regular hit. This means that changing a miss to a hit adds as much damage as a regular hit deals, while changing a hit to a crit only adds 0.62 times as much, or less than 2/3 as much damage added. Replacing a miss with a hit is MORE effective at adding burst damage than replacing a hit with a crit. In addition, hit rating converts at a much more favorable rate (15.76 hit rating per 1% hit, versus 22.08 crit rating per 1% crit), so you're getting more of it. All said and done, hit rating adds more than double the white DPS as crit rating does.

The difference is that hit rating doesn't really benefit yellow damage as much (outside of frost mages, etc.). However, white damage is still a very large portion of your overall damage. This combined with the other utility advantages of hit rating (poison application, spell pushback, Blind not missing against ShS rogues, specials not missing against frost mages), I think hit rating is superior in almost all aspects to crit rating, point for point.

Now, don't get me wrong, I know you're talking about agility -- but I wanted to at least point out that hit rating does provide burst, and was using crit rating as my comparison. The added dodge and armor of agility help to make it more advantageous, but hit rating is still very, very good.


@ Jakani

In zero resilience situations, you'd be accurate. But resilience has a large effect against crit rating, a smaller effect on AP and agility, but -- here's the kicker -- ZERO effect on hit rating. Literally zero.

Hit rating isn't a better DPS increase than AP or agility, no, but it does provide other benefits (as listed above). I wouldn't take it in all my sockets, but I definitely take [Glinting Pyrestone] over [Wicked Pyrestone].

To me I would only consider gemming all hit rating if it would put me over 10% so I'll know I'll never miss against a frost mage, but it takes too much to get up there in full PVP gear. I definitely wouldn't complain about hit rating on PVE gear though, if I had any T6 to wear.

 

• Tiiki

Do you not understand the part where burst means more damage in a shorter space of time?

Converting extra hits, 2.6 seconds later, doesn't count.

You want a Hemo crit, White MH crit, White OH crit and second Hemo crit 1 GCD later to land, type thing. Even if other times both white hits might miss completely. It's the peaky and troughy damage you want.

You start off with the statement "Hit rating DOES provide burst damage" and end with "hit rating adds more than double the white DPS as crit rating does". I agree with the second point... but it's not really relevant :P

 

drumbum

Random burst damage isn't what wins games (well, maybe occasionally). What wins games is planned burst damage done when, for example, a healer is CC trained. When your target is low on HP and you need to burst him down, you don't just say "OK, now I will crit 4 times in a row!" It just doesn't work that way. Therefore to improve your chance of a successful burst, you want to increase the amount of damage you will deal on average in a short period of time, since you don't generally have many windows of opportunity to hope to RNG your way to a win. Since you have a chance of missing when you need the damage, replacing misses with hits definitely increases the damage you can deal when you need it.

My point about hit rating being twice as beneficial to white damage was to convey that hit rating isn't automatically inferior because it doesn't help yellow damage. I think while I was editing my post I misplaced that statement, so sorry for the confusion. My real claim was (1) hit rating provides close to the same sustained damage as agility, and (2) hit chance is just as useful when trying to burst a target as crit chance is.

The kind of burst damage you are talking about is what warriors do -- they get a string of crits and kill someone before they can get healed. A Shadowstep rogue simply does not have that kind of burst available to them. 4 crits from a rogue does a lot less damage than 4 crits from a warrior, even though the chance of these two events occurring are relatively similar. Rogues' advantages come from control, not random burst.

 

Tel

And as a SS rogue, the only planned burst you can do is hemo. you can't plan for more white hits to land, or for more hemo's to crit, that would be 'lucky burst', all you can do is increase the damage of your hemo and land as many as possible in the time frame, by pooling your energy.

Hit/Crit rating won't do this for you as they don't increase the damage of your hemo. They increase the average damage of your hemo, but thats not alot of use to you in planning your burst. On the flipside of this Agi/AP will. That's why you gem agi/ap and use a trinket like Zerkers Call or BB rather than Romulo's poison vial and gem for Hit.

 

drumbum

I think you're taking this a bit too far, though. You say you can't "plan" on your white attacks landing -- well sure, they may all miss, though it's statistically unlikely to happen (and coincidentally, that's the point of hit rating, to increase white damage's reliability) -- but you can plan on Hemo? What if every single Hemo is dodged or parried? What if you have a debuff that drops you below 5% hit rating, and you start missing Hemos? No damage is "guaranteed" by any sense.

Imagine if based on your comp or whatever, to win a match against a certain team requires that you deal some specific amount of damage (X) in a specific time frame (say during a 10 second CC) in order to finish off your opponent. Naturally it's not possible to ever guarantee that you can deal X damage in 10 seconds, because it's entirely possible that every one of your attacks fails to land. Rare, but possible. Therefore the only thing you can do is to increase the chance for you to deal X damage in a 10 second window. From this perspective, hit rating is not far behind in effectiveness compared to agility, because they increase sustained damage by similar amounts. In short, hit rating and crit rating most certainly do increase the chance of dealing X damage in 10 seconds, so to suggest they are not helpful because they are based on chance is a bit illogical.

The primary difference between "burst damage" and "sustained damage" comparisons is the ratio of energy spent to time on target. Energy queuing increases this ratio. Both are functions of average damage, but burst damage is also more concerned with probability distribution (since time is usually much shorter, thus a much larger variance).

As far as gemming is concerned, if hit rating added more sustained damage than agility or attack power, you'd probably see most people gemming for it. The same would be true for crit rating. But they don't, so that's why AP/agility gemming has become more preferred. As for the trinket selection... BLB and BC are popular because they are on-use trinkets, not because they happen to use AP. A trinket that increases hit chance by an appropriate amount with an on-use effect would be nearly as good as these trinkets. Romulo's Poison Vial is a bad example because it uses a "chance on hit" proc, which due to the higher miss rate in PVP, is clearly going to be worse.

 

Halfdane

I think a lot of attention has been focused on Mutilate in WotLK, but most of is focused on Hunger for Blood or 41/25/5 builds. Do you think 41/0/30 deserves notice?

Something like:
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Rogue -> Talent Calculator

Deadliness makes up for some of the damage lost to not having duel wield, and you get Preparation, one of the most important PvP talents.

I feel it compares favorably with Shadowstep/Quick Recovery, trading some maneuverability for a lot more damage. It has most of the goodies that we see in our current 20/0/41 builds, but with the extreme burst damage of Cold Blood/Mutilate/<finisher>/Preparation/Cold Blood/Mutilate. It doesn't get much burstier than that.

 

Towelette

*DELETED*

Can we please avoid wasting time with the +hit argument again? We already did that for quite a while a few pages ago, and rehashing a topic that already has an answer is kind of pointless.

I've thought about it, but it's really hard to gauge at this time. I don't know that I'd want a build that doesn't include HfB or Shadowstep\Shadowdance. However, given that other classes are being given more mobility already, I'll have a hard time sacrificing any of my own. I'd be very interested to see some videos or hear accounts of both HfB and ShS\Shadowdance builds.

 

Macblade