Please post your findings here regarding any use of rogue mechanics that you discover during the course of an encounter. This can include both offense and defensive cooldowns, as well as, specing ideas for certain mechanics, clever uses of game mechanics, individual strategies used, or any other mechanical information found during the process of a fight which may enable other rogues to perform better.

Also, I may simply overlook or perform a mechanic wrong and that could cause some of my information (or other posted information) to be incorrect. I would appreciate all information discovered the be tested and validated. If you find that one of the stated mechanics is either correct or incorrect, please post to let me know so that I can update the thread. I will try to post an indication of those mechanics that are confirmed.

I will update the information as regularly as possible.

I have been unable to make most of the Heroic PTR testing. Are there any major changes anyone has noticed? I will only be able to make Heroic Spine 10. Please leave feedback.

Morchok: (All from bi0bi0, could use confirmation)
- You can cloak the "Black Blood of the Earth" Debuff.
- I skilled Enveloping Shadows as Sub and managed to survive the Ability "Black Blood of the Earth" (in 25 Mode) every Time (even in the Softenrage)
Its important to Feint after 3-4 Stacks -> Cloak when first Feint fades -> Feint when Cloak fades without any delay, otherwise your Cloak will be on Cooldown for the 2nd or the 3rd because "Black Blood of the Earth" is on a 90s timer.
I still needed some external Heal. If your healer cant manage to keep you alive, i would recommend to spec Cheat Death. (With a Timer for Black Blood of the Earth, it would be clever to use a Feint 6-7 seconds before, so that we also reduce the Damage in the first 2-3 seconds, and have Feint ready when the 3rd/4th Stack is applied)
- You can Feint the Stomp.
- You also take only a minimal amount of Damage from the "Tank" Stomp, so the tanking Tank can avoid the doubled Stomp damage. (Sidenote:The two closest targets take a double share of the damage.)
-Sub may be the best spec.
-May want to equip a throwable ranged to use during the crystals in order to keep deadly poison up.
-Glyph of Cloak does work on the stomp (although on heroic cloak should probably be saved)
Heroic:
-Be careful with Killing Spree, could port you around to bad places, like the orb (as always).
-You should take 2/2 recup if you are soaking as combat and keep it up for stomps.
-Consider taking 2/2 reinforced leather.


Yor'sahj the Unsleeping:
-Combat vs Assassination is under debate. Combat cleave is very useful, but the AoE of FoK may be much stronger.
-Sprint should be up for every ooze spawn phase, use on CD to get to them quickly.
-Reports of Recup not stacking corruption.
Heroic:
-Cannot cloak the healing debuff.

Warlord Zon'ozz:
-Cloaking the orb works. The orb does have a cooldown between when you can trigger it. The cooldown can easily be seen by visual cues.
-Feint'ing the orb works to reduce damage taken.
-Wound Poison reduces boss healing
Heroic:
-Fiend works on the raid wide dot during the tentacle phase
-Cloak still works on the orbs, but you need to time the immune with the hit to be able to solo the orb. It does not prevent the damage otherwise.
-Cannot cloak resist black blood AoE, but if well timed, you can immune a tick.
-Can kick Eyes when they are crouched over.
-Can cloak remove the debuff without knocking other people back

Hagara the Stormbinder:
-Combat will most likely be the best spec for this fight. When the ice tombs go out, they should either be placed close to the boss or next to each other (at least on normal) for cleave purposes.
-Vanish also temporarily stops you from getting hit by Ice Lance.
-Cloak can immune the conductor lightning damage, but only seems to do it for the first second of cloak.
-Cloak removed the stacking debuff during the lightning phase.
-Keep Sprints/rocket jumps for moving back into the middle after bubble shield burst, as she takes increased damage.
-Rupture does stack with feedback and the buff to rupture fades when feedback falls.
-Smoke bomb prevents ice lance from hitting you and players in the smoke.
-Can shadowstep through ice walls
Heroic:
-Imp Sprint removes the slow effect of frost traps.
-Cloak removes the slow effect of frost traps.
-Vanish Removes snare from frost traps
-Can cloak immune the frost wall, but it is not recommended
-You can Feint the Ice Lance Damage.
-Cloak removes the Ice Lance stacks.
-You can use Smoke Bomb a few seconds after vanishing the Ice Lances, which will protect you for another 5 seconds. If timed correctly there will be only 0-2 Lances. (I believe using Smoke Bomb will have no effect if you use it before Vanish e.g. before the Lances spawn, but I tested it only one time)
-You can Feint the damage in the Lightning Phase and you can use Feint on the Boss while she is in her bubble.
-Can cloak the snowflake debuff

Ultraxion:
-Killing spree is working (for now).
-Feint works for the Hour of Twilight. You do not have to use the button to go down, just use feint. You will need to have over 150k hp in order to survive with this and it puts you extremely low. Consider keeping up a recup as it happens. ALSO CONSIDERING USING A STAM FLASK FOR THIS. As I said, you need 150k to survive and you have to HAVE 150k the moment it goes off. You can spec sub for the redux as well.
-The boss has a debuff that makes it so you will not be parried.
-Cloak does not remove faded light, but you should be able to immune the effect with appropriate timing.
-Backstab and Ambush currently are not working from the front.
-Use Feint as often as possible.
-Cloak works on Hour of Twilight.
Heroic:
-If you take a Hour of Twilight, you get a 2 minute debuff. If you get hit again, you will be killed.
-You CAN cloak hour of twilight to prevent both damage (you will still get the debuff and die if soaking another before the debuff fades)
-You may want to go Sub and take enveloping shadows
-Cheat does not work.

Warmaster Blackhorn:
-Cloak and Feint both appear to work on the little blast pools (small purple pools).
-As for the large blasts, this was copied from one of my guilds test groups. They did not have a rogue with them, but this was their finding: "Large blasts should ideally be soaked by a majority/all of the group. Barring that, a fire mage with cauterize can definitely solo a large blast, as can a shadow priest with dispersion. Immunities such as ice block and bubble will not work"
-Damage reduction cd's work on the large blast pools. It is possible to solo "tank" the blast with a damage reduction cd. We used spriest with dispersion, so I was unable to test solo tanking with Feint, but it could potentially be viable
-Keep the big adds together for cleave. BF is very effective
-If the sapper makes it to the room and you are too close to the door, Feint works to reduce damage taken
-Slayer and Dreadblade can be Dismantled
-Can cloak Degeneration
-You can solo the small voids with feint, with a good HP pool
-Blade Twisting works to slow the sappers
Heroic:
-You can Cloak to get rid of the 15 secs Twilight Barrage debuff
-Can solo small pools with feint and being topped off
-You can BF adds and the drake. It is recommended that you have tanks position close enough to be able to do this, and if the dreadblade is still up, it can simply be faced away from the melee.

Spine of Deathwing:
-Cloak does not remove Searing Plasma
-Can Cloak/Feint the Superheated Nucleus
-Can Killing spree the tendons (there have been reports of being ported around the platform of his back, generally towards the opposite side from the tendon)
-Lots of cleave opportunity, combat may be best.
-Can shadowstep the tendons, but doing so teleports you to the rear of his back
-Can Cloak immune Grasping Tendrils
-You can shadowstep both amalgs and bloods.
Heroic:
-Feint works on corrupted blood's blast (what the do when they die). Very Important to do this towards the end.
-Should look at going troll/orc with on use macro'ed to something for the burst periods
-Blade flurry should be used with caution, as the blast damage and healing debuff could cause problems. Use best judgement based on environment and strategy.
-Sub has an extreme benefit on this fight . Not going to say I recommend it, but I will highly suggest it ;-)
-WP/WP is supposed to yield the highest burst
-This was my rotation and spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
5cp built while waiting-->Recup as blast casts-->cloak-->hemo to 3-4 CP-->Let HAT get you to 5-->ShS blood-->Pop SnD-->ToTT-->Vanish with trinket-->Premed/Ambush-->Evisc-->Backstab to 5-->Evisc-->ShD-->Ambush/evisc spam till ShD fades-->Backstab/Evisc until the end.
-ToTT mages and other rogues, pop it right before the tendon comes up if you are troll (so that it doesnt overlap with zerking). Outside that, it may be advisable to use it during shd instead (unsure at this time).
-Use /tar burning ten in a macro to ensure you are on it as soon as you can be.
-Post nerfs, you should be able to kill with any spec, but sub will still produce more burst on the tendons.
-If you are playing combat, consider using a different spec, one that is designed to maximize short term burst. AR may or may not be up for every tendon, depending on how fast your guild is at clearing to a nuclear burst.
-Combat has a major bonus in its ability to BF the bloods (if you find your guild unable to kill enough bloods quickly enough, especially towards the end, you should consider suggesting to go combat and BF bloods down).


Madness of Deathwing:
-Killing spree works.
-You can BF off of the Blistering tentacles onto the arm, but not the other way around.
-Can also BF onto the Elementium bolt (before Noz's platform) from the main tentacle and from Mutated Corruption.
-You cannot attack the hands from the back, you must be in front of them.
-Shadowstep has some issues. Works on Alextraza's platform, but not on Ysera's or Nozdormu's. It is not recommended that you shadowstep any part of deathwing, rather, use bloods.
-Feint and Cloak work on the elemental bolt smash.
-Feint doesn't work on Blistering Heat.
-Feint/cloak works on crush from Mutated Corruptions.
-Killing Spree DOES work in phase 2, but the visual is not noticeable.
-Apparently cannot be missed by auto-attacks (may want to considering reforging from hit, although you still need hit for poisons).
-FoK can proc spellweaving while kalecgos is up.
-You can use vanish and impale.
Heroic:
-Depending on your strat, combat and mut are both very strong for this fight.
-Personally, I go mutilate to maximize spellweave through FoK spamming, using tott and overkill to increase regen and minimize cost. FoK spamming will result in more spellweave procs than BF. Combat may look better on meters atm, but that is a result of leaving up a regen blood for almost the entire fight. I won't recommend any spec, simply say that combat does well as a result of a padding mechanic, while mut does the damage needed on the targets its needed on and when that damage is needed.
-Cloak removes corrupting parasite debuff, do not use until you are in the correct location.
-If you spec mutilate, you should put at least 1 point in deadly brew to slow the bloods on the last platform (DW's head).

I have to disagree with the cloak on Zon'ozz. It triggered fine and I took no damage during the cloak immunity.

It is very possible that I am wrong about this. It was early in our testing that I tried it and it is possible that the internal CD of the orb was still up.

It seems there would be plenty of cleaving opportunity on Spine of Deathwing, with all the adds about.

Also, is it likely that Combat would come out ahead on Ultraxion due to not being behind the boss for sub 35%?

If this appears to be true, you should be able to take full advantage of MI. Seeing how there would be no need to cap for Expertise or Hit for this specific fight, you could reforge all your Expertise/Hit into Mastery/Haste or Crit. Even though this boosts all 3 specs significantly, Combat will most likely come out ahead thanks to the stronger scaling with both stats.

Of course it all depends on how exactly the whole buff plays out in reality.

I recall reading that the debuff on the boss that removes dodge/parry/miss chance also lets you use positional abilities all the time.

Rogues in the official feedback thread are reporting that, yet again, you can't use Killing Spree without killing yourself. I hope it gets fixed before it goes live.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I was unsure how to link this to show the hit/miss, so I just linked the log itself. As it demonstrates, Poisons still miss and there are still glancing blows on Ultrax. I believe that this log covers 7 attempts and 1 kill (with a few wipes done on purpose to reset and test again). I can't remember how much hit my rogue has on the PTR because it is not the current live gear I have, but I would guess that its around 600-800 (will check this later and update you). With that, I was only missing with DP 3.1% and IP 2.9%. These are just PTR testing numbers, but it gives us a starting point at least.

With that, it seems mut rogues will probably want to maintain their hit caps and combat rogues may just want to reforge out of expertise. If someone has actual testing/numbers crunched on this though, that would be better than just me general guesses.

I can confirm also that Killing spree does not work. There was also this post from a member of Pie Chart: "Worry not, a GM told me you would be able to KS in the next build of this boss. I imagine it will work the same as Ragnaros... and I assume that means Shadowstep will work as well." All should be well in this department.


I have been unable to test Morchok and will be unable to test him today. Is there anyone that has that could give some feedback? I will also miss everything up to Spine for todays testing. Please post if you find anything.

Also on yesterdays Yor'sahj testing, did anyone try out mutilate to spam FoK? With all of the switching and massive aoe from other classes, combat rogues were actually looking VERY weak on this compared to most other classes. I found myself at/near the bottom on and attempt that we switched off of the boss (we did some where we let all the oozes hit and during those I was around the middle of the pack). Anyone try out mut/sub?

You have to pick up the quest before you can pickpocket it correct? I was unable to find the quest when I was in there a few days ago. I haven't really looked since though.

You can backstab/ambush his face. It is only Killing Spree and Shadowstep that fail.

@Morchok.

- You can cloak the "Black Blood of the Earth" Debuff.

- I skilled Enveloping Shadows as Sub and managed to survive the Ability "Black Blood of the Earth" (in 25 Mode) every Time (even in the Softenrage)
Its important to Feint after 3-4 Stacks -> Cloak when first Feint fades -> Feint when Cloak fades without any delay, otherwise your Cloak will be on Cooldown for the 2nd or the 3rd because "Black Blood of the Earth" is on a 90s timer.
I still needed some external Heal. If your healer cant manage to keep you alive, i would recommend to spec Cheat Death. (With a Timer for Black Blood of the Earth, it would be clever to use a Feint 6-7 seconds before, so that we also reduce the Damage in the first 2-3 seconds, and have Feint ready when the 3rd/4th Stack is applied)

- You can Feint the Stomp.

- You also take only a minimal amount of Damage from the "Tank" Stomp, so the tanking Tank can avoid the doubled Stompdamage. (Sidenote:The two closest targets take a double share of the damage.)

(I highly recommend Subtlety for this Fight, this will give you 30% more Dpstime overall.)

I am unsure of the details and cause, but Feint seems to cut the damage from Ultraxion's Twilight Arc twice, making us take 1/4 of the damage instead of 1/2.

Morchok: in a 10 man, we single tanked him and I stood in the center of the boss using feint for the stomp and would only get 30k damage. If I mis-timed the feint b/c of gcd, I would take little under 110-120k damage. Can also peak around the pillar and use throw to keep DP up on the boss during the black earth phase while still safe from getting dmged by the black earth.

Yor'sahj: sprint will be off cd for every ooze, they come out ever 1 min 10 to 20 seconds, which is also about the same amount of time that killing spreed comes off of cd.

Warlord Zon'ozz: I can vouch for cos'ing the orb to bounce it if no one is around to help. The hit box for the boss is a little smaller than the red ring that is shown when he's selected, so feinting the orb bounce must be done before you peel off to the orb.

During Hagara, you can vanish and icelance will stop targeting you, but when you come back, it re-aquires target on you after a second or two. COS will be able to drop the debuff from the icelance.

Warmaster Blackhorn: it seems that cos doesn't work on the big blast pool. If for some reason the sapper reaches the room, can feint the damage so that is survivable, but will still come out very low. COS doesn't appear to work on this damage. Where ever I say "doesn't appear to work" it *might* work if COS is used just as the damage comes in, just like for major domo and the seeds on heroic mode can be cos so that you the damage buff bar doesn't drop to 0.

Are you certain that clos prevents the heroic ultraxion Looming Darkness debuff? I was consistently getting cloak immunes off but still getting the debuff in the process. The only time I managed to avoid the debuff was when I fully resisted Hour of Twilight (which I assume isn't intended). Will have to test again tonight.

EDIT: Definitely getting the debuff even with cloak immune right now.

Heroic Ultraxion (11/02/2011 PTR):

Cheat Death does not work against Ultraxion's Hour of Twilight with the Looming Darkness debuff.
Cloak of Shadows (cloak-immune) does work on Hour of Twilight, but does not work when you have the Looming Darkness debuff.

edit: added underlining

Still can't Backstab Ultraxion. Killing Spree does work though.

Also, Ultraxion does not parry, but can still dodge.

I could Cloak immune the Hour of Twilight, but I was still receiving the debuff.

Didn't see it updated here, I was on a Rogue alt on Madness of Deathwing yesterday and was able to killing spree the limbs. It puts you about 15 foot in the air as the point it ports you to constantly before dropping down to the platform.

A couple things for heroic 10-man Warmaster Blackhorn, disarming the large adds does not appear to prevent the usage of their abilities (stun immune as well). Feint alone is not enough to solo a Twilight Onslaught (large blast, does 1.2 million on heroic) however, it can be CoS-immuned.

I disagree with that. Adds are either multiple (black ooze) and better killed with aoe or a sole blue mana sponge usually not close enough to the boss for cleave purposes. I don't think Combat cleaving ability will help much. Assassination's strong AoE may push it to the top for this fight.

The boss can easily be dragged on top of the mana void to allow cleaving.

We tried assassination on one of the 25 man attempts. Assassination seemed to be stronger. This could use some more review.


It is not recommended that you solo a Twilight Onslaught. While someone can survive the blast while solo'ing it, the damage appears to continue to the ship unless there are a minimum number of people in it.

Update on killing spree on Madness of Deathwing. It still works on the Arm and Wing tentacles. On the Wing ones you get placed in the air like I mentioned previously but you're safe, nothing to worry about. On the Arm tentacles you just stay in front of it and on the ground during KS. KS does not work on the Mutated Corruption, I was unable to cast it at all. I didn't spot whether it targeted Blistering Tentacles or not as I was tending to save it for the Regenerative Blood.