Theo's (WotLK/Cata) Rogue PvP ThreadFollow

Hey guys. I've been away for a while, but I figured I'd try to revitalize the forum a little bit by bringing back an old staple: my PvP thread.

Since there's really not a limit to how long a single post can be, I'm going to be going back and copy/pasting a lot of the basic info from my old FAQ and then updating it.

A note: this will mainly be regarding how to gem and gear, as well as what talents are useful, and what aren't. Also covered will be what build to play based on which comp you're running.

On to the info, then!

Arena Terms

In this post I’ll be explaining terms that I will use quite frequently in arena discussion, that may not be obvious to PvP newbies. If more clarification is needed, please ask.

Baiting: Using moves or abilities that provoke the enemy into attacking you in a certain way. (Eg. A rogue using a CS -> KS opening will usually bait a Blind from another rogue, and can counter with Evasion right as KS is up, giving him an extra 25% chance for that Blind to miss.)

Burning: The act of a priest manaburning a target over and over, to hopefully run them out of mana (see OOM).

Buttons: Abilities/trinkets that can be used to boost damage.

CC: Crowd control. Fear, Blind, Sap, Sheep, Intimidating Shout, etc. are all considered crowd control. Used to take an enemy out of the fight for periods of time in order to make it easier on your teammates to take down other enemy players. (Note: stuns are NOT CC.)

Comp: Arena team makeup, for instance rogue/priest, druid/warrior. There are also abbreviations for team comps, such as RMP (rogue/mage/priest), RWD (rogue/warrior/druid), RRL (rogue/rogue/lock), etc.

Counter-comp: A comp that is a natural counter to your team’s comp. (Eg. Rogue/mage is counter-comp’d by lock/druid, meaning that rogue/mage has a very low chance to win, all things being equal.)

CS: Counterspell. Also can refer to Cheap Shot, but generally used on vent for Counterspell.

DRs: Diminishing returns. CC (see above) usually have diminishing returns, in which an 8 second CC turns into 4, then 2, then you will get an “Immune” on next cast on the target. General math is full duration -> 1/2 duration -> 1/4 duration -> immune. Some CCs, like Blind and Cyclone, are said to “share” DRs, meaning that if Blind is used then Cyclone is used on the same target, Cyclone will pick up on DRs, making that a 1/2 duration Cyclone.

Humping: Sticking to an object, such as a pillar, to break enemy caster’s line of sight.

Locked: Term referring to when a player gets Counterspell used on them while casting, preventing them from casting.

LOS: Line of sight. All offensive abilities (or almost all) require line of sight to use. Putting an object such as a pillar between yourself and an opponent will for the most part prevent them casting on you. Related to humping.

Overextend: Moving out of the range of your healers. Generally called on vent to get the team to focus that person as they won’t be getting much, if any, healing.

Outs: An ability or trinket that breaks a CC or snare. Called outs because they get you out of said CC/snare.

Peel: Shorthand for the act of putting a snare on a melee class that’s trying to attack one of your teammates when that class is not your main target, allowing your teammate to get out of their melee range. Used mainly on warriors, as rogues have too many outs (see outs, above) for it to be practical, most of the time. Shiv is the normal method for rogues.

RNG: Abbreviation for Random Number Generator. Generally used when complaining about how random WoW is with crits, dodges, resists, etc. Can also be used in a good way.

Thanks to Team Pandemic for some of the terms. They have a more detailed list here.

Mechanic Discussion

Here’s where I’ll talk about mechanics, such as our class has. I’ll also be talking about some skill sets that rogues should have in order to succeed in PvP, as well as some basic gearing, gemming, and enchanting ideas.

Now, in PvP, you need a certain hit rating in order to not miss with specials attacks like Eviscerate, Hemorrhage, and Sinister Strike. That’s called the PvP Hit Cap. That hit cap is 164. 163.95 if you want to get technical (32.79 hit rating per percent, and you need 5% to not miss specials), but you can’t get fractions of hit rating.

Of course, there’s always the Mage talent Arctic Winds, but generally, we can’t give up too much in the way of other stats on our PvP gear to get enough hit to negate Arctic Winds, ergo we ignore that talent when gemming our gear.

For our current gear, based on what you have, you may need to gem for hit. Most rogues don't need to, but the first thing to add is 12 hit via Icewalker to your boots. After that, consider gemming for it; it shouldn't take more than one or two yellow gems to get it. If you need yellow gems, put them in your chest/shoulder yellow sockets.

As far as rogue abilities go, there are some ways to use Vanish that I find to be much more useful than just getting another opener.

The first is obviously an out, breaking a root or snare. Extremely useful, and even more useful when considered with Elusiveness and Prep.

The second is not so obvious. Everyone doing arena should have an addon like Afflicted or Gladius that tracks casted spells, or be able to see enough of the playing field to see who’s targeting whom and be able to keep track of spells being cast on you.

The second use takes a lot more practice, but vanishing incoming spells is a skill that will greatly benefit you in keeping you in range of your target and also keeping you in the fight. This same principle can be applied to Will of the Forsaken if you’re undead. Too many rogues use it as a reactionary fear break, when you’ve already moved a good 8-12 yards from your target.

Cloak of Shadows can be used in this way too, though less reliably. I generally save it for wiping DoTs from a Lock/DK or if I’m getting focused and I need to take some pressure off for my healers.

Gems:
Red: 40 AP
Yellow: 1x Nightmare Tear, otherwise 40 AP unless hit cap has not been reached.
Blue: 1x Nightmare Tear, otherwise 40 AP
Meta: 21 Agi/3% crit damage, or 42 AP/run speed for ShS (will need to gem two yellows for this meta)

Enchants:
Head: 50 AP/20 crit (optionally, 50 AP/20 resil is fine)
Shoulder: 40 AP/15 resil
Cloak: +stealth 10 Agi
Chest: 10 stats
Bracer: AP
Gloves: AP
Legs: 75 AP/22 crit
Boots: AP unless ShS
Weapons: Berserking MH, Titanium Weapon Chain OH

Spec Discussion

There are two different roles a rogue can fulfill on any given team: Burst and Durability. With the Burst build type, you're basically either trying to blow someone up as fast as possible, or you're trying to set up so that you can blow someone up. The Durability role generally means that we put pressure on someone through constant damage and mobility, not giving their healers much time to top them off while our teammates provide burst damage.

To that end, here are the builds I've put together for each role.

The Burst Role

Mutilate is going to be the build of choice for this role, generally.

There are two different routes to Mutilate: Envenom and Eviscerate. With one build or the other, you're going to be using the finisher of choice and you'll change up your poisons.

With Envenom, you're going to be using Envenom, obviously. This means that you need Deadly Poison on your MH, Wound on your OH. With Master Poisoner, your Envenom won't be wiped off your target, and you can do the lethal Envenom -> Mutilate -> 4 pt Envenom dance with Ruthlessness. Eviscerate build is like normal Mutilate; double Wound Poison, go to town, finish with Evis.

Some talents that can be changed: if you're in a comp where you get focused but you need the burst of Mutilate, drop points into Deadened Nerves from Find Weakness and (maybe) Murder. FW is the first talent you take points out of, NOT Murder.

Personally, I prefer the Envenom build because it makes Plate classes a lot squishier, but you need to be very careful with your DP, as it will mess with your gouges and blinds.

The Durability Role

Shadowdance is the main staple to this role. With the talents that come with speccing into Shadowdance, you can take a good amount of beating, almost to the point of using a mix of PvE/PvP gear on a team with good healers, boosting your damage.

Before we continue, I need to mention one thing:

THIS IS A DAGGER BUILD!

You will be using DAGGERS with this build.

There are two types of Shadowdance builds. Lethality builds, and heavier sub builds.

Lethality Shadowdance is my favorite; you play very much like a feral druid in cat form in this build, with Hemo acting like Mangle and BS acting like that other ability that only hits from behind and does more damage. And yes, you can Hemo with daggers. It's okay.

HAT/MOS Shadowdance is my personal variation on the popular ShD build going around right now. It lacks big punch, but on a 5s team, this will allow you to Evis spam to your heart's content, and also make for huge Ambush openers.

There are a LOT of variations out there. Feel free to experiment and post your own contributions. These are considered guidelines. Have fun with it.

I'll be keeping this up to date into Cata, now that I'm back in the PvP swing of things. As with my other thread for TBC, feel free to ask questions and post suggestions.

The mana war is a whole metagame going on alongside the actual arena match. I would really only spec for mana burn in a 2v2 team, maybe in a double healer DK setup in 3s. As long as the other healer is crippled, mana burning is a pretty fantastic strat, especially in mirror matches (disc/rogue or spriest/rogue). It works against basically all healers though assuming you are good at dispelling innervate and divine plea, and water shield.

There are some nice tricks to regain the mana that burning costs, popping shadowfiend on the enemy healer, fear warding it and then using divine hymn while humping a pillar. Your max mana is temporarily increased for the duration of the hymn so each hit the fiend does returns a lot more mana than normal. You can counter this by dispelling then fearing the enemy fiend, maybe even covering fear with dots if your partner is looking healthy.

Getting your rogue to vanish and sap after a psychic scream is great for allowing you to drink as well assuming he can tie up the other enemy player.

I'll be watching this thread as I do plan on playing my undead rogue come cata.

Looking forward to your updates, as it is (rather) outdated at present time.

And burning is double edged true, but only if you are runnning low on mana yourself.

I'm not playing WoW at all currently. Got far too bored of farming ICC and frost badges and achievements and never having decent arena partners. I guess i'll start again when they release the pre-expansion stuff. Paladins look like a totally different class in the beta; holy power seems pretty cool. I want to save the echo isles too (once you go troll, you never reroll!)

I let my priest's gear fall way behind, had a blast playing him last season in rmp and 2v2 though. Smite spec is sick when you get in a position to add some burst, 4 or 5k smite crits easy. In S8 i got addicted to playing protribution pally instead, cause it's brokenly powerful and kinda mindless. Ret can't kill healers, but every 30 seconds as prot you can get a long stun > silence combo that tends to murder them. It's all unresistable holy damage too.

I found druids are probably the worst to try and burn actually, they're so mobile they can los the spell, or even just go bear and become immune to it while bashing people. And if they use improved barksin with innervate you likely wont be able to dispel it. Better to try dispelling hots on the kill target and get some holy fire, smite swd combos to help kill it.

edit: err oh yeah, this is class=4. I have a rogue! Specced shadowdance but i really suck at it.

Edited, Jul 31st 2010 5:43pm by ArtemisEnteri

No, and after my experience in the WotLK beta, I don't have much desire. It kinda of made me burned out on WotLK so that I didn't level my rogue until S7.

If I do get into beta, I'd probably end up giving it to someone here.

I honestly can't handle more than one. I tried to do DK and my rogue, but I tried to start using WotF on my DK (back when they were both Horde) and he was a BE, so...yeah.

Lost that arena match pretty badly. Was kinda funny, though.

I may not be a terrible idea to put together some super-basic threads before Caty hits. There are going to be a metric tonne of new players and some of them will be coming here. Stuff like "PvP 101" etc might really help reduce redundant threads and make the site more useful for the new players.

Like taking the abbreviations section above and expounding general tactics from that maybe? Could include addons, a PvP UI discussion, how to chain CCs.. etc?

I had started a general "DPS Manifesto" a while back but stopped when I realized everyone was just steamrolling raid content. Basically making the finer details pointless aside from the more progression/hardmode peeps who don't need a primer, of course. Might be time to revisit that.

Not to take away from this thread at all Theo (great post!). But if the long-time posters put together some primers in the general forum....

Guess I'll have to find my DPS Manifesto and edit that this weekend too =)

Nice job daddio.

Yeah, same!

Gnomes are creepy, I'll do it though.

E-mail, or gtfo.

Real ID is the shiz, yo.

Better than you Theo.

<3