PvP Source and Rogue Weapons

PvP Source has an excellent article regarding Rogue builds and arena. I thought it was really well-written and highlighted exactly why I didn't think Shadowstep builds will be the future of the Rogue class. But now I'm not so sure.

It also got me to thinking about how Rogues seem to be one of the few classes that are so gear-dependent that even our choice of weapons pretty much forces us to go one build or another. And if you decide to change your build, you're facing getting new weapons to adapt. At first, this seemed severely unfair, but on second thought, many other classes need to get a completely new set of gear if they want to change their build from one talent tree to another. Rogues simply have to pick up some two new weapons. However, so much relies on the weapons, you either have them or you don't.

As so much relies on our weapons, consider our choices and the playstyle encouraged by each type:

• Mace. I've never heard of anyone touting a high-end raid DPS Mace build. I don't think it exists. Because Maces aren't really for DPS, their main advantage is for stuns during PvP. Now, don't get me wrong, Maces have good sustained DPS and with the added critical strike, they even have decent burst damage. However, the one thing Maces have that other builds lack is stuns. And as Doomilias has pointed out, stuns in PvE should be precisely timed and the Mace specialization proc is completely random. When Blizzard added the critical strike portion to the talent, it was just icing. No one was picking Mace for burst damage. If you interested in Mace spec for PvP, I'd probably suggest a Hemorrhage build such as this.

  If you're interested in a Mace spec for PvE, I'd suggest you get your head examined (or maybe this build).

• Sword. I'm unsure if any other weapon build can match the DPS output of a Combat Swords build. Attack power, not critical strikes, is the name of this game. Sword specialization gives you extra swings and together with a high average damage, you'll be pulling ahead of most other classes in DPS without much effort. The downside of Swords is that most people consider it to be incredibly boring. Mostly you are maximizing your time in Slice and Dice, spamming Sinister Strike and avoiding stealing aggro on the tank's mobs when you use Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush.

  But that's just Swords in PvE, how does Swords work in PvP? I've been using my Swords in PvP for a while now and I feel like I've done pretty well with them. As long as I've kept those abilities we have that give me a burst of damage when I want it and those abilities that help me maximize my mobility, I've been able to make Swords work in PvP.

• Fist. I considered using Fists for a long time, but after doing some quick math, I noticed that Swords are more plentiful and have a much higher average damage. Fist is critical based. Consider it Daggers without positioning. There's nothing really "special" about Fists however. I consider Fists to be more boring than Swords simply because with Swords I can at least be excited about doing more damage than Fists. Heh.

• Dagger. In my opinion, the true weapon of the Rogue. We were designed around it. We have three abilities that require it: Backstab, Ambush, and Mutilate. Which also means, taking a look at our three trees, we also have two talent trees that focus around it: Assassination, which ends with Mutilate, and Subtlety, which I believe can only achieve a level of burst DPS for arena through Ambush and Backstab.

  However, Daggers suck. I hate Daggers. Daggers might be fast and you get to see big numbers, but having to maintain positioning in an online game is annoying. Yeah, I know it's called Backstab, emphasis on the Back, but no other class in the game has to worry about positioning so precisely. Okay, maybe Warriors do as they tank and Druids have similar constraints in Cat Form. But Druids don't have to be wielding a certain type of weapon as well.

So, realistically, we have two clear options for PvP now: Maces and Daggers. Sure people will make Swords and Fists work in PvP, but I think if you're going to get serious, you're going to have to go Maces and soon Daggers.

Why Daggers? Examine this build. Since they all seem to have clever nicknames, I'm going to call this one BAD(A)SS. Backstab/ Ambush/ Deadliness/ Shadowstep. With Ambush's damage factor going from 250% to 275%, the 10% bonus to Backstab from Sinister Calling, Shadowstep's bonus of 20% damage to the followup attack, the already inherent bonuses from talents such as Opportunity, Improved Backstab, Malice, Murder, and Lethality, Daggers suddenly look a lot nicer, especially with all the Season 3 Armor Penetration against clothies. I would expect this would do better in 5v5, rather than in 2v2 or 3v3.

What do you think?

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No More AR/Prep and More!

New PTR notes include some interesting news:

• Hemorrhage: This ability now correctly does additional damage when its debuff has already been applied.
• Preparation now resets the cooldown of Shadowstep and no longer resets the cooldown of Adrenaline Rush.
• Shadowstep now adds a 3 second, 70% movement speed increase.
• Sinister Calling now also increases the percentage damage bonus of Hemorrhage and Backstab by 2/4/6/8/10%.

So, my 0/33/28 build is dead. Many things remain, but the ability to pop Adrenaline Rush twice on a target really was what not only made this build viable in PvP, but also allowed me to use it in PvE. Now, I foresee me definitely having to change my build multiple times a week.

Blizzard wants every 41 point talent in each tree to be useful enough that people will use them. I'm sorry, but Shadowstep and the rest of the Subtlety tree just still isn't there. With such a huge penalty from dual wielding, Rogues are pretty much forced to pick up Precision and the middle of the Combat tree to be effective in groups.

We've gained back some of our Hemorrhage damage if we pick up Sinister Calling and Shadowstep. With 110% from Hemorrhage and an extra 10% from Sinister Calling, we will be back up at 121% of normal weapon damage.

Shadowstep is getting nicer, but I'm curious how big a tooltip can get in World of Warcraft as they keep adding more and more things to it to try to entice us to take it.

I'm filled with rage and I'm not a Warrior, so it's pretty useless. I feel like Blizzard is showing that they really have no clue where they want our class to go or any type of foresight as to how their changes might affect their own game.

I'm eager to hear what other rogues think of the changes. So, please chime in and let me know what you think of this. Is it just minor, or is it as monumental as it feels?

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Death Cheated

imagine cool picture here

Unlike Elistana's Rogue Sightings, which apparently is now wiped from the face of the blogosphere, I am not calling it quits. I am still alive and well. Having finished a mammoth project at work, I can now blog again without feeling like I'm neglecting my deadlines.

But what is new? Not much. If you've been following the other sites, you know that Hemorrhage is currently broken and on the PTR is has been nerfed from 125% to 110%, though the extra damage is going up 6 points for the 10 charges. While this poster may think this is a minor nerf, I'm not at all thrilled by the change. I read elsewhere that Blizzard made this change to give Rogues a utlity to help groups and raids more. If this is the case, I wish they would have allowed it to scale with AP or something. Blizzard should know by this point that fixed point values on end game abilities makes them less and less useful as gear improves. Just ask a Druid.

I don't believe that Rogues have changed to Hemorrhage because it is overpowered, as the blue reply came back, but rather that it is now simply a viable alternative to Sinister Strike. I have a 0/33/28 AR/Prep build. I did because I wanted to see how it worked and I think many other Rogues did the same. I hope Blizzard doesn't base their "overpower" evaluation on popularity of a build or Combat Swords has been overpowered for a long, long, long time. And although I do well with this build, I do much, much better with my Combat Swords build.

Yet, I also went with the AR/Prep build because of the success many give it for PvP. I've been playing a bit more PvP lately. Okay, a lot. Just last week I participated in five different teams, 2 2v2, 2 3v3 and 1 5v5. None of the teams are uber. You can check my armory. We are just merely getting by. However, I've been having a blast and this AR/Prep build helps a lot. Being able to Sap from 10 yards away is amazing. I find that I can Sap Warlocks with Felhunter pets before they can see me and Sap people on the edge of pillars in Blade's Edge Arena. And the smaller the team size, the better this gets. It's great in 5v5, but in 2v2, when you Sap the Paladin, he trinkets, you Blind him and then you kill his partner blowing your Adrenaline Rush. Mmmm. Tasty.

As I've noted elsewhere, although I love my swords dearly, I wish I would have bought the maces first. Watching other Rogues stun my partners or myself, is painful knowing that I could be doing the same, but just chose not to.

On the other side, I'm committing to posting at least once a week, hopefully twice. You might see more fluff pieces — er, like this one — but at least you'll see something.

Sound like a deal?

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Day of Thanks

I kiss you!

There's a few thanks long past due. Days like today are good to set aside to think about how things affect our lives and touch us in profound ways. Therefore, I'd like to start by thanking my Season 2 swords, [Merciless Gladiator's Slicer] and [Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade]. You look so awesome and you hit so hard it makes me want to cry sometimes. I'm thankful for the Mongoose enchant on both of my weapons, because nothing is better than proccing dual Lightning Speed with 240 Agility, 240 Attack Power and 4% Haste. I'm thankful for my two pieces of Netherblade giving me the 2 piece set bonus increasing my Slice and Dice duration by 3 seconds. There's a lot of other pieces of gear for which I'm thankful. Every one of them, in fact. From my new [Dragonspine Trophy] to every one of my non-combat pets, like my new [Tiny Spore Bat].

And as you can tell from the last paragraph, I'm thankful for WowHead and how easy they made it to include tooltips on a site. WoWHead is always improving, like a Google of the WoW data reference community. Along with WoWWiki, they've changed the way I research information about the game.

I'd like to say how glad I am to have found the blogging community and be introduced to it and encouraged into it by Phaelia and so many others. There so many people theorycrafting and sharing their experiences, it is amazing. I track over 217 WoW Blogs on my Google Reader. Many are semi-inactive, but many are incredibly prolific generating over a post a day, and I skim every one of them — even the Shaman ones. ;D And Google Reader makes it possible, because without it I wouldn't have the time to visit each of them looking to see which ones posted something new.

I want to thank Blizzard for making something so fun to play. Like Phaelia posted on her blog, Blizzard filled World of Warcraft with multiple ways to feel like you're improving your character constantly. I'm so thankful for every thing on that list. Not only is the process fun because of that, but they filled the World with wonder, awe and humor. Before WoW, I'd only play most MMOs about 3 months before I just didn't feel like there was much of a reason to play. I've been playing WoW since beta, and though I did take a short break, I can't see myself ever leaving such a fun place.

But when it comes to WoW and life, what I'm really thankful for is the people. I am so lucky to be able to play with a great guild. We aren't the 'litist and we aren't the biggest, but it's filled with my friends, both local and distant. We've had at least 3 RL guild parties with over twenty players attending, some driving hundreds and hundreds of miles. I'm glad I have friends to play with, because without them the game would lose it's magic. It would lose the spark that I hold so dear. I'm so glad when I came back from my break I moved to Scarlet Crusade to join all my real life friends and I made so many other friends I hold so dear now. Just look at the guild roster and you'll see their names. They are Valenna's family.

Lastly, I'd like to thank the people standing in line when I bought my copies of World of Warcraft: Phaelia, Ebene and Khatrina. We have had so much fun together in game. Leveling our first characters, leveling horde, leveling and playing Burning Crusade. But more than anyone I have to thank Khatrina, my wife, for letting me play the game so much and for everything she does for me in our life together.

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Rogue Sighted!

I just wanted to say "Hi!" and "Welcome!" to Elistana for joining the Rogue blogging community! Her blog, Rogue Sightings, is completely devoted to PvP and has been marked as a "No Raiding" zone. Elistana also looks like she may be releasing more movies in the future, as she already has one featuring the new engineering mount. With already 7 posts since its launch last week, I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more from Elistana.

It seems Elistana has completely disappeared. Rogue Sightings isn't up anymore and the character has been marked as inactive on the Armory. If someone knows if she moved, let me know. It was the beginnings of a great blog.

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Petitioning Actually Works?

As I reported yesterday, we one-shotted Gruul on Tuesday night, but the instance servers crashed before we could loot him. Our guild master's first petition was ignored, but after we all petitioned, he got a response in Zul'Aman last night and generated our loot. Among them was the [Dragonspine Trophy], which I received in the mail. I'd like to thank Raliah for passing to me as I've been waiting for this for a long, long time.

Dragonspine Trophy Binds when picked up Unique Trinket Requires Level 70 Equip: Increases attack power by 40. Equip: Your melee and ranged attacks have a chance to increase your haste rating by 325 for 10 sec.

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Damage Meter Junkie

Patch 2.3 is here. I've been reading so much and doing so much research; I wanted to try something new even if I eventually go back to what I have been playing. Therefore, I'm going to relay the first day of my experiences going from my old build to my new build.

I've been Combat Swords for a long, long time. Not to brag, but I'm often beating all of the melee (and usually ranged) by quite a margin, usually 8-15%. And I could achieve at least most of that without putting forth a major effort. I'm sure that's because I have worked out a solid routine of ability rotation and largely because of my old build and my Season 2 swords.

I had done my research and switched to a 1S/5R rotation. That's 1 combo point Slice and Dice followed by a 5 combo point Rupture. Because a 1 combo point Slice and Dice gives 17.4 seconds if you have 3/3 Improved Slice and Dice and 3 extra seconds from 2 piece set bonus of Netherblade. A 5 combo point Rupture does more damage if you get all your ticks out than a compareable 5 combo point Eviscerate and it lasts 16 seconds. After your Rupture, you have a 60% chance of getting 1 combo point back from the Ruthlessness ability and Relentless Strikes gives you 25 energy back from a 5 combo point finisher, which is exactly enough to start the process over again with a 1 combo point Slice and Dice. Combat Potency ensures you have enough energy to fuel enough Sinister Strikes to get your 5 combo points for your Rupture before the Slice and Dice runs out. Thus, you constantly have Slice and Dice and Rupture up on the mob once you get the rotation going.

But I had to experience the changes from Patch 2.3 for myself. So, I wiped my talents and took Hemorrhage. The exact build I went with was modelled after one that was posted by a high ranking Rogue. Basically, a AR/Prep build, i.e. Adrenaline Rush & Preparation, 0/31/30. I wanted to evaluate Hemorrhage firsthand, both in PvE and PvP. But I had to log off to take care of some RL, so I didn't get a chance to evaluate it immediately.

A few hours later, after a slow painful start due to server crashes, my guild made it into Gruul's Lair. Some people exited the raid and I was invited without really testing my new build at all. The raid itself went rather well. We dropped Maulgar after working out the new fear changes and then we one-shotted Gruul. And then the server crashed before we could loot him. >.<

And although I was prepared to have my damage suffer slightly, I was very depressed to see that on the first Lair Brute, I was coming in under all of of the other Rogues in our guild and even a Rogue guest. It was probably just randomness. First mob of the instance, but it was at this moment that my Damage Meter Junkie-side took over. It's not that I didn't know I was a DMJ, but I just didn't realize how much it really meant to me. Hence, when I saw that I was doing so poorly, I realized that I really just hadn't figured out the "rhythm" of my new build.

The biggest weakness of my new build was the lack of energy renewal. As I've discussed before, energy is pretty vital to Rogue DPS. And this is what I was finding with my new build. I have Adrenaline Rush and that's it. No Combat Potency, no Relentless Strikes. I also did not pick up 3/3 of Improved Slice and Dice, but rather only 1/3, a 15% boost. Instead of 17.4 seconds, my 1 combo point Slice and Dice only was lasting 13.8 seconds. Because Rupture is even nicer with Serrated Blades, I was trying to play the same way, with the same rotation 1S/5R. I have had to move up to a 2S/5R, a 2 combo point Slice and Dice will give me 17.3 seconds which should match up nicely again to my Rupture time. Still, I found myself waiting for energy. Energy to finish off 5 combo points for a Rupture before my Slice and Dice ends. Energy to get my 2 combo points for Slice and Dice.

However, now in this build, I have 10% more Attack Power from the talent Deadliness, and I have Preparation. Preparation allows me to reset my cooldowns on Adrenaline Rush and Vanish. That means I can use Adrenaline Rush three times in 10 minutes rather than twice. It also means I can Vanish an additional time to get rid of aggro or apply another Garrote.

So, how did I do? I ended up as #1 on my damage meter, but only as I started to juggle all my ability and trinket cooldowns. I know this isn't really a PvE spec, but the DMJ inside me kicked in and I had to try to do my best to keep on top of the meter. Because for me, if I'm at top the meter, I'm doing everything I can do, I can't say I'm not doing my part. At the end, my damage meter, Recount, had me at around 710 DPS for the entire fight, which seems about 50 DPS down from when I put forth the same level of effort with my previous build. I would have liked to have taken some screenshots to analyze it more, but the instance servers crashed on Scarlet Crusade before I had a chance.

What is next? Testing it in PvP for one, but I'm also thinking that I'm going to change my build slightly to include Combat Potency for energy renewal and Nerves of Steel for stun resistance. I will lose Deadliness (+10% Attack Power) and Dirty Deeds (+20% damage to target's below 35% health), but gain Vitality (+4% Stamina and +2% Agility). This new build should give me a bit more survivability in PvP and a bit more DPS from the energy renewal in PvE.

Anyone else have some suggestions on how to make Hemorrhage work with a Combat/Subtlety build? Or what have you changed with Patch 2.3?

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