Rogues in PvP

[Lavindathar]

Ok, for Memmy mainly.

Ingafel hit 70 tonight, and has 5/5 leather opportunists set, nice boots cape etc, all enchanted and gemmed.

So i'm good to go for PvP.

Can you link me a nice Subtlety spec for PvP? Talents and maybe, a, how to play guide? (opening from stealth etc, what attacks I should be using?)

Ive finally decided after helping everyone, I need some help, as I'm not a big PvPer, and my rogue has been 70 for about 53 mins.

[Memnoch]

Gratz mate! Finally something I can help you with.

I've tried numerous builds, but the build I find best for PvP is this (thx to Burnzey for first sharing it with me when I was a noob):

Shadowstep build
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=f0ebRiZZxMe0MuRkxst

This build maximises control, which is important in PvP and still allows you to stunlock. You lose the massive burst damage you get from Assassination or from not using daggers, but bottom line is you control fights with this build and you still do good dps as your agi and AP should improve substantially from Combat spec. One benefit to your stats is that when you get 5/5 Sinister Calling and 5/5 Deadliness in Sub your AP and agi will increase considerably. Ideally you want something like 1650+ AP (preferably 1800-1900) as an absolute minimum.

Keep in mind you can also Sub as a dagger rogue, but Sub is more of a sword/mace build because of Hemo.

5/5 Master of Deception and 5/5 Camouflage, along with at least 1 pt in Heightened Senses means that nobody will ever find you while you are stealthed unless you want to be found, and you will have a better chance of finding other rogues. Important again for control (deciding when the fight begins).

Also, this build helps your energy regen and combo point generation, which I found really important in PvP. That's why you get Relentless Strikes. 2/2 Expose Armour is invaluable against casters (I think it was Zink Whistlefly who showed me this) and 5/5 Vile Poisons helps you apply your poisons (I go Crippling OH and Wound MH unless you want to go hunting for locks and priests in which case you can go Mind Numbing). And even though they nerfed Cheat Death (even I now agree it was OP before) it's still worth taking. Otherwise you can put more points in Heightened Senses and Master Of Subtlety. This is why I think it's better to go 20/0/41 instead of 0/20/41 - with the latter you will do more DPS with 5/5 Dual Wield but you will be forever starved of energy and combo pts.

Preparation basically resets your Sprint, Evasion, Vanish, Shadowstep and Premeditation cooldowns which is invaluable esp. in arena but also in BGs. Premed allows you two free combo points before you even initiate combat.

And with ShS, you will be using Hemo as your main attack instead of SS, which helps not just because of the Hemo debuff but also because Hemo costs 5 less energy to use than Improved SS.

Basically, ShS build maximises your control of your abilities and talents (CCs etc) and allows you to dictate terms of a fight (e.g. when you start it, how long you lock enemy down for, and when to exit it ie vanish) plus you do good steady DPS (esp if your AP is 1900-2000+).

I just armoried you and your Opportunist set is good enough to start as you have 170 resil at least (though resil is less important to rogues than many think, I'm finding we can get away with 250 or so, because of Cheat Death). You need better weps though which I'm sure you will get!

General tips:

1. Get dual mongoose on your weps if you can afford it (I'm SURE you can lol)

2. Use the slowest (2.6+) wep you can find in your MH, and the fastest wep (1.6-) you can find in your OH. I find little difference in maces vs swords (since they are nerfing mace stun anyway) though generally mace OHs are slower. You want Crippling Poison on a fast OH so that the target cannot get away from you. Daggers can work as fast OHs but you may gimp yourself too much on dps. Dual maces, fists or swords is fine.

3. I usually open with Cheap Shot from stealth as it adds 2-3 combo pts which immediately allows you to use your kidney shot after a couple more Hemo hits - usually they are still in stun when you apply a 5-pt KS which gives you up to 9 secs where the target is stunlocked unless they pvp trinket out of it (or better yet, you may get them to blow their trinket on the cheap shot which means you can KS after they blow their trinket). Then Hemo some more to rebuild CPs then I usually use Rupture (which is helped by your 3/3 Serrated Blades talent). I don't generally use Evi as the damage doesn't scale at 70 and it doesn't bypass armour while Rupture does. If you want to stunlock some more you can vanish again and open again with CS and repeat the cycle (I once kept an arms warrior stunlocked from 100-0 this way, I think I had him locked down for 18 secs in a row lol). If you're willing to use Prep to get reset your vanish cooldown you could theoretically keep someone stunlocked for over half a minute.

4. ShS you will find to be awesome for 3 reasons: 1) it allows you to quickly close to melee range if you are being kited/snared/rooted/feared and stunlock the enemy; 2) it allows you to get to those @#$% frost mages who use Frost Nova then blink away; and 3) it allows you to quickly get yourself out of harms way if you are getting wailed on by multiple foes (select a target further away and then ShS). Plus you get +70% speed increase to hunt down those runners. Oh, and it allows you to jump between the Frostwolf towers in AV lol. NEVER use ShS as your opener, it's too useful later on in the fight. (BTW, ShS is getting nerfed in Wotlk so that it can no longer be used if you are rooted - frost mages QQd too much - so enjoy it while you can).

5. The only time I don't open with CS is against mages because they can blink out of it anyway and it makes you waste your CS (and your ShS as you will have to ShS to close to melee again). I open with garotte against them and instead of using Kidney Shot right away, I use Expose Armor because it's lethal against clothies (again thanks to Zink for his feedback). Once you hit them with 5/5 EA they will go down fast unless they are a disc priest. Also, as a blood elf you have Mana Tap/Mana Explosion which you can use to leech their mana/silence them.

6. ALWAYS use Evasion when fighting in melee, esp against those fury warriors. I'd be surprised if you got hit at all by one of them.

7. Blind is a great CC which can either keep an additional enemy out of a fight or buy you time to bandage, etc. You can realistically take on up to 3 enemies at once if you can sap one from stealth, blind another then focus on the third, hitting your Evasion just as the 10-sec effects wear off. If you get wailed on, Vanish. Remember to remove your dots if you can before you vanish or you will waste it.

8. Cloak of Shadows (which as a lock you probably hated lol) is crucial in pvp as it removes dots and makes you invulnerable to magic just about for a few secs. And it's on a 1 min cooldown woot!

9. ALWAYS attack from stealth. Stealth is what allows you to dictate the terms of the fight. You can CLoS if you are in stealth btw, from what I remember it doesn't break stealth. When facing 2 or more, sap one to get him out of action then CS/garrotte the other (depending on class). Don't sap until you are ready to fight so you don't waste any of the 10 secs. Element of surprise is crucial for you.

10. Against casters, remember to kick to interrupt the heals. KS and gouge will also interrupt heals. When facing another rogue, using rupture will prevent them from vanishing as you can't CloS out of rupture (works against you too though).

11. Obviously in arena you will want to blow all your cooldowns as the fights are so short while in a BG you may want to save them.

So my general rotation is:

Vs non-casters other than rogues:
Prep > CS > Hemo > KS > Hemo x 4 or 5 > Rupture > Hemo etc (you can toss in a Vanish here if you don't need to save it for other foes so you can restart with CS again)

Vs rogues
Do Rupture first instead of KS to stop them vanishing

Vs casters
Garrotte > Hemo x 4 > Expose Armour > Hemo x 3 or 4 > Kidney shot (if you are doing heaps of DPS or if your mongoose procs you may not need as long a KS to burn them down)

CLoS all dots, kick heals/casts and blind other target if you see others coming down to help your enemy. There's a macro somewhere that allows you to blind on mouseover without actually changing your target.

General tips for BGing as a rogue:

AV
- stealth means you are perfectly suited for ninjaing towers (eg the DB towers or the mines). You can even ninja GYs because of your CC and DPS (you can sap one guard and burn down the other 3 without much harm to yourself if you use Evasion). You are also suited to stealthing to behind the battle line and taking out the healers/casters who should go down to you quick.

AB/EOTS
- obviously ninjaing nodes and the usual. One tactic I found useful was if you are stealthing near an enemy node with a few guards, if you sap one of them the rest of them panic and you can effectively keep them rooted to that node while your teammates make use of superior numbers elsewhere. You don't always have to dps to be effective.

WSG
- even though druids are the best flag runners you can run the flag as long as you have a swiftness pot and you have Prep available, as it effectively gives you 40 secs of double speed and you can CloS off dots. If someone is trying to close to melee with you (eg warrior intercept) you can blind them and keep running.

This is dependent on situation of course, but classes you should own:
- fury/prot warrior
- shadow/holy priest
- other rogues (as long as you can get the first stun in)
- warlocks
- any pally
- moonkin/dumbkin
- fire/arc mage
- hunter (depending on how good he is)
- shaman

Classes you will have a hard time with:
- feral and resto druid
- disc priest
- frost mage


Good luck mate - rogues are heaps of fun to play in pvp. Nothing like choosing when to start and end a fight. Plus chain sapping (even on diminishing returns) is so much fun!

[Lavindathar]

Ty very much mate

Gonna respec tomorrow and try it.

So you think Subt/Ass is better than Subt>Combat. I'll try it out.

Only thing I'm unsure on is improved expsoed armor. I mean, Isn't it better to blow a rupture on a clothy than an exposed armor? Or not?


My warlock has lets face it, shit hot gear. I have 1697 armor. So, that means a 4point EA will reduce my armor to 57. So, improved armor means that I'd only ever need to use a 2 CP EA on a clothie to give them around 400 armor left? Actually, now I've wrote that that sounds nice But I'm gonna leave my musings up here, so I dont delete them to look clever

Well, that's based on PvE gear. I'm assuming a 3 CP Improved Armor will reduce a full S4 clothie to 0 armor. 1800 reduction? no idea what cloth armor gives on PvP gear.

[Kakero]

For memsie only?

Depend on what the clothie are, I find that it's best to ks priest/warlock and rupture mages instead. Clothie already got low armor and iea will be useless for them. Save iea for plate wearers.

Btw don't worry about it, you are horde and you'll have an easy time ranking up the honour points for those wellfare epics.

Mem, no remorseless strike?

[Memnoch]

Originally Posted by Lavindathar Ty very much mate Gonna respec tomorrow and try it. So you think Subt/Ass is better than Subt>Combat. I'll try it out. Only thing I'm unsure on is improved expsoed armor. I mean, Isn't it better to blow a rupture on a clothy than an exposed armor? Or not? My warlock has lets face it, shit hot gear. I have 1697 armor. So, that means a 4point EA will reduce my armor to 57. So, improved armor means that I'd only ever need to use a 2 CP EA on a clothie to give them around 400 armor left? Actually, now I've wrote that that sounds nice But I'm gonna leave my musings up here, so I dont delete them to look clever Well, that's based on PvE gear. I'm assuming a 3 CP Improved Armor will reduce a full S4 clothie to 0 armor. 1800 reduction? no idea what cloth armor gives on PvP gear.

Sub/Combat > Sub> Ass for overall DPS but you have less control and less energy regen.

Reducing a clothie's armor down to 0 drastically reduces the damage mitigation they get, which in turn increases your damage from white hits, which is why you want to do it early. I've tried using EA against plate wearers but the mitigation is not that great so bleed effects (rupture) are better for them IMO.

Damage "improvement" from 5-pt EA for different base armor:


Armor EA % Imp EA %

3000 17.81% 28.42%

4000 16.39% 26.78%

5000 15.18% 24.63%

6000 14.13% 22.81%

7000 13.22% 21.23%

8000 12.42% 19.86%

9000 11.71% 18.66%

10000 11.08% 17.59%

11000 10.51% 16.64%

12000 10.00% 15.78%

13000 9.53% 15.01%

14000 9.11% 14.31%

15000 8.72% 13.68%

17500 7.88% 12.31%

20000 7.19% 11.19%

22500 6.61% 10.26%

25000 6.12% 9.47%

27500 5.69% 8.79%

30000 5.32% 8.20%

As for KS earlier in the cycle, I tend to be able to kick and gouge to interrupt spellcasters and I usually leave my KS for when they are half dead because once I KS them at half dead they are usually dead very shortly.

Kak, you talking about Remorseless Attacks instead of Relentless Strikes right? I used to take 2/2 from there, but it's pretty random and I found that I was doing more overall DPS with Murder 2/2. Depends on how often you get the killing blow in.

[Lavindathar]

I'm getting the hang of it....



5k honour til I get S2MH!

[Memnoch]

Let us know how you're finding the spec, Lavi. It takes a bit to get used to ShS, but you should get the hang of it quickly. Like warlock fear, rogue stunlock is awesome for pissing off other players.

EDIT: Nice!! 5k honour, you should be able to farm that in AV really quickly since you're Horde. I think it's AV weekend as well, may only take you a few hours.

[Kakero]

Originally Posted by Memnoch Kak, you talking about Remorseless Attacks instead of Relentless Strikes right? I used to take 2/2 from there, but it's pretty random and I found that I was doing more overall DPS with Murder 2/2. Depends on how often you get the killing blow in.

Yeah, I was talking about remorseless attack. I find it's very useful for BGs.

I was thinking of this sub/ass build.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fMebRxZZxMeoMhRkxst

You have remorseless attacks, murder, iea among other things.

[Memnoch]

According to Shadowpanther's spreadsheet, Vile Poisons > Lethality for Sub spec. Of course it's totally the opposite for pve Combat, but the increased ability to apply your OH poisons (unless you're using Shiv as your CP generator) is pretty important from a control perspective.

But try it and let us know how it goes!