A Rogue, Warrior and Hunter, having a drink in a Pub in Dalaran…

I read a great post by Wrthofnino over at A Rogue’s Diary and I have to say I can definitely relate to it; I think it summarises the current feelings in the rogue community perfectly… Ok it’s a bit “over-the-top” but then it wouldn’t be much of a read otherwise would it?

Despite the “hotfixes” to Rogue DPS I still hear “NERF MUTILATE ROGUES!!!” everywhere (and I’m not talking about guildies winding me up here either – you know who you are!).

I do wonder why I’m still hearing all the QQs? Maybe it’s just because I’m a Rogue? Perhaps other classes remain blissfuly unaware the issue (or part of it) has been addressed? Or maybe… Just maybe they think by continuously whining about it Blizzard will nerf us some more?… And more… And more… Maybe when Rogues go back to the state we were in at the release of WoTLK in Naxxaramas (urrrrgh!) they’ll shut up?

Anyway, as I said earlier, Wrthofnino illustrates some very good points which, whilst not new, are still valid all the same:

We are a PURE DPS class

This is what we do and it is all we do. So, we should be very good at it; we are a single-target DPS specialist. Plain and simple. This is one of the major reasons I chose to play the class and why I enjoy playing it. For you non-rogues out there it’s not an easy class to play well either.

Can we heal?

No.

Can we tank?

No.

So what do you want us to do?

Party Buffs

We have been screaming out for this and I DO mean SCREEEEEEAMING!

Every single class provides some form of raid utility or buff except Rogue.

It’s nice to see Blizzard have put a foot in the right direction with the introduction of traps in the Icecrown Citadel and I’m hoping to see a little more interesting things for Rogues to do.

I have a feeling Blizzard will be addressing the buff side of things and my guess is we’ll see it in Cataclysm. I’m really looking forward to see what they do with this.

On the bench?…

Now, I’m not complaining (not really) since I do think we were way too far ahead in terms of damage and a nerf was inevitable. YES… I have to admit I did enjoy the massive boost we got (who wouldn’t) even if it was for just a short while. BUT… I don’t think Rogues across Azeroth are being benched for other classes… Well, not the decent ones anyway.

Let’s not go down the old “the sky is falling on our heads” road with this nerf. Overall, and let’s be honest here, we are still THE best class… Errr… I mean… THE best single-target DPS class in game.

If you haven’t already read it, go check out Nerfing Assassination Rogues – An Overheard Conversation on A Rogue’s Diary. I highly recommend it – it’s well worth the read!

What do you think?

Heartpierce Dagger and Invigoration Buff

Blizzard have buffed the proc on the Heartpierce dagger which up to now granted a +2 energy gain every 2 seconds for 10 seconds to +4 energy.

Quoting Bornakk’s official Blizzard post:

The Invigoration buff from melee attacks using the Heartpierce dagger will now grant twice as much resources as before. It now grants 2 rage, 4 energy, or 120 mana every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.

Recked’s New Dagger

The dagger dropped from Lady Deathwhisper during a 25-man run end of last week and to be honest I wasn’t sure whether to take it or not. I did have my mind set on the Rib Spreader. However, after learning about the recent buff I took it anyway.

Just how good is it?

Unfortunately I cannot find it on any of the Rogue DPS spreadsheets currently in use in the Rogue community; its still being tested by the theorycrafters so I cannot really say. However, I certainly do notice the additional energy from Invigoration and it does proc often.

It looks pretty damn cool and it is a very nice DPS increase from Gouge of the Frigid Heart which I was using before.

Rogue News: Another Hunger for Blood Nerf… Meh!

We all know it was going to happen didn’t we?

Rogue DPS hit the roof following patch 3.3 and now we’re hearing the cries for nerfs. It’s no surprise and Blizzard have been hinting at this for a little while now:

As per Ghostcrawler’s official Blizzard post:

As many of you have suspected, we think rogue damage is too high. We will be making hotfixes to lower the maximum damage output of Assassination and Combat rogues. The Combat nerf will be slight. Both specs should still do just fine on damage meters (assuming skill, gear etc.) but shouldn’t be beating out other specs to such a large degree.

… So what have they actually done to address this issue?

Quoted from Bornakk’s official Blizzard post:

• The base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood has been reduced from 10% to 5%.
• The bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons has been decreased. This applies to Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Wound Poison.

Hang on! This rings a bell… Didn’t they already nerf Hunger for Blood from 15% to 10%?

Yup… And now they’re nerfing it again from 10% to 5%.

From what’s been said around the Rogue community this translates into something like a 7% nerf to Assassination Rogues and a somewhere around 2% to Combat Rogues.

Sam over at Slice and Dice, Dinear over at Forever A Noob and ZeroInitiate have all written more about the subject and their take on it.

I have to agree with the general gist of what they say and think Hunger for Blood was the easy way out and I suppose I cannot balme Blizzard for choosing to do it this way… It is a quick and easy fix. I also have to agree with Sam when he says “I agree I was doing too much damage, but really, if Blizz is going to take 10% off of the pre 3.3 HfB, shouldn’t they redesign it?  It was mediocre before, but now it’s just getting sad“.

What do you think?

Rogue News: Wooah! DPS after patch 3.3 and Hunger for Blood

Everyone: “Check out the DPS!”

Assassination Rogue flexes his muscles, oooh so strong!

Combat Rogue sulks

What can I say? It’s great to be up there at the top of the damage charts. It’s especially satisfying since Combat Rogues have being outdoing Assassination Rogues for far too long. I really enjoy playing as an Assassination Rogue and, despite all the top Rogues using Combat spec, I’ve stuck with it. My DPS has always been competitive with Combat Rogues with them usually beating me but only by a reasonable margin so why change?

As I’ve said before in previous posts; REAL Rogues use daggers!

You simply cannot NOT notice the whopping difference in damage done following changes to Deadly Poison, Improved Poisons and the update to Murder. I’m sure Combat Rogues are feeling a little bruised at the moment having “ruled the roost” for too long…. Good!

 I wonder how many Combat Rogues are now going to be switching over?

Both Sam (Slice and Dice) and Dinear (Forever a Noob) have written great articles covering the DPS increase from before and after patch 3.3 for Assassination Rogues. According to their numbers their DPS has increased between 20% and 25% (on a stationary target dummy).

Of course we’re already hearing “NERF ASS ROUGES” and I have to hold my hands up and just admit it; I am loving it! (I’m not going to deny it).

Unfortunately, I do have to agree this sort of DPS increase does seem a little overboard, we’ve been expecting an “adjustment” and sure enough…

Ghostcrawler has come forth and revealed Hunger for Blood will now increases damage by 10% instead of 15%:

“We wanted to increase Assassination rogue damage, and we were succesful, but we overshot the mark. We buffed Hunger for Blood back when Assassination needed a damage boost, so we’re more than happy that this talent won’t account for such a huge dps increase. Because of the nature of hotfixes, it is unlikely the tooltip will change to 10% right away”

It was only to be expected really wasn’t it?

As Dinear says; “mutilate still has a significant buff overall from the patch” and in all fairness we are still looking at a buff of between 15% – 20% after this nerf (on a stationary target dummy).

Are you a Combat Rogue? Will you be changing to Assasination spec?

Rogue News: Talent Trees and Class Changes in Cataclysm?

Ghostcrawler’s latest blue post gives us a hint about some interesting ideas and developments for the Rogue class in the upcoming release of Cataclysm.

There’s been quite a bit of talk about the viability of the subtlety talent tree where utility and mobility are the dominant focus rather than DPS and if you didn’t already know Blizzard are revamping the talent trees in the next expansion…

“… We’d like for more talent trees to look like Subtlety. Trading utility A for utility B is an interesting decision. Trading utility A for more dps is not an interesting decision; the latter is always going to win.

Somewhat related, for the pure dps classes it’s likely that there will always be a spec with the theoretically highest dps. It’s going to be nigh impossible to make multiple talent trees provide identical dps regardless of gear improvement, encounter specifics or group synergies. Our goal instead is just to get things close enough that players are willing to sacrifice a little bit of dps for a playstyle they really enjoy. (For some players, losing any dps is unacceptable, but I also know enough hardcore players that I can say with some confidence that you can’t just make a blanket statement that all competitive players feel this way.) “

My sentiments exactly!

Of course Combat Rogues are currently in first place in terms of DPS in raids. However, I just love Assassination too much to switch. Fortunately, Assassination Rogues are not far off Combat and with the incoming patch 3.3 update we’ll be even more competitive and without the need for any Weapon Swapping shenanigans.

Where it lacks in terms of quick-fire burst damage, for sustained DPS, Assassination wins. Look at fights like Gormok the Impaler, Twin Val’kyrs (Fjola Lightbane and Eydis Darkbane)and XT-002 in Ulduar. However, these fights have something in common; they’re pretty much stationary battles. As soon as there’s any real running around to be done Combat wins. However, this is part and parcel of the spec you choose and you have to accept there will be differences.

I chose Assassination and stick with it. For me the challenging rotation, the playstyle is much more enjoyable and I don’t want to have to change to Combat (which I personally don’t enjoy as much) in order to get a regular raid spot and progress.

I enjoy playing World of Warcraft and, without wanting to sound selfish, I want to use whatever playstyle I find most enjoyable not whatever spec is flavour-of-the-month in terms of pure DPS.

“I don’t think we’re there with rogues yet. Assassination is now a serious contender in end-game raiding, but Subtlety isn’t and hasn’t been since HAT was in a silly place. I think we’re a lot closer with mages. Arcane may be the highest dps in a general sense, but there are fights on which Fire will win. Frost is a lot closer than it used to be, to the point where someone who just loves Frost won’t feel like they are horribly gimping their group’s progress. (It probably still needs to be slightly higher than where it is, but we’ll see what Icecrown is like.) We eventually want to get rogues, locks and hunters closer to where mages appear to be in 3.3 (and work on mages more too of course).”

The reason I picked up a Rogue was primarily due to one thing… Stealth!

I played around with the subtlety tree back in The Burning Crusade and absolutely loved the mobility; Shadowstep was just awesome fun! I really enjoyed it and, whilst slower for levelling, used it for questing, 5-man dungeon runs and battlegrounds. Ok, it wasn’t the most suitable spec but it was by far the most fun for me.

I would love to be able to give the subtlety tree a go but it is simply not an option at all at the moment.

“Honor Among Thieves was a good attempt to get more combo points, and therefore damage, into the tree. It ended up having the scaling problem that a lot of our abilites have — it’s easy for it to be too weak in a small, 5-player group and to be too powerful when it’s scaling off of 25 players. (Restricting it to a group doesn’t really help because you can just fill that group full of folks who crit a lot, and raids provide a lot more buffs to guarantee crits.)

I do agree with the general feel of Subtlety being high finisher damage and cps through alternative routes, and that’s a kit we want to keep going forward. I also agree that Ghostly Strike, Hemo and Backstab all could use more “juice” (by which I don’t just mean higher dps). I’ll also add that I think we went a little overboard in emphasizing damage over utility in Lich King PvE, especially in the earlier raid tiers. Who needs a good Sap when you’re AE’ing everything down?”

In terms of PvP I’m using the 44/2/25 spec (primarily Assassination). I am in no way an expert… In fact I’ve got a long way to go before I’d consider myself to be any good… BUT… I enjoy it. I have been tempted to give subtlety a go here too but to be honest I miss the control the Assassination tree provides. Without it I feel too vulnerable; we do get torn apart pretty damn fast without our crowd-control abilities.

In my (limited) experience so far, in PvP, the Rogues job is to control and manipulate the opposition using stuns, interrupts, disarm the enemy and NOT get caught. If we get caught, that’s it. So far I’ve found we are the first nuke target. As soon as we open out of stealth I hear cries of “NUKE TEH ROUGE!”. And it can happen fast!

“PvP-wise, utility can be a lot more useful than in PvE. However, as I’ve said before we think we’ve kind of let rogues get into too much of that glass cannon state. They either keep someone controlled and blow them up, or they themselves get blown up. We would still like to tone down some of the rogue CC and increase some of their passive (not cooldown-based) survivability. It’s a little weird that leather classes are generally more fragile than cloth.”

Amen to that!

So… When are we going to see these changes? Well… Soon says Blizzard.

Personally, I’m excited to see what the changes in Cataclysm will bring.

A Tribute to Zaltu from One Rogue’s Journey…

For those of you who regularly read Rogue blogs Zaltu over at One Rogue’s Journey is hanging up his daggers and calling it a day.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to Zaltu for his contribution to the Rogue community. One Rogue’s Journey is definitely one the premium Rogue blogs out there.

Personally, I’ve always looked forward to reading his posts and he’s been an inspiration to me to keep pushing myself and learning more and more about the Rogue class.

Zaltu, you will be missed and thank you for your entertaining and informative articles. I wish you all the best for whatever the future holds for you!

If you haven’t already go wish him well and best of luck.

Improved Poisons and Deadly Poison in Patch 3.3

In a bid to boost damage for Mutilate Rogues Blizzard have announced improvements to Deadly Poison and the Improved Poisons talent in the latest 3.3 patch notes.

According to the 3.3 patch notes Improved Poisons will now increase your chance to apply Deadly Poison to your target by 4/8/12/16/20% (up from 2/4/6/8/10%).

In short, we’ll get our 5 stacks of Deadly Poison up faster (10%).

Great… Is that it?

Woooooooooah! Hang on a minute!

As I said before; Blizzard have also announced an improvement to Deadly Poison too…

In addition to its existing effects, when you apply Deadly Poison to a target which has already got 5 stacks up (the maximum number of applications) it will also trigger the poison which you’re using on your other weapon.

So what?

What do you mean? Don’t knock it!

Deadly Poison will now be applied 10% faster with the change to Improved Poisons and… the icing on the cake is you’ll get more procs from the Instant Poison on your main-hand weapon too.

Meh! There’s no pleasing some people.

Being a Mutilate Rogue I have to say I’m pleased to see this. There’s been a lot of talk about the need for us to use Weapon-swap macros or the Poison Swapper add-on in order to compete with fellow Rogues of the Combat variety.

Real Rogues use Daggers! Now let’s show them Rogue Warriors how it’s really done!

p.s. Dinear over on the Forever A Noob has posted a great article about the latest changes to be announced in the 3.3 patch update today along with his take on the subject. Go check it out.

WoW Rogue Arena Armor Set Bonuses Updated in Patch 3.3

Blizzard, as generous as they are, are upgrading the 2-piece and 4-piece arena set bonuses in patch 3.3 which will provide us Rogues with just a little more burst and survivability…

Arena Set Bonus (Patch 3.3)

2-piece:

• +100 Resilience
• +50 Attack Power

4-piece:

• Increases your maximum energy by 10
• + 150 Attack Power

Having dabbled a little in Arena recently (and making some decent progress I might add) I’m happy to see a significant boost to our attack power.

Like most Rogues I’m currently using a mixture of PvE and PvP gear; using too many PvP pieces means I have to sacrifice my burst damage for resilience.

An additional 200 attack power and an extra 50 resilience is not be sneezed at and should make a bit of a difference.

Following this update you will now have 2 options;

• you can make use of the extra attack power from the set bonus and give yourself that little bit more burst or;
• you can put in one or two pieces of the PvP accessories, keep your attack power at the same level and boost your resilience a little.

Here’s the official quote from Blizzard:

“The two-piece set bonus for all Wrath of the Lich King Arena sets now provides 100 resilience and 50 attack power. The current four-piece bonus will remain, however it also now provides 150 attack power.”

I don’t think any Rogues will complain about this change… I wonder if any other classes will be screaming “OMG Rogues OP! Neeeeeeeeerf!” as a result?

Will you be keeping the extra attack power to improve your burst? Or will you be swapping some of your PvE gear for PvP stuff to boost your resilience?

Rogue News: Emblems of Frost Rogue Gear

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better after finally getting to see the Rogue T10 armor stats the Emblem of Frost gear is now available for viewing!

All the items are level 264 and available from collecting Emblems of Frost. How many? No idea.

Emblem of Frost Rogue Gear:

Similar to the Rogue T10 armor set; we appear to be getting either red or yellow sockets and no blue ones on any of this gear either.

I hope Blizzard haven’t forgotten to give us at least one blue socket for our Relentless Earthsiege Diamond meta gem bonus.

Surely they haven’t overlooked this? Have they…?

I doubt it… but it would be funny… wouldn’t it? NO!?

Looking at this gear and the T10 set one things for sure… Rogue stats are going through the roof! If you haven’t already checked out the Rogue T10 stats go put a silly hat on, stand in the corner and have a word with yourself!

… And for those of you who are not satisfied with dribbling all over those stats go check out what they look like in-game courtesy of MMO-Champion:

Emblem of Frost Rogue Gear

• Shrapnel Star
• Shadow Seeker’s Tunic
• Cat Burglar’s Grips
• Vengeful Noose
• Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape
• Herkuml War Token

Now if these items don’t do it for you I don’t know what will.

GIEF! GIEF! GIEF!

Rogue T10 Stats Revealed: The Rogue Shadowblade Armor Set…

We’ve seen the pictures and the video and now, finally, the T10 armor stats for the Rogue Shadowblade set have been revealed!

According to World of Raids the set is active on the PTR now and without further ado here it is…

 Rogue Shadowblade Armor Set (iLevel 251)

Rogue T10 Stats

In summary, when comparing the T10 set stats to the T9 Level 245 Garona’s Battlegear it’s no surprise it provides a considerable upgdrade. Please note the Attack Power and Critical Strike Rating stats in the table below don’t include the AP and Crit gained from Agility (they are merely the Equip bonuses).

Stats	T9	T10	Change
Agility	562	646	84
Stamina	610	646	36
Attack Power	717	801	84
Armor Penetration Rating	149	223	74
Critical Strike Rating	247	422	175
Expertise Rating	133	80	-53
Hit Rating	215	0	-215
Haste Rating	0	63	63

On top of this the +84 agility between T9 and T10 will give you another +84 attack power and +46 crit rating (+1% crit).

In total the change from T9 to T10 in terms of attack power and critical strike rating is significant:

Total AP & Crit	T9	T10	Change
Attack Power	1279	1447	168
Critical Strike Rating	553	778	225
Critical Strike Chance	12.05%	16.94%	4.90%

Don’t forget this is before we even look at the other slot items AND we’ve got those lovely set bonuses to take into consideration too…

Rogue T10 Bonuses

• 2-Piece Bonus – Your Tricks of the Trade ability now grants you 15 energy instead of costing energy.
• 4-Piece Bonus – Gives your melee finishing moves a 13% chance to add 3 combo points to your target.

Gems

On the gem front we are going to be better off with 2 more red sockets in the T10 and none of those crappy blue sockets:

Gem Sockets	T9	T10	Change
Yellow	0	2	2
Red	3	5	2
Blue	4	0	-4

Overall

I like the look of the T10 set, I like the bonuses, gems and stats. Win. Win. WIN!

Thanks to World of Raids for making my day!

What are YOUR thoughts on the new T10 Shadowblade set?