> Disclaimer. This is my very first blog ever and I am nothing more than a casual player. I choose to write this game-related blog in hope of letting out some frustration due to the amount of idiotic players inside the game we all love and hate: World of Warcraft. ///
A "little" introduction:
Since I'm not familiar to blogging, I figured I could start off with a little intro about who I am, what I do and why I choose to write this WoW related blog.
I'm 23 years old, I live in Norway and work as a Securitas guard. On my sparetime I either work out, socialize with my friends or relax. Relaxing usually relates to WoW and the rogueclass.
I was mostly inspired to write this blog after I started reading Givlon's blog. I find it rather amusing, intelligent and clever. I see alot of people disagreeing with him and constantly whining or arguing with his points of view, alltho, most of his readers seems to have a more mature mind and will instead give constructive critisism and point out flaws in his research or what could've been done better. (www.greedygoblin.blogspot.com)
Most of his posts points out people who he referes to as S&M's (slackers & morons), and I cannot express how many times his "theories" or "points" is proven. Over and over and over and over again.
Some of the funnier 'quotes' I've read in his blog is things like;
"the gemless archmoron", "bad player is bad" and my favorite; "gearscore doesnt move you out from flames".
In one of his latest post he tried to (successfully) write a mini-guide about basic things that newbies should know about when they are actually level 80, which many players don't and it scares me. Blizzard obviously don't see that newbs have hundreds of ways of being carried through this game and facerolling to "success".
Ofcourse, this is success only within the minds of S&M's. They think they're good, while in reality, they are in mild words: INCREDIBADS.
Enough crying!
Now that I've cried enough, I can start writing about what this blog is intended to be. A rogue guide, or rather, a pocketguide, so if a lone-lost-rogue is in need of help, you could always link him this page. This means that most advanced players will find alot of what's being posted here useless, but you never know, maybe you'll learn something too?
Talents/Explanations/"cookiecutterbuilds"
The endgame damage-builds for rogues consists mostly of 2 speccs, or specializations.
Mutilate 51/18/2 - http://www.wowhead.com/talent#f0ec0egoVboIuVo0xV0xcZb:ITs
Combat 20/51/0 - http://www.wowhead.com/talent#fhg00tLZMgVo0cxqru0xRt:Nhk
Explanation and variation of talents will be explained later.
However, this is the socalled "cookiecutters" for rogues, and I can tell you right now, they cut.
I myself use the 20/51/0, and it works completely fine. I'll now explain some about stats, how they work and why they are optimal for each of the talent trees posted above.
Let's start with the Mutilate talents. Your damagesource will consist alot of poison proccs, which means, poisons that you will be applying to your weapons, is your #1 damagedealer.
You want instant poison in your mainhand weapon and deadly poison in your offhand. With the fast daggers equipped and in the flurry of attacks, your poisons will do alot of damage. most likely alot more than you'd expect.
Mutilate has got a priority list: target must have deadly poisons applied all the time, a bleed effect (you will most likely have this, if you have a druid or a warrior in your raid/group), slice and dice and the finishing move Envenom. Your envenom will deal an enourmous amount of damage, but that's not the big deal with the ability at all, it's the fact that it refreshes your slice and dice ability to its maximum duration, and within a few seconds after the Envenom being cast, you gain an enorumos amount of chance to apply poisons to your target. At some point later, I will make videos to show how the rotations can be done.
Now, let's take a look at combat (20/51/0).
This is something every rogue should manage to handle. The rotation itself is like driving an automatic-gear car. It's a 3 button smashing for players who's got slight issues with learning curves. Poison still does alot of your damage (instant mainhand, deadly offhand), but your white/passive damage will do an enourmos amount more. The priority list in this talent-tree is slice and dice. Always keep it up, either at 4 combo point, but preferably 5. Eviscerate should be used at 5 combo points, but also with 4 if you're using the Glyph for Sinister Strike. You don't want to have 4 combo points, then have a critting sinister strike and end up with 5, and 1 combo point wasted. Whenever you are low on energy (empty your energy bar), you should use your ability called Killing Spree. It does a huge amount of damage within a few seconds. If there are several enemies close to eachother, make sure you cast your Blade Flurry ability before using Killing Spree.
Adrenaline Rush can be used during "nukes", which usually is when a shaman uses the Bloodlust ability,
but make sure that you use it during a "stage" of a bossfight where you're not going to move within a very short amount of time. This will make the cooldown completely useless.
STATS - please do read up on this
I see that alot of rogues blindly equip items that's got a higher itemlevel because they think it's better than the lower itemlevel one. This is WRONG. A classic example of this is when a mutilate rogue buys the "Lethal Mask of Intent", itemlevel 245 from triumph emblems, instead of the itemlevel 232 tier9. and Vice/versa as a combat rogue.
The most important stat for every rogue: Hit Rating. this needs to be "soft capped" as many players refers to it. The current Soft Cap versus level 83 (bosses) is 8% for a rogue if the 5% from precision is included in your talent tree. (Poison cap is 11% and hard cap is not needed).
You need 8% as combat and mutilate, you should have 11% as a mutilate rogue, and it's usefull as a combat rogue. After you've "capped" your hit, you must aim for expertise as a mutilate rogue, and I advice you to do the same as a combat rogue because of the fact that it's easier to keep a "rotation" going with this.
8% hit means that none of your special (yellow abilities) will miss. Sinister Strike, Mutilate, Envenom, Eviscerate and list goes on.
Which leaves the "stat priority" looking like this for rogues:
Combat -
#1 hit rating untill 8%
#2 hit untill 11%, or expertise rating, preferably reaching 26 (26 is softcap when standing behind a boss.)
#3 armor penetration.
Once you've capped hit to 8/11%, the value of armor penetration will increase immensly, while hit will drop alot. Expertise and armor pen is valued roughly the same, some prefere armor pen, I prefere getting expertise softcap, then going deep armor penetration.
#4 haste/agility/attackpower.
2 attack power is worth roughly the same as 1 agility, but I prefere the attack power. (due to critcap, 52% mainhand)
The reason why armor penetration is so good for combat rogues, is that you have a very slow mainhand weapon versus what mutilate rogues have, and also, your talent tree consists of "Increased critical strike damage". If your opponent has a huge amount of armor, your damage done will be reduced alot. Armor penetration bypasses this, but again, it doesn't matter if you hit for 50,000 but you can't hit anything at all. This is why hit and expertise is important to keep your damage output stabile and "safe", and it sucks if your kidney shot is dodged by a mob that was supposed to be stunned (Lich King valkyrs anyone?).
Mutilate -
#1 hit rating untill 11%
#2 expertise untill softcap (26)
#3 haste and attack power.
armor pen is BAD for mutilate rogues.
Attack power equals increased poison damage and envenom damage, which is mostly your prio damage resource. Haste equals faster attack speed which means more poison damage. Again, poison is your biggest damagedealer as a mutilate rogue. The mutilate ability itself is there only to provide a quick rotation and alot of poison proccs on your target.
I hope this will be helpfull for a "newb" rogue who needs guidance. If things are very unclear, please do leave comments with a good feedback. Constructive critisism is constructive!
However, if you wonder about anything, you can either contact me through commenting on this blog, or leave an ingame email to me, or a whisper.
//Bonebeast @ Magtheridon EU
armory link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&cn=Bonebeast
