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Encrypted Text: Rogues do it from behind
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. The best way to improve your DPS is to attack more. I'm not talking about stacking haste so that your attacks are swift as lightning, but rather about not missing any opportunities. In order for a rogue to deal maximum damage, he needs to be in melee range of something that needs to die at all times. Staying in melee range can be difficult, as bosses are always tossing out pools of fire and knocking us back into the walls. Rogues need to be tenacious; we need to be vicious dogs that won't let go of our prey for any reason. We need to hustle between targets, minimizing the amount of time we see "Out of Range" at the top of our screen. In order to ensure that we're on our targets at all times, we need to learn about how melee mechanics work.
Encrypted Text: The rotation system
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we discuss the rotation model of DPS, and how it defines our class in every way. Blizzard has a long history of taking popular addons and rolling their functionality into the game's base user interface. The first instance of this that I can remember was when Blizzard introduced its own quest objective tracking overlay, nearly copying MonkeyQuest's original configuration. The dev team also inserted dungeon maps for the various instances, taking a page out of Atlas' book. Their latest invention is a replacement for Power Auras, the popular notification mod that displays custom graphics when a specified event occurs. Looking at the list of spells for which Blizzard created custom "spell activation" effects (thanks BB!), we see mostly random and reactive abilities on the list. Paladins will enjoy the art for Art of War, and every mage spec has a particular proc to watch patiently for. What intrigued me was that there is actually a spell activation effect for rogues, an orange lightning bolt that represents Slice and Dice. Slice and Dice, as any rogue will inform you, is not a random proc; it's a core part of our DPS and should be up at all times. While having a lightning bolt on my screen at all times sounds like fun, it got me thinking about the rogue DPS model. I utilize Power Auras extensively on every other character I play, yet I don't even have it enabled on my rogue.
