ranged-rogue
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Encrypted Text: The rise of the ranged rogue
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 original Shuriken Toss never made sense. Why would rogues, a purely melee class, want a single ranged attack? We don't have the supporting toolbox to make the transition into a ranged DPS spec. Melee uptime is our top priority. Because of our reliance on our melee attacks, mobility is our most requested feature. Why would a class want Shuriken Toss when they can have Shadowstep? Patch 5.2 is turning a one-off ranged ability into everything a rogue needs to attack targets from range. If you use Shuriken Toss on a target that is farther than 10 yards away, your auto-attacks gain a 30-yard range for 10 seconds. The auto-attacks turn into tiny shuriken that you throw at your target. These shuriken have several special properties, but the extended range is obviously the most important aspect of the ability. With Shuriken Toss, ranged auto-attacks, and Deadly Throw, rogues suddenly have a ranged repertoire.
Encrypted Text: Shuriken Toss' unlikely popularity
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. I'm not very happy with how the rogue talents turned out in Mists. Rather than new utility or cool features, we saw our old abilities given back to us, except that they were made mutually exclusive. The level 90 tier was particularly disappointing, as it focused on improving our quality of life instead of adding new functionality. Paladins get Boundless Conviction for free, and yet we're paying for Anticipation. I have yet to meet someone using Versatility. Couldn't we just see Redirect's base CD lowered to 30 seconds and call it even? The worst talent of the bunch seems to be Shuriken Toss. Why would you use an ability that's significantly weaker than Mutilate? The surprise is that assassination rogues don't care about how much damage Mutilate does; mutilate is only their 7th-highest source of damage. Shuriken Toss, on the other hand, generates more combo points per energy than Mutilate. Shuriken Toss still procs Deadly Poison, which makes up 40% of our overall damage. Rogues across a variety of gear levels are reporting Shuriken Toss results that are at or near Mutilate's performance. Update: Due to last night's PTR updates, Shuriken Toss will no longer proc Seal Fate when in melee range. As such, Shuriken Toss will not be viable after patch 5.1 goes live.
