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Encrypted Text: Lifestyle of the Pandaria 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. After writing Encrypted Text for nearly four years now, I have gotten into the groove of writing about how rogues will handle upcoming expansions. The upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion looks to repeat most of the last two expansions' changes: a complete poison revamp, talent trees slashed to the core, and no news on our missing Swirly Ball. Wait, Swirly Ball is back? Everything I know about rogues just went out the window. The developers avoid implementing major class changes via patches, preferring to deploy them via expansions. There's a natural separation between expansions that softens the blow of redesign a class mechanic. While rogues weren't fundamentally altered during Cataclysm's patches, there are already several changes brewing for us in Mists. We're gaining more raid utility, dropping a few outdated mechanics, and becoming more flexible with our abilities. How will these changes affect your day-to-day lifestyle?
Encrypted Text: Slicing up hit and expertise for Cataclysm rogues
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, especially if you've been playing subtlety lately! I love hit and expertise. While their mechanics and nuances can be complicated, I enjoy the diversity they bring to our gear options. We have stats like critical strike chance, which give us a chance to hit harder; haste, which lets us hit more often; and of course, hit and expertise, which let us hit our targets more often. The interaction between all of these different gear stats is one of the most interesting parts of theorycrafting for me. Think about it, would you really enjoy picking gear if you were just choosing between haste, mastery, and crit? Unfortunately for us, hit and expertise are also our only two remaining stats with tangible caps on their potency. While we were able to cap out on critical strike chance and armor penetration in the past, one of those stats has been rebalanced and the other completely removed. Because of the caps in place, hit and expertise's value drops off immediately after reaching that golden value, and so we're left always keeping those caps in mind.
Encrypted Text: Guide to Rogue gear for new raiders
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'll discuss gearing options for a Rogue who wants to break into the raiding scene.Last week, we looked at what stats are important for a PvE Rogue, and how those stats interact with each other and why they're important. To summarize, hit and expertise ratings are very important until you reach a few key milestones, after which the pure damage options like Agility and Attack Power become more attractive.The key is to be over 99 hit rating (the Yellow Hit Cap - YHC) but under 315 hit rating (the Poison Hit Cap - PHC) and to never be over 214 expertise rating (the Expertise Cap - EC)? If you look in the right places, reaching these numbers becomes fairly simple. Bind on Equip Leatherworking goods, Heroic drops, and reputation rewards will form the core of your gear as a newly 80 Rogue. Let's explore where to find the right type of gear to prepare you for that Naxxramas raid next weekend. Much of this information can be found at Shadow Panther, however I have collected the pieces that specifically sport Hit or Expertise that can be acquired in 5 man Dungeons or below. Remember that the PHC and EC are "caps" and not necessarily goals, and that you shouldn't sacrifice other stats to reach these goals unless you have used a spreadsheet to determine which is the better piece of equipment.
Encrypted Text: Guide to Rogue stats for new raiders
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'll discuss what stats are important for raiding Rogues in today's end-game.Wrath's first true raid instances come in the form of a level 60 raid instance put in the microwave for 20 levels and served with a side of dragons. Don't get me wrong; I love the retouched Naxxramas. I never got to experience all of the fights against Kel'Thuzad's minions before they relocated to Northrend, so being able to re-enter the citadel of death and slay some undead is a welcome opportunity.If you search for "naxx 60 rogue gear guide" I'm sure you'll find a bunch of articles that recommend you sport at least 8/8 Bloodfang and maybe a weapon or two from Ahn'Qiraj. Times have changed, and so have the gear requirements. There are a few magic numbers that every Rogue wants to shoot for. After the cut I'll detail these vital stats and explain why they're so important to us.
