combat-rogue
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Blizzard's new level 90 crash-course videos
Blizzard has released 11 instructional videos designed to give a new level 90 a quick and dirty introduction to their class. The title is perhaps a bit misleading, because these are not complete class overviews. Instead, each video focuses on a particular specialization of that class--and specifically, a DPS specialization. The specs featured are: Frost death night, Balance druid, Survival hunter, Arcane mage, Windwalker monk, Retribution paladin, Shadow priest, Combat rogue, Elemental shaman, Destruction warlock, and Arms warrior. If you've got a brand-new 90 that you're still figuring out, or if you're looking to busy yourself learning a new aspect of your class before Warlords of Draenor, these might be of interest to you. It is nice to see a Blizzard-sponsored guide for specs such as the Balance druid, which I personally find annoyingly complicated to play, but I'm a bit puzzled by the extremely specific nature of the videos. Are there going to be further guides for tanking and healing specs? Or for the DPS specs not covered here, such as Affliction warlocks, Fury warriors, Feral druids, Subtlety rogues, and more? I think videos like this that come straight from the horse's mouth of Blizzard are a great idea, but it's strange to see a set of them that feels so incomplete. Still, if you're toying with the idea of learning one of the specs covered, the videos are a good place to start.
Encrypted Text: Combat and the GCD
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 three rogue specs share many common mechanics. They all follow the same formula: generate combo points, use finishers, activate your cooldowns when they come up. The real differences between the specs only show up once you start playing them. Assassination is well-known for being more relaxed and favors pooling energy over spamming attacks. Subtlety rogues have a knack for massive burst damage via their complex cooldown, Shadow Dance. Combat is arguably the simplest of the three specs, and is often characterized by its fast-paced gameplay and high actions-per-minute rate. Adrenaline Rush, which has been combat's signature cooldown for years, is designed to let you push buttons even faster. Assassination's Vendetta lets you hit harder, subtlety's Shadow Dance lets you use openers, and Adrenaline Rush doubles the numbers of buttons you can push. Unfortunately for combat, the concept of "push more buttons" can't scale forever.
Encrypted Text: The lazy combat build, part 2
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. You can be a mediocre rogue simply by pushing three buttons. While that might seem shocking, remember that you can be a great mage with just one button. There's just one problem with being a rogue who spams Sinister Strike blindly -- you're not using all of your capabilities. Rogues have a rich culture of maximizing our damage at all costs. Rogues are a conceptually simple class. We only have the capacity to deal damage in melee range. Rather than letting that stifle us, we embrace the purity of form. Every single ability that a rogue wields is designed for a specific purpose. Our talents are designed around a single paradigm: kill. As you being to unleash the full arsenal of the rogue, it's easy to see why we're so efficient -- and why we're so feared.
Encrypted Text: The lazy combat build, part 1
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 this week's deluge of Mists of Pandaria information, Cataclysm is fading fast. Everyone is looking ahead to the future, with dreams of exploring Pandaria and complaining about monks being overpowered on the general forums. Deathwing has been vanquished millions of times, and with no new content slated for Cataclysm, this expansion has come to its end. We're now officially entering the inter-expansion lull. What better time than now to roll a new rogue alt? You've got plenty of justice and valor points banked, and your guild has probably been level 25 for months. If you haven't been playing recently, then you can simply have someone use a Scroll of Resurrection to give you a free level 80 character on the server and faction of your choosing. If you've ever wanted to play a rogue, there's no better time than today to try one out. If you're lucky, you might even make it to 85 in time to pick up your guild's inevitable fifth or sixth set of Fangs of the Father.
Encrypted Text: How to use a spreadsheet
Every Wednesday (usually), 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 how to properly use a DPS spreadsheet.Patch 3.1 is finally released, and there is a ton of new gear available for Rogues. The Argent Tournament has some great gear for newly 80 Rogues looking for solid-quality blues and epics, Ulduar has over 800 new items (more than all of TBC's raids combined), and Arena Season 6 should be starting next week. There's multiple new epics for every slot and for every playstyle.With this sudden influx of new gear, the infamous Rogue spreadsheets have seen a huge increase in download traffic. While I haven't seen any officially updated sheets from our friend Vulajin, Aldriana has published a pair of new Mutilate and Combat spreadsheets. While not quite as pretty as Vulajin's, Aldriana's has all of the major features that you need to plan your gear upgrades. Read on for detailed instructions on how to use a spreadsheet.
World of Warcraft guild leader wins Oscar (no, really)
Apparently last night was an Oscars evening. Didn't you know? Well, we sure didn't -- but that's besides the point. As it turns out, one particular winner in the visual effects category was Steve Preeg, who's also a guild leader in World of Warcraft. Now it'd be one thing to say he played the game, but to be the leader of an active guild means he plays the game.In fact WoW Insider was informed via one of Preeg's guildies that he's not only a guild leader in the game, but that he plays a Combat Rogue with 450 (that'd be maxed) Enchanting and Inscription and runs a progression guild that's downed almost everything the game has to offer.We can't turn down this chance to offer props to Mr. Preeg on his epic loot drop last night. That blue is most assuredly sitting somewhere prominent at his home, likely somewhere close to where he plays World of Warcraft -- at least when he's not making award winning feature films. Is this guy some kind of machine or what?[via WoW Insider]
