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Encrypted Text: Rogues can actually tank
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. In the original WoW beta, rogues were designed to be off tanks. Complete with a high dodge coefficient from agility and a buckler, rogues could survive quite a beating. Evasion was a tanking cooldown, and Vanish was a useful tank-swapping ability. Hunters worked similarly, also sporting bucklers and using Feign Death to lose aggro. Obviously, the developers scrapped both of these ideas before launch. During The Burning Crusade, Gaeowyn broke the combat table by achieving unhittable status with 102.63% avoidance and using it to successfully slay Illidan. After that, the crew slew Gruul with just five people while it was still relevant content. In Wrath, Jider abused Shadowstep and our amazing damage output to solo several Naxxramas bosses. The upcoming Mists expansion looks to again revitalize rogue tanking, with the advent of the druid ability Symbiosis and our bonus ability, Growl.
Encrypted Text: Art of the peel
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 be talking about one of the most important things a Rogue can do that's not called 'DPS'.In WoW, we don't get to decide much about our characters. A few pre-built faces and skin tone are about as deep as the customization options run. Gear is typically released in discrete tiers, and you'll find that most Rogues use mostly the same leather sets. Talents are similarly stale: there are rarely true choices in our trees. Choosing one talent over another either cuts your damage or cuts your usefulness, and for most Rogues the decision is easy.Most people assume one Rogue is as good as another. Take two arbitrary Rogues, Gankenstein and Istabbedu. They're both undead Rogues: their chins are falling off. They're both sporting full Season 2 gear with a few PvE epics sprinkled in. And they both traded in their Slicers for Shankers & Shivs this patch; all aboard the Mutilate train. So what separates these two from each other, and from the other 9,000 Rogues on any given server?
Tanking Rogue 3: Return of the Gaeowyn, or Illidan dies
You've seen him tank Shahraz and a 5-man Gruul run, and now Gaeowyn, of the Shards of Existence guild (US Illidan-A), has struck again. Technically, he gave us some teaser footage about this back at the end of his Shahraz video, but he's now released a full video of a successful Illidan tanking. As on his last 2 videos, Gaeowyn was able to use gear, talents, and buffs to stack enough dodge and parry to fully avoid all physical attacks (with a little help from Scorpid Sting and Insect Swarm, of course). Alas, it looks like this will be his last video. He says that he doesn't want to wear out the concept -- after all, there's only so many videos you can make of a rogue standing in front of a giant monster and dodging a lot. In addition, he's switched characters to a priest to help his guild with a shortage of healers. I'll miss the series, myself, if only because it's great to see people conquer challenges in unconventional ways. It makes the game a little fresher and a little more interesting. [Thanks for the forward, Allen!]
The tanking Rogue strikes again, 5-mans Gruul
You may remember Gaeowyn, the Rogue from Shards of Existence who tanked Mother Shahraz thanks to an insane amount of dodge via agility. She's struck again, this time taking down Gruul with herself tanking, along with a Paladin (with Blessing of Kings), a Shaman (with Grace of Air), a Hunter with Scorpid pet Sting, ad a Druid (using Insect Swarm in addition to Mark of the Wild, of course). After all the buffs and debuffs, she had 76.31% dodge, 12.16% parry, and 14.16% chance to be missed, resulting in 102.63% avoidance. She posted a link to her spec and gear for tank mode, too. The video's short, but it took them a little over 23 minutes to down him. They also got to discover that his Growth caps out at a 30-stack, and that it expires after 5 minutes.
Rogue tanks Black Temple boss Mother Shahraz
The guild Shards of Existence on the Illidan server hasn't managed to down Illidan himself yet, but apparently that hasn't stopped them from having a little bit of fun with the other Black Temple bosses. According to their site, they've been having a bit trouble with tanks losing their computers, which has in turn frustrated their attempts to put Illidan on farm status. But just because they're still getting their replacement tanks geared up doesn't mean they have to sit back and wait. Introducing Gaeowyn, The first Rogue to tank Mother Shahraz, the harem mistress of Black Temple. Notes Nihilum's news site, she pulled it off by stacking massive amounts of agility, while keeping enough expertise to cause adequate threat to keep the boss' attention. Raid buffed, she had 76.31% dodge, 12.16% parry, and 14.16% chance to be missed, meaning that she had 102.63% avoidance - just enough to take physical damage out of the equation. If nothing else, that alone makes me wonder if I could pull that off on my Druid tank - It certainly would make tanking Prince Malchezaar's phase 2 easier. Of course, Bears cannot parry, alas, so I'd have to make up some major ground somewhere. The video is a fun watch, especially at the end where it looks like Gaeowyn tries her hand at tanking Illidan. Is this a sign that we can expect Rogues to be fighting with Paladins, Druids, Warriors, and Death Knights for tanking spots come WoTLK?
