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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: 5 tips for heroic 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 with any article suggestions or screenshots you may have. Why do I ever talk myself into running heroics without my guildmates? I always end up with a tank that doesn't like waiting for CC, the healer who thinks that Recuperate is all the healing I need, and the hunter who wins the roll on Left Eye of Rajh. Despite all of this, I still put myself through all of pain because I love running heroics. Not everyone I meet is awful, and it helps me to keep my gameplay sharp for my upcoming raids. Practicing in heroics, as if they were raids, can have you learning your new rotation and gearing up at an accelerated pace. The last thing you want to do is underperform at your opening raid, as you'll be first on the chopping block. Heroic bosses have come a long way from the easily conquered Wrath dungeons, and many bosses are basically bite-sized raid encounters. By learning new mechanics and keeping your timing and rotations sharp, you can be fully prepared for whatever tier of raiding you intend to conquer.
Encrypted Text: Pre-raid gear 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 with any rogue questions you have. Let's be honest here, rogues don't really need a leveling guide. We simply continue to exist, as we always have, leaving a trail of the dead in our wake. We're trained killing machines who also have the ability to Stealth around to avoid detection. With Recuperate, we never need to stop and eat, and with Deadly Momentum, we never need to stop and Recuperate. Basically, if you want to level your rogue from 80 to 85, just find any new zone and start killing anything in sight. After questing your way through Cataclysm's new content, you've reached level 85. Unfortunately for you, much of your old gear is now quite out of date. Think of Azeroth as a giant piñata filled with loot, and then imagine Deathwing's entrance into the world ripping a hole in said piñata the size of the Maelstrom. There are reputation vendors dying to give out new leather gear to anyone loyal to their cause, and new dungeon bosses mean new dungeon drops. The best part of all this new gear is that with the new armor specialization system, hunters and warriors will finally stop rolling on our leather.
Encrypted Text: A Cataclysm 101 guide for 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 with any Cataclysm questions you have! There was once a time where rogues were one of the worst soloing classes in the game. We have never had any tanking or healing abilities like the hybrid, and our fellow pure DPS classes have the advantage of ranged attacks. Rogues were simply wrecked by their enemies. While we had decent levels of dodge, our survivability depended entirely stunlocks to control our opponents. Against anything immune to stuns, we were pretty much worthless. Times have changed. Rogues have reached levels of survivability that were previously fantasy. We remain the single best DPS class for toe-to-toe damage, and now we can actually last long enough to get the job done. Each of the three rogue specs has a purpose and a direction, and the title for top DPS spec is still up for grabs at level 85. Blizzard has already tweaked the mastery system for rogues several times to ensure that no spec is left behind. I'm looking forward to our bright future in Cataclysm.
Encrypted Text: Rogue mechanics for the Cataclysm era
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 rogue questions you may have. After writing Encrypted Text for over two years now, I have gotten into the groove of writing about rogue life at level 80. I've talked about all about armor penetration's various iterations (and eventual removal) and where to snag the best leather gear with your emblems justice points. We've discussed the trade skills that best suit the discriminating rogue and how to hide from our would-be assassins and their Turkey Shooters. However, all that is about to change. Blizzard has implemented a ton of changes that affect the rogue class in serious ways. Cataclysm is by far its most ambitious expansion yet. With such a huge delta between what was and what is, the transition is going to be a bit rough as we cope with the post-Shattering world. Poisons have been streamlined (again), our Stealth was buffed significantly, and our talent trees were redesigned from the ground up to ensure that each spec provides a useful raid buff. I think it's safe to say that the rogue as we know it has evolved.
Encrypted Text: One last look at the rogue of Azeroth past
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. Today, we look back on the great kills of the past. With The Shattering's complete ruination of the planet, Azeroth has been transformed forever. Entire zones have been uprooted, flooded, and even broken in half. Deathwing's ascent to the mortal realm has left our world with several battle scars. Thrall and the shaman are doing trying their hardest to contain the damage, but the elemental planes are bleeding through. Insert some bad pun using the word Cataclysm here. Rogues have been sneaking through Azeroth for eons. Mages weren't around until a race discovered magic, and priests couldn't heal anyone until they discovered the Light. The art of stealth has been around for as long as there have been shadows to hide in. We've walked a million miles without ever leaving a footprint and killed a million foes whose bodies were never found. As we watch the Azeroth we've known and loved disintegrate around us, I can't help but remember our history.
Encrypted Text: Theorycrafting basics for the studious 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 rogue questions you would like to see answered. In the immortal words of our favorite crab, "WoW is a game about upgrading your stuff." While achievements and professions allow for your character to grow, they don't make you any stronger. If you want to increase your power, you need to upgrade your stuff. Gear improvements are often the difference between success and failure on cutting-edge encounters, when your raid needs to meet specific raw damage and healing numbers to pull off a win. While it sounds easy, it's not always as simple as it seems to upgrade your stuff. While the advent of the ilvl system allows for us to quickly judge the rough quality of an item, it doesn't provide any help when comparing two items from the same dungeon. It also doesn't assist us in our gemming or reforging choices. Making intelligent gear decisions is a part of every rogue's life. In order to make the best choices for our characters, we use what's known as theorycrafting to evaluate the various stats in the game. The end result allows us to make educated gearing strategies and ensure we're doing the most DPS we possibly can. But how do we get from evaluating stats to choosing an actual piece of gear?
Encrypted Text: An interview with the ever-cautious Aldriana
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. This week, I interview Aldriana, the infamous author of rogue spreadsheets. Nobody likes rogues. Whether it's due to an instinctive fear of being stabbed repeatedly in the back or a Freudian bout of jealousy, we are easily the most reviled class in WoW. Death knights may be characterized as noobs while hunters are blamed for rolling on every single weapon, yet rogues still receive the least amount of good will. Because of this, it's rare to see anyone talking about rogues outside of asking for massive nerfs for all of our abilities. Playing a rogue has become a thankless job. I'd like to take this opportunity to reverse that trend. With the last tier of content for level 80s (and the associated gear), Aldriana released the final copy of his infamous Wrath spreadsheets, which had been maintained since Naxxramas' release. Aldriana has a long history of involvement in the rogue theorycrafting community, particularly on the rogue forums of Elitist Jerks. With spreadsheets dating back to The Burning Crusade and numerous contributions before that, Aldriana has been dedicated to keeping rogues informed for years. Blizzard itself even gave Aldriana a nod via an in-game item, Aldriana's Gloves of Secrecy (thanks splodesondeath). I recently had the pleasure of asking him a few questions about his rogue, his spreadsheets, and life as an EJ moderator.
Encrypted Text: Answers to your pre-Cataclysm rogue questions
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 rogue questions you may have, like how to get yourself out of a straightjacket with only your mace. With just one month remaining until Cataclysm's release, everyone is getting ready for WoW's latest installment. I have been working on refining my leveling builds for my characters, preparing heirloom gear for my upcoming goblin shaman, and solidifying my guild's roster for January's inaugural raids. Cataclysm will be the biggest expansion yet, and there is no lack of work to be done. Many of you are doing likewise, adapting to the changes introduced in patch 4.0.1 and planning for the future. I have been receiving a ton of great questions via email about best practices moving forward. While some things are still up in the air (like combat's viability), most of the changes are settling down, and we can really start to make plans knowing that it's unlikely we'll see any new major changes.
Encrypted Text: BlizzCon news for patient 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. This week, I'll be sharing my report from BlizzCon 2010 for rogues. As a member of our shadowy brotherhood, my duty to investigate and report on the rogue class is never over. Even though I was enjoying the festivities at BlizzCon 2010 and testing out the new demon hunter class in Diablo 3, I still made time to take care of business. The class Q&A panel is one of the best places to communicate directly with the WoW development team, and so I staked my place in line before the prior panel had even ended. When my turn finally came, I had to first pay my respects to the developers. I had asked them at the prior year's BlizzCon if we would ever see a Vanish fix implemented, and Ghostcrawler avoided promising anything. Fast-forward a year and we finally have a Vanish that I'm proud to call my own. I opened my time by giving them their much-deserved thanks. I then took the opportunity to ask about something near and dear to my heart: off-hand weapon speeds. Axes and daggers were simply never meant to be used at the same time. Their art styles don't even match!
Encrypted Text: Finding combat's missing damage
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 you'd like to see answered. With patch 4.0.1 in our rearview mirror, we've had over a week to fix our addons and get our houses in order. I've already had a few decent raid DPS parses forwarded to me by subtlety rogues, who are finally able to actually do reasonable DPS. Traditionally, there has always been a few "bad" specs in WoW, but subtlety was so bad that it was tier below the other bad specs. Its arrival has brought back several of my old friends from retirement, who were looking forward to the frenetic rotation of finishers. Assassination rogues have been enjoying the synergy between Vendetta and cooldown like Bloodlust, and their relative DPS is still decent. The addition of Rupture as a finisher and Backstab as an alternate generator has their rotation shaken up a bit, but still easily manageable. I actually found the Mutilate-centric build to be pretty fun to play after the patch, and I'll be using it to raid with for the immediate future. However, it wasn't assassination's playstyle that caused me to promote it to my main spec, but rather combat's current weakness that drove me to enchant my daggers with Mongoose.
Encrypted Text: Rogue specs and glyphs for patch 4.0.1
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. This week, we're talking about the changes of the recent patch 4.0.1 and what they mean for rogues. With patch 4.0.1 now upon us, rogues are experiencing more changes in a single patch than probably ever before. While our talent trees have regressed to 31-point incarnations, new mastery bonuses and abilities have been added to each tree to create definition and purpose. The glyph system has seen a similar reworking and boosts the number of glyphs we can use by a full 50 percent. Finally, the reworking of the buff and debuff system has granted us new utility in a raid environment. Due to the breadth of the changes and the uncertainty of new mechanics, it's difficult to predict exactly what the outcome will be. It's hard to say which spec will be the most powerful, as each has seen significant change. Assassination rogues were hurt the least by the removal of armor penetration, but combat rogues had many of the abilities buffed to compensate. Subtlety may even be the dark horse, eclipsing both of the traditional PvE specs if everything goes its way. After we've had a few more days of patch 4.0.1 under our belt, it should be easier to figure out exactly what's working and what isn't.
Encrypted Text: Fresh rogue rotations in Cataclysm
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 new rotations that rogues will be using. After Blizzard's latest press release, we know that Cataclysm will be released in early December. We already know that there will be at least one patch that precedes the expansion. The period of time between patch 4.0.1 and the expansion's actual launch is a time of transition, and it's rapidly approaching. The transition phases of The Burning Crusade and Wrath were rocky to say the least; it's safe to say that that we're looking forward to exciting times. Many classes are hurting pretty badly on the PTR for patch 4.0.1 right now. Blizzard had the great idea of temporarily granting rogues Cloak of Shadows as our 31-point subtlety talent back in patch 2.0 to help us deal with the souped-up casters of that era. A similar change could be used to give retribution paladins access to Inquisition (at the cost of Zealotry) to bolster their damage until Cataclysm. Luckily for rogues, we were on the receiving end of the latest "damage pass." Several of our core abilities were granted significant damage and scaling bonuses to keep us competitive in a pre-Cataclysm world.
Encrypted Text: Cataclysm heroics from a rogue's perspective
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 new heroic dungeons in the upcoming expansion. I remember what it was like to play a rogue in dungeons in vanilla WoW. Our only form of long-term crowd control was Sap, and it brought us out of stealth every time we used it. Subtlety rogues could spend three talent points on Improved Sap, which still left Sap knocking us out of Stealth a tenth of the time. Every mob had some sort of AoE or whirlwind-style attack, and rogues were often right behind tanks in terms of healing necessary. We've come a long way since the old days. Tricks of the Trade, with its instant threat transfer, has become the crutch that supports even the greenest tanks. Fan of Knives is one of the best AoE abilities in the game and synergizes with our poisons for incredible potency. Improved Sap has been baked in to the ability, and we can use our CC safely on a wide variety of targets. Feint's new ability to reduce our AoE damage taken also allows us to survive most attacks. You might say that rogues are nearly perfect for running heroics. Unfortunately for us, Cataclysm's heroics have a thing or two to teach us about complacency.
Encrypted Text: Top new, useful Cataclysm rogue abilities
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 new abilities that we'll see as we level up in the upcoming expansion. As I've mentioned several times before, rogues are often thought of as the "cooldown class." We've got a plethora of abilities, with nearly one (or two) for every situation. We're then regulated via cooldowns attached to each abilities, limiting how often we can use them. This gives the rogue class incredible potency in short fights, when our cooldowns are able to be used in quick succession. However, we have often stumbled in longer encounters, when our cooldowns are only active for a small percentage of the overall fight. Blizzard has been working on resolving this by reducing both the potency and the cooldown of a few of our moves, like Sprint, to give us more flexibility. The DPS model for rogues hasn't change at all since The Burning Crusade. The only real addition was the creation of Mutilate and Envenom, which have been staples for rogues for years now. While Fan of Knives was a fun addition at level 80, its use on anything but trash has been limited at best. It's unsurprising that even though we're receiving three new abilities in Cataclysm versus BC's two, they're still all cooldown abilities. However, our new spells are actually incredibly fun and useful. They also take some skill to use properly, which is something that the rogue class needs desperately to get back to. Using your abilities wisely should yield a large reward -- and with that thought, I will now introduce the 2010 graduates of the Rogue Ability Academy.
Encrypted Text: Playing your rogue in patch 4.0.1
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 new PTR and the upcoming patch 4.0. If you haven't heard, there's a new public test realm in town. It's riding on patch 4.0.1, the fabled pre-Cataclysm patch that contains a ton of class and stat changes. While you still can't fly in Azeroth and goblins are still just NPCs, you can experiment with the future of the rogue class without waiting for a rare beta invitation. As a rule of thumb, any changes that don't add content like quests or zones are in, while anything specific to Cataclysm, like archaeology, is out. It's important to note that patch 4.0.1 is not intended to be balanced in any way, shape or form. It effectively marks the end of competitive PvE and PvP until Cataclysm's release, and I can guarantee there will be class mechanics that are simply out of tune. What you should be focusing on are the changes to our class, how they function and how some of the new systems work in practice. Also, remember that it's your duty as a rogue to exploit any variations in power to kill as many of the opposing faction's members as possible.
Encrypted Text: Rogue glyphs in the Cataclysm beta
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 new glyph system and talk about which glyphs look good so far. Back in the day, before Wrath was even released, I had incorrectly speculated that there would be three tiers of glyphs in the expansion. It was my very first post on WoW.com, and my mistake was clearly pointed out to me by some of the helpful commenters. It turns out that I was actually right -- it just took Blizzard a few years to get around to adding the extra tier of glyphs. There are now three types of glyph: prime, major and minor. Prime glyphs aren't necessarily fun; they just buff us. Major glyphs are sort of the utility glyphs that give us a measurable benefit, but they're not necessarily mandatory. Minor glyphs are just for fun things that make our lives easier. Luckily for us, many of the new Cataclysm glyphs are available on the beta, complete with the shiny new glyph interface. While scribes may be complaining about their business models going out the window, I'm busy drooling over some of the new glyph options we have available.
Encrypted Text: Iconic rogue items
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 some of the awesome rogue items that help define our class' image. I remember the first time I was ever kicked from a guild. At the time, my main character was my very first rogue, who was a new level 60. I browsed around the realm forums for any guilds recruiting and found one that seemed to fit my schedule. I started raiding with them, and everything seemed to be going great. Well, it was going great, until I decided to argue with a hunter about weapons. The raid had a Core Hound Tooth drop for them in Molten Core, and a hunter had used his DKP to win the item. I saw him walking around Ironforge with it the next day. I argued with him that a rogue should've had first priority for it, since it's one of our main weapons. His stance was that any weapon a hunter could use was a "hunter weapon," or else Blizzard would've made it so that they couldn't use it. His other weapon was an Azuresong Mageblade that he claimed boosted his Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot damage. It turns out he was a high-ranking officer of the guild, and our spat was grounds for a /gkick. Luckily for us, there are a few items in game that rogues can take claim of. These items were designed specifically with us in mind and have become instantly recognizable symbols of our class to everyone.
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.
Encrypted Text: Rogue mobility
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 talk about the brand new version of Sprint in the beta. I'm freshly back from slaying elementals and cultists alike in the Cataclysm beta, and I'm here to bring you some good news. I already talked about how Vanish was finally fixed and has managed to stay fixed on the beta servers. The mechanic they're using is a two-stage process, similar to how a space shuttle launches. The first stage is a buff called (unsurprisingly) "Vanish," which isn't actually Stealth, but a pseudo-Stealth that keeps us out of sight. The Vanish buff only lasts for 3 seconds, at which point regular Stealth takes over. We can't leave Stealth for those 3 seconds because we're not actually in Stealth anyway, which is a pretty elegant way of fixing the problem. I'm rambling again, as Vanish is fixed and you've already heard about it. Blizzard's newest gift to the rogue community comes straight out of our de facto wish list, again. General mobility worries have been heard from rogues since warriors received Intecept, which is to say we've been complaining about it since Day One. An oft-suggested change has been halving Sprint's cooldown and duration, and it seems that the dev team actually took the idea to heart. As the screenshot above shows, Sprint is now on a 1-minute cooldown.
