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Encrypted Text: Adjusting your rogue to patch 5.2
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. Patch 5.2 only came out three weeks ago, and there's already talk about what's coming in the next patch. While the new PvP gear changes are interesting, we still have to deal with what the last patch dealt us. Rogues typically receive fewer changes than the other classes, for better or worse. When we have a patch like 5.2 that introduces several updates and new additions, there's naturally a period of coping with the changes. Marked for Death is an amazing talent for chewing through mobs, if you remember to use it. I tend to use it to dispatch a few enemies while doing dailies, forget about it for 5 minutes, and then I remember it, and wonder how I forgot in the first place. With the Glyph of Deadly Momentum, I feel that rogues are the most efficient solo class in the game. We can keep Slice and Dice up permanently, and with Rupture applied immediately, we're dealing full damage right off the bat.
Encrypted Text: Smoke Bomb's new trick
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. Kick will cost zero energy in patch 5.2, bringing it in line with most of the other melee interrupts in the game. Ghostcrawler indicated that as PvE utility ability, Kick should be free to encourage regular usage. In PvP situations, Kick was already the straggler in the process of becoming free, not the forerunner. Blade Flurry's new 4-way 40% cleave allows us to deal 260% of our normal melee damage to 5 targets. Combat's cleave is still quite potent against two targets, but now excels when facing small groups. In addition to these improvements, Smoke Bomb is learning a new trick. In patch 5.2, Smoke Bomb will reduce damage taken by our allies inside the Smoke Bomb radius by 20%. While Tricks of the Trade has always been a valuable addition to our arsenal and we have several buffs and debuffs, the new Smoke Bomb is our first true raid cooldown.
Rogue glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for rogues. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Rogues have no brand new glyphs and are keeping most glyph names. Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Sinister Strike becomes Adrenaline Rush Rupture becomes Cheap Shot Fan of Knives becomes Deadly Momentum Eviscerate becomes Debilitation Revealing Strike becomes Detection Deadly Throw becomes Recuperate Adrenaline Rush becomes Shadow Walk Slice and Dice becomes Shiv Preparation becomes Smoke Bomb Shadow Dance becomes Stealth Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Backstab becomes Decoy Mutilate becomes Disguise It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Encrypted Text: Reflecting on our Cataclysm abilities
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 love October. While any baseball fan will tell you that there's a special feeling in the air during October, I couldn't care less about the World Series. I know plenty of football fans who enjoy spending their Octobers obsessing over their fantasy rosters, but my team has cruised to a 5-and-0 start already. I'm not even particularly excited that my birthday falls in October, as another event takes priority. October is BlizzCon month for me, and I can't wait to hear all about what's in store for rogues as we learn about next year's expansion. When thinking about what cool abilities rogues might see in the next WoW expansion, I started reflecting on the new spells we received in Cataclysm. For our new high-level spells, we picked up Combat Readiness, Redirect, and Smoke Bomb. Recuperate was added to our low-level spells to help make leveling smoother and to provide rogues with a healing option that didn't involve bandages. How useful have these spells proven themselves to be over the past year?
Encrypted Text: Maximize your rogue's cooldowns
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 suggest a topic you'd like to see covered! Rogues are the cooldown class. You've heard it before. For the entire lifetime of World of Warcraft, rogues have been defined by their cooldowns. Vanish and Blind were the key ingredients to the infamous Roguecraft videos, while Shadowstep and Adrenaline Rush defined an entire expansion's worth of arena matches. Preparation, the cooldown-eliminating cooldown, has been considered to be the most powerful ability in a rogue's arsenal. Aside from the low-level ability Recuperate, all three of our new Cataclysm abilities are cooldowns. We have a plethora of both defensive and offensive cooldowns, and knowing when to use them becomes key in defining the difference between a good rogue and a great one. While it may seem simple to pop CDs as soon as they're ready to be used again, defensive cooldowns are much more complex. Offensive CDs can be coordinated with external effects to increase their potency significantly. Many cooldowns ride the line between the offensive and defensive categories, as they're viable for each purpose.
Encrypted Text: Fresh patch 4.0.6 PTR notes 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 rogue questions you may have. Have you ever read Blizzard's patch notes and wondered exactly where the developers are going with certain changes? We're all familiar with the fact that subtlety has been lagging behind the other rogue specs in DPS. It's actually still seeing some use in top guilds on healing-intensive encounters, due to Enveloping Shadows giving us nearly permanent Feint on top of 30% AoE damage reduction. The fact remains that subtlety has largely been a PvP spec outside of very specific situations, although it's a quite potent PvP spec. The patch notes show us that the developers obviously want for subtlety to be more competitive in PvE -- no surprise here. What I don't understand is the new Blade Flurry mechanic. On the PTR, Blade Flurry no longer has a fixed duration, meaning that you can have it up 100% of the time. While yeah, it sounds awesome, it also opens up huge balancing issues. It means that any time there's a raid encounter with more than one target, we're stuck swapping to combat. There are plenty of other classes with similar Cleaving abilities, but none as powerful as Blade Flurry. While I'm all for spec diversity, I'd rather not waste development time on something that's certain to be cut once it makes it to live.
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: Smoke bomb vs. joke bomb
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 our upcoming Cataclysm ability at level 85: Smoke Bomb! I've been poring over our Cataclysm class review over the past few weeks, trying to glean any hidden information out of the developers' commentary. I am glad to see an emphasis put onto more active defenses and several changes that should take our survivability to the next level. Most of their ideas are pretty simple: Combat Readiness is going to let us survive being focus-fired and force our opponents to choose another target instead. I still have one burning question about rogues in the next expansion, and it's one that I may not be able to answer until the beta testing begins. How powerful is Smoke Bomb? When first saw it, my initial reaction was surprise. Blizzard was really adding yet another cooldown to my already taxed keybinding setup? However, after reading some of the developer feedback on the ability, I have the feeling that this could be the sleeper ability of Cataclysm. It's got the potential to do something truly unique: no other class can prevent targeting. While I had hoped for a Death Grip clone like Scorpion's Grapple, I think that once we learn to true potency of this spell, we'll be satisfied with our level 85 ability and its usefulness. The question still remains: What will Smoke Bomb be capable of?
Encrypted Text: What the Cataclysm preview was missing
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 a few questions we still have following our class preview. Rossi also sent me the above picture of his rogue, and I have to say that I was not surprised in his choice of character customization. If you haven't had a chance to yet, you should take a peek at the Cataclysm preview for rogues that was released last week. We've learned about several new moves being added to our arsenal as we level to 85, in addition to being privy to developers' plans for the class as we fight against Deathwing and company. Cataclysm looks to be the most ambitious expansion to date, and Blizzard is pulling out all the stops to ensure that many of the issues the game has faced since launch are handled while also developing each class to a more robust level of play. There was a lot of great info in the preview, but there were also a few details missing. Does Blizzard have any plans to replace Vanish, is there any chance of a new combo system ability (generator or finisher), and what about ever having Shadowstep become trainable? These are just a few of the questions I've been considering, and I've heard many more from other rogues as well. What's your biggest questions for the developers after having read their plan for the rogue class?
Cataclysm Class Changes: Rogue analysis
I'm sure you've been following along with the recent pre-Cataclysm class information posts that Blizzard has been releasing to the public. I will admit that I was a bit blindsided by the info, as Blizzard is usually reluctant to give any details of their upcoming plans and generally prefers to use vagaries. But not this time! We actually have some serious, meaty details of what the devs have planned for the rogue class, and let me be the first to say, I like what I'm seeing. A lot. Let me introduce you to my new best friend: Improved Distract. Wait, I mean Critical Vanish. Wait, I mean Smoke Bomb. Smoke Bomb (level 85): The rogue drops a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interferes with enemy targeting. Enemies who are outside the cloud will find themselves unable to target units inside the cloud with single-target abilities. Enemies can move inside the cloud to attack, or they can use area-of-effect (AoE) abilities at any time to attack opponents in a cloud. In PvP, this will open up new dimensions of tactical positional gameplay, as the ability offers a variety of offensive and defensive uses. In PvE, Smoke Cloud can serve to shield your group from hostile ranged attacks, while also drawing enemies closer without the need to rely on conventional line-of-sight obstructions. Smoke Cloud lasts 10 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown. source The goblins haven't even joined the Horde yet, and already we're seeing the fruits of their labors. Instead of the trashy Flash Powder we used back in vanilla, we rogues of tomorrow have evolved to use the most powerful smoke generators available on Azeroth, courtesy of our engineering buddies. Who needs to Vanish when you can literally become untargetable? This is what we've been waiting for: now when Vanish is down, we won't have the "deer in the headlights" look on our face when the mage begins their Shatter combo. We'll disappear.
Scourge Invasion: Lord Blackwood
Lord Blackwood, found in the bowels of Scholomance in the Western Plaguelands, was one of the most popular invasion bosses back in 2006. One of his drops were so cool because it had a particle effect! Holy crap! That was a rarity back in our day. These days they'll put stars and glitter on any damn thing, but back when we were 60? We got our sparkly weapons from once (twice, I guess) in a lifetime world events or the bosses that were the very pinnacle for 40-man raiding. Yeah. Forty men. Sometimes women. Well, not forty women. Some men, and some women. Man, it doesn't matter. My point is, you kids don't know how good you have it!Anyway, head on into Scholomance! If you don't know where this is, you should take the Western Plaguelands map and beat yourself with it. I'll give you a hint, though. It's on Caer Darrow. You 'need' a key to get in the front door, but if you don't have one there are alternatives. Bring a Rogue. If you lack Rogue... Kite dozens of undead all the way to Sorrow Hill so they can murder you outside of the door of Scholo, thus allowing you to rez on the other side of the door. Easy! Okay, clear through the dungeon, you know how to kill things I'm sure. Fight your way down through the Summoning Chamber, and you'll come across this room here. See the purple glowy guy? That's him. He patrols around the entire backside of the room, and I recommend clearing out the room, even some of the areas back there. He likes using his bow and arrows, so if he runs in that direction to get range, you're going to get some adds. That's bad. When you engage Lord Blackwood, you'll very quickly discover he has a ton of health and armor. This fight is going to last awhile. Blackwood is the most difficult of the invasion bosses so far, because he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. One, the most basic, is he has Shield Bash. Keep him away from your Casters and Healers or he'll have a lot of fun interrupting them. To get to range, he'll use Smoke Bomb. You get stunned, and he runs off to start pelting you with his bow.While at range, he uses a basic Shoot which does more damage than his basic melee swings. He also uses a Multi-Shot that hits multiple targets for Arcane damage. Basically, leaving him at range is a lot more dangerous than keeping him in melee, but he'll use Smoke Bomb fairly frequently to escape. That's why I suggested clearing as much of the room as you can before pulling him. When he starts running around trying to get range, he could easily pull a lot of extra mobs.Once he's dead, you can take a look at your loot! He drops primarily tank loot, a shield and a sword. The shield is Lord Blackwood's Buckler and the sword is Lord Blackwood's Blade. Truly, that sword is a relic of the past. Back when particle effects meant something.*For an added piece of trivia, Lord Blackwood shares his name with Blackwood Lake in the Eastern Plaguelands. It's very possible he used to own/oversee that region of Lordaeron before the Scourge came. These little details are sprinkled all throughout the Plaguelands. It's part of what made me love those zones so much back at 60.Now that Blackwood is done, let's bop over to Stratholme and check out Balzaphon!*I'm completely joking around here. I'm glad everyone gets cool stuff and there are more unique weapons in the game.
