In the category of “Bloody Cool WoW Videos” there’s one that came out a couple of years ago.

I linked to it here, The Craft of War: Blind, but that link died. The new link is, where else?, to YouiTube.

Check it out, here.

Hey Bliz! A few buffs please. I want my Rogue to be able to do that.

I’ve posted an article the the GotWarcraft blog on the Top Three Rogue PvP Tips.

1 -  Know how to re-stealth

If you can’t re-stealth in combat, you are drastically reducing your survivability. The main techniques for acheiving this are to

1. blind and wait to leave combat
2. gouge/kidney shot your oppenent and run out
3. get your oppenent crippled and sprint away
4. vanish

Here’s the rest: Top 3 Rogue PvP Tips

I’ll state this upfront – I’m a newb when it comes to raiding. I finally joined a guild (with my 80 Rogue) which does some raiding (mostly PUGs) and when asked,”Hey, ya wanna join us for (some raid abreviation)” my answer is typically, “What’s that?”

So I prodded a friend, who does raid a lot, into writing an article on Rogue Raid DPS which I found quite useful. Now it’s time to start playing around with some of this stuff and see what I can come up with and see if I can get to the point where my Rogue is useful.

My first raid was 25 Man OS (no drakes) and I beat most of the healers for DPS output. I was running a PvP mutilate build and had no clue so didn’t respec.

More browsing brought me to the ElitistJerks.com Roguecraft Spreadsheet which factors in a huge amount of stuff. It includes a Mutilate build and various defaults for maximum DPS.

I specced into that build and hit 2k DPS on the Orgrimmar practice dummies, so maybe there’s hope for cracking the top 20 of a 25 man raid?

Anyway, here’s what I’m working with for now:

Mutilate Build Details

Here’s the build on WoWhead

Note: this is a dagger build and assumes use of instant and/or deadly poisons. Lev 80 (non elite) mobs go down real fast with this build.

Assassination:

1. 5/5 Malice – more crit chance
2. 3/3 Ruthlessness – more combo points
3. 2/2 Blood Splatter – Adds to your DoTs
4. 3/3 Puncuring Wounds – +15% Mut crit, +30% Backstab crit
5. 5/5 Lethality
6. 3/3 Vile Poisons – Greater chance to actually apply poisons
7. 2/2 Fleet footed – Moved faster while stealthed and spend less time being rooted
8. 1 Cold Blood – add this into a macro with your favorite strike. I add mine to Eviscerate.
9. 5/5 Seal fate – Use less energy
10. 3/3 Focused attacks – gain energy from crits
11. 3/3 Find Weakness – All damage increased by 6%
12. 1 Mutilate – Your bread and butter attack
13. 3/3 Turn the tables – Adds 6% crit chance to bread and butter attacks. lots of arguing going on over whether to choose this or 3/3 Master Poisoner. Comments?
14. 5/5 Cut to the chance – lets you keep Slice and Dice up permanently.
15. 1 Hunger for Blood – More damage, Rarr! Edit: Will be changed (improved?) when the 3.1 patch hits.

Combat

1. 5/5 Dual Weild Specialization – More DPS
2. 5/5 Precision – Your Dual Weild gives a major “to hit” penalty. This compensates somewhat.
3. 3/5 Close Quarters cbt. – More crit chance

Subtlety

1. 5/5 Relentless Strikes – Restores energy
2. 2/2 Opportunity – +20% damage to your bread and butter strikes.

Weapons I’m using right now. Both drop off the Auction House.

1. Main – Titansteel Shanker
2. Off hand – Librarian’s Paper Cutter

Enchants:

• Exceptional Agility (+26 ag) on Main hand
• Titanium wpn chain on off hand (+28 hit rating)

I’ll be playing with some weapon choices, poison combos, gems, etc. to see what I can do to boost DPS.  Your comments? Thoughts? Changes? What do you have to say?

Edit 4/9: Joined a PUG into 10 man OS. Hit almost 2400 dps on the trash (#2 on the DPS list,) but the group disintigrated before the first drake. No one died, but people suddenly realized they had to wash their socks, so poof. All of a sudden I’m raid leader with two people in the raid.

The Recount addon said I had a miss rate of almost 15%, so I guess I need to look for more Hit ratng. Might try the Titanium Weapon Chain on the main hand as a start and swap an Ag gem for a Hit gem.

Changed off-hand to Namlak’s Supernumerary Sticker

Mongoose provides better DPS than Exceptional Agility and Berserking is better still, but Mongoose is over 400 gold (and Berserking is a lot more.) I’ll see if I can get better weapons before blowing that much cash on Berserking.

Ok, This is Why Rogues Are Cool

Rogues, Stormwind, Nobility pwning their lessers…

Actually, what this really is is an awesome video. The creator says he’s a professional animator and this is his first real, personal, piece.

This is only the second personal creative work I’ve ever posted so I’m a bit nervous about it. The first being an image I painted years ago which…um… we don’t talk about. It’s a bit nerve-wracking to post creative work for others to judge.

With over 500 comments , all along the lines of, “Dude, this is Awesome!” I don’t think he has anything to worry about.

This will probably spoil you for other WoW videos and you really need to see it in High Def, which is why I’m not posting the YouTube version here. Check it out, now:

The Craft of War: BLIND

Credit where credit is due, I found this on Jame’s Blog.

The woman with the staff is here

update 8/31/10: Above link was broken. Click here for the HD YouTube vid.

Currently my Rogue is level 78.5 and is helping the Argent Crusade to kill Alliance the scourge. I’ve respected into a shadowstep dagger build and grabbed the Shadowdance talent.

The daggers I’m using (which dropped off the AH at a decent price) are:

1. Saronite Ambusher
2. Saronite Shiv

To make the best use of that talent you might want to have some Thistle Tea on hand, a Glyph of Vigor, and gear that adds energy, such as the Gladiator set.

Ok, here’s the (dagger) build and I’m using it to level. Feel free to comment. I don’t claim to be any great shakes at PvP, the 3.0 patch killed any thoughts of competence that I might have been having. I’m sure that experienced PvPers will roll their eyes at some of my choices here:

• 5 points Malice: Gotta love the crits.
• 5 points Dual Weild
• 5 points Precision: More hits = more DPS
• 5 points Relentless Strikes
• 3 points Master of Deception: Great for PvP
• 2 points Opportunity
• 2 in Dirty Tricks: The extra range is surprisingly useful, especially since you can now sap almost anything living.
• Ghostly Strike: Instant strike, more damage, more dodge, and a combo point to bot. What more could you want?
• 3 pts in Serrated Blades: Lead-in to Hemorrhage
• 3 pts in Setup: If you have a decent dodge skill this will add a useful number of combo points.
• 3 pts in Initiative: More combo points.
• 2 in Improved Ambush: +50% to crit. ’nuff said.
• Preparation: Kindof the “Get out of Jail Free” card.
• 2 in Dirty Deeds
• Hemorrhage
• 3 pts in Master of Subtlety: More damage attacking from stealth.
• 5 pts in Deadliness
• Premeditation: I stick this in a macro with my openers, so I get those 2 points a lot.
• 5 points in Sinister Calling:+15% Agility, yummy.
• 2 pts in Waylay: More for PvP
• 5 points in Slaughter from the Shadows: I Ambush and Hemo alot, so this is good.
• Shadowdance
• 2 pts to spend elsewhere (at lev 79 & 80,) which I may stick into Improved Eviscerate.
  

Here’s the full level 80 build on WoWhead.

If you open with Ambush (or Cheap Shot or Garrote) you will,much more often than not, see an immediate 5 combo points ready to go. So you do Opener and Finisher, bang bang, such as Ambush + Eviscerate. Get a couple of crits there and you open with some nice damage.

If you use Eviscerate then check out a Glyph of Eviscerate.

Here’s what I’ve been experimenting with:

1. Ambush + Eviscerate
2. Shadow Dance
3. Cheap Shot and move behind
4. Ambush
5. Eviscerate
6. gouge and move behind…

Fighting more than one mob?

1. Sap one
2. Cheap Shot another
3. Blind the 3rd
4. Shadowdance
5. Gouge one and move behind
6. Ambush
7. etc.

Here’s the opener macro that I use, which I found on Arena Junkies (lotta macros there.)

#show premeditation
/cast Premeditation
/cast Pick Pocket
/cast Cheap Shot

Swap Cheap Shot for Ambush or whichever opener that you use. The Pick Pocket will keep you in healing potions and lockboxes as you level.

It might be a good idea to put your Shadow Dance hotkeys on a second action bar, and swap it in when you do the dance. Here’s a macro to switch action bars when you do just that, also taken from Arena Junkies.

Set up bar 2 to be your main bar with Sap on it, Ambush instead of Backstab, Cheap Shot instead of Kidney Shot, and Garrote over Rupture. Hit the Shadow Dance macro once to activate, and a second time to swap your bar back to normal.

#showtooltip
/cast Shadow Dance
/swapactionbar 1 2

Comments? Besides the obvious ones about my newbishness.

All of you Death Knights out there might be interested in this: It’s a Rune Management addon which, well, I’ll let the author describe it:

Runevolution is a small rune tracking addon. The intent is to provide a “stack” of your ready runes, so they pile up on your screen in the order you used them. This means your rotation is reflected in the rune positions on your screen.

Cooldowns are tracked by moving the runes towards the “stack” of ready runes. Therefore the order that runes will be ready is also available on the screen.

Here’s the movie and the download link: Death Knight Runevolution

The Stoppable Force has a good post for new Death Knights. First on he admits to only being level 63, but by listening to what others are saying saying and doing he’s realized that he has some good stuff to offer.

His posts covers attack rotations for each tree (blood, frost, unholy) and why you want to use them. Good stuff. Some good stuff in the comments, too.

TSF Teaches You How To Start Playing Your Death Knight

Something that will be a great help in building an attack rotation, for your DK or for any character, is your keybindings. Don’t click your powers, bind them to hot keys. All other things being equal a key-binder will always outplay a clicker, because the bindings are so much faster to use.

Here’s a nice tutorial on the How and Why of keybindings, by LockSucks.com. While it’s a Warlock post I think most people will be able to use the info and adapt it to their Death Knights or any other class.

It’s the notorious topic, the eternal struggle between clickers and the rest (let’s call them pressers due to lack of terms). Many articles were published about keybinding, some good some bad, but most of them agree on one thing: binding your keys is the way to excel at this game. Here’s the rest: WoW Keybindings

More death Knight Goodness

Frost isn’t just for tanking. This wag has been doing just fine by going against convention and using a Frost Build for his Death Knight.

Pastor Playz» Blog Archive » Frosty the Deathknight was a jolly … – When the mention of the Death Knight class was introduced by blizzard I was one who . . well . . .I did not care really. To me it sounded dark and foreboding, nothing like any of the characters I like to play. …

A great overview of the Death Knight, what it’s like to play, and so on.

The Death Knight, Azeroth’s Overpowered Hero « Bird’s Sweet Blahg – You also receieve your talent points, so by the end of the quest line, you will be able to fully build your character’s spec. Let’s talk perks. For one, you get an epic riding mount from the get go for free, and it’s a Death Knight …

There be some changes comin’…  Here’s what’s currently on the test server, scroll down to see the list of possible DK changes. Of course, since it’s on the test server any given change may or may not make it to the live servers.

3.0.8 PTR Patch Notes Now Available | DeathKnight.info – PTR Patch notes where released today so I would expect to see them hit the PTR just about any time now. One thing to note, you can now create Death Knight on any server once you hit 55!

And for those of you who think that Death Knights might be underpowered…

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King | Wrath | Wotlk: Death … – Felblood, the Death Knight who recently soloed Zul’Gurub, sent us news of a new accomplishment: he’s finished off most of AQ20 as well. Kurinaxx’s Mortal Strike-like debuff apparently didn’t affect Death Strike, so he just had to dodge …

Death Knight PvP at level 80, from the beta. Siege Vehicles! ’nuff said.

I haven’t started a DK yet. Yeah, I know, I’m bad. I did play one for awhile in the beta and I’m looking forward to it, but I think I’m going to get my Rogue up to 80, first. I haven’t had much time to play recently and I’m only level 73.

So. DKs and PvP. What do you think of them as they stand, now?

Are they the overall destruction machine of choice? Or strong against casters and Ok against others? Or…? Are they the Gankers or the Gankees?

For the one or two of you (like me) who haven’t started your Death Knight yet and want a leg up, the free leveling guide to the DK starter area is still up.

Thunderstomp, Beastial Wrath, Volley, A of E tanking with the Gorilla Stomp.

Big Red Kitty has the video: BRK Gorilladin 101 Movie

Planning to play a Death Knight when Wrath goes live? Or are you going to give it a couple of weeks to let the hordes move on?

If you are going to join the Deathknight horde (at any time) then you might want to check out this free DK leveling guide (a PDF) that covers the DK starting area. Both Horde and Alliance will be using the same area, just in case you didn’t know, so this guide applies equally to both sides. (By the way – I didn’t write the guide.)

When I was running my DK through that area some weeks back there were a number of people asking “Where’s the…?” “How do I…” etc.  So I think that a lot of people will find this to be useful. Download it here and save to your disk.