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.

Parry! Dodge! Spin! has a post on what’s happening with the Rogue talents.

New Rogue Changes Coming

Parry! Dodge! Spin! has a post covering the various Glyphs that the new Inscriptions will add to the Rogue talents and abilities:

First of all, I think every other class needs to send Blizzard a thank you card for the following change to Mace Specialization. As a Combat Swords Rogue (and as a Resto Druid), I’m pretty excited to see it myself. This should make Mace Specialization a bit more attractive for raiding as well.

Mace Specialization (Combat) no longer stuns enemies, and instead increases critical damage bonus by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Here’s the rest: WotLK Beta 8820 Rogue News

You’ll want to look at the comments, too. As usual with something like this there’s a wide differing of opinion.

One of the comments points out that resilience pretty much negates the crit bonus. Still, not everyone in PvP is running around with 400+ resilience or s4 gear. For leveling the damage bonus might be better than the rare stun proc.

Keep in mind that this is still in beta test and the final numbers may well be somewhat different. I’m sure that no matter what change Bliz make there will be whoops of praise and howls of outrage.

I think a lot of the Glyphs look pretty nice. What do you think?

Edit: Azande, in the comment, has some interesting stuff for the rading Rogue and more remarks on the raiding potential of Glyphs.

Twinking is the fine art of taking your character to levels far beyond what he/she should be able to do at any given level. For example, a Rogue twink, at 19, with 2,000 HP? It’s been done.

The Warsong Gulch Battleground (Capture the Flag) has a level 10-19 bracket. Naturally one wants to be level 19, otherwise rapid doom will happen. Then one needs that little edge over the other 19s…

AzerothNow.com has a killer twinking guide for those level 19 Rogues bent on mayhem and slaughter in Warrsong Gulch (and maybe a duel or three.)

So you’ve done your dailies - everyday, you’ve cleared Heroics and Karazhan for Badges until your eyes bleed, maybe you’re even utterly tired of farming Illidan every week or wiping on Kil’Jaeden. But what now? Level another character? Cancel your subscription until Wrath?

Well, I have your solution: why not create a lvl 19 Twink Rogue? But what is a lvl 19 twink Rogue, you may ask. The simple explanation is that they are characters with the best possible gear for their level (including enchants), whose purpose is PvP, and their playground is the 10-19 bracket of Warsong Gulch Battlegrounds.

Here’s the rest: The Ultimate Guide to Lvl 19 Rogue Twinking

edit: A commenter points us to his twinking guides and I may just make use of his level 39 Warlock guide. Very cool. WoW Twink Guide: 39 Affliction Warlock

Actually, it’s a Cunning Blade and I’ll skip further Black Adder references.

Rogues at level 10 can do a quest chain to get this Cunning Blade as a quest reward. This quest chain is entirely optional and if you browse the Auction House regularly you’re likely to find better weapons for not much gold. (And you twinks can stop laughing now.)

Still, it’s a fun little quest chain and it can be quite challenging for your average level 10 Rogue. Each race has a different quest, in its own area, but the quest rewards are the same.

Gwynne’s done a complete walk-thorugh of all of these level 10 quest chains. So if you have an up and coming Rogue, here you go:

1. Level 10 Rogue Quests for Horde
2. Level 10 Rogue Quests for Alliance

I’ve been fussing around with macros for my Rogues and have come up with a couple of useful ones. Now, I’m more the “copy and paste” type than any kind of macro programmer, but the macro system is worth learning and will save you a lot of clicks and keymashes.

Basically a good macro set will make you a leaner meaner killing machine.

By the way, this naturally applies to classes other than Rogues, it’s just that I’m working with Rogue macros at the moment. There are a variety of other sources for WoW Rogue Macros and I list a couple at the end.

So here are the macro basics to start:

1. Type /macro to open the macro interface
2. Hit “new”
3. Pick an icon
4. And then you’ll enter your code.

For my Shadowstep (Swords) Rogue I use this:

/cast Premeditation
/cast Cheap Shot

Replace Cheap Shot with the opener of your choice, eg: Ambush. Premeditation adds 2 combo points right before the attack (with a 2 min cooldown.) So with this build I Cheap Shot and can frequently add an immediate 5 pt combo finisher. If the cooldown hasn’t finished then just the Cheap Shot will fire.

This one makes sure you bandage yourself and not the other guy. Replace the bandage with whatever bandage you’re using at the moment.
/use [target=player] Heavy Netherweave Bandage

This next one allows me to strike with Ambush and immediately switch to swords or maces or whatever. Probably not the most efficient thing to do, but it’s fun. Slot 16 is your main hand, 17 is your off hand. Just swap in whatever weapons you’re using.

If Ambush doesn’t fire for whatever reason then the weapons still swap. If you’re one of those people who likes to spam the Ambush key as you approach then this won’t work so well, because the weapons will swap before you get the ambush off.

/cast Ambush(Rank 2)
/equipslot 16 Diamond Hammer
/equipslot 17 Ironpatch Blade

Here’s a quick swap macro. Make a couple of these and switch back and forth as the situation dictates.
/equipslot 16 Mainhand weapon
/equipslot 17 Off hand weapon

Macros can get far more advanced than these, allowing you to simplify many different actions.

Killer Guides’ Rogue Guide has a bunch of other macros and a ton of great Rogue info. Get your’s here.

Arena Junkies has a page with macros for all classes that’s worth checking out, especially if you do PvP.