I wasn’t feeling very well over the weekend, nothing really wrong per se, just not really right either.
So when I wasn’t half asleep, I devoted some time to my poor rogue.
Over the weekend I went from level 12 or 13 up to 20.
First dungeon, naturally, was Ragefire. Easy peasy, especially with the new threat mechanics.
Realized part way through that I had never gotten around to the training I meant to do and so was unable to Kick. (Leave it to a game to say that you are born without the innate ability to move your foot quickly towards an opponent.)
Oops!
No one seemed to notice or care that I was missing out on that ability but I still felt bad and took care of it as soon as the run was over.
Also did some Wailing Caverns. 1000% better than it used to be and still terrible. I dropped into a group that had apparently been cycling through members and no one knew what had been killed by the previous members. We ran around blindly until everything was dead.
Got Shadowfang Keep and was briefly terrified. Then I remembered that I wasn’t healing it on heroic with craptastic blues and greens at the beginning of the expansion. It’s really weird being familiar with a dungeon on heroic and then running it on normal when normal isn’t even end-game levels.
Poisons are good.
Going AFK in Orgrimmar for longer than intended and allowing poisons to drop off and forgetting to reapply them for half a dungeon is bad.
Zoning into a dungeon as a rogue is… odd.
Zone in, group up and cast… nothing!
Zone in, group up and hand out… nothing!
Zone in, group up and… wait for everyone else to cast the buffs and do cool stuff while I twiddle my thumbs!
I feel like such a little leather-clad leach. A whore of a leach. /shame
DPS as a rogue is… odd.
At this level I have 1 button to hit.
Oh, sometimes I get to Kick something, or sometimes I run over and gouge the caster that the tank has decided to let chill in the corner and free cast on the healer, or sometimes I get to cast stealth before the next chain pull and can open with Ambush.
But most of the time, I get to cast Sinister Strike.
Again, and again, and again.
But wait! Don’t rogues have cool finishing moves like Eviscerate?
Yes, they do.
But by the time I’ve got enough combo points on the mob to make it worth using, the fucking shaman in the group has run in to melee, knocked everything out of range and then the mage crits it in the face. It dies before I can get to it and the whole cycle starts over again with the next mob.
Seriously, I think every group I’ve been in has had a shaman going to town with the knock back. The tank laboriously gets all the mobs grouped up nice and tight, and WHAM! Mobs are flying everywhere. There needs to be an emote for “grits his teeth in frustration and contemplates letting the shaman die if he ever manages to pull aggro.” It should be accompanied by a smack to the head of said shaman. I bet tanks in these lower levels would use it a lot.
I don’t really know when I can use Backstab. My energy regen seems to be atrocious and 60 energy just sounds like so much out of my pitiful little energy pool.
I get Slice and Dice soon. Yay for another finishing move I won’t be able to use!
Any advice for not falling asleep at the keyboard with a low-level rogue?
::UNSOLICITED AND OUT OF DATE ROGUELY ADVICE FROM A FORMER ROGUE::
Rogues are boring until they get more button on their bars.
Once they get all those buttons they get to be a lot of fun.
Backstab starts out okay, then kind of sucks. You’ll have to look at the numbers yourself but I think just SSing is a better deal. Slice and dice is awesome. Remember that you don’t need more than a point or two usually, So SS once or twice, throw S&D and go to town. By the time S&D wears you should have the CP to put it back again.
Use the time you spend not having to buff everyone or pass out everything to say Hello! my name is #### I’ll be your Rogue for this evening. How are you?
Once you do get all your buttons you -still- won’t being anything overt to the party, other than a crapload of damage if you do your job right.
BUT. You -can- be the guy that saves they party but never gets thanked because nobody even saw what you did or noticed what was wrong in the first place. Rogue is a very ‘heads up’ class, meaning that since you’re basically spamming the same button over and over again and have little to watch for. So keep your head on a swivel and maximize your situational awareness. Look for uncontrolled mobs, (they will be by the healer, smashing their face in) patrollers, etc. Your job as rogue is Disaster Prevention. If you understand the tools at your disposal and how to use them you can and will save potential wipes.
…And if not then fuck it you can always Vanish. ;)
The reason I always liked Rogue was because it made me feel like was a combination of James Bond and Batman, and no other class in the game did that for me. It may be hard to have fun with it now, but wait a while try to get a feel for it.
Remember:
James motherfucking Bond and the goddamn Batman.
That’s who you are.
With some big goddamn knives.
…Oh and you owe it to yourself to get some decent gear if you haven’t already. =P You need good gear or your damage will suck, simple as that.
Remember, Corvine is looking down on your roguelette from his seat in Valhalla, (right next to the beer & wench dispenser) You are now his legacy so do not disappoint him. >:(
Remember he tanked Saurfang once.
EEP!
Now I feel somewhat obligated to make something out of this rogue. Damn you!
Would dancing naked on mailboxes in Org also satisfy Corvine’s legacy? Typing “/dance” is more effort than spinning my mouse wheel for SS…
It looks like I’m on the right path. Now I just need some more time. Thanksgiving keeps creeping closer and closer.
Oh yeah. Listen to this. This helps too.
RRROOOGGUEE!!!
RRRROOGGUE LIKE THE WWIIINNNDDD!!!!!!
If you haven’t already, I recommend speccing combat. It’s a lot more fun, especially at low levels, and it will help with the low energy regeneration. A lot.
The joy and challenge in being a rogue comes not from the complexity of the task but the perfection of execution. You have to be on your toes at all times, and you absolutely cannot rest, or you’ll begin capping energy and losing DPS. You are a relentless, remorseless, adrenaline-fueled killing machine, and you have to just spam the buttons as fast as the GCD will allow. I often find myself hopping back and forth even on fights that require no movement while my character repeatedly screams “That ability isn’t ready yet!” at me, because playing a rogue just keys me up.
And remember you don’t need a full five points to use a finishing move. Judge the number to use based on how much longer the fight will be.
All that said, rogues really aren’t suited for trash, especially flimsy, low level trash. Long fights are where we shine.
I think I’m combat. I’m whatever one is in the middle. That’s terrible, isn’t it? I can’t even tell you what spec I am.
I say play Shadowstep. Then you can do a nice *poof* every few mins to break the boredom. I enjoyed leveling as shadowstep a lot. Kinda like *poof* *wham* dead mob.
I’m doing a lot of dungeon leveling (at least in the lower levels when a DPS queue is only 10-15 minutes). Is *poof* still useful in group settings? I always saw it more as a PvP thing.
I’m not sure how things have changed since I stopped playing, but you used to be able to do pretty respectable AOE damage as a Rogue.. You just have to be a little creative and combine your abilities somewhat. Not that you’ll be able to match dedicated AOE classes all the time, but you can still put up nice burst numbers. This is for Combat of course, I’m not sure the other specs support this as much.
First of all if you’re fighting more than 4 mobs in a pack Fan of Knives is a good investment, less than that and you’re better off staying single target.
Blade Flurry has some interesting applications in AoE situations too.. For one thing, it STACKS with Killing Spree, so each of your Killing Spree teleport hits will proc an extra attack.
So if you really want to ruin some trash (or better yet, 2 close-together mobs with a lot of health):
Trick to the tank
Blade Flurry
Killing Spree (Has a range of ~10m so you can use it to teleport you to the mobs a bit faster, hammer it on the way in. Also you want your trinkets macro’d with this.)
(Watch all the numbers as you wait for KS to finish. Did you see the extra Blade Flurry procs? Neat, huh? :D)
SS once, Put up Slice and Dice. (always always always slice and dice. It’s 40% additional white damage. Just don’t waste more CP than you need to get it up. Time your average fight and see how long it lasts. You’ll usually only need 1 or 2 CP worth. Bosses are a different story though.)
((ALTERNATE STARTING ORDER:: If you are feeling fancy you can run to the mob, SS twice, and then Blade Flurry + Killing Spree, because while you’re jumping around killing everything your energy will recharge. THEN start S&D, and get a ‘extra’ SS or two in because you’re just that much more efficient and awesome… In practice it’s not that much better an opener than doing things the easy way though, so far as I can tell. But it’s a fun party trick you can use to get laid at Rogue conventions.)
If you’re facing 4 or more mobs, FoK Spam
If you’re facing 3 or less, Just pound SS and refresh S&D when it wears or when your target is about to die.
Anyway.. Your cooldowns are meant to be used, so throw them as often as you get them. :) A ‘vanilla’ Killing Spree without Blade Flurry is almost a waste, unless you’ve only got one target.
Also remember Adrenaline Rush! Throwing this not allows you to not only pound FoKs faster, you can SS faster too. It’s basically like Combat Rogue Afterburner. If you want more damage toss it in and give yourself a finger cramp hammering SS or FoK.
By the way, in case you aren’t aware, you want the weapon with the highest average damage in your main hand, many of your special attacks (esp. SS) are calculated off your mainhand damage, so you (theoretically) want the highest damage you can find there for bigger and more awesome SS, speed be damned because you’ll be SSing basically all the time anyway.
Also for low-level enchants, Striking is actually pretty good, with a fast attack speed +4 or +5 on hit can add up quickly, esp. at low levels.
So.. that’s my two cents.. like i said the game may have changed since I stopped playing so take it all with a grain of salt. :)
Look at all those pretty abilities I don’t have yet…
I’m pretty sure I have the better weapon in my MH. If I can say one thing about the drops I’ve gotten, they’ve been almost entirely daggers, one right after the other. I generally pick the best out of my selection for the MH and then demote the old MH to OH. But since I’m cycling through them like a box of tissues at the moment, I’ll probably pass on enchants. I don’t think I have enough JP to get the weapons since I don’t run dungeons anymore on my 85s.
Bah! You’re not helping me not like the rogue!
HAHAHAHA.. I mean..
Humm.. I’m not sure exactly when but you WILL eventually get Swords and Axe proficiency, (and maces but BLAH) and if you’re rolling Combat you’re better off with a bigger weapon, at least in your MH. So see if you can find a sword or axe or mace or something big and nasty for your MH at least.
I think Ambush requires dagger or something, but Ambush also sort of sucks after a while, so I wouldn’t keep using daggers just for that.
If you’re in an instinct you can pretty much treat your Rogue like a Warrior (Whatever the 2H warrior spec is..Fury? I dunno..) Just run up, get behind the mob and go to town. Only bother with Stealth if you need to sap something. Most of your openers won’t be too amazing anyway.
Incidentally FOR GOD’S SAKE LEARN HOW TO SAP. And learn how to use Distract effectively. If you’re soloing a lot you will probably learn this by necessity.
How soloing might work will be dependent of your gear and your approach. I remember soloing sucking a lot as a young rogue but it gets heaps better when you have more skills…
If you have a significant gear/level advantage over a mob it’s okay to just run up to it and SS it in the face till it goes down.
If you aren’t quite so confident you can stealth in (pickpocket EVERYTHING, just on principle) Open with your stun(Cheap Shot?), SS once or twice, S&D, (always, remember? 40% more damage) SS till it wakes up from your opener then use your combat stun (Kidney Shot?) to knock it back out again. If it’s still not dead and wakes up again then Gouge and disengage, let your energy build back up to full and then SS it in the face again once it does wake up.. If it’s STILL not dead by then then you probably shouldn’t have picked a fight with it, >>or you need better gear<<. I guess just hang in there till Kidney Shot comes off CD or Blind and wait for Energy or your other CDs to come back, or just pop Evasion to whittle it down while it tries to hit you and fails.
Once you get this down it's totally possible to do a whole fight and only get hit once or twice and grinding is pretty efficient… But your gear has to be good.
Don't bother setting up a complex rotation that lets you get ambushes and backstabs and other stuff. Generally they aren't worth it as Combat. Just run in, flip out like a ninja and cover the landscape in bodyparts.
Later on once you get all your toys you can put out some crazy burst damage that'll let you kill even-level Elites in ~15 seconds if you have the gear… (Actually you -have- to kill them that fast or you'll die…)
Bah I suck at typing:
If you’re in an instinct you can pretty much treat your Rogue like a Warrior
should be
If you’re in an INSTANCE you can pretty much treat your Rogue like a Warrior.
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