First off, I’m pretty sure we can all agree that Rogues come in three flavors (giggity) – Good, Bad and Fucking Annoying. I’m not a pro, but in my journey from 1 to 85 I’ve learned a lot about a class that was once only appealing to me in the low bracket battlegrounds. From reading around on the forums, Arena Junkies, Elitist Jerks, watching various PVP videos while at work (productivity, dood!) and even talking to other Rogues in game, I’m shaping up to be a respectable member of the most un-respected class in WoW. My goal, as always, is to perform to the best of my ability at whatever it is I’m doing in game. I’m like a sponge that girls use to prevent unwanted pregnancy or maybe just the ones you use to wash dishes, I dunno, but still.. I want to soak up as much info and sage advice as I can.
So I’ve comprised a cliche list of things that I’ve learned that you’re most likely just going to skim over anyway. Maybe there is a little nugget of info that you’ll walk away with, or maybe I lose more readers because it’s a giant wall of text. I’ll be nice and break it up with some pretty amazing PVP videos that I have bookmarked here.
In PVP, it’s easiest to pick on cloth casters and Hunters. From all of the kills I have gotten, these two seem to be the easiest to get to do exactly what you want them to do – panic, blow their defensive cooldowns early and promptly set themselves up for failure with no way to deal with a Rogue who still has Cloak of Shadows, Blind, Kidney Shot, Gouge, Sprint, Kick, Shadowstep, Evasion and Preperation off cooldown. When a caster doesn’t see you coming (much like your girlfriend in the dark) and all of a sudden they’re silenced by Garrote, a majority of them will go in to panic mode the instant they realize they’re health is going down and they can’t cast anything. By this time, they’re balls have already dropped and they’ve already mentally lost. A Hunter is a different beast because you have to read them in one of two ways. First, if they’re standing still after the initial Ambush, chances are they’re AFK rubbing one out (highly unlikely) or dropping a trap to gain the distance advantage, so I generally use Cloak just to be safe and then go from there. The other thing I’ve seen is they also go in to panic mode and pop Disengage or Deterrence right out of the gate. This is brings up the 2nd thing I’ve learned so far..
Shadowstep isn’t always best used as an opener. If my PVP target (see above comment about casters and Hunters) is just standing there, why waste Shadowstep? Sure, you get a damage bonus from using it and it looks pretty rad, but Ambush stops one-shotting people eventually and you should be using Garrote as an opener against a caster anyway. Most casters and good Hunters know how to use their tricks to get away from the Rogue after the initial “oh shit, I’m getting fingered!” moment, and that is the perfect time to use Shadowstep – regaining your ground and unleashing the fury with Shadow Dance and/or your various CC abilities.
A Cloak of Shadows + Vanish macro and a mouse-over Blind macro is pretty much liquid OSSUM! I’ve failed enough times popping vanish and not noticing I had DoTs on me, only to be popped right back out of stealth. This prevents that from ever happening as long as Cloak is off cooldown. Having the mouse-over Blind macro comes in handy if you’re in a 2v1 position and need a quick CC without swapping targets or wasting combo points on a stun. Max First Aid is also a godsend if you need a quick heal since the duration of Blind is slightly longer than the duration it takes to bandage yourself back up. If you’re afraid you might have a DoT on you, make a Cloak + Bandage macro and flex your pro skills in the mirror when mom isn’t home.
Slower MH/Faster OH. With Assassination’s damage mostly coming in the form of poisons, I went in to it with the mindset that I’d want 2 fast daggers to apply the poisons as fast as possible. What I didn’t take in to consideration was that Mutilate and Backstab go by weapon damage, benefiting a lot more from a slower MH dagger. Having a faster OH dagger (1.4 generally) allows you to apply Deadly Poison much faster, which when at a full 5 stack will automatically proc your MH poison (Instant Poison) each time it’s reapplied, while the slower MH will give your 2 doof doof abilities a bit more doof.
What works in PVE doesn’t always work in PVP. Assassination is my leveling/PVE build while Subtlety is my PVP spec of choice for obvious reasons. I play on a PVP server so sometimes I end up in some random world PVP skirmishes with the opposing faction while I’m just trying to quest my little Worgen ass off. When someone tries to get the jump on me with my Assassination build, I’ve only got PVE on the brain so I’m trying to roll small point Ruptures, keep up Slice n’ Dice and usually wind up fucking dead because I’m only used to PVP’ing as Subtlety. It was much easier on my Warlock when Immolate, Chaos Bolt and Conflagrate cured just as many problems in PVE as it did PVP and whip cream poured like waterfalls.
