HOT STREAK 2.0: Rogue Cataclysm PvP

[Jackie Moon]

Update:
21/1/2011 - Large update! Added Macro's, Subtlety information, Stats update, what moves to use fix from my old wotlk style to my new cataclysm style, added link for videos of game play with many videos to come, Smoke bomb explanation and how to!

1. Introduction
2. Talent Spec
3. Glyphs
4. AddOns
5. Macros
6. Key Bindings
7. Basic Rotation

Hey guys, Jackie Moon here. This guide is very similar to my old guide which was made pre 4.0, this is an updated guide for Cataclysm so you can get the best out of your rogue at the start of the season! Many of you may not of known that I am a PvP fanatic and I have been 2k+ on multiple characters:

Paladin - Rival Season 5
Mage - Rival Season 6
Resto Druid - Challenger Season 7
Rogue - Rival Season 8 (Arena Master)

Now we're are in S9 (Season 9) and I rerolled in season 8. I wanted a class with more of a challenge like say a warrior or a rogue. I decided to go with a rogue and now the fun begins!

PvE vs PvP
First off to get high in arena these days its recommended to be in a PvE guild, this is as necessary anymore but it's recommended to acquire the best PvP trinkets/offsets.

PvE neck and ring with PvP Boots and belt
or
PvP neck and ring with PvE Boots and belt

That combo above is a good starting template until you're comfortable mixing and matching gear to suit you. The additional DPS is crucial! Sure you loose maybe 300 resilience but it's not necessary when considering you're still running with 2.5k-3k resilience. This is not always the case, running double DPS in 2's you will most likely be the kill target so you should go for as much resilience and battlemaster's trinket.

Stats
As a mutilate rogue in PvE your main stat you will go for is agility and mastery, with mastery you will be able to do the most amount of damage in a short time than any other stat. Why? Good question. Using mastery not only increases damage done poison's it also increases the damage of your main finishing move; Envenom. Your second priority is resilience, this stat is basically the difference between you surviving and you dieing. Rogues get focus targeted in arena very often so it's crucial that you get 2.5k+ resilience.

As subtlety you will want to get haste and agility, haste doesn't just increase attack speed it also increases your energy regeneration which is awesome for all rogues! I currently run 11% haste with around 20% critical, I get 1-2 extra ambushes in shadow dance which is 14-17k damage per hit on a full resilience target.

Arena Comps

As a rogue you really don't have much of a variant compared to some classes when it comes to compilations that do and don't work in 3s, but 2s you have a lot that can work.

2v2
RP - Rogue/Disc Priest is one of the most common as they are the most harassing DPS and Healers in the game. Rogues train (stick on) one target mainly a dps while the priest rotates fears and mana burns onto the healer whilst keeping the rogue alive. While you can have other healers, Paladins lack CC and harassment and shaman/druid can do good harassment/CC they lack the benefits priests give.
R/DPS - Rogue/DPS you have many different variants, one of the best is Rogue/Feral they call it a GCD comp which means you will kill someone in one global cooldown. Rogue/Boomkin, Rogue/Lock, Rogue/Spriests, are all common and strong 2s comps, we can't forgot good old Mage/Rogue which use to be a very strong comp but now days is a lot stronger than it was in wrath.

3v3
RLS - Rogue/Lock/Shaman has many benefits and is a comp capable of 2800, with good co-ordination sap/blind/fear/hex the lock down is amazing while still having the burst of a lock/rogue + bloodlust/heroism. Totems help to stop CC on your casters while the rogue trains a healer or caster DPS. This is recommended to be played with a destro lock but affliction still works.
RMP - Rogue/Mage/Priest is one of the most popular played comps in the 3v3 bracket this comp has a lot of potential but requires a great deal amount of co-ordination the be able to get the burst and CC down pack. I suggest the mage gets Glyph of Polymorph and do some skirmishes to get your co-ordination and strategies second nature for the real thing.

There are more comps for 3v3 but they aren't as strong as the two I have mentioned. RLD (Rogue/Aff lock/Druid) or RRP (Rogue/feral/priest) are the only ones that come to mind that could come close to those two mentioned above.

Mutilate is a very strong spec for people with low gear. I use this spec at the moment because I feel subtlety is gear dependent. With this spec I can still do a lot of damage onto all classes with vendetta and poisons going through armor, where subtlety on the other hand without the gear costs to much energy for the damage being dealt out. *NOTE* it is imperative that you keep slice and dice up all the time, it is your main source of damage in the long fights.

As I said before this spec I believe requires more gear than mutilate. I feel that towards the end of the season this will be the dominant spec with the ability to deal huge amounts of damage in a short time and switching capabilities.

Assassination Glyphs:



Subtlety Glyphs:

When it comes to AddOns, I highly recommend getting curse client! It is a nifty tool that lets you update and automatically install AddOns for your World of Warcraft game.

Download here: http://www.curse.com/client/

My Recommendations:

Now every person has personal preferences on certain AddOns work best for them. The ones that I am going to recommend are essential or optional (still recommended).

Essential

Gladius: A must have Arena Unit Frames, highly customizable, tells you important information; Trinket use, enemy drinking and enemy spec.


Download Via Curse Client or here

Gladiminish: An extension of Gladius, it shows more important information about DR (Diminishing returns) on CC (crowd control) spells such as; Sap, Polymorph and Fear.


Download Via Curse Client or here

Optional

Doom Cooldown Pulse: A great AddOn that pulses the Icon of the spell that comes off of cooldown on your screen, great for non-clickers to see what they have and when they can use it.


Download Via Curse Client or here

CCReport: Just a basic AddOn that reports to your party when you get Feared, Sheep'd, sapped etc.


Download Via Curse Client or here

Domino's: A customizable bar addon that lets you move and customize your bars to fit you.


Download Via Curse Client or here

Mutilate

#showtooltip Mutilate
/cast Mutilate
/startattack

If you have no energy your rogue won't sit there doing nothing he will start auto attacking. (Assassination)

Backstab

#showtooltip Backstab
/cast Backstab
/startattack

If you have no energy your rogue won't sit there doing nothing he will start auto attacking. (Subtlety)

Blind

/cast [target=focus, exists] Blind; blind;

This macro will blind your focus target (not your target you're attacking!) right click your CC Target and click set focus or make a macro /set focus and click on your CC Target and press the macro.

Tricks of the Trade

#showtooltip Tricks of The Trade
/cast [target=NAMEHERE] Tricks of The Trade

Use this if your AddOns mess up the one above

#showtooltip Tricks of the Trade
/target Nameofteammate
/cast Tricks of the Trade
/targethostile

This team mate buff can be casted in stealth, which increases their Damage by 15% for 6 seconds only when you attack it will activate so don't do it after you open, do it just before!

Vanish

#showtooltip Vanish
/stopattack
/cast Vanish

A basic Vanish macro stops you auto attacking so you don't break yourself out of stealth when you use it by accident.

Sap

#showtooltip Sap
/targetenemy [harm][nodead]
/targetenemy [noharm][dead]
/cast Sap

This macro will tab targets and sap the closest target. Use it to find stealth targets ONLY, use regular sap to sap a non stealthed target or you could sap the wrong person.

Preparation

#showtooltip Preparation
/cast [nostealth] Evasion
/stopcasting
/cast sprint
/stopcasting
/cast preparation

Preparation resets your cooldowns so this macro blows your unused cooldowns before using preparation.

Stealth

#showtooltip Stealth
/cast [nomodifier] !Stealth

This Stealth macro allows you the mash the stealth button without accidentally going in and out of stealth.

Gouge

#showtooltip Gouge
/stopattack
/cast Gouge

Stops auto attacking so you don't accidently break gouge.

Shadowstep Kick Focus

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus, exists] shadowstep; shadowstep;
/cast [target=focus, exists] kick; kick;

If focus exists press once for shadowstep and twice for kick straight after, if no focus it will use your current target.

This will stop you auto attacking so you don't break the gouge.

Movement Recommendations:

W - Keep as Foward
S - Unbind this! Back peddling the worst thing you can do in arena!
A - Bind this to Strafe Right (Unbinds Q)
D - Bind this to Strafe Left (Unbinds E)

Spell Bind Recommendation:

1-5 - This should be all you use (With modifiers)
Q/E/F/C - These are the easiest binds to use for spells.

Modifiers:

Modifiers let you use more buttons for spells. ALT is the most common then CTRL then SHIFT.

Using a modifier allows you press ALT+1 at the time to cast a spell that isn't the spell on that is binded to 1.

How to Keybind:

Using the Blizzard standard Key binding in the Interface can be a bit confusing at first, personally I use domino's UI AddOn (Bartender works as well) which has a custom Key Binder inbuilt which is really easy to use!

Assasination

As a Mutilate rogue you will be using Mutilate to accumulate most of your combo points. When you get your first 5/5 combo points spend it on Rupture, why? Rupture in assassination spec when it deals damage it rolls back 12 energy to you, so I suggest keeping this up 100% for maximum damage. When you reach 4/5 or 5/5 Combo points, you use Envenom, not Eviscerate. Envenom as a mutilate rogue having improved poisons does a lot more damage against plate wearers. Another move you can use which is very effective on long fights is Slice and Dice, not only does it increase attack speed, Envenom will also refresh your slice and dice to full duration.

Envenom:

Envenom requires deadly poison, which stacks up to 5 times on a target. The more stacks of deadly the enemy has the more damage it does!

Cold Blood:

Cold Blood is a move that makes your next attack 100% chance to critically hit, the most effective way to use this is when you have 5/5 combo points and 5 stacks of deadly poison built up and envenom. (On my rogue hits for 23-28k)

Vendetta:

This move is a very good ability to burn down focus targets, it increases all damage done to that target by 20% and you can see them even if they go invisible or stealth.

Opening:

You have two options as a rogue; Cheap Shot or Garrote. Cheap Shot is a small stun that generates 2 combo points and Garrote a Silence + Bleed DOT that only generates one combo point.

Garrote is a very good option to use against casters or even other rogues.

Finishing Move: Again you mainly have two options, Kidney Shot or Envenom. Kidney shot is the long 6 second stun that takes 5 combo points with a 20 second cooldown. As mutilate spec it also generates 8% damage bonus from ALL spell damage so use it when you want to make a guaranteed kill or after your first opening.

Subtlety

Subtlety are is easily the hardest spec for a rogue to play at the moment, it takes a lot of precise timing and skill. As a sub rogue you will want to keep up recuperate 100% not only is it a heal but it gives you 12 energy every time it heals you. Once you get your recup up you will most likely use kidney next, when you kidney shot thats your best opportunity to get a kill or lay down some massive pressure. I usually tricks of the trade my team mate, smoke bomb, kidney shot, shadow dance and ambush spam. This will deal immense damage and pressure, the healer or team mate will have to run in which also gives you an opportunity for an easy blind.

Shadow Dance

Lets you use your stealth moves un-stealthed, great for getting silences with garrote or immense damage with ambush spams. Use wisely because this cooldown is your most important.

Preperation

Resets your cooldowns for almost everything but cloak of shadows, it even does smoke bomb which puts out alot of pressure on the opposing team.

Daggers, poisons and Enchants

Dagger Speed
I feel that this is a very important part of the guide I left out. Many people get confused about what speed daggers to use and what poisons. It is recommended that you use 1.8 speed main hand and 1.4 speed off hand daggers but for mutilate you can get away with duel 1.8 speed daggers for bigger mutilate burst.

Poisons
Poisons are probably the most important thing about a rogue.

Assassination:

You will want to use Instant poison in your main hand and deadly poison in your off-hand. The reason why you don't use wound in the main hand for the mortal strike is because it's only 10% and the trade off of damage is just not worth it. Deadly in the off hand for the stacks and so you can use Envenom your main finishing move.

Subtlety:

Instant poison in the main hand. Use crippling in the offhand because you don't have the assassination talent that automatically applies crippling.

Enchants
In your main hand for any spec you will want Hurricane, this enchant activates a lot and it not only gives attack speed but haste increase energy regeneration.

In your OH you will want to get Pyrium Weapon Chain which is an enchant that reduces the duration of disarm by 50% and increases hit by 40 which is great because a rogue thats disarmed for a full 10 seconds is a useless rogue.

Thats all for now, videos of my gameplay found at: YouTube - JackieMoonWCM's Channel

[mcflea]

Excellent guide. + Rep

[Reflection]

Thanks a lot, great layout as always and interesting information. +8

[Jackie Moon]

Thank you both! I will be making a PvP video soon, just need some more gear! I hope that will be a good addition to this thread.

[dracogp]

Awesome guide really pro and tidy +REP

[Hiddn]

This is the best rogue guide i've ever seen and is exactly what i was looking for. +rep

[Methodus]

This is the best rogue guide i've ever seen and is exactly what i was looking for. +rep

I concur

filler

[Prince489]

Paladin + Rogue is far superior in 2s \ 3s with an additional partner atm. seeing that exorcism hits the double of a smite.

Also, maybe add some focus gouge macros \ kicks \ shadowsteps.

Overall, nice and solid guide!



Wasn't ment as flaming btw, just constructive criticism ;p

[Forsak3n]

very nice guide but at your sub spec you should drop initiative and get improved recuperate (6% less damage on you)

+rep

[HunterHero]

Please, please PLEASE make a Death Knight pvp guide too! Or if you know any, please post a link! + rep btw.

[xZer0x]

why choose Avalanche for mainhand ? doest it procc often ? aint hurricane better for the 450 haste?

Awesome guide + rep twice

[Kazin420]

Simply amazing as always.

I love your guide layouts. Imo you should make a guide on making guides lol.

+repx4 for you good sir.

[Jackie Moon]

Simply amazing as always.

I love your guide layouts. Imo you should make a guide on making guides lol.

+repx4 for you good sir.

Haha! Thank you! My Guide Layout won first and third place in the Guide competition.

In other notes, first off, You can drop initiative if you want but this spec is also Reckful's (3k player). The 6% damage reduction at a cost of energy is it really worth it now that we have combat readiness plus glyph of cloak?

Sure paladins hit more now, but the dot's is more efficient considering paladins have to cast everything on have few instants. Compared to priests with leap of faith into the AOE bubble then you smoke bomb over it. Plus priests have an offensive dispel which I still like more as i'm more of an aggressive player.

I will also add more macro's I have a focus kick in game which i'll be adding but I have never used a focus shadow step.

Lastly, I don't play Deathknights. I do play a warrior if you want me to make a guide for them, but be informed i'm only 1900 on my warrior. Hope that answers all your questions!

[toadboy96]

nice guide, but unfortunately i play a warrior, wanna find me a sweet cata warrior pvp/arena guide?

[bt411]

I like it, im playing exactly same mut spec after a lot of testing with slight diffence in glyphing, prefer rupture glyph over gouge glyph aside from that:

  /cast [modifier:shift,target=focus, exists] blind
  /cast [nomodifier:shift] blind

instead of

/cast [target=focus, exists] Blind; blind;

to be able to you blind your current target while a different focus exists