[Arena] Double Rogue Guide

[Pirlz]

Not my guide, copy/pasted from WoW Forums -> Literacola's Double Rogue Guide for better exposure.
It's a viable, and very effective combo. Before I go into double rogue strategy, let's get some things straight.

-Double rogue is not hard, and is probably the easiest rogue/x combo to play
-The only "hard counters" to double rogue are paladin/melee teams. Thankfully, you don't see many of those at high rating.
-Perception and WotF, while extremely helpful, are not by any means essential. Just about every racial will be useful against a variety of match ups as double rogue.


-Getting high rated as double rogue is dependent on you
A) you and your partner not sucking
B) not getting steamrolled by paladin/melee teams
C) your gear not sucking

You keep saying double rogue is easy, why do you say that?
Because, well, it is. You can approach any team in a variety of ways. You are a rogue. You have no counter class, and there is no class that (as shadowstep) you should have difficulty with 1v1. Additionally, your CC is not dispelable, and can be applied instantly and reliably. If someone trinkets your blind, you can hit them with another assuming you can survive for 20 seconds. Against many teams, if something goes wrong, you have the opportunity to completely reset the fight and try again via cloak/vanish.

Your most difficult match ups will be against other rogue/x teams, since the rogue has enough cooldowns to effectively peel for his partner or survive your burst while his partner is CC'd. Match ups against other rogue teams will almost always be decided by which team has a rogue brought out of stealth first. basically, whichever team gets sapped first loses unless you have some serious RNG on your side.

General strategy for rogue/rogue
As with any double DPS combo, the whole idea is to CC someone and blow up his partner before you run out of CC options. There's never a set strategy as far as "CC healer blow up DPS" or "CC dps blow up healer." Typically, it depends on whoever you can CC easier, or who you can DPS easier. IE, warriors and mages are typically poor choices for CC targets. Always keep in mind that pet classes (hunters, locks, priests, mages) will stay in combat if their pet is in combat. This means that if someone has their pet on you, you'll have to get out of combat with the pet before sapping them. Keep in mind that you have no healing to fall back on without resetting the fight. You have room for error, but only in terms of the RNG. If you make a dumb positioning mistake or poor CD use, you're going to lose quickly.

Some things to think about when you're deciding who to DPS and who to CC are:
A) who is easier to CC (durrr)
B) who loses a lot of their effectiveness when trained by melee (ie people that rely on casting or getting range on you)
C) who can you find first
D) who can you force a trinket on (ie priests and druids are likely to trinket a KS if two rogues are on them)
E) who you can do more damage to
G) who poses more of a threat if left un-cc'd

A lot of this is dependent on your gearing and racials, IE if you're running human against a druid comp, you stand a good chance of just rushing the druid down and chaining blinds on the warrior. If you're dwarf, you have the option of forcing a trinket on a blind, and then stoneforming/vanishing to reset the fight.

There's always the option of essentially turning a fight into two 1v1's. Against a lot of comps, you'll do this temporarily, but only to force a trinket on a target so that you can train the other. With a rogue on you, you're only going to be getting off instants, and instants only get you so far. It's not the total dps that matters, it's the difference between the dps and hps that matters. One rogue can barely, if at all, burn its way through a full row of druid hots even with 5 wound up. Add the DPS of another rogue, and that druid is dead if he eats a KS out of bear form.

The most enjoyable part about playing double rogue is working out your own strategy for fighting another team. You have the element of surprise. Even if they know it's a double rogue because you're playing a series against the other team, they don't know when you're going to open on them, and they don't know what your strategy will be. Being unpredictable as rogue/rogue is huge. A lot of people base their next step on what they think you'll be doing. IE a druid will trinket your blind if he thinks his partner is going to get gibbed, which then leaves him vulnerable. similarly, healers will trinket your stun if they think they're the primary kill target, leaving them open to CC.

Basically, between good communication and coordination you can pretty much approach any team any way you want. Fast target swapping, as with any double melee combo, is essential in many matches. Those "things to think about when deciding who to dps and CC" that I talked about earlier are going to change as the fight goes on as your opponents blow their various CDs. IE if you're up against a paladin/lock and the pally bubble/bops early because he was getting focussed and his lock was getting CC'd, you have the option of CCing hte paladin and rushing down the lock, which is normally a good way to get owned.

Spec Choice
You've got two choices:
A) shadowstep - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
B) lose

You need vile poisons, elusiveness, prep, and at least one rogue needs imp EA.

Gear Choice
As a safe rule I don't like to go into an arena match with much under 10k hp. Resil doesn't matter as much since you have no healer. Most of the damage you'll be taking is dot/instant damage. Against warriors/other melee, agi (the dodge and armor you get from it) is going to help a hell of a lot more than resil will.

Basically what I'm getting at here is that pve gear, or atleast offensively gemming/enchanting is huge here. If you're taking significant amounts of damage as rog/rog, you're going to lose regardless of how defensively stacked you are. Also, things get a lot harder when you're out of CDs. You want to end the fight as quickly as possible. Most games I play as rog/rog, I go in with anywhere from 80-250 resil. I've tried ~350 before and it really just isn't worth it. Avoid defensive stats if possible, and definitely use good pve gear if you have it.

Stealth mods and detection mods are also pretty nice, like stealth to cloak and the new panther trinket and goggles. Don't sacrifice too much for it though. In stealth vs stealth matches getting the opener often decides the match, but if you sacrifice too much offensive power for an opener, you're going to have trouble against teams that require you to put out heavy burst. Basically, don't use low-level items just because they have stealth mods.

Poison Choice
For the most part both rogues will be running wound/crip. Things can change too fast in your matches to have to worry about blowing multiple GCD's to get another poison up, and being able to shiv cripplign whenever you need to is huge. Deadly/instant/mind numbing have their uses, primarily against paladins and shamans. However, with the new toughness change and how easily shamans can cleanse crippling, make sure you always have one rogue running crip offhand.

General Tips/Tricks/stuff that you SHOULD know by now

Vanish/Sap
Ah the good old vanish/sap. Not difficult to execute, but it makes you look pretty baller. There are plenty of ways to take people out of combat, and once you do, you can vanish and then sap them for a 10 second CC. Often, the method of taking them out of combat is blinding them. Keep in mind you can't sap a warrior if he is in berserker stance unless his berserker is on cooldown, and you can't sap shamans in GW or druids in feral forms (you can sap moonkins though). Once a warrior has blown his trinket, he's vulnerable to a vanish/sap if you catch him swapping to defensive or battle stance. Also, berserker ragehas a 10 second duration and a 30 second cooldown. Sap and blind both have 20 second DRs.

Shadowstep/KS
Some people still haven't figured this out, but you can prevent your kidney shot from (or other finisher) from being avoided by shadowstepping and kidneyshotting during the ShS (ShS doesn't trigger the GCD). It can still get resisted, but KS'ing a rogue relying on evasion can often lead to a win.

Dealing with BoSac
Blessing of Sacrifice. Places a Blessing on the party member, transfering 104 damage taken per hit to the caster. Lasts 30 sec. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

30 second duration, 30 second cooldown. Sap the paladin just before he goes to refresh is BoSac and you'll likely force a bubble or trinket.

Opening on lock-humping druids paranoia *@#!#s
Plain and simple, if you walk up to a lock with paranoia, he or his teammate will knock you out of stealth. This is bad, and you will probably lose. Your teammate will hate you, and find someone else to play with that doesn't suck. A lot of times, you're going to be able to find a druid by blowing an early sprint and then vanish and searching the ~30yd radius around the warlock. Obviously, do this after you've checked other spots for the druid. Prevanishing is huge against other rogue teams as well. If your intention is to attack the person in stealth, do NOT sap his partner before sapping or opening on him. Any player will move off to the side since you've given away your position.

True sight can make or break a match
It used to do damage, which was nice vs other rogue, mage, or hunter teams. Now it just increases the damage you take. Against teams with other stealthers, you might want to just wait for the wards to come up and pick them up. There are three ways to properly use a ward -
1) shadowmeld just before it's about to spawn, pick it up, stealth. holy **%* useful NE racial.
2) pick it up, blow sprint and vanish.
3) be a baller and just mount up and grab it.

Against most teams, the wards are essentially what limit how many times you can attempt to reset a fight. No point in trying to reset the fight if wards are up.

Comp-specific strats
I won't go over everything here, but I'll go over some of our strats vs more popular comps.

spriest/rog
probably your hardest matchup. open on the priest and CC the rogue as best you can. the rogue can escape, the priest can't. if the priest dots you, don't cloak - dots give you the freedom of trinketting a fear or KS. The spriest needs to die fast, do everything you can to CC their rogue and avoid getting CC'd yourself. Try to vanish/sap the rogue just before or after openning on the priest. He'll likely be nearby. If you're human or UD you stand a significantly better chance here.

rogue/warlock
!#%* on the warlock, chain blinds on the rogue. don't get sapped. not much to say here, the fight will be over fast and if anything goes wrong for either team it'll only end faster.

rogue/disc priest
you'll have to try to CC the priest here. blind early, and then save your blind for when the priest's trinket is down and you know you can get a kill on the rogue. getting a sap off on the rogue and blowing up the disc priest works great, but getting a sap off on their rogue is going to be hard. unless you can open with a sap on the rogue, you really don't have an option other than to just both go on the rogue. and put out more damage than the priest can heal through via instants. early blind is essential here since you won't last long and you need that 2nd blind to be up. open on the priest, but don't dot him. blind and switch to the rogue as soon as the rogue opens on one of you.

rogue/mage
similar to rogue/lock, !#%* on the mage and avoid getting CC'd. letting the mage get a cast off will probably result in you losing, so don't let that happen. CC and blow cooldowns agressively here.

druid/war
this is a comp that will likely force you to split dps. open on the war, dot him up, do not stun. once the druid comes out of stealth, one rogue has to chase him down. you have to move fast before he has a chance to get more than just a few hots up. stun the warrior at this time to prevent him from peeling for the druid. if either of them trinket a stun, blind and train their partner. this is by no means an easy matchup, since there's a lot of RNG involved with the warrior. as with any druid comp, opening on the druid is pretty much instantwin.

druid/hunter
druid will likely be flare camping. you won't kill the hunter with the druid CCing you + abolishing poisons. you have to either kill the druid, or force a trinket on the druid and blind him, and then kill the hunter. often, i find the best strategy is to grab the sight rune, mount up, pop evasion/sprint early and just go for a rushdown on the druid. if the druid is kiting you, you usually have the freedom to trinket a scattershot.

druid/rogue
the opener will most likely decide this match. open on whoever you can first so that you avoid getting sapped. sap here = you lose. either the druid or rogue can be CC'd easily. once they're both out of CC, you're going to lose quickly though. it's often best to just chain blinds the offtarget and hope the 5s blind is enough to get them OOC for a vanish/sap. Between hots, the damage they'll be doing, and the CC they have, you have to end this fight fast. Pve gear helps a ton here.

lock/druid
you pretty much !#%* on this comp. opening on druid = you win. if you open on the lock, the druid is forced to trinket your blind because of the pressure you're putting on the lock. you've got a few options here after the druid trinkets. you can either swap to the druid immediately before he has a chance to hot himself. as long as you catch him in caster without hots you should be able to down him in a cs->KS. you also have the option of staying on the lock for another 20 seconds, then hitting the durid with a blind->sap combo when blind is now off DR and he has no trinket. any mistakes against this combo will cost you heavily, such as getting knocked out of stealth, missing a kick on a fear, or messing up your blinds. however, both classes die fast with two rogues on them, and both are relatively easy to CC and shut down. another strat that works is to have one rogue shadowstep to the druid as soon as he tosses his first hot and start stunlocking. if you respond quickly, the druid will be usually be forced to trinke and NS the lock. if he eats your stunlock, you can blind the lock and both jump on the druid since he'll be low.

lock/paladin
fighting this comp is all about dealing with bubble/bop/bosac. it's easy to reset the fight via clos/vanish, so a pretty solid strat is to sap the lock and open on the paladin. if he bops the lock, reset the fight. Come back, sap->blind the lock while pounding on the paladin. if he bubbles, reset the fight again. come back and CC the paladin while you zerg the lock. the key to winning this fight is getting the sap off just as BoSac wears off if you're going for the lock. also, keep in mind that you're racing against the sight runes coming up. another strat that works is to double sap and open up on the warlock's pet, attempt to deny the feldom, and just sit on the lock while CCing the paladin. Splitting DPS also works here if you're in heavy pve gear.

shaman/warrior
kill the shaman and pray the warrior doesn't destroy you. that's really all you can do. the shaman has no escape mechanism and the warrior doesn't have any CC outside from RNG. you will get rnGG'd by this team, there is no way around it. your best chance at winning this fight is to go nuts on the shaman and hope you can burn him down before the warrior lolwindfurries you. shivving mind numbing helps a lot here. also, remember to keep your front to the warrior at all times. sweepign strikes is not avoidable. if he has SS up, and your partner takes damage, you will to, even if you have evasion up.

shaman/not a warrior
warriors are really the only class that are scary with shaman buffs. against any other team, the shaman will get some sort of peel from his teammate, and he only needs a second or two to gain a substantial amount of HP from a hero'd/buttlusted lesser healing wave spam. however, shamans are pretty easy to CC, especially if you can start off with a sap. just remember to not blind while blind is on DR (unless it's for a kill) and you should be able to deny the majority of the shaman's heals.

Other Stuff
Rogue/Rogue is a hell of a lot of fun to play, especially for people that like dueling. Few matches are won easily, and even though it's not a hard comp, having a high rated double rogue makes you look pretty baller. If anyone has any suggestions on other strategies to use, I'd like to hear about it. The best thing about playing a double rogue is the random/unpredictable things you can do during a match.

[scudtda]

Copy and Pasted from:

WoW Forums -> Literacola's Double Rogue Guide

It's litercola's guide.

[Monty]

before I actually read and rep you, I'd like to see your character and which rating you got as double rogue. you could PM me.

[yamidante]

Copy and Pasted from:

WoW Forums -> Literacola's Double Rogue Guide

It's litercola's guide.

Whats your point?.

Not my guide, copy/pasted from WoW Forums -> Literacola's Double Rogue Guide for better exposure.

[Monty]

Whats your point?.

the first post was edited, first comment was written before editing, k?

[Pietje]

Shadowstep is not necessary for a dual rogue team. I've seen 2x assassin teams go high as well; as high as 2k. The 2x ambush + mutilate rapes any clothy straight to ****in hell.

[Netzgeist]

....You are a rogue. You have no counter class,....

Stopped reading since here, feral druid ftw

[Monty]

mmowned is soo wrong place for pvp discussion. thread only started and theres already two nonsence comments >.>

[jdismeuc]

No counter class as a rogue? I have a hard time against warriors...

[scudtda]

Whats your point?.

As stated, the disclaimer was not there when I replied. I don't care if it's copy/pasted, so long as the OP doesn't take credit for it.