Hot Streak: Rogue PvP

[Jackie Moon]

UPDATE LOG
26/8/2010 - Added Update Log along with added Talents/Glyphs
26/8/2010 - Added second Tricks Macro - Thanks Shameless!
27/8/2010 - Added a third spec and more information - Thanks to Endedlife!
28/8/2010 - Added more glyphs and pictures - Thanks to Mayx for some pictures! Check out his PvP guide! Hunter PvP Basics
28/8/2010 - I am now an arena master! Picture proof!
29/8/2010 - Added section Stats and Daggers, Poisons and enchants
6/9/2010 - Updated guide with arena comps!

1. Introduction
2. Talent Spec
3. Glyphs
4. AddOns
5. Macros
6. Key Bindings
7. Basic Rotation
8. Rogue vs Class Strategy

Hey guys, Jackie Moon here. Many of you may not of known that I am a PvP fanatic and I have been 2k+ on multiple characters:

Ret Paladin - S5
Mage (Arena Master) - S6
Resto Druid - S7

Now we're are in S8 (Season and I rerolled again. 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!

My Rogue's Armory: WoW Armory Alternative - Nameless Armory Profiles.

PvE vs PvP
First off to get high in arena these days its recommended to be in a PvE guild, which I hate because I don't enjoy PvE. Get yourself OS (off set) gear which is either having this:

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

The additional DPS is crucial! Sure you loose maybe 100 resilience but it's not necessary when considering you're still running with 1.1k 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 Attack power, with attack power you will be able to do the most amount of damage in a short time than any other stat. Why? Good question. Using attack power not only increases damage done by special attacks and auto swings, it also scales up the amount of damage that your poisons do. 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 1k+ resilience (Patch 3.3.5).

Arena Comps

As a rogue you really don't have much of a variant compared to some classes when it comes to comps 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/Paladin (Ret or Pret) 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 no days isn't the best.

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/ret/priest) are the only ones that come to mind that could come close to those two mentioned above.

This Mutilate spec is based on more "Team Play" burst, with improved kidney shot for 9% more damage from all effects it's a good spec for double DPS or RLS comp in 3v3 (Rogue/Lock/Resto Shaman).

This Spec gives your rogue some more self burst damage and survivability with 2/2 in murder for 4% increased damage from ALL attacks and 3/3 deadened nerves for 6% less damage taken from all sources. Also in subtlety you have serrated blades which lets your attacks ignore 9% of your opponents armor which is great for warriors, paladins and Death Knight's.

The normal mutilate with find weakness instead of deadened nerves and the focused attacks variant.

Major
Glyph of Cloak of Shadows
Glyph of Mutilate
Glyph of Preparation
Glyph of Vigor
Glyph of Sprint

Minor
Glyph of Blurred Speed
Glyph of Safe Fall
Glyph of Vanish
Glyph of Distract

Why these?

Major

Cloak of Shadows when active on top of making you 90% magic immune with allow you to take 40% less physical damage also which is good for making kills or escaping sticky situations.

Mutilate is your main move so the energy decrease is crucial!
Preparation also resets your cool downs on some more abilities the main ones being Kick (cast interrupt) and Dismantle (Disarm).
Vigor is basically 10 bonus energy which can increase your self burst by quite a bit and that is handy for quick fights.
Sprint is a used commonly at high end pvp, being able to activate it in stealth you will reach your enemy for a critical sap early in the game.

Minor

Vanish is the most important of the minor glyphs increasing your movement speed by 30% when you activate vanish it helps avoid getting broken out of stealth by AOE.
Distract is handy for some extra range to get help get the saps off on the enemy.
Safe fall isn't really needed it's mainly a little asset when doing bgs or farming.
Blurred Speed is also not need just a little fun for bgs and farming.

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.

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.

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!

As a Mutilate rogue you will be using Mutilate to accumulate most of your combo points. When you reach 5/5 Combo points, you use Envenom. Not Eviscerate, Envenom as a mutilate rogue having improved poisons does allot more damage against plate wearers.

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 6-8k)

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 9% damage bonus from ALL attacks so use it when you want to make a guaranteed kill or after your first opening.

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. First of all as mutilate PvE DPS you do infact use a fast Off hand dagger but as PvP you want to try use two 1.80 speed daggers. Mutilate attacks with both weapons therefore increasing burst.

Poisons
Poisons are probably the most important thing with a rogue and different comps. If you are running without another form of MS (Mortal Strike (Healing Debuff)) it is required that you use Wound Poison in your offhand, if you do have a form of MS use Mind-Numbing. In your main hand as a mutilate rogue you will need Deadly Poison, stacks up to 5 times and the more stacks you have the more damage your finishing move Envenom does.

Enchants
In your main hand you will want Berserking because AP (Attack Power) is the main stat you will want to go for in PvP. Haste in PvP as a mutilate rogue is not recommended as it is in PvE. In your OH you will want to get Titanium Weapon Chain which is an enchant that reduces the duration of disarm by 50% which is great because a rogue thats disarmed for a full 10 seconds is a useless rogue.

Now for my favorite part of the guide! Strategy! I will help you win duels/arena with tips to beating other classes.

Rogue VS Hunter:

I had to do this one first as a Rogue you will despise hunters. They have flare, Hunters Mark and Pets. You are going to have to either have no ping and make a lucky opening or deal with none at all.

You will 9/10 not be able to re stealth because pets tend to be able to see you and they will bust you out or a fast hunter will flare straight away.

The basic strategy is to stay on their feet at all times. Force them to Deterrence and then try for a vanish. Hunters are by far the hardest class to beat as a rogue in my opinion.

Rogue VS Mage:

Mage's are probably the second hardest but easily beatable when played right. I myself like to open against a mage using Garrote.

Why? Well it's simple if you cheap shot, they will blink away. Garrote lets you silence them and get a good decent amount of damage off. I usually envenom after garrote and force them to Ice Block or Blink. If they Blink you can then cloak to get close and built combo points to Kidney or Vanish and open with Cheap shot. If they block simple run away and re stealth.

Rogue VS Rogue:

This fight is all determined by who uses what when correctly. The first sap is crucial, they will have to eat some damage or use PvP Trinket and vanish, which are important cooldowns. As horde VS human/Nightelf the racials are sure to make you rage allot.

After you open with cheap shot, I mutilate then Rupture. I only rupture against rogues! Bleed effects will disallow a rogue to go back into stealth! After the rupture I vanish and re open with a stun and try to win the duel then and there. If they use evasion, dismantle the rogue and try re stealth and re open on them. If Rupture is about to run out open with Garrote.

That is all for now!

Thank you for reading and please post suggestions to improve the guide or requests on what class you want to see strategy against next!

[Andeby]

Nice guide! Thinking of leveling a rogue and use as a PvP char, this will help a lot!

[Mayx]

Thats a perfect little start-off guide

Just leveled my rogue to 80 so.. Thanks!

[eldarion42]

Repped you especially for the neat macros. Some of them I didn't know.

[alj03]

I don't play WoW anymore, but I'd defiantly use this if I still played!

Good job.

[murdertrain]

You may want to add to the hunter section that cheap shot will hit through deterrence, and you can't parry or dodge while stunned. A general strategy might be cheap shot - kidney shot and dismantle, because he'll trinket the kidney shot and you can't deterrence while disarmed. After that you can vanish and cheap shot his deterrence if he uses it, or prep and dismantle him again.

[themaster]

Repped you especially for the neat macros. Some of them I didn't know.

all these macros (and more) can be found on arenajunkies.com
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Btw i like your effort for putting in this guide, but are you serious about that specc? You are talking like that the specc you linked is the best in general. But basically no good rogue uses this build. Improved kidney shot is giving me question marks. You probably could spend these points better in Focused Attacks/Find Weakness (Depends on which daggers you use. Double 1.80 id take Find Weakness and 1.80/1.40 with Focused attacks). Also 2/2 murder is nice so it aint bad to just drop 1 point out Improved poisons to get it to 2/2. For 3v3/5v5 i wouldn't take Heigtened senses at all. Just run that comp with double 1.80 daggers (unless you play RLS) and take 4/5 Dual Wield Specialization to get the max burst you can get.

Your strategy against rogues is really tricky because if let's say you get an opener with cheap shot and you use rupture then they can just blind you + re-stealth sap. And restealth re-open. Or you trinket blind and they will pop evasion + rupture you back (=no revanish for you, if you do manage to vanish they quickly fok while running away=gg aswell). Then after their rupture ticks off they can vanish-CS-Full KS And the game is GG. I'd probably open cheap shot, gouge (see if he trinkets or not), KS and they trinket this part and then immediately pop blind on them, this is a guarranteed win. Oh i use double wound against rogues in a duel and eviscerate instead of envenom (because of the blind).

Against mages i'd open with garrote indeed, after blink i would use vanish (really fast before you get deep freezed) and run around because they will use AoE (CoC,AE etc.) and re-open cheap shot. This way you saved your cloak for later in the fight + trinket. Now you got a full stun on them to nuke, they either will trinket this or iceblock. I wouldn't really walk away to re-stealth in an open area like outside Ogrimmar because they can auto cancel IB and sheep you, if you trinket this = gg, if you take it = gg. So just stand infront them, watch the buffs, gouge asap after IB. then use muti,evisc ofc. They will blink, try to CC you, here you pop sprint+cloak and nuke them. At this point the mage should have really low HP. If really necessary you should use prep, because dueling a mage where you don't need to use preperation for, is not a mage worth dueling. If the mage uses Water Elemental+mirror images you cant expect that you'll win. Yes against mages i also use double wound poison + Evisc, because there is no point to stack deadly poison on mages since you can't stick on them 24/7 to get the (re)applies.

I dunno what to mention about hunters, they are kinda lame when they use Readiness to reset cooldowns, but the fight shouldn't be hard, you could probably waste sprint to get that opener from behind with cheap shot, kidney them and dismantle 2 sec later because you can expect them to trinket+disengage, here you still got sprint on and then run to them back, they will probably root you with pet/scatter you or pop detterence later on. You can vanish + CS the detterence and nuke. After that they will probably disengage again just pop blind on them to let them lose 1-2 sec before deadly poisons ticks the blind off, then you can full ks again. Really really hard to fight against hunters using Readiness, but if they use that you can probably use Prep aswell

Well goodluck with the guide, i will check it when its finished once again and then you will be hearing from me

[DrWho1988]

Here's an abridged version.
Stealth, sap, stun lock, 3 shot. Done, move on to the next sucker.

I don't like rogues

[Jackie Moon]

@themaster

The spec works for me, I did link a armory of my rogue if you don't believe me. In the end it comes down to personal preference and what comps you run. I never run DPS/Healer, in 2s always double DPS so the 9% bonus damage is very useful. Also I play RLS. Another thing with the duels is it all comes down to what the enemy does I could write countless situations I am just trying to help people get the general idea. I am not hand feeding people a easy way to get 2k+ I am simply giving them a ground point for them to work on. Kind of annoys me how you wrote i'll check when guide is finished, it's like you think I am going to re-write the whole guild because of your opinion. I will be adding more specs in though of course.

[Shameless]

There is a much simpler Tricks macro for your partner.

If you play doube DPS with a rogue, use this macro:

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

This doesnt change your target and its much quicker. Can also be used for things like Power infusion on a priest etc..

Other than that, good Guide. Very useful!

[Jackie Moon]

Updated guide with some tweaks and changes!

[Endedlife]

1)you have 2 uncommon specs and should include the normal mutilate with find weakness instead of deadened nerves and the focused attacks variant.

ex) http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc...20000000000000
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc...20000000000000

2)You are also missing glyph of sprint which is one of the most used glyphs in higher end pvp.

3)You should envenom at 4 OR 5 combo points.

4)You are missing simple action bar changing addons like dominos

6)s key is situational and should not necessarily be unbinded.

7)You don't not need any pve gear and in fact most rogues run full resil (like me) for the top RLS's

Why don't you use glyph of distract? its not that usefull but its better then safe fall or water walking.

9)Focus sap,gouge,kick macros are very usefull

Other then that macros and pretty solid along with addons.

edit: this is coming from a 2700 rogue

[Greedy]

Nice guide, Jackie Moon!
E: Didn't see Endedlife's post, but i got to agree to him, i also use the glyph of sprint.

[Jackie Moon]

1)you have 2 uncommon specs and should include the normal mutilate with find weakness instead of deadened nerves and the focused attacks variant.

ex) The World of Warcraft Armory
The World of Warcraft Armory

2)You are also missing glyph of sprint which is one of the most used glyphs in higher end pvp.

3)You should envenom at 4 OR 5 combo points.

4)You are missing simple action bar changing addons like dominos

6)s key is situational and should not necessarily be unbinded.

7)You don't not need any pve gear and in fact most rogues run full resil (like me) for the top RLS's

Why don't you use glyph of distract? its not that usefull but its better then safe fall or water walking.

9)Focus sap,gouge,kick macros are very usefull

Other then that macros and pretty solid along with addons.

edit: this is coming from a 2700 rogue

Thankyou for this! Updated and edited guide. Feel free anyone to add some more suggestions to make this guide the best!

[Kazin420]

Great guide! Also fantastic you added the updates and suggestions. I love the layout, and I might even use this for a guide of my own some day. +Repx4 well deserved.