Rogue 1.12 Preview

[Xame]

As a priest, I destroy hunters one-vs-one, even when I'm holy spec'd. Their only chance is if they catch me out of mana at the start of a fight. When shadow spec'd, I destroy rogues, too. When holy spec'd, I die so fast to reasonably equipped rogues, it's not even funny.

I agree that the mark has little effect on a priest in a one - one fight. The mark is placed on the priest in group pvp to make sure "this one dies first". Priests are far too deadly in group combat if left standing for too long (a priest healing a rogue will cut up a large group pretty quickly if the priest is left untouched). What is interesting is what a hunter brings to a fight in terms of personal surviablity, dps and harrassment. Even though they can be beaten one-v-one. Their long range snipering of cloth targets is what puts them up in the pvp ranks everytime. Similarly rogues can drop a cloth target and then vanish before the group can react. Most clothies hide in pvp since standing out will get you killed quick.

In the typical AV pvp battles I see, hunters work in groups of two or three and setup snippers nests. They trap the enterences to the nest and use one of their pets as a lookout. A target is marked (clothie) and all hunters shoot it (almost insta-kill). If someone happens to get in the nest, its scatter shot, FD and then a trap on the feet for the quick crowd control to get range (or switch weapons and just beat it down).

Similarly, I've seen rogues working in killing crews grabbing three casters at a time and dropping them with their stun locks. A five person team (three clothies, shaman and warrior) can just be erased by three rogues with very limited damage to the rogues. The element of surprize being very huge in getting a few free seconds.

The new rogue talent that is the most pvp game changing will be the use of the offensive "sprint" to break movement effects and close the distance to a target. Granted, it will depend on how many of the movement impairing effects it clears but this will be huge. A mage frost novas a rogue so that they can wind up the cast; sprint, blind, good bye mage. Previously this would have been, vanish and the mage runs away (a draw).

Also the line: "Garrote, Rupture, and Eviscerate are being increased in damage" and "Hemorrhage will be moved up in the tree to become a 21 point talent" leads me to believe that the developers are looking for rogues to get more dot slots on bosses for pve. Thus creating more strategy choices for the raid. Kind of a "run in, put on a dot and back out to save healer mana".