Damage optimised rogue

[Brista]

Hi gang, long time no see! WoW's finally made it across the Atlantic this month and I've decided to join in the mayhem

I see there's been some debate on the boards recently about min-maxing. I prefer min-maxing myself so I'd like criticism that will help me optimise damage output

This is my brief:

I want to play a Rogue

I want to optimise for play in a competent group. I'm hooking up with the Brains guild and I'm assuming that much of my time will be with a solid tank who can hold aggro and a healer who thinks heals > nukes.

I want to optimise for instant damage over damage over time. I'm imagining that I'll be in groups good enough to steamroller a lot of the content so a 30 second dot is a bit of a waste on something that dies in 10 seconds.

I want to optimise for PvE. I'll almost certainly PvP in due course but I'd like to level up fast then respec rather than employ a jack-of-all-trades template just to stay flexible. I don't mean I won't pvp while levelling up, just that I don't want to take power away from the pve side

I like crafting in these games so I anticipate being able to support a costly build to run. If I need to drink a mana potion more often than most that's not a big concern


This is my initial idea for tactics

The big assumption is that there are viable crowd control, damage mitigation and tanking options elsewhere in the party so I can focus on killing speed.

The expectation is that monsters will arrive at the tank with me stealthed a few yards away. I read Roland's comments about Rogue pulling a page back with great interest but I'm expecting not to be the puller in a fast-paced group that will have established its procedures before I catch up with them. I'll let the tank build a bit of hate then:
Cold blood
Ambush
(maybe Feint)
Backstab
Eviscerate
thistle tea
Vanish
Ambush
Feint
Backstab
Eviscerate

and that's about it

I had a long look at Preparation and I felt it was a big chunk of talent points which would cost damage. I also discarded Improved Sap despite reading that it is very highly regarded. This is because I'm joining a little late and I imagine I'll be hooking up with players who are coping perfectly well with the game and don't need crowd control quite so much as the general population at large

Sinister strike is an option for fights where I can't get the position for Backstab although possibly repeated Feints until I lose aggro might be a better option


Weapons

Daggers, perhaps with a macro to swap in maces for face to face fights. A face to face fight means something's gone wrong but that's to be anticipated. Possibly it's not worth the time investment of skilling up the maces, especially since I would lose the benefit of Dagger Specialisation when using them. The other advantage of the faster daggers is proccing more poison

Instant poison rather than deadly poison to fit the anti-dot theme

I have a question on dual-wielding. I understand that dual-wielding reduces chance to hit of both weapons. For my specials like Ambush and Backstab am I better to use one dagger only then macro in a dual wield set for auto-attack or does the dual-wield penalty not affect skills?

Talents

Assassination Talents (31 points)

Improved Eviscerate - 3/3 points
Increases the damage done by your Eviscerate ability by 15%.

Malice - 5/5 points
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%.

Ruthlessness - 3/3 points
Gives your finishing moves a 60% chance to add a combo point to your target.

Relentless Strikes - 1/1 points
Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

Lethality - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ambush, Ghostly Strike, or Hemorrhage ability by 50%.

Improved Instant Poison - 5/5 points
Increases the chance to apply Instant Poison to your target by 10%.

Cold Blood - 1/1 points
When activated, increases the critical strike chance of your next Sinister Strike, Backstab, Ambush, or Eviscerate by 100%.

Murder - 2/2 points
Increases your chance to hit while using your Sap, Ambush, Garrote, or Cheap Shot abilities by 5%.

Seal Fate - 5/5 points
Your critical strikes from abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point.

Vigor - 1/1 points
Increases your maximum Energy by 10.



Combat Talents (20 points)

Improved Sinister Strike - 2/2 points
Reduces the Energy cost of your Sinister Strike ability by 10.

Lightning Reflexes - 3/5 points
Increases your Dodge chance by 3%.

Improved Backstab - 3/3 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your Backstab ability by 30%.

Precision - 5/5 points
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%.

Improved Sprint - 2/3 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Sprint ability by 60 seconds.

Dagger Specialization - 5/5 points
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with Daggers by 5%.



Subtlety Talents (0 points)

None


Discard pile:

Remorseless attacks - it seems a bit too situational. It won't always be me getting the kill in the group so there's a good chance of it doing nothing. It will also do nothing whenever I have the superior Cold Blood available (3 minute cooldown). If I find that the group kills something every 10-20 seconds and I get half the group's kills personally then I'll have to review this assessment

Improved slice and dice - this is effectively a dot. I'd prefer Eviscerate for damage now than slice and dice for damage over the next 30 seconds

Improved Expose Armour - another dot.

Vile poisons - it's a toss-up between this and Improved Instant poison to get the pre-req points for the higher talents. The maths seems to be this:

Vile poisons 5 = X poison damage +15% for the talent proccing 30% of the time = X * 1.15 * .3 = 0.345 X per weapon hit

Improved instant poison = X poison damage proccing 40% = 0.4 X per weapon hit

Unless there's something I've missed, Improved instant poison is a clear winner, over twice as good in fact, although Vile poisons has a greater versatility

Improved gouge - I have to take this or 3 points of Lightning Reflexes as pre-req. Gouge isn't in the game plan but then neither is having to dodge so I've opted for the passive

Deflection 2 vs Improved sprint 2 vs Improved Evasion 2 - I have two points to spend here, none are skills I'm especially after. Sprint seems the most generally useful but I'd be interested in what experienced players have to say

Dual wield specialization - I was very unsure whether +50% damage to off-hand weapon beats +5% critical on Daggers. Has any number-crunching been done on this?



Talents summary

OK, to summarise that list the basic idea is to encourage combo points, critical chances, energy management and raw damage.

In developing it I guess the most practical route would be to develop Assassination as fast as possible and then Combat afterwards



Build Summary

I'm after a front-loaded, drop a ton of damage down fast then be out of mana build. I'd very much welcome your experienced advice :)

PS: isn't this fun? Blizzard do do this very well, giving you options to work out a character, it reminds me of planning Diablo2 characters. I haven't seen anything like so much pre-planning possible in other games

[Quark]

I want to optimise for instant damage over damage over time. I'm imagining that I'll be in groups good enough to steamroller a lot of the content so a 30 second dot is a bit of a waste on something that dies in 10 seconds.

Elite mobs in higher instances may slightly change your perspective on the time, but my philosophy with Rogues is essentially the same. I want to do damage now.

I like crafting in these games so I anticipate being able to support a costly build to run. If I need to drink a mana potion more often than most that's not a big concern

Well, no mana for Rogues at all :)
Just Energy.

The big assumption is that there are viable crowd control, damage mitigation and tanking options elsewhere in the party so I can focus on killing speed.

In my experience, more crowd control is always useful. Having 1 target sheeped while another is sapped really makes battles easier.

Damage Mitigation: don't focus on it at all as a Rogue. If you get hit, you get hurt. So the basic Rogue group strategy is don't get hit. If you do get hit, use Evasion. The exception to the don't get hit rule is if your casters are getting hit. Then Sinister Strike spam away and try to get that aggro, using your Evasion to mitigate your own damage.

The expectation is that monsters will arrive at the tank with me stealthed a few yards away. I read Roland's comments about Rogue pulling a page back with great interest but I'm expecting not to be the puller in a fast-paced group that will have established its procedures before I catch up with them. I'll let the tank build a bit of hate then:
Cold blood
Ambush
(maybe Feint)
Backstab
Eviscerate
thistle tea
Vanish
Ambush
Feint
Backstab
Eviscerate

1) Don't use an Eviscerate without at least 4 combo points. A backstab or SS is better off then. Don't forget that Eviscerate's listed damage is not taking armor into account.
2) Your build doesn't have Improved Ambush, but even so I'd save Cold Blood for Eviscerates. The damage potential of Eviscerate is much higher, so the critical bonus is that much better.
3) Don't rely on Cold Blood, Vanish, and Thistle Tea as your basic combo strategy. The cooldown is too long for all of them to be used every battle. Vanish takes a Reagent so you should only save it for when it's survival or boss fights. Thistle Tea is not easy to cook unless you're an Herbalist, or have a supplier.

However, a combo like this could be useful against a boss where you're expecting to have all your skills ready.

I had a long look at Preparation and I felt it was a big chunk of talent points which would cost damage. I also discarded Improved Sap despite reading that it is very highly regarded. This is because I'm joining a little late and I imagine I'll be hooking up with players who are coping perfectly well with the game and don't need crowd control quite so much as the general population at large

I encorage you to try out your build, and report back (since I'd like to know how it plays), but don't discount the Subtlety tree. I find all the talents I took to get to Improved Sap useful. Especially Oppurtunity and Improved Ambush.

Improved Sprint - 2/3 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Sprint ability by 60 seconds.

I'm not a fan of any skill that reduces cooldown of a single ability. You might be better off finishing Lightning Reflexes.

Vile poisons - it's a toss-up between this and Improved Instant poison to get the pre-req points for the higher talents. The maths seems to be this:

Vile poisons 5 = X poison damage +15% for the talent proccing 30% of the time = X * 1.15 * .3 = 0.345 X per weapon hit

Improved instant poison = X poison damage proccing 40% = 0.4 X per weapon hit

Unless there's something I've missed, Improved instant poison is a clear winner, over twice as good in fact, although Vile poisons has a greater versatility

Your numbers are off, but the real numbers don't make Vile Poisons seem any better. The basic proc amount is 20%, not 30%. So that's X * 1.15 * .2 = 0.23 X per hit. IIP is then 0.3 X per hit. Essentially IIP is a 50% increase in poison damage, compared to a 15% increase for Vile Poisons. Not only that, but before I got IIP, my poison timer (30 minutes) was always running out before my charges were used up. Now that I have IIP, it's more money effecient using poisons as I'm getting more charges used.

Improved gouge - I have to take this or 3 points of Lightning Reflexes as pre-req. Gouge isn't in the game plan but then neither is having to dodge so I've opted for the passive

Not necessarily the Improved Gouge talent, but have Gouge in your plan. My strategy for spellcasters is this:
Cheap Shot or Ambush opener
SS whenever I have 70+ energy (Backstab's too expensive for my spellcaster strat)
Kick when they start casting a spell
Gouge on the 2nd spell, wait for Kick cooldown and Energy while they're gouged.
Kidney Shot substitutes Kick or Gouge when I have 5 combo points.
Eviscerate if I know it'll kill the mob.

If a spellcaster gets a non-instant cast spell off on me, it's because I messed up. Note that this strategy won't work in PvP on mages, they can Blink out of stuns.

Deflection 2 vs Improved sprint 2 vs Improved Evasion 2 - I have two points to spend here, none are skills I'm especially after. Sprint seems the most generally useful but I'd be interested in what experienced players have to say

Well, I mentioned Improved Sprint above, though I do see Improved Evasion as more useful than Improved Sprint if you want a less passive talent. There's no reason to take Deflection instead of Lightning Reflexes unless you're using Riposte, from what I see.

Dual wield specialization - I was very unsure whether +50% damage to off-hand weapon beats +5% critical on Daggers. Has any number-crunching been done on this?

I would guess that Dual Wield spec will add more damage, but Seal Fate builds want as many criticals as possible.


Something I've thought of but I've already cut-pasted all over the place: if you're getting Dagger Specialization, I wouldn't recommend having maces with macro switching. The extra criticals help your Seal Fate, and have a fast dagger in both hands means you can have damage poisons on both hands. Right now I have a mace off-hand because it's signficantly better than the dagger I had, but it's awful at having a second poison.

[Concillian]

Basically no rogue is going to be short on damage.

The primary issue is your tank. This will regulate the damage you can safely do. Frontloading damage doesn't really help in these cases, you end up sitting out a few seconds so he can build threat, so are you really frontloading then?

You definitely can't just jump in and dump all your energy at once at the start of battle. However, there is no fixed formula for figuring out how much damage to do. Luckily in the lower instances leather armor is not nearly as much of a liability as later, so you can get a feel for it before it starts really hurting your group when you pull aggro.

Generally I much prefer to meter my attacks so instead of waiting, then jumping in and frontloading all my damage, I will jump in earlier, but do my attacks more slowly. This way if a mob breaks away towards the casters I have the energy required to frontload THAT mob and potentially save the priest. If you're energy is always near zero, you can have problems assisting the squishier. After all, rogues can tank for 15 seconds with evasion.

Your proposed sequence has a 2 point eviscerate (that has chances of being 3-4 pts, 5 if you're REALLY lucky)? 2 point eviscerates are not very high damage. When using a big mace of appropriate level, my 3 point eviscerates are pretty close to the same damage as an SS. But the kicker is that if eviscerate misses you eat the full 35 energy, if SS misses you only eat 7 energy. SS is generally the better option until at least 4 combo points if you can manage a weapon swap macro.

Also, by adding combo points, Relentless strikes gains a MUCH higher chance of giving 25 energy after the eviscerate (100% at 5CPs). Between that energy and the 20 energy per tick you have enough energy to do something else right after the eviscerate or 1 second later to get the 20 energy at the tick. Because of this, the time for thistle tea is during CP generation, not after a finisher.

If you're planning on using much tea, I HIGHLY suggest being an herbalist. Swiftthistle is somewhat rare. It's primarily available on herbs in lower level areas (12-30 or so) but there are uses for thistle even for level 60s (thistle tea and swiftness pots primarily). Swiftness potions, which are quite profitable for the level that you can make them (only 60 alchemy required, and they sell for at least 1 gold per stack of 5 pots), so low level alchemists (most likely to be herbalists) will make them into swiftness pots if they have the recipe (the recipe is pretty rare). It's generally bought out on the AH very quickly. When I put 20 swiftthistle up for 1.5 gold buyout, it got bought pretty quick (less than 2 hours). most of the times I look for it on the AH there is NONE listed.

In short, do not take thistle tea for granted.

Preparation is a big chunk of points for a very nice OS talent if you get in trouble. Or you can use it for god mode against one single enemy (2xvanish, 2x cold blood, 2x evasion). It's a tradeoff of being more effective against a single very threatening target vs. being more effective against all targets.

Vanish will erase you off the hate list, as it takes you out of combat, it is the ultimate feint. You should not need to feint after you vanish, because your threat level will be way down on the list vanishing that late. Because of this, keep in mind the ramifications this has if a cloth wearer pulls aggro.

Dual weilding does not appear to have any effect on special attacks, check the 1H+unarmed vs. 2x1H post I made.

I did the math for dual weild vs. dagger spec. before. Assuming both your daggers are the same DPS:
Dual weild spec = +12.5% damage on all normal attacks and +0% damage on special attacks that use weapon damage (backstab, ambush, etc...)
dagger spec = +5% damage on normal attacks +6.5% damage on attacks that Lethality applies to. With seal fate a crit also gives 2 extra combo points (in SFs current buged form, it does, it's really only supposed to give 1 extra)

With seal fate, I think dagger spec is a no brainer. Without seal fate, it depends on how much damage you do with normal attacks and how much with specials. In my current build I only do about 40% of my damage from normal attacks when soloing. In instances I am doing a larger percentage of damage from normal attacks, as my energy regen is happening while I'm attacking instead of when a mob is gouged.

Lastly, I would probably move the 2 points from imp. sprint to imp. evasion. Sprint is nice, from time to time, but past about level 25 or so, you get dazed too much for sprint to really be a very effective escape skill (by then you have vanish, which is better most of the time.) Evasion though... evasion is god mode against mobs. 75% dodge turns you into a protection spec warrior with a shield doing the damage of a rogue for the duration of the evasion. Given that you probably will be pulling aggro from time to time, I think the extra 4 seconds of evasion is more useful.

[Brista]

In my experience, more crowd control is always useful.  Having 1 target sheeped while another is sapped really makes battles easier.

Yup, but what I'm driving at is that if I'm joining a team where everyone else has strong CC skills I don't need to sacrifice damage talents for CC talents

I would also like to ask how easy does a battle need to be? From playing EQ2 which is an extremely similar game and from reading Bolty and others on healing it doesn't sound like healers are especially challenged 99% of the time when in a good group. So I don't need to spec to make their life easier rather than speccing to level us all up faster.

Let me give examples:

1) Standard pull, 3 mobs. One gets sheeped, tank holds aggro on other two, I ambush, priest heals

2) Standard pull, 3 mobs. One gets sheeped, I sap one, tanks holds aggro on other, priest nukes

In the second case we have the rogue doing damage mitigation with Sap instead of damage just so the healer can do damage instead of damage replenishment

Surely that's sub-optimal? Let the dps do damage and the healer heal

1) Don't use an Eviscerate without at least 4 combo points.  A backstab or SS is better off then.  Don't forget that Eviscerate's listed damage is not taking armor into account.

Both you and Concilian picked this up. I was thinking Ambush (one point) with a crit from Cold Blood activating Sealed Fate (one point) with Feint and Backstab for another two. I had a vague notion there was 75% chance of a 5th but that was from a talent I took out. There's also a chance (base +40%) of Backstab activating Sealed Fate for a point

Point noted, 5 combo points is what I'll aim for before using Eviscerate

2) Your build doesn't have Improved Ambush, but even so I'd save Cold Blood for Eviscerates.  The damage potential of Eviscerate is much higher, so the critical bonus is that much better.

OK, I had it in mind to generate a combo point with Cold Blood getting my Eviscerate off faster. It sounds like the monsters are tougher than I'm bargaining for. I'm envisioning fights where everyone hits it four or five times then it's dead. The advantage of using Cold Blood with Ambush is to get the Eviscerate off one move earlier, making the difference between completing my sequence and being left with 5 unused combo points when the monster dies. It sounds like mobs are tough enough for this not to be an issue

3) Don't rely on Cold Blood, Vanish, and Thistle Tea as your basic combo strategy.  The cooldown is too long for all of them to be used every battle.  Vanish takes a Reagent so you should only save it for when it's survival or boss fights.  Thistle Tea is not easy to cook unless you're an Herbalist, or have a supplier.

I'm intending to be a herbalist, but it looks like I need to moderate my thinking with regard to tea drinking

don't discount the Subtlety tree.  I find all the talents I took to get to Improved Sap useful.  Especially Oppurtunity and Improved Ambush.

Yup. I guess I could ditch combat and go Assassination 31/Subtlety 20 instead. I'll have a look at that option

I'm not a fan of any skill that reduces cooldown of a single ability.  You might be better off finishing Lightning Reflexes.

Point taken and I agree. The answer to a long cooldown is just to use something else, right?

Not necessarily the Improved Gouge talent, but have Gouge in your plan.

One of the lovely things about this game design is that one has all the skills of the Rogue, with the tactical flexibility that implies, with the talents simply providing specialisation. However what I have in mind for spellcasters is (usually) to be in a capable group where the others are counterspelling, pummeling etc and I can just damage. We don't need all 5 players shutting down casting and no one doing the killing.

Also Gouge is sub-optimal in groups, no? The other players interrupt it, don't they? I'd thought Kick looked to be the option for this function in groups

Not that I'll never solo, group with idiots or pvp, but simply that I don't wish to optimise for those circumstances

Thank you for a terrific reply :)

[Brista]

Basically no rogue is going to be short on damage.

This sounds like a philosophical issue. If I can hit something without it dying I'm short on damage, that's my view ;)

The primary issue is your tank. This will regulate the damage you can safely do. Frontloading damage doesn't really help in these cases, you end up sitting out a few seconds so he can build threat, so are you really frontloading then?

Bear in mind I'm new to WoW so I'm basing my experiences on other games. But I'd say yes, I'm frontloading. Going before the tank has established aggro is not an option so a few seconds of him establishing aggro would be there regardless. I'll aim to develop a feel for when I can start killing without peeling the mob off the tank and do as much as I possibly can in the first 4 or 5 seconds of the fight. My alternative is to inflict DoTs which will not be so good against anything we kill fast

So it's frontloading in the sense it's at the front of my participation, it's not at the front of the group's activity in the fight

You definitely can't just jump in and dump all your energy at once at the start of battle.

Well, yeah as I said, I'll let the tank build aggro and use Feint. I would like to try a "dump all my energy at once" build but I quite accept it may not work out well

It seems to me that with Feint one can dump all one's energy at once since if hate generation from damage is too high one simply spends less Energy on damage and more on Feints. You still get one combo point per Feint

Generally I much prefer to meter my attacks so instead of waiting, then jumping in and frontloading all my damage, I will jump in earlier, but do my attacks more slowly. This way if a mob breaks away towards the casters I have the energy required to frontload THAT mob and potentially save the priest.

OK, I recognise the value of this but with 4 others in the group, all very likely with valid methods of rescuing this situation, plus options available to me from the basic skillset like Gouge, I don't want to spend talent points speccing for this. I envisage spending an evening killing stuff fast, not an evening peeling mobs off the healer. Sounds like this situation is more the kind of thing I should be using my Thistle Tea for

Your proposed sequence has a 2 point eviscerate (that has chances of being 3-4 pts, 5 if you're REALLY lucky)?

Point taken, I'll wait for 5 points

Between that energy and the 20 energy per tick you have enough energy to do something else right after the eviscerate or 1 second later to get the 20 energy at the tick. Because of this, the time for thistle tea is during CP generation, not after a finisher.

Ah that's very interesting, I hadn't thought of that

If you're planning on using much tea, I HIGHLY suggest being an herbalist.

Definitely, herbalism sounds just my cup of tea... :rolleyes:

In short, do not take thistle tea for granted.

Right

However, assuming I can generate excess gold and assuming I can acquire optimal gear there may come a time when I've nothing left to spend money on. Seems that tea would be a good way to burn gold for exp if I get that far

You should not need to feint after you vanish, because your threat level will be way down on the list vanishing that late.

Understood

Because of this, keep in mind the ramifications this has if a cloth wearer pulls aggro.

Understood

With seal fate, I think dagger spec is a no brainer.

Yup, I think that's what I'll try

Lastly, I would probably move the 2 points from imp. sprint to imp. evasion

You make a very convincing case and you've also underscored that as I surf the wave between damage and aggro I'm going to get in over my head rather a lot!

Thanks for your comments, another terrific post :)

Edit: apologies, something's gone wrong with the Quote tags but I can't quite see what

[Quark]

Okay, I'll try to make some clarifications.

Yup, but what I'm driving at is that if I'm joining a team where everyone else has strong CC skills I don't need to sacrifice damage talents for CC talents

I would also like to ask how easy does a battle need to be? From playing EQ2 which is an extremely similar game and from reading Bolty and others on healing it doesn't sound like healers are especially challenged 99% of the time when in a good group. So I don't need to spec to make their life easier rather than speccing to level us all up faster.

Let me give examples:

1) Standard pull, 3 mobs. One gets sheeped, tank holds aggro on other two, I ambush, priest heals

2) Standard pull, 3 mobs. One gets sheeped, I sap one, tanks holds aggro on other, priest nukes

In the second case we have the rogue doing damage mitigation with Sap instead of damage just so the healer can do damage instead of damage replenishment

Surely that's sub-optimal? Let the dps do damage and the healer heal

Consequence of not having Improved Sap, then. With Improved Sap I'll sap a target, get aligned for the next target, and wait for my hunter to pull. My energy is back at that point and I'm not losing any damage potential. Something else comes up, but I'll combine that with a point below ...

Point noted, 5 combo points is what I'll aim for before using Eviscerate
OK, I had it in mind to generate a combo point with Cold Blood getting my Eviscerate off faster. It sounds like the monsters are tougher than I'm bargaining for. I'm envisioning fights where everyone hits it four or five times then it's dead. The advantage of using Cold Blood with Ambush is to get the Eviscerate off one move earlier, making the difference between completing my sequence and being left with 5 unused combo points when the monster dies. It sounds like mobs are tough enough for this not to be an issue

(Partial continuation of above) It's dependent upon you fighting elite or non-elite mobs. In a non-elite mob, especially earlier on, I would frequently not even get a finishing move. Right now with my normal group I'll typically get a 4-point and use the Eviscerate to finish off the mob. Elite mobs, if you can't get 5 points then something's wrong :)

Yup. I guess I could ditch combat and go Assassination 31/Subtlety 20 instead. I'll have a look at that option

As I said though, try yours out. Nice to see how a different build goes :)

One of the lovely things about this game design is that one has all the skills of the Rogue, with the tactical flexibility that implies, with the talents simply providing specialisation. However what I have in mind for spellcasters is (usually) to be in a capable group where the others are counterspelling, pummeling etc and I can just damage. We don't need all 5 players shutting down casting and no one doing the killing.

Guess it depends on the group dynamic. Since I'm the best at preventing a spell in my group, I gladly kill my damage potential. In Uldaman at one point I would Sap one caster, solo another while the other 4 would take on a hurtful melee mob. By the time I killed the one caster, the other was just about out of sap so I took him on.

Also Gouge is sub-optimal in groups, no? The other players interrupt it, don't they? I'd thought Kick looked to be the option for this function in groups

Yes, but I'm not using Gouge for the delay, purely for the spell interrupt. Since Kick has a cooldown and you don't always have a Kidney Shot ready, Gouge fills in as an interrupt :)

Definately I don't see anything wrong overall with your ideas. Just recommending tweaks here and there :)

[Concillian]

It seems to me that with Feint one can dump all one's energy at once since if hate generation from damage is too high one simply spends less Energy on damage and more on Feints. You still get one combo point per Feint

This is false. Feint does not add a combo point. Feint lowers hate levels but if you are on the edge and get a crit backstab, feint is not enough. Feint also has a miss rate like any other attack, so you cannot DEPEND on feint. It also has a considerable cooldown of 10 seconds.

OK, I recognise the value of this but with 4 others in the group, all very likely with valid methods of rescuing this situation, plus options available to me from the basic skillset like Gouge, I don't want to spend talent points speccing for this. I envisage spending an evening killing stuff fast, not an evening peeling mobs off the healer.

As MongoJerry says... Rule #1: Things go wrong.

like it or not, rogues, hunters and shamen are best equipped to help in this situation. Pallys have a limited skillset for this situation, and any clot wearer pulling the aggro back is only delaying the inevitable, because they'll go down just as quick as the priest. Ideally the warrior will pull aggro back to him, and the fade will work, but Rule #1 can always apply. Blizzard has said it was their intention that battles be chaotic. And even the best laid plans go wrong in WoW.

All I can say is play the game some, your perspective may change. If you're tactics are not group oriented and all you want to do is kill stuff fast, then you may want to stick to killing normal mobs 3-5 levels below you solo, rogues tear through those quick. Or duo with another DPS class on normal quests. Instances and 'elite' mobs may not be your thing. That's the thing about WoW, you can find your niche, because there are multiple ways to play and level to 60.

[Artega]

I'm going to chime in here from the tank's point of view.

You can NEVER have enough CC. A rogue in my group without Improved Sap would be better replaced with a Mage; I do have Arcanite Keys, after all.

Although they're rare, I absolutely LOVE DoT rogues. They make it a fair bit easier to contain aggro (since their damage is strung out over time, and not in big bursts), and the fact that a lot of their skills ignore armor makes them capable of dealing significant damage to longer-fight mobs like bosses. Obviously, they suffer a tad when we're just mowing down non-elites and easy elites (like the initial groups of skeletons in Stratholme.)

Feint is never used, and it makes me cry. Rage is already hard to get, and if the Rogue isn't using Feint and is going full-tilt, I can NEVER get aggro. Feint isn't a permanent solution, but it's hopefully long enough for me to get a Sunder or two off, and that might be enough to put me back on top of the stack. Do your tank a favor and use Feign. Off-topic: Priests should also use Fade. I die a little on the inside when I get grouped with a Priest who doesn't have Fade (or max-rank Fade.)

I would think that a heavy Combat build would be the best for quick leveling. It seems like the best of the Warrior trees on steroids. You get Riposte (I'd trade Revenge and Overpower for Riposte any day of the week), Blade Fury (Sweeping Strikes with big, bronze balls), and Improved Kick (slightly weaker Improved Shield Bash that doesn't limit your gear or force you to spend a lot of points in a fairly weak tree.) Most Rogues I party with are heavy on Combat.

I'd think that five points into Master of Deception would be mandatory for a Rogue, since Stealth is their gimmick. If I see the Rogue first, the Rogue dies a horrible death.

I'd highly advise you to use Crippling Poison at all times. It's invaluable in both PvE and PvP. I wouldn't expect it to be the pure uberness that it currently is for too much longer (passive chance for a 30% snare? I sense a nerfbat incoming!) While I try to keep all mobs snared, sometimes they resist, or sometimes I have to spend the rage on a Sunder because the stupid mage hit something too hard :)

[Quark]

I'd think that five points into Master of Deception would be mandatory for a Rogue, since Stealth is their gimmick.  If I see the Rogue first, the Rogue dies a horrible death.

The trick to stealth is, if you're behind someone, they can't spot you. I have 5 MoD right now with 2 Camouflage, but I may end up switching those. Last night was the first time I was spotted by anything other than a stupid mistake in a full month.

I'd highly advise you to use Crippling Poison at all times.  It's invaluable in both PvE and PvP.  I wouldn't expect it to be the pure uberness that it currently is for too much longer (passive chance for a 30% snare?  I sense a nerfbat incoming!)  While I try to keep all mobs snared, sometimes they resist, or sometimes I have to spend the rage on a Sunder because the stupid mage hit something too hard :)

If I'm fighting mobs my level, solo, Instant Poison must be on the quick hand. Rogues doing less damage means Rogues getting killed because they take severe damage. Crippling Poison is highly expendable in PvE. If I'm using a slowhand poison, it would probably be Mind Numbing because spells hurt. It's useful against mobs that run away, yes. But that's assuming no one else in the group snares the guy, you're not prepared with a Kidney Shot, and the 30% actually registers. 30% may sound like alot, but if we're talking non-elites, your slow weapon is not hitting that often in groups. For me, Crippling Poisons is just not feasible, due to Economics and Inventory Management. PvP is a different story, but I'm not on a PvP server.

[Treesh]

Feint is never used, and it makes me cry.  Rage is already hard to get, and if the Rogue isn't using Feint and is going full-tilt, I can NEVER get aggro.  Feint isn't a permanent solution, but it's hopefully long enough for me to get a Sunder or two off, and that might be enough to put me back on top of the stack.  Do your tank a favor and use Feign.  Off-topic: Priests should also use Fade.  I die a little on the inside when I get grouped with a Priest who doesn't have Fade (or max-rank Fade.)[right][snapback]68990[/snapback][/right]

I want to apologize for those other rogues and priests who don't use feint and fade. They are two excellent skills to use and they just aren't used enough. Generally, my rogues are more DoT-centered than frontload-centered and even then I still use feint sometimes. And I absolutely love fade for my priest, until it fails and then it seems like it increases my threat instead of just leaving me at a baseline, but that could just be a feeling rather than how it actually works.

I'd highly advise you to use Crippling Poison at all times.  It's invaluable in both PvE and PvP.  I wouldn't expect it to be the pure uberness that it currently is for too much longer (passive chance for a 30% snare?  I sense a nerfbat incoming!)  While I try to keep all mobs snared, sometimes they resist, or sometimes I have to spend the rage on a Sunder because the stupid mage hit something too hard :)
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Have crippling poison on hand, but don't use it "at all times". If you're in an area where the critters aren't mostly runners, don't use it. Keep all your different types of poisons on hand (damage, snares, mind-numbing) and use whatever ones fit the area best. Lots of casters around? You bet mind-numbing is going to be on one hand, no doubt about it. Are they runners too? Throw crippling on the other weapon. Are they stupid and just stand there most of the time? Use instant poisons instead. In instances, crippling is usually on because of the high concentration of runners and all the hurt runners can cause, but outside of instances I really don't use it that much - don't need to. I hit, GG hits, they die. I can't even get more than two combo points up before they're dead. ;) Why waste my poisons on such squishy things? :)

Edit: I don't have a PvP rogue so the above is for PvE rather than PvP.

[Guest]

One big problem. These 2 lines just dont go together.


"I want to optimize for play in a competent group."

and

"I also discarded Improved Sap despite reading that it is very highly regarded."



Its the best thing a rogue can bring to a group. Yes groups can get by without it, but groups can get by without a priest by depending on a druid but it sure isnt optimized.

[Guest]

Also evicerate misses frequently. For me it misses more than SS or any of my openers.


Over all your build(with the exception of no imroved sap) seems good.
Although myself I prefer combat focused build with a slow mainhand weapon for groups. It gives you the ability to rapidly switch targers and keep your damage up. And if if you max parry/evade talents it helps you be an emergency tank when things go wrong. I often use slice and dice because its way to still make use of bonus points on fast dying mobs.

But that just how I like to play, either tactic seems effective.

[Brista]

Many thanks for your comments, which as I wait for my copy to arrive are of great help in figuring out my gameplan

It's hard from the perspective of a non-WoWer to separate differences of philosophy from differences of knowledge. The "you can never have too much crowd control" seems absurd to me - would players want to have a two mob pull where 4 of the team sheep/sap the superfluous one mob?

It's perhaps an extension of a philosophy I saw in D2 where people used Bone Walls and Dim Vision to avoid the requirement for good positioning in hardcore. An old and off-topic argument but I felt that while there were terrific players who had great positioning and a safety build, there were other players who insisted on safety being essential because they hadn't developed the positional skills to survive hardcore without it. This lead to an insistence that D2 Hardcore requires crowd control skills which actually it doesn't. So I'm thinking that instead of pumping dodge and parry and getting away with it when I blunder into trouble I'll leave them at start values and try to develop a playstyle that doesn't require a Things Go Wrong build

On the other hand it's quite possible that I'm a silly noob who doesn't know anything about the game who is about to land with a bump when I try this out

Still, clearly Improved Sap is demanded both because it's uber and because I think MMOs are extremely unforgiving of variant scum. If 2 of the three people in my area putting together decent groups know I lack Improved Sap and won't group me because of that that's a real hit to my play experience, much more than it would have been in Diablo 2. That's the clincher - if you're going to be left out of groups because of your build you need a different build irrespective of effectiveness. MMOs are political.

Working in Improved Sap proved to be extremely easy, almost all the pre-req skills help Ambush which I'd like at the heart of the build

This gives me a new build of:

Assassination Talents (31 points)

Improved Eviscerate - 3/3 points
Increases the damage done by your Eviscerate ability by 15%.

Malice - 5/5 points
Increases your critical strike chance by 5%.

Remorseless Attacks - 5/5 points
After killing an opponent that yields experience, gives you a 40% increased critical strike chance on your next Sinister Strike, Backstab, Ambush, or Ghostly Strike.

Murder - 2/2 points
Increases your chance to hit while using your Sap, Ambush, Garrote, or Cheap Shot abilities by 5%.

Ruthlessness - 3/3 points
Gives your finishing moves a 60% chance to add a combo point to your target.

Lethality - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ambush, Ghostly Strike, or Hemorrhage ability by 30%.

Relentless Strikes - 1/1 point
Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

Cold Blood - 1/1 point
When activated, increases the critical strike chance of your next Sinister Strike, Backstab, Ambush, or Eviscerate by 100%.

Seal Fate - 5/5 points
Your critical strikes from abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point.

Vigor - 1/1 point
Increases your maximum Energy by 10.



Combat Talents (0 points)

None

Subtlety Talents (20 points)


Master of Deception - 5/5 points
Reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while in Stealth mode. More effective than Master of Deception (Rank 4)

Opportunity - 5/5 points
Increases the damage dealt when striking from behind with your Backstab, Garrote, or Ambush abilities by 20%.

Improved Ambush - 3/3 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your Ambush ability by 40%.

Initiative - 4/5 points
Gives you a 60% chance to add an additional combo point to your target when using your Ambush, Garrote, or Cheap Shot ability.

Improved Sap - 3/3 points
Adds a 90% chance to return to stealth mode after using your Sap ability.


My game-plan for Ambush is to ride the brink between grabbing aggro and not doing so which I anticipate will be a matter of the tank's tactics and practice with the timing.

My game-plan for Cold Blood & Eviscerate will be to try to time it to land the killing blow. Kill-stealing, if you like, from the rest of the group. Hopefully they'll agree to help me do that by timing their big hits for when the mob is not almost dead. That not only sets up a Remorseless Attacks bonus but also means that the big hit that steals aggro is also the one that inflicts the most effective form of crowd control - death!

It does sound like I'll have a bit of a rocky ride but the idea of pumping the Combat tree to build what's basically a Fighter with Stealth is not nearly so appealing

I'm also persuaded that I should no longer use the word "optimal" anywhere near this build, leaving me chuckling over the notion that my build - a rogue who doesn't tank - is something of a wierdo variant one ;)

[Treesh]

The "you can never have too much crowd control" seems absurd to me - would players want to have a two mob pull where 4 of the team sheep/sap the superfluous one mob?
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Because in instances, it's not just a two mob pull that's the trouble. It's linked groups of 4,5 and higher that are the trouble. You can only sheep one thing at a time; you can only sap one thing at a time. If it's a really bad pull or a group spawns on your head or a patrol comes wandering by at the wrong time or a combination of all those, your 5 man group may be fighting up to 10 mobs (maybe more in some of the higher areas that I haven't been in yet) with no chance to regroup in between. The more of those adds that you can take out of a fight for a short time, the better off your group will be. There are fewer area of effect attacks than in D2 so having more mobs on you at once is worse in WoW than it was in D2.

[acidjax]

Still, clearly Improved Sap is demanded both because it's uber and because I think MMOs are extremely unforgiving of variant scum.[right][snapback]69156[/snapback][/right]

Improved sap makes using the skill more convenient in instances. It greatly reduces the chance that healer will need to heal you when you use sap to pull. If there are multiple rogues in the fight, in such a way can you sap two mobs from the same group (since sap doesn't work on targets in combat mode).

In PvP, improved sap will allow you to sap one target and get your ambush off on another target without having to wait 5-8 seconds (of not hitting or getting hit) to drop out of combat mode and return to stealth.

My game-plan for Cold Blood & Eviscerate will be to try to time it to land the killing blow. Kill-stealing, if you like, from the rest of the group. Hopefully they'll agree to help me do that by timing their big hits for when the mob is not almost dead. That not only sets up a Remorseless Attacks bonus but also means that the big hit that steals aggro is also the one that inflicts the most effective form of crowd control - death![right][snapback]69156[/snapback][/right]

Because your group will usually fight multiple mobs in one pull, ambush loses some attractiveness here. Where in PvP combat mode drops after 5-8 seconds of not being attacked, in PvE it will last for the entire fight unless you use vanish. You'll be fighting primarily elite mobs in instances so they've got a good deal extra HP. If you're going for all-out damage, you will probably use backstab quite a bit more frequently. Given the right build and circumstances (tank keeps agro on targetted elite), backstab with a high DPS slow speed main hand dagger will result in (I believe) the rogue's highest amount of sustained damage possible.

Remorseless is generally seen as a good talent for solo (or small group) leveling. With talent backup you can get a constant 100% crit chance on your ambush. In PvE your crit ambush (talent boosted) might take off 30-60% life from a monster your level.

[Brista]

Because in instances, it's not just a two mob pull that's the trouble.  It's linked groups of 4,5 and higher that are the trouble.  You can only sheep one thing at a time; you can only sap one thing at a time.  If it's a really bad pull or a group spawns on your head or a patrol comes wandering by at the wrong time or a combination of all those, your 5 man group may be fighting up to 10 mobs (maybe more in some of the higher areas that I haven't been in yet) with no chance to regroup in between.  The more of those adds that you can take out of a fight for a short time, the better off your group will be.  There are fewer area of effect attacks than in D2 so having more mobs on you at once is worse in WoW than it was in D2.
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I'm not disputing that

However the word that describes that is sometimes

The word people have been using is never

It's partly pedantry, it's partly that people start with an exaggeration (you can never have too much crowd control) and use that as the premise for a build philosophy (you should spec for cc not damage)

[Thenryb]

The build you have decided on happens to be the one my rogue used to attain level 60. I found it overall to be very useful both for soloing (which a rogue must do more than you may like because there are so many of us and because most groups are not interested in having more than one in the party) and for party play. Improved sap is very useful in instances such as BRD and lower BRS where there are a lot of humanoids and, hopefully, the party you play with will slow down enough to allow you to use it. It is no panacea, since sap misses altogether 5 percent of the time and stealth is broken 10 percent of the time, assuming improved sap is maxed. I have not done Scholomance but in Stratholme and UBRS, most groups won't want you trying to sap at all. Even in that case, the build you have described is helpful in adding dps against the main assist's target. Even in instances with lots of humanoids, if you are in a raid or in a party with more than one mage, I think you will find that most group leaders will prefer to initiate an encounter against a group of 4-5 mobs with the mages each sheeping rather than the rogue sapping first. A few patches before retail a rogue could sap a trailing mob and that was very useful for adds. Unfortunately, such a mob is now considered in combat. Most rogues I have seen on the PVE server I play on have combat based builds as opposed to the build you have described. Those seem to work fine as well so long as she plays with some restraint and is not so in love with her dps that she insists on targeting different monsters than those selected by the main assist or doing other stupid things designed to draw aggro.

[Treesh]

I'm not disputing that

However the word that describes that is sometimes

The word people have been using is never

It's partly pedantry, it's partly that people start with an exaggeration (you can never have too much crowd control) and use that as the premise for a build philosophy (you should spec for cc not damage)
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Really, you can't have too much crowd control potential. There's nothing that says you have to have everyone do their crowd control at the same time. Have it available, sure, but you usually don't use all your skills in every group, in every situation. You have to pick and choose what works the best for the group you are in and what the situation is. What if your mage bites it early on in the fight, the tank is swarmed and the critters that just tore through the mage are now attacking your healer? You need to get your butt over there and control the situation on the healer. Here's where some of your crowd control comes in. The biggest thing to know about this game is that Things Will Go Wrong. When things do go wrong, your best hope for survival is having your tricks available to you and crowd control is a valuable trick for every character. You simply cannot take on huge groups your level or higher without someone in the group having crowd control and the more redundancy, the more likely your group is to get out of the Bad Times alive.

There is no best build for rogues. There is no hard rules about "always use this all the time". With how many different compositions of groups there are and how many different kinds of critters there are, each time you may have to play differently. There will be times when you are alone and you'll need your crowd control. There will be times in a group when you will still need to crowd control and so will others in your group. And honestly, for rogues, you will still be able to deal damage and do decent crowd control regardless of how you spec your character. Don't be so quick to throw out "variant scum" builds. I've never made a min/max build yet and I don't have trouble finding groups, being productive and helpful in groups, and preventing most of the really stupid things that can happen. The brains behind the keyboard influence the game more than how you spec your character. And really, without having played the game at all yet, it's really difficult to try to plan out your characters. People can help suggest what works for them and what doesn't, but personal playstyle makes quite a bit of difference in what works and what doesn't work for you. What looks good on paper isn't always what works well in the game. Without seeing how the game actually is, I don't think you can efficiently build a character just from looking at papers. For one thing, the papers don't always tell you what's bugged and what isn't. ;)

[Guest]

What you took from the comments isnt what I was saying at least.

A group can survive with out a rogue having improved sap. On PvP servers many/most rogues dont have it(contrary to another poster here - sap is worthless now in PvP). You get complaints for not having it but groups use different tactics and gets by but not quite as well.


My point was you are building this rogue to work with a group of friends you say - but the 1 talent that would help your group most you dont want.
In an instance a talent that gives you 5% more damage is not going to help your friends as much as having improved sap.
There is no 3 talent points that can help your group as much as 3 points in improved sap.

[Artega]

What you took from the comments isnt what I was saying at least.

A group can survive with out a rogue having improved sap. On PvP servers many/most rogues dont have it(contrary to another poster here - sap is worthless now in PvP). You get complaints for not having it but groups use different tactics and gets by but not quite as well.
My point was you are building this rogue to work with a group of friends you say - but the 1 talent that would help your group most you dont want.
In an instance a talent that gives you 5% more damage is not going to help your friends as much as having improved sap.
There is no 3 talent points that can help your group as much as 3 points in improved sap.
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To further reinforce this, without Improved Sap, you aren't going to be doing much sapping (if any) in later instances.

While it's possible to save the rogue if he breaks stealth early in earlier instances, it becomes wipe-endangering in later instances. We had this happen to us in an UBRS run. A rogue failed to go back to stealth after sapping, and a priest reflexively started healing him. We soon had 15 very angry elite mobs tearing through our groups. After me and the other two tanks went down, it ended pretty fast.

You probably won't get kicked from the group if you don't have Improved Sap, but people WILL take rogues WITH Imp. Sap before they take rogues without it.