by Zach Yonzon

Rogues. Those sneaky little bastards could be anywhere. Out of all the classes in the game, there is perhaps no class no more feared for their PvP prowess than rogues. Rogues gain a fearsome reputation by virtue of the nature of the class alone — they can Stealth. Because of rogues, everyone has to literally watch their backs. No place is safe because a rogue can be lying in lurking in some dark corner waiting to strike at the proper time. Through years of leveling in a PvP server, there is no sound in the game more unsettling than the low humming whoosh of a nearby stealthed rogue. In fact, rogue (and by extension, feral druid) stealth is the single biggest reason why I don’t PvP with music on.

And for rogues, it’s all about timing. In the Battlegrounds, it isn’t uncommon to find rogues preying on the weak, those low on life, the defenseless players eating or drinking. They can’t help it. It’s in their nature. The class encourages foul play through Stealth and a wonderful repertoire of attacks from behind. Rogues are at their best when catching their opponents off guard and are extremely capable of doing so. After the jump, we’ll take a closer look at the basic things to expect when fighting a rogue regardless of their spec.

Stealth

As mentioned, Stealth is a rogue’s defining ability. Learned at Level 1, every rogue learns to sneak around and pounce on an opponent. It’s their single biggest trump card, the ability to remain unseen. In Arena play, it’s critical for the rogue to get the opener, as some of her most powerful attacks require her to be stealthed. Taking a rogue out of stealth removes the element of surprise so it’s important to be on your toes. If you see a rogue from a distance entering stealth, always be on the ready. While it is practically impossible to get the jump on a very good rogue, the good news is that there are quite a lot of mediocre rogues who get too close to an opponent assuming their stealth will keep them undetected.

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by Chase Christian

If I were choosing one word to describe the Mutilate playstyle, I’d have to go with the easy answer: Assassin. Keeping the tradition of the tree’s namesake, Mutilate rogues are experts of the quick and efficient kill. Not designed for toe-to-toe combat or lengthy encounters, the last dagger-wielding rogue spec prefers a more vicious approach. You give your enemy no quarter, and expect none in return.

Specializing in single-target damage, a Mutilate rogue performs at peak efficiency when there’s only a solo target. The assassination tree grants us a complete mastery over all things poisonous, and in this, gives us strength against highly armored opponents that our siblings of the shadow can only envy. A properly played Mutilate rogue on an advantageous fight can be rivaled by no other DPS class in the game, and why should there be any competition? Killing is what an assassination rogue was born to do.

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by Chase Christian

Let me say first that I’m not referencing some sort of vampire fetish, I’ll leave that to our resident Twilight fan. I’m talking about riding around Azeroth, slinking in the shadows, preying on the weak and undefended. Ganking is a great stress reliever, it allows you to vent all of your frustrations and shed your rotations: there’s nothing left but a pure kill. Coating your weapons in your opponent’s vital fluids and having their warm blood splattered all over your armor is the perfect way to christen your new gear.

A rogue’s ancient rite of passage, the art of the gank has been set aside by many for more important tasks. All work and no play will not only make you dull, but your weapons as well. As trained assassins, we are masters of destroying unsuspecting targets before they even realize what’s happened. Death from the shadows, we disappear as if we’ve evaporated. Built from the ground up as killing machines, no other class is as feared in the open world. Once your opponent hears the ‘whoosh’ sound of stealth, they know their life has come to a tragic end.

Always snare the victim

There are a few keys to ensuring that your target doesn’t escape your grasp once you’ve selected them for death. Crippling Poison is a must for enemies that will attempt to escape once you’ve engaged. A combat or subtlety rogue will be putting Crippling Poison on their off hand, while a Mutilate rogue will be able to use Instant Poison via Deadly Brew. Either way, slowing your target down is key to keeping them within your deadly range. You’ll want to use Wound Poison on your other weapon, because if you allow a healer to get any casts off, the gank could turn around very quickly.

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Rogue Guide (Last updated 2/13/2010)

By Uhohuhoh, Undead Rogue @ Ensidia

US – Bleeding Hollow

Being a good rogue is considered one of the easiest things to do as a World of Warcraft player – compared to being good at other classes. Rogues are known to be a two button (Mutilate, Envenom) class with some wicked survivability tricks. All of this might be true if your simply running dungeons and trying to hit an 1800 arena rating. However, being a truly good rogue – one who truly excels and PvE and/or PvP – requires a lot more than what most people think. Being a good rogue requires dedication, patience, skill, and understanding. The goal of this guide is to help explain and debunk some rogue myths, as well as help you understand what it takes to be a good rogue, and how to get there.

To better organize this, I will be dividing it into two major sections, Combat and Mutilate, and each of these sections will have their own respective sub-sections. If someone would like to write a PvP section for this, I would be happy to put it up.

Raiding as a rogue, you really only have one goal and purpose for the raid: To do as much damage as possible. Rogues have no buffs and a weak debuff (compared to other classes). While this is not always the case based on the fight and how Blizzard changes WoW at any given time, rogues, on a static fight, should be the top damage doers in the raid. Please note, I am making a clear difference here between DPS (damage per second), and damage (overall damage done). Rogues generally will not be on top of the DPS meters even if they are on top of the damage meters, because casters (such as arcane mages) generally have much higher DPS. However, since they are limited by mana, they cannot dps during the entire fight, and need to take breaks to regenerate their mana. This is part of what allows rogues to be highest on damage and yet not highest on DPS.

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by Chase Christian

Dragons. We’ve been hunting these flying lizards for years immemorable. From the first slain whelp of our rogue infancy to the most powerful reptiles in the land, we’ve made our bones by assassinating these majestic reptiles wherever we can find them. No phase in WoW was complete without a dragon (or several) to take out, and Northrend is no different. We’ve faced a variety of dragons already: black, blue, undead, and more. Our axes are strong enough to tear through their scales, while our daggers are adept enough to slide between their armored hides.

The dragon encounters that we face in ICC are of a different breed than what we’re used to fighting. For instance, the first encounter actually has us teaming up with a green dragon to combat Arthas’ corrupting power. The second faces us against the undead brood mother, the largest and most powerful dragon we’ve faced to date. While Deathwing awaits us in Cataclysm, Sindragosa is clearly the ultimate dragon encounter we’ll face at level 80.

Valithria Dreamwalker:
In a change from our typical reaction to seeing a giant dragon inhabiting a roughly boss-sized room, we actually aren’t trying to kill Valithria in any way. She is one of the few inhabitants of ICC that is still in possession of free will, and the job has fallen to us to save her from captor, Arthas. This captured green dragon remains mostly passive throughout the fight, besides opening portals to the Emerald Dream realm for your healers to take. The real fight consists of a serious amount of add control: focusing down high priority targets while also making sure to keep the boss and your healers safe from attackers.

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?by Chase Christian

Rogues have still been stunning on every fight in Icecrown, but the competition is definitely heating up. The true test will be how we fare against the Lich King himself.

We’ve all heard about the hybrid tax: Blizzard regrets mentioning it, and every druid and ret paladin brings it up when they complain about their position on the DPS charts. Some estimates put it between 5-10%, but obviously hybrid classes are currently designed to stay near the pure DPS without passing them up. However, how many rogues are actually doing their maximum theoretical DPS? There are several common mistakes or oversights that can cost us dearly. Read on for a detailed list of ways you’re hurting your own DPS, and how to fix it before your next raid.

Tricks of the Trade:

We picked up the seemingly humble Tricks of the Trade at level 75, where it looked like a Misdirection clone that was likely to get rogues killed with its short range and our need to be in melee range to do damage. I was certain that a hunter developer at Blizzard threw it in just to spite us. Why would we want to waste our energy on threat? Isn’t that the tank’s job?

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by Chase Christian

The two boss battles we find in the Crimson Halls are night and day when it comes to how a rogue should approach them. The first, an unconventional ‘council fight’, will have your thief senses tingling as danger comes from every angle while you move about the room. The second, a DPS race of highest order, will have you drooling over the huge numbers that appear on your screen as you assassinate yet another member of royalty: the Queen of the San’layn?

The Blood Prince Council

After you clear up some Team Edward members in the foyer of the Crimson Halls, you’ll find yourself faced against the recently reanimated Blood Prince Council. I promise that will be the last Twilight joke this week, and I want you to know it took some restraint not to make any ‘Half Blood Prince‘ references. We’ve seen these guys already in our tour through Northrend, defeating them each in turn.

Prince Keleseth, the caster of the group, was defeated easily in Utgarde Keep, making him one the first bosses we toppled on our way to 80. Prince Taldaram loves to vanish, bringing back memories of my favorite rogue boss, Moroes! We were able to knock him out in Ahn’Kahet; his giant glowing fire orbs were no match for our daggers. Finally, we kicked Prince Valanar’s lifeless corpse out of the floating Scourge citadel of Naxxanar while cleansing the Borean Tundra.

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by Chase Christian

Blizzard has stepped up the pacing mechanic in Icecrown Citadel, releasing each new wing in two week intervals. With the latest wing, the Crimson Halls / Blood Wing (also called Vampire Wing if you’re a Twilight fan), recently unveiled, there’s bound to be a ton of interest in raiding ICC on your server. This week, I’d like to talk about the bosses that were released in the previous wing, the Plagueworks (Unholy). Once I get a chance to fight the Blood Princes and Blood Queen Lana’Thel first-hand, I’ll have a write-up posted here.

The Plagueworks revolves around Professor Putricide and his two abomination creations: Rotface and Festergut. Each of his children have a ‘dog’ to call their own, and plenty of trash guarding the way to their inner sanctum. These fights are a tier above what you’ve faced so far in Icecrown, and will push your DPS, your awareness, and your reaction times to the limit. Don’t hold back in the Plagueworks: use every consumable and tactic available to maximize your DPS, or find yourself facing one of a few very interesting enrage timers. Unfortunately for us, as you can see in the picture above, our view for the first two encounters involves standing behind bosses that resemble a pair of deformed potatoes.

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By Dinaer @ Forever a Noob

The fourth boss in ICC (and the last one available as of the date of this post) is by far the most challenging.  He has an interesting fight mechanic that will challenge your raid’s awareness and control.

The primary mechanic in this fight is the boss’s Blood Power.  You can see it in the boss’ unit frame where his mana/rage/energy bar would be.  It starts at zero, and it will increase during the course of the fight. Saurfang gains Blood Power every time either he or his minions do damage to anyone in the raid.

For each point of Blood Power he gains, his size and damage will increase by 1%.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, if it reaches 100 (a full bar) then Saurfang will place a Mark of the Fallen Champion on a raid member.  That raid member will take continuous damage.  The Mark cannot be dispelled, and even persists through death.  Not only does the Mark do damage, but that damage will also contribute more points to Saurfang’s Blood Power gain.  His Blood Power returns to zero when he casts Mark of the Fallen Champion, and the process starts again.

As you can see, the key to this fight is to avoid damage as much as possible to minimize his Blood Power gain.  No matter how good your tanks and healers are, if there are too many Marks of the Fallen Champion on the raid then the fight is lost.

Here are the ways he does damage (and gains Blood Power):

• Boiling Blood – a debuff cast on random raid members.  Its unavoidable and can’t be dispelled, although a priest’s Power Word: Shield.will block the damage on you (and prevent Blood Power gains).  Don’t waste your CoS trying to get rid of it – it won’t work.  (I don’t think it even prevented the damage ticks – can anyone else confirm this?)
• Blood Nova – this is only cast on players at range, so it shouldn’t have any impact on us rogues.  The person with Blood Nova doesn’t take damage himself, but does damage to anyone within 12 yards.  Ranged players must stay spread out to avoid this.
• Rune of Blood – cast only on the tanks, so rogues won’t get this either.  The target with this takes debuff extra damage, and the damage heals Saurfang for 10x the amount dealt.  For this reason, tanks will swap during the fight.  Be aware of that in case it causes threat issues.
• Summon Blood Beasts – he will summon minions (2 on 10-man, 5 on 25-man) who give him a point of Blood Power each time they hit someone.  It is imperative that no one gets hit by them.  They are mostly immune to AoE damage, so they must be focused down.  They can be slowed and snared.

The most important, and most challenging,  part of the fight is to prevent the Blood Beasts from hitting anyone.  If your players can do that, then Saurfang’s Blood Power gain, while inevitable, will be slow enough that you can kill him before his Marks overwhelm the raid.

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