Rogue Guide

Rogue- This is pretty much common sense. When a rogue gets the jump on me I am simply waiting for my opening. If you don’t know where the hole in your combo is you certainly won’t know where his are. When you get the opening, gouge him and vanish. Show him what a real stun lock is.

GROUP PVP

The best PvP happens when 100 horde take on 100 alliance. In these situations it is wise for the entire group to stick together in a small cluster. You want to avoid the divide and conquer at all costs. Unlike almost every MMO I have played this is a huge factor in WoW. However, this tactic doesn’t necessarily apply to the rogue. This isn’t to say he can just run off and do what he pleases, but it isn’t always best for the rogue to stick with the pack.

A rogue should sometimes be picking off strays. Disrupt them when they are close together by sapping one and moving away. This tends to make the half the group scatter or cluster on the sapped individual while the other half continues their push forward becoming an easy battle for your tightly grouped party. Rogues should also hunt other rogues. We don’t see stealth better than anyone else, but an experienced rogue knows how other rogues move, what they hide behind and what targets we go after. I always find myself able to pick off the smart rogue who is sneaking around sapping my group.

Battlegrounds will require significant strategy and will be a completely different experience than the lag fest we experience in large scale PvP today. I will cover this in detail in version 3.0.

SOLOING ELITE MOBS

I don’t consider soloing elite mobs a good means of gaining XP or making money. They are capable of dropping some great items, but it is actually a less effective means of finding world drops than just killing normal mobs. So why do it? Because I can. It’s great practice to learn how to be as effective as possible. You really learn what to do and when to do it to maximize your damage to tanking ratio. There will be times where you are stuck soloing elite mobs in instances and it becomes vital that you can handle yourself well.

Note that not all elites are created equally. There are level 59 elites that I can beat all day long without using cold blood, evasion or blind. There are level 54 elites that will beat me every time. Know what you’re getting into in advance.

Use evasion wisely. There is no sense in evading a caster mob. You shouldn’t be using evasion while you have the mob stunned. Use blind. This is a great way for you to fill your energy bar completely and use first aid if necessary.

Then we have stun kiting. At first glance this will seem a bit like an exploit. Believe me, you will find that this is not the case. Gouge the mob and immediately run away. Don’t walk backwards, turn around and run a reasonable distance that the mob will chase you to rather than resetting. You will have a full energy bar when it gets to you, so get yourself 4 points and gouge again. The gouge timer will be ready by then. Run away again. When the mob gets into range hit him with a kidney shot and light him up for 4 more points and again hit him with a gouge. Repeat as necessary. You will get hit a lot less than you normally would. In fact, you will only get his once each time you stun and maybe a couple more times as you are building up to 4 points and waiting for 45 energy to gouge. The truth is, somehow the mobs will nail you for extra damage in these situations. Either they get some kind of crit bonus or they are much more apt to do their big specials when they come out of stun. At the end of the fight you will have taken a lot less damage than if you were to have just fought the mob straight up. And of course it takes about 5 times as long to kill a mob in this manner. To maximize this technique further use crippling poison. Doing so will allow you to run shorter distances.

HIGH LEVEL INSTANCES

Most of your endgame content consists of taking groups into challenging instanced dungeons. Typically in these situations no one party member can solo much in these dungeons. As a group, if everyone works together, an appropriate dungeon is a walkover.

The rogue isn’t considered a vial part of a group by most. Everyone wants a priest and a warrior with a mage as a back line damage dealer. However the rogue can perform certain functions that make him a more desired class.

There is a lot the rogue can do to make life for the group much easier. First is sap. This takes a humanoid NPC out of commission for up to 45 seconds keeping the group from having to fight the entire cluster of mobs. Any rogue that ever wants to be in a group should have improved sap.

We can also serve as main assist in groups. The main tank’s job is to get as much aggro on him as possible and the rmain assist’s job is to focus on the right targets at the right time. Everyone but the healers for the most p