TBC Count Down - Rogue PVP Talent Guide 2.0.3 (1 of 4)

My old TBC talent preview is severely outdated, after so many weeks in beta it is time to update it. I plan to publish the finished product on Gamefaq as well as rogue forums. This is a PVP talent guide so I won't cover 1v1/5v5 fights in-depth. That will be for a separate guide sometimes in the future, perhaps after I fight some serious opponents from each class at 70 after TBC comes out.



New Rogue Spells & Abilities



Cloak of Shadows

Instant 1 min cooldown

Instantly removes all existing harmful spell effects and increases your chance to resist all spells by 90% for 5 sec.



One move, changes everything. Rogue went from low tier to top tier overnight with the addition of this ability as a trainable ability. For rogues that are used to abusing prep COS in 2.0.1 arenas, to be 100% honest the 1 minute cooldown (no longer affected by prep) makes it a better move in most situations. The 1 minute cooldown means you will still get to use it twice per arena fight, potentially much more often if the fight is long. Instead of having COS up for every other warlock in a BG, you will have it up for every warlock. This ability does not break spells that take away the control of your character, such as sheep, fear, or hammer of justice, however it can be used to block such spells in anticipation. Properly used with garrote, vanish CS -> KS, improved kick, you can lockdown a caster forever. Soullink warlock and Undead shadowpriest finally have a real counter to their prowess. Mages will finally fear the anti-cloth like they are supposed to. Being able to instantly remove DOTs, fairy fire, poison, nova, curse, disease, you name it, and 5 second near-immunity to spells right after, it is the best addition to the rogue class by far. Even in PVE, proper use of this ability allows you to block countless boss attacks and crowd control abilities. (****** yes, that is 6 out of 5)



Wound Poison V

Use: Coats a weapon with poison that lasts for 30 minutes.

Each strike has a 30% chance of poisoning the enemy, causing 65 Nature damage and reducing all healing effects used on them by 10% for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times on a single target. 120 charges.



Quite simply, the second biggest addition to the rogue class. With greatly improved healing abilities like prayer of mending, earth shield and swiftmend for healbots, it was simply impossible for a rogue to kill anything that heals. Healers have way too many instant heals, that a priest can stand there and spam instant prayer of mending on him, gets healed for 1200 every time I hit him and never have to use a single flash heal. Rogue stuns/interrupts were insufficient to deal with TBC healers and that is why Blizzard turned our most useless poison into our most useful one. With the addition of shiv, MH wound, OH cripple is the standard poison setup for rogues in serious group PVP. Not only 5 stack of wound poison reduces the healing of your target by 50%, it also does instant damage. Don't be fooled by the low damage, because untalented wound poison procs 50% more often than instant poison, you get roughly 50% the damage of instant poison. Without using any talents, a rogue can already make it impossible for a paladin to cleanse all the poison layers. Only druid abolish and shaman poison totem can deal with this ability to a degree, that is what improved poison and vile poison are for. A properly specced rogue can stack 5 layer wound on his target extremely fast and it is very hard to remove. Classes have to beat us with their DPS spec instead of healbot spec. (*****)



Deadly Throw Rank 1

35 Energy 8-30 yd range

Instant cast

Requires Thrown

Finishing move that reduces the movement of the target by 50% for 5 sec and causes thrown weapon damage plus additional damage per combo point:

1 point : 132-228 damage

2 points: 216-312 damage

3 points: 300-396 damage

4 points: 384-480 damage

5 points: 468-564 damage



What makes this ability exceptional is the PVP glove. With just the easy to obtain blue PVP glove from expansion, deadly throw will have the ability to interrupt spell casting and disable the school for 3 seconds. You have a ranged spell interrupt on top of a ranged snare that does decent damage. This ability is huge. Coupled with ruthless, you can potentially deadly throw a target multiple times until you catch up to him. (****)



Garrote - Rank 7

Requires Level 70

50 Energy

5 yd range

Instant cast

Requires Stealth

Garrote the enemy, Silencing them for 3 seconds and causing 978 damage over 18 sec, increased by Attack Power. Must be stealthed and behind the target. Awards 1 combo point.



Non-dagger rogue’s best opener against mages, so good, that even dagger rogues will use this over ambush against full health mages. The 3 second silence is enough time to get off a backstab followed by renataki -> 5CP cold blood eviscerate for 4000 damage even if the backstab doesn't crit (add an extra 1000 if it does crit), plus a 1600 DOT if you are playing 30031. Combat rogues with improved kick can keep a caster silenced for 5 seconds. Extremely creative openers will come from this ability. And with garrote damage getting 22% of your attack power, it does excellent unmitigated damage especially for 30031 dagger rogues. I can premeditation garrote shiv 5CP rupture a warrior or bear druid, vanish CS BS CB evis then evasion to rush him down, the two DOTs combine for 3500 damage unmitigated by armor, it is an amazing 1v1 combo against classes with high armor but weak CC's. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to land this move against a mage jumping around like a monkey and spamming AOE's. With the amount of AOE in the arena against a competent 5v5 team, the non-positional cheap shot is probably still your opener even on mages. In 1v1 you can sap the victim then garrote him for the perfect start. In 5v5 this move will be quite a bit more limited. (***)



Evasion - Rank 2

Requires Level 66

Instant cast

5 min cool down

Increases the rogue’s dodge chance by 50% and reduces the chance ranged attacks hit the rogue by 25%. Lasts 15 sec.



I missed the days when this was 50%. At 25% it still offers decent damage mitigation against hunters, but you can no longer deny scatter shot or blind with any reliability. The hunters cried and moaned so Blizzard ended up toning it down to 25%. It still increases our survivability in group PVP to a degree. (***)



Envenom - Rank 2

Requires Level 69

35 Energy

5 yd range

Instant cast

Requires Melee Weapon

Finishing move that consumes your Deadly Poison doses on the target and deals instant poison damage. One dose is consumed for each combo point.

1 dose: 204 damage

2 doses: 407 damage

3 doses: 611 damage

4 doses: 814 damage

5 doses: 1018 damage



The ultimate anti-plate finisher. Coupled with vile poison (+20%), murder (+2%), find weakness (+10%) and improved kidney shot (+9%), a cold blooded envenom can hit a paladin with shield for close to 3000 damage. Like eviscerate, this ability is boosted by 15% of your attack power. Unfortunately, with the change to wound poison, this ability will most likely never appear on anyone's hot bar. Deadly poison is simply nowhere near as good as wound and cripple. Remove (or drastically reduce) the dosage requirement will give this ability some serious use in both PVP and PVE. My suggestion to Blizzard is consumes 1 dosage of deadly poison for any number of combo points. In its current form compared to wound+cripple, it is not even situational, it is pure garbage. (*)



Shiv - Rank 1

Requires Level 70

33 - 49 Energy (weapon speed * 10 + 20)

5 yd range

Instant cast

Requires Melee Weapon

Performs an instant off-hand weapon attack that automatically applies the poison from your off-hand weapon to the target. Slower weapons require more Energy. Awards 1 combo point.



A 1.3 dagger shiv costs 33 energy and 2.8 offhand sword costs 49 energy. A fast offhand is a must to take advantage of this ability. Notice sword/fist/mace offhands are normalized to 2.4 for shiv, dagger offhands are normalized to 1.7, so a non-dagger offhand will do significantly more damage for shiv. A 41 combat's shiv with instant poison and a fast sword offhand will actually outdamage sinister strike. Currently shiv can not be dodged/parried and this is a significant advantage over sinister strike, and 41 combat's kidney shot can not be dodged. Basically even against a rogue with evasion or hunter with deterrence, 41 combat can easily build up combo points and land a big kidney shot, a tremendous advantage. For everyone else, shiv is the hamstring ability rogues always wanted, so many times you are snared/rooted and you must snare your opponent in the split second before he leaves melee range. Without shiv, you have to pray cripple actually lands in a singular attack, and that is usually asking for too much. Unlike hamstring, shiv can not be dodged/parried, but the poison itself can be resisted. (****)