This article is out of date. Click here to return back to the Rogue Guide to find newer articles. This one is from WoTLK, some of the information may be useful but overall is very dated.


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[protip]The threshold is 10%! If you get 10% more hate than the tank, that monster is going to swat you like the leather fly you are![/protip]

YOU
SHALL NOT PASS!

Well, you can, but enjoy your repair bill.



face="Times New Roman" size="3">When our goal
is not to heal damage, or take damage, we have but one goal in
WoW.  Deal it.  Dish it out in the wildest way
possible, in a cascade of white and yellow numbers that ends with a
death cry.  Unfortunately, every class shares the same
weakness we do as Rogues.  If we stab too fast and too hard,
they stab us back.   Controlling agro is the name of
the game, and we Rogues have every other class beat.  So not
only do we dominate the meters, but we make it so the other classes of
the game can go faster and harder and have a chance of keeping up with
us, no matter how futile of an effort it may be. 

 

As a class dedicated to punishing enemies and nothing else, we have an
innate modifier of about 30% reduction to threat done.  This
is compared to the tanking classes having about double threat
generation, so if we deal 1000 damage, we gain 700 threat, and if the
tank does 500 damage, he gains 1000
threat.  Good!   Staying 30% behind the tank
is a lovely target since we can get spikes in threat and damage with
our finishing moves and many bosses just love to affect the meters with
damage buffs, threat reduction, or flat out wiping the slate with phase
changing, teleporting, or just feeling like it because they're a pain
in the ass.

face="Times New Roman" size="3">How
To Get Ahead of the Tank - In a good way

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All
we have to
do is keep convincing the opponent we're not the one hitting
them.  With liberal use of Tricks of the Trade every time it
is up, ~20% of our hate generation will be directed to that guy in
plate armor instead (or ... style="font-style: italic;">plated bear fur?). 
Ulduar has
given us many encounters with the potential to become a wrecking
crew.  Take Hodir, for instance.  It's possible to
have a massive boost to our critical damage as well as having our
attack speed increased 50% on top of our own buffs.  When we
are a tornado of destructive one-handed steel (Had to differentiate us
from the Warriors, you see) due to these buffs, it's imperative that
Tricks is used and has been used in the past.   No
tanking class has a chance at holding a monster for long due to these
damage buffs, and it's up to us to give those tanks a fighting chance
at keeping the opponent fighting them.  Hunters have
Misdirect.  3 shots is a good chunk of damage. 
Rogues have 6 seconds of 'here, blame this guy for what I'm about to
do.'   It simply has no equal and you will never be a
good rogue if you do not have this macroed!  In the heat of
battle you don't have the luxury of changing targets. 
Designate your tank, off tank, and annoying warlock that needs to eat
the dirt, separate Tricks macros with assists coded in afterwards to
get back to your victim.  Sometimes you'll need to be careful
with this though; in a fight like Kologarn for instance, the tank might
just stay on the body the whole time where as you have a date with his
arms.  If you're flailing at buttons and accidentally generate
combo points on another target, of course upon switching back you'll
have a nice 0/5 points on your real target.  Suck it up and
hit the Slice and Dice before the switch.  You might as well
get something out of your failure.

face="Times New Roman" size="3">Evasive
Maneuvers
style="font-weight: bold;">
- Not
the Evasion skill, sorry

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If you're like
most people these days, you have a threat meter mod running. 
If you're not, don't fret.  It's easy to be aware of your
surroundings and agro situation.  With the amount of area of
effect nonsense flying around in most encounters these days you need to
bust out a skill that was gathering dust until a few months
ago.  It's time to style="font-weight: bold;">Feint. 
It might take up a bit of
your DPS pool, but you'll be saving your own hide potentially, saving a
full spell from your healer's mana pool, and lowering your threat on
the target by a solid amount.  Almost everything in the game
that is not targeted at your skull will have its damage cut in half by
Feint.  Some retard can't figure out the difference between
Positive and Negative in Naxx?   Feint, so you have
twice as long for him to realize he's retarded before you kiss the
pavement.  Emalon charging a Lightning Nova and the melee
running away in a mad panic?   Not you. 
You're going to feint that and still have half of your life left
comfortably.  XT throwing a tantrum?  Tell him to
quit being a baby and feint it instead of being forced to use your
health stone or potion.  Feint has become a wonderful skill
that enables us to stay in the fray when all hope is lost for the other
classes.  The threat reduction is just icing on the cake,
really.

face="Times New Roman" size="3">Vanish
- Gone in 60 nanoseconds

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You
can
consider this our 'standard' threat reduction ability compared to the
casters now.  Ours is on a 3 minute cooldown and no longer has
a stupid reagent thankfully.  This also has the double impact
of a few talents getting some serious use and increasing our DPS
overall.  There are two things to consider when vanishing to
wipe threat though, assuming the monster isn't charging you. 

 

Get out of stealth! 
-  Wait, what?   Yes.  You want to
wipe threat.  You do NOT want to stop attacking.  As
soon as you hear that noise, you either need to reactivate your auto
attacks or do a quick stealth opener once more.  If you stay
stealth for longer than a second, you're doing it wrong and I can see
you falling down the DPS leaderboard quickly.  Get those
stealth bonus talents reignited and get back to kicking ass
anew! 

 

...Is this going to end well? -
Listen, things are expensive
now.  And if you're not running
daily quests at this point, and just pummeling bosses by moonlight with
your guild and buddies, saving yourself from death is neat.  I
don't like a 75 gold repair bill.  Every successful vanish to
safety on a wipe will save you big bucks down the
line.   We're rogues.  It's okay to be
selfish. 

 

But don't be selfish enough to top every meter.  If you're
topping the threat meter, soon you'll be topping the dead
meter.  Even if that was really stupid, you know how much DPS
a corpse does.  As a rogue, since we have DOTs, dying doesn't
stop our DPS calculations and remove us from combat until
they’ve finishing ticking.  So going all out and
dying early will impact you heavily, making your extra heavy effort,
extra foolish.  However, if you manage to top the healing
meters, well, post a screenshot in our forums for me to see. 
That'd be a good idea for an achievement, actually...


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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