With the release of Patch 3.0 right around the corner, those who don’t like to see content until it’s live or simply haven’t gotten around to playing on the PTR, will notice a lot of great new changes/features to choose from. From my few days of playing on the PTR, I thought I’d share the things that need to be gotten "used to" and to also help you understand them as quickly as possible from the minute you load up WoW 3.0. Nobody likes to fall behind from the start! I know some of these aren’t exactly Rogue related so I’ll leave those for last.

POISONS

When you first start, you’re going to notice some of your poisons are marked "Deprecated Item" which are grey and unusable. You’ll also notice there is no longer a usable icon from your spell book. Most poisons are now only one rank and you will be using the same Crippling Poison as when you were level 20. All of the premade poisons are sold where the old poison vendors were and at a cheaper cost – so all of you out there that are scraping together silver for poisons will have a little extra gold for cheap Blood Elf hookers.

DISMANTLE – Disarm the enemy, removing all weapons, shield or other equipment carried for 10 sec. 1 Minute Cooldown. 25 Energy.

It’s a great ability which is why the cooldown isn’t shorter. If it was, the disarm would be much shorter duration and would have diminishing returns most likely. I thought originally that this should be a 30 second cooldown, but seeing how game breaking this can be I can now easily understand.  What’s great about this is that it causes no damage AND does not build any combo points for target switches to save your healer from that Warrior/Rogue. It simply disarms them and you can switch back to your target with all your combo points. Eventually, you will see people in arena videos switching to cc’d players and disarming them just before it breaks – adding even more to our crowd control chains. Although personally I would rather see someone disarming during a clutch moment to save someone and being a teamplayer. There is also a great deal you can do with the ability offensively. Either way its a great ability and use it wisely.

CLOAK OF SHADOWS 

Don’t forget this has a 1:30 second Cooldown now so be even more selective when using it. 

GLYPHS 

I have gotten a lot of email’s lately concerning Glyphs. Glyphs themselves are sort of like Aldor/Scryer Shoulder enchants except you must buy them from an Inscriptor.  Whether it’s direct or off of the AH. Glyphs also modify your spells or abilities instead of your gear like enchants do. To apply/change them you must be in certain places in big cities to avoid you not changing them on the fly. You have 3 Major and 3 Minor Glyph slots. The minor ones aren’t very important and don’t really impact the game or you very much, such as increasing the range on your pickpocket by 5 yards. Not saying none are good such as this one Glyph of Vanish (not sure if implemented I haven’t seen it yet) just not as good as Major Glyphs. Definitely gonna have the sprint on water one though for some fun.

You will unlock the ability to use these glyphs at level intervals, but if you’re already 70 then you wont have to worry about unlocking them. (Might even be 60 but not sure.) The glyph itself requires the level of the ability it’s for. Ex. Adrenaline Rush Glyph has a minimum level requirement of 40 since that is the earliest you have 31 points to spend to get it. The major glyphs are really good and similar to regemming your gear, you can replace a Glyph, but the old one will be destroyed in the process. As for the major Glyphs, there is a huge assortment which will further add to the uniqueness of your Rogue. Obviously this also means there are good ones for whichever you prefer most, PvE or PvP. I’ll link a couple of my favorites but I think your choice of Glyph’s should mainly depend on your main spec.

Glyph of Shiv – Great Glyph for an ability used mainly for a snare and not damage.

Glyph of Sap – 12 second max cc? Not anymore, this makes you able to sap, go get a drink and come back to continue the fight.
 

Full list of Rogue Glyphs here.

MOUNTS

When you first log on you will see your mounts where they are normally, but the moment you try to Mount Up it will disappear from your bags forever and no longer take up bagspace! To view them go to you character pane and click the "pets" tab. You should go to your bank as well and right click those to free up extra bank space and fill up those empty spaces on the pet pane. Don’t waste your time trying to put them in a good order for your first page as they will be listed in alphabetical order, whether it’s a flying or ground mount. From here you can drag them and place them on your bars. If you are someone who normally would go into your bag and manually click your mount each time, you might be slightly annoyed at first, instead having to go to the pet pane each time.

However, below is a working PTR macro, (haven’t tested on live) that will automatically with one button mount up your flying mount if able to, and if not mount on your ground mount. If you press it a second time it will dismount you like normal. I’ve found this to be great to free up another keybind by combining the two to one simple key. This will be fine for me for now until Blizzard actually catches up and makes the Mount Screen more user friendly and add something similar.

/cast [outdoors,nomounted,flyable] FLYINGMOUNT NAME
/cast [outdoors,nomounted] GROUND MOUNT NAME
/dismount[mounted]

ACHIEVEMENTS

The Achievement system is a great way to show who is an oldschool player. It records everything you have done in the past as well as new ones that are very challenging, so you get even more satisfaction from your accomplishments. It will display as an emote so everyone can see everytime you succesfully gain an Achievement as well as compare yours easily on a chart to others. Some of the hardest to obtain achievements will also reward titles and mounts! Each one rewards a select amount of "Achievement Points" depending on the difficulty. While they are there right now simply for show I would be sad to see Blizzard not eventually implementing special items or discount prices on things so you can spend these points. My favorite part is that some of the Achievements are aimed towards good players and will put even the best to the test where they have to actually try and achieve them, hopefully this gains some interest to the always quitting great players of WoW.

Full list of Achievements here

SPECS

There are many good specs out there but are obviously going to be much weaker than their level 80 counterpart builds. Like I said I have only been on PTR for a few days so I won’t be linking any builds for level 70’s just yet. I want to thoroughly test each and every one before I make my decisions and link my favorite builds. We never have nor ever will be a site that just takes others advice without trying it ourselves. Hopefully by patch day however, me and Akrios will release a post of the Viable Specs for builds at 70 in patch 3.0.

STATISTICS

Whether its the amount of Re-specs you’ve done or how many times you have typed /lol since you first stepped into Azeroth. The statistics tracker covers everything you can possibly think of about your character. Not only that you can inspect others and compare them to yours. Every wonder things about your gold the entire time you have been playing WoW? Wonder no more because not only can you see how much gold you’ve ever earned you can see the richests and most expensive auctions you have been involved with. Also tells things such as how many consumables you have ever used and how many times you’ve hearthed + more.

On PTR characters statistics are beginning when you log on PTR, I pray that on live they will have all the information about our characters. I think it would be cool to see that stuff I’ve sometimes wondered about.

MY PREDICTIONS

Right now it seems every Rogue is on the Mutilate bandwagon, the whole time I was in Durotar it was nothing but Mut Rogues. After trying Mutilate myself it seemed pretty similar to the old Mutilate. Most players are happy with Mutilate being able to be used whichever way the target is facing but I was kind of upset by the news. Sure this eliminates the few times when you just couldn’t land that last Mutilate to finish them off because you couldn’t get behind them, but it also prevents you from being able to spam it like you used to as you were about to get behind your target. This will lead to you sometimes (not on purpose I hope) Mutilating your target from the front and risking it to be dodged, blocked or parried. If you’ve ever played a Mutilate build for a decent amount of time you know that it’s not that hard to get behind your targets, while at the same time teaching you good habits for whatever build you plan to go. It was an unnecessary "buff" I guess is what you would call it.

Damage is once again high in comparison to Survivability, I expect to see the return of "zerg" teams in arena for the start of WOTLK at least for Season 1 at 80. This is another reason why I believe most people are so excited about Mutilate because of the poison talents and all the tools to be able to win long games with a healer consistantly, which I don’t think will be the case early on. What’s good at the end of one expansion might not be good at the start of a new one. I most likely will be running some Rogue/Ret Pally 2s at first with Snugyen on Patch day, hopefully he will join the team on his Mage as well. (Which is his main.)

Personally I have been having a lot of fun with Combat, and coupled with Endurance and the Glyph of Sprint to reduce your Sprint every Minute, you will have an IMPROVED Sprint to break snares. Not only that but Killing Spree makes you immune to stuns which isn’t listed on the tooltip during its short duration. The other great assorted Combat talents and pure damage output by a Combat build early on with AR, should make it a decent PvP build once again hopefully.

I feel Mutilate will shine once enemy players can gain enough survivability to take some hits and the poison can do its work. Don’t forget to place Hunger For Blood on a very accessible key. It IS usable without breaking Stealth so make sure you always have 3 stacks up before a fight starts. It will take some practice to be able to keep it up the entire fight or close to it, fitting in the 15-30 energy cost and the global cooldown.

 And finally, don’t forget to take out some anger on a target dummies that are now in major cities.

Hope this helps, if you have other helpful things that you feel weren’t mentioned post them and they might end up here on this post.

If anyone wants to have some friendly duels while testing specs feel free to message me on the Test Server (US PVP) (PVP) on Nitionx or Nitiontwo.

Related posts:

1. 3.1 Notes Out, New Rogue Glyphs Out
2. 3.1.0 Patch Notes – Rogue Review
3. Introduction and What to Expect
4. 3.1 Rogue Specs and Glyphs
5. 3.0.8 Patch Rogue Highlights