Vanish is far from perfect, but like it or not it’s one of our most essential, class defining abilities. I’d go as far as to say the outcome of the majority of my arena games is a result of how effective my vanishes were. I guess that’s not surprising considering that it’s an ability which immunes almost any damage, drops combat, and makes you invisible to your opponent. It’s too bad it’s so finicky, but there are steps you can take to give it the best possible chance to work.
- Watch your opposition. Did they just cast something or use an ability? It’s a good idea to use your vanish when the opponent is on a global cooldown.
- Although this may seem obvious, couple vanish with cloak in situations when it’s possible. Sometimes you need to use them separately so do this at your own discretion through experience.
- Don’t wait in stealth after using vanish near a hostile target. If I’m not immediately reopening, I get away far during and after vanishing that aoe ability will be far less likely to take me out.
- If you are, for example, fighting a frost mage and you need to vanish, don’t simply vanish and keep chasing. Move in a direction they won’t expect (backwards, sideways) to give yourself the best chance of avoiding aoe.
- Try to vanish behind melee classes when going for an in-combat vanish-> reopen so that their abilities and auto-attacks are less likely to cancel vanish.
The mechanic with vanish is currently the following for those unaware. If you use vanish when a projectile is in mid air that is not instant (ie. frostbolt, lightning bolt, lightning generator, deathcoil, icelance, etc) then vanish will negate the projectile’s damage and effects. If you use vanish at the same time as an instant ability (fireblast, counter-spell, shadow-word: pain, blind) both abilities (vanish and the hostile ability) will be canceled out. If a hostile ability is used just slightly after vanish (probably about 0.2-0.4 s) then it will not be immuned, it will treat it as if vanished never occurred (this is why people can get blinded or counter-spelled out of vanish, or when sometimes you will vanish then get hit by an icelance right after). I’ll note that it is possible to knock a rogue out of vanish in response to it using any instant ability.
But as we all know, vanish sucks because it’s no where near concrete due to latency, etc. Imagine a mage’s iceblock or paladin’s bubble worked as inconsistently as vanish. Blizzard noted on the common suggestion of the suggestion of adding a brief immunity to vanish:
[What's] wrong with giving vanish a ~.5 second (or whatever) immunity to stealth breaking?
That’s an idea that has come up a few times. It may be something we experiment with, but it’s not the kind of thing you can just slap on and call it done. It would take quite a bit of testing to solve any edge cases or exploits.
My suggestion would be the following on vanish. The ability should return the rogue to stealth no matter what. If you have dots, etc, or you take damage within the first 3 seconds of vanish (0.5 seconds is far too short), then it should still harm you but you should remain in stealth (ie instant ability that occur AFTER vanish would not remove stealth, nor would dots).
Would this be overpowered? 3 seconds of immunity twice a game, coupled with cloak of shadows for 5 s magic immunity? Not in my opinion, every class has some sort of defensive cd and they aren’t nearly as fragile as rogues. Vanish can’t be used while stunned (the true bane of rogues). It would give us defensive cd’s comparable to the top DPS class at the moment, Death Knights, with cloak vs. AMS and vanish vs. IBF and quick recovery comparing to frost prescence. This is forgetting the fact that they also have plate armor and heals.
Note: Bizzle’s video is done I’ll post it here whenever it’s ready to go up, should be some time tommorow.
Related posts:
and together with vanish make clos 100% for fucks sake
Comment by Stealth — April 5, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
I agree, Akrios. But Vanish has been bugged since Classic WoW (I’ve played rogue that long and I certainly remember it), it wasn’t as bad though because less abilities that would break it were being used (my guess).
At any rate, it’s about time they fix it, it’s losing me a lot of arena matches these days.
Explosive Shot and Ice Lance seems to be Dr. Vanish’s biggest nightmares, along with diseases (one to two CloS a game isn’t always enough with a DK in the opposing team, in my opinion)…
Now, besides all that, I was wondering if you could make a sort of “targeting guide for Rogue-Mage teams” – who to target and who to CC, if/when to swap on each teams we’re most likely to face (not all possible fail combos of course).
At least just give your readers some hints to fighting DK/pala teams, I personally lose most fights against them, and it seems most teams are DK/pala these days.
Well, cheers,
Zareph
Comment by Zareph — April 5, 2009 @ 3:17 pm
Nice write.
Looking forward to the video!
Comment by Fortitudelol — April 5, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
I think they should go with the 0.5 second immunity. It would make vanish a riskier ability to use when you have more than one DoT on you and would most likely fix the issues. And for some reason, with every new patch, it seems to get worse. In many rogue duels, vanishing a sap is nearly impossible because the sap almost everytime ignores vanish and seems it takes about 0.30 seconds for the sap to occur.
Comment by Gaust — April 5, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
Is there any way to make the bar swap faster, when casting vanish?
Quite often I vanish, and appearently click my bind(2) for cheapshot too fast, and it casts a mutilate instead..
I’ve tried some if stealth, cheap shot, if no stealth mut, macros.. But they didn’t seem to help.. Anyone else reckognize this? Or even better have a solution? Thanks
Comment by Døxler — April 5, 2009 @ 5:33 pm
Im having the same exact problem, and have lost games to it.
I was told many times that it’s a latency issue or an addon would help but i’ve tried all, it’s just something you have to work around I guess
Comment by Fortitudelol — April 5, 2009 @ 6:53 pm
Yes i had the same problem with gouge instead of CS… i put CS out of stealth bar with other keybind
Comment by Venezia — April 5, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
This will solve the problem 70+ percent of the time.
Bind the same keybindings to vanish and cheapshot, though one in the non-stealth and one on the stealth bar.
In Akrioss’ videos you will see he binds stealth and cheap shot to the same button. this runs on the same principle i am suggesting.
anyway gl
Comment by Carbz — April 5, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
Why not a physical+spell immunity for 1sec without affecting AoE damage nor DoTs ?
Comment by Inket — April 6, 2009 @ 1:29 am
“My suggestion would be the following on vanish. The ability should return the rogue to stealth no matter what. If you have dots, etc, or you take damage within the first 3 seconds of vanish (0.5 seconds is far too short), then it should still harm you but you should remain in stealth (ie instant ability that occur AFTER vanish would not remove stealth, nor would dots).”
/agree
Comment by su1c1de — April 6, 2009 @ 2:42 am
I was thinking of something similar to your suggestion:
Make vanish unbreakable for the next 1-2 seconds vs direct attacks(e.g. spells which you have to target the rogue, like a frostbolt, blind, etc), however dots and aoe can instantly break vanish still. This would be a bit less OP than your suggestion but still make vanish more reliable in certain situations.
Also, DK’s gargoyle usually tends to still attack and follow you after a vanish, happened to me in 2v2, I vanished with 400 hp left and 3 sec later I got killed by the gargoyle.
Comment by Retrospective — April 6, 2009 @ 4:21 am
applause
Comment by kalavera — April 6, 2009 @ 5:13 am
DK’s gargoyle following you and still attacking you after vanish, will be fixed at the 3.1 if i remember right.
I think 3s of “immunity” in response of the vanish bug is a little bit too long comparing to how usefull vanish is. But this ability really needs to be fixed…
Comment by Dhyllias — April 6, 2009 @ 5:30 am
Actually, you can Cloak the gargoyle, the retarded programmer made him like a magical debuff that you can remove, so those low-IQ’d DKs dont have to worry about commanding him, and keep spamming his castRandom macro….
and yes, please give us immunity for 2 – 3 sec, not to just fix vanish, but as a defensive ability, imagine being able to vanish when you are stuck in a dk’s aoe or a pala aoe and still manage to run away without getting hurt, same goes for blade storm, or eating a whole explosive shot in the stealth immunity time..
but yea, not gonna happen, it took them 2 years to just start thinking about giving us a 0.5 sec immunity, and yet they say it “takes time” and “you can’t just throw it there”
god i need to replace his game asap
PS: cheers Akrios, good to see you updating your blog regularly
Comment by Kiba — April 6, 2009 @ 5:55 am
Yeah how about giving us rogues something usefull in PvP instead of keep nerfing us, while you leave Hunters, DKs and paladins alone? I dont feel like taking a 7 second stun from a paladin who causes 10k burst dmg on half a second, while afterwards taking him down he bubbles and heals himself while typing /laugh at me, or a DK with his 20 second Death Grip cooldown. And their ghoul keeps attacking you EVEN if you vanish?! And hunters firing off 3x Explosive Shot to each 3-4k dmg. Thx Blizz, next patch does nerf some classes, but we rogues only get upped PvE wise and alittle in Subtlety which is (sadly) hardly used anymore. Give us back 50% DMG increase on poisond targets.
Comment by Granis — April 6, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
Uhm
RNGRNGRNGRNGRNG
Comment by Lulzmachine — April 6, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
Sub isn’t used as much in america but in European and eastern countries they rock it like champs.
Comment by Jaggers — April 6, 2009 @ 3:19 pm
I play on Vashj-EU and I’ve never seen anyone who wasn’t 41-5-25 for PvP. Same while I was on Darksorrow-EU.
So I doubt it, Jaggers
Comment by Zareph — April 7, 2009 @ 2:46 am
I personally hate being Death griped while cloaking and vanishing only to be auto attacked out of it when I land where I was deathgriped.I hate having some huntard shoot me out of vanish twice while im trying to save my skin only to wind up dead and yeah I know there are precautions to it Like gouge him and then sprint away and vanish but Its difficult when your at low health and your mind set is to get away. In my opinon and this is following more lore if you will, but Stealth is rogues signature move I think it should be harder to break then right now same with vanish Because Our opener is everything In most situations.I think vanish should make you immune to all dmg (Minus AoE) Including bleeds/dots because I cant handle a full set of feral druid bleeds if they hop on me and I try and run Ill die even with 18k HP its just so much dmg at once Now if I can get away and eat Behind some building or pillar that would be better instead of being facerolled and if I dont have cloak I can Be killed by A set of lock dots or even Spriest dots If I cant eat in a short amount of time.I think alot of rogues would be happy if they just fix vanish In this low survivability world of Broken resil and Burst pvp.
Comment by Sennaria — April 7, 2009 @ 12:57 pm
This would be absolutly useless as vanish causes anyone who is targeted on you to lost there target.
Comment by Rendevor — April 8, 2009 @ 11:08 am
I think you are one of the most logical rogues that I know in game, not just with skills but your understanding of the class is top ranked in my opinion. So I do hope you put your ideas (like this one) in front of the Devs. Not in the forum cause that place is a mess all the time and you will just get lost in useless blatter. Anyways I will kee checking up here many times to listen to your opinion.
Rogue Powa!
Comment by Jaykis — April 8, 2009 @ 12:02 pm
Haha.. bet me they lose their target. A hunter in my guild who I duel frequently is sometimes able to autoshoot me out of 2 consecutive vanishes. Never loses his target on me.
He isn’t the only one. Pets (such as gargoyles ^^) are a nuisance.
Vanish needs a complete overhaul IMO. With all this time that Blizzard is able to spend on 3.1, they couldn’t work on a recognized broken ability? Give me a fuckin break.
Comment by Sall — April 8, 2009 @ 12:31 pm
What i have done instead of having Cheap Shot over Mutilate.
i have made a macro that is as followed
#showtooltip vanish
/stopattack
/cast vanish
/cast cheap shot
This macro will, if close enough, cheap shot right when you vanish.
Or
you could just have Cheap Shot over Stealth(a mashable button now) and it will Cheap Shot the target as soon as it switchs through the bars.
However, i find my vanish macro works amazingly for those fast rogue duels and arenas that you have to pull that quick finishing stun off on him/her.
Comment by scizok — April 8, 2009 @ 7:27 pm
[RogueRogue] Vanish facts and suggestions….
RogueRogue.com’s post
Vanish is far from perfect, but like it or not it’s one of our most essential, class defining abilities. I’d go as far as to say the outcome of the majority of my arena games is a result of how effective my vanishes were. …
Trackback by Anonymous — April 9, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
Can someone confirm if the the minor glyph of vanish works now?
Comment by dankh of detheroc — April 16, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
rogue/warlock > dk/pally
Comment by chuge — April 30, 2009 @ 4:32 am
I use vanish as another trinket to break snares in pvp, when it actually leaves me stealthed it usually takes me a sec to figure it out…. oh well, 2 less snares per arena ftw!
Comment by jogging — October 28, 2009 @ 6:36 pm