I’ve been playing a lot on the Tournament Realm the past few weeks, not only in the actual 3v3 competition but doing a lot of dueling as well. Where on live realms, the majority of players don’t have optimal gear, on TR everyone has access to everything available at the pre KT gear level. The result? Rogues are depressingly weak 1 v 1. When the best players put on some defensive gear and spec defensively as well, you’d think a rogue could counter this by gearing and speccing offensively. Wrong.
Here’s a quick overview of each class as I see it 1v1 going in to 3.1
Death Knight – Lost cause once they go “anti-rogue”. You might have a hope on some shadowfrost or average blood dks on live that use considerable pve gear, but once they put on resil you’re probably cooked. Dwarf and you can forget it. Getting them to 30 percent is usually impressive. Your best hope is to open with cs gouge restealth, slice and dice in stealth, open cs ks rupt vanish. Open again after DR with a cs ks dimstantle eva trank, and pray you force a trinket or mark of blood at this point. Once that happens you need to get a cloak prep vanish off. Open once again to try for a kill here. You can also swap anesthetic poison and shiv the hysteria off if they are blood if they trinket a stun before you blind. The problem? None of your vanishes can fail, and with a dk with drw, dnd, and deathgrip there isn’t much chance of that happening, at least not consistently.
Frost Mage – They already should win with moderate resilience. When venruki (or any top mage) goes gnome and gears defensively, this moves to what I consider unwinnable at the moment unless you get very lucky, although literacola says he’s making progress by opening and forcing a block with 2 vanishes, then cloaking after block for the kill. The big problem here is deep freeze (which they can kill you in if you don’t trinket), so you trinket that, and they can snap df into sheep and the duel is basically over. A lot of mages don’t do this as it makes the fight kind of a joke.
Warlock - at least rogues can beat warlocks, right? Enter destruction warlock Psyhawk. Here are some sample duels (nothing serious but it should give you and idea for the fight or kill 10 minutes if you’re bored).
At best this is a 50-50 fight as undead. As good a player as he is, a class that we supposedly counter and dominate is a scary duel, and not winnable without wotf. If you vanish away you will get shadowfuried out. He often chains stuns to deathcoils so vanishing one of those is out. Killing the pet is out because of demon port fel dom, and if this fight gets to a second set of drs and you have no trinket you lose. Health stone with talents, etc, is about an 8k heal non-crit. I think a series with him would be winnable, but, after 3.1 destro buffs? Good luck.
Warrior - Dueled sonydigital and dahis as well as some other warrior a bunch as prot or a prot / arms variant. They have a very large advantage. You can win sometimes, but with booming voice giving demo such enormous range and with bleeds it’s struggle to get those crucial vanishes off successfully. One revenge stun and your odds of winning decrease drastically. The best strategy as mut in my opinion is the same as feral druid, open cs ks bleed vanish, open again after drs into a cs ks rupt dismantle eva tank, when you are out of energy 5-8 kite, now you’re either going to have to prep and try to vanish away or 5-8 prep and vanish open into a cs ks once against, and end it with a rupture dismantle. In theory this is winnable but if the warrior intercepts you it’s probably not. If you are not undead you have to save trinket for their fear. In this case if you get stunned and they chain it into a conc blow and disarm you are in a lot of trouble. If they do land a conc blow before fear then you have to trinket it, and you’re in a terrible situation.
Druid - If they can keep up a simple hot rotation, you lose. Tree druids are such a joke in terms of class difficulty in a duel, it actually makes me miss the mobile druid of TBC and it’s huge skill cap. Ferals are difficult but beatable, so long as they don’t get any abilities off on you through evasion and if you can dodge the bash it helps your chances a lot. Like prot warrior, you want to open bleed vanish and do it again, eva tank force cds save cloak for roots or a late vanish if they refuse to root you, but make sure you are vanishing after a ks–> bleed. If they choose to hot themselves during the vanish bleed then they risk being caught in caster form and you can really make them pay.
Priest- Even a dwarf, duel-specced disc priest is beatable as undead, but only barely. You can’t really make a mistake or get faked, because if that’s the case it’s likely a loss. I love close duel scenarios like this but honestly, for the class that is supposed to be a priest counter in pvp this being barely winnable reflects the solemn state of our class.
I haven’t spent time on hunters but dance vs beast (the best 2 specs for the scenario imo) would likely be close. As for paladins, i consider it an accomplishment to make them bubble when they gear defensively. As a dwarf with repentance, regardless if holy or ret, a rogue should never win this fight.
I know this is not a game balanced around 1 v 1. Having wound poison means we need to make some sacrifices. I also know that people don’t gear or spec so defensively on live. But most rogues don’t have access to the best pve gear either. I don’t think rogues need to beat every class in 1 v1 regardless of spec, but to barely beat any class? There is a big problem.
Buddhist’s Subtlety Suggestions
Buddhist posted the following suggestions on his site, I agree with them for the most part. He brings up a lot of good ideas and it’s definantly worth a read.
A) Take gouge off of the DR with sheep and more importantly, sap. Sap can stay on DR with sheep. Just take gouge off dr with sheep/sap.
Why? Because using gouge in arena is very skill demanding (you aren’t going to be using it on the target you’re dpsing 95% of the time, and it’s a melee ability, so it means you have to maintain a close range to who ever you want to use it on and do quick target swaps). It’s very clutch when used correctly, but when paired with a mage, it often screws you over by putting a DR on sheep. Gouge doesn’t really need to be on sap DR, an Imp gouge is about the duration of DR’d sap anyway, and costs 5 seconds of energy.
Not to mention, and Akrios brought this one up, to use gouge, you lose probably 5k+ damage through white damage, the energy cost, and the global, not to mention the varied travel time which could lose you more.
B) Replace filthy tricks, or waylay, with this: Reduces the cooldown of gouge by 2.5/5 seconds OR Increases the duration of gouge by 2/4 seconds.
Why? Because, especially if gouge no longer shares DR with sheep, it could turn a subtlety rogue into a very powerful utility, which I honestly believe is the vision of the spec. Using gouge effectively in arena is very skill demanding, and increasing its effectiveness would give a skilled subtlety rogue a unique potency. Reducing the CD is the weaker of the two, especially in 2v2, because the DR will stack quickly, especially if gouge stays on DR with sap. Increasing the duration would be a pretty good change. It would be like sheep, except it’s melee (huge requirement), lasts 9 seconds, and has a 10 second cooldown (can’t just spam it if they trinket). Not very OP.Why waylay or filthy tricks? IMO, waylay is pointless. It pretty much does what crippling does, and with the poison buffs, I have no trouble keeping crippling on my target. Filthy tricks just has no real use in arena, because you most likely aren’t going to be in a match long enough for the 5 minute preparation cooldown. It obviously has no use in PvE.
This last suggestion is a lot more controversial than the first two, but it’s pretty important.
C) Shadow Step now useable while rooted (ie. frost nova etc). Also removes all snares. Perhaps also makes the Rogue immune to snares during the 3 second speed buff.
Why? Shadow Step used to be useable while rooted, but that was removed with WOTLK. It was essentially removed because ShS rogues were OP in s3 and s4, but the change came far too late to make any sense. Removing snares honestly should have gone on ShS from the beginning, because — and many top rogues will back me up on this — you’ll often Shadow step too far behind the target to hit them before they get out of range, due to a snare on you. It makes the ability near worthless a good portion of the time.
You know, reading my own gouge suggestions, I try to really work them out in such a way that they won’t be too powerful, but most people must be going, “what? gouge? what’s even the point?”, because really, very few rogues even use gouge in arena. It really is difficult to use it effectively, and i like it that way. It’s skill demanding, like kicking a pally’s heal, while you’re dpsing his DK. You have to stay close to him to do it, and you have to have very quick reactions to pull it off.
I think changes A and B would certainly be fair, and very fun. I think C would give subtlety the mobility it needs to be an effective utility spec. Notice none of the changes involved an increase in sub damage dealt, and it’s because I think sub can be viable by simply giving it enough utility, and not just more cookiecutter burst.
Related posts:
Great article. I’m just starting to do more pvp and this will help out a lot. Thanks for your time and keep up the great work.
Comment by Jedow — April 12, 2009 @ 10:04 am
Hmm, really good info. Will help many out. Nice one!
Comment by Wic — April 12, 2009 @ 10:42 am
Buddhist has some great suggestions, especially the Shadowstep one.
I support these
Akrios, good summary of duels vs other classes. Still waiting for TNT stun nerf to hunters…
Comment by Evolas — April 12, 2009 @ 11:39 am
nice one!
Comment by grimpvp — April 12, 2009 @ 12:07 pm
Great article, agree 100%. I have never been able to beat a pally, DK, frost mage or a resto druid.
Comment by Rendevor — April 12, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
well nice article…buuuuuut what´s the name of the music?
Comment by Neofin — April 12, 2009 @ 12:57 pm
I got a Destro Warlock harassing me similarly in an EOTS match the other day.
Now, I know I don’t sport fantastic PvP gear and skills etc (and I usually don’t expect other players in my BG to be anything different) but I just couldn’t touch that guy.
Now I see it wasn’t just me …
Comment by Aeltyr — April 12, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
“Having wound poison means we need to make some sacrifices.”
Other classes with superior MS effects don’t have to make a single sacrifice. Case in point: hunters.
Comment by Eysiv — April 12, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
hey Akrios was wondering if that really is you posting on The Venture Co. US realm forums… someone with the name Akriosx posted something about looking for buddhist, a buddhist transfered to The Venture Co. guessing a fake but dunno.
here is the post from Akriosx TR 2
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16137079362&sid=1
and buddhist post saying he needs duels for his next video…
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16137220578&sid=1
anyway would greatly appreciate you clearing this up for me.
Comment by mike — April 12, 2009 @ 5:23 pm
As a sub rogue, I agree with those comments. I think being snared while ShS really defeats the purpose, and very difficult to hit your target.
Comment by Ironklad — April 12, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
The SS thing would be so awsome it would gimme a new reason to go sub, to tell ya the truth…mut is getting way to boring
Comment by Enter name — April 12, 2009 @ 6:14 pm
Sickass vid. Crazy skilled Lock… those vanishes, Ak… jesus. Nice stuff!
Comment by Seriouslylolol — April 12, 2009 @ 7:17 pm
9 second gouge? i like the idea of gouge being more useful but 1v1 this is pretty OP. Think about RvR it would definitely end the duel.
Comment by Remenission — April 12, 2009 @ 7:51 pm
not me
Comment by Akrios — April 12, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
small world – nas , beach chair – jay-z
Comment by Akrios — April 12, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
I’ve been wondering a thing, when you open on lock. The opening it self with CS and CoS is fine. When the pet get its first “miss” why dont you blind the pet and do a vanish? – that would get you a 10 seconds where the pet wont charm you
Comment by Crucion — April 12, 2009 @ 11:36 pm
Yo, verry nice movie, love you guys..keep up the good work.Have helped me alot.
Comment by Shaòlol — April 13, 2009 @ 2:50 am
Great vid with the lock. Almost every lock i fight i either kill in the first 20 sec or they CC the shit out of me and i die very very very frustrated. Also, this might sound like a very noob question but when talking about the warrior, you 5-8 kite and 5-8 prep, what does that mean? what is the 5-8 about? someone enlighten me?
Comment by Bendickson — April 13, 2009 @ 11:49 am
A blind on the pet is useless with soul link, the next time you hit the warlock, the blind will break. Its only worth it if you watch your clos timer and blind right when it rolls off in anticipation for the seduce… this way if your blind goes off right after the seuce hits the channel will be cancelled, and it will waste a DR.
Comment by Rippahlol — April 13, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
5-8 kiting = cripple and keep yourself between 5 to 8 yards so they cannot melee or intercept and you can regen energy or wait for cooldown or wait for their cooldowns (wall, retal)
Comment by Akrios — April 13, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
what does DR and 5-8 Kite/Prep mean?
Comment by Dariain — April 13, 2009 @ 4:29 pm
…. lol he just wrote
” 5-8 kiting = cripple and keep yourself between 5 to 8 yards so they cannot melee or intercept and you can regen energy or wait for cooldown or wait for their cooldowns (wall, retal) “
Comment by Cryo — April 13, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
i believe the DR youre referring to is ‘diminishing returns’
Comment by Bendickson — April 13, 2009 @ 8:51 pm
I don’t know if there’s any stitistics on the class population, but this will definitly help reducing the number of rogue players, could this be a reason? there’s also the class population balance besides class pvp balance
Comment by Nox — April 13, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
Nice insight with the 1v1’s but what race has the most synergy between rogue abilities and race abilities for dueling? Is it still human/undead for ally/horde?
Comment by Setsunai — April 14, 2009 @ 6:50 am
Akrios i was wondering why you haven’t tried Harp/SSarp/Combat variants vs dahis/sony, it should give you a drastic advantage with the 12% avoidance + riposte/setup/nerves, the guaranteed finishers and the improved sustained damage the combat tree gets in 3.1. I think that a combat build should definitely take down a warrior more efficiently than mutprep.
Considering Dahis/sony spec and gear specifically for rogue in these duels you can do the same and i believe come out ontop. Hell even going mace spec with all available ARP gear should offer even more advantage.
Just curious why no one has tried this out on ptr, or maybe they have and it failed miserably and I’m retarded hehe.
Comment by Rotting — April 14, 2009 @ 11:11 am
Tbh I find Waylay to be very useful when Playing Dance especially having 400+ ms (GOTTA LOVE AUSTRALIAN INTERNET) If Im Ambushing while In Dance Im not gonna waste the limited duration of Dance by Shiving when I could be critting 7k+ 3 times in a row with keeping the Poisons on as Dance unfortunately without weapon swapping you can only have a max of 2 poisons on at a time so Crippling could very easily be dispelled where as Waylay cant which Imo Remove Filthy Tricks instead of Waylay
Comment by Spooky — April 14, 2009 @ 8:55 pm
what buddhist realls does at home:
http://elitenook.mybrute.com
Comment by nook — April 15, 2009 @ 3:19 am
Is there a reason you don’t blind the succubus?
Comment by Terran — April 17, 2009 @ 10:40 am
never mind- decided to read the comments, that sucks =/
Comment by Terran — April 17, 2009 @ 10:58 am
Is distract still able to cancel drinking/eating?
If it does i would try it against this warrior!
greetings & keep it up
Szerion
Comment by Szerion — April 18, 2009 @ 6:07 am
I love gouge, I if anything.. Overuse it I spec for 1.5sec longer
I play with Priest for 2v2’s and 5.5secs is plenty long enough for him to recover, or to stop heals on the other dps for the final push.
Comment by Stevie — April 23, 2009 @ 8:21 am
Why are you using evasion against the warlock? It gives 50% Melee dodge and 25 Ranged %
Does suduction count as ranged? Or spells counting as ranged now?
Comment by Tyro — April 25, 2009 @ 6:16 am
Whats the first song?
Comment by Ben — April 29, 2009 @ 7:29 pm
Hi GUys!
This video is awesome!
Can anyone know WHat addons he used in his interface?
Thank you!
best regards
Comment by Sun0id — May 3, 2009 @ 5:41 am
These are great suggestions, Sub needs to make a return in pvp. Personally i think most rogues ignor this spec due to the annoying positional requirements of bs and ambush. And using Hemo with a weapon swap, can leave us crying when it mucks up. The new ShD glyph is good, but tbh i was disapointed when i saw it. Many times my shd has been wasted for the most part by being snared out of range or position, and chain cheapshotting them just to get behind them is a big waste of energy. Shd needs to be buffed, and not just in time. I would much prefer to see something like this added to shd, as a talent buff or new glyph.
1. Shd removes snares and movement impares and makes you immune for the duration.
-similar to buddhists shs suggestion, but applied elsewhere
2. When entering the shadowdance enemies lose target of the rogue, The rogue can only be seen within 15-20 yards distance for the duration.
- This would make the dance even more useful against casters/ranged, and also provide surviability in larger arena teams and bg’s.
Removing positional requirements for ambush and garotte would be amazing, but ofc far too OP to even suggest.
Thanks,
Copenet
Comment by Copenet — May 3, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
well,copenet.just take a moment and put ur self in ur opponents place,say mage.if the rogue is immune on impairing effects for 10 secs,dont u think that’s gona be probably impossible for me to beat u?.plus, i agree with u on losing the target when i use Shd but about the 15-20 yards thing i think its too much.
but ofc in the end that’s my opinion and i respect urs.have fun anyways
Comment by moody — May 5, 2009 @ 6:23 am
y not use evasion,usually rogues use “Full Preparation” so they burn all their cds that preparation resets when casted
Comment by Deadlytoch — May 7, 2009 @ 11:08 pm
I like the post. Personally I like waylay, but I think filthy tricks is completely worthless. Completely. Replace it with gouge improvements.
Comment by Phace — May 12, 2009 @ 10:29 am
I have a question for you Akrios. I play a human rogue, and Every Man for Himself is on the same timer as the pvp trinket. Is that only for humans? Does WotF still work without taking trinket cooldown?
Comment by Phace — May 12, 2009 @ 10:33 am
Hey, what addons are ya using?
Comment by ALex — May 17, 2009 @ 12:17 pm