Hey there guys, I’m back with my 2^nd blog, so let’s get to it.

First I would like to talk about Haste.

As we all know, Haste makes things generally faster. What does that mean for rogues? Less time to interrupt a cast. Let’s take a normal Polymorph for example, with a cast time of 1.5 seconds un-hasted, someone with normal reflexes should be able to interrupt this cast quite comfortably assuming the Mage is not faking you out. With the gear currently available, it isn’t rare to see Polymorphs having a cast time of around 1 second without Icy Veins, Heroism/Bloodlust or a Black Magic proc.

This generally means for oceanic rogues (or anyone without a perfect connection), if you haven’t kicked by the 0.6 second mark, you are going to waste a kick. Sure the kick will register before you get Polymorphed, but is the Mage going to get locked out? No. It almost gets to the point where you have to preemptively kick a cast (In the case of bloodlust, icy veins/power infusion). This does, however, take me to my next subject.

Latency and you.

I know what you’re thinking, “look, the Aussie rogue is crying about latency again, can’t you guys just pay for a service to get the same as Americans?”  The simple answer is No; however the tunneling services I’m talking about really do help a lot.

Is latency a problem exclusively for Rogues? From my own experience it’s not, although we do suffer heavily from it. Take any AoE ability. Psychic Scream, Frost Nova, and Shadowfury for example. You name the spell, it’s heavily affected by latency.  I’m sure any rogue with imperfect in-game latency has experienced the frustration that comes with spamming cheap shot on a moving mounted target, try as much as you like it just doesn’t go off no matter how close you are to your target, this goes for saps, gouges (You must be in front of your target :S) and Ambush/Backstab. There is currently nothing that Blizzard can do about latency, it’s all dependant on where you live and how good your connection is. There are steps that Blizzard can take to greatly reduce the impact of latency though.

Positional requirements on spells and abilities need to be looked at, they have always been clunky and in my eyes not necessarily needed. Backstab is one of the few abilities that would need to remain unchanged for obvious reasons, Backstab that doesn’t need a positional requirement sounds silly. (Stab, anyone?)

Garrote’s positional requirements make it frustrating to use while in arena, I can’t count the times I have vanished and spent the next 2 seconds sprinting around my target in stealth trying desperately to find his/her back. PvP isn’t about hitting a stationary target, with the amount of snare removal abilities currently in-game it makes it quite difficult to consistently use Garrote in a clutch situation.

When Kick and Kidney Shot are down, what interrupt do you have left? Gouge. It’s quite an amazing ability but as with Garrote the positional requirement really does hinder the consistency in which we can gouge a cast, there really is nothing more frustrating than having both of my out of stealth interrupts being on cooldown and spamming gouge on a Flash Heal, only to be stopped by the Priest spinning around as fast as his mouse physically lets him. I personally would like to see Gouge without its positional requirement, with how fast-paced the game currently is, it makes sense in my eyes.

Cloak of Shadows.

Source: (Mmo-Champion.com #BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter 4/16)

Q. With the emphasis moving to Battlegrounds, have you looked into rogue cooldown dependency issues?
A. We definitely want to give rogues a considerable boost in the passive damage reduction department, and then tone down some of their active cooldowns in the process. We still want the rogue to feel twitchy and exciting to play, but not to the extent that you can’t deal with another class toe-to-toe without any cooldowns up.  Oh, and Cloak of Shadows now provides 100% resistance.

This is huge, we can finally rely on cloak working 100% of the time, (Don’t forget you can’t cloak spells in midair!) It should also definitely help with my now very violent twitching whenever I get sheeped/feared through cloak. A small addition I would like to see would be taking it off the global cooldown, is that overboard? Maybe.

In the last few day’s I’ve received a number of requests from people that would like me to cover my UI.

So here it is

The addons I use include:

!BugGrabber

BugSack

Buttonfacade

DeadlyBossMods

Dominos

EePanels 1 and 2

ErrorMonster

Gladiminsh

Gladius

InterruptBar

MSBT

Quartz

RoguePowerBars

SexyMap

SLDataText

SnowfallKeyPress

Xperl

CombatLogClearer.

I personally hide my binds and macro text, as I like the clean look and feel of it. A ui that suits you is key to success as a Rogue, if you have a cluttered ui with too much information or information that just isn’t needed, I recommend downgrading to something more basic, you will literally feel the difference in your game play without alerts and text flying across your screen. RoguePowerBars is a great addon to track how long you have left on your buffs/debuffs, another addon worth mentioning is SnowFallKeypress. It removes the “Keypress” time it takes for you to actually press and release your button, making the ability you cast just that little bit faster. If you have any other questions about my ui, feel free to drop a comment or contact me in-game.

The Interview

Whilst I was writing this, I was talking to one of my close friends from Jubie’Thos Alliance who snatched the Rank 1 title on Vengeance, and thought to myself  “what a great idea, I should interview him and let everyone get to know him.” So I now bring you a quick interview with Relentless Gladiator Geehardy, a Paladin who attained the title in the 5v5 Bracket.

Hey man! What have you been up to generally in the last few weeks in WoW?

Hi Seezy! The last few weeks of WoW for me has been trying a lot of different 3s comps on my paladin. I’ve also managed to level my once a month Warrior alt to 80 and have begun PvP on him as well.

How long have you been playing a Paladin? Was it your first Character?

I’ve been playing my Paladin since shortly after the release of Molten Core in Vanilla days but didn’t start any meaningful PvP until s6. Paladin was indeed the first character I rolled.

Interesting! You received your title from 5v5 as I believe, would you mind explaining what setup you ran?

Yes we received Relentless Gladiator from 5s playing a rather fotm comp of hunter/ele/destro with myself and a resto druid healing. Very similar to the priest/paladin heals variant with less dispels all round, but more CC potential coupled with the extreme pressure hunter/lock with ele burst can produce.

Ah so no Rogue. Are there any specific reasons behind that decision?

Rogue was not something we ever considered, apart from the fact that the server at the time had no higher caliber rogue players. Unfortunately last season in 5s with our comp there was close to nothing a rogue could bring that a hunter couldn’t bring and do it better.

I see, let’s say you could turn back time, do you think you would try and find a rogue? Or were you completely happy with your setup all season?

As I mentioned rogues ability to replace a primary MS source in a staple 5s comp such as 2346 just wasn’t enough to make it a contender for a spot on the team without changing the setup a bit more. In the end we were happy with the comp, sometimes we would of loved to have another defensive dispel via trading priest for druid, but the setup prevailed.

Sounds good! Did you guys have any general strats against teams that did use a rogue?

Truck him. Hard. Vengeance doesn’t have a huge 5s pool and last season I can only really think of 2 rogue teams that were anywhere even close to a competitive match. It’s sad to say but once cloak and trinket are down for the opposing rogue (which they almost need to use offensively to maintain pressure) it’s a HoJ or Death Coil away from death.

How do you think individual skill shines in the 5’s bracket?

It can be hard to see obvious individual skills from 5v5 in-game, but it can really shine through in Vent/Skype. In-match planning that is vocalized and carried through is impressive to hear and be a part of but it’s been said before that you can’t throw amazing players together and expect top level results. Team work is obviously the key.

You mentioned/seem to not be playing 5v5 this season, any specific reasons?

Our 5s team from last season split somewhat immediately after season end. Our hunter didn’t wish to play the bracket anymore and our Shaman and I had a lot of Uni work on our plate. Combined with the fact that I didn’t have home internet until recently has meant that I haven’t been able to play 5s. Plans are in works however…

Any plans for 3v3 setups in the future?

Like I said I’ve playing with a lot of different comps this season in an effort to help out friends to 2200 and to try to improve on my own game. The comps I had the most fun with were balance comps. I played ele/arms/hpally a bit which was very enjoyable and in the past few days tried out some rogue/lock/hpally which I’m very excited about. I play the game to have fun with comps, not for titles! Got some boomkin/ele lined up this week I think as well…

In your own personal opinion, what do you think of BG-Vengeance?

I’ve played on bg9 and there is no real suitable comparison in terms of depth of skill and teams. Being an Australian it’s impossible to get queues after 11pm our time against worthwhile teams (though our forums would suggest we only queued at midnight!). Team variety is much less, haven’t really seen a prot warrior team this season and you feel you know your opponents and the outcome of the game after you see their names pop up on the arena frames. The famous FIVE FX contradicts this somewhat as they are an amazing team in both 3v3 and 5v5 (would love to see them compete on bg9!)

Are you looking forward to Cataclysm, or any specific changes that could affect how you play?

I’ve never been one for reading a lot into changes so far out from when they are due. I’m looking forward to parts of Cataclysm, I think rated BGs will be great in many ways despite how many are proclaiming the death of Arena. I mean if so many are saying Arena is finished, then its only logical to assume that these are the guys that will play Arena and therefore Arena won’t die? It’s so far out yet to really know what is going to happen. The Rogue Smoke Bomb seems silly in an arena setting as it provides another out for bad positioning as does Life Grip. These things in a BG setting I think are great however when you think about a map based objective rather than a Death Match. What I’m worried about is how big the teams are going to be. You think organizing 5v5 is a pain. Unless they merge battlegroups to give a greater pool of competition or something of a similar nature it’s going to be very hard to see much variety in ladders, getting regular games in etc etc.

Last but definitely not least, why are you so damned cute?

Perfect bone formation, regular showers and Old Spice body wash

That concludes my second article I hope you enjoyed the read!

~Seezy

Related posts:

1. Six Silent Shadows