Help me understand Rogue/WeaponsFollow

Eh, accidentally closed the window while typing my response. Oh well.

Not too familiar with 29, but hopefully I can provide some help.

Take those points out of Precision and put them in Opportunity if you are going dagger, or Deflection if sword/mace, and take a point out of Remorseless Attacks and get Riposte (great against rogue and warrior twinks). You could also consider Improved Sprint.

Cheap Shot is godly in this bracket. Use it against anything you can't 2-shot with Ambush+Backstab.

Weapon swapping gives you a 1 second global cooldown, keep in mind.

Isn't the new respecs next Tuesday? I would hold off on any changes until then.

Agreed.

Cheap Shot is level 26, Kidney Shot is level 30.

As I recall, swapping weapons resets the swing timer (so if you do it right after a mainhand swing the impact isn't too huge) and also adds a one second global cooldown for Rogues (1.5s for everyone else). However, if you use an attack and _then_ swap weapons you won't have to worry about the Global Cooldown... so a macro that cast backstab and then used ItemRack or some such to swap the weapon configuration could be rather handy. You'd just hit that one when you want to switch to Sinister Striking.

It's been almost a year since I played Rogue, but you should definitely go with the mace for your main-hand, IF you decide to focus on Cheap Shot and Sinister Strikes.

For Sinister Strike it's all about the weapon's maximum damage. Don't worry about speed as you'll be spamming the Sinister Strike button constantly.

I would personally go with the dagger in off-hand to get the poison procs (you can use poisons at level 29, right?). Ambush and Backstab are overrated, especially against twinks. Better to control their actions with Cheap Shot and Riposte (as mentioned earlier, Riposte owns).

Don't know if that gave you any real solutions so perhaps I should sum it up.

Looming Gavel, main-hand (slow).
Toxic Revenger, off-hand (fast).

Cheap Shot > Ambush.
Riposte > Remorseless.

Talent build.

I took Riposte because it's such a great attack. I took Precision because it adds to your white DPS. Malice increases your overall DPS. Improved Sinister Strike is a must, obviously, but you can change the three points in Improved Gouge for Lightning Reflexes if you don't find the bonus to Gouge worth it.

That about covers my two cents.

Edited, Dec 3rd 2006 11:09pm by Mazra

If remorseless attacks only activats after killing an opponent that yeilds experience, then I'd leave that out for PvP'ing.

Having high weapon damage is only useful if you use hemorage, as the other rogue ability's have been normalised. So if you aren't a hemo build, then go with the higher dps.

Just not dagger unless you are backstabbing as I think that normalises out to 1.7 where as swords / maces / fists ect. are 2.4. To work out the sinister strike damage on your weapons after normalisation the formula is



http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Sinister_Strike_Damage

As SS is an instant strike, it still benefits from slower, high max damage weapons despite the normalization that occured some time ago, just not to the extent it did back in the day.
Im not sure on exact benefits, if you already have enchants on them all you might as well hit 29 and try them all out for yourself, but I would go with the mace personally and without any testing.

As far as weapon swapping goes, I use QuickWeaponSwap and StanceSets to auto equip a dagger whenever I go into stealth, and to reequip my normal MH sword whenever I exit stealth (sometimes doesnt work when I am hit in stealth though, so have to be careful). Therefore, the 1s cooldown goes basically as soon as I use cheap shot, so the timing is usually perfect.

As for weapons, if you were planning on more sustained fights (such as against certain classes at 60), I might suggest the sword, but for the type of fighting you'll be doing (quick 5-10s fights usually), the harder hitting mace is a better choice imo.

i feel like shouting to get through to everyone, but i won't:
damage normalisation on instant attacks affects only the ap portion of the damage, not the min/max portion. how high is you ap at lvl29? thought so.

now, around 50% of your damage is from special abilities, 50% white damage.
the min/max damage on the gavel is much higher than on the leg, so the 2.3 dps and the weapon proc can't make up. AND you have more survivability and dps through stats on the gavel.

in the off-hand, i'd go for the leg, because it's higher dps than the revenger, faster (=more poison procs) and doesn't have an annoying proc that breaks gouge (and blind 5 levels later).

as for spec:
like others have said, precision is less of an issue when fighting same and lower level opponents. it's nice to put a couple of points in there, put hardly worth 5. it will help reduce those missed ambushes which you manouvered your way into.
also, riposte is nice for those high-dps weapon twinks.
remorseless attacks is nice (it works for opponents that yield exp OR honor), but the question is, can you get your opener in within 20s of your last kill? you'll see it run out unused quite a bit...
3 in gouge is a matter of playstyle, but could be relevant for you with imp bs. it will allow you to go ooc while your opponent is gouged, therefore allowing you to re-enter stealth without blowing vanish (for another manouver, cs, bs).
a basic problem you will always have with switching between amb/bs and ss is that you need to invest points into both.
how about this build?

Edited, Dec 4th 2006 1:24pm by Turicus

2.3 white damage per second difference in favor of sword.
10 average damage per SS swing in favor of mace.

If you SS every four seconds you'll (just barely) beat out the white damage on the sword, 10 as opposed to 9.2 damage. Seeing as how it take four seconds to gain the energy for an SS (with talents) you'll be able to make that. Assuming you engage someone with full energy a cs->ss opener will net you an a 10 damage starting difference with the mace over the sword, and that will increase by .8 damage every 4 seconds if you continuously SS the oppoent to death. However any energy spent on other abilities (kicking them, gouging, etc.) is going to result in a decrease done by the mace.

One gouge during a fight (assuming an opener followed by immediate ssing form full energy) will negate the entire starting damage bonus of the mace and result in only a .8 damage every 4 seconds (.2 damage every second) gain in the mace over the sowrd. A second gouge or a kick in the same fight will reduce this so that by the end the sword will probably win out.

To be honest they are both pretty damn close. I don't know the proc rate on the electrocutioners leg so I'm not going to factor that in. Also I believe that since fiery is set at 6 procs per minute (correct me if I'm wrong) that the mace should have a higher proc rate on your sinister strike swings, but I'm unsure of this.

If you usually end up starting with any 60 energy opener and then SSing them to death with no other abilities thrown in then the mace wins out by 10-12 damage. However if you finds yourself doing few hit and runs (waiting for full energy) and more continuous fighting with occasional use of gouging and kicking then I'd go with the sword.



Your spec is the best I see possible for an SS build. I disagree with Mazra's spec, I feel it's too defensive, especially for a chracter with the weapons and enchants to kill before needing to defend. The dagger is a slighter better SS weapon than the sword, but liek the mace it has less dps and will do lesss white damage. But if you plan on opening with ambush I think it would be ok to leave the dagger equipped if you are going to follow up with SS, and definitely if you are going to mix SS and bs (swapping would be too troublesome).



I find daggers to be a lot of fun. They're not as good in 29 as they were before (the talent movement messed up how all the key dagger talents could be reached by 29), but they're still damn good. It depends on your playstyle. I find myself usually going after the cloth wearers (priest and druids being main targets because of healing, mages as secondaries because they were downed so easy) in BG as a rogue, and dagger build is very effective in dealing a quick burst before a preist can shield or a mage can nova.

White DPS is tricky because you miss or get parried a lot.

I can't see how the sword wins over the mace if you start Gouging. Gouge takes you out of attack mode, meaning your white DPS drops to 0. The Gavel will do more damage on Sinister Strikes meaning more burst damage. Burst damage is win in PvP.

I also fail to see how my talent build is too defensive. You mean the Riposte? It's one of the best talents in that tree as it completely cripples your melee opponents as well as doing more damage than your average white hit. The talent prereq to Riposte makes Riposte proc more often. The other talents were +crit, +hit, -energy cost (= +damage) and I gave the choice between +dodge or +time on Gouge.

Allegory, Jord won't be the only twink in that bracket, remember that...

Edited, Dec 4th 2006 9:02pm by Mazra