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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsEncrypted Text: Rogue Glyphs
by Jason Harper 
Aug 27th 2008 at 2:00PM
Every Wednesday, Encrypted Text explores issues affecting Rogues and those who group with them. This week Jason Harper, the Rogue feature blogger, discusses a new feature in Wrath, Glyphs and the opportunities for Rogues. Inscriptions, a new profession in Wrath of the Lich King, allows for the creation of tradable Glyphs that can enhance your spells and abilities. Recently a number of these glyphs were released into a beta build and Inscription was announced to be apart of the new pre-Wrath patch.
As you'll see in the list below, Rogues get a wide variety of both lesser and greater glyph options, and in a lot of cases can greatly effect your talent choices in a way that gemming or enchanting never did.
There are a total (at this point) of seventeen Rogue centric glyphs discovered in the 8820 pre-release build, each expressing a different talent or ability improving skill. I should note, however, that I do not have any details around a few pieces of data that will most likely be very important once the Inscription profession has been released. They are: How to create the glyph, which glyphs are tradable and which are not, what Inscription skill-level any particular glyph requires.
I've split up the glyphs into two categories: Utility and Damage, with utility being either group or individual survivability buffs.
Utility Glyphs
As of this build (8820) there are five glyphs that I would categorize as "utility". These glyphs generally increase the duration of talents you already have, but do not strengthen the effect in terms of power. Leading off is Glyph-SAP, which can increase the duration of your Sap by 10 seconds. Overall not too bad when tacked on a level 71 accessible rank 4 Sap (which lasts up to one minute). I haven't really found too many situations where I've wished for, say, ten more seconds on my Sap though. And really, Rogues do not excel at PvE crowd control and aren't typically brought to raids with this in mind.
Next in line is Glyph-Evasion. Evasion, if you recall, makes you harder to hit by increasing your dodge chance by 50% and reducing ranged hits by 25%, on top of whatever dodge stats you have already. This glyph add an additional five seconds of evasion time, which can be crucial in fights where the tank or off-tank dies or becomes "unavailable" (e.g. "brb, I have to wash my steve"). I've evasion-tanked many mobs down from 1% (the one I recall best was Instructor Razuvious) and an extra five seconds is win.
But what about when you really really don't want to be the one tanking the boss in those final seconds? Well, Glyph-Feint will reduce the cost of your Feint ability by 10 energy points, knocking it down to 10 energy. PvE Rogues already (should) know to use Feint every time it's available on boss fights, and this just makes it that much more usable, especially deep into fights when energy management is crucial.
The next two are more PvP in nature, IMO, than the others. Glyph-Expose Armor and Glyph-Sprint, increase the ability duration by ten and decrease the cool-down by sixty seconds respectively. I routinely use Expose Armor on targets in battlegrounds and making Improved Sprint available one full minute earlier can be a lifesaver. With two points into Endurance you can utilize Sprint 105 seconds earlier, taking a five minute cool-down to 3.25 minutes.
Damage Glyphs
Damage glyphs typically add either a percentage damage modifier or increase the range/duration of the skill. The best place to start is with my favorite Rupture. The Glyph-Rupture will increase the duration of a Rupture by five seconds. At level 79 Rupture rank 9 will last sixteen seconds with five combo-points, doing (217+0.0375*AP)*8 damage over that entire time. Now though you can have it up for twenty-one seconds, increasing damage by 1.3% (based on 1800 AP you get 2276 points of damage vs 2987 with the additional five seconds).
Similarly, Glyph-Garrote, an opener from stealth will increase your periodic, or DoT, damage by 45%, but will decrease the duration by three seconds. At level eighty a rank 10 Garrote will last eighteen seconds and cause (119 + AP * 0.07) * 6 damage. Using a sample calculation, rank 10 Garrote with 1800 AP will do 1470 points of damage over eighteen seconds, or 81.67 points per second. When you bump that up with the glyph you move to 118.4 points of damage per second, giving you 1776 points of damage with the 3 second decrease. Not too shabby.
The other excellent finisher is Slice and Dice, which would gain three seconds, over the five point 21 second duration, additionally modified by Improved Slice and Dice by 45% (total of 30 seconds without the glyph, 33 with). A possibility of 33 seconds of 30% increased attack speed is a fine improvement, but nothing as special as the Rupture and Garrote glyphs. Don't get me wrong, SnD is excellent in so many ways, and three seconds added to it make it somewhat more special. But with limited glyph slots, I'm not convinced I'd take this one.
The last one we'll talk about today is the Eviscerate glyph, which will increase your critical strike chance of the skill by 10%. Critical damage buffs are in vogue for Rogues these days with both Prey on the Weak and Unfair Advantage, getting you various increases. However, with most Rogues relying on SnD/Rupture cycles as the primary source of damage, is a critical damage modifier to Eviscerate really all that important? Without a doubt more damage is good, but again, if I had to choose between this glyph and the Rupture one, I'd have no problem going with Rupture.
Next week we'll take a close look at glyphs for Backstab, Shiv, Deadly Throw, Hemorrhage, Adrenaline Rush, Gouge, Ambush and Ghostly Strike.
Encrypted Text is your source for Rogue guide goodness. From enchants for Rogues to Patch 2.4 gear guides to raiding as a Rogue.And, of course, our Rogue leveling guides for levels 1-20 & 21-40.Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
Doomilias Aug 27th 2008 9:08PM
this article is full of absolute complete fail. i dont have to restate the rampant ignorance related to the feint glyph, and someone already stated about the general uselessness for glyph of garrote.
some of you reading this site may or may not have read my rogue blog before, doomilias.com (which i have since shifted from roguery to real-lifery)...but i did apply for the position at WI for this column. never even got a word back.
my assumption? WI wants sub-par writers who know how to fill word space by taking 48 paragraphs to talk about all of the things they are about to talk about. it starts and ends with the content-stealing mike scamm.
thing about the rogue class is that it is one of the simpler classes to understand. a pve rogue has one job, and one job only. d-p-to-the-mothereffing-s. theorycraft and general pve playstyle have long been clearly defined by those at elitstjerks.com, ming, & shadowpanther.net.
the only worthwhile column on this site is brk...and you can get everything you need to know and much, much more just by going to his site.
~ Doomilias
http://www.doomilias.com
Bisquick(z) Aug 27th 2008 10:58PM
I can see why you didn't get the position. You labled Shadowpanther.net and Ming as reliable sources of Theorycraft.
As for the article, several people have stated it prior to me commenting:
Great Choice on the Rogue Columnist.
Doomilias Aug 28th 2008 5:51AM
actually, i said theorycraft AND general pve playstyle. who is praising this rogue columnist as a good choice? all i read from these comments are wtf fail...
Barish Aug 28th 2008 2:40AM
As said before, DON'T use feint.
You can better stop dps for a few seconds, same result, for a less energy cost.
Shadoweric Aug 28th 2008 8:30AM
So since the utter fail of this article has been pointed out, let's educate Jason Harper a bit instead...
Most of your PvE damage is white damage. This is why you want Slice and Dice to be up AT ALL TIMES. It's your best DPS increase.
Rupture: It scales with AP up to 3 combo points (4&5 have the same scaling) and ignores armor. Also benefits from having Mangle up on a mob.
Eviscerate: does not ignore armor, badly scaled (last rank at lvl 64... come on Blizz).
Expose Armor has already been explained by others. Just keep in mind it has to be Improved through talents to be worthy.
Ahh the big one... Feint ! Where to begin. Jason, do you understand how threat works ? For a melee class to grab aggro, they have to hit 110% of the tank's threat (130% for ranged classes). The % here is very important... why ? Because Feint lowers your threat by a FIXED amount, not a % (-1050 threat for the highest rank of Feint). So, at the very beginning of the fight, when 1050 threat represents something like 10 to 25% of the tank's threat, yes it's useful. Once, maybe twice. And... that's it.
On a boss, where you've pumped out, say, 50K damage, what exactly will Feint do for you ? Drop 1050 ? Whoopdeedoo, big fricking deal. What's that gonna be compared to the tank's threat at this point ? Remember rogue have 29% passive threat reduction. So 50K times 0.71 is 35.5K threat. 1050 threat is 3% of that. AND THE LONGER A FIGHT TAKES, THE WORSE IT GETS.
If you've caught up to your tank's threat, you think that's gonna save you ? Consider the value 1050 threat. With the 29% damage, it's the threat generated by a sinister strike that would hit for 1479 damage. I sure as hell hopes your SS hits for higher than that... So you hit Feint, waste your energy to drop 1050 threat, then you SS again... only to completely negate what you just did when you used Feint.
Do you now understand why Feint is useless, bar at the VERY beginning of the fight ? It's a fixed amount, not %, yet Blizzard bases threat on %. It's a major flaw in the design of this ability.
Hope you learned something. This is rather brief so I suggest you read up on rogue's theorycraft on the usual resource websites.
BlackDeath Aug 28th 2008 12:32PM
"Does anyone who raids T5 or better even keep it on their action bar?"
Yeah, just for blood boil.
And I don't think I need to point out the fail in this article any more since the posts before me have done this quite well, but I will say that if any pve rogue thinks that the SnD glyph aint worth it compared to other glyphs then please go roll a warrior.
The SnD glyph, the rupture glyph and the SS glyph all appear like they are going to be mandatory for a raiding rogue, but with this being said keep in mind that we still have not seen all of the glyphs (or even half I would guess).
And on a side note can bliz please get a little more creative with rogues? These glyphs are practical but they don't do much to make this class more enjoyable.
Kama Aug 28th 2008 2:11PM
"PvE Rogues already (should) know to use Feint every time it's available on boss fights"
Are you for real ? Maybe if your tank sucks. Run up the threat , vanish and repeat. If you catch your tank again, find a new tank. Waisting energy (and dps) on Feint is stupid.
And the Garotte Glyph sucks. 300 extra damage once per fight ? OK, twice if you vanish ? Utterly useless.
Punkenjoy Aug 28th 2008 4:24PM
Note to Wowinsider, please find a new rogue to write these "encrypted text"
This one seem to be a #$@$% noob and he give wrong advice and it decrease the reputation of the site.
Also, i'm sure that non rogue will read that and will ask us to use more feint and things like that.
it a big fail ...
But it's not personal Jason. it's just that you are so wrong....
Noktismorté Aug 28th 2008 7:08PM
I quote - 'PvE Rogues already (should) know to use Feint every time it's available on boss fights, and this just makes it that much more usable, especially deep into fights when energy management is crucial.'
Seriously are you for real? As posted above feint is the worst thing you can do in your rotation, way to go to lower your DPS abilities. If you need to dump threat vanish, simple as. Your spreading crap information and any newer rogue would do well to ignore this and seek answers elsewhere.
Seriously are you the person WoWinsider hired to discuss and report on rogues? Do you even play one? Stop talking b******t, play a rogue in end game. Also, let me quote Lonika Stillblade (NPC in shatt who ran the rogue academy) - Real rogues don't feint.
Suba Sep 23rd 2008 9:39AM
Evis Glyph is for raiding Mute Rogues, imo. As every Evis will refresh SnD up to it's 5pt length (see Cut to the Chase), once you've got SnD going you should never have to cast it again. Instead of, say, refreshing to a 4 pt length SnD, 4 pts can get you a 5pt SnD and a burst of damage just by Evis'ing.