Posts with tag relentless-strikes

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we discuss one of the least-appreciated rogue abilities, Expose Armor. I took the above screenshot by pushing one of two Expose Armor macros I have.

One of the most common complaints that I hear from the rogue community is that we don't provide enough useful buffs to make ourselves worth taking to a raid. The rumor was originally true; in fact, rogues had a bad reputation for actually knocking off important debuffs when there used to be a limit. I remember my raid leader using the CT_Raid addon to look for Phantom Blades and Gutgore Rippers, then kicking anyone wielding them. We were the simple rogues, brought to stab our enemies and soak up any leather gear that dropped.

Times have changed. Both of the popular PvE rogue specs now possess a critical raid debuff. Mutilate has the fairly common Master Poisoner critical strike chance debuff, which is brought by a few other DPS specs as well. Combat, however, has the fairly unique Savage Combat debuff, which we share with arms-specced warriors alone. Since arms warriors aren't exactly common in the high-end raiding game, we're essentially the only way to pick up that serious boost. Add in the fact that Tricks of the Trade is often glyphed to provide maximum uptime, and we've actually got one of the better buffs in the game as well. All of this doesn't even include our most beneficial raid ability by far.