Posts with tag rogue

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or topic suggestions.

Did you know that druids have four different, viable playstyles? They can heal, tank, and DPS in two different ways. While others might be impressed with their flexibility, we aren't. Rogues have learned that complete dedication is required to be the best. Do you know what else doesn't heal? A shark. Do you know what never tanks? A viper. Do you know what always attacks from melee range? A wolf. Rogues channel their predatory instincts while concentrating on a singular purpose.

The only issue with being so focused on DPS is that we don't have any backup plans. What do rogues do when they can't kill things in melee range? If you're familiar with the Shazzrah encounter from the days of old, then you know that a rogue who can't attack is completely useless. My guild used to have all of us rogues light a few campfires in the back of Shazzrah's room and cook food for the rest of the guild while they downed the boss. After years of training to kill, I was stuck wearing an apron and making Savory Deviate Delights. Rogues need to do good DPS in order to validate our very existence.

Blizzard has been on an information release kick this week for Rage of the Firelands, the next content patch for Cataclysm. World of Warcraft has been known, for better or for worse, by its armor design choices. Some of the armor sets in WoW actually have transcended the game itself, becoming part of a healthy nostalgia for players old and new.

Firelands is not going to have any shortage of cool raid gear. The tier 12 armor preview has just been released and contains images of the paladin, mage, rogue, hunter, death knight and priest sets. Warlocks, warriors, shaman, and druids are currently absent, though we can bet druids will also have a fire motif, considering Fandral Staghelm's role in the Firelands raid.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to suggest a topic you'd like to see covered!

Rogues are the cooldown class. You've heard it before. For the entire lifetime of World of Warcraft, rogues have been defined by their cooldowns. Vanish and Blind were the key ingredients to the infamous Roguecraft videos, while Shadowstep and Adrenaline Rush defined an entire expansion's worth of arena matches. Preparation, the cooldown-eliminating cooldown, has been considered to be the most powerful ability in a rogue's arsenal.

Aside from the low-level ability Recuperate, all three of our new Cataclysm abilities are cooldowns. We have a plethora of both defensive and offensive cooldowns, and knowing when to use them becomes key in defining the difference between a good rogue and a great one. While it may seem simple to pop CDs as soon as they're ready to be used again, defensive cooldowns are much more complex. Offensive CDs can be coordinated with external effects to increase their potency significantly. Many cooldowns ride the line between the offensive and defensive categories, as they're viable for each purpose.

WoW forums user Tantojutsu put together the great Ganker's Kit of Ganking 2.0, based off of an older and hilarious thread, detailing the wonderful items and abilities available to make stalking and killing player prey in game that much more fun. Rogues are already deadly and frightening, and when I hear that stealth sound, I immediately spin my head around looking for a sign of a shadowy attacker. Some of my favorite points on the list include a list of banners you can plant on your dead foes, the use of focusing lenses to quickly point toward a target, and using the 2010 Winter Veil MiniZep pet as air recon. Tantojutsu put together a great list, and all of you would-be gank artists should definitely check it out.

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Welcome to another edition of WoW Insider's Weekly Comic, Safe Passage. This comic takes place post-Cataclysm, so there will be minor spoilers.

The first strike! A frost trap has been thrown onto the fire, blanketing them in darkness. She strikes, now within her natural element.

Check out the full comic right here, and tune in next Tuesday morning for a new page. You can also see all the previous pages in the gallery below.

Welcome to another edition of the WoW Insider's Weekly Comic, Safe Passage. This comic takes place post-Cataclysm, so there will be minor spoilers.

Our gruff guys arrive at the sight of the raid. Things are looking grim until they find a talking box. No, not that talking box.

Check out the full version right here, and tune in next Tuesday morning for a new page. You can also see all the previous pages in the gallery below.

This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Back in the dark ages of history, in vanilla World of Warcraft, I rolled a rogue. This was before battlegrounds, when dishonorable kills were a fear and world PvP was a rush, when men were men, mages sheeped for fun and warlocks ... well, let's just say that warlocks have a reputation that they've earned.

World of Warcraft was my first MMO, after coming from persistent worlds hosted by Neverwinter Nights. I played a rogue there, too, steeped in Dungeons & Dragons rules and the like. World of Warcraft was both nothing like and exactly like my roguish experiences before -- a sneak who dealt devastating damage with small weapons, no matter whether the target was gnome or giant, fearsome orc or fiery dragon.

In the midst of a Westfall investigation (tasked by SI:7 to infiltrate a tower), I noticed a few growing complaints in guild chat: "We have seven rogues in the guild but only one priest; would someone please roll a priest?" I told them I would, sent my rogue back to the character select screen, and rolled the character that would take up the entirety of my vanilla experience.

Welcome to another edition of the WoW Insider's Weekly Comic, Safe Passage! This comic takes place post-Cataclysm, so there will be minor spoilers!

Don't you hate it when you just get home and someone throws chores in your face? "Go do this! Go do that! Go check out this fire!" Jeez. Some people.

Check out the full version right here, and tune in next Tuesday morning for a new page. You can also see all the previous pages in the gallery below.

Welcome to another edition of the WoW Insider's Weekly Comic, Safe Passage! This comic takes place post-Cataclysm, so there will be minor spoilers!

We have now been introduced to two of the major characters, Ash'gor the orc veteran, and Mig'ai, his Darkspear shaman companion. Again, I politely ask that you just wait and see what develops in the next few weeks. The Alliance aren't all bad, after all.

Check out the full version right here, and tune in next Tuesday morning for a new page. You can also see all the previous pages in the gallery below.

Before Byron snuck off into the shadows, he told me to give you all a little something to remember him by. "Now," you ask. "what could you possibly give anyone that wasn't obtained illegally?"

That's easy: IM icons!

You are all more then welcome to use these swanky icons for things like forums, Twitter, or your absolute favorite site to talk about WoW!

Also, if you somehow missed the ending of Byron, the review, or you don't even know what I'm talking about, why not try catching up a little bit?

Byron is a young, male tauren who dreams of becoming the first rogue of his kind. His friends -- skilled rogues themselves -- dare Byron to sneak into Stormwind and steal the Shield of Fordragon. If he can acquire it and safely escape the city, then he has more than proven himself.

Blizzard's been hard at work adjusting a lot of WoW's game systems for Cataclysm, and one of the biggest changes in the pipeline is the overhaul of the inscription profession. You may remember the Path of the Titans alternate advancement system was axed in favor of making inscription, well, better. On top of other changes and a new UI, part of this task is adding a new tier of glyphs -- called prime glyphs -- on top of the already-existing tiers of major and minor.

Ghostcrawler recently had this to say about the new glyph system:

Ghostcrawler

Prime glyphs aren't going to be exciting in a "change up your rotation" style. We want primes to be unambiguous dps (etc.) increases so we figured they might as well be easy to understand rather than something so convoluted that everyone would just go to a fansite to see which 3 to pick.

The majors are more interesting, because they are either not dps increases at all, or dps increases in ways that are tricky to math out. We think players will debate and geek out more about which majors to use, and with the new glyph design, swapping them out once in awhile isn't very painful.

Minors are basically convenience or fun.

source

Several classes have had their glyphs worked on and updated as of this beta patch, but only rogues and shaman glyph passes appear to be "done," so we've listed glyphs for those two after the break.

Welcome to another edition of the WoW.com Weekly Comic, Byron the Tauren Rogue!

Well, here we are: the end of Byron. Our story ends with Byron, the bovine hero, watching a raid take place upon the ever-assaulted Crossroads. He has chosen his path but swears to use it to protect those who need to be protected. He is now one with the shadows, always watching over his beloved Horde.

I wanted to thank all of you for sticking with this story from the beginning. While I'll be the first to admit it got off to quite a rocky start, I feel that this comic has evolved a lot, and I'm ultimately happy with where it led. Next week, I'll be featuring an article which, among other things, will be an overview of the entire series. I'll talk about the characters, the story, the writing and many other points. I hope to see you all back again!

For those who are worried -- don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I'm taking a small, two-week break to write the next story and pen out a couple of fun little Byron-related goodies. Byron may come back one day, as this next story will be completely unrelated, but who knows?

From the Byron crew, we all thank you for reading. Take care!

Check out the full version right here, and tune in next Tuesday morning for a new page. You can also see all the previous pages in the gallery below.

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 the rotation model of DPS, and how it defines our class in every way.

Blizzard has a long history of taking popular addons and rolling their functionality into the game's base user interface. The first instance of this that I can remember was when Blizzard introduced its own quest objective tracking overlay, nearly copying MonkeyQuest's original configuration. The dev team also inserted dungeon maps for the various instances, taking a page out of Atlas' book. Their latest invention is a replacement for Power Auras, the popular notification mod that displays custom graphics when a specified event occurs.

Looking at the list of spells for which Blizzard created custom "spell activation" effects (thanks BB!), we see mostly random and reactive abilities on the list. Paladins will enjoy the art for Art of War, and every mage spec has a particular proc to watch patiently for. What intrigued me was that there is actually a spell activation effect for rogues, an orange lightning bolt that represents Slice and Dice. Slice and Dice, as any rogue will inform you, is not a random proc; it's a core part of our DPS and should be up at all times. While having a lightning bolt on my screen at all times sounds like fun, it got me thinking about the rogue DPS model. I utilize Power Auras extensively on every other character I play, yet I don't even have it enabled on my rogue.