Rogue vs Paladin

Difficulty: Easy To Moderate
Poison Choice: Dual Instant
Spec Favored: Combat

With the 1.9 talent calculator out, I assume paladin will go live in its current form. I can see further tweakings will update this section accordingly. Rogue vs Paladin is my favorite matchup. It is not a cooldown intense fight. It is a long fight which allows both players to come back from bad luck and human errors. There is also a tremendous amount of variety to this fight, with three very different style of play.

The Opener:

With consecration now a 11th talent point and the rise of holy tree, you will see a lot of paladins with this spell. A paladin with end game gear can spam the rank 1 version of this spell non-stop to deny the opener. With seal fate dagger, a gouge->backstab is a very acceptable opener. With combat it takes a bit of work to try to CS them the same time you take damage from consecration. You see unless you were in the area of the AOE when he casts it, you don’t take damage immediately walking into it. There is a very short pause before you take damage, which is more than enough for you to land the CS especially if he is standing on the edge of the AOE.

It takes practice and patience to land the CS, but it is still doable. If he hits you out of it, gouge, run away, restealth. He will cast a few more AOEs, just wait until your health regens to full and try again. Be patient.

Part 1: Turtles (One Hand + Shield + Repetence)

This build took a huge hit in 1.9.3. You can no longer get divine favor and repetence in the same build which is a big plus for rogues. The +spell damage bonus for both seal of righteousness and holy shield is also greatly reduced. Unless the paladin is using a thunderfury which can chain proc with reckoning, the rogue should win this fight. Unfortunately, a lot of rogues do not understand what they are supposed to do in this fight, so here is the rundown.

a) Deliver all of your damage with the paladin is stunned.

This really applies to any paladin, but the concept is the same. See the stunlock listed in rogue vs rogue section. But more importantly, you need to control the tempo of this fight. It looks something like this, gouge -> unload, run away, kidney shot -> unload, run away. When we say run away we don’t mean run very far away, just outside of his melee range. If he chase after you, keep running away, it is ok if you take a whack or two from his little 1 hander, it does far less damage than you hitting him and getting hit by holy shield.

A paladin with this build will try to activate holy shield as soon as he is out of stunlock, and he would love it if you hit him, with redoubt and holy shield his block is very high and you will take nasty damage. Don’t allow him to do this to you. Make him waste mana and run away from him, let your energy recharge, but as soon as he stops, walk back to him, if he heals, go for a kick, repeat. Remember gouge can be blocked but kidney shot being a 0 damage special can not be blocked. Protection paladins have very poor dodge and parry so your kidney shot has a very high chance of landing. Try to save your gouge for when his holy shield wears off, and your kidney shot to stuff his holy shield heads on.

A protection paladin maybe buff, but full energy kidney shot, coupled with instant poison (and lifesteal, maelstrom if you have them), will do massive damage. If you are using seal fate dagger and have extra combo points before your kidney shot is up, don’t waste on evis, use on expose armor.

Don’t be greedy, it is a war of attrition. You should leave him right before he is out of stun. Don’t backpedal, turn around and run away from him but use a hotkey to reverse the camera to see what he is doing. If he is chasing after you, that is an ideal situation. If he stops, turn around and be ready to get back to him to kick his heal. You should never attack him head on unless either he is very low on health or he is gouged/KSed/CSed.

Done properly, you should never take any real hits unless he stuns you or the very few times when you can’t get away from him because your gouge is dodged/parried. The proper way to gouge->backstab against a paladin is stand at maximum melee range, backstab and jump away from him at same time. You will backstab him but he won’t be able to hit you at all.

b) Restealth 101

It is a common misconception you have to run very far away from a paladin to restealth. You only need to turn off your auto attacks, and 5 second without him hitting you, and you can restealth. Be very smart about restealth especially against a paladin with consecration.

Basically, as soon as he is out of stunlock, you should turn off your auto attacks. Other great times to do so is when he stuns you with hammer of justice or sleeps you with repetence to heal himself. Turn off your auto attacks, as soon as you recover, you can often restealth in his face with a cheapshot. The perfect time to restealth is just when you are re-entering his melee range. Walk toward him, tap the stealth key then CS just as you enter his melee range, mix it up with gouge and kidney shot, you can play a lot of mind games.

A paladin can use seal of righeousness and judge it on you for a little damage to stop the restealth, but even with talent his judgement is on a 8 second cooldown, not enough to stop restealth completely.

c) Beat his mana bar

The paladin has 45 second cooldown HOJs (35 with PVP glove), and 1 minute repetence. He will probably use blessing of wisdom when his mana get low. How do you beat his mana regen?

It takes practice, but the idea is you are running circles around him to let your energy regen. And keep hitting him with full energy cheapshot, full energy kidneyshot. Every time you lose 1250 health, do a jump away gouge, bandage about 1 yard out of his melee range so he has to walk forward to hit you. Done properly, you can get a nice 5-6 ticks of healing, 1250-1500.

Practice with a) and b), and you will be able to do a lot of damage to him while taking very little of your own.

d) Force A Shield

Regardless of what happens, this is your ultimate goal. There are many ways to force a divine shield. When he is at 50% health, a full energy kidney shot with BS BS CB Evis from seal fate dagger. Turn on BF+SND and restealth CS for a big combo with combat sword. Against a turtling paladin, ultimately you need to do enough damage to force him to shield. I would say you need to be able to drop 40-50% of his health off a full energy kidney shot or full stunlock to win. It sounds difficult but it really isn’t. Get enough damage that mitigate armor, or apply a expose armor before you restealth for a CS combo with seal fate. Ultimately, you need to force him to shield.

When he is shielded, you want to heal yourself. Depend the amount of health you have left. You can either sprint far far away from him (out of the range of everything, holy shock, repetence, you name it) and get a full bandage, hopefully suckering him to chase you a bit and waste a few seconds from his divine shield, or you can turn off auto attacks, get out of combat and start eating a few steps away from him, stealth after you eat. You want to bait him to chase after you while he is shielded.

If he didn’t get the memo that blind breaks blessing of protection and BOPs instead of bubbling, just blind him and you already won (unless he is a dwarf and stoneforms out of it).

e) Kill him in 60 seconds after shield.

A combat build has the easiest time at doing this. A great setup is to build 4-5 combo points, expose armor, blade flurry, slice and dice, vanish CS->AR->SS->Gouge->KS->SSx4->Improved Kick->Evis. Improved kick is awesome at the end of stunlocks which prevents him from being able to HOJ/Repetence, gives you two extra second’s worth of white damage. Equal gear, if you set him up with expose armor ahead of the time, AR should take a 1 hand + shield paladin from 65% to 0%, if you still have your blind, blind in the end and extend the stunlock.

Without AR, it is trickier, but basically whatever you did to force him to shield in phase 1, keep doing it. You really need a high damage build for this, seal fate dagger with 5/5 instant poison talent, 3 piece Bloodfang bonus works great, and the BWL class trinket is also a great asset here. Dual lifesteal enchant, maelstrom, heroism, they all work wonders in a long sustained fight like this.

Part 2: Reckoning Bomb Paladins (2 Hand + Command)

The paladin basically let you hit him and build up 5 charges, he stuns you with HOJ, and unleash 5 hits in one shot on you. It does huge damage, expect 2000-2500 from an arcanite reaper, end game weapons can crack 3000 and sometimes as much as 4000 with procs. It is heavily, heavily luck based. The average reckoning bomb by paladins with high end 2-handers in 1.9 is around 2500-3000.

You need high stamina gear for this, 4500 health is minimum to take on a high end paladin with this build, or the heart of hakkar trinket that increases your armor by 2000. Fortunately, in 1.9 a paladin with this build can no longer get vengeance unless he sacrifices repetence. While he can judge you with seal of command for extra damage, he usually won’t have enough time for a heal if he does that.

However, the most important thing is to not allowing him to build up those 5 charges easily and don’t allow him to HOJ->Reckoning Bomb you comfortably.

Against a paladin that just sits there and wait for 5 charges, flash healing himself, refuse to hit you back until he has his 5 precious charges, do 5 garrotes on him with garrote run away restealth, turn off auto attacks right away. Expose armor. This will waste a bit of mana (not much), but with expose armor, a good stunlock with a high DPS build, dual instant poison, will do tremendous damage. If he is wearing little to no mana gear, consider a rupture kite, garrote rupture repeat, if his mana is going down not up, you are in good shape, force him to hit you with his 2 hander instead of collecting charges.

In 1.9, because you no longer have to save your blind for his BOP (if he divine shields, he can not use BOP for 60 seconds and vice versa), a great new strategy of dealing with reckoning bombs is to blind him right before the stunlock ends. Blind wipes reckoning charges (have not tested vanish->sap, but I believe blind still works in 1.9.3). Rank 14 combat rogue against rank 14 paladin, a stunlock with blind forces them to shield as it is. While they can break the stunlock with PVP trinket, if they break it too early they don’t get enough reckoning charges to HOJ with, if they break it late you already wiped his charges.

As soon as your stunlock is ending, run away from him, let him HOJ you but ideally you want to be stunned a few steps away from him, it will waste 1-2 seconds and the new reckoning bomb has a little bit more delay between each hit, I have noticed it is possible to eat a reckoning bomb and kick/gouge his holy light if he hojed you at 8-10 yard. You can also anticipate the hoj and gouge or improved kick him, it will also shave a few seconds off the clock.

As soon as you are out of HOJ, go for a restealth if possible (see Restealth 101), gouge or KS into a small combo if not, and turn on evasion. You are not going to be very high on health at this point, no reason to take extra damage. Make him repetence you to heal himself, it takes 6 seconds out of your 15 second evasion, sprint him down if he runs away to heal. You need to force a shield with your evasion. Refer to “Force A Shield” and “Kill Him In 60 Seconds After Shield”.

If you didn’t need blind to force him to shield the first time. Use it to wipe his reckoning charges the second time around. A high DPS build is needed. But ultimately, unless he gets some rediculously high damage reckoning bombs via lucky crits/procs, I feel very good about this fight. Yes, you need high stamina, and yes, you need relatively high damage.

Part 3: The New School Holy/Retrib

The rage on test server at the moment and undoubtly will be one of if not the most popular builds. Finally controlled DPS for paladins! Check out this combo.

Auto attack with weapon -> seal of command proc
HOJ
Consecration
Holy Shock
Seal of Command Judgement
Auto attack x 2

This is a devastating combo, a blue paladin did something like 2000-2500 damage to me with it. It is basically reckoning bomb on demand. Fortunately, a paladin with this build has no repetence. As soon as you are out of hand of justice, turn on evasion and rush him down, you should easily force him to shield by the time evasion is over, he has nothing that stops a rogue with evasion after he blows the HOJ.

Refer to “Deliver all of your damage while the paladin is stunned” and “Restealth 101″ for this fight, the difference is evasion is a huge asset, just turn it on after he HOJs and he will be forced to shield.

I don’t see this build as a major problem for a rogue. While it has the offense, without repetence they really have no answer for evasion.

Rogue vs Priest

Difficulty: Easy To Moderate
Poison Choice: Dual Cripple or Cripple + Mindnumb
Spec Favored: Combat

What used to be one of, if not the hardest matchups for all non-UD rogues turned into a joke with the introduction of the PVP trinket. There is no reason a rogue should lose a series to an equally geared priest UNLESS he is Undead and has devouring plague.

Yet countless rogues struggle in this matchup, especially subtlety rogues. What you need to understand is this is a sustained DPS fight, not a 2-3 shot fight, especially if you are up against a shadow priest in shadowform. The most important asset a rogue has in this matchup yet almost nobody use, is expose armor.

You see with innerfire a priest has massive damage reduction. Base armor + innerfire + shadowform, you are looking at the same damage reduction of a 2 hand epic warrior in zerker stance. You are NOT fighting cloth, you are fighting high end mail / low end plate.

The beauty is a priest may have 38% damage reduction, but 23% of it will come from armor. A 5 CP 3/3 expose armor on a warrior will reduce his reduction by 15%, on a priest, it is the entire 23%. Armor value has heavy diminishing effect at high end, it is much better to remove 2000 armor from a 1800 armor target, than 2000 armor from a 4500 armor target.

Opener:

A smart priest will trinket the opening cheapshot. Cheese demonstrated that by trinketing the CS, I usually don’t have time to apply cripple poison on him, he can fear and start running away from me, even when I trinket the fear, as long as he gets distance, he can kite me with DOT and buy time for the second fear. The second fear is something you must avoid at all costs. DOT kite is very, very powerful. A fear not trinketed, the priest will DOT and run away, by the time you catchup with him, he already burned 15 of the 26 second cooldown between fears, you only have 16 seconds to do damage which is just not enough.

For seal fate dagger or 21/8/22 I recommend ambush ->gouge. Although CS->Gouge->BS is a great alternative. You want to gouge him right after he trinkets the stun, you want to get your free combo point early. Once you trinket his fear you do not want to waste any time. With combat spec I improved kick->SS->gouge->BF->AR->vanish->CS. It is a great idea to turn on your BF and AR during the gouge so once you trinket the fear you expose armor start unload right away.

Either way, build up 4-5 combo points and expose armor. From there you must trinket his fear as soon as it lands (the IOTH mod helps greatly). If you get feared for even 2-3 seconds, he already gained space and can start kiting, especially if he gets a blackout proc.

Unload your damage, but don’t overuse your energy, you always want to have enough for a kick. Avoid use gouge, kidney shot at all costs (but of course, if you have to stop a flash heal, so be it), I sometimes eat a mind blast just so I can evis instead of kidney shot. This is a DPS fight, you have 26 seconds against a 0 armor target or 15% damage reduction target, you must kill him before he fears you again. High level play, once the second fear comes out, it is GG.

Very few priests can survive a 4-5 point expose armor, trinket fear, and adrenaline rush. Toss in a blade flurry and slice and dice. I would say alliance priests have no chance against this combo. With seal fate dagger it is closer unless you use tea, build up to another 4-5 CP and CB evis on a fully exposed priest works wonders.

Against Blackout Proc:

Blackout procs is what priests need to win this matchup. Sometimes you get chain procs and there is nothing you can do. If a blackout procs and the priest is not crippled, he can start running away, activate sprint immediately and chase him down. If you are using dagger spec SS him until cripple procs, you absolutely positively can not allow him to kite you off successful blackout procs, it is the fastest way to lose this fight.

Against Holy Priests:

Make sure you always save enough energy to kick his heals. Mind numbing on offhand helps although I still prefer dual cripple poison since DOT kiting off blackout when cripple doesn’t proc is far more dangerous than say, late to kick a heal.

Against Shadow Priests:

Depend on the amount of health you and him have left, sometimes it is better to take the mind blast and use every bit of energy to kill him. I really hate to blow 5 combo points on a KS in this fight unless he is really low on health and I can sense a fear coming.

Against Devouring Plague:

With +damage gear, this ability can easily do 1500 damage and heal for 1500, it is a 3000 damage swing. This is the reason why Undead Shadow Priests are almost impossible to beat for warriors at equal gear. This is also the reason why other than adrenaline rush and thistle tea, it is almost impossible for a rogue to do enough damage to kill fully decked out UD shadow priests. Hopefully when they rebalance the racials, this will be tuned down. It is too powerful an ability for such a short cooldown. Go adrenaline rush if you must defeat such a priest, it is almost the only way. Even then it is a very close call.

Fortunately, if you are an Undead Rogue yourself, you have two fear breakers, basically making it extremely hard for the priest to win. I don’t think any priest can last to a third fear against a decked out rogue. If you are a dwarf rogue you can also remove devouring plague with stoneform, and an Undead Shadowpriest turns into an alliance priest in that scenario, very easily beaten.

Stun Resistance:

99% of the priests take the 15% talent. Just use kick, stunlock is not the answer in this fight. It is very difficult to do enough damage via stunlock and they have trinket to break it anyway.

Salvage a bad situation:

It is possible to KS->Gouge->Blind the priest as the DOT is running out, although the good ones will usually refresh it. Even then, blind->bandage only wins if the priest is already very low on health and mana. A priest with 50% health 50% mana will still win the fight even if you get off a blind/bandage. Fear, heal, DOT, kite, fear again, you get the idea.

Overall:

This is a pretty easy fight for adrenaline rush rogues. A moderate fight for seal fate dagger rogues, and can be tough if you are playing a subtlety spec that lacks in DPS. Undead racial makes it extremely difficult, but still very winnable.

One of the simplest fights with very little random variables other than blackout procs