Guide to Rogue PvP Strategies

Rogue vs Warrior

Difficulty: Moderate to Hard (Depend on Race)
Poison Choice: Dual Cripple
Spec Favored: Combat

Rogue vs Warrior is finesse vs power, it is a textbook matchup that directly tells me how good a rogue is. For me, in a full cooldown fight, a rogue should win more than it loses in this matchup against most races. You really need to be able to beat the cookie cutter 31/20 warriors at least 50% of the times before you can claim you understand how a rogue plays.

Basic Strategies:

There are three ways to open against a warrior, rupture kite, expose armor, or zero cooldown.

The classic rupture kite, usually done with a hemo spec with improved rupture, is CS->Hemo->Hemo->Rupture. The rogue will sprint, do the opener, and vanish as he sprints out of warrior’s shout range. A 5 point rupture with talent will do 1200 damage (1300+ if the warrior is in zerker stance as they usually are). The rogue comes back in for a CS Hemo CB Evis right as rupture wears off. And he can either blind for a third opener or just turn on evasion and finish the warrior off (white hits + yellow hits + rupture damage will combine for a good 3000 on plate even with mediocre weapons, 3500-4000 if he is in zerker stance and you have top weapons). Be sure to rupture at maximum melee range so as soon as you rupture you are out of the range of a possible rend or hamstring. Try to wait at least 15 seconds after the first CS to avoid diminishing returns. Evasion in the end is extremely beneficial, if he is in zerker stance he has to switch to battle stance and give up a ton of rage.

The expose armor is basically the same idea. CS->BS->Expose or CS->SS->Expose, followed by vanish and reopen, or just AR+Evasion and unload. It is more commonly used with the combat spec, expose armor into AR + Evasion is simply devastating, even AR + Evasion alone can defeat most warriors, expose armor makes it even easier, add a BF and SND and the warrior will feel like he is cloth if he is in zerker stance.

Last but not least is my zero cooldown strategy against warriors. Generally speaking, save for a dodged/parried kidney shot, or the warrior uses his PVP trinket, I really don’t need cooldown to beat most high end warriors those days save for certain racials. It works like this:

1) Open with CS->SS->SS or CS->BS->SS depend on your spec, make sure you are at maximum melee range when you do the final hit so you are out of his range as soon as he is out of stun.

2) Back off, allow your energy to recover, try to stay within the intercept range (8 yard) but outside of his melee range (5 yard). This is difficult to do, just try to stay away as long as you can, shoot him with bow, bait an intercept. A good warrior will always intercept you as fast as he can, but you want to delay it as long as you can to get back as much energy as possible since after the opener your energy is at zero.

3) Kidney shot him after he intercepts you, unload on him, and get out of melee range again. Try to jump through him and turn around for a kidney shot as if you are backstabbing him to avoid dodge/parry. A kidney shot with a nearly full bar of energy is EXTREMELY damaging. You basically get to unload a bar and half’s worth of energy thanks to regen and relentless while he is stunned. Get out of his range again before he is out of kidney shot stun, don’t be greedy and eat an enraged MS crit as you are trying to get out of the way.

4) Cripple poison is a stronger snare than hamstring. As long as you are out of melee range, your energy is filling up, his rage won’t be. It is extremely beneficial. Go for a restealth CS, or wait for your next kidney shot, and you should finish him off on the next stun. The entire strategy relies on hitting him only when your energy is high and he is stunned whenever you get into melee range. Done properly, other than the intercept, he shouldn’t land any real hits on you.

Abilities To Use:

1) Evasion. If ANY rogue tells you evasion is bad vs warriors, he simply has no clue how this matchup works. Overpower has a 6 second cooldown, you will take far less damage with evasion on and avoid MS, white damage, rend, hamstring than without evasion. The perfect time to use it is when he is in zerker stance and has yet to land a hit on you (a very common situation as most warriors start the fight in zerker stance), this forces him to give up most of his rage and switch to battle stance just so he can overpower you. Usually it takes them a second or two before they realize you just turned on evasion, and you take even less damage. Evasion also kills a warrior’s rage generation. He can not get rage from overpower, his white hits all get dodged so the only rage he gets is from your damage. Again, don’t use this when your health is low, use it before he touchs you and you can avoid a lot of damage. Even without evasion the chance of getting overpowered in the fight is very high, why not dodge everything else?

2) Kidney Shot – The warrior killer. Contrary to popular belief, a DPS warrior’s dodge/parry is not very high. We are talking about 20% chance combined at best (10% dodge and 10% parry). For every 25 defense they also get 1% additional dodge/parry, plus 1% higher chance for you to miss. Precision from combat tree and +to hit items are invaluable in this matchup. Never use your kidney shot when you are low on energy (CS->BS->KS is a retarded opener against warriors unless you plan to thistle tea because you basically wasted your KS for no damage especially if relentless doesn’t proc). Try your best to save this for his intercept. Once he uses his intercept, with cripple poison you can stay out of his range for either a restealth or at very least get your energy back.

3) Blind – Once again, extremely valuable, make sure you turn on debuff duration. It is very possible to blind->bandage off a connected gouge or kidney shot as those DOTS run out. With evasion, only DOT he can land on you is deep wound, a very common technique is evasion, gouge when 5 second left on overpower deep wound, blind bandage. He has to be in battle stance to overpower, take advantage of it and gouge->blind.

Abilities To Watch Out For

Berzerker Rage – SpellAlert will tell you when he has this up and when this fades away. Do not gouge him if he hasn’t used this. Gouge is an extremely valuable tool in this matchup especially for a dagger rogue. It buys time for your kidney shot to come back, it buys time for deep wounds and rend to wear off so you can blind->bandage. Only use gouge when you see his berzerker rage fades away OR when he shifts out of zerker stance to overpower you through evasion. When you backstab after a gouge, again, make sure you are at maximum melee distance, so as soon as you backstab, you are out of his range.

PVP Trinket – Some warriors use it on your cheapshot, in that case just kidney shot. The smart warriors will save it for your kidney shot, in that case a vanish CS usually allows you to stun him again and get out of melee range while he is crippled. Or blind him and reset the fight. Or gouge him and back off. Or turn on evasion and tank him with AR. A lot of choices, how you handle his trinket is the key to winning this fight in high level play.

Intimidating Shout – Warrior’s answer to AR + Evasion. They can get a bandage and restart the fight with a charge. Make sure you trinket this. Your PVP trinket stops this cold.

Hamstring – Cripple poison is the stronger snare. And vanish does remove this if you are desperate to get out of his range. If you are on a dagger spec and a warrior hamstrings, SS with dagger to coat him with cripple and get out of the melee range until your KS/Gouge/energy come back.

Piercing Howl – Cripple poison, once again, is the stronger snare. This along with demoralizing shout are warrior’s counters to restealth. You want to “hide” your restealth as much as possible. Don’t run away and restealth. Walk toward him and restealth right before you enter melee range so he doesn’t have time to shout you out of it.

If you are heavy subtlety, go with the rupture kite strategy. It is very easy to do and very hard to counter. I have seen countless full epic warriors brought down to their knees by blue hemo rogues.

If you are heavy combat, consider expose armor into AR + Evasion. Although zero cooldown is extremely strong as well. I usually open with zero cooldown and only use cooldowns if the warrior dodge/parry/trinket my kidney shot.

If you are seal fate dagger, I would always open with zero cooldown and use your cooldowns if the warrior dodge/parry/trinket your kidney shot. As a dagger spec, hamstring makes it extremely difficult to backstab him without stunning, you really have to stay away until either gouge or kidney shot is available. A great way to counter a broken kidney shot is turn on evasion right away, and force him to switch into battle stance, gouge -> backstab and you are out of range again.

Racials:

Human warriors have perception. Be sure to stay far far away for 20 seconds and watch spellalert. Human, night elf, undead and troll warriors are easiest to beat.

Tauren warriors have warstomp, which is evasion killer. They can stomp to stun you and get off a guaranteed MS before you are out of stun. Try to bait a warstomp by moving your feet, or be ready to blow a cooldown.

Dwarf warriors have stoneform. Again, try to bait this with cripple poison and keep away. You will have to use cooldowns. AR + Evasion is the best way to defeat a dwarf warrior. Stoneform removes cripple poison and blind. If you want to bandage in the fight you must bait him to use stone form earlier in the match. Gnome warriors can also remove cripple poison with escape artist in same fashion although they can not be immune to it like Dwarfs can nor break blind.

Orc warriors are hardest. Stun resist is heavily luck dependent. There are fights a Orc warrior feels like a human warrior and eat all of my stuns, there are fights they seem to be immune to my stuns. Again, expose armor followed by AR + Evasion makes it easy, but other strategies are also viable depend on the roll of the dice.

Protection Warriors:

They have stun resist and heavy armor and will fight you in defensive stance, don’t bother with expose armor since at best a 5 point 3/3 expose armor removes his shield. You need the combo points for kidney shot. The in and out approach is amazing against protection warriors because when they do get to hit you, they do relatively very little damage.

Abuse gouge and kidney shot, you should play it like an extended fight with zero cooldown strategy. CS BS SS, back off, kidney shot, BS BS, back off, gouge->backstab, back off etc. Do understand they have high defense, they have stun resist via talents, you will inevitably fail some of your gouges and kidney shots, that is when you may need to use a cooldown or two. Because of last stand, you will usually need to blind bandage, it is a long fight, just wait until rend is about to wear off (use gouge and kidney shot to buy time if you need to), blind and get a full bandage. Don’t toe to toe him, cripple him and run away until either gouge or KS is available.

Rogue vs Mage

Difficulty: Easy To Moderate (Depend on Spec)
Poison Choice: Dual Cripple
Spec favored: 21/8/22

If rogue vs warrior is bread, rogue vs mage is butter. Instead of the controlling, stunlocking style in rogue vs warrior, this is a very fast paced fight, one of the few that requires some actual reflex and fast clicking on both sides. I once said I can tell how good a rogue is just by watching him fight a few warriors and mages, and I still believe in that statement. Rogue vs Mage is the closest thing in this game that can be called skill for both classes.

The opener:

The mage can jump around like an idiot spamming AOEs. You can distract him and some of the amatuer mages blink when you distract them cause their finger is so close to the blink key, quite funny. Anyhow, I always sprint and charge in for my opener, it is the best way to get it off during the universal cooldown between AOEs.

Seal Fate Dagger And 21/8/22 – Ambush if possible, CS if not. Go for a gouge right after.

CB/Prep/Hemo – CS->Gouge

Combat – Improved kick -> SS -> Gouge or just improved kick -> SS -> SS

A gouge right after the opener is ideal. With sprint it isn’t very difficult to land. Many times they will blink but get gouged at same time, so they land in the destination gouged, it is what I would call a perfect start and one that is extremely difficult for the mage to overcome.

Not only it is a free combo point it gives you energy back for a backstab if you are specced for dagger, or a SS and two more white hits, it also positions you perfectly. You will stand right behind him and sprint forward as soon as you hit him out of gouge. Most of the mages will blink as soon as they are out of gouge, and that is where you catch him with a kidney shot or kick.

If the gouge didn’t land, he blinked and you can not find him right away, vanish. You never ever want to allow a sheep at any point during the match. A mage will sheep, bandage, sheep, mana regen, and you wasted your cooldowns and he is at full health near full mana, it is a very bad situation. A sheep in high level play is GG every time. Vanish and sprint to him for a CS, don’t waste time looking for an ambush since he should be spamming AOEs at this point. If you have cold blood, activate it before you CS him and slam an evis in his face as soon as he is CSed, hopefully before he ice blocks.

Against frost nova, blind restealth ambush or blind restealth improved kick is the best opener. You never want to use your vanish on his frost nova because you need it for his blink.

Against Fire and Arcane Mages (POM Sheep):

An easy fight. Make sure you have the PVP trinket equipped. Many fire mages love to POM sheep. Simply trinket it and continue. A mage without ice block is very easy to beat if you manage your cooldowns properly. Go for a Vanish -> Sprint -> CS or Sprint -> KS after he blinks and it is already GG. Blind if he novas. You simply have too many cooldowns to blow here.

Against Ice Block:

Majority of the high end PVP mages are frost and this is why. While a fire mage is hopeless when you get in his face after blink, a frost mage can simply ice block again. Stand behind him and mash backstab or SS, and be ready to blind as soon as he is out of ice block, or be ready to run after him if he blinks forward, most mages come out of ice block with a frost nova.

Against Cold Snap:

You need preparation, a second set of nova and ice block is too much to overcome if the mage plays his card right. Fortunately, a mage can not activate cold snap during blind to break it, so I have defeated many frost mages before they had a chance to cold snap. High level play however you just don’t have enough cooldowns to beat his 10 minute timer without your own.

Against Frostbite:

Treat it like frost nova. Nasty proc when it happens, you pretty much have to use a prep build if a frost mage uses this.

Tips:

1) Always try to blind first when you get novaed. Vanish is too precious in this fight, you need to save it for his blink. You have to be fast because the mage would try to move out of blind range after he novas you.

2) Always try to land a gouge during the initial opener. This allows you to position yourself perfectly to sprint after him when he blinks.

3) Every single second is precious after he blinks. Don’t waste time to position for an ambush. Go in for a CS.

4) Activate cold blood right before you evis. Do activate cold blood while you are stealthed if you plan to CS->CB Evis. Good mages will ice block as soon as they hear the sound of CB and make you waste it. Make sure you hotkey CB.

5) Never ever allow a sheep. A rogue without cooldowns against a full health full mana mage is pure slaughter, that is exactly what it is if you get sheeped. You are a warrior without intercept in that scenario.

6) A combat rogue with improved kick is devastating for mages. You should never CS if kick is available. 2 second silence is as good as 2 second stun except it costs 25 energy and has a 10 second cooldown. Open with kick, SS gouge SS (that is 2 SS and 4 white hits), then sprint to him for another kick or ks. It is easy to do, very hard to stop.

7) This is a battle of cooldowns. Being able to save a vanish is huge. Against a mage without POM, he blinks, you see where he is, you sprint to him, he sheeps you right as you get in his face, you trinket right away and you saved a vanish. The PVP trinket is only useful if you are sheeped next to him, or you can trinket when he bandages himself and get a restealth to boot. You want to use your trinket to save yourself a vanish/blind, but you always want to save your trinket if he has POM.

Salvage a sheep:

You are sheeped and out of cooldowns, what to do? Thankfully the mage should be low on health and mana at this point. If you have trinket left, use the trinket when he bandages and try to get a restealth. You stop his bandage and you still have a chance to win.

Be ready to restealth if sheep breaks early. The second and third sheep especially are on diminishing returns, they tend to break early. Mash stealth if he is casting a big spell. There are many times I am out of the sheep right before the spell leaves his hand and I avoid the damage. In world PVP, a good way is to run the opposite direction and try to get a restealth off. A mage usually try to cast his spell from maximum distance and even with blink he may not be able to catch up with you, especially if he is fire.

Gouge -> Bandage. With high stamina and against mages who are not flawless on their kiting, or when you get lucky resists, it is very possible even with a successful sheep you can come back to win it. Gouge bandage when you get low and you can get lucky crits to squeeze out some wins.

Having said that, getting sheeped by a mage is like getting opened on by a top rogue, you are probably going to lose, it is something you need to avoid at all costs.

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

Rogue vs Druid

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
Poison Choice: Instant + Cripple or Dual Instant
Spec Favored: Combat or CB/Prep/Hemo

One of the more interesting fights. Like Paladin and to a lesser extent shamans, a druid can play different styles as a hybrid class. Generally speaking, a druid will either try to tank you in bear form, or kite you with roots and dots, the good ones will do a mixture of both.

The opener:

The common style of druids is go into bear form, do a demoralizing shout at start, try to avoid if you can and open with CS. Try to always open with CS SS Gouge if at all possible, the reason is many PVP druids have the nature’s grasp talent, which roots you for a brief time. CS SS Gouge followed by KS usually outlast those roots, however in rare occassions it won’t, the druid may get fancy and go into human form to cast entangled root, blind immediately and it is usually GG. Either way, always assume your opponent has nature’s grasp and use a long, extended stunlock to outlast it. You do not want to blow a vanish on nature’s grasp.

Against Bearform:

Expose armor doesn’t really do much against someone with a lot of armor items. A druid can go over 10K armor easily, lowering him to 7500 doesn’t accomplish all that much. This is one of the few matchups I actually use slice and dice. Coupled with instant poison (especially if you have talents for it), lifesteal, and maelstrom, it can be a lot of unmitigated damage. Having said that, expose armor does work wonders against druids that love to shift to human form (catching them in human form with a blind is win), and I only need a 1-2 point slice and dice to keep it going anyway. If there is no nature’s grasp, I generally save the kidney shot for later use and expose armor instead.

With expose armor, slice and dice (blade flurry if you are combat), you will be doing very good damage against the bearform, especially with instant poison. Here is where it gets complex, you want to have at least 40 energy in your bar at all times. Never allow your energy to deplete completely, unable to punish a shape change. You also want 2-3 combo points on him at all times. If a druid has the talent that allows him to cast faire fire in bearform, you simply must save some points for a kidney shot to do any real damage, vanish CS is not an option.

His health is going down, you are taking some damage. There are many things you can do to improve your success against bear form. If he is crippled by offhand poison, step back, let your energy recharge, but keep yourself in blind range, he will feral charge if he has it, be ready to gouge the feral charge, it roots you but doesn’t stun you. Bandage! Gouge->Bandage very early, as soon as you lose 1250 health, gouge, jump away, bandage. Many druids have this tendency to go human form as soon as you are out of melee range, blind and GG. Bait them, if he just hit your bandage while still in bear form, no problem, you got some health back, fight on. Remember to never be more than one tick away from blind / kidney shot, always leave some energy and some combo points if possible.

His health will go down at a faster rate than yours (equal gear of course). And the druid will:

Bash -> Human Form

The most common technique. Now as a rogue you have at least 30% chance to dodge, parry, or he simply miss the bash. This ability is on a 1 minute cooldown. If you dodge/parry it, you are at a huge advantage. Just tank him until he gets low when he has to get to human form without stunning you first, stunlock and it is over.

If you are playing a cb/prep/hemo build, and have points invested into instant poison or expose armor, and your opponent is not wearing specialized feral armor (you can tell by the amount of damage he takes off the opening stunlock) that gives him something like 12K armor, consider double evasion and rush him down. Evasion, hemo for CB evis, prep, evasion again, force him to go into human form without bashing you, blind and it is usually GG. You have to be fast and blind as soon as you see him going human form. Works extremely well if you have the class trinket from BWL and talents in instant poison.

However, with high end gear and frenzied regeneration, it is not always possible to kill a bear druid in 30 seconds worth of evasion. What to do? If the druid you are fighting is trying to play the outlast game, he will wait until his health is at around 50% before bashing and going into human form for a heal. At 50%, turn on evasion, tank him out, right before evasion ends, blind restealth or KS AR, a big combo usually wins it. This is a very common method to fight druids for combat rogues, actually killing the druid in bear form, never allowing him to go caster form.

A Druid in Human Form While You Are Not Stunned

Be quick on a kidney shot if possible and force him to trinket, hopefully before he casts abolish poison. If he is out of 5 yard try a blind. It is completely possible to catch a druid human form -> NS and blind him right before the heal comes out. If he still has expose armor debuff on him it is GG.

A Druid in Human Form While You Are Stunned

This will happen all the times against top players. He bashed you before/after you evasion. If he roots, sprint first, the vanish to break initial root, go for a KS or Blind, if he didn’t fairy fire you, a CS on caster form usually wins it. Always go for a blind, gouge or kidney shot, properly linked you can do a ton of damage to a druid in caster form.

The Druid Survived Your Blind/KS

There are many ways a druid can survive your blind/KS. He abolish poison before you blinded. He trinketed your kidney shot and CS is not an option because you are faire fired. He got off an NS heal with 5% health left from your stunlock. Either way, he is healed and pops back in bear form.

What to do? Play the outlast game. Gouge bandage if you haven’t done so, whenever you are not dotted. Work him down. Save energy and combo points. Things like dual lifesteal and heroism, bloodfang 8 piece, they are fantastic in this fight. He will have to eventually bash again and again, with a high chance to dodge / parry, it is GG if it misses.

If a druid stuns you, roots you and run away, shoot him with your bow. Every bit of damage adds up. Remember 400 damage you dealt to caster form takes 800 damage to do to the same to bearform

Racials:

Taurens are extremely good at surviving your blind stunlock. Trinket, warstomp, guaranteed heal. You have to consider outlasting them. Gnome rogues have escape artist which is very useful in this fight.

Tips:

1) Once again, never completely use up your energy. A good druid can pop out to human form as soon as he sees your energy hits zero, remember shape transformation removes all snares, he can be out of melee range, DOT, and change back to bear form. Be ready to sprint and blind if it happens.

2) Gouge bandage is extremely useful. Do what I call a fade away gouge. Jump backward while you gouge, bandage when you are just right outside of his melee range. He has to walk forward to hit you which usually gives you another tick for 250 health, or he can be baited into human form and allow you to unload.

3) Maximize your damage for human form. Save your cooldowns, CB, AR etc for this form unless he is low on health and you want to do a evasion into stunlock thing.

Cat Druids:

A night elf druid with MOD 5 (don’t laugh, it is their equivalent) and the talent to cast faire fire in cat form, it is almost like looking for another rogue, you search for each other in the dark. Faire fire definitely has advantage here over CS being a ranged special. Don’t waste your blind, you have no combo point, you can not restealth or vanish CS, you won’t be able to do any real damage.

A cat druid plays like a rogue and they have their own form of rupture kiting. Root, DOT, nuke run away. You need high stamina to outlast them, bow them whenever they root you if possible go for a blind bandage stunlock when DOT wears off, chase them down with sprint at right times. Remember it is very difficult for a druid to kill you with spells and keep himself alive with a single bar of mana. A blind and bandage at right time usually wins it.

Their margin of error is very slim with cat form. Be patient, use your KS and Blind properly and you will win, be aware of the time left on faire fire and moon fire at all times.

Conclusion:

Proper cooldown management is the key of winning this fight. Combat rogues can choose to overpower the druid and kill it in bear form. Seal fate dagger rogue can often deliver the burst damage neccessary off a blind or kidney shot in human form. Prep rogues have enough cooldowns to play the outlast game or even double evasion, cooldown spam to rush it down.

Rogue vs Warlock

Difficulty: Easy
Poison Choice: Dual Cripple or Cripple + Mind Numbing
Spec favored: Seal Fate Dagger vs Succubus, Combat vs Everyone Else

Death coil now makes warlocks a very difficult opponent . . . if you don’t use PVP trinket. Instead of toying with them like you used to, you actually have to blow your PVP trinket.

Against Imp, Void Walker, & Felhunter Warlocks:

Stunlock. Refer to the combos in rogue vs rogue. This is the only other matchup where stunlock is dominant. Because you have a pet hitting you, you have to blow a vanish->CS instead of restealth, but the actual sequence is the same.

A warlock with felhunter, refer to world of roguecraft 2, stay away, sprint in for your opener. He has very little time to stop your opener, you should still land it especially if you distract him a bit and go from behind.

A full stunlock with blind will kill all but the heaviest staminaed warlocks (remember a Dalrend rogue can do 5000 damage to me with hemo in a single combo, with better gear it really isn’t hard to do it on cloth even if the warlock has 6000 health self buffed).

There is always a chance for him to coil you with 10-20% health left. Just sprint back to him for the kill, trinket if he fears. Without the PVP trinket a fear into DOT is devastating, a warlock’s DPS is extremely high since they shortened the duration but increased the damage per tick of their DOTs.

Against Soul Link warlocks with void walker:

The new soul link is only 30% reduction, and a warlock that deep in demonology lacks damage compared to their counterparts. I prefer to expose armor on those warlocks before applying the full stunlock. This is a DPS fight, AR and Seal Fate Dagger are usually much better choices than subtlety.

Against Succubus warlock:

A classic matchup ruined with PVP trinket and repeated nerf on fear/seduce. Ambush -> Backstab is clearly the opener of choice here, if you don’t have 120 energy ambush->rupture->SS. For a combat spec open with garrote -> SS. You will get seduced , a DOT on him will prevent bandaging. Do not use your trinket on the initial seduce.

He will curse you and soul fire or shadow bolt. Depend on positioning you have many choices.

1) If he is amatuer and doesn’t reinvis his succubus. You can blind warlock, kill succubus, or blind succubus, kill warlock.

2) If he is pro and reinvised his succubus, and he stands very far away from the succubus. Vanish and go for a second opener. A seduce lock won’t DOT you until the end so you can get a second opener safely. Trinket the second seduce and it is GG.

3) His third seduce or coil->fear is heavily diminished. You can blind or gouge him if you anticipate the third seduce. Either way it shouldn’t be a real threat.

Against Major Health Stone:

Depend on your damage output, you may need to thistle tea to counter this. A rogue can do far more damage with a tea than a warlock can heal with health stone.

Rogue vs Shaman

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

Many rogues have problems with shamans. On the surface this is a very difficult matchup but this is a situation where the shaman actually gets weaker as we go into full epic vs full epic. A rogue can concentrate on two of the five stats, AGI and STAM and get great results. A shaman, both their PVP set and Tier 1/2 is somewhat spread across all five stats. Being a hybrid class they grow weaker as the specialized classes become more dominant at what they do, jack of all trades and master of none doesn’t quite cut it.

The sure fire anti-shaman build, full combat:

Literally every single major feature of the combat build is shaman killer. Riposte removes their melee weapons and does good damage as they try to swing their little one hander at you. Improved kick is at its best stopping lesser healing waves. Blade flurry is absolutely beautiful as it kills every single totem around you. Adrenaline Rush gives you the DPS that a shaman can’t withstand especially if you expose armor first.

Open with something like CS->SS->Gouge, turn on adrenaline rush, blade flurry, expose armor, a 1-2 CP slice and dice, and just rush him down. Turn on evasion to take his melee damage out of the equation. Vanish CS to clear frost shock and stay glued to him, it is very easy to do and very hard for the shaman to counter. However, refer to the tips and strategies for other builds.

With other builds it is quite a bit more complicated, although the strategies still apply.

Opener:

Consider sap -> kill totems, only the first pulse from earthbind totem destealths you, sap, kill all totems, restealth for an opener. Remember sap is on the same diminishing return as gouge.

You don’t neccessarily have to open with CS, a good ambush->gouge->backstab is fine if you want to save your vanish CS for later use.

Meleeing The Shaman:

Windfury hurts, what to do? It is called evasion. I am shocked how many rogues (including myself) simply forgot a good chunk of a shaman’s damage comes from melee, especially their burst damage, there is no excuse not to use evasion when you are in their face.

Mix up gouge and kidney shot as usual if you are a dagger build. Always save energy for a kick, it is difficult to kick lesser healing waves with its one second cast, but kicking just one of those shuts down his nature school and it is highly beneficial.

THE MOST IMPORTANT KEY OF WINNING THIS FIGHT:

Get off a blind->bandage. A good shaman (Tauren especially) will always get off the NS heal with warstomp. For you to win, a successful bandage is key. You need to be able to read his totems at a glance. The best way to do bandage is gouge (be ware of diminishing returns, you want a nice, clean, undiminished gouge. This is one of the few fights I actually like to open with CS BS KS if playing a seal fate dagger build, not only it baits them to use the PVP trinket right away, it also gives me a clean gouge for use later. Gouge, kill totem, blind shaman, very easy. If he dodges/parries your gouge (shaman don’t really have high dodge/parry), kill the totem and blind him manually. The poison cleansing totem is the most important totem, followed by searing totem, you need to be aware of the position of those two totems at all times. It takes a little practice but basically you must kill the poison totem before you blind him, a full bandage and restealth CS is usually GG.

Stay In Melee Range:

A good shaman will always, always try to kite you. They will also try to position themselve away from the poison totem so you can not kill it easily. Don’t forget you can use your ranged attack to kill the totem while he is gouged. Sprint allows you to chase him down. Vanish clears earthbind snare and frost shock snare. Dual cripple is a must to reapply the snare. Proper use of gouge and kidney shot also allows you to stay close to him.

A 50% health shaman is a dead shaman.

If he already blew his PVP trinket and your have a full energy stunlock ready. Save your cold blood eviscerate as a finisher. If you already applied expose armor to remove his shield, it is even better. A shaman basically has hunter armor but can’t kite nearly as well.

Conclusion:

Whether it be in rogue PVP videos and my own experience against them, IMO both prep rogues and combat rogues beat shamans very easily. Too many cooldowns, too much damage, properly used, they really have no chance. Probably the most overrated class. Seal fate dagger takes most effort in this matchup but it is still very winnable.

I have yet to make a video against shamans because I have yet to find someone who is truly worthy of a video. Being alliance, I definitely don’t know this class as well as I do know the paladins. I will be updating this section in the future if some shaman changes my opinion of this matchup.

Rogue vs Hunter

Difficulty: Hard To Impossible (Depend on Race)
Poison Choice: Dual Cripple
Spec Favored: CB/Prep/Hemo or Combat

Every class has a hard to impossible 1v1 matchup. Warriors have frost mages and paladins (and hunters but that is another story), hunters have frost mages and druids, and for rogues, thankfully, we only really have hunters on the “next to impossible” list. In a matchup like this, literally everything has to go right for you to win, all the random rolls have to work in your favor, blind has to land, cripple poison has to be applied and reapplied, and so forth.

Prep IMO is a must against hunters. 2 set of timers definitely gives you a little bit bigger margin for error. Don’t bother with daggers in this fight, if you are seal fate dagger, this is the time to equip a sword.

Part 1: The Freezing Trap

Anyone who has been around hunters know this drill. The hunter stands (or dances around) his trap, the entire area is flared. Trap is 1 minute duration with 15 second recast, flare is 30 second duration with 15 second recast. Don’t even try to disarm the trap or anything like that unless he is a total newbie and doesn’t flare the area. You can not disarm that trap in any way against even an average player.

If the hunter is standing on the trap like an idiot as the duel counts down:

Stealth next to him and mash sap, you will sap him and be frozen at exact same time, which is a very good start. Unfortunately, this will work at best only once against even newbies, the next time he can simply dance around the trap, you don’t sap him the precise second the duel starts, you get frozen.

Learn the trap dance

It is a common misconception that you can not hit the hunter when he is standing on top of the trap. The key to having any chance of winning this fight is to fight him around the trap without getting frozen. It is completely possible to hit the hunter without getting frozen even if he is standing right on the trap. It takes a lot of patience and finesse, but it can be done. Circle strafe around the trap and position the hunter between yourself and the trap, this way he can not scattershot you into the trap. Yes, it takes a lot more skill on the rogue’s side to hit the hunter without getting frozen, but that is what hard matchups are, you have to outplay them. Obviously, lag, uneven terrain, all affect your performance doing this, but trap dance is a must against hunters. Don’t do this outside of IF where it is significantly lagged and extremely difficult to dance around a trap, do it somewhere with less lag and your performance will improve.

Tip: Turn on your auto attacks and move yourself around the trap, as soon as you are in range you will hit him automatically. It is much safer than mashing SS as you move around the trap.

The best of the best hunters will turn on AOTC and dance with you. Throwing dagger is a good counter for this. Unlike ranged weapons, throwing daggers leave your hand almost instantly, use it to your advantage. You can use a sprint here as well to GREATLY improve your chance around the trap if you are prep spec. Again, practice makes perfect.

You will never ever actually kill a hunter with trap dance alone, what you want is force them to get off the trap a little bit, make them dance with you around the trap. Make them try to multishot you by leaving the trap. And more importantly, drag it out until flare wears off. A few things will happen.

1) The hunter strayed away from his trap for a few yards so he can get off a multishot before he jumps back into the trap.

Blind bandage restealth CS. Don’t blind until flare wears off. Don’t jump into the fight right away when he flares when the duel starts, wait about 10 seconds after he flares then engage him. This way if you have danced with him for 10-15 more seconds, hopefully he didn’t refresh his flare and you can get off an opener. An opener is by no means a guaranteed win when the hunter has scattershot, PVP trinket and deterrence, but it does help quite a bit to trade your blind for one of their 5 minute cooldowns early.

Unfortunately, hunters have similar dodge/parry of rogues, and if your blind doesn’t land it is almost GG. If it does land you are at best 50-50, that is what a hard matchup is, your margin of error is far less than theirs.

2) The hunter scattershots you into the trap. Or the hunter scattershots and FD->Trap you.

All is not lost, scatter shot is on the same diminishing return of freezing trap, his second trap will be very short in duration. This is the opener you want.

3) You eat the trap without him blowing scattershot.

It is very ugly, that is the type of start you want to avoid at all costs.

Part 2: You are frozen and the hunter is at range with a second trap.

More often than not, you will usually end up in this situation. The hunter is going to aimshot you, if he gets a crit it would be very very hard to come back but fortunately, their crit % is not that high. Mash the restealth key since sometimes the trap does break early (especially if you already ate scattershot) and you can avoid his aimed shot but of course eats rest of the hits.

Sprint toward him (if you didn’t use sprint in part 1), now if he already used scatter shot before he trapped you in part 1, blind him and walk into the trap, you will recover before he does because of diminishing returns. If he has a frost trap instead of freezing trap, blind him, gouge pet, bandage. Every bit of health helps. This is also one matchup where the armor trinket from ZG is a huge asset (casters love to use that trinket in duels and I think we should too).

If the blind didn’t land, trap dance with him until he scatter shot you again, then walk into the trap. 3 times and you are immune. Again, your chance of winning goes down dramatically.

Part 3: You are finally in his face

Don’t forget to turn on evasion. At this point you are going to be 40-50% at best, every bit of health counts. Work your way into a kidney shot early, expect him to trinket it and hopefully you can reapply cripple poison before he gets out of melee range.

NEVER EVER USE YOUR VANISH against a hunter with deterrence, until he eitheralready blew his PVP trinket, or already counterattacked you. The counterattackroots you in place and it can not be dodged or parried, it is guaranteed to land.As a prep build you have a second set of sprint/blind/vanish that is going tohelp tremendously in this fight. Vanish CS after he uses PVP trinket or afterhe already used counter attack. If you are combat spec, this is also where youuse adrenaline rush.

Part 4: You used your cooldowns and he is out of melee range again.

A very common situation against Dwarf hunters. Throw the dagger if they are using cheetah form, but it is probably GG. This is the situation you want to avoid at all costs. But a dwarf/orc hunter is almost impossible to defeat without resorting to third party items.

Prep build’s second set of timers is invaluable in this situation. Nothing like a second sprint to chase him down.

Against Beastmastery Hunters:

To be honest, they are much easier than marksman/survival hunters especially with pet speed normalization in 1.9 and BW nerf. Evasion helps a lot against the pet. And because hunter vs rogue is heavily reliant on freezing traps, their pet won’t be a factor in several stretchs of it (the beginning especially) and their damage is very poor without pets.

The 3 second stun from the pet is effective but scatter trap is still far more deadly. In 1.9 (and even in 1.Cool you won’t see too many hunters with BM.

Third Party Devices Against Hunters:

It is funny how hunters wear blues can kill full epic rogues and warriors with relative ease and they think they are hot stuff. When frustration reachs a certain level I bust out:

Barov Peasant Caller – Clears freezing traps

Ice Reflector – Give hunters a taste of their own medicine

Netomatic – Requires some luck to work, but when it does, it is beautiful.

In Live PVP:

Free action potion + sprint does the trick nicely. They really don’t have anything that can counter this even if they free action themselves.

Of course, none of those are real options in a clean duel. You can’t really say you beat a hunter if you resort to those tactics. Every class has counters, this may be the most broken matchup (a blue paladin will never kill an epic warrior, a blue priest will never beat an epic mage for example, the way a blue dwarf hunter can beat a full epic rogue) in WOW but hopefully Blizzard will give us a bone eventually like how warlocks got their death coil.

Rogue vs Rogue

Difficulty: Broken
Poison Choice: Dual Cripple
Spec Choice: CB/Prep/Hemo

Probably the most broken mirror match out there. Regardless of spec, it is very easy to stunlock a rogue from opening CS stun to death. Thankfully, very few rogues really know the art of stunlock. Most of them have very flawed openers which gives you a chance to come back. A true stunlock, the opponent is stunned the entire time, no dodge, no parry, and with enough gear, no misses. If your opponent can gouge you out of it, you are not stunlocking properly.

REAL Stunlocks:

With enough +to hit items, all of those combos are guaranteed 100 to 0 at equal gear. The versions I posted are as cooldown efficient as possible, maximum damage with minimum cooldowns. It is good to learn those stunlocks because they are also extremely useful against non-succubus warlocks.

CB/Prep/Hemo:

CS->Hemo->Gouge->KS->Hemo->Hemo->Blind->Slice & Dice
Restealth
CS->Hemo->Gouge->KS->Hemo->Hemo->Evis (or CB Evis)

The Unsouled combo. Without instant poison, with just Dalrends and no epics, he stunlocks me to death every time with this combo, and I have 5000 health. The second CS, properly timed, is NOT on diminishing returns. Remember CS, Gouge, and KS are all on separate timers. You only need 15 seconds after each ends to avoid diminishing returns. Be sure to wait for maximum duration of gouge before KSing, stunwatch is extremely helpful.

Seal Fate Dagger:

Countless rogues do the CS->BS->KS opener, IMO unless you plan to tea, this is a much weaker opener than CS->SS->Gouge. If your BS doesn’t crit you only have 3 combo point, for a 4 second stun and the chance to not get back 25 energy is very high. If you don’t get 25 energy back your combo is broken and your KS does no damage. A gouge is a free combo point for no energy if you have improved version. It is much better to use it BEFORE the kidney shot.

CS->SS->Gouge->KS->BS->Blind
Restealth
CS BS KS BS (IMO CS BS KS is much better for the second opener, for 120 energy builds you can CS->BS->CB Evis on the second opener to knock people out, 110 energy can CS->SS->CB Evis if the opponent is low on health).

Combat Spec:

CS->AR->SS->Gouge->KS
SSx3
Blind
Restealth
CS->Wait For Energy->KS
SSx3

With high end gear, you don’t need blind to kill 99% of the rogues if you plan to use AR. Gouge is awesome because it allows you to get a full bar of energy before KS, and for 99% of the rogues that I ran into, the fight ends during kidney shot. Blind is just excessive here. I usually evis instead of blind because that is all it takes.

21/8/22

Being a hybrid spec you can do either the seal fate dagger version or the hemo version. The hemo combo is easily done with SS (make sure you have improved CS 1), although the seal fate dagger version is easier.

Rupture Kite:

Warriors hate this strategy, and rogues hate it even more. Do any combo listed above, instead of blind, just rupture and vanish. Then reopen with CS CB Evis or whatever opener of your choice. Easy to do, hard to counter.

Counters to openers:

Most people don’t stunlock with blind, and a lot of rupture kiters love to run away and restealth, more than 50% of the players don’t do either strategy. There are plenty of counters when your opponent allows them.

1) Against rupture kiter who ran away to restealth instead of vanishing.

a) Bow him, if he tries to run back into rupture range blind him, restealth between rupture ticks, and do your own rupture kite, except you will vanish instead of trying to restealth and don’t give him the same opening.

b) Vanish to break cripple poison, sprint and run away until rupture wears off, restealth. Extremely useful in world PVP.

c) Eat, this works if the person you are fighting didn’t stunlock into rupture, instead he did something amatuerish like CS BS Rupture Vanish. Damage is low, as soon as you start eating he will come CS you which has diminishing returns and you mash evasion or vanish to counter.

2) Against blind stunlocks & tea combos

Some of the blind stunlocks are quite tight on timing (people also tend to get greedy and want to squeeze an extra hemo in there for example). Tea combos that involve CB evis are usually VERY tight in timing requires certain number of combo points. Mash vanish or evasion and you can survive quite a few of them. In world PVP, consider a poison elixir to break blind.

3) Against broken openers

Evasion is countered with vanish->CS, even if you have a DOT on you it is doable between the ticks. Still, try to turn on evasion as early as possible just to dodge a possible KS or Gouge. Try to jump through him and hit him from behind, it is hard when you are snared but sometimes people get too aggressive.

Try to land a gouge while he stunlocks you, then you can either blind bandage, or blind into your own stunlock. Or if the person is truly amatuerish on his stunlock you can just backstab and go from there.

No Timer No Stealth Fight:

Very common situation in BGs, and getting more and more popular in duels. A combat rogue has a tremendous advantage here. Dodged gouge/kidney shot is fatal to the dagger rogue.

Unlike most other rogues, I prefer to open with SS to start with this fight as opposed to gouge. Because of lag, I will at least get 1 sometimes 2 SS off before I am gouged. This is a tremendous advantage. I done good damage from SS and white attacks, my opponent did no damage, just a gouge. He is waiting for his energy to tick, guess what, I am getting my energy back as well. SS is a much better opener even if you are dagger. Don’t try to land a backstab on another rogue when he is not snared or stunned, it just doesn’t work in high level play.

Try to SS a few times, back off let energy recharge. Once you have 3-4 combo points, go for a gouge, KS with a near full bar of energy, and it is usually GG at equal gear. KS is extremely valuable in this fight. You never want to throw it out without gouging first, you never want to waste it when you don’t have enough combo points/energy. End game weapons, a 4-5 CP KS when you have a full bar of energy is 2500 damage on leather easily. As with against warriors, always try to jump through him and land the kidney shot from behind.

Racials:

Human perception and Orc stun resistance are the most powerful racials in this matchup. Orc rogues probably have the best chance to win since they can stunlock all other races to death yet no one can apply the full stunlock on them. Human rogues with equal levels of MOD will always land the opener. There really isn’t much you can do if you are not a Orc or Dwarf and someone lands an opener on you. You have to pray he gives you a chance to retaliate. Dwarf can break blind and rupture kite, the AR stunlock usually doesn’t require either, just evis or vanish CS instead of blind or rupture.