Re: Hathôr's 5.4 F2P Comprehensive Rogue Guide
Rogue gameplay
Rogue class is not all about ambushing ppl that are below 20% hp, it isn’t about ganking that poor low geared F2P over and over. No, it’s more than that.
As rogue, you can help your team win games in many ways using your tools, tools that most tend to neglect efficiency-wise.
General Hints and Tips
I’ve seen in time many ppl stating that rogues at 20 can’t properly CC, that rogues can’t peel or lockdown a healer. That’s wrong. We have 3 powerful tools. One is called Sap, the other one called Kick and the last one, called Crippling Poison.
From those 3, the most powerful one is Sap. You can slow an entire team catching your FC just by sapping each one of them. Yes! But when you sap one, the other one that was previously sapped gets free – you might say. I agree, but, that 1-2 seconds that you keep each of them sapped can save the life of your FC getting him to safety. But that’s not all. With sap you can force trinkets and we all know what happens when you’re vulnerable to all sources of CC because you don’t have trinket.
Another utility of Sap is to lockdown a healer as much as you can. Keeping a healer CC’ed can lead to a flag return from your teammates. In time, I’ve released some movies on YT, was trolled hard because I walk in stealth and sap random ppl with no use. Well, they are wrong and they know it. If not, they will find out now.
In this animated GIF I’ve managed to keep that healer locked so my other teammates managed to return the flag and we capped.
In this animated GIF, we’re chasing EFC with a paladin coming to assist. Sapped the paladin at the right time when he was about to cast a heal on a teammate, then switched to EFC, meanwhile, another fella rogue, resapped the paladin and we both managed to kill efc returning the flag.
Now, talking about Kick, this is a very useful tool to prevent casting heals from healers or CC from Lock/Spriests/Mages. Sounds nice huh? But, there is a problem. Some of those casters know how to fakecast thus, you need to be careful to not waste a kick on a fake cast. Very hard to predict fakecasts from the start since every person has his fakecasting pattern. Just be careful and watch and learn when they do it, and use Kick accordingly.
When comes to Crippling Poison, the usual understanding is that you slow your current target. Well, that’s not all. Crippling Poison is a great tool to peel or at least slow for a while and entire group of persons.
What can you see in this animated GIF above? You’re seeing a crazy rogue using Swiftness Potion and running around like headless chicken, right? Well, look again carefully. We just managed to return the flag from our GY, and some from horde team rushed our flagroom to repick the flag. I’ve used Swiftness Potion and tried to put Crippling Poison on all of them just to slow them down so my teammates could catch up and wipe them. What happened in the end? Only one druid managed to get into our flagroom and repick but he died shortly after and we scored.
Ok, so we’ve talked about our powerful CC tools. What about the defensive ones? Well, we have something called Evasion. Evasion is a great tool that can be used against melee classes and on those nasty hunters of course. Careful tho, Evasion doesn’t grant you 100% dodge from behind. So, you must try and face attackers even with Evasion up.
Another thing to know is, us rogues, need to LoS and restealth a lot. We can’t just walk around outstealthed, we’re not warriors, we’re shadow killers, we are the ninja’s of WoW. Thus, take every chance you can to LoS, restealth and reopen.
For example, in this animated GIF we were on full offence. I knew that I can’t be 100% effective staying outstealthed and spamming Hemorrhage on EFC. Went to LoS, managed to restealth, resap and reopen EFC with a powerful Ambush putting a lot of pressure on him and we’ve managed to return a few seconds later.
Another thing to know is the way you should position yourself on the field. You’re no use to the team if you go on random trips around the map. Check the surroundings, inform yourself, prioritize targets, return flags, cc/kill healers, peel for your teammates when needed. That’s your mission on the battlegrounds. You have one big advantage, you can’t be seen. You’re always a threat, profit!
What to do in BG/Arenas
Well, i've given you some general hints and tips on the rogue class gameplay. Now, let's talk a bit about specific battle environments.
Basically, at this lvl we have only three options. We have two battlegrounds(
Warsong Gulch and
Arathi Basin) and Arenas. Arenas are a bit hard to get in since you need the help of P2P's to group you, but, that's anothery story and not a subject of this guide.
Warsong Gulch
This is a 10v10 capture-the-flag style battleground that traces the conflict between the Silverwing Sentinels seeking revenge on the orcs that chopped down the Ashenvale forest during the Third War. A faction wins when they have returned three enemy flags within 25 minutes, or if they have returned the most flags (or capped last if a tie) when the timer runs out. The longer a flag carrier holds onto a flag, the more damage the player will take.
First of all let's clear some terms like
(EFC/FC/EFR/FR) commonly used when playing WSG:
- EFC = Enemy Flag Carrier
- FC = Flag Carrier
- EFR = Enemy Flagroom
- FR = Flagroom
Basically, your primary objective when playing WSG is to return flags and/or help offence to return flags. Because you're a stealth class, you can scout the ground and give your teammates vital informations about the location of EFC, how many defenders he has, whitch classes they are..etc.
As secondary objective, pressure/kill healers specially when you have already many pressuring EFC, there's no point for you to join the "fun" also with that healer freecasting on EFC. Go and take care of him! You have the tools to do so.
Third objective is to lockdown/slow enemies as much as possible by using Sap, Crippling. Also, when no enemy healers around to take care of, focus on those enemy targets that deal the most damage. You have the tools to approach them and take them by surprise and for sure you have the tools to kill/lockdown them, no matter what class they are.
Arathi Basin
This is a 15v15 battleground located in Arathi Highlands. Players fight over five resources (Stables, Mines, Blacksmith, Lumber Mill, Farm) which rewards teams with points. The more resources a team controls, the faster they accumulate points. A team with all five nodes captured will gain 30 resources per second.
I must admit, i'm not a huge fan of this battleground. Never was, not even when playing my 90's.
To be honest, the most important role you can play in this battleground is the role of
"ninja-capping" bases. When i was playing RBG's at endgame, this was my main objective. Stealth to enemy bases and try to ninja cap them.
The rest is just the usual drill, prioritize targets. Try to nuke healers 1st, then go for highest dmg-dealers.
Arenas
At endgame, i'm huge fan of Arenas. When comes to F2P Arenas, i'm not impressed at all. Tried a few arenas back in the day and didnt like the way you're forced to play. I can't give you much insight on this subject since i really dislike F2P Arenas. Maybe some of you can help me with some thoughts. I'm waiting
Until then, for more information about F2P Arenas, you can visit
Billow's Intro to Arena Guide and
http://www.twinkinfo.com/forums/f148/bops-guide-f2p-arenas-52155/index2.html.
Diminishing Returns
Abbreviated DR, means that certain spells and abilities are less effective against player characters if they are used frequently within a short period of time. Effects within same category diminish each other.
When a spell with diminishing returns is used against a target in PvP, the first effect has full duration. The effect then diminishes by 50%, then 75%, then the target becomes immune. Spells must be used on the same target within 15 seconds of the *end* of the duration in order to be diminished. In other words, if a target hasn't had a stun effect active on them for more than 15 seconds, the next stun will have full effect.
Some abilities share diminishing returns—that is, it doesn't matter which one you use; the next time you use an ability in the same category on the same target, its duration will be diminished just as if you had used the exact same ability. These abilities fall into the same category.
Why i'm mentioning this? Because our most important CC ability, Sap, is affected by Diminishing Returns. Getting Sap on DR is not always a bad thing for example, if you need to keep one enemy CC'ed as long as you can. But, on the other hand, running around spamming Sap for no reason, can waste you an eventual NEEDED good CC. Use Sap wisely, you won't want to make your target immune to Sap when your teammates arrive. You need to lock your target to full when the fight starts. That will give your team an advantage.
Another thing to know about Sap DR's is that you don't want to Sap a sheeped/seduced target. Why? Because
Sap is sharing DR's with
Sheep/
Seduction/
Quaking Palm.
There are some addons monitoring DR's but also you can use the method based on WoW's Stopwatch.
Basicly, add to the end of your Sap Macro the following lines:
Code:
#showtooltip Sap
/cast Sap
/sw 16
/sw play
Basically when you Sap someone, a timer will popup on your screen counting down the seconds till DR's will wear off for another full duration Sap. Now, i've said above that DR's reset after 15 seconds and as you see in my timer, it's set to start at 16 seconds. Why? Sometimes because of server latency, you could end up not getting a full reset on Sap duration, thus, the safest way to avoid this, is by incresing the timer with one second. Do not be scared, when the timer reaches 0, you'll hear a beep to let you know that DR's are over.
WARNING!! This timer is useful on a single target only. It's useless if you swap targets to sap one at a time
(to slow them, separate from the group.. etc).
