After initially tanking the rating a bit, we had a couple of great nights of 3v3 games, despite there being two different enhance/warrior cleave variants taking turns trucking us down. Sallice’s team in particular is crazy strong, and though we forced them to a close 2v2 once, we never managed to beat them. I really think enhancement is one of the most underrated specs in the game right now. High skill cap, I guess?

As you’d expect there was a huge amount of RMP in the last week, and we’ve gotten much more solid against that comp recently. By the end we got into a great rhythm, when the dispel magic is flowing freely and Azuba is in the zone frost mages get absolutely nothing done against us. We decided to call it at 2668, which was around 25th at the time, and then there was nothing to do but sit back and refresh the armory every half hour until the servers went down. Well, and finish up zuba’s latest nerd point fascination.

Looks like we’re in good shape though: the 2s ended up 81st (cutoff: 97) and the 3s ended up 31st (cutoff: 36) and that’s without factoring inactive teams in. Truly/Tama on horde side have been sitting on their 2527-rated 2v2 team for half the season and we laughed when they ended up tied for 98th, but with 5 or 6 inactives in that bracket I think they’ll still sneak in.

(taken just as the servers went down, so not quite up-to-date)

Great season! There were highs, there were lows, there were occasional prot warriors (complete with aoe spell reflect, rofl). There was a lot of sitting around Dalaran Sewers waiting for the 5s queue to pop. Huge thanks to everyone in the Reckoning arena community and especially to my fantastic teammates for making it possible.

Bring the player, not the class! See you in s7.

I only just saw the Master Poisoner change, I’m guessing this is their idea for increasing assassination sustained damage slightly without affecting PvP burst. Seems like a reasonable change, although it does dumb down the spec a bit more for raiding since you no longer have to time your envenoms after a DP tick.

I wonder if it will make using offhand deadly a good choice as PvP HfB?

BONUS: 2v2 Comp breakdown for the Reckoning top 100 after the dust has settled.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to learn this morning that I’d be equipping my axes that much sooner. I’m not sure how much longer the season is going to run, but it seems like they’re still committed to giving two weeks notice so probably either two or three weeks more. I wonder if they’ll have another one-week grace period between seasons this time around?

I’ve still been playing a lot of games (just about at the thousand mark for my rogue’s 2s, even) but because I’m working slightly more traditional hours at the moment and a lot of my teammates are in different timezones, we’re mostly confined to playing weekends.

I’ve been trying deep holy on my paladin since Dowser has been fiending for a 5s team for a while now. 5s as a paladin is very turret, but holy has slightly more interesting spell-selection than prot at least. With the beacon buffs this patch the spec is going to be a lot better in small bracket too, and I’m looking forward to trying it out for 3s (still DK/Elem/Paladin) when we play this week.

It seems like the prot changes (or, more commonly, the lack thereof) and the new sacred shield HoT are going to firmly cement deep prot as the 2v2 healing spec of choice, though. Unless I’ve missed something, it only seems to be getting better.

On my warrior I’ve been struggling around in the 1600s with a friend’s even-more-undergeared druid alt. Playing in that bracket and not being able to beat awful keyboard turners because of the gear disparity and your partners’ inexperience is probably one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever encountered in this game. I’m hoping there will be an easy-to-obtain upgrade to the destroyer at some point, since it’s going to be fairly far behind the curve next season, and I’m not interested in raiding on this character at all.

My rogue’s 2s is rollercoastering around based on the percentage of druid/plate teams in the queue, but 3.2 contains some significant druid (purgable innervate) and dk (2 min IBF, dodgeable frost strikes) changes in addition to the shaman buffs so I’m hoping we can push that a bit higher. We had a great 3s session the other night playing disc/rogue/elem and pushed that team past 2500 for the first time, which was pretty cool, too. We’re running into issues keeping our priest alive against some compositions (she tends to crack under pressure a bit) but it’s something we can improve on and there wasn’t really anybody that could beat us consistently except a 2700+ wizard cleave. And really good rmp, which thankfully most of them aren’t.

I’ve been streaming some brackets on xfire but I have it set to friends only at the moment, so hit me up in game if you want the details.

I always seem to neglect the blog when I’m on holiday, there’s too many other fascinating things to occupy me, such as bear-style hibernation and re-released Lucasarts adventure games.

Arena-land has been busy as always. We’re deep into season six now, and Azuba and I are gradually climbing the ladder in an attempt to de-throne our realm’s current #1, a cleverly named horde-side DK/Druid team. I think they might be sitting on their rating at the moment, since they haven’t moved from 2527 in quite some time. At least we’ve built up a lead over our closest alliance competitors, Dues’ holy/unholy team.

I’ve been tempted to start writing a rogue/shaman strategy guide since over the last few weeks there have been a phenomenal number of “how do I shot it” posts on AJ about the comp. I’m no expert by any means, but it’s a very underplayed comp, and the dearth of reference material is unfortunate to say the least. A lot of the (primarly PvE-focused) rogue blogs I follow have also mentioned arena in some capacity, and It’d be nice to have something introductory to be able to point people to. Having played close to a thousand 2s games this season, we’ve picked up a few leet tricks too.

Actually nah, I’m pretty bad, but I couldn’t think of a better excuse for linking that picture.

We’ve also been playing RLS a bit, up to about 2330. Partly because Azuba was interested in playing elemental more seriously (it’s been his PvE mainspec for some time) and partly because our warlock only logs on about 10% of the time, we started a second team with a discipline priest to play “lightning RMP“¹, with some success. We were using a second charter for it at the beginning, just in case it turned out to be an awful comp, we didn’t want to tank the rating too much. Besides that, we also thought it would be quite amusing to fill up the Eldre’Thalas 3v3 ladder with team names of the form “Azuba is %s”, hopefully getting sillier and more elaborate each time like a kind of space goat Chuck Norris.

ANYWAY. The comp is actually really fun, and plays a fair bit like RMP does. Although a shaman doesn’t have the control of a frost mage (they do have some), they bring a lot of other defensive options to the table like shocks, grounds, and off-heals. Their DPS isn’t as reliant on freeze effects either, which gives you an edge killing hard-to-snare classes like druids or paladins. And you can’t forget lolthunderstorm off BEM!

And just like with a destruction warlock, you can get some fantastic 100-0 gibs if the shaman is left alone to freecast.

Eventually we got bored of switching teams twice a week and losing our PR (turns out a 2400 3s team is worth a lot of points) so we have merged the two teams into the latest charter, and we’re currently working on grinding Inamorata’s PR up on that team.

My gear is almost done now; just gloves next week and then throwing weapons the week after, then I’ll finally be able to start saving for some combat weapons. Possibly even axes, depending on when the season-end announcement happens.

Apart from that: I’ve been duelling a lot of rogues (Garotte is not as good an opener as you think, Splakken), accumulating fans, and fighting with people on the realm forums about whether PvE is harder than PvP. My priest is still 74, but I did grind inscription at least!

¹ There’s probably a better name for disc/rogue/elemental. Depending on how fixed you consider the ordering rules, you can abbreviate it as RPS!

Looks like cloak has emerged as the popular option for the contested third glyph slot. It’s what I’m using, and it seems pretty strong, especially for surviving double DPS and tanking Death Knights. I do miss 35 energy gouges though!

EDIT: As usual the graph is based on rogues in top 200 2v2 teams on US-Reckoning.

EDIT2: Kiru of Frostmane is the guy using the spree glyph in his assassination spec. Hoping it’s just armory update lag :\

So here’s the new version they’ve come up with:

Overkill: Talent redesigned. Now increases energy regeneration by 30% while stealthed, and for 20 seconds after breaking stealth.

I think I like this, although it’s only marginally more energy regen than the combat talent Vitality and will have significantly less uptime¹. I haven’t crunched any real numbers on it, but let’s have a look at how it affects a typical mut/prep opener.

Assumptions: mut glyph, vigor glyph, no FA (for simplicity), no ruthlessness, full RS, dirty deeds.

Old-style Overkill

New-style Overkill

So basically your damage is spread out more over the 10 second period now than it used to be, and the second set has one less mutilate. However, the new buff persists significantly longer than the old overkill after leaving stealth, so in terms of sustained damage you’re trading a potential saving of 60 energy over 6 seconds (if you use an ability every GCD during overkill, which is not really realistic anyway) versus a potential generation of 60 energy over 20 seconds (+3 energy per second, but does nothing if you’re capped). Sounds fair.

It’s a bit different for openers versus rogues but cs->rup->mut->mut->ks depends on Relentless Strikes and Seal Fate RNG to a large extent anyway. It’s a definite nerf for swap sap -> cs openers, but I die in cheapshot as much as I kill other rogues in cheapshot so, well, let’s hear it for symmetrical rebalancing. And it seems much easier to take advantage of in PvE now.

Even if it was a massive nerf I think I’d still be looking forward to this patch, though, when you take a gander over some of the other things that are going in:

• +5 seconds on charge CD. Maybe I’ll actually be able to peel a warrior briefly?
• DK PvP glove bonus reworked to a runic power energize. Small mercies.
• Frost Presence and Tree Form armor toned down. Although they added some armor to barkskin, I really don’t mind that. Barkskin is for dispel resist, and if they use it for anything else then that’s just fine with me.
• Eye for an Eye damage decreased. Hells yeah, one step closer to not soloing myself on afk ret paladins.

Freedom nerf I’m still on the fence about. Six seconds is probably enough, it sounds balanced on paper, but I’ll have to play with (and against) it to see.

You can see Zarhym’s post about the patch notes here.

¹ Unless you can end games in 60 seconds reliably, in which case it could possibly have identical uptime!

That’s fine, though to some extent I’m envious of caster classes that get to worry about things like haste plateaus and actually get to consider the comp they’re playing when they decide how to gear. Nevertheless, there’s one area where rogues do have some options, and where playstyle and comp can affect your decisions significantly: your trinkets.

Let’s take a look at what I consider the different options for rogues in season 6. I’ll try to be relatively comp-agnostic, though my rogue+healer 2s bias will probably shine through.

PvP Trinkets – Medallion / Titan-forged Runes

If you’re a human, your active racial means you don’t need to equip a PvP trinket. For everyone else, a trinket from this category is absolutely essential. Thankfully now you have a number of options available to you for the passive part of this trinket. The default one available from honor provides passive resilience, but most rogues are going to prefer the offensive-oriented wintergrasp versions which can bestow attack power, crit, or hit.

Buff Proc Trinkets – Mirror / Anvil / Infuser / Blood / DMC: Greatness / Grim Toll / Mjolnir

These trinkets provide passive damage stats with a proc on a 45 second internal cooldown that provides some sort of short-duration offensive benefit. You get a better deal in terms of sustained dps compared to the activatable trinkets, but the downside is you can’t control the timing and procs can end up partially (or completely) wasted.

In terms of the procs, the huge amount of ArP Mjolnir and Grim Toll provide are the strongest, especially if you have other armor penetration on your gear. They synergize well, which humans can take advantage of.

Grim Toll, Infuser and Blood of the Old Good all have hit passives, which are typically wasted, though that will depend on the rest of your gear. The anvil has a resil passive, which is also not that desirable. For that reason Mjolnir pulls ahead of the pack, with DMC:G a very viable alternative.

DMC:G has another advantage in that the agility it provides confers a non-trivial defensive benefit.

Damage Proc Trinkets – Bandit’s / DMC: Death

These trinkets both have a chance on your attacks to deal direct magical damage, with a similar 45 second ICD. The proc rate is high enough that they’re extremely likely to occur in your initial opener, which makes them very strong for overkill burst openers.

Bandit’s Insignia is significantly better because of it’s very strong attack power passive, but because it drops off heroic Sapphiron it is also quite a bit harder to obtain.

Note that the ICDs for these two trinkets are completely independant, so if you’re a human you can use them both and they will often proc together. This is probably going to get nerfed, but right now it’s very strong!

On-use AP Trinkets – Loatheb’s / Platinum Disks / Wrathstone

These trinkets provide an attack power buff on a two-minute cooldown. The strength of them lies in the fact you can choose exactly when to activate them, so you can time them with enchant procs, with other trinkets, or for moments when you have momentum in the fight (successful kidney shot that your opponent won’t trinket, for example).

The flipside of this is that some people find another keybind challenging to manage; and the fact you’re waiting for a perfect opportunity means some time will be wasted. Activating these trinkets does not trigger a global so you could theoretically macro them to one of your other abilities.

The disks have a resil passive, but they’re very easy to get compared to the other two.

On-use Damage Trinkets – GLG

This trinket has been tweaked since its somewhat overpowered inception as a high damage cast-time nuke in season 5. It’s now instant cast and off the GCD completely, but it shares the 10 second “burst damage” cooldown category with activated buff trinkets and the pyro-rocket glove enchant. Compared to Bandit’s/Death, it has a slightly longer cooldown (60 seconds instead of 45) and can’t be timed with the rockets, but it has the advantages that it’s completely controllable and usable from range.

The crit rating is a decent passive, but the fact that this trinket still backfires means it’s not nearly as desirable as some of the alternatives. Not terrible, but not amazing, which I guess is to be expected from a profession blue.

Defensive Trinkets – Battlemaster’s / DMC: Berserker!

The Battlemaster trinket provides a short-term health boost which can be very helpful if you’re able to get it off (can’t do that while stunned). It’s purchased with honor, and much like the wintergrasp trinkets, you have your choice of passives: hit, crit, haste, ap. The attack power one is by far the strongest in terms of raw damage.

DMC:B is something of an odd customer. It procs off both incoming and outgoing damage, and has quite a high proc rate, so it’s going to be up pretty much all of the time you’re in combat. Essentially it’s a passive 105 resil and 105 crit rating. It’s not bad, but perhaps not as exciting as some of the alternatives.

On-use Tentacles – Vanquished Clutches

Tentacles. Need I say more?

Blind (Rogue) is now in the same diminishing returns category as Fear effects, but no longer shares diminishing returns with Cyclone (Druid).

…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[source]

The special melee hit cap against players is 5%. You need 32.79 hit rating for 1% of melee hit. That means you’ll need 164 hit rating for the special cap, or 230 for special cap versus night elves. Those numbers would be 132 and 197 respectively if you have Heroic Presence from a draenei (the perks of running rogue/shaman!).

The spell hit cap against players is 4%, which is relevant because it affects your poisons. It’s not as important a cap to hit because although your poisons provide your snare and your mortal strike, you have a very high application chance and thus it’s very unlikely one failed proc will set you back. You need 26.232 hit rating for 1% of spell hit, so you should be able to cap poison hit (105) as a happy side-effect of capping specials.

Spell penetration: poison damage is good, but it’s not that good.

Here are your main options for hit, assuming a full PvP setup:

• Furious Gladiator’s Cloak of Victory – 42 hit rating. Also comes in a crit version.
• Furious Gladiator’s Pendant of Victory – 42 hit rating. Also comes in a crit version.
• Deadly Gladiator’s Band of Victory – 38 hit rating. This is the only deadly melee ring available.
• Icewalker Enchant – 12 hit rating. Obviously useless if you’re an engineer, which you should be!
• Enchant Gloves – Precision – 20 hit rating. Undercosted compared to the attack power enchant, and again, not an option if you are an engineer.
• Titanium Weapon Chain – 28 hit rating. This is a must-have for the disarm duration reduction alone.
• 12 sockets (2 yellow, 4 red, 5 blue, 1 prismatic), in which you could socket Glinting (or Pristine), Rigid, or Vivid. Note that one of those reds will be a yellow if you’re still using the engineering goggles.
• If you’re desperate, the burning crusade rogue arcanum included 16 hit rating, although the Wrath one does not.

Without gemming or enchanting (except the chain) you’re already at 150 with the aforementioned gear. If you’re using PvE weapons (which I anticipate will be significantly less popular this season given how readily available, cheap, and high quality the furious offerings are) you’ll probably score some extra hit rating from there, and you can comfortably gem for the rest based on how much you hate Artic Winds. I recommend 2 x [Pristine Monarch Topaz]!

100 tokens later: the hat is mine.