bjornh.com

Hi folks,

Some people say that World of Warcraft = No Skill. I would like to share a little story with you, and then you can make up your mind whether this is a myth or not. This is a post that I made over at Tera Online‘s forum, in a thread about – well, rogues. Here you go;

The rogue class is loved and hated in WoW. No-one is ever 100% safe – you never know when you’ll get freakin’ jumped out of nowhere! A good rogue is like a ghost — sneaks around and hides in the shadows, looking for opportunities – and strikes only when he has all the advantages or if he knows he can manage his opponnent(s). Quick and deadly!

Playing a rogue well takes skill. A bad rogue is totally beatable by just about anyone. This difference is defined by what kind of combination of actions are needed in order to execute properly. If everything that being a rogue means is ‘Stealth, stab, hit a couple of buttons – you’re dead’ then it’s just poor game design.

Close your eyes a second and take a deep long breath.. you’re a rogue!
You’re sneaking around, looking for some action. Along comes 3 enemy players. A priest, a warlock and a warrior. Really hard. You’ve got your skills off cooldown and you wait for the right moment. No-one else but those three in sight, and they’re close enough to eachother for you to do your dirty business..

You move in on the priest and Sap him (10 sec duration), then instantly hits Shadowstep (jump behind a target) and opens with a Cheap Shot (4 second stun) on the warrior. As soon as the GCD (Global (skill) CoolDown) expires from that Cheap Shot, you instantly Blind (10 sec disorientated) the Warlock so that he won’t be able to DOT you up. Now if you’ve done all this down to the milisecond, you should still have the warrior stunned while the priest has about 6-7 seconds left on his Sap duration. That means you’ll have to kill the warrior within that time or at least get him down to 30-40% HP. You’ve now barely got energy to use your skills so you’ll just have to hope for some lucky crits while still executing everything perfectly.

You did a Premeditation on the warrior while simultaneously Shadowstepping him, so you’ve got 4 CP (Combo Points) on him now – 2 from Shadowstep and 2 from that Cheap Shot. That, and you reach your maximum 5 point CP with a 35 energy cost Hemorrhage. Great, so now you’ve got the max CP on him but apart from a few melee hits and that Hemo, you still haven’t hurt him more than getting him down about 10-15% and you’re on low energy.

Now if everything was done perfectly, the priest will have about 4-5 second duration left on the Sap and the Warlock will have 6-7 second duration left on his Blind. Now the priest has already used his PvP trinket (get out of jail every 2 minutes) so he’s out of it for a little longer, but the warlock has understood what’s going on (remember it’s just been a few seconds up until this point) so he trinkets out of it. You’ve got the warlock set to Focus so you’re able to instantly notice what he’s doing. You notice that the warlock isn’t channeling Fear, but is instead DOTting you up so you decide that the only way you’re going to get away with all this, is to continue DPS’ing the warrior for a couple of seconds.

1 Hemorrhage and a Kidney Shot (stun based on amount of Combo Points) and 4-5 melee hits on the warrior has the warrior down to about 40% by now. But you know that he’s getting out of stun in about 1/2 a second and that means he’ll probably Rend you (bleed effect, leaving you exposed in such a way that if you go into stealth, you’ll be seen after 1 tick). And with the DOTs building up on you, the priest getting out of sap in 2 seconds and the warlock’s pet DPS’ing you, you know now that the only thing to do is hit Cloak of Shadows (90% chance to clear all DOTs and immune for 5 seconds) and Vanish–Shadowstep on to the warlock. After which you must instantly move about 2-3 yards at least back and quick in on the warlock again in order to stay out of the pet’s Detect Invisibility range so that he won’t auto-attack you before you have the time to Sap the warlock (which can only be done while in Stealth and when both you and him are out of combat).

So you pull that off and manage to Sap that warlock. The Blind and Sap skills don’t share a Diminishing Return (can’t have 2x 10 sec Sap after each other for example, which is why I couldn’t just resap the priest). The warrior is out and spamming Thunderclap (AOE) and Piercing Howl (Stun AOE effect) in order to lure you out, but of course you took great care to position yourself throughout the whole sequence, taking all that into consideration. The priest just got out of Sap and you see the priest channeling a spell and no doubt he’s going to heal up that warrior!. But you’ve already hit Sprint and Evasion (+speed and +dodge for 15 sec, off GCD) while fumbling around with the Warlock because you know you’ll need that extra edge. So in a flash you’re over at the priest again (remember, you jumped them at the right time when they were standing close-ish together) and since you’re still in stealth you do a Cheap Shot (that 4 sec stun again, only usable in stealth, no CD) on him and instantly set your eye on that warrior, which is now out of Rage after spamming that AOE in order to get you out of stealth(of course you took that into consideration too). So since you’ve got Sprint and Evasion still active and you’re out of stealth from that Cheap Shot on the priest, you rush over to the warrior and do a Gouge (4 second stun, requires you to be in front of the target) on him and move in behind him and do a Kidney Shot on him (that stun based on CP again, and is just now off CD since last time).

He was at 40% when you started the second go at him and this time you’re able to get him down with a couple of Hemorrhage, a few melee hits and an Eviscerate (Finishing Move, more damage based on amount of CP) critical strike. Barely. And we still have a warlock and a priest to worry about .. now – your Talent build allows for a reset of a few skills every 5 minutes, but not Blind or Cloak of Shadows.

The warlock now has 4 seconds left of that Sap duration and the priest is just out of that stun. No doubt the first thing he’ll do is throw a Shadow Word: Pain (a DOT) and that means you’ll be screwed because you can’t use Cloak of Shadows since it’s still on CD. You hit Preparation and instantly hit Vanish (re-stealth even when in combat every 3 minutes), and since you still have a few seconds left on your Sprint duration, you move away to a location you deem to be safe from AOE attacks that are sure to come (which will de-stealth) you. This all happened very fast.

So now you’re at 50% HP (from the warlock’s DOTs that you let tick for a little while in order to do just enough dmg on the warrior), you’ve got a warrior down and a priest who’s starting to ress him, while the warlock is running around like a headless chicken trying to find you. You decide to at least wait until you’re at 100% energy, but you’ll need to do something about that priest within 2-3 seconds, and you’ve also got a couple of seconds left on your Sprint duration. Since you know that the warlock has already used his trinket and you don’t know if the Priest is out of Diminishing Returns on the Sap or if he has trinket ready, you decide that you’ll have to CC (Crowd Control) the warlock this time and go for the kill on the priest.

Thankfully the priest hasn’t put a HoT (Healing over Time) spell on himself, he’s been busy trying to AOE you out and starting that ress on the warrior. So you Sap that warlock and with some time left on the Sprint, you move quickly in on the priest before he has time to finish that ress (which is a 10 second cast) and you do that with a good margin. This is still just a few seconds after the warrior bit the dust.

You do a Cheap Shot on that priest then but you’re now low on energy. That Sap cost 65 energy – and you do a quick Premeditation (that +2 CP on target while in stealth skill, no GCD) + Slice and Dice (increased attack speed, duration based on CP) combo before seeing your energy bar at barely enough to get that Cheap Shot off before your energy bar hits 0. So all you can do now for about 3-4 seconds is to melee attack the priest. You’re a fan of Hit Rating so you don’t miss so much in melee, and that Slice and Dice duration helps. You get him down to 40% in the 4 second duration that has passed – he’s only average geared and you’r equip isn’t bad. Fine. And the warlock is still in Sap for about 4-5 seconds more – his pet is DPSing you though. That’s ok, he doesn’t do any DOTs and doesn’t really hit hard; it’s a Felhunter. It’s getting a bit dangerous now though cause you were at 50% and the pet is doing about 2-3% per second on you.

You follow up that 4 second stun on the priest with a Kidney Shot (the stun based on CP), which again is just off CD. However, since your energy was low to start with and you now only have those 2 CP on him from that Cheap Shot, you can still only melee him – no energy for anything but stuns. To your delight, the rest takes care of itself. The Slice and Dice is still ticking and you’re hitting him hard with those melee hits. He bites the dust and is no doubt sighing out loud IRL.

Well now you’ve used just about everything, everything is on CD except Cloak of Shadows, Sprint and Evasion. So you hit that (since it helps vs the Felhunter’s dmg) and just take off as fast as possible! The warlock still has about 1 second left on his Sap duration and you hit Cloak of Shadows in order for you to be able to avoid his DOTs while attempting to gain enough distance in order for you to be able to re-stealth. But the pet is still DPSing you and that’s keeping you in combat. You don’t have enough energy to Gouge it either and have to wait.. still running.. 1 sec left on CLOS.. ok now you have enough energy, so you do that Gouge and keep running away. This happens just as you get out of the warlocks max range and you’re OK. You get into stealth again after a few seconds.

Naturally you eat up/stealth and immediately start running over to the warlock and now you’re 1v1..
The warlock kills you since warlocks are overpowered.

–

This all happened in the course of about 20-25 seconds. Everything had to be done perfectly and you’ve had to play the rogue class for a long time before being anywhere near being able to do something like this. In addition you’ll need a thorough understanding of other classes and just the whole environment. No newbie can do stuff like that and it actually takes skill. When you’re a little into WoW and you watch good arena matches and know what’s actually going on and you see someone playing with a certain amount of finesse (cause finesse actually exists in WoW!), you may find yourself entertained. If you read all that, I salute you. I was just listening to some good music and thought I’d tell you a little story. Perhaps rogues don’t just smash their heads on the keyboard and win after all..?

I’m not trying to advocate WoW with this by no means (I haven’t played for over a year), but rather defuse some misconceptions. And perhaps to convince some people that the Rogue class is actually a good idea or that WoW CAN be about skill.

Btw, here’s a video that I uploaded a little over a year ago. Yes it looks really simple but it takes a lot of time and effort to be able to reach the point where you can pull this off in synchronization. And yes, it’s Combat Specc and has a much higher potency against SOME teams than the standard Sub/Sub or Sub/Assa – but by all means not against all teams – this setup is very weak against a lot of other setups (no combat/combat specc 2v2 teams rank high for good reason);