Being A Well-Rounded Raider (And A Better Rogue)
Posted by 
iTZKooPA on Thursday, July 16, 2009 - 17 Comments Tags: DPS, PvE, being a good raider, faster raids, hints, instancing, raiding, rogue tips and tricks, well-rounded raider
iTZKooPA on Thursday, July 16, 2009 - 17 Comments Tags: DPS, PvE, being a good raider, faster raids, hints, instancing, raiding, rogue tips and tricks, well-rounded raider 
Follow The Tips Or Be Eaten By Each And Every MawCombat, Assassination, Sublety. Backstab, Mutilate, Sinister Strike. White, yellow, green damage. These are all important things to consider when you are trying to maximize your DPS, but they aren't the only things. Not by a long shot. The stab-happy class (and all other classes) also needs to keep stats like Hit, Expertise and Critical Rating in mind as well. Then there's the act of standing behind your target at all times, timing a Slice and Dice refresh, popping the various cooldowns to maximize total output, sharing the wealth effectively and dropping a Vanish at the most appropriate time. In short, the class that many players believe to be incredibly easy simply isn't. Maximizing a rogue's abilities is as difficult as any other class in WoW.
Here's the thing, one's raw DPS isn't the only thing that matters. Adding to the already complex task of DPS is other raid mechanics. Staying alive, reducing the healing required, spreading out and minimizing incoming damage. These are all highly important tactics that every raider should be trying to master. PvE encounters will become far easier for each member that masters their basic role - DPS, Tanking, Healing - and these "secondary" tasks. Achieving outside the box is exactly what separates the casual raiders from the hardcore, and I don't mean in time spent.
It'd be impossible for me to discuss what every class can do outside their normal role, but here are a few for my favorite class.
- Minimization of incoming damage - Yes, yes, of course killing the target will reduce its DPS to the fullest extent. By show of hands how many of us can kill an elite target inside 10 seconds? No one? Thought so. In the midst of burning that mob down be sure to interrupt incoming damage as much as possible. Kick spells - but prioritize which you kick - stun whirlwinds, Blind stray mobs. Sap. Every class has a handful of tools to make life easier on the healers, use them.
- Spreading out damage - You have to be careful with this one depending on your class. Especially considering that this mostly comes up during a breakdown in an encounter. During these hairy times spreading the damage across multiple players can be the difference between a catastrophic failure and a messy recovery. For a rogue the idea is to save any squisher class from being pummeled, while bringing the mob to a tank. Liberal use of Evasion and Cloak of Shadows are key. By reacting quickly you can save other raids members, give healers time to react and focus on the tanks while reducing the tanks incoming damage as the encounter returns to normal. Saviors just need to watch our for their own well being, as heals won't likely be coming their way.
- Staying alive - Blaming the healer is a fun past time, but barring a complete wipe you could have saved yourself. If you were one of a few deaths during an encounter it's on you. Sorry. Perhaps you should have potted, moved away from the pretty spell effects that were nearby or eaten some food for that extra stamina. If all else fails Sprint or Vanish.
- Dealing with AoE - Previously rogues couldn't do much with AoE. We'd just stand there and take it, interrupting when applicable. And we couldn't return the favor. Very annoying. Now we have two new tools at our disposal. For incoming AoE damage - as seen in numerous Ulduar fights - we should be spamming a tried and true ability, Feint. A 50% reduction in AoE damage is a sweet buff to the old school spell. For dishing out AoE we have Fan of Knives. FoK is best used with slow weapons. If your energy is going to be dedicated to FoK during an encounter then switch to your slowest, hardest hitting pair.
- For the love of all that is holy - Enchant, socket and fill out all of your glyphs with something! None of this "waiting for a better piece of gear to enchant" or "need to find a good gem." Get a placeholder at least!
With many experienced raiders part of the readership I know a fair amount already grasp these concepts. But I hope each of you learned a new trick, or at least remembered how important these tactics are. If you already knew this information, then I am sure you have something to add. Let's hear it. Examples for other class tactics would be appreciated as well.
Remember folks, we each have roles, but we can all make raiding easier, more efficient and, most importantly, faster by performing outside our narrow view of the world.
Reader Comments (17)
Green damage o_0 What's that?
My assumption would be nature damage, inflicted by poisons :)
I have to agree. Rogue DPS is not something easy to master as well. Anyone can DPS with a rogue character, but to really master the class and make full use of its abilities is an entirely different story. Some can, others need time to play.
I played a rogue myself and got to through Naxx several times, but have since abandoned it due to guild raid timing being extremely unfavourable to Asian life. AoE centric raid instance - not easy - because your DPS is constantly monitored by The Asshole aka Raid Leader and he'll kick you if your DPS is not up to standard for a pure DPSer.
I play a Paladin now - Retribution Paladin
Hell - For Ulduar, where raid damage can hit its all time high even when every single class is trying their best to minimise their incoming damage, paladins have Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian upgrade to this ability~ sweetness...!!
Imagine - I Divine Shield myself and immediately casts Divine Sacrifice! Voila - I negate the 150% cap to my max HP of incoming damage I can receive and at the same time reduce the whole raid's incoming damage by 40%!
Whats even better - my raid tested whether this ability stacks - it does! So... we have two ret pallies doing exactly the same thing - 80% incoming damage reduced!! LOL..
I also have Hand of Salvation and Hand of protection.. great for reducing Warlock threat or totally wiping it from the Omen meters respectively. A wipe can often occur because a warlock's threat outscaled the tank - and the poor guy can't do anything about it. Fear no more - calling all paladins... save the poor soul, brother!
Finally, Cleanse.. - I may DPS full time.. but seriously - if a healer (priest or druid) have to spare some precious time doing something that my paladin could have done itself, is just plain idiotic and may cause another raid member to die due to a slight lack of healing.. Cleanse is good.. i use it whenever I can...
Not to mention.. a retribution paladin can help heal herself sometimes...
its not so hard to do or even difficult to ask for, especially in the XT-002 fights. A few Flash of Light healing casts here and there and continue to DPS as if nothing has happened.
I find the rogue to be much more difficult than most think. Everyone seems to have one for a while, but then they give up and choose something else. Could it be the leather armor or lack of AoE or distance strikes?
Using quests as a basis for comparison, doing quests with a rogue is much more difficult than doing them with a DK, paladin or even a druid. I usually find myself bandaging after most fights and taking on mobs a few levels higher is unheard of. The class is a challenge and I love it, but definitely not as easy as many think to play.
Are there alot of raid bosses that you can AoE? No.
I remember once incident where we were doing "the dance" boss in Naxx - Heigan i think - with healers that were fairly new to naxx. Half of the heals die during the first "Dance" leaving only 1 cleanser for the disease. I CoS the first disease, but some of the already weakened dps die off due to lack of cleansing. Second dance phase, more people die. I get the disease again and die this time, but get a BR from the druid. Eventually the battle comes down to me, the tank, an off spec arms warrior and the healing/cleansing pally. We survive the last dance with the boss at about %5. We get the disease as usual, but the pally yells in vent "OOM!!" I see 1 tick of the disease go off, i pop CoS (freshly off of CD) and keep going with ~200 hp. Arms warrior dies off, pally barely manages to keep the tank alive, but we manage to get the kill about 5 secs before the the next dance phase.
It was probably the most intense fight ive been through in months.
Atm im resto druid n dual specced from feral tank to feral dps n still learning the rotation. Thx for ur tips, because ofc as a healer i dont have to worry about dmg reduction or threat. hard to surpass the tank in threat as a healer. Only need to look for adds n, maybe, lead them to the tank. Especially the tip for picking adds of clothies. as feral leather wearer i can mitigate some dmg thru armour n maybe save that clothy.
Ugh...i cant stand people who dont get gems/enchants
Really love the post. I just started playing wow recently, and as of yesterday started an alt rogue which I really like so far, and this is gonna help me a lot.
Dude, I never thought rogues were easy to play, even back in vanilla when they pwned everything. It's so easy to pick up aggro as a rogue, and just as easy to die, that if you want to keep killing things and not get punched in the face for 37 thousand damage you really have to watch yourself.
I also remember one time back in the day when we were raiding MC. It was one of our early runs and we hadn't killed Ragnaros yet. Of course he kills the tanks and since I'm the highest threat guy in melee range, he immediately turns and says "RAGNAROS SMASH ROGUE!" Thank GOD I dodged the first swing cuz I surely would have died, but as soon as I saw him on me I popped Evasion. I sat there for the duration of Evasion with Ragnaros, the biggest elemental badass in the game, trying to crush me like a bug. So yeah, Evasion eventually ended and I got smooshed, but it was fun while it lasted, heh.
Recently been playing a rogue, levelling with a friend.
Two rogues. It's awesome, mobs die via Ambush (me), Ambush (my friend).
They're a really fun class to play. I hated it up until about level 20ish (or whenever I started getting stuff like vanish, and ambush).
So fun to have rogue vs rogue duels in odd places (Tarren Mill's farm is a favourite).
Ultimately, it's a great class. Though I'll always prefer my hunter, it's a character I'll always jump on when I'm bored.
what i find brings my dps as a rogue and a melee dps the most is teh kiting or runaway from an AOE and then getting back into the fight and owcurse switching tagets really drags my dps down
I hitted 80 last week and start raiding with my guildies naxx, of course my dps sucks (1.8 buffed) but I've found really good things that I like to share with other rogues.
Keyboard: I use all my left side of my keyboard for all my abilities and macros (tab, 1,2,3,4... q,e,r... f g... <,z,x,c...) and changed the "a" and "d" for strafe instead of turn.
Macros: Always use /startattack (enter) /cast "name of ability" this is pretty powerful because you can automatic start attacking even if you don't have energy for abilities, and in aoe encounters you do dps to 1 target meanwhile you are hitting other ones with fan of knives.
Maybe you already know all of that, but as a new raider, I just wanna help others like me, just like koopa :P.
On the helpful tactics for other classes note...
As a hunter if I see a mob breaking for a healer or any other squishy class I will use misdirection, if its off cool down, to send it back to the tank. If that's not an option, then I use Distracting Shot, pop Detterence and lead the mob back to the tank. Detterence has acctually saved my quite a few wipes as well when the tank has died. Sometimes 5 sec is all it takes for the rest of the group to kill that last mob that killed the tank. There is also our most forgotten aspect, aspect of the wild. It makes a nice little difference on a fight like loken where you are taking constant nature damage.
I recall one time I was running H Nex on my tankadin and in our party we had a combat rouge...now I've never been one to REALLY give a serious hoot about 'geared dps' or any of that, so long as the job gets done. On the splitty chick (shows how long it's been since I've run H Nex! LoL), I see that the rogue overall has only done something in the neighborhood of 800 dps...my first thought was 'dang that's pathetic'...until I leveled MY rogue aka Metakecandle aka best rogue name EVER...I will say I'll never bag on a rouge again...they are an INCREDIBALLY complicated class, perhaps the most complicated class in the game with so many things to manage at once...timers, debuffs, interrupts, threat etc...anyone who wants to bag on rogues coming up needs to seriously roll one or have their head checked!
I recently discovered how awesome the feint change is. It does really help the healers.
Also don't forget tricks of the trade to pull wandering mobs off of clothies.