Project Lore

Like most rogues, I use Tricks of the Trade (referred to as ToT, TotT, or Tricks) a lot. Its a rogue ability that has gained a newfound popularity with the great 2 piece tier 10 bonus from Shadowblade Armor. Tricks of the Trade is cast on a friendly player in your party or raid who is within 20 yards. After it is cast, the rogue gains the Tricks of the Trade buff, lasting for 30 seconds. Once the rogue attacks something, the buff is removed, and a buff is applied to your target that lasts for 6 seconds (10 seconds glyphed). This buff causes all threat caused by the rogue to be applied to the player with the buff, and all of the targeted player's damage is increased by 15%. Once the buff is applied to the target, the cooldown of 30 seconds begins on Tricks of the Trade. In short, Tricks is a rogue ability that lasts 10 seconds, has a 30 second cooldown, and transfers all of the rogue's threat to someone else and makes that person deal 15% more damage. It can be cast on anyone within 20 yards initially, but after casting the rogue can move and attack something farther away and the effect still works. Its usually used to pick up adds or help with aggro. Pretty straightforward. The kicker is the tier 10 bonus that everyone has been picking up. Normally Tricks costs the rogue 15 energy, so rogues usually only used Tricks when the tank needed threat or the rogue's threat was too high, such as during an initial pull. With the tier 10 bonus, the ability grants the rogue 15 energy instead of costing energy. This means that Tricks actually increases the rogue's own DPS, making it very valuable. As such, using Tricks of the Trade whenever it is available because an important part of a rogue's DPS rotation. There are a couple of issues that most rogues will run into. The first is how to select a target to use Tricks on when in combat. Most rogues will focus their target, by selecting them and typing /focus. Then, they use a macro along these lines: /cast [target=focus] Tricks of the Trade The issue is that there are usually multiple tanks. The one you picked before the fight might be out of range, dead, or not supposed to be getting threat on your current target. For example, if you are Tricksing to a tank with a lot of threat-per-second (TPS) ability and a tank with less TPS needs to get aggro, you could be screwing things up by Tricksing at a bad time. What's a rogue to do? Rogues in this situation usually make a series of macros that look like: /focus tank1 /focus tank2 Then we hit these until something works if it isn't crucial who has aggro, you know you are Tricksing an okay target, or you think your raid is oblivious to why the offtank is pulling aggro. This approach still leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes, the tank is doing fine on aggro, and you would rather use it on a DPS target. Other times there are unique encounters and situations, like Blood Queen Lana'thel, where ToT has a unique use. An addon to manage Tricks of the Trade could easily because a rogue staple. A simple version would have users give an ordered list of targets that are viable to ToT to, and when you use Tricks it attempts to use it on each target on the list until it is successful. Again, sometimes your target is out of range or dead, so its important to be able to have multiple targets on the fly. A more sophisticated version could synchronize ToT timing between rogues using it on each other. On fights where DPS checks are tight, like on Festergut, a Tricks of the Trade addon could be set up with two rogues where it could tell if they were glyphed for the extra time and give an alert to each rogue when the other one Tricks on them so they could Tricks back. It could designate a "leading rogue" and a "responding rogue" to simplify the process. Additionally, in case threat got out of hand, one of the rogues could press a button to have both of the rogues Tricks onto the tank during the next cooldown to help stabilize threat, or have the other rogue wait a few seconds to resynchronize the ToT rotation. An even more sophisticated version could tie into threat and DPS tools like Skada, Recount, and Omen as well as range tools such as those in DBM to deliver automatic and on the fly target choosing based on user-configurable rules. For example, it could detect the tanks from gear and HP, or from something like CT_Raid, and when a rogue uses tricks, it would go to any tanks in range, given that there were targets that were within 20% aggro of the tank. If the tanks are out of range or dead, there can be an option to tricks onto the lowest threat DPS in range below a certain threshold. If the tanks are well ahead on threat, there can be an option to Tricks onto the highest DPS below a certain aggro level. These can be customized and reordered, perhaps with a scripting language, such as in Outfitter. There are special circumstances that could be taken advantage of in some encounters, like on Lana'thel. Lana'thel turns players into vampires, causing them to do double damage, heal themselves, and generate no threat. The fight is very tight on DPS, and since there are players generating no threat, it makes sense to Tricks to a vampire in range doing the highest DPS. An extra 15% damage for 10 seconds every 30 seconds is an extra 3% DPS, and saving cooldowns and stacking it with things like potions of speed, the vampire buff, and bloodlust make Tricks a valuable DPS tool. An addon with the ability to automatically ToT onto vampires when possible would be a great tool. If this addon gets made, let me know right away so it can be featured right here on the Project Lore blog.