Project Lore

Feint, the forgotten skill My fellow raiding Rogues, we've been neglecting one of the biggest buffs to our beloved class that we've had in a while. No it doesn't improve DPS, directly at least, but falls in line with the number one rule of being a raiding rogue, staying alive so you can still DPS! Patch 3.0.8 released on January 20th which is coming up on six months old now. The buff (or change depending on your view) on this skill that generally has been laughable, has now been made a very viable skill, especially in high-end raiding.

Feint: Rank 8 now reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 50% for 6 seconds in addition to its existing effects.

Now, go back and read that again; reduces damage of AoE attacks by HALF for 6 seconds. To be honest I had forgotten about this skill until a few weeks ago, it has been on my bar of course but has been on the further side of the keyboard away from more important skills. Now while this may not be a huge deal even in heroic Ulduar, once you start hitting the hard modes this redone skill really shines and a really great example of great use is on XT-002 Deconstructor. I was running normal Ulduar (10 man) with my guild and we went for the hard version of XT-002 Deconstructor. Basically once you activate the hard mode the damage put on the raid (and thus stress on the healers) is increased by 40%! The spell from XT you should be most be worried about is the Tympanic Tantrum, which everyone in the raid needs to be healed from; if you can cut this in half you reduce the stress on your healers and they can worry about getting other people (tanks, other healers) topped off before you (and if you have healing potions and healthstones, you should be using those too). Giving your healers an extra 4-6 seconds to worry about others before you, can be invaluble in a healing intensive fight such as hard mode XT. The skill only has a 10 second cooldown which is very nice as it's only four seconds that you are without the 50% damage reduction, although it is highly recommended to NOT put this into your rotation as it is merely a situation skill at this point. With that said though, am I the only one who forgot about this spell? Have you raiding rogues been using it for a while? Or did it take something drastic like not wanting to stress out your healers during a hard mode? What other fights do you find this to be a good fit for?

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