I have a new Rogue (lvl 18) I'm trying to lvl up and have heard about "stun locking" someone. I realize I probably am not high enough lvl yet with the proper skills learned to do this, but what is the sequence for a stun lock?
Also, I have read much about daggers vs. swords. I presently have a main-hand sword and off-hand dagger equiped. I would really appreciate advice from some of you that have been doing this much longer than me on the advantages vs. disadvantages of the sword/dagger decision. Thanks :)
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33 posts
heh..this is gonna be a long reply.
ok first off the sequencs tot he stun lock will kind of vary for the situation and as you get farther down your tree and getting new skills you can probably figure it out simply. but here is what you will use [not in order yet]:
Cheap Shot[CS],Sinister strike [SS],Gouge, Kidney Shot [KS], Blind, Eviscerate [Evis], Preperation [prep], and Sap
now for the specific sequence, it depends on your build.
there so many ways. about 1/2 to 1/4 of your sequencs depends on your build. ill name some of em so you can see.
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Combo #1 (assumes you have improved cheap shot, preparation and initiative)
Pros- This combination will lock your opponent down until they’re dead with almost no chance of retaliation.
Cons- It’s hard to pull off all 15 points of this combination.
CS, SS, gouge, eviscerate, blind, vanish, CS, SS, gouge, prep, eviscerate, blind, vanish, CS, SS, gouge, eviscerate.
Simple enough, right? Before I break the combo down, note that you should always link one stun to the next. Gouge has to land before CS expires, CS has to land and before blind expires. Why? Because almost all classes have some means of instantly breaking your control like fear, dots, vanish etc. Now let’s take it step by step:
CS- You’re guaranteed 2 points here and chances are initiative will proc. If it doesn’t, stick with the plan. A 4 point eviscerate is better than losing control. I can’t emphasize this enough.
SS- Time to throw in a little damage. Backstab is out. It uses too much energy to maintain control.
Gouge- You should do this just before CS wears off. There are addons that will let you know when all of your stuns will wear off. I’ll get to that later. You’re using gouge here to gain enough energy to eviscerate and blind. Once you land the gouge, get behind your opponent and as close as possible (very important). If it misses, throw a SS and continue.
Eviscerate- Since you’re behind your opponent, eviscerate has an extremely high chance of hitting. If it misses chase them down and try it again. If you’re only at 4 points because initiative didn’t proc then eviscerate anyway. Continue with your combo.
Blind- Since you stayed close to your opponent, landing the blind will be much easier to do. Going from eviscerate to blind is the toughest part here IMO. The bad news is that it is the only point in this combination where your opponent isn’t completely locked down. The good news is that there is no global cooldown on eviscerate, so blind can be done in rapid succession. Now that your opponent is blinded, take this time to clear your head. First aid if you need it, pop a potion or two, fix your hair, strike a pose, etc. But keep your cool. Get your energy back. Don’t feel like you need to jump in immediately or you will be left short on energy through the rest of the combo. If blind misses just vanish.
Vanish- Note that if you deselect your opponent you can sometimes go back into stealth without vanish. It’s a bug and not consistent. Vanish is the safer bet. If for some reason you have a dot on you, vanishing and staying in stealth will be a challenge. If you wait for the last second of blind and quickly vanish/CS, then you will likely land CS. However, with practice, you can learn to time your dot ticks so that you can go into vanish and immediately CS without getting knocked out of stealth from a dot.
Cheap Shot- We’ve just started our second combo. Land the CS from behind. If you have ruthlessness maxed out you have a good chance at having 4 points into your next combo after only one move. Again, stick to the plan. There is no such thing as a 6 point combo but SS and gouge anyway.
Sinister Strike- Hit them from behind.
Gouge- Move to the front and again remember to land it just before CS wears off. If it misses, throw a sinister strike and continue. You might have to be fast.
Preparation- All of your cooldowns have now been reset. You can now do another cold blood (if you have it), blind and vanish. If you don’t have preparation or the cooldown isn’t ready, then I suggest kidney shot here followed by sinister strikes until they’re dead. More on KS later.
Eviscerate- Get into the habit of getting right behind your opponent and very close.
Etc. etc, etc- Do the combination for the third time. You’re in the home stretch. Don’t blow it now. Do NOT lose lock on them. An extremely good player of ANY class will turn this fight around and kill you on the spot.
You just locked your opponent down for 3 full combinations ending with eviscerate. If you have cold blood (I don’t anymore), you will have done 2 of those eviscerates with a crit. I haven’t taken the time to average how much damage I do throughout this full set, but it is enough to take out virtually any warrior, druid in bear form or warlock with soul link, a voidwalker, master demonologist and sacrifice. There are exceptions. There is a druid in my guild that has 11,500 armor in bear form. This combo doesn’t kill him anymore. My warlock has close to 7000HP fully buffed and with my voidwalker out and soul link activated I am insanely hard to take down. It’s been done though. These are exceptional situations. The truth is my warlock is only buffed in instances, people rarely get buffs in battlegrounds and no rogue with half a brain would wait for a druid to get into bear form before starting this combo.
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Combo #2 (assumes you do NOT have improved CS, preparation nor initiative and that you DO have blade flurry and adrenaline rush)
Pros- Combat rogues do pretty good damage.
Cons- They’re crippled when it comes to stunlocks.
This is a combo for the combat rogue. This is a very important combo to learn as it goes into great detail about proper use of kidney shot. Note that this is NOT a full stunlock.
CS, SS, gouge, kidney shot, blade flurry, adrenaline rush, spam SS, thistle tea, spam SS, eviscerate, blind, vanish, CS, SS, gouge, kidney shot, SS…
Cheap Shot- There goes 60 energy, but stay close as your auto-attack does a lot of damage as a combat rogue assuming you have sword spec and dual wield spec.
Sinister Strike- You’re now pretty much out of energy. Prior to landing this you might want to consider turning evasion on against hunters, rogues, and warriors as they will come out of stun before you land your gouge.
Gouge- This might not come quickly. Expect to chase some opponents down. Be patient and persistent but land that sucker and get ready to put the hurt on. Let your gouge run as much of its course as possible to get as much energy back as possible, but do make sure your gouge overlaps with KS.
Blade Flurry- This isn’t a monstrously devastating attack but it’s one of a combat rogue’s best tools and a good time to use it is when you’re about to land a kidney shot.
Adrenaline Rush- The more energy you have during a KS the better.
Kidney Shot- You spent your finisher on a zero damage attack but now have them at your mercy for 6 seconds. The point of this is to punish your opponent for as much damage as possible in that time. If you land it with a full energy bar and have a decent sword or mace, you will do almost twice as much damage as you would with just an eviscerate. If you land a kidney shot with your last 25 energy, you will do very little more than wait for energy to replenish.
Spam Sinister Strike- You should be able to get 3 off before you’re out of energy.
Drink Thistle Tea- Now you have a full bar of energy and adrenaline rush is still running.
Spam Sinister Strike- Energy cycles and timing will vary how many you can do, but you should be able to get 3-5 off before you have to deal with consequences.
Eviscerate- If you activated evasion, it will likely still be up which means you will have some luck in getting this off against melee. We have a full combo bar (and then some) from spamming sinister strikes, so you could drop this before KS wears off. Don’t bother with gouge to set this up. You just spent a ton of energy spamming SS and most opponents will drop before you need to do this eviscerate. I will proceed depending on how much life they have left at this point. If they have 75% of their total health left, I will fight to get eviscerate in early so I can blind them and dish out some more pain. If they are left with a sliver, I might push the envelope a little harder. But remember, great players need 1 hitpoint to beat us if we don’t lock them down.
Blind- Time to slow the pace down. Use first aid. Let blind run its course.
…. We’ve covered this all before….
You’re very vulnerable in this fight. It’s fun to dish out the damage so quickly, but combat rogues don’t beat most classes as well as other builds do. That’s right, I said it. But remember my disclaimer in that these are my subjective opinions. Combat rogues typically don’t have anything in subtlety which is where we have a gigantic amount of utility. Improved CS is the core of our ability to stunlock. You could get 21 points in combat and get CS and prep but then you’re gimped in damage from having no points in assassination, and damage is why you went down the combat tree to begin with.
The plus side of this combo is that you just did a NASTY amount of damage. A blade flurry/adrenaline rush KS with thistle tea is certain death.
Combat rogues are great for killing warriors. They still really need to lock them down as much as possible, but evasion, riposte and that extra auto-attack damage is really nice against these goliaths. I fully admit that I have a tougher time against good warriors than a good combat rogue does. But I have an easier time against everyone else.
________________________________________________________________________________
Combo #3 (assumes you have Improved CS, preparation and are a dagger rogue)
CS, vanish, ambush, gouge, BS, eviscerate, blind, preparation, vanish, ambush, gouge, BS....
I’m not breaking this one down step by step. It has a TON of gaps in it. Energy is your biggest problem. Ruthlessness and relentless strikes help a lot when extending this combination and closes the gaps some.
This is more a demonstration of what a dagger rogue might have to struggle through to get big damage in quickly and stun at the same time.
________________________________________________________________________________
ok sword vs daggers.
not really alot to say and yet so much.
first of all it depends on what you want to do and your build. if your gonna be a combat rogue then you might want to stick to swords. if you are a subtle rogue you might want to go daggers. simply puting it that is. there are obviously more factors and variables to this but for now lets keep it at that.
ok first off the sequencs tot he stun lock will kind of vary for the situation and as you get farther down your tree and getting new skills you can probably figure it out simply. but here is what you will use [not in order yet]:
Cheap Shot[CS],Sinister strike [SS],Gouge, Kidney Shot [KS], Blind, Eviscerate [Evis], Preperation [prep], and Sap
now for the specific sequence, it depends on your build.
there so many ways. about 1/2 to 1/4 of your sequencs depends on your build. ill name some of em so you can see.
________________________________________________________________________________
Combo #1 (assumes you have improved cheap shot, preparation and initiative)
Pros- This combination will lock your opponent down until they’re dead with almost no chance of retaliation.
Cons- It’s hard to pull off all 15 points of this combination.
CS, SS, gouge, eviscerate, blind, vanish, CS, SS, gouge, prep, eviscerate, blind, vanish, CS, SS, gouge, eviscerate.
Simple enough, right? Before I break the combo down, note that you should always link one stun to the next. Gouge has to land before CS expires, CS has to land and before blind expires. Why? Because almost all classes have some means of instantly breaking your control like fear, dots, vanish etc. Now let’s take it step by step:
CS- You’re guaranteed 2 points here and chances are initiative will proc. If it doesn’t, stick with the plan. A 4 point eviscerate is better than losing control. I can’t emphasize this enough.
SS- Time to throw in a little damage. Backstab is out. It uses too much energy to maintain control.
Gouge- You should do this just before CS wears off. There are addons that will let you know when all of your stuns will wear off. I’ll get to that later. You’re using gouge here to gain enough energy to eviscerate and blind. Once you land the gouge, get behind your opponent and as close as possible (very important). If it misses, throw a SS and continue.
Eviscerate- Since you’re behind your opponent, eviscerate has an extremely high chance of hitting. If it misses chase them down and try it again. If you’re only at 4 points because initiative didn’t proc then eviscerate anyway. Continue with your combo.
Blind- Since you stayed close to your opponent, landing the blind will be much easier to do. Going from eviscerate to blind is the toughest part here IMO. The bad news is that it is the only point in this combination where your opponent isn’t completely locked down. The good news is that there is no global cooldown on eviscerate, so blind can be done in rapid succession. Now that your opponent is blinded, take this time to clear your head. First aid if you need it, pop a potion or two, fix your hair, strike a pose, etc. But keep your cool. Get your energy back. Don’t feel like you need to jump in immediately or you will be left short on energy through the rest of the combo. If blind misses just vanish.
Vanish- Note that if you deselect your opponent you can sometimes go back into stealth without vanish. It’s a bug and not consistent. Vanish is the safer bet. If for some reason you have a dot on you, vanishing and staying in stealth will be a challenge. If you wait for the last second of blind and quickly vanish/CS, then you will likely land CS. However, with practice, you can learn to time your dot ticks so that you can go into vanish and immediately CS without getting knocked out of stealth from a dot.
Cheap Shot- We’ve just started our second combo. Land the CS from behind. If you have ruthlessness maxed out you have a good chance at having 4 points into your next combo after only one move. Again, stick to the plan. There is no such thing as a 6 point combo but SS and gouge anyway.
Sinister Strike- Hit them from behind.
Gouge- Move to the front and again remember to land it just before CS wears off. If it misses, throw a sinister strike and continue. You might have to be fast.
Preparation- All of your cooldowns have now been reset. You can now do another cold blood (if you have it), blind and vanish. If you don’t have preparation or the cooldown isn’t ready, then I suggest kidney shot here followed by sinister strikes until they’re dead. More on KS later.
Eviscerate- Get into the habit of getting right behind your opponent and very close.
Etc. etc, etc- Do the combination for the third time. You’re in the home stretch. Don’t blow it now. Do NOT lose lock on them. An extremely good player of ANY class will turn this fight around and kill you on the spot.
You just locked your opponent down for 3 full combinations ending with eviscerate. If you have cold blood (I don’t anymore), you will have done 2 of those eviscerates with a crit. I haven’t taken the time to average how much damage I do throughout this full set, but it is enough to take out virtually any warrior, druid in bear form or warlock with soul link, a voidwalker, master demonologist and sacrifice. There are exceptions. There is a druid in my guild that has 11,500 armor in bear form. This combo doesn’t kill him anymore. My warlock has close to 7000HP fully buffed and with my voidwalker out and soul link activated I am insanely hard to take down. It’s been done though. These are exceptional situations. The truth is my warlock is only buffed in instances, people rarely get buffs in battlegrounds and no rogue with half a brain would wait for a druid to get into bear form before starting this combo.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Combo #2 (assumes you do NOT have improved CS, preparation nor initiative and that you DO have blade flurry and adrenaline rush)
Pros- Combat rogues do pretty good damage.
Cons- They’re crippled when it comes to stunlocks.
This is a combo for the combat rogue. This is a very important combo to learn as it goes into great detail about proper use of kidney shot. Note that this is NOT a full stunlock.
CS, SS, gouge, kidney shot, blade flurry, adrenaline rush, spam SS, thistle tea, spam SS, eviscerate, blind, vanish, CS, SS, gouge, kidney shot, SS…
Cheap Shot- There goes 60 energy, but stay close as your auto-attack does a lot of damage as a combat rogue assuming you have sword spec and dual wield spec.
Sinister Strike- You’re now pretty much out of energy. Prior to landing this you might want to consider turning evasion on against hunters, rogues, and warriors as they will come out of stun before you land your gouge.
Gouge- This might not come quickly. Expect to chase some opponents down. Be patient and persistent but land that sucker and get ready to put the hurt on. Let your gouge run as much of its course as possible to get as much energy back as possible, but do make sure your gouge overlaps with KS.
Blade Flurry- This isn’t a monstrously devastating attack but it’s one of a combat rogue’s best tools and a good time to use it is when you’re about to land a kidney shot.
Adrenaline Rush- The more energy you have during a KS the better.
Kidney Shot- You spent your finisher on a zero damage attack but now have them at your mercy for 6 seconds. The point of this is to punish your opponent for as much damage as possible in that time. If you land it with a full energy bar and have a decent sword or mace, you will do almost twice as much damage as you would with just an eviscerate. If you land a kidney shot with your last 25 energy, you will do very little more than wait for energy to replenish.
Spam Sinister Strike- You should be able to get 3 off before you’re out of energy.
Drink Thistle Tea- Now you have a full bar of energy and adrenaline rush is still running.
Spam Sinister Strike- Energy cycles and timing will vary how many you can do, but you should be able to get 3-5 off before you have to deal with consequences.
Eviscerate- If you activated evasion, it will likely still be up which means you will have some luck in getting this off against melee. We have a full combo bar (and then some) from spamming sinister strikes, so you could drop this before KS wears off. Don’t bother with gouge to set this up. You just spent a ton of energy spamming SS and most opponents will drop before you need to do this eviscerate. I will proceed depending on how much life they have left at this point. If they have 75% of their total health left, I will fight to get eviscerate in early so I can blind them and dish out some more pain. If they are left with a sliver, I might push the envelope a little harder. But remember, great players need 1 hitpoint to beat us if we don’t lock them down.
Blind- Time to slow the pace down. Use first aid. Let blind run its course.
…. We’ve covered this all before….
You’re very vulnerable in this fight. It’s fun to dish out the damage so quickly, but combat rogues don’t beat most classes as well as other builds do. That’s right, I said it. But remember my disclaimer in that these are my subjective opinions. Combat rogues typically don’t have anything in subtlety which is where we have a gigantic amount of utility. Improved CS is the core of our ability to stunlock. You could get 21 points in combat and get CS and prep but then you’re gimped in damage from having no points in assassination, and damage is why you went down the combat tree to begin with.
The plus side of this combo is that you just did a NASTY amount of damage. A blade flurry/adrenaline rush KS with thistle tea is certain death.
Combat rogues are great for killing warriors. They still really need to lock them down as much as possible, but evasion, riposte and that extra auto-attack damage is really nice against these goliaths. I fully admit that I have a tougher time against good warriors than a good combat rogue does. But I have an easier time against everyone else.
________________________________________________________________________________
Combo #3 (assumes you have Improved CS, preparation and are a dagger rogue)
CS, vanish, ambush, gouge, BS, eviscerate, blind, preparation, vanish, ambush, gouge, BS....
I’m not breaking this one down step by step. It has a TON of gaps in it. Energy is your biggest problem. Ruthlessness and relentless strikes help a lot when extending this combination and closes the gaps some.
This is more a demonstration of what a dagger rogue might have to struggle through to get big damage in quickly and stun at the same time.
________________________________________________________________________________
ok sword vs daggers.
not really alot to say and yet so much.
first of all it depends on what you want to do and your build. if your gonna be a combat rogue then you might want to stick to swords. if you are a subtle rogue you might want to go daggers. simply puting it that is. there are obviously more factors and variables to this but for now lets keep it at that.
Wow...you left out Hemo...THE stunlock build. Better energy conservation vs. Sinister Strike = better control. Pretty much insert Hemo for SS.
Note: Don't use hemo with daggers, and if you have less than 900 AP(as it does not do as much damage as Sinister Strike with less).
Note: Don't use hemo with daggers, and if you have less than 900 AP(as it does not do as much damage as Sinister Strike with less).
WoW man this is awesome! I'm hemo sword specced... so if u can share some tips for hemo, i'll be very, very glad :) tnx
3 posts
Fantastic reply xgkithe. . . thx so much. I am printing your post so there's no way i can lose it. I have a 70 hunter, a 70 druid and a 60 mage . . . but by far this rogue is the most complicated to play (and damn fun!!!). I certainly have an increased appreciation for rogues now :)
P.S. If we are on the same server but different factions, I hope u never come up behind me! lol
P.S. If we are on the same server but different factions, I hope u never come up behind me! lol
33 posts
yea i did leave out Hemo [Hemorrage] because i dont e=have enough experience with it so i didnt meantion it. from what i hear ppl like it alot so i didnt want to give facts about stuff i dont know so yea. i am gonna try out hemo too when i make another rogue.
This is an old, old Rogue guide he copied from (notice it doesn't mention things like Mutilate). I know because I read it a lot when I started out like a year ago.
While the info is useful, shame on you for trying to take credit for something you didn't author.
Edited, Mar 28th 2007 4:03pm by Phaltruism
While the info is useful, shame on you for trying to take credit for something you didn't author.
Edited, Mar 28th 2007 4:03pm by Phaltruism
33 posts
well i know it from somebody else, i never once took credit for it btw but its from another guy. i dont have problem saying its from someone else. the probelm i do have is i dont know who ti is to give credit too because i copy pasted it to my word document. and so i jsut kind of put it up. and this is first time really using forums so, im sorry if i did anything wrong. i did not mean too.
just to clarify once again i did not come up with that combo sequence. and also about mutilate i havent had any experience with that skill yet so i cant really even mention it.
just to clarify once again i did not come up with that combo sequence. and also about mutilate i havent had any experience with that skill yet so i cant really even mention it.
The beginning and the stuff about sword vs. dagger is all his own, of course. You can tell because he can't spell or type to save his life and it contains no useful information.
But here is my opinion:
It is easier to find good swords than daggers while you are levelling. Swords are nice because you don't have to worry about positioning yourself behind a mob. It is better for Evasion tanking (which you shouldn't do a lot of, but it happens sometimes) as you still have all your abilities available to you. Combat swords is very consistant damage though weak in PvP. Hemo is the ultimate stunlock build and has decent raid utility.
Daggers, on the other hand, are very reliant on positioning. If you use daggers to level, it takes a bit longer to burn down a mob, but your down time between fights is less because you are taking less damage (you will be cs, gouge, KS all the time to get behind what you are fighting). While it is hard to say since BC came out, Combat Daggers is thought of the ultimate raiding build. Assuming a mob/boss is standing still, Combat Daggers will out DPS sword builds. Of course, things don't just stand around and if you can't get your positioning to use your dagger skills, that is when Swords shine. Generally, Daggers relies more on crits and sword is more about white damage.
Both are viable options for raiding and levelling, it all comes down to preference.
But here is my opinion:
It is easier to find good swords than daggers while you are levelling. Swords are nice because you don't have to worry about positioning yourself behind a mob. It is better for Evasion tanking (which you shouldn't do a lot of, but it happens sometimes) as you still have all your abilities available to you. Combat swords is very consistant damage though weak in PvP. Hemo is the ultimate stunlock build and has decent raid utility.
Daggers, on the other hand, are very reliant on positioning. If you use daggers to level, it takes a bit longer to burn down a mob, but your down time between fights is less because you are taking less damage (you will be cs, gouge, KS all the time to get behind what you are fighting). While it is hard to say since BC came out, Combat Daggers is thought of the ultimate raiding build. Assuming a mob/boss is standing still, Combat Daggers will out DPS sword builds. Of course, things don't just stand around and if you can't get your positioning to use your dagger skills, that is when Swords shine. Generally, Daggers relies more on crits and sword is more about white damage.
Both are viable options for raiding and levelling, it all comes down to preference.
BS man, you said you left out Hemo because you didn't have enough experience with it, not because the guide you stole it from didn't include it. Just go crawl back under the rock you came out from, k?
33 posts
wait wat? hemo? i thought we were talking about mutilate.
Quote:
yea i did leave out Hemo [Hemorrage] because i dont e=have enough experience with it so i didnt meantion it. from what i hear ppl like it alot so i didnt want to give facts about stuff i dont know so yea. i am gonna try out hemo too when i make another rogue.
33 posts
yes i already do know that the thing doesnt include but i really dont know anything about hemorrage. i even posted about asking on why people use it so much. and i already said i dont take credit for it.
Edited, Mar 28th 2007 7:08pm by xgkithe
Edited, Mar 28th 2007 7:08pm by xgkithe
is it true that don't reset blind now? i read that somewhere and i did't try to see if its true
dunno what you're talking about, but if u ment preparation, it don't reset blind CD... i was so paralyzed when i dueled my friend and after duel i used prep to duel again, but that damned blind was still on CD! omg
Prep was nerfed, only notable resets are Cold Blood and Vanish.
Prep is not nerfed it resets cold blood,vanish,sprint,and 1more but cant rember
adrenaline rush & premeditation :P
yea but if u will watch some episode from world of roguecraft, especcialy episode 1, you will see great stunlocks without any time to response, and he uses blind twice always... now it's immposible with nerfed prep... but i agree with Blizz this had to be nerfed... blind twice in combat is such a owerpowered thing i think :) or i'm wrong? :)
Edited, Apr 1st 2007 6:37pm by SqueezCZ
yea but if u will watch some episode from world of roguecraft, especcialy episode 1, you will see great stunlocks without any time to response, and he uses blind twice always... now it's immposible with nerfed prep... but i agree with Blizz this had to be nerfed... blind twice in combat is such a owerpowered thing i think :) or i'm wrong? :)
Edited, Apr 1st 2007 6:37pm by SqueezCZ
Premeds on a quick timer (3 mins) and no one is gonna go AR-Prep as a hybrid build, Hemo/Mutilate are much better utility builds.
hehe i didn't say that i'm using this ^^ but it's how prep works ;) u dunno who might like it, something like BIIIG BERSERK 2x AR xD may be really, really cruel thing in BG lol... i must say i've never tried combat spec...
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