Out of curiosity, how did rogues perform best in vanilla and TBC?

[Fullmetal89]

All I remember is that the most fun I had in WoW PvP was during TBC. With my sub rogue wearing merciless glad and dual wielding swords. I think PvP died after that imo, I prefer short battles over the ridiculously long pillar humping we see in arenas today with healers being unkillable and certain classes (warriors ) having way too much survivability.

[I-Thalos-I]

All these threads about old vanilla classes seem a bit fishy :P

Somthing is going on here!

There is a pattern!

You are either running a survey, doing some kind of essay on nostalgia or trying to set up a private server based on vanilla/TBC content :P

[-aiko-]

I didn't main a rogue until Cata, but in vanilla I did PvP. I certainly don't remember 2 shotting people, but I remember Sub being fun. Does anyone remember imp sap? I also miss Ghostly Strike...that was removed in Cata I think.

[D3athsting]

I didn't main a rogue until Cata, but in vanilla I did PvP. I certainly don't remember 2 shotting people, but I remember Sub being fun. Does anyone remember imp sap? I also miss Ghostly Strike...that was removed in Cata I think.

Improved sap in dungeons was like playing russian roulette

[achromatickang]

In PvP you just went stealth and 2-shotted everyone.

In instanced PVP I felt incredibly weak on my Rogue. Once I was out of stealth just about any class could destroy me with a single DoT. I used to think I was doing good if I could kill someone in WSG before dying because once I came out of stealth I had literal seconds of being alive, and the legitimate 2-shots were a combination of luck and / or being really well geared. I actually had a PVP dagger (spent weeks in AV just to get this), and was considered fairly well geared but not every ambush led to a kill.

[Vladimeir]

I recently made a similar thread about warlocks, and because I got so much interesting info and insight into the history of the game, I want to check how the other classes played as well.

I'll start with rogues and work my way through the rest in the next few weeks. how did rogues play in those days? what specs were the strongest?

In Vanilla, Rogues typically played combat daggers. If they didn't, they were doing it wrong.

In BC, Combat was still king but it depended on where you were in content as to which weapons to use. Swords were the easiest goto without worrying about what gear you had. However, Fist/Sword to take advantage of off-hand swords procing mh fist with 5% crit was slightly ahead around T5.

At the end of T6 (Hyjal/BT) swords while using Warp-spring coil and Madness of the Betrayer due to armor penetration.

In Sunwell, haste took over and was godly for swords specs.

With the introduction of magisters terrace, the 1.3 daggers you could get out of there made assassination somewhat viable. It was better than anything for that level of gear but obviously T6 and sunwell gear/weapons pulled ahead.

Also, gem for hit.

At some point, mace specialization was changed. I don't remember if it was the end of BC or in WotLK. At that point, combat maces was really good due to armor penetration.

[-aiko-]

Improved sap in dungeons was like playing russian roulette

Ah such fond memories...dungeons without improved sap maxed out. It was something stupid like a 3 point talent that was 20%/40%/100%.

[ymirsson]

elusive DST... I never wanted a drop so badly.

i got mine in wrath.

- - - Updated - - -

Ah such fond memories...dungeons without improved sap maxed out. It was something stupid like a 3 point talent that was 20%/40%/100%.

it was something stupid as 30/60/90 %.

[Kulestu]

In vanilla hybrids were generally awful. Balance, ele, feral, enhance, ret and all other hybrid damage specs were, for the most part, not viable. Pure DPS classes were tuned to do more damage (as I believe they should be, though not to the scale of vanilla levels, or even close to that level) and hybrids to do less. It just meant that PvE damage was plainly higher. In PvP, there was no ranking system so a lot of it was just personal experience. It's annoying to die to a rogue in a cheap shot, isn't it? There wasn't a class that a decently geared rogue couldn't take out in a battleground while a fight happened, and it didn't hurt that rogues could evasion>sprint away if the team didn't react quickly enough after you appeared. When BC launched rogues were damn near the kings of arena pvp and that didn't help the OP cries. Hell, the amount of bad rogues I saw in the top 50 on bg9 in season 4 was hysterical. Get 4/4 and some warglaives and you get free gladiator and a good chance at a free rank1 title on lower pop BGs.

And of couse, the RRRRD (ret ret rogue rogue druid) comp of early WoTLK with retard FoK spam. Rogues had a hell of a spree of being exceptionally powerful.

[Adoxe]

Edit: R.I.P. swirly ball

We got the Swirly Ball back in like patch 5.1 :P It's a glyph called Glyph of Detection.

[-aiko-]

it was something stupid as 30/60/90 %.

Dang I thought it went to 100% at least.

[caffeiine]

well for one, a rogue could walk around naked and kill peoples in the best gear. Them CD's that reduce your CD's inside of CD's with your CD's that dragged the fight on till you were dead.

damnit... nostalgia moment, but yea, around 5 minutes goes around in no armor killing stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u55vHURPQSw

[Naxere]

they were scaling extremely well with the old Windfury Totem (only horde in Vanilla, became available to everyone in TBC), which was a flat chance to get extra attacks and could proc from old combat sword specialization and also from itself (and that attacks could proc sword spec aswell). That was extremely powerful, now it's become the raid wide aura that grants attack speed.

God I used to love the old Windfury totem as an Arms Warrior with Sword spec and the old Hand of Justice. I had a Bonereaver's Edge, which had armor pen on it before armor pen was a stat, and I could global clothies with lucky proc strings.

[Kulestu]

All I remember is that the most fun I had in WoW PvP was during TBC. With my sub rogue wearing merciless glad and dual wielding swords. I think PvP died after that imo, I prefer short battles over the ridiculously long pillar humping we see in arenas today with healers being unkillable and certain classes (warriors ) having way too much survivability.

Actually, the consensus among most high-end players is that BC had the long mana-drain battles that required epic communication and teamwork with CC rotations, and that everything since then has been a bursty meta where the actual "game" lasts 30 seconds. It could take 4 minutes of waiting for someone to get out from behind the pillar, but the games end damn near instantly. BC, on the other hand, games were typically 10 minutes long.

[Dimzum]

In Vanilla you were combat daggers and spammed backstab, SnD and evis (and you rarely had extra points for evis). Alliance didn't have shaman so no WF buff. You would have 4 rogues and 1 dps warrior in a group and tell the warrior to keep sunder up. Combat swords didn't pick up until patch 2.0, but most of us were trying mutilate at that point.

In TBC sword spec was king. Too many fights mobs were immune to poisons and mutilate didn't scale nearly as well with WF. The rotation was simple depending on what set bonus you had. I think with 4 piece t6 it was 3pt SND/5pt Rupture and repeat. My rogue has at the hit cap in TBC with full yellow +hit gems. A 5 man group in a raid would have 2-3 rogues, an arms warrior, an enh shaman. If you were lucky you might have a ret paladin who knew what they were doing.

TBC also had the awesome hemo/combat hybrid for awhile. Blizzard broke the hell out of that spec, but while it was around it was fun. Shadowstep, hemo, sword spec and blade flurry all in one spec.

[Kulestu]

Sword spec might have been king in PvE or in certain setups, but Shadowpriest/Rogue 2v2 teams regularly ran combat HemoARPrep. Being on the receiving end of the random mace and blackout stuns was NOT fun.

[D3athsting]

In Vanilla you were combat daggers and spammed backstab, SnD and evis (and you rarely had extra points for evis). Alliance didn't have shaman so no WF buff. You would have 4 rogues and 1 dps warrior in a group and tell the warrior to keep sunder up. Combat swords didn't pick up until patch 2.0, but most of us were trying mutilate at that point.

In TBC sword spec was king. Too many fights mobs were immune to poisons and mutilate didn't scale nearly as well with WF. The rotation was simple depending on what set bonus you had. I think with 4 piece t6 it was 3pt SND/5pt Rupture and repeat. My rogue has at the hit cap in TBC with full yellow +hit gems. A 5 man group in a raid would have 2-3 rogues, an arms warrior, an enh shaman. If you were lucky you might have a ret paladin who knew what they were doing.

TBC also had the awesome hemo/combat hybrid for awhile. Blizzard broke the hell out of that spec, but while it was around it was fun. Shadowstep, hemo, sword spec and blade flurry all in one spec.

Oddly enough i used to top meters in aq40 with hemo build and http://www.wowhead.com/item=23221...
and that damned cts that never dropped from chrommie (same for BF spaulders)

[Dys]

I raided MC as a rogue when it was still relevant content, so did a friend of mine. We both always ran a dual dagger backstab build (I was the first of us to get a Felstriker, but he was the first to get a Perdition's Blade) and just decimated everything, always topping the charts by a decent to wide margin and basically being the primary reason that we even got past a few encounters. We PvP'd together, raided together, pretty much did everything together as a dual rogue gank team. We used to kill people in the middle of their raid groups as they were gathering up outside of BRM, we would both just nuke one dude and run for our lives, and it worked every single time. There was nothing quite like killing someone in a group of 35+ people, getting away and being able to sit by and watch everyone else in the area scatter to try and find us, which would lead to more ganks on the people who would stray too far from the pack. We both had Frost Reflectors for those pompous frost mages, and various other engineering toys for screwing with people. Gouge -> Gnomish Death Ray was pretty fun, when it worked right. During the TM/Southshore zerg days, we would both stealth sprint into the middle of the alliance pack and blast off a Chained Essence of Eranikus and Rammstein's Lightning Bolt, it didn't do much damage, but it was fun, and added some distraction to the mix.

It was the most fun I've ever had in this game.

Then BWL came out and my rogue just became my miner. I switched to a warrior main and fell out of touch with the rogue class for the remainder of my time playing the game.

[dinouille]

what about mage guys?

seems that all of you say rogue where king, but mages in pvp was godlike ² !!

[Senka]

From my point of view, it's because Blizzard didn't understand for a long time how crazy weapon damage scaling was, so Rogues were left alone to dominate along with Warriors and Hunters. Those classes were also deliberately designed to do more damage than other classes in PVE, but it really was just out of hand because Blizzard was too new at developing the game to tune numbers well in general.