On Rogue Abilities: Shadow Dance and Dismantle

Hello everyone, it has been a while since I’ve blogged – it turns out that shadow-gaming (a site I ran with Dahis and blogged on) burned the heck out of me for quite some time. I am back now, however, and with a lot more free time than previously—so, ideally, I’ll have more endurance so to speak. Moreover, WoW is currently full of interesting changes, yielding lots of discussion on topics ranging from WOTLK to the current sponsor + tournament craze going on across the community. I don’t recall a competitive surge like this in the history of the game. While many may disagree – especially Serennia who argues that WoW is dying off and no one cares to play anymore — I think there is no doubting the fact that there are more tournaments now than ever, bigger prizes, more locations, and more teams getting sponsored. Not to mention the recent surge in activity revolving around WOTLK, beta keys, flaming forum nerf posts, and the usual ming hate.

One thing I learned from shadow-gaming is that people get in touch with me and care about what I write for pretty much one reason and only one reason, my opinion on the current rogue situation, etc. Articles I wrote in the past regarding movies (except the most dramatic ones), other classes or comps were never as accepted as rogue posts. Fact of the matter is, if my specialty is one class, why try to give critiques on ones I am not as versed with? After all, one wouldn’t go to a psychiatrist to hear about the weather, you’d ask a meteorologist–ok, bad example because they can’t seem to predict these hurricanes either, but you get the point.

Now, I don’t want to be terribly unoriginal like most recent gameriot blogs that seem to have been revolving around WOTLK. I am not here to provide the most recent patch notes (although later I may resort to such to avoid having to write a blog – forgive me if it ever comes to this), instead I’m here to offer my opinion on the current WoW situation regarding certain specific topics. For example, today I’m going to go over my personal opinion of a few new rogue abilities and talents.

To get this new blog started, I’m going to talk about my concerns regarding the most obvious and talked about rogue abilities, such as Shadow Dance and Dismantle. I’ll just quickly go over my opinions of Shadow dance and the recent change. The change – for those of you who were not familiar, it removed the vanishing aspect of it – was absolutely necessary in terms of functionality, but was likewise a huge nerf to the ability which previously broke roots, and made a rogue virtually impossible to CC. Shadow dance is kind of a niche ability: on one hand, it provides you with a guaranteed cheapshot while fully dotted, being attacked, etc., which is a dream in terms of reliability of target swapping. No longer will I be locked out of target swaps because of faerie fire. Moreover, it is great because the cool down is nice and short, so it can be used twice in most arenas. This means your swap opportunities are doubled by a single ability. Whereas previously, target swaps were 90% based upon whether the rogue could land a cheap shot, they are now based off of shadow dance and cheap shot.

However, on the other hand, there is a down side to spec’ing into Shadow dance; first of all, you have to give up the new fleet footed (amazing increase in mobility that is surely going to be needed in WOTLK), quick recovery which is surely an amazing talent for Rogues playing in a setup that relies even slightly on endurance (or any pve gearing rogue), and cold blood. Chances are the sacrifice is worth it in that case, but there is one other aspect that irks me about shadow dance. Before they put a five point relentless strikes ability into subtlety, rogues were pretty much forced into a back stab centric spec because the other point dumps were simply horrible.

Well, Blizz quickly fixed that by taking our 1 point talent gem/necessity relentless strikes and turning it into five points. This is terrifically horrible because now if you actually want to go back stab subtlety you’re going to be missing out on some extremely key talents, or you’re going to be putting 55 points into it. Either way, doing so is almost counter intuitive because as you all know, there are so many other HUGE talents out there that you’ll miss. So once again, Blizzard has pigeonholed subtlety into a hemo centric tree (which I don’t mind too much) which defeats the whole purpose of adding the energy reduction to back stab in the first place.

My second topic of the day is regarding Dismantle, perhaps the single best rogue ability ever conceived. Finally, rogues have a defense to mace stunning (thanks for removing this btw, Blizz), intercepting, hammer of justicing, plate wearing melee classes. Let me put it this way: how do warriors peel at the moment? Simple, intercept > hamstring. If they are feeling particularly elite they can intercept > d-stance > disarm. Pretty legit for a 15 second cool down, am I right? Now, let’s go over rogue peeling. Shadow step > Shiv (yeah right, they have intercept - and abolish most of the time - who cares about shiv!) or Shadow step > Vanish > Cheap shot > Shiv/Hemo > Kidney shot. If this resists, you are worthless and wasted one of your only 2 target swap chances. Thank god for Dismantle guys, finally I can simply shadow step > dismantle just like warriors can (without the free stun). Moreover, as you all know, the dualistic advantage of dismantle is that it is not simply a defensive ability, it can be used to remove a shield! Oh heck yeah, and only on a 1 minute cool down. Better than any 51 point rogue talent, period. Well, maybe not better, but close. There is so much utility around this ability, it is out of control > Expose + Dismantle = how much armor?