Rogue 80

Rogue 80 Hit Caps

2019-12-31T19:16:00.000-08:00

See the updated post for Rogue Hit Caps for Level 85 at Cataclysm Rogue.

To hit or not to hit? That is the question.

Ok. Is it essential for a Rogue to be hit capped?

Short answer. No!
Why? Well it will differ for every Rogue, whether they Raid or Pvp.

What is Hit?

Hit is simply if you "hit" or "miss" a target. In Rogue 80 we are talking about Wrath of the Lich King. Therefore for the WotLK Rogue it is regarding a level 83 Boss.
There is an 8% chance for a melee attack to miss a level 83 Boss.
There is an 17% chance for a spell attack to miss a level 83 Boss.
(Poisons are regarded as spells!)

What is Hit Rating?

For every 1% melee hit there is 32.79 rating.
For every 1% spell hit there is 26.232 rating.
Precision 5/5 will give + 5% melee or spell hit.
A Draenei in party will give +1% melee or spell hit with Heroic Presence.
A Shadow Priest or Moonkin in party will give +3% spell hit.

Types of Rogue Hit.

Yellow Hit: Melee
Poison Hit: Poisons (Spells)
White Hit: Auto attacks

Rogue Hit Rating Caps.

Yellow Hit:

66 with a Draenei in party and Precision.
99 with Precision.
263 without either.

If you do not reach these caps you WILL massively decrease your chance to do maximum damage in a raid.

Poison Hit:

210 with a Shadow Priest or Moonkin in party and a Draenei with Precision.
237 with just a Shadow Priest or Moonkin in party with Precision.
315 with Precision only.
446 without a Shadow Priest or Moonkin in party and a Draenei. No Precision.

This is effectively your target for raiding. Going over this "cap" will not adversely effect your performance but will only increase the effectiveness in a minor way.

White Hit:

689 with a Draenei in party and Precision.
722 with Precision.
886 without either.

Again, heading toward this cap will not hurt, however, it is unlikely you will ever reach this cap without totally nerfing your Rogue.

A final word on expertise. Expertise and hit do not mix. Expertise being whether or not a mob can "dodge" your attack (keeping in mind mobs can dodge attacks from behind!).

More on expertise later. But that's it on Level 80 Rogue Hit Caps.

Thanks to Adrine and the great post on Wow Forums.

Rogue 80 Critical Strike Cap

2010-03-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

What is Critical Strike?
A Critical Strike "Crit" is a strike which deals 100% bonus physical damage when a target is attacked (in a Rogues case) with melee weapons.
Calculating what your effective Crit on a target can be a little daunting due to the factors on the combat table effecting the outcome!

We will attempt to simplify it here! Want more? Check out the guys of at Elitist Jerks. Great stuff, but as usual take your PHD in Rocket Science and rations for the duration!

Critical Strike Rating
For every 1% Critical Strike chance there is 45.91 rating.
As of Patch 3.02 this effects not only Melee attacks but Spells also!
That's it! Our poisons are Spells! Bonus!

Rogue Critical Strike Cap
Ok! A level 80 Rogue with White Attacks on a level 83 Boss has a fixed 24% chance of being Glancing Blows.
Not much we can do about that one.

Now time to skirt around the formulas and get to the heart of Crit caps for Rogues.
An attack table is made up of % chance to:
Crit+ Hit
Miss
Dodge
Parry
Block
Glancing blows

Were attacking the boss from behind (If you are not get thee to a tank forum :P) therefore the Boss cannot Block or Parry! So, ignoring those and knowing Glancing Blows are fixed at 24% we have:
Crit+ Hit
Miss
Dodge
Glancing Blows 24%

Basically we have a 76% chance to Crit now less x% Miss chance and x% Dodge chance.
Therefore if your Miss chance is 0% and Dodge chance is 0% your (76-0-0) Crit Cap is 76%.
If you Miss chance is 10% and Dodge chance is 5% (76-10-5) your Crit Cap is 61%
That's all folks!
We discussed how to mitigate Miss (Hit Cap) and Dodge (Expertise Cap).

To sum up, its wise to:
1/ Cap Expertise
2/ Cap Hit up to White hit
3/ See where your Crit is.
4/ Throw anything extra from then on into hit.

Rogue 80 Armor Penetration Cap

2009-10-04T18:17:00.001-07:00

What is Armor Penetration?

Tooltip quote: "Enemy armor reduced by up to xx.xx%"

"By up to" is highlighted for a reason. This value is modified by calculations within the game based on the level of the targets armor and level.

Want to know more? Ghostcrawler's (Lead System Designer) post.
The usual cautions apply, take a calculator and a packed lunch!

Rogue Armor Penetration Cap

1231 Armor Penetration Rating = 100% or 12.31 * 100. (Pre 3.2.2 Nerf read below)

1401 Armor Penetration Rating = 100% or 14.01 * 100. (Post 3.2.2)

Keeping in mind the section above 100% Armor Penetration Rating will NOT give 100% Armor Penetration.

Other Talents like Mace Specialization and Expose Armor will dictate how much effective Armor Penetration is achieved.

Having both of these trinkets equipped for example:

Grim Toll & Mjolnir Runestone

will take you over the Armor Penetration Cap, especially since a lot of gear already carries Armor Penetration Rating.

The Latest Word

Again, from Ghostcrawler:

"The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

This change is largely for PvE reasons, though we won't cry at all if melee damage in PvP drops a little as a result."

Rogue 80 Combat and Mutilate

2009-09-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

What is the best raid spec?

The one that you like!

I personally have never played around with a deep subtlety spec and currently use combat for raids. Again, why? Because its what I like playing. There is endless debate and theorycrafting over which spec "rulz" at any given moment in the game and that's great!

Currently, however, the boards are about even across Combat, Mutilate and Subtlety within certain parameters. What! I can hear the screams now. This is better than that because of the other. Sure we can all see figures of endless data and theorycrafting mathematics proving one point or the other. The fact is we can probably never play exactly to that data for any given circumstance, we are not machines, we will not play our spec perfectly. What do we do then? Play what suits YOU!

World of Warcraft is a game of increments however and as we all know gear can make a difference.

What is the best Combat and Mutilate gear?

That is something theorycrafting and the guys who are good at it can help us immensely!

The guys at Elitist Jerks. Vulajin, Mavanas and Thaela and others for example. Have done a lot of great work on their spreadsheets to help us get more from our game.

Personally I like Aldriana's Rogue Combat and Mutilate Spreadsheets and so have linked them here.

Save them. Put your gear in. Play with gear and gems to get the most out of your Rogue.

If you want to argue with these guys about the veracity of their calculations feel free.

But I suggest unless you have spent a long time at data mining and theorycrafting yourself.

"You are not prepared!"

Trial of the Crusader - Northrend Beasts

2009-08-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

ArgentSun

of

Wowhead

has put together a

Guide for Trial of the Crusader - Northrend Beasts.

So what Rogue 80 gear is in it for me?
Normal 10 man, check it out:

3 x Emblem of Triumph
Collar of Unending Torment
Acidmaw Treads
Acidmaw Boots

Just a Rogue 80 footnote here:

Gormok the Impaler is the first boss of this encounter, he has a rather nasty move called Impale.

This can be Disarmed! Ok, you say, that's a warrior thing!

Rogues have Dismantle.

Same effect? Let us know!

Rogue 80 Expertise Cap

2009-08-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

Expertise, why?

Expertise basically dictates if a boss can dodge or parry a melee attack.
Its basically understood that a boss has a 6.5% "Soft cap" chance to dodge a melee attack and 14% "Hard cap" chance to parry an attack.
As Rogues, unless their threat meter blows their eardrums apart, do not act as main tanks (Yes I have seen a Rogue with 104% dodge MT a raid!), lets be concerned with the "Soft cap".

Expertise Rating
Expertise rating is generally from gear stats. (eg Conqueror's Terrorblade Breastplate)
For each "32.78998947" in expertise rating at level 80, you reduce your chance to be dodged/parried by 1%.

Therefore 32.78998947 x 6.5 = 214 Expertise Rating to reach the "soft cap".

Expertise
Expertise is generally gained from talents. (eg Weapon Expertise)
For each point "1" in expertise, you reduce your chance to be dodged/parried by 0.25%.

Therefore 6.5% / 0.25% = 26 Expertise to reach the "soft cap".

Where do you find this?
In your Character page at the bottom between all your l33t gears will be your melee stats.
They will read:

Damage: xxxx-xxxx
Speed: x.xx/x.xx
Power: xxxx
Hit Rating: xxx
Crit Chance: xx.xx%
Expertise: 26/26

Rogue Level 80 Expertise cap 26!

Again it isn't critical to hit this on the mark, however exceeding the cap will do zip to help your dps.

Call of the Crusade now Live!

2009-08-04T18:24:00.000-07:00

Call of the Crusade, the new World of Warcraft content update, is now live! Under thundering skies, Argent Tournament participants have honed the arts of war and faced off in bone-shattering jousting matches to earn the right to be called champions. But these heroes have yet to face the greatest challenge of all: the Crusaders' Coliseum, an all-new level-80 raid dungeon available in both normal and more challenging Heroic versions for both 10 and 25 players. Call of the Crusade also introduces the new Isle of Conquest Battleground, the ability to gain experience points in Battlegrounds, new daily quests, and significant changes to class talents and abilities.

Call of the Crusade

Patch Notes 3.2
Wow Shop Talk

Rogue 80 Q&A with Greg Street

2009-08-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this post from Blizzard.

Interesting reading for any Rogue.

"Community Team: This segment is all about the rogue; we will delve deep into this class with Greg Street and discuss the elements that make the rogue class incredibly unique. "