World of Warcraft - Rogue PVP Guide

When WoW first came out and I had merely dipped my feet into the PVP aspects of the game on my priest, I was so tempted to quit due to the annoyance of pvping rogues. Back then everyone was ganking (now it got boring) and as I was on a PVP server, things were worse than ever. I remember this time when I was in STV, trying to do my "kill x monkeys" quests and this annoying undead rogue kept coming out of the shadows and kicking my ass at every possible opportunity. This, my fellow rogues, is how the other classes feel when you work your magic :) It's so frustrating going toe-to-toe against a rogue in PVP, especially if you're not in a controlled environment (duel, arena, etc). The basic rogue PVP powers of the rogue are threefold: 1. The element of surprise - the ability to attack from the shadows and catch your opponent completely off-guard. 2. Stuns and locks - whether it's through physical stuns (gouge) or abilities that mess with your spell casting ability (kick, poisons, etc), a rogue is a master of crowd control. A skilled rogue can keep an opponent stun-locked from full HP to death, which makes it a bit unfair (yet justifiable, since it takes some amount of skill to go for a full stunlock). 3. White damage - I know it may sound silly placing white damage as a PVP advantage, but I actually tested it quite a lot of times (and my fellow rogues have confirmed). Between two equally skilled players and with the same gear level, white damage can make a huge difference (the longer the fight, the bigger the difference). It's also a very important factor in raid DPS, but we're here to discuss rogue PVP, so we'll leave that for another time. When PVP-ing against healers, a rogue will have to partake in an invisible race between his or her hit points and the victim's mana pool. There might be a slight chance that, against priests (who forget to use Inner Fire) you'll manage to finish them off with a nuke before they get a chance to deplete their mana pool. But in most cases you'll just be hitting a healer hard to get him to use some of his mana for healing/shielding. Remember, you only have 1 or 2 chances to bandage and heal yourself during a stun, whereas they'll be at it full time. Another good trick is to try to save your abilities until you get him to what you consider a reasonable HP bar (let's say a half-full bar), then go crazy with the stuns and damage. When the stun cycle wears out and he's forced to use a heal, kick him and grab your honor points. In battlegrounds and arenas (especially in 2v2s) rogues can be heavenly as their crowd control can be unleashed to full effect in that closed environment. The downside is that you lose one of your 3 main weapons, namely the element of surprise: even in an arena, opposing players will easily be able to figure out that they're dealing against a rogue-team (cat druids can stealth to, but usually they buff the other teammate with GOTW, so if you see a lonely mage with GOTW, you know he's pairing with a druid, not a rogue).