Hemo rogue - any links to a good guide?

[drowland]

Believe it or not, I'm actually having a hard time finding a good (and
up-to-date) guide to a hemo rogue, ie necessary talents, recommended
talents, and the stunlock combos to use to keep 'em stunned throughout the
fight and maximize the control of the subtlety tree. I've never played a
heavy subtlety rogue, so it's kinda new to me. When I do return, since I
plan to respec anyways to get out of the new 'dirty deeds' talent, I figured
I might try a hemo/stunlock build for a bit, see how it works for me.

BTW, I know hemo builds are very gear and attack power dependant, and
require a good mainhand weapon. At present I still use my old L60 sword,
CTS, and have ~1100 unbuffed AP, IIRC. If needed, I can stack on more +hit
gear too, with what I have in the bank I can reach about 155 +hit rating by
sacrificing a bit of other stats.
Here's me:
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Sarebear
I have a variety of different offhand weapons I can use, depending on what
will work best. I use the whistling sword currently for its high dps & high
speed, procs well with combat potency. Of course, that won't exist on the
hemo build, so I can swap to a number of different offhand weapons depending
on what works best. I have the whistling sword shown on armory, hakkari
offhand sword (48dps, 1.60spd, +40ap, with +15agi enchant), qiraji dagger
(50dps, +ap, +stam, with +15agi), footman's longsword (HH honored item,
52dps, slow, +ap +stam +hit, with +15agi enchant), and the 50-something dps
blue dagger from a terrokar quest reward, currently un-enchanted. I also
have the Mag'hari fury brand fist weapon, the 62dps one from the Ring of
Blood quest chain in Nagrand, currently unenchanted but can go out and farm
up mats for either a crusader or +agi enchant for it...that thing could go
in mainhand or offhand depending on where it'd work best. I suppose I could
also get Mongoose on it, but I'd sadly have to hire another enchanter to do
it, I haven't learned that 'chant yet.
--
US-Thunderhorn PvE
Sarebear 69 HU rogue - formerly of Nathrezim
Fruitrollup 58 TR hunter

US Ysera PvE
Drugard 46 HU pally
SpecialK 60 NE warrior

US Nathrezim PvP
Healie 40 HU priest
Impawsable 6 NE druid

[Dan]

Post by drowland
Believe it or not, I'm actually having a hard time finding a good (and
up-to-date) guide to a hemo rogue, ie necessary talents, recommended
talents, and the stunlock combos to use to keep 'em stunned throughout the
fight and maximize the control of the subtlety tree. I've never played a
heavy subtlety rogue, so it's kinda new to me. When I do return, since I
plan to respec anyways to get out of the new 'dirty deeds' talent, I figured
I might try a hemo/stunlock build for a bit, see how it works for me.

This is my favourite hemo spec for PvP:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=iuebox0oZZxrIoMGRsjc

21/0/40. It's slightly unusual in not taking premeditation, but I
find I never used it when I had it anyway - the extra two combo
points it gives result in two combo points 'wasted' in a typical
stunlock attack, so it wasn't worth it.

Key talents for stunlocks include:

(Assassination) Ruthlessness - getting a combo point back from a
kidney shot gives you a head start on the next.

(Assassination) Relentless strikes - getting energy back from a
kidney shot means you don't have to 'skip' a hemo to have energy to
stun when you need to.

(Assassination) Cold Blood - when their health gets down, cold blood
+ eviscerate is the perfect finisher. It makes the difference
between finishing the fight now and having to restealth and do
another round of stuns.

(Subtlety) Dirty Deeds - you're going to open with cheap shot, this
talent makes the difference between having 4 or 5 combo points as it
wears off for your kidney shot. Without it, you don't have the
energy for the extra hemo that makes the 5th combo point.

(Subtlety) Initiative - again, this makes the difference between
having 4 or 5 combo points when cheap-shot wears off.

My typical stunlock attack starts with Cheap Shot (3 combos, 4
second stun), Hemo, Hemo (5 combo points), Kidney Shot (just before
cheap shot wears off, 5 more seconds stun), hemo, hemo (2 combo
points), eviscerate, Blind. Fight pauses, wait as your energy
regenerates to 100, restealth as soon as you can, you should have a
few seconds left over. Now start over with cheap shot again. After
the time the second kidney shot wears off, instead of eviscerate,
hit them with gouge, then cold blood & eviscerate if you know it'll
kill them (it normally will) or restealth and start again. Timing is
much trickier on restealthing after gouge when you don't have
improved gouge talent (my spec doesn't, because I rarely need it,
but you could easily swap 3 points from say, Enveloping Shadows to
Improved Gouge instead.

Preparation wouldn't help with this stunlock, since the 2 combo
points it adds just mean the two hemos between cheap shot and kidney
should wouldn't add combo points, and you want to do the hemos
anyway to do damage. :)

Post by drowland
BTW, I know hemo builds are very gear and attack power dependant, and
require a good mainhand weapon. At present I still use my old L60 sword,
CTS, and have ~1100 unbuffed AP, IIRC. If needed, I can stack on more +hit
gear too, with what I have in the bank I can reach about 155 +hit rating by
sacrificing a bit of other stats.

I prioritise stats roughly in the following order:
+hit
+crit
+attack power
+agility
+stamina
+strength

You need at least enough +hit to overcome the base 5% miss chance
for special attacks - there's nothing more annoying than having your
kidney shot miss in the middle of a stunlock. If you're fighting
higher level opponents, you'll need more +hit anyway, and +hit also
adds damage as dual-wield misses a lot.

Dan

[Frank E]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:03:42 GMT, "drowland"

Post by drowland
Believe it or not, I'm actually having a hard time finding a good (and
up-to-date) guide to a hemo rogue, ie necessary talents, recommended
talents, and the stunlock combos to use to keep 'em stunned throughout the
fight and maximize the control of the subtlety tree. I've never played a
heavy subtlety rogue, so it's kinda new to me. When I do return, since I
plan to respec anyways to get out of the new 'dirty deeds' talent, I figured
I might try a hemo/stunlock build for a bit, see how it works for me.

I haven't been a heavy subtelty spec since the expansion so this is
based on 2nd hand info.

Hemo is one of the few attacks what wasn't normalized so you still get
major advantages from a slow main hander. The cross-over where hemo
will do as much damage as SS is supposed to be at around 1500AP with a
2.6 speed weapon. ... which is probably why you don't see many hemo
guides around any more, you need really good gear to make it
competitive.


I would add one comment to Dan's talent post. Premed might not be all
that useful if you always open with CS but you have a lot of other
options open to you with a Sub build. Garrote, shiv a crippling
poison, rupture and kite....

Rgds, Frank

[Dan]

Post by Frank E
On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:03:42 GMT, "drowland"

Post by drowland
Believe it or not, I'm actually having a hard time finding a good (and
up-to-date) guide to a hemo rogue, ie necessary talents, recommended
talents, and the stunlock combos to use to keep 'em stunned throughout the
fight and maximize the control of the subtlety tree. I've never played a
heavy subtlety rogue, so it's kinda new to me. When I do return, since I
plan to respec anyways to get out of the new 'dirty deeds' talent, I figured
I might try a hemo/stunlock build for a bit, see how it works for me.

I haven't been a heavy subtelty spec since the expansion so this is
based on 2nd hand info.
Hemo is one of the few attacks what wasn't normalized so you still get
major advantages from a slow main hander. The cross-over where hemo
will do as much damage as SS is supposed to be at around 1500AP with a
2.6 speed weapon. ... which is probably why you don't see many hemo
guides around any more, you need really good gear to make it
competitive.

Not necessarily, you just need a slow main-hander. According to:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=205730948&postId=2056025395&sid=1#3
then with a 2.9 speed main-hand weapon, hemorrhage beats SS for
damage-per-energy at just 961 attack power. Unfortunately, such slow
main-hand swords are rare, though there are quite a few maces at 2.7
speed.

Anyway, my human rogue had 1015AP, unbuffed, in blues at level 60.
She's 66 now, in greens with around 1300AP - 1500AP at level 70
ought to be easily achievable with blues.

Hemo is useful for stunlocks even when it does less damage than SS,
purely because it builds combo points for less energy. Outright dps
isn't so important when the victim can't hit you back. :)

Dan

Post by Frank E
I would add one comment to Dan's talent post. Premed might not be all
that useful if you always open with CS but you have a lot of other
options open to you with a Sub build. Garrote, shiv a crippling
poison, rupture and kite....

That's true and those can be very useful in PvE against mobs with
tough armour. It can be good against player warriors too - garrote,
hemo, hemo, rupture, vanish, wait a few ticks for energy and then
reopen with cheap shot to start a stunlock. Warrior and paladin)
plate (and bear-form druids for that matter) can really blunt a
rogue's damage output, so anything that ignores armour is useful.

Dan

[Frank E]

Post by Dan

Post by Frank E
Hemo is one of the few attacks what wasn't normalized so you still get
major advantages from a slow main hander. The cross-over where hemo
will do as much damage as SS is supposed to be at around 1500AP with a
2.6 speed weapon. ... which is probably why you don't see many hemo
guides around any more, you need really good gear to make it
competitive.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=205730948&postId=2056025395&sid=1#3
then with a 2.9 speed main-hand weapon, hemorrhage beats SS for
damage-per-energy at just 961 attack power. Unfortunately, such slow
main-hand swords are rare, though there are quite a few maces at 2.7
speed.

Have you seen anything better than a 2.6 sword in the expansion? I've
been looking but haven't found any. ... admittedly, my rogue is only
66, been leveling my warrior, so I don't have access to the endgame
items yet.

Post by Dan
Anyway, my human rogue had 1015AP, unbuffed, in blues at level 60.
She's 66 now, in greens with around 1300AP - 1500AP at level 70
ought to be easily achievable with blues.

I'm impressed, my rogue just broke 1000AP at level 66. <g>

Rgds, Frank

[drowland]

Post by Frank E

Post by Dan
Anyway, my human rogue had 1015AP, unbuffed, in blues at level 60.
She's 66 now, in greens with around 1300AP - 1500AP at level 70
ought to be easily achievable with blues.

I'm impressed, my rogue just broke 1000AP at level 66. <g>

I could hit about 1300 ap and 8k+ health on my rogue if I equipped the
ap/stam gear I have in the bank. However, I'd lose a ton of crit and hit for
it, which is a bigger loss IMO. At 69 my rogue is running (IIRC) about 22%
crit, +105 hit, ~1100ap, 7.2k health. I find 90-110 hit rating sufficient
for levelling and questing in outland, obviously for raiding and endgame you
want alot more to mitigate misses but at that point you have the gear that
can give both high hit/crit *and* high ap/stam.

Pre-expansion, epicced out from BWL/AQ40/MC drops, I was running 4.2k
health, 985ap, 27% crit, +120 hit. In comparison to a friend's green-geared
rogue alt @60, he had about 3k health, 500ap, 15% crit, no +hit.

The loss in +hit% and +crit% from hit/crit rating as you level is so steep,
I find I gotta keep upgrading my hit/crit to even maintain the same level,
and I have dropped alot in the hit% and crit% between 60-69 anyways.

1500ap? That's a helluva lot for a rogue to try and get without sacrificing
too much hit/crit. I've looked up rogues in some of the world's top guilds
on armory (nihilum, death and taxes, etc), and they, in tier4/5 &
kara/gruul/serpentshrine/magtheridon/the_eye epics are running about 1400ap,
with about 240 +hit and 22-25% crit, and 8-9k health.

I had a standalone utility, forget the name of it, pre-expansion that let
you "try out" all the different gear setups for a toon at a given level and
see what your stats would be. I wonder if there's an upgraded version of it,
to see what a rogue can strive for in full tier5 and full epics in all other
slots at 70. And once people start clearing Black Temple & Hyjal, I can
imagine there'll be some crazily-geared people out there, back to the days
where the difference between the raiding rogues in half bloodfang, half
nightslayer and n00b L60 rogues were ridiculous. I remember doing AV on my
epicced-out rogue and going up against green-geared L60 rogues and couldn't
believe how insanely easy it would be to tear them down.

How long til some guild in the world actually gets into Hyjal? I think
they're all just held up now on being able to get to and down Kael'thas for
the second vial of eternity. Of course, it'll take them some weeks of
downing him to get enough people their vials...

[Ken]

Post by drowland
I had a standalone utility, forget the name of it, pre-expansion that let
you "try out" all the different gear setups for a toon at a given level and
see what your stats would be. I wonder if there's an upgraded version of it,
to see what a rogue can strive for in full tier5 and full epics in all other
slots at 70. And once people start clearing Black Temple & Hyjal, I can
imagine there'll be some crazily-geared people out there, back to the days
where the difference between the raiding rogues in half bloodfang, half
nightslayer and n00b L60 rogues were ridiculous. I remember doing AV on my
epicced-out rogue and going up against green-geared L60 rogues and couldn't
believe how insanely easy it would be to tear them down.

I recently downloaded that tool and it is not updated. It went through
the motions of importing the new gear from wowhead but was not able to
then equip it to show how it would affect my stats. If I remember I
will post a link to the utility, maybe some uber-programmer out there
can modify it for TBC.

[Frank E]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:25:13 GMT, "drowland"

Post by drowland
1500ap? That's a helluva lot for a rogue to try and get without sacrificing
too much hit/crit. I've looked up rogues in some of the world's top guilds
on armory (nihilum, death and taxes, etc), and they, in tier4/5 &
kara/gruul/serpentshrine/magtheridon/the_eye epics are running about 1400ap,
with about 240 +hit and 22-25% crit, and 8-9k health.

As Dan mentioned earlier in this thread, it's not always about
straight out DPS. All this talk about hemo builds had got me thinking,
since I'm going to respec anyway after the next patch.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fhxfot0RiZZVrfohhRoxo
... seems like it might be a nice balanced build for someone like me
who doesn't raid. Sword and hemo for decent 'in the face' damage, nice
backstab potential for PvP and instances and the ability to put out
some massive damage while you're tanking with setup and evasive.

Post by drowland
And once people start clearing Black Temple & Hyjal, I can
imagine there'll be some crazily-geared people out there, back to the days
where the difference between the raiding rogues in half bloodfang, half
nightslayer and n00b L60 rogues were ridiculous. I remember doing AV on my
epicced-out rogue and going up against green-geared L60 rogues and couldn't
believe how insanely easy it would be to tear them down.

I wonder if Blizzard learned their lesson when it comes to raid versus
casual itemization. So far, it looks like the gear gap won't be as
huge as it was pre-expansion but I guess only time will tell.

Rgds, Frank

[Dan]

Post by drowland
I could hit about 1300 ap and 8k+ health on my rogue if I equipped the
ap/stam gear I have in the bank. However, I'd lose a ton of crit and hit for
it, which is a bigger loss IMO. At 69 my rogue is running (IIRC) about 22%
crit, +105 hit, ~1100ap, 7.2k health. I find 90-110 hit rating sufficient
for levelling and questing in outland, obviously for raiding and endgame you
want alot more to mitigate misses but at that point you have the gear that
can give both high hit/crit *and* high ap/stam.

Yeah, my +hit has suffered a lot in Outland, currently down to +71
which only just mitigates the 5% miss rate on instant attacks. I
can't remember exactly what it was before the expansion, but it was
a lot higher. As long as I can keep it above 5%, I know I'm not
likely to miss a kidney shot in PvP, so I can focus on attack power.
:) I don't worry too much about +crit, since with Cold Blood I can
guarentee a crit when I need one.

Post by drowland
1500ap? That's a helluva lot for a rogue to try and get without sacrificing
too much hit/crit. I've looked up rogues in some of the world's top guilds
on armory (nihilum, death and taxes, etc), and they, in tier4/5 &
kara/gruul/serpentshrine/magtheridon/the_eye epics are running about 1400ap,
with about 240 +hit and 22-25% crit, and 8-9k health.

For raiding, yes - but then I wouldn't expect a hemo spec rogue to
be raiding hardcore - their dps is going to be a step behind combat
rogues anyway.

Dan

[Dan]

Post by Frank E

Post by Dan
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=205730948&postId=2056025395&sid=1#3
then with a 2.9 speed main-hand weapon, hemorrhage beats SS for
damage-per-energy at just 961 attack power. Unfortunately, such slow
main-hand swords are rare, though there are quite a few maces at 2.7
speed.

Have you seen anything better than a 2.6 sword in the expansion? I've
been looking but haven't found any. ... admittedly, my rogue is only
66, been leveling my warrior, so I don't have access to the endgame
items yet.

There seems to be a distinct lack of decent swords in the expansion
- my rogue reverted to daggers purely because the dps of daggers
started to outweigh the extra damage of my out-levelled swords in
instant attacks. I've seen a few good maces, but I just don't like
maces so much. My top rogue is L66 and kinda stalled there, so I
haven't seen the loot from the top instances.

Post by Frank E

Post by Dan
Anyway, my human rogue had 1015AP, unbuffed, in blues at level 60.
She's 66 now, in greens with around 1300AP - 1500AP at level 70
ought to be easily achievable with blues.

I'm impressed, my rogue just broke 1000AP at level 66. <g>

My rogue had the full blue PvP armour, which adds a ton of attack
power and stamina, and some more from weapons, trinkets, etc.
Actually I think the moment I passed 1000AP was on adding an epic
from ZG, so it wasn't completely in blues. :)

I just looked up my rogue in the armory and in her L66 greens she
has 1128 AP, so the 1300 value I remember must have been buffed.
Some of the items she's wearing are L61,L62 though, so with all L66
stuff she could probably do a bit better.

Dan

[Peter Ellis]

Post by Dan
That's true and those can be very useful in PvE against mobs with
tough armour. It can be good against player warriors too - garrote,
hemo, hemo, rupture, vanish, wait a few ticks for energy and then
reopen with cheap shot to start a stunlock. Warrior and paladin)
plate (and bear-form druids for that matter) can really blunt a
rogue's damage output, so anything that ignores armour is useful.

An interesting build to try (which I had till I ran out of weapons slower
than 2.6s) is just enough to get Hemo, and stack the rest in Assassination,
including all the poison talents. Put deadly poison on both weapons.

You can pretty much stun lock from the opener (cheap shot, a couple of Hemos
and a kidney shot), then stack the combo points and cold blood Envenom. For
longer fights, rotate your finishers between Slice'n'Dice, Rupture and
Envenom, and never worry about armor on anything ever again.

It loses out slightly in raiding, because you lose deadly poison damage by
continually dropping the stack with Envenom, and not being able to put
instant poison on your main hand. The extra damage of Envenom doesn't
*quite* cover it.

But for very high burst damage with stun lock capacity, there's nothing to
touch it.

Peter