Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about leveling a rogue from level 51 to level 70.

If you've ever leveled a rogue (or really any class) to 80 before, you know that there's certain spots in the leveling curve that can get downright boring. We play like a "dual wielding warrior" far too often, preferring to simply walk up to enemies and Slice and Dice our way to a kill. Rogues have a variety of skills, but it seems like Sinister Strike is really the only one worth pushing. Where's the fun in spamming one ability mindlessly until the enemy falls over from boredom?

Luckily for us, all of that ends at level 50 and above. We receive some of our core abilities via our 41-point talents, and each spec becomes a completely different playstyle from what you've been using for the past 50 levels. In addition, we pick up some of the clutch PvP abilities that were added in TBC that allowed rogues to compete in the arena environment. To summarize: leveling a rogue just got real.

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about leveling a rogue from level 11 to level 50.

As we discussed in the comments last week, rogues play fairly simple for the first several levels. Without any real finesse techniques and the simplest of opponents, there's no reason to do anything besides run up to an enemy and just start swinging away. It may not seem very rogue-like in nature, but that is because low level rogues are still learning the tricks of the trade.

The trip from 11 to 50 will be much of the same. We receive a few awesome new abilities that help us in a few situations, but until level 50, we don't really see any of rogue that you can expect to play at 80. Luckily, at 50, you get a completely new skill set that will rewrite how you play your rogue. With the mount changes to allow low levels to ride epic mounts, you'll be jetting around and having a great time questing and finding enemies to slay. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, you've still need to get to level 50 first, and so read on for full details on the process.

Ghostcrawler has put a significant sticky up on the forums about what he calls the "hybrid tax" in terms of PvE play -- there's been some back and forth lately on the forums about hybrid classes and what they should and shouldn't be able to do, and GC wants to put any confusion about what Blizzard intends "hybrids" to be to rest. Very basically, he says that there are three roles in the game (tanking, healing, and DPS), and if a class can respec to perform a different role, it's considered a hybrid class. Otherwise, it's a "pure" class. This means a few things: pure classes, he says, should have slightly higher DPS ("all things being equal," and when does that ever happen?), because they don't have the option to switch out. There's no rule as to how much better that is, but as a tradeoff of rerolling being the only way for "pures" to switch, they get to be a little better. That's the "hybrid tax," and mages, hunters, rogues, and warlocks don't have to pay it.

Hybrids, however, do, and that means that paladins, druids, priests, shamans, and to a certain extent, warriors and death knights, will in Blizzard's view never be able to equal "pure" classes in terms of DPS output, with everything else being equal. You may love your ret pally, and he may be in uber gear, but he should never be able to pour out as much damage as an equally specced and geared hunter, because you can switch to healing, and the hunter can't.

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about leveling a rogue from level 1 to level 10.

So, after reading the list of pros and cons, you've committed to starting your new rogue. This is a proud day for the brotherhood of assassins, as we welcome a new member into our fold. You will learn to embrace the shadows and your adrenaline will spike after your first kill. You will learn to hide your tracks and strike fear into your enemies.

Before you're ready to slay dragons and assassinate high-profile targets, you've got a lot of learning to do. Rogues can be a complex class, with our nearly limitless bag of tricks and a playstyle that is uniquely our own. You must learn how to use your techniques effectively, and how to maximize your damage output while staying alive. The journey from a young rogue to a powerful assassin begins today.

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about leveling a rogue, and why you should choose one for your next alt.

I've heard a lot of statistics from various sources stating that the rogue population has been dwindling since Wrath of the Lich King was released. Whether our decline is due to former assassins deciding to try out the new death knights, or rogues simply moving on to greener pastures, we may never know. I do, however, know that there's also a lot of newly minted rogues, working their way up through the levels and lowbie zones. And if there's not, there should be!

There's a lot of fights that are absolutely amazing for rogues, with Yogg-Saron hard mode (no keeper) and Anub'Arak hard mode being two of the most prevalent and important encounters currently in the game. I have seen guilds beg their inactivate rogues to resubscribe with promises of gold, crafted epics, and endless heroic runs to gear them out. I know of a rogue on my server who went from newly 80 to better geared than myself in about a month with a ton of help from his guild and friends. Many of the world's top guilds are looking for solid rogues to fill the shoes of those who have given up the mantle of shadows in the past year.

We've also got a lot of new rerolls who are working on getting a new class to 80 for Cataclysm's upcoming release. I have been working on a guide for those rogues who are new to the class (and possibly the game) who are looking for tips and tricks for getting the most out of their roguish experience. I would also ask that any veterans or novice rogues alike add their own tips in the comments, if you've got a personal anecdote or bit of info that made your time leveling easier.

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Everyone once in a while it occurs to me that our various level 80 characters actually are, in terms of relative power, astonishing. We've killed Old Gods, fought a herald of the titans, even balked the Lich King himself. But to be honest, it's not any of those things that brings it home to me.

No. It's events like this weekend, when I was trying to get my level 41 paladin through Stranglethorn Vale as fast as possible (because, you know, it's bloody awful) and came upon a level 80 DK and his level 63 rogue buddy slaughtering all the quest givers. I couldn't see what levels they were (to the pally, they were skull level) so I decided to switch over to my warrior (after I got cocky and flagged hoping to draw them to attack me, which they did... level 41 pally went boom) and come clean them out. It wasn't until I arrived in Booty Bay I realized that the DK was wearing heirlooms and greens... well, to be honest, I only realized that when I hit him twice with my Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade and he fell down. The rogue died from the ancillary whirlwind.

The first thing I did after cackling and thinking about how to work this into a Wow.com post (which, as you can see, I managed - I realized about an hour later that I should have remember their names) was to think about how it rarely even occurs to me just how fast gear escalates. I can remember doing the daily quests for Knights of the Ebon Blade reputation out on the Scarlet Onslaught island, carefully pulling groups of one or two and stopping to eat or bandage between pulls. Now I pull groups of 8 to 10 at a time and don't even have to stop to eat, period. With patch 3.3 coming and with it a new raid of even more powerful gear, by the end of the expansion's cycle will we just pull the entire island in one go?

So once again I turn to you, readers - how much is too much? Are we even going to need to upgrade at all before we hit 85 in Cataclysm? Or are things progressing just as they should and the fact that my shaman can go resto and run through the Argent Tournament dailies letting his fire totems do they killing while he AFK's and trust Earth Shield and Healing Stream to keep him alive is just a consequence of gear evolution, nothing to be concerned about?

In keeping with our musical theme, here's David Bowie's Changes. Most of you have probably heard it, but most of us have not really listened to it. Take some time to enjoy one of Bowie's most renowned pieces with the article today.

Last time, I went over a few significant arena modifications that 3.2.2 brought us. Square pillars for line-of-sight, the armor penetration nerf, focus frames, flying in battlegrounds, and the Onyxia loot table can be found here.

This article is going to talk about five of the nine classes discussed in the 3.2.2 patch notes (warlocks were left out). The reason we won't be talking about the other four is sheer article size. I'm not getting blamed for breaking anyone's scroll wheel today! We'll go over death knights, hunters, druids, and mages in the second part of this part II (which should be in a day or two).

I'm giving analysis on class changes; I hope we will agree on most things, but if you disagree or decide I don't understand a mechanic properly, please let me know in the comments below. I read all your comments and am often stunned with how gracious our readers have been towards me. Thank you for all the kind words, those of you who took the time to write them!

Please don't assume that I don't care if I don't write a large amount about the horrors of nerfing or the glories of buffing your main character's class (triple negative hooray). I probably don't know enough about the intricacies of the change to make an educated prediction, and would say little rather than proclaim "this will gimp class X vs. class Y" and have it fail to come to fruition.

I'm going to be ignoring all non-pvp related notes. If you think I left something out, please post a comment below and I will (most likely) edit the post accordingly.

Also, 3.3 patch notes are out already! Next week, part III will be merged with the 3.3 patch notes that are coming; there's a lot to talk about!

So, without further ado, here's what 3.2.2 is cha-cha-cha-cha-changing in the arena world.

The area-of-effect damage cap is something that doesn't get talked about a whole lot. The first time I noticed it having a real effect on gameplay was in Mount Hyjal ("Hey, warlock! Wake up and throw us another Seed of Corruption!"). So what is it and what is patch 3.3 doing with it?

When you hit a single mob or player with a spell, or some kind of crude inertia-based impact utensil, the game will work out how much damage that target takes. This is based on the various offensive properties of you and the spell or utensil, as well as the defensive properties of your target. The same is true for area-of-effect (or AoE) abilities, though these tend to do less damage to a single target. Add in some more targets and, while it's still fun to do lots of damage to one of them (with the casting and the poking with sticks), you may have a chance to do damage to all of them at once. Let's say that you can do 2500 damage to a single target with one spell or stab, but can only do 1000 damage to a single target with your AoE ability. If you have five targets that you can hit with your AoE, then that will do a total of 5000 damage. Already we're having more fun than just beating on the one target.

Tonight, after Trials of the Grand Crusader (four down, bug to go) we decided to hop onto some alts, which led to back to back TotC 10 on my DK and Shaman. Then back to back Ony 10, also on the DK and Shaman. And because I'd spent hours in TotGC 25 on my warrior before that, by the end of the night, I had no idea what class abilities I had anymore. Between popping Army of the Dead when they called for Heroism (it's bound to the same key) to trying desperately to use Chains of Ice when asked to Frost Shock the Ret Pally, I was in rare form. And it wasn't just me, either: the druid healer is usually a mage, the warlock raids as a priest, and the holy paladin healing the second Ony attempt has something like 10 alts at 80. I'm surprised he even knows where he is. We got it all done, mind you, but you can really tell the difference in smoothness between our mains and our alts, even as well geared as the alts often are.

So now I put it to you, gentle readers. Do you ever suffer from class bleedover? Are you ever on your druid finding yourself mashing the Consecration button, or on your Mage trying to use Hymn of Hope? Or do you find it easy to keep it all straight?

As you've probably heard, the latest build just hit the Patch 3.3 PTR. With it comes a ton of great stuff, including the Tier 10 set bonuses! The usual warning accompanies them, they might change, they're not necessarily final, they could be place holders, et cetera. They look pretty flipping good right now, though. Chase Christian seemed quite shocked at the staggering upgrade the Rogue bonus is from what they had previously.

All set bonuses are listed below, classes arranged in alphabetical order.

Death Knight

• Death Knight T10 Tank 2P Bonus - Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.
• Death Knight T10 Tank 4P Bonus - When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 sec.
• Death Knight T10 Melee 2P Bonus - Your Obliterate, Scourge Strike, and Death Strike abilities deal 10% increased damage.
• Death Knight T10 Melee 4P Bonus - Whenever all your runes are on cooldown, you gain 3% increased damage done with weapons, spells, and abilities for the next 15 sec.

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about the upcoming Vanish fix that is currently on the PTR, and how it stacks up to the hype.

From our mouths to Ghostcrawler's ears: we have finally seen the fruits of our continued patience. GC responded to a thread calling for Vanish's swift repair, indicating that there was a change in the works for patch 3.3. This is even earlier than I had hoped we would see it, as I had resigned myself to expecting a fix in Cataclysm via some new mechanical change. The PTR notes indicate that we should have a 1-second immunity to being brought out of stealth after Vanishing.

This seems like the ultimate fix and one that's been brought up several times before. It prevents nearly any random effect from removing stealth from us, while still giving our opponents a chance to remove us from the shadows if they act quickly. The question is whether or not these mechanics are working properly, and if we have gained any additional survivability from this fix. I hopped onto the PTR, and with my trust rogue and paladin, I tested the mechanic in full. Read on for the gritty details. Edit: Since this article appeared, the patch notes were edited to reflect a 0.5 second immunity, which coincides with the results seen here.

Patch 3.3's notes are pretty sparse so far, and the rogue-centric bits are really no exception. Rogues only have three little bullet points, two of which apply strictly to the leveling game. The first is that rogues will have Dual Wield right at level 1, which only makes sense. It's quite possibly the most iconic part of the class. Waiting until level 10 to get your hands on it always felt a little off. The first ten levels is hardly indicative of the sort of combat you'll be getting into as that particular class.

The second change seems to aim for that same purpose: Making the first ten levels as a rogue feel more rogue-like.

Stealth: This ability no longer has multiple ranks. While active, the single rank of this ability (available at level 1) allows rogues to move at 70% movement speed.

Stealth is a lot less fun when it's as slow as molasses, isn't it?

The patch 3.3 PTR notes are out, and the most interesting thing to me, after just a first look, is that Blizzard is making some serious tweaks to the level 1-10 experience, of all things. Dazed is getting changed a bit -- characters from levels 1-5 will be completely immune, while characters 6-10 will have a much lower chance of getting slowed down. Health and mana regeneration at the lower levels is being increased (mana costs on the lower levels of spells are also being decreased, though we're not sure yet which spells are being changed and what the difference is). The default equipment is being tweaked, and most notably, rogues will start out right away with dual wield and two daggers do it with.

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about a few of the most common rogue macros in use today.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to play my rogue quite a bit more than I am typically able to. Brewfest and Onyxia have had me busy every night, helping my guild mates slay Coren Direbrew over and over again. I was able to pick up a Direbrew's Shanker 2.0, although it won't see much use, it's still nice to see one in my bank beside the previous versions.

I captured this bit of a World of Logs parse from one of the Onyxia attempts, where I was able to my AoE combination macro: it's a very deadly combination. Looking at numbers like these make me wonder if perhaps the great FoK nerf of 3.2.2 wasn't as heavy-handed as it was made up to be. With a Vanish fix on the horizon for patch 3.3 (who's PTR is coming "soon") and the red-hot topic of 'weapon swapping', I decided to do a bit of housecleaning and tidy up my macros and addons in anticipation.