LoDBlog

Ah, the age old problem of a movement heavy fight. Whether you have to move a lot to avoid damage or to switch targets the effect is the same. Back in the day a movement heavy fight very much favored ranged/caster DPS while static fights tended to favor melee. This isn’t nescessarily the case anymore as sometimes melee can move with the boss and continue to attack and many casters gain much from being able to stand and nuke.

I’m not going to debate which fight is better for melee and which is better for casters, I want to talk about what melee (and specifically rogues) can do to make the most out of a fight with heavy movement and/or target swapping.

Move Faster

First things first, either take the talents to increase your run-speed or get a boot enchant to give the same effect. Yes, something like Icewalker is modeled as a larger DPS increase and on a fight like Deathbringer Saurfang (and it is), but the reality of the situation is that there are very few fights like that. If you’re a Mutilate rogue, pick up Fleet Footed (you’ve dropped Blood Spatter anyway), retnoobs should get Pursuit of Justice, engineers should already have Nitro Boots and if your class/spec can’t pick up run-speed, there are several enchants. Pick the one that’s best for you, get it and don’t look back.

In todays Warcraft raiding environment, movement is key and being able to move to the right place a the right time is vital. It allows you to stay in just a bit longer before the boom and get back just a bit sooner after the boom. Even ranged classes are doing this. If you head over to EJ right now and ask, “What’s the best boot enchant for a Shadow Priest?” you’ll be given an infraction for not reading the guide which says to use Tuskarr’s Vitality.

I really cannot stress enough just how important this is for melee to have this. You need to move faster. Do not, however, use a meta gem with run-speed; I have never found a situation where this is better than a boot enchant.

Hit Things Sooner

There are a couple things here you can do to help you. First off, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen a rogue swap targets like they’re supposed to but just stand there like an idiot for 2 seconds looking at the new target before attacking, I’d be a very rich man. I can tell you what’s happening. That player is at his keyboard, furiously pounding on Sinister Strike or Mutilate… with no energy. As much as you mash that keybind, you won’t start attacking until you’ve reached 40 or 55 energy. The key here is the key with all classes: make a macro and bind it to your combo builder or your first attack. Here’s what yours should look like as a Mutilate rogue:

#showtooltip Mutilate
/startattack
/cast Mutilate

This leads right into my next tip.

Know Your Targets Ahead of Time

Let me tell you a little story. Back in TBC, just before I joined LoD I was in another guild which was doing quite well but by no means competing for top honors and kills on my server. Sporting my T5 and a good mix of SSC gear (Talon/PvP, lol) I got invited to run Zul’Aman with some of my friends and their friends from the top guild. It was a bear run and I was really excited to be going. It was hardly my first bear run but at the time it was pretty rare for me to run with a crew of that caliber of both skill and gear. And also to my delight I would be running side-by-side with arguably the top rogue on the server. In the end, one of my shaman friends won the bear that night but I walked away from the whole run scratching my head in disbelief.

In my SSC gear I had kept up with a T6 rogue with a Glaive in nearly every fight and in at least one fight I had even edged him out. I was a bit heartbroken to say the least. At the time I really didn’t understand why or how that could happen. Was my gear better? Certainly not. Was the other rogue not really trying? Well, maybe, but it was a timed bear run so I’d like to think he had tried to do his best. We were both fully buffed (I checked). For the longest time it was an enigma that I just couldn’t get out of my head.

That is until a while back when I updated my macros for an upcoming fight in Ulduar. Looking at those macros I got an idea just what had happened and went back at the logs from the Z’A run to see (yes, I have a log of every raid I’ve ever been in since sometime in 2006). As it turns out, I was just playing a different game. While he was likely using tab or some other method for finding his new targets when they came up, I had planned ahead and put those targets into my attack macro above and was getting to the targets a lot faster than he was. In a fight like Halazzi that can make all the difference. When the totem comes up you need to get right on it and then back on him as fast as possible. If you’re slow in switching targets or smack the Lynx a few times first you can end up with a difference in damage done to your primary targets. Over the course of a run something as small as being prepared like that can really add up.

So how do you do that? It’s actually very simple. Just add a few more lines to the macro like I’ve done below and put the highest priority targets at the bottom. When you get the warning that one of those targets is up, hit the alt key and your attack key (I have it set up so I can just tilt my hand slightly to do this).

#showtooltip Sinister Strike
/startattack
/stopmacro [nomodifier:alt]
/target Halazzi
/target Corrupted Lightning Totem

On a fight like Jaraxxus hard mode when the portals come up this isn’t a huge time-saver, after all there’s only one other target. But when you get to fights like Lady Deathwhisper where you have multiple targets all standing near each other it can make all the difference in the world. While they’re not all out yet, I guarantee that more fights in Icecrown will have high priority targets that need to be hit quickly.

Use All Your Abilities

You know all those PvP skills you have? Yeah, they work in PvE too. It really isn’t all about attacking. For instance, just like in PvP if you disarm a mob, nine times out of ten he can’t whirlwind or cleave anymore and that means you can stay in. Rogues, Feint is your best friend in ICC. Pallies, use your bubble, 50% damage is a hell of a lot better than the 0% you get when you move away. Hand of Freedom through the slows, Cloak of Shadows for debuffs that force you to move away (although you should be aware that this isn’t always the best idea). Charge, Intervene, and Ghost Wolf (especially the sexy instant kind) should be at the ready when you need to move.

The list of abilities players should be using but aren’t is just staggering. Remember, just because an ability doesn’t directly increase your DPS directly doesn’t mean it can’t be used to.

Make Sure You’re Doing the Right Job

Raid leaders aren’t perfect. They lead the raid, plan strategies, make sure all the important bases are covered, do their best to keep everyone motivated and a huge list of other tasks. I did it for a short while and at some points it was almost soul-crushing. One thing that isn’t on their list is the optimization of the way you play. If your raid leader assigns the you (a rogue) to one target and a kitty to another but you and the kitty think you could do more DPS if you swapped targets, tell him. Every class has different skills and if each of you has skills that favor the others target, then it would behoove you to bring it up. I guarantee that if you aren’t a dick about it he’ll gladly swap your jobs.