Spellpower of Malfurion posted on the Priest forums that spell pushback is an indication that Blizzard prefers melee classes over spell casters. In his thread, the original poster used the example of a sixteen-second actual cast time for a second and a half spell due to spell pushback. This greatly reduced the effect of casters against melee classes. Songbreeze of Dragonmaw echoed this sentiment with the response, "Welcome to World of Meleecraft."

Other posters disagreed. Some stated that many PvE encounters favor casters. Nemarra of Tichondrius pointed out that melee characters have an equal disadvantage at range. Casters also have access to instant spells and abilities such as Blink, Frost Nova and Curse of Exhaustion to help them get out of melee range. Others have access to Power Word Shield and Earth Shield that mitigate the effects of pushback. If you're concerned about spell pushback, you should pay particular attention to how your spec can mitigate it.

Great news for compulsive /inspect-ors from the new patch -- Hortus confirms that in neutral areas and out of combat, players will be able to do a little cross-faction inspecting. No more will you have to wonder what kind of helmet that dirty Human Warrior is wearing around Shattrath -- you'll be able to pull them right up and check out all of their gear.

The sky, as you may have noticed, didn't fall when Inspect changed back in patch 2.3 to let anyone see anyone else's gear and talents, and it won't fall again when this change is introduced (trust me). It is interesting to consider how much the Armory has changed the game, though -- odds are that if you'd suggested that we should be able to check the other faction's gear and talents to a developer at the launch of vanilla WoW, they'd have said that, like limiting cross-faction communication, it wasn't right for the feel of the game they wanted to make.

But now that the Armory is up and showing off everyone's secret gear of shame, there's no reason to hide it any more in the game either.

Combat vs. Assassination and Subtlety
I'll be the first to admit that many Combat heavy builds, especially Combat daggers (which I was for a long time while raiding), are not inherently fun to play.

The calls go out through trade chat, "Premade AB, must have 250 resil." "Warlock looking for 5v5, have 400 resil, pst." It takes some doing but with Season 1 (soon to be Season 2) Arena gear available as PvP honor rewards, this is not outrageous. Changes on the public test realm that allow the purchase of Gladiator gear with Badges of Justice would make it still easier to acquire gear that is loaded with resilience.

Resilience was introduced along with the Burning Cruasde, and has had a massive impact on PvP gear. This combat statistic was designed to reduce the chance of being struck with a critical hit. It also reduces the damage caused by a critical strike. This stat was implemented in order to extend PvP combat.The presence of resilience is the main feature of PvP gear that sets it apart from PvE gear.

As it turns out Zebulon had a run-in with a shifter who really knew how to use his class abilities. As he was flying back from Skettis daily questing high above Terorkkar Forest, Zebulon, who was playing a Rogue, was ambushed by a Druid in Swift Flight Form. The attacker flew above him and shifted into caster form. The Druid cast Insect Swarm and began spamming Moonfire as he dropped toward the ground. The altitude permitted the Druid to break combat and return to flight form. Because of the speed boost from epic flight form the Druid was able to make another pass. Damaged, dotted, and desperate, Zebulon searched for a safe body of water to drop into. The plan was to dismount into the water, Cloak of Shadows, and then Vanish from the attacker. No luck- HK for the Druid.

Obviously, all of our classes have a bunch of combat spells, and we use them in combat all the time. But when it comes to standing around the city, all of us might as well be clowns mocked up in different outfits, because we don't use our magic unless we're killing something. Of course there are also a lot of non-combat spells, such as mages summoning food and water, or warlocks summoning you and me. But is there any use to some of our combat spells for those times when we're not in combat?

The greatest non-combat use I can think of for combat spells is in roleplaying, such as the frost-mage gnome I featured in an article, who had such a horrible cold all the time -- she would sneeze and Frost Nova at the same time for a really fun character effect. I'd love to hear some more of these roleplaying ideas, but I'd also like to hear from non-roleplayers as well. How do you use your spells to entertain yourself or your friends, without killing something at the same time?

Nibuca from Mystic Chicanery gets credit for coining this one, but I don't disagree: Lurting is bad-- don't do it.

Lurting, as you can see in the video above, is a made-up term for looting during battle. Sometimes, we can't help it (yes, I'm a sometime lurter, too, I'm sorry to say)-- the thrill of seeing shiny sparkles on a foe is just too much. But while it seems like it won't matter, odds are that that's when things will go wrong-- looting not only distracts you from the fighting, but also can cause exactly what happens in this video. If a loot window pops up while you're trying to keep the main tank healed. And it's a distraction that could cost the whole group.

In short, no looting during combat: no lurting allowed. That loot ain't going anywhere, and it's got your name all over it. Wait until all the sheeps are dead, and all the targets are down, and then right click away and claim your goodies.

So yesterday on Build Shop, I mentioned that I'd gotten an email this past week from a Rogue who wanted to know about the viability of a 30/0/31 build for casual instances, raids and PvP. The short answer is OK, not very, and sure. The long answer is slightly more complex, so this week on Encrypted Text I'm examining exactly where a non-conventional hybrid build like could work, and why there are usually better specs available for both PvE and PvP.

First of all, I'm a big supporter of non-standard specs. I think that your own play experience should help determine where you spend your talent points. However, I do think that you should at least examine why certain specs are tried and true, and how certain talents outperform others. If you never play in any type of group (instance, raid, battleground, arena, etc), then how you spec only affects you. Once you start spending time with other players, though, the way you play and spec starts to directly impact your teammates. Raids especially are all about teamwork, and if you're not contributing 100% in all the ways that you could, you start to become a liability. You become less of a liability in dungeons where fights are generally shorter, but you're still not living up to your potential.

Friends, countrymen (and women), lend me yer... eyes! Today I come to you with the first installment of our shiny new Rogue column, Encrypted Text. As the weeks go by, Elizabeth W. and I will share Rogue tips, tricks, gear, and more about all things stealthy and stabby. You'll get lots of Information spanning levels 1 to 70, based on questions we get, interesting forum posts, and more. (As such, if you have any questions or suggestions for Encrypted Text, you know the drill!)

Before we get rolling, allow me to steal just a moment of your time and give you a bit of information about my history (and passions) as a Rogue. My main Rogue is a L70 Troll who I have spent the last year and a half leveling and raiding under different Combat variants for the most part. I also have a L23 Blood Elf Rogue on Zangarmarsh who will be my test subject for builds once she gets to a respectable level. Currently, I am running a Swords variant on my main and do a respectable amount of damage with her. While I know many folks will immediately scream "but Swords don't fit the sneaky stabby thing, and you disable attacks that way" at me. Yes, I am aware of that. Playing up the assassin personae can definitely be a lot of fun. However, as I am primarily about PvE content, and still spend a great deal of time soloing between instances (motes - you know I love 'em) I find Combat Swords to be an excellent build for what I generally want to achieve. I do not want to mess around with having to worry about positioning or timing -- especially when in a situation where I am competing for taps. I want to walk up, pilfer through the mob's pockets, drop an opening Cheap Shot (love that noise) get my Combo Points, throw my (Improved) Slice & Dice, and proceed to Cuisinart my target into a pile of sparkly win at my feet.

If this sounds like fun to you, then keep reading. Past the jump I'll share some of what I consider to be the crucial things that anyone considering rolling a Rogue for the first time needs to know. (For those of you who are battle-proven Rogue veterans, feel free to join us and add your own observations!)

With that great explanation of stats this morning, how fitting that this afternoon, we have Drysc's update on what the various combat ratings mean for each of your character's combat values.

The combat ratings system was implemented when the expansion came around-- it used to be that instead of a "dodge rating" on a piece of armor, you just got a "+2% chance to dodge." But Blizzard noticed that in order to scale that gear up ten levels, they'd have to push up percentages, and eventually everyone would just be walking around with crazy high percentages-- adding enough armor up to a 100% chance to dodge would obviously break the game.

So they developed the rating system, with each armor piece giving a plus to "rating" that then translated into different percentages at different levels-- an item with 18.9 dodge rating on it actually gives +1% dodge at level 70, but more than that at level 60 (about %1.5, actually). That way, Blizzard can scale the rating with level, and gear can get better without breaking the game. Much more on this, I'm sure, when Elizabeth continues her WoW Rookie feature on stats. And don't forget that RatingBuster can give you all this automatically ingame-- from what I understand, it has been updated with these numbers.

But in the meantime, after the jump, I've posted what Drysc says all the ratings will give you at level 70. Feel free to bookmark this post for quick reference when comparing gear.

Last week we did a little joke with Phat Loot Phriday (and, if I can brag for a moment, did everyone read my completely-made-up WoWWiki article that the beautiful people over there didn't delete?), but there's nothing funny about the loot this week-- it's one of the most droolworthy world drops you'll find in the game.

Name: Blinkstrike
Type: Epic One-hand Sword (which means, yes, it can be dual-wielded)
Damage/Speed: 143 - 267 / 2.60 (78.8 DPS)
Abilities:

• chance on hit: adds an extra attack to your swing.
• What, no other stats? Nope, it doesn't need any other stats-- that proc might be the best one in the game. Players who've had one say it procs about 5-6% of the time, which is nice, but here's the big deal: unlike most "extra attack" procs, this one supposedly chains. As in, you hit once, get an extra attack, and then get another extra attack from the extra attack. One player reported seeing 8 hits chained in a row-- that's around 1300 damage without any crits with one swing. Ummm... yeah. Unstoppable much?
  
• Because of that, this thing is perfect for combat rogues, but fury warriors will love it too (Tanks will find better defensive swords, but they have to PvP sometimes, too, right?). Bewarned: the chaining thing is very likely a bug, but even if Blizzard nerfs that, extra attacks are teh win.

How to Get It: With a weapon as crazy as this one, you know they're not going to just give it out. In fact, that's exactly what they're doing, but very, very rarely-- it's a very rare World Drop, which means it could drop from anywhere at any time. Some servers haven't even seen them yet, though, so if you really want one from a drop, you'll be killing things for a long time.

The better option would probably be to just farm the gold-- they're selling on the AHs for anywhere from 1500 to 3000g. At least it's not as much as an epic mount, right? If you do go the raising money route, make sure you can find a seller first-- make friends with your guildies, in case they get one, and keep an eye on your AH and your realm forums to see if anyone's found a Blinkstrike to sell.

A Blinkstrike is more of a weapon you just come across if you're lucky, rather than grinding or questing for. But everyone can dream, right?

Getting Rid of It: If you're crazy, a vendor will give you 10g, 19s, 34c for it, and it'll DE into... well, it'll DE, but no one has DE'd it yet-- probably a Large Prismatic Shard or a Nexus Void Crystal, if I had to guess. Of course, if you have one that you can't get rid of and can't use, feel free to drop it in the mail to Punishment on Thunderhorn-- I'd love one!

Some flavor of combat build is generally taken to be the easiest build for leveling a rogue. But once you get to the middle of the tree, you face a decision: which weapon type to specialize in? Fist Weapons is easily eliminated, since there just aren't that many fist weapons, pre-raid. That leaves dagger, for 5% extra crit chance; sword, for a 5% chance to get an extra attack on doing damage with the sword; and mace, for +5 weapon skill and a 5% chance to stun the target for 3 seconds when doing damage with the mace.

While the swords play-style tends to revolve around Cheap Shot and Sinister Strike, dagger rogues lean more towards Ambush and Backstab. Why? Well, Sinister Strike is best with a high-average-damage (read: slow) weapon, and daggers are generally fast. And honestly, Backstab is a lot harder and more time-consuming to pull off in solo PvE than Sinister Strike. Sure, you can gouge and run through the mob, but it's so much easier to just stand there and whack it in the face with something big and sharp.