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 explore two of the new 51 point talents coming soon.

If you ask 75% of the top Rogues worldwide what the premier PvP spec is, they'll tell you Subtlety. If you ask an even greater margin of raiders what Rogue spec pumps out the most DPS, you'll get a solid shout of "Combat, duh!" And if you should ever feel the urge to pick up a pair of daggers, every brother of the shadows will direct you towards Assassination. These three trees have been neatly defined by Blizzard, and it's fairly obvious what each is designed for.

What separates Rogues from every other class is our nearly unilateral use of 41 point talents. A dagger Rogue without Mutilate is gimped while a Sub PvP Rogue without Shadowstep is the laughing stock of the arena. And don't bother stepping into Sunwell without Surprise Attacks, unless getting trashed on the damage meters is your idea of fun. We've gotten so used to the comfort in knowing that dumping 41 points into any of our trees will yield a viable build. Now that 51 pointers are on the way in 3.0.2 and Wrath to follow, I've been asked by many Rogues "Will the bottom of our trees continue to be the anchors of our builds?" Find out after the cut.

Dear corpsified bundles of beautifully-armored joy (but more particularly those who tank Azjol Nerub while wearing Expedition Bracers of the Bandit),

We had a little bit of controversy in the first installment, so I'm just going to state this as baldly as possible; if you hated what I wrote last time, there's a good chance you'll walk away from this one thinking I eat babies. Delicious, delicious babies. While I never mean to offend people, I reserve the right to tell them the truth, or at the very least a highly entertaining and plausible lie.

Truth, she be at times an ugly mistress. And she ain't gettin' any prettier as we move from DPS to tanking.

Tanks have significantly more responsibility, both in groups and raids, and they face the competing directives of maximizing mitigation (to keep their healers happy) and maximizing threat production (to keep their DPS happy). I've healed dozens of Death Knight tanks at this point, and while the average pugged DK tank has gotten noticeably better, there are still a few trends you'd want to be aware of as a healer. The problems in beta right now are made worse by Blizzard unintentionally overselling the ease of tanking on a Death Knight in 5-man runs. Many people seem to have interpreted the statement that they should be able to tank well with Blood, Frost, or Unholy specs as being tantamount to saying they can tank well regardless of how their talent points are spent in those trees.

Any experienced tank can tell you right now that this is not true, but people believing that it is is how you wind up with 11K-life Death Knights taking 7-8K enraged hits from Keristasza in the Nexus. If you've never tanked before but you're interested in tanking on a Death Knight -- or pragmatic enough to know you'll probably wind up tanking a certain number of 5-mans on your DPS Death Knight -- I hope this article helps you avoid what I went through in May 2007 when I started tanking and sucked at it.

I came to the beta to slowly lose my mind trying to heal insane tank damage and gulp Extra Strength Tylenol. And I'm all out of Extra Strength Tylenol.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Last week we took a look at some of the more popular and requested enchants and how to get them for yourself. I also promised that I'd continue the faction recipe series by taking a look at enchanting for this week.

So far, I've talked about the following professions and which factions hold appropriate recipes:

• Designs for jewelcrafters part one, and part two.
• Plans for blacksmiths.
• Recipes for alchemists.
• Patterns for leatherworkers.
• Patterns for tailors.

Here is a complete list of the factions to which any enchanter should "suck up" and how far you'll need to take it:

• Shattered Sun Offensive, honored.
• Consortium, revered.
• Cenarion Expedition, exalted.
• Thrallmar/Honor Hold, exalted.
• Keepers of Time, exalted.
• Lower City, exalted.
• Sha'tar, exalted.
• Violet Eye, exalted.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

If you've ever spent any time sitting in trade chat, you could probably make a list of some of the most popular enchants. Requested frequently, any enchanter possessing the the knowledge to imbue a weapon or piece of armor with the proper stats stands to make a fair amount of gold.

For example, a healer seeking Major Healing, or a meleer seeking Mongoose, will know the materials, and gather them. Each time they replace their respective weapons, back into trade they will go to request the enchant.

Today, Insider Trader presents a list of some of the most requested enchants with information about how to obtain them so that you can offer them to friends, guildmates, and your server.

It is by no means a complete list, but it will get you off to a shining start and provide you with quite a to-do list. Check out the comments section for helpful details as well.

Drop rate data was gathered from the Armory, and Blizzard uses ranges such as Very Low (1-2%). This is narrowed down with data from Wowhead where appropriate, but keep in mind that some bind on pick-up recipes can only be seen by enchanters, and Wowhead cannot filter out that data, making their estimate much lower than the actual drop rate.

In the next couple of weeks, I'll be working on the faction recipes series, focusing on enchanting, so stay tuned.

The Rogue class is going to be the target of a vast array of smaller and larger modifications in the LK beta. We saw a set of these changes already, and last night Gamnin came by the forums to post another set. The interesting changes (and there are a lot of them):

• Cloak of Shadows cooldown down to 1.5 minutes, from 2 (1 in live). Elusiveness will now reduce the cooldown of CloS by 15/30 sec as well as its previous effect.
• Tricks of the Trade confirmed; they note that "we'll need one type of solution or other to prevent the need for 5 rogue Trick rotations."
• Assassination:
  • Vigor moved to tier 3. It's long been a sub-par talent, so this is sensible.
  • Relentless Strikes moved to Sublety tier 1, and raised to five ranks (from one) for the same effect (4/8/12/16/20%). Fair, but a little difficult to stomach too. This does somewhat achieve their stated goal of making it more accessible, but quintupling the cost and putting it in my least favorite tree is not what I had in mind.
  • New tier 7 talent that I assume is taking Vigor's place: Overkill: Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy. I'll need to play with this, but it looks pretty great.
  • Master Poisoner has been moved and redesigned. It's now in tier 9 and has three ranks, and instead of increasing chance for poisons to hit, it now increases everyone's crit chance against targets you've poisoned by 1/2/3% and lessens the duration of poisons on you by 17/34/50% [fixed, thanks].
  • Hunger for Blood's effect increased to 30 sec, from 10.

Rogues were one of the last classes to get new talent trees for LK; in general, it seems like they've been a bit behind during the beta. However, today another blue I've never heard of, by the name of Gamnin, dropped a lot of information about what's in store for the most stabbity of classes. Here are the changes that jump out at me:

General:

• All reagents and tools (such as Thieves' Tools and poison reagents) are being removed.
• Poison skill is being removed. Poisons can now be bought from vendors.
• Evasion, Sprint, and Vanish cooldowns reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes (2 minute with talents).
• Cloak of Shadows cooldown raised to 2 minutes (1 minute with Elusiveness).
• An unspecified new level 75 ability is coming, which will "add some much needed group utility." The previous level 75 ability, Dismantle, will be trainable at level 20.

Continuing on from the analysis of the changes to the Balance druid talent tree, as shown in the first patch notes for the official Wrath of the Lich King Beta, we'll now examine the Feral and Restoration trees.

Feral tree
The Feral tree is seeing changes to limit the benefits that the other two trees, specifically Restoration, can gain from investing a few points into the first few tiers. We are also seeing changes to the ways in which bears will be generating aggro.

The Faerie Fire (Feral) and Feral Charge swap
Feral Charge is currently an 11-point talent into the Feral tree, which contributing to the advantages that Restoration druids currently have in arena. It allows Restoration druids the ability to charge, immobilizing their target and interrupting spells for four seconds.

Instead, Faerie Fire (Feral), which is not something that a Restoration druid would likely spend 11 points to get, will take up the 11-point spot, with Feral Charge taking its place in the tree 21 points in.

In addition, Feral Charge will be usable in cat form, dazing the target and moving the cat behind it. This will help address the concerns that cat form is not especially viable in PvP, although their crit dependency is still a weakness. It will also be useful in dungeons to catch runners and other out of place mobs.

Now that the Wrath of the Lich King Beta is live, and the patch notes are up, we have some solid information on Druid talents as they're being tested. Here is what the patch revealed:

Balance tree
If you were to invest three points into your Brambles tier three talent, you will not only have the current 75% boost to damage caused by Thorns and Entangling Roots, but your Treants will have their damage boosted by 15%.

In addition, all damage caused by Treants, and any attacks done to you while Barkskin is active, have a 15% chance of dazing the target for three seconds. Actually, Force of Nature, which summons your Treants, is having its cooldown reduced from three minutes to two.

This will be a nifty talent for Moonkin in battlegrounds and arena, although it won't be enough to convert all of those Restoration druids to the ways of the Giant Chicken.

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.

I was standing under Moen's Nozzle of Inspiration a while ago. No, that's not an in-game item, I'm talking about my shower head. Ever since I got back from my mini-vacation this week I've just been completely blank about what to write about. There were a few topics rolling around in my head, but no stories. Suddenly, the rabbit joke appeared and everything came into focus.

You've all heard the rabbit joke. A guy is traveling down the road when he accidentally sends a rabbit to its permanent death. He pulls over to verify if the rabbit is indeed dead, and as he's standing there staring at the rabbit cadaver, a mysterious passerby stops and asks what's happening. The saddened man explains that he didn't mean to kill the rabbit, and points to the dead animal on the ground. The mysterious passerby goes to their vehicle and returns with an aerosol can. He picks up the rabbit, sprays the rabbit, and in a moment reminiscent of the Mr. Jingles scene from The Green Mile, the rabbit springs to life. The happy varmint leaves the two onlookers, travels down the road, waves, travels a little further, waves, and continues doing this until it disappears out of sight. The two relieved strangers part company leaving our original rabbit killer standing confused on the side of the road wondering what was sprayed on the rabbit. He picks up the can to read it. "Hare spray. Revitalizes hare, and gives it a permanent wave."

Well. Some people are mighty worried about what Blizzard is intending to spray on some previously nerfed rogues, and I would be one of them. I was personally so sickened by the Subtlety talent tree (that served me well from levels one to seventy) that I recently respec'ed to a common Assassination/Combat blend. While mere words can't explain how deeply amusing it is to watch something die when you're not even hitting it, I really miss the "WHAMMO" effect I used to have in the subtlety tree. It looks though, from changes on the PTR to the subtlety tree that subtlety may not be a lost art form after all. Eliah applied more than adequate emphasis to the changes in the Cheat Death talent the other day, but Doomilias over at A View From Behind has experienced the changes first-hand and even as a rogue says the changes are overpowered. He believes there is no way that Cheat Death is going to go to the live servers with a 33/66/100% spread. He thinks that a 100% immunity to killing blows coupled with a brief period of invincibility and a short cooldown is a recipe for disaster. Doomilias thinks that this "new and improved" Cheat Death is going to breed an entire nation of roguetards that will flood battlegrounds like an army of ants. What do you rogues think? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I think I'm going to copy to the PTR and spec back to subtlety and give this new stuff a try!

The 41-point talent for rogues in the subtlety tree, Cloak of Shadows, never really impressed me. However, while I can't see myself spending that many talent points for it, I can certainly see its uses, and I know I'll be using it frequently if the change in the Burning Crusade beta -- making it a trainable skill -- makes it to the live realms. And before you think it's too good to be true and start pointing out that Cloak of Shadows is still listed as the 41-point talent in the official talent calculator, you should know that Tseric seems to have confirmed the change -- or at least, in his posted response to the thread about the change, he doesn't deny it -- only talks about reasons for making trainable high level talents.

Of course, if the 41-point talent is trainable, that leaves the question of what the new talent might be -- and I believe the above screenshot is legitimate. The Shadowstep ability is getting too much discussion on the beta forums for it to have been a fabrication by a single person.