Rogue Finally The Strongest Class of TBC

I am not sure how long this will last, I don't even know whether the new hemo will make it to the final patch, but as of now, I firmly believe rogue is the strongest class in TBC. The AR/prep build with 125% weapon damage, +36 debuff hemo once supplemented by full AP gear of season 3 is enough to defeat any class in the game, and it is the strongest arena spec in all three brackets, a dramatic upgrade over season 2's combat mace and combat mutilate.



I was on PTR and fought Jasi's 12700 HP, 410 resilience discipline priest with the new focused will talent, and I could go 50-50 with him with just one AR, pretty much a guaranteed win if I use both AR's. I had one of my characters specced CB/hemo, and I hemo crit him for 1475 when he went below 35%. I removed ghostly strike from my riposte/hemo macro and it feels so much cleaner. I will probably /castrandom ghostly strike with evasion. 5 energy over hemo for 15% dodge for 7 seconds is still a pretty good deal, although some will probably drop it completely. Then again lower tier subtlety is really weak, I think I still rather have ghostly/evasion macro over 1 point in camou.



Let's take a look at season 3 weapons, hemo vs 19/42 sinister strike vs 41/20 mutilate vs 30/0/31 backstab at 1500 AP:



Mutilate (Poisoned): 22.40

Backstab: 21.12

Hemo: 20.55

Sinister Strike: 18.16



Hemo with 2.8 weapons will start to approach mutilate's damage per energy, especially at extreme AP levels. With just 1500 AP, Syphon of the Nathrezim, you get 21.76 damage per energy, which is quite ridiculous. In fact, with just S3 weapons, mutilate only has a 9% damage per energy advantage over hemo. It is pretty crazy stuff.



For people who complain AR/prep make other specs obsolete, I would much rather have ONE dominant spec than two mediocre specs. Arm warrior, holy paladin, WE mage, SL/SL warlock, restoration druid, and we can finally add AR/prep rogue to that list.



The golden age of the rogue class, here we come!  I just sincerely hope there is no further change to the rogue class, no news is good news at this point.  We are absolutely loaded going into season 3.