Breaking news
- May 28, 2023
four pacts, Kyrians, Necrolords, Nachtfae, and Venthyr, offer quite a few special features and bonuses that will influence which faction you ultimately choose to join. Most important for many players, however, will be the class-specific abilities, which will significantly affect your strength in battles. In the Shadowlands beta, we were able to take a look at the four skills for the rogue.
On thefollowing two pages, we will tell you what our conclusion is after the first tests.
The Kyrian Pact skill for all rogues provides you with the attack Resounding Blame
:Inflicts Arcane damage on an enemy and drains Anima from them, recharging one of your combo points. Damaging finishing moves that consume the same number of combo points as your anima-charged points cause damage as if seven combo points were consumed. Grants three combo points. Costs 30 energy. Cooldown of 45 seconds.
The Echoing Blame is difficult to understand from the tooltip alone. Therefore, let's first explain the exact way the attack works. Once you cast Resounding Blame on an enemy, not only do you deal Arcane damage and build up combo points, but at the same time one of the combo point slots is randomly marked under your Health and Energy meter. This mark remains until you perform a damaging finishing move that consumes exactly as many combo points as the mark indicates.
WoW: Shadowlands - Our rogue's third combo point slot has been marked by Echoing Blame.
Source: buffed
For example, if the fourth combo point slot is marked, then Assassin Rogues must cast Poison or Bleed at exactly four combo points in order for the bonus from Echoing Blame to take effect. Of course, it's especially nice when the first combo slot is marked and you can immediately bust out a Poison finisher after a Strangle, for example, which does damage as if you had previously built up seven combo points. Thanks to the comparatively low cooldown, the ability can always be sprinkled in for a short burst phase. Of course, the three combo points at the touch of a button don't go amiss either.
: The ability Slaughter has been replaced by a new ability in the latest beta build (on September 24). Read more about it in the article below. As soon as we were able to try out the new ability in practice, we will update this section.
The Venthyr provide you with the Pact ability Slaughter, the name says it all here:
Slaughter the target and deal physical damage. The target's anima combines with your lethal poison and remains on your blades for the next five minutes. The Carnage Poison deals Shadow damage over the course of twelve seconds and steals 15 percent of the target's healing. Grants two combo points. Requires stealth. Costs 50 energy.
WoW: Shadowlands - After casting Slaughter, your attacks will apply the harmful Slaughter Poison for five minutes.
Source: buffed
Unlike the other Pact abilities, you must cast Slaughter of the Venthyr from Stealth (or as a Deception Rogue during Shadow Dance), forgoing other openings such as Nasty Trick or Ambush. The exception to this in Shadowlands is still the Trickster talent, which allows you to cast Stealth skills up to three seconds after exiting Stealth. But how does Slaughter benefit you in practice? Well, like Ambush, the Pact spell gives you an instant attack on the target, which grants you two combo points. In addition, you'll receive the Slaughter Poison buff:
Each strike has a chance to cause the opponent to suffer shadow damage every 1.9 seconds for twelve seconds. Further applications during the effect duration cause shadow damage immediately. The effect also robs the target of 15% of their healing received.
Since the effect is a five-minute buff to your character, you don't have to start every fight with slaughter. In addition, it's quite possible to spread the DoT across multiple enemies at once using only your melee strikes.
Slaughter
should be especially exciting due to the heal steal in PvP.
Rogues who befriend the Necrolords can enjoy the skill Serrated Bone Sting, which brings a damage-over-time effect
:Pokes a bone spike into the target's flesh, dealing bleed damage every three seconds until the target dies. For each active bone spike, you'll also deal more instant damage and generate one combo point each. When the target dies or is fully healed, you regain one charge of the attack. Maximum of three charges, 30 seconds recharge time. Costs 10 energy. 30 meter range.
The tooltip does not lie! When you attack a victim with the Jagged Bone Sting, the associated bleed nibbles away at their health every three seconds until the enemy expires. So you don't have an additional overtime effect that you have to keep an eye on and renew in addition to Bleed, Choke, Chop, and so on. What you can't do despite the three charges, however, is stack the effect multiple times on a target to cause even more damage over time to a single enemy.
WoW: Shadowlands - The Serrated Bone Spike can also be applied from a distance. Duration of effect: until the death of the victim!
Source: buffed
Due to the low energy costs, the long range and the three charges, the bone spikes can be quickly distributed to just as many targets at the beginning of a fight. If you're soloing, the attack is also great for bulldozing distant enemies and applying the associated debuff while generating a combo point.
Last but not least, we have the Night Fae, who provide your Dagger Wielder with the ability Sepsis
:Infects the target's blood and deals nature damage over the course of 10 seconds. If the target survives the full duration, they take additional damage and you automatically cast Disappear. If Sepsis does not reach full duration, the 90 second cooldown is reduced by 60 seconds.
Unfortunately, due to a quest bug in the beta, we have not been able to test the Night Fae ability with the rogue yet. It would be important to know, for example, whether opponents can simply cleanse the nature damage effect to bypass not only the damage, but also the disappearance. In that case, the Pact skill would be quite weak in PvP. In PvE challenges, however, the automatic disappearance is only of limited use. Here, it depends solely on how much the poison nibbles away at the enemy's health points in the ten seconds - especially if you're fighting against only one enemy that can withstand a lot and where the very high cooldown of 90 seconds then comes into its own.
Of course, the actual strength of the Pact skills cannot be definitively assessed at the moment
.
However, the best impressions we've had so far are of Jagged Bone Spike and Echoing Rebuke. The Bone Spike effect is quick and easy to apply, even on multiple enemies, and then deals constant damage to your victims for the rest of the fight. Great for beginners! The Kyrian skill, in turn, delightfully unobtrusively influences your rogue's rotation by marking a combo point slot and, with a little experience, lets you initiate powerful burst phases with pinpoint accuracy. Slaughter will probably be the strongest option in PvP. We're still cautious about Sepsis due to lack of field testing.
Do the cross-class signature abilities of the four pacts actually
giveyour rogue any special advantages?
Summon your provost, who will bring you a vial of equanimity. Drinking this will restore some of your health and remove all curse, disease, poison, and bleed effects. Your provost will also offer you a selection of useful amenities once per day. Five minute cooldown.
Verdict: The Provost is like the Swiss Army Knife of signature abilities. It lets you sell items in the wilderness, change talents, or provide you with three healing Vials of Equanimity when needed. Of course, all these things are not decisive for the war, but we would call them helpful or comfortable.
You enter the world of shadows and reappear at the destination. Cooldown of 60 seconds.
Verdict: The Shadow Gate is actually a worse version of the Lawless Rogue's Grappling Hook. Why worse? Because you have to channel the ability for a few moments and can't just use it mid-move. The grappling hook gives you more flexibility and mobility in a fight. However, for assassins and shadow dancers, the teleport skill could be interesting.
WoW: Shadowlands - Shadow Gate needs to be channeled over a few seconds. The outlaw grappling hook is more flexible.
Source: buffed
Creates a shield of flesh and bone that prevents damage equal to a portion of your maximum health for two minutes. If you are standing next to the corpse of a defeated enemy when casting this ability, you will gain a larger shield. Cooldown of two minutes.
Verdict: Rogues tend to take a few hard hits in direct combat with their leather armor. If you're often soloing, Fleshforming is a great way to increase your survivability at least a little bit. However, the absorption effect only really pays off if you use the ability near a defeated enemy. Simply cast, the protection spell is quite weak.
Take the form of a fox with increased movement speed. You can activate Soul Form again to teleport forward a short distance. You can also unlock and collect additional cosmetic shapes in a variety of game situations. In the game world, this effect ends after a short time. In resting areas, it lasts indefinitely.
Verdict: The soul form simply looks cute and, as a kind of "ghost wolf with turbo mode", noticeably increases your mobility, especially in rest areas. Once activated, you'll enjoy an increased movement speed of 50 percent. In this form, you can then use Soul Form every four seconds to teleport 15 meters forward. Outside of resting areas, the shape unfortunately only lasts twelve seconds. Enough time to make a short sprint and escape from a dangerous situation, for example.
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