With Tricks of the Trade generating a hefty 15% damage increase, and too be frank the added threat has no meaning anymore to really worry about, (can you remember the last time you managed to pull threat off a tank in an end game raid?), a long standing ploy with rogues has been to swap tricks back and forth during a boss fight to boost their dps. Which was why I was kind of embarressed the other night after downing Saurfang when the other rogue asked in raid chat if I had been giving him tricks. Because I hadn’t. I assume that he had been giving me tricks as I was top of the meter on that fight by around 750dps. I hastily whispered him my apologies and then spent the whole of the fight of Rotface trying to give him tricks whilst running around with yucky slimes chasing me, which was damn difficult I can tell you.
But this tricks swapping has always confused me, and here is why. In my old guild, back in the day, when we were running Ulduar and Trial of the being bored out of your mind, there were a few other rogues in the guild who alternated between coming on runs with myself being the constant. It was around this time that tricks came into vogue with being raid swapped in this way, and I clearly remember the first time I ventured to ask one of the other rogues if he wanted to swap tricks with me during the run.
He flat out refused. As did the other rogue. And with no door left ajar for any sort of discussion on the issue. I felt that I had made a terrible social indescretion, like getting drunk when you’re 16 and attempting to make out with your hot first cousin in front of your relatives. It leaves you with a clear feeling of never wanting to go there ever again. But in my courageous attempts to improve my game play I decided to ask in every PuG if the other rogues wanted to swap tricks.
“Would you like to swap tricks for this fight?”
“No.”
I appreciate the no. Sometimes they just ignore you and you’re left wondering if they missed the whisper or if they are purposely ignoring you and if you ask them again they’ll scream obscenities in your general direction. So you stand around like the poor schmucks at the grade 10 school dance who are never and I mean never going to get asked to twirl around the room.
So when our other guild rogue asked me this the other night I was mightilly confused. Had I been right all this time? Was it all the other moron rogues and not me? But now I didn’t do it when I should have done and I’m in trouble again! ARAGHGHGHHGGHGHGH!
And I still don’t understand where to go with this because I just know next Sunday I’m going to whisper him if he wants to swap tricks and he’s going to ignore me and go dance with somebody else.
May 26, 2010 at 9:28 am
Hey, great to see another rogue blogging around here!
Having tolerated raiding more than most on my rogue (my guild is 11/12 heroic ICC 25), I can say that this “tricks etiquette” is not your imagination. Generally, I trade tricks with the other rogue in my raid. We are guildmates. This is sort of expected of a high-end guild, to just do what you need to do to increase the raid’s DPS. In pugs I don’t really ask or give tricks to other rogues unless they ask, in which case I would response “of course!”. It’s a habit you should pick up but don’t be surprised if pug rogues don’t immediately understand it.
It is general practice that as a rogue giving tricks to other rogues (and tanks, when the time is right or necessary) is part of what you do to better the raid. I mean, to me it’s just like paladins collaborating on who is going to cast what paladin buff. An even better example is the expectation that mages will trade Focus Magic to each other unless the fight desperately needs a specific person of another class to get that buff.
Any rogue who refuses to trade with you probably either does not trust the tanks in any way, shape, or form; does not like you, or perhaps is giving tricks to someone that rogue knows personally and feels will get a bigger DPS increase than if they had given it to you (alternative possibility: the rogue may be using tricks to force aggro on someone they would like to die
). Those are my guesses anyway. Generally I do not give my tricks to high-dpsers other than rogues because 90% of them do so much DPS that they will pull aggro and do not have the tools to wipe aggro like a rogue does (tricks, vanish).
Whew, sorry about the long-winded comment, but I’ve thought about this a lot and I was surprised to see you blogging about it!
-Poptart
May 26, 2010 at 9:38 am
In my guild the rogues typically trade with each other after the first one. That one is usually going to the tank so we can all dps hard from the start.
As a blood DK I am asked to give my hysteria to our top physical dps classes: druids, warriors, rogues, hunters, and then myself in that order.
When on a 10 man once I only had a rogue to hysteria and in turn he gave me his tricks. It was an amazing boost. If your guild is serious about killing stuff you should be passing the buffs to the people who can use it best and swapping tricks for rogues is one of these cases.
May 26, 2010 at 10:12 am
You can /cancelaura the threat transfer, without cancelling the damage buff, as I understand it. Best to do it by id, not name, though.
May 26, 2010 at 10:33 am
This is entirely true. You can cancelaura macro the threat transfer. However things can become convoluted when you are the recipient of another Tricks of the Trade buff; as you mentioned the use of spell ID’s are used to differentiate between the buff you might receive from another rogue (+damage) and the buff you gain when you are giving tricks to someone else (your threat -> to them). Often when I do not have another rogue to give Tricks to, I usually use this method to safely allow other DPS to receive my buff in lieu of a fellow rogue. I just usually prefer to give it to rogues because they can reciprocate, are usually top DPS, and have the tools to drop their aggro without the aid of my extra macro.
May 26, 2010 at 10:26 am
Like the previous replies I swap tricks with other rogues in my guild and for the same reasons. In pugs I give it to the tank (MT) because I don’t know how reliably they get or hold threat.
Sometimes it can be impractical, as in your example of Rotface, anywhere that you can’t reliably remain within range of your exchanging partner (Dreamwalker also comes to mind where rogues are often in seperate groups for stuns).
It’s important to work out the arrangement up front. As well as the hefty dose of extra dps you get that equally hefty dose of threat… If it’s one sided you could end up with zero dps output – dead.
On that subject; I find you need an easy method to swap to an alternate target if your exchanging rogue dies, otherwise you lose the energy regen from the T10 bonus. My preference is the grid addon to quickly focus anyone in the raid (one click) and a key bind to apply the TotT to my focus.
There are other methods, it’s a personal preference.
May 26, 2010 at 11:04 am
sry dude… i have to inform you that i pull aggro nearly everytime when there is no huntard or rouge… äh… rogue… whatever!
May 26, 2010 at 11:13 am
sidenote:
if you know the tank is good… give it to another dd… but inform him first!
i’m realy geting aggroprobs with my retardin if nobody informs me about the extra aggro…
May 26, 2010 at 1:25 pm
A dandy and easy way of applying Tricks, and Misdirect for that matter, is to install the addon Clique, which basically lets you right-click a raid member in Grid and Tricks them. Pretty handy if your default Tricks recipient dies.
May 26, 2010 at 3:15 pm
While a hunter can’t do much to help you back, providing a skilled and geared marks hunter with a well timed tricks can let them roll the 15% damage for the duration of their sting- which is to say the whole fight for about half of ICC. Unlike attack power, chimera shot (the marks hunter main attack that refreshes the duration of the sting) will keep the initial application value of any +%damage and crit (assuming their stings can crit).
All you’ll get back from the hunter is a thank you, as we have precious little we can do to help others’ DPS, however for the cost of a single tricks, you can provide a significant DPS increase to what should be one of your highest performing ranged DPS.
May 26, 2010 at 3:43 pm
This holds true for Shadowpriest Shadow Word:Pain also. When their Shadow Word: Pain is refreshed by their talents, the initial bonuses for it persist as long as the same DoT is kept rolling the entire fight. This is a usual tactic my guild uses on Blood Queen Lanathel heroic due to the massive healing shadowpriests with the damage buff provide to the raid overall.
May 26, 2010 at 8:48 pm
I own a small guild of about 200 members, alts included, etc., and I have a nice little troll rogue.
We are outnumbered 5-1 by the alliance and everything is pretty cheap and people with professions like jc and enchanting sell gems and enchants for TWICE the amount of the cost of the mats.
Everyone seems to be rich and we get into icc every now and then, with me popping a nice 9k dps.
Another nice thing is that ALL the rogues seem to be pvp.
Im one of the TWO rogues that seem to be in this server who actually focuses on pve.
Sounds like paradise, eh?
Im quittin till cat comes out though.
May 27, 2010 at 4:00 am
A good rogue will Tricks the player who’s the highest dps, and not about to pull aggro.
This means you look at Skada (or if you’re bad: Recount), then look at your choice of threat meter, then selecting the appropriate player from your Raid Unit Frames, and Tricksing them.
This takes 1 second of thought. If the range player is out of range, you chose the next player on the list before the time comes… or you take 1 second to move to the max hitbox range, which doesn’t interrupt your dps.
Several ICC fights are exceptions to this rule. For Lady D and Valithria, you’re Tricksing your Adds tank. For Bloodqueen, you’re Tricksing the 1st vampire. And so forth.
The only other caveat is a wipe, where instead you tricks one of the low dps, so the boss exhausts all other dps before they get to you… and you pop Vanish, raising the odds of a successful boss reset before you’re hit by random shots.
May 28, 2010 at 8:53 am
I too usually pop tricks on the tank for the very first one to help the raid get stuck in immediately and after that I like swapping my tricks with another rogue (if there is one) and if not i pass it on to another DPS that would benefit from it (those lucky so and so’s think it’s all their own doing they are top of the meter
). However I too have encountered many rogues who just don’t want to do it. I think because they are quite scared of doing so. I did have one time where I swapped tricks with another high geared rogue like myself. While I managed to keep my threat down popping feint wherever possible, the other rogue did actually keep pulling the boss from the tanks. So in the end we stopped. All in all it depends on how good your other rogue is for managing threat, and how good your tank is for building it, hunters in the raid also help you to do this easily.
The thing is, the Tricks of the Trade glyph is actually a much better DPS increase than say the Eviscerate glyph for rogues. However, because it’s not a DPS increase for them personally many rogues will not use it, especially when there is no guarantee your tricks swapping rogue partner will have the glyph either. It’s a shame because it would really help out raids a lot more if rogues sucked it up and put the tricks glyph on.
May 28, 2010 at 9:29 am
Any Rogue Raider not glyphed for Tricks cannot be considered one, and has no place raiding ICC or anywhere else.
It’s the biggest FAIL indicator next to a 0/0/71 build.