2.3 Night Elves
Starting Attributes
Strength 18
Agility 28
Stamina 20
Intelligence 20
Spirit 20
Shadowmeld - active
Activate while immobile and out of combat to enter stealth mode - lasts until canceled - 10 sec cooldown
- Thanks to this ability, Night Elves are the only Rogues that can Stealth from level 1. Shadowmeld isnt the best ability but it can be useful. For starters its on a separate cooldown from Stealth so you can run off and Shadowmeld if you need to restealth quickly. It also can more or less save you the 5 points of Rapid Concealment since it mostly accomplishes the same thing. Mostly good for restealthing after an oops like restealthing after a long drop into a dangerous place before proceeding. More impressively though, it adds some extra Stealth just like Master of Deception. In fact a Night Elf Rogue will always have the potential to be the hardest race to detect. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so:
http://hghq.com/xgen/NEmod5b.gif
Quickness - passive
Dodge chance increased by 1%
- This is quite literally a free Talent point, if you were going to put a Talent point into Lightning Reflexes. This is a solid damage reduction skill, and adds up in the end since its our main defense after stealth.
Wisp Spirit - passive
Become a wisp when dead with movement speed increase of 50% (25% faster than normal ghost)
- A nice ability for reducing PvE downtime. Depending on how much you die, your use will vary but realistically it does save you a lot of time in the end.
Nature Resistance - passive
All Night Elves get +10 Nature Resistance
- More free resists! With AQ and the world Dragons, this is a nice little boost for end game raiding these days. Especially since Alliance have less classes with Nature resists than the Horde. Add in that a lot of things are considered Nature including poisons and its not half bad.
Summary: Night Elves do a good job of really maximizing everything a Rogue should be good at. Want the best possible Dodge or Stealth Night Elf is for you then, they even get the highest base Agility. The downside is that they dont add a lot of utility to the class so much as max out what they all ready do.
2.4 Gnomes
Starting Attributes
Strength 16
Agility 26
Stamina 20
Intelligence 24
Spirit 20
Escape Artist - active
Activate to break out of a Root or Snare effect - 0.5 sec cast - 1 min cooldown
- This is probably my personal favorite ability for a Rogue to have. Probably because on my first Rogue I spoiled myself on Free Action Potions but thats another story. Snares kill melee classes, why do you think Hunters are so hard to beat Personally I think this ability adds a lot of good overall utility to the Rogue class, look at the effected abilities:
- Frost Nova
- Frost Shock and other Cold Effects
- Nets
- Entangling Roots
- Wing Clip and Hamstring
- Concussive Shot
- Crippling Poison
- Earthbind
- Mind Flay
- Piercing Howl
- Traps
- Curse of Exhaustion
Expansive Mind - passive
Increase Intelligence by 5%
- Intelligence does nothing for Rogues, and as such this is pretty close to useless.
Arcane Resistance - passive
All Gnomes get +10 Arcane Resistance
- There isnt a whole lot of Arcane damage out there, but a resist is a resist. Most notable Arcane spell would be Polymorph.
Engineering Specialization - passive
15 skill bonus to Engineering
- Unless they decide to give Gnomes some sort of Trinket that requires 315 skill this is pretty worthless once your Engineering is 300. Still nice to help you level it though. Rod: Except that if you pick up engineering your pets will fight like they are 3 levels higher.
Summary: Most of the Gnome traits are pretty close to useless, but Escape Artist really helps turn that around. It is applicable to a lot of effects in PvE and more importantly PvP. Makes Gnomes the best flag runners, will let you save your Vanish for when its vital and lastly makes them the best Rogues at not getting caught.
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