Feral Rogue 2v2 Guide | Burning Crusade (by Petraxs)
Disclaimer
We do not encourage scripted gameplay. This is not the aim of such guides. We do not claim to have the most efficient tactic available, nor is it possible to devise one given the nature of Classic TBC and random variables involved such as RNG. But much like a musician needs to practise other composers’ work before improvising, we believe that there are certain strategies which you can follow if you are not confident about various match ups. Once you acquire the experience necessary, you will be able to play off-script and on the fly, having developed a keen eye for situations and how to make the most out of them to win.
Quick intro
Rogue/Feral Strengths
How can I say it…. This is going to be tough, very hard.
But no worries, you’ll also have lots of fun playing this comp.
Feral Rogue is a composition described as bursty and relying a lot on doing tons of damage in a very short period of time (for example, by using all cooldowns on the same target to kill it as quickly as possible). If this statement is not necessarily wrong, it’s not true either.
This paradigm is verified often, of course, but never more than once or twice on the same opponents. It’s not only about one shooting people.
In my opinion, Feral Rogue is the only double DPS team composition that has such a strong reset/temporization capacity.
– The Rogue has multiple CC such as Stuns, Blind, Sap
– The feral also has CC (clone, root, bash, cripple, charge) but also has great healing possibilities.
So the point is more about trying to set up a kill with a chain of controls and stuns etc … and if your attempt at killing someone seems infeasible not to continue to persist until death, but instead, to look for the best way to reset the game.
From my experience, that is the only strength of this composition (not to mention the possible deadly damage during a full CS KS)
Rogue/Feral weaknesses
1. LOADS OF COUNTER COMPS.
First problem, the composition can be played during S1 and S2, but not at its full potential. To say it in a simple way, Feral is bad due to the lack of stats on the gear. The S1 and S2 gear parts have heal bonus, instead of crit and armor pen. These stats came with S3 and S4 gear.
Why? Very good questions that I have been asking myself for quite a few years now.
Second problem: Fears because feral certainly has 30% resistance to fear effects but ultimately does not resist that much…The feral is quite vulnerable, can be easily controlled against some matchups, with classes having a Fear: War, priest, lock… in other words: 70% of the ladder.
Feral Rogue, is a composition with a lot of damage, but is very vulnerable and can die very quickly without even having time to do anything.
There are hardly any favorable matchups.
Your weaknesses will also vary depending on the race chosen.
The composition can very well be played ally Side like horde side.
However, the strength and weakness of the composition will be impacted depending on the side in which you are going to play the composition so we will see that.
2. ALLY: HUMAN+NIGHT ELF vs. HORDE: UNDEAD+TAUREN
Perception: Extremely efficient against RD and RM comps. Pretty good as well against WD and RP, to get nice openers. It’s interesting when aiming to play the comb in a very aggressive way with a lot of cooldowns used early on. (you can read the Feral/Rogue arena guide of Sbkzor who played it a lot as an alliance). But you may have understood that it’s not my favorite way. From experience, yes it is possible and very doable to climb the ladder by playing it as Alliance. But you don’t really make it easy. Rogue Feral has a lot of counters, and as Alliance, it’s even more impactful due to Fear being an extremely common school of CC in arenas, and the ladder will be filled with comps such as RD. WD. DP M. DP LOCK. LOCK DRUID. DP R. RM. WAR SHAM. PAL WAR. Yes, you’ll have an edge over RM and RD like I said which is very popular (especially in first seasons) but you’ll end up facing a lot of the same opponents once you’ll be reaching the top spheres, especially if you play at the same MMR. The first game might be pretty fun and the second a lot harder, because the rogue will play hide and seek a lot more, and then your Perception becomes a mind game. A druid might start in bear instead of stealthed, the rogue might opt for a different path, and play a lot more carefully. And once your perception is finished, if you didn’t make a difference with it, then you just start with a useless racial. And against Disc/Rogue especially, being able to WOTF one Fear will suddenly become something you wish you could do, a lot of times. In addition, this racial is completely useless against specific matchups which are already difficult as Rogue/Feral: War Pala, double casters, rogue lock for example.
This is why I prefer playing it as Horde.
You can easily skip Perception and not necessarily crave for a perfect opener against stealthy. Like I said before, there are tons of good reasons to go for the undead.
WOTF is useful against absolutely every comp in the ladder, except RD/RM, but then you can also enjoy the good cannibalism in 1v1 situations in addition to first aid.
In addition, your druid gets a great racial: War stomp (Tauren racial) which allows to AOE stun for 2sec bringing nice Gouge, KS, Cyclone, or Roots opportunities right after it. Can also outplay Vanish, or counter enemy rogue’s opener by using it to protect the rogue.
Rogue gear for Feral/Rogue
Gearing your rogue depends on whether you are actively doing PVE or not. but it’s pretty much similar from a season to another.
– Head: blue goggles for S1 / epique goggles for S2 / PVP helm for S3-S4
– Neck: ideally from PVE (you can easily start with the one you buy with BOJ)
– Shoulder: PVP (from S1 to S4)
– Cloak: ideally PVE, and/or Dory’s Embrace (60 Boj) once S3 is started
– Chest: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Wrist: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Hand: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Belt: ideally PVE/craft one such as Belt of deep Shadow during S2 (Or PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)).Engi belt might be necessary for S1.
– Legs: PVP (S1 S2) and ideally PVE for S3-S4 (but PVP works too anyway)
– Boots: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Rings: Ideally PVE (or PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Trinket: PVP trinket, of course
– Trinket: En S1 S2: BLBrooch (41 Boj) then Battlemaster (80 AP) for S3-S4
– Weapons/S1: Spiteblade + weap S1
– Weapons/S2: Rod of the sun king + weap S2 or 2x Weapons S2
– Weapons/S3: Warglaives or Weapons S3
– Weapons/S4: Warglaives or Hand of deceiver or Weapons S4
If I sum up : Neck, Cloak, Legs, (Belt), Rings from PVE and then, all PVP.
My partner’s gear
It’s quite the same as Feral, you’ll need PVE to optimize your stats.
– Head: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Neck: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Shoulder: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Cloak: En S1 S2 = PVE ; En S3 S4 = Dory’s Embrace : 60 Boj
– Chest: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Wrist: PVP (S1 S2 S3) ; En S4 = [Thunderheart Wristguards] T6,5 ou S4
– Hand: PVP (S1 S2 S3 S4)
– Belt: PVP (S1 S2 S3) ; En S4 = [Thunderheart Waistguard] T6,5 ou S4
– Legs: PVP (S1 S2 S3) ; En S4 = [Thunderheart Leggings] T6 ou S4
– Boots: PVP (S1 S2 S3) ; En S4 = [Thunderheart Treads] T6,5 ou S4
– Rings: From S1 to S4 = The 2 Ring
– Trinket : PVP Medaillon
– Trinket:
En S1 S2 : Broche 41 Boj ou Hourglass ;
En S3 S4 : Battlemaster 40 Crit
– Weapons/S1: [Terestian’s Stranglestaff] ou PVP S1
– Weapons/S2: PVP S2
– Weapons/S3: PVP S3
– Weapons/S4: [Stanchion of Primal Instinct] T6,5 ou S4
Tips
A few tips I thought would be important to detail about the weapon enchants
Use Mongoose on MH, OH crippling, and OH MindNumbling
And weapon chain on your OH wound
Against warriors team, you’ll enjoy the weapon chain because it reduces the disarming effects to half their duration, especially as alliance, since you cannot trinket Interceptions (due to Fear)
Macros
But also,
| /cast [nostance] Stealth(Rank 4) /targetenemy [noexists, nocombat] /cast [exists, nocombat] Sap(Rank 3) |
| /cast [nostance] Stealth(Rank 4) /targetenemy [noexists, nocombat] /cast [exists, nocombat] Cheap Shot |
When you are very close to an enemy, this macro is better because CS lands before Sap.
Matchups developed in this guide
Healer/DPS comps
|||||||||| – DPriest/Rogue
|||||||||| – DS/Rogue
|||||||||| – Druid/Hunter
|||||||||| – Druid/Lock
|||||||||| – Druid/Warr
|||||||||| – Hpala/Warr
|||||||||| – Rsham/Warr
|||||||||| – DPriest/Mage
|||||||||| – DPriest/Lock
|||||||||| – Rsham/Ret
Double DPS comps
|||||||||| – Mage/Rogue
|||||||||| – Spriest/Rogue
|||||||||| – Rogue/Rogue
|||||||||| – Lock/Rogue
|||||||||| – Feral/Rogue
|||||||||| – Warrior/Warlock
|||||||||| – Spriest/Mage
|||||||||| – Spriest/Warlock
Strategies
Healer/DPS comps
vs Disc / Rogue
If you get the Sap on rogue, you can either focus on priest or rogue.
– if you go rogue:
You’ll have to time your Sap on the Priest with the moment when your Feral opens the rogue (pounce). The Pounce will keep the rogue controlled (stun) and apply bleeding on him while you are sapping the Priest. You’ll come with Garrote+Rupture and Vanish resap the Priest.
The rogue might die during your CSKS on the Priest. If the rogue’s not dead, then you go back on him during the KS to bring more damage. (if the priest uses his trinket on KS, you’ll blind him). As I said, you can also, and simply, focus priest during the sap on the rogue. Unless you face a dwarf, he’ll be helpless.
If you have not sapped the enemy Rogue, you will be forced to open the priest, which is really okay as UD because you don’t have to juke the Fear (with cloak/or pillar). As human you’d either end feared into sap or blinded on your trinket
vs Druid / Rogue
When I said we could play RF without Perception, I meant that there’s a solution to get the openers. The most important thing is not to get caught by the enemy team (especially the rogue). If the feral goes out of stealth, it’s not that bad.
As you can see in some of our videos (Spottman and I), what we enjoy doing is waiting for the Shadow sight eye to appear, to catch the enemy rogue. Usually, I stay quite far, hidden until we get this buff, then we’ll be able to FF the rogue and sap him a few seconds later (if Feral manages to stay out of combat, which could be hard, depending on the positioning and map) That’s where it comes handy to keep the sprint for this situation.
The point is to CC as much as possible the rogue while going hard on the druid. The kill target is the druid. you’ll go on rogue RARELY. Focus on the druid as much as possible.
What if you get the Rogue but not the Druid?
Then you cannot open the Druid apparently, so your Feral will open the rogue alone, apply FF and do as much damage as possible into Maim + Cyclone
The opposing druid might be forced to play on the Feral to make sure he doesn’t get a cyclone, or stealth, or eventually heal his partner if he’s taking too much damage. Then, as a rogue, you’ll have to open him (with CS KS) as fast as possible and eventually get his trinket into Blind+vanish if possible. The point is to avoid the opposing rogue opener on yourself. If he opens, you can try to cyclone him before his KS (can also force a vanish or a cloak), and if he’s able to KS then you’ll have to instantly trinket it into vanish, assuming you’re not already bleeding.
You’ll have one vanish left for the druid which is enough. Sap after blind then reopen with CS KS and vanish again, the feral might finish the job alone, otherwise, you can think about chaining your KS with a garrote and bring a bit more damage.
vs Druid / Hunter
Two options: focus druid or hunter.
The opener on this comp is always tricky because most of the time they’re both sitting in the Flare. The best is to play on the timer of Flare (20sec – you can track the cooldown with an addon). This will allow you to sap the hunter before the refresh and even if you get caught, your partner will be able to open safely.
Once you’ve timed the Flare and sapped the hunter, you’ve got to find/open the druid. if you get opened by the druid, then your Feral will open the druid, meaning that you’ll stack your combo points to chain his Pounce with your KS. 100% of the time they want to trinket because the hunter is usually still sapped, and he’s taking big damage. You can opt for staying on the druid, or you can choose to switch on the hunter, but you need to be careful with the bleeding applied on the druid if so. This means that you’ll start dealing damage to the hunter and Blind the druid. you’ll have to land some CC during the damage on the hunter to cover your vanish sap (due to Flare) especially if the hunter kept his trinket until the Blind. If you have to vanish-sap 3sec before the end of the Blind, then do it. This might be enough to finish off the hunter.
vs Druid / Warlock
Option 1: In case you find the druid
Open : CS > Vanish > Sap warlock > KS > Druid Trinket > Blind > Restealth (or Vanish) > Sap > ReOpen CS KS > WIN. As easy as that.
Just make sure not to bleed him if you catch him in cat form to be able to Blind his trinket. If he does not use his trinket, then you’ll have to pop all your cooldowns to finish him off while interrupting the warlock’s Fears as much as possible.
Option 2: In case you DON’T find the druid
Sap Warlock > Feral Open Pet
– The feral kills the pet if the opposing druid doesn’t pop. Then, you start on warlock with CS KS and apply mindnumbing besides your other poisons. The nyou try to kill the warlock while being prepared to kick the Fel domination.
– If the druid opts for healing the pet, don’t lose your time on it and just vanish + shadowstep CS+KS the druid. if he doesnt trinket, you might use all your cooldowns to kill him. If he uses his trinket, then you will Blind him and kill him on the next opener.
vs Druid / Warrior
For this matchup, 90% of the time you are going to kill the druid.
Case 1: Druid stays in stealth.
Try to find him if he does not come in tree/bear form. You may have to wait for the Shadowsight to appear or let the feral start the warrior in 1v1 (with bleeding effects etc.) and play with the map to get stealth and reopeners…. This situation might force the druid to come out of stealth and heal his partner.
ICase 2: Druid starts in tree or bear form:
Pounce garrote will be the opener to force the druid’s trinket on KS. Sometimes we even KS the druid in bear form so he feels safer and does not even think about using trinket which helps us to win, because it means that we’ll stack all poisons (5 wounds) and bleeding effects, meaning a super high pressure when he‘ll start healing himself.
If the druid uses his trinket, you can think about sticking on him in order to land the kill anyway, but against a good warrior druid, this might not work. In this case, try to reset and get stealth to set up a new opener (CSKS).
Case 3: You find the druid:
Open him with CS KS, do not apply bleeding effects because the druid might be forced to trinket (if he does not, he’ll die without healing himself). That’s what you can see in this clip (left):
vs Holy Paladin / Warrior
This is simply your biggest counter.
It’s usually best to Sap the paladin, focus warrior, and interrupt every paladin’s cast to force BoP which is a great window to cyclone the warrior.
Most of the time, the Paladin is played by a dwarf. This is by far the best race option to counter Feral rogue due to stoneform which removes both bleeding effects and poisons and protects the player for 8 seconds of any similar effects
If the paladin is not a dwarf, then it’s possible to focus him, or switch on him.
If both are dwarves, then going for the warrior is often suicide, and you may prefer going Paladin. You’ll have to play it smart to be able to counter his trinket, bubble, and racial in order to land the kill.
vs Shaman / Warrior
Open shaman with Garrote > Vanish to Sap war if in Combat Stance (ready to charge) or use Faerie fires to block his charge. (pretty similar to war druid’s strategy when you catch the druid actually). The Kidney Sham, to push his trinket and keep stacking your wound on him while kicking all his healing. Using Bash on the warrior might be necessary during that phase. That’s a nice way to buy time to get your cooldowns/DR’s back for another CSKS.
Sometimes the warrior will do insanely high damage and you’ll have to decide very fast how to play it defensively with some resets for new openers.
vs Disc / Mage
Usually, we chose to Sap Mage and Open Priest (pounce/garrote, expose) to deal damage (Hemo) in order to vanish garrote again + KS. You can time these to avoid the multiple Sheep attempts. The mage will probably try to kill the Feral as fast as possible since he has no real escape so your partner will have to be cautious and leave the battle to heal himself before coming back. You need to keep your pressure up while avoiding as much damage or CC as you can
vs Disc / Warlock
For this matchup, you want to Sap Priest, open Warlock with garrote/expose and spam damage with no Kidney shot because he’d trinket it anyway. At the end of the Sap on the priest, vanish resap priest, then come back on the warlock with a garrote, use eviscerate, and make sure to stack wounds.
If the warlock isn’t dying (because of the belt, or an absurd amount of stam/resil) then be prepared to charge and step kick the priest’s healings.
In case of bad openers, you’ve got some alternatives.
For example, you’ll have to play on enemies’ trinkets. Blinding Priest when he’s going for the kill to get his trinket until you find your perfect moment to switch on him with a strong CS KS for the kill. Never use your cloak of shadows randomly. Don’t be too greedy with it.
In that clip, when the priest resisted the KS, we chose to stick on him because we had good pressure and nothing else to reset.
That’s a nice use case of Bttlemaster trinkets, by the way.
Double DPS comps
vs Rogue / Mage
The best is to find the rogue and use everything on him to make sure he’ll die as fast as possible while paying attention to the mage’s CCs and damage.
Since you’re an undead it might be difficult to detect the other rogue so another strategy might be necessary. You’ll have to open together on the mage with a garrote. (before BC Classic, I’d have said garrote+pounce to prevent from the Blink, but on BCC you can blink during stun/silence openers). You also have to keep your shadowstep at the beginning, because you’ll need it really soon.
The opener looks this way, from a rogue perspective :
Prem Garrote > Eviscerate > Vanish away. Usually, there, the mage will use his block. Then you can step garrote, shiv eviscerate.
If the other rogue opens your feral, you can think about using once vanish+CSKS on him to peel him from the feral and go back to the mage.
To make it simple, you’ll have to avoid as much as possible to get opened by the enemy rogue, because it usually leads to a Sheep which is deadly.
vs Spriest / Rogue
Just like Disc/Rogue, you can either kill a rogue or shadow priest.
Focus rogue works pretty well if you get the sap on him. In this case, you’ll have to proceed the exact same way as DPR, but it’ll be less tanky (no PS, less healing, etc.)
Otherwise, you can simply wait for the Shadowsight, if you absolutely want to focus on the rogue.
Nonetheless, you can also open the Priest and tunnel him to death, it works quite well.
vs double rogue
There is not much to say about this comp.
You’ve got to apply as many bleeding effects and damage as possible on one rogue while doing CC on the other one (Bash, Blind, CSKS)
vs Warlock/Rogue
Again, in this matchup, you can kill both of them, your choice.
Usually, you’ll end up going warlock in 95% of situations.
Due to paranoia buff, it’s always difficult and risky to play for the sap at the beginning, unless you’re human. And even as a human, you’d have to think about pre-vanishing with perception active, to get the opposing rogue out.
Using a vanish isn’t that bad, because having the opener against this matchup is actually almost auto-win. I’d recommend going lock because it’s way easier to kill compared to a rogue under evasion.
With no sap on rogue, you’ll wait for the warlock’s shield (from the void walker) to fade before opening. Then you’ll go with a Cheap Shot, ideally with a Shadowstep so you don’t get sapped or spotted (by the warlock or his pet) on the road due to paranoia. After the cheap shot, you can even think about using vanish to see if you can sap the opposing rogue. He’ll be near the warlock for sure once you open, looking for an opener.
So the opener looks like this : CS > EA > VANISH > GARROTE > EVISC > HEMO/REVANISH GARROTE > HEMO HEMO HEMO.
If you take a Death coil, without being undead, you’ll have to ask your partner to interrupt the incoming Fear otherwise you’ll lose because you can’t trinket death coil nor Fear due to Blind.
vs Feral/Rogue (mirror)
It’s all about the opener. The best focus is the rogue and ideally you want to pump your damage without using KS unless he uses trinket on Pounce/Cheap Shot Just apply your Bleeds, and try to land your best damage (hemo/evisc)
It’s quite difficult to kill the opposing Feral because he’ll quickly swap to bear form and tank the damage, making it a lot longer to kill.
That being said, if you catch him in cat form, don’t even try to Kidney, and just do this :
CS>Hemo>Evisc>Vanish>CS>EVISC>Hemo>Bleed. (do as much damage as possible during the windows in which he’ll be in cat form, and keep you KS because he’ll use his trinket anyway.)
If you’ve got sap on rogue, then use Pounce+Garrote. If he trinkets, you can simply vanish into CS (diminished + full Kidney. He’ll die during the stuns.
Nothing much to say, it’s about the opener, and also about your ability to survive by running away, front facing your opponents to dodge their attacks as much as possible, trying to avoid Kidney Shot
What if you get sapped?
You’ll have to trinket the pounce as fast as possible to open the enemy rogue and apply bleedings on him quickly during the Cheap Shot. Then, run away out of their LOS, buy time with Evasion, to dodge Kidney. If you take that KS, it’s auto lose…
if the enemy rogue uses his trinket on CS, then it’s gonna be your only window to punish him with your KS and big damage.
vs Spriest / Mage
That’s quite the same thing as Disc/Mage. You’ll focus the priest.
You can also think about sapping sp, and going hard on Mage, while keeping your CCs on the priest. But the safest is to kill the shadow priest as fast as possible. It’s basically a disc/mage, but less tanky.
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