If you had one role and you had to choose one spec for all current raid content, what would you choose? I would choose nothing but a saboteur spec. Why? Simple, saboteur is the most versatile soul in the rogues lineup. Offering the ability to go from melee to range as needed losing less damage than other souls. Depending on how deep you go into the soul, saboteur offers several forms of utility to the raid.
Charges having a zero through thirty meter range gives saboteur a large advantage over any other rogue soul. This gives the you the ability to create either melee or ranged focused specs. It also allows you to do near max damage with either focus both in melee or at range. Usually with melee jousting an area effect spell means a drastic loss of damage. With saboteur you can still apply charges and detonate losing only auto attack. Ranger and marksman have a minimum range for skills, unless a cool down is used. While the ranged saboteur can simply switch to melee without the slightest change in rotation.
Silent setup allows the saboteur to fully charge a target prior to the pull. Detonating on pull would result in a dead rogue. Using incriminate to transfer your agro to the tank will not only save the rogue but will also help lock the target onto the tank. This will help ensure that agro is never an issue. Incriminate can also be used with traps and several different bombs to give tanks initial agro on any newly spawned adds in encounters.
The usual rotations for saboteur is among the simplest for rogues. Due to the talent residual shrapnel, shrapnel charge does more damage than blast charge on a single target. With the exception being that the target will not live through the entire six second duration of the debuff. Shrapnel being an area effect skill means that as soon as any other target is in range the saboteurs damage goes up. So your rotation barely changes as you switch from single target to multi target phases or encounters.
Unfortunately the saboteur soul is not without some minor irritations. Due to the charge mechanic any trinket or greater essence that has a chance on hit ability(proc) do not fire as frequently as with other specs. This is due to most proc items having an internal cool down. Since charges do all their damage instantly they only get the initial check on the proc before it’s on cool down.
While they have improved upon it, charges still reduce your chance of auto attack swings. This reduction in turn reduces your chance of anything based on auto attack firing. You cope for this slightly by creating macros with startattack and your charges. The placement of the startattack is important because you can not auto attack while jumping.
Doing all the damage at once does come with a pit fall. If the target does not live long enough for you to detonate you do no damage. Also spike and shrapnel charge only do more damage than blast charge if they run their full durations. Learning when to switch spike and shrapnel charges out of your rotation for blast charge is a must. It may take some time but once you are comfortable with your raids usual kill rate it will become second nature.
[26 Saboteur / 19 Bladedancer / 21 Assassin]
Melee Saboteur
The melee variation is a topic of much debate. This spec uses deadly dance found in the blade dancer tree to give +105% damage to ALL charges. Deadly dance tool tip says “Your Deadly Strike increases the damage of your next 3 combo point generating abilities by 21% per combo point”. Due to design mechanics, charges do not consume the buff. This is the only reason that the melee saboteur does competitive damage compared to other top rogue specs. **Changes on test indicate that deadly dance and charge synergy is intended.**
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Macros:
#show Spike Charge
cast Spike Charge
startattack
#show Shrapnel Charge
cast Shrapnel Charge
startattack
#show Blast Charge
cast Blast Charge
cast Weapon Barrage
startattack
#show Detonate
cast blade tempo
cast Detonate
#show incriminate
focus tankname
cast @focus incriminate
clearfocus
Rotations:
Single Taget
Spike charge x 5 > Deadly Strike > Puncture > Detonate
Shrapnel charge x 5 > Detonate
Multi Target
Shrapnel chargex 5 > Deadly Strike > Puncture > Detonate
Shrapnel charge x 5 > Detonate
Notes: The five points in combat expertise can be moved around as you see fit. Nothing will gain you a noticeable increase in damage for those 5 points. Apply spike charge prior to every fight. Incriminate is a valued tool in several fights ensuring mobs rarely hit anyone other than your tank. Cast incriminate before a detonate. As the target gets closer to death remove spike and shrapnal charges from you rotation if they will not run full duration. Instead use blast charge in place of one or both.
[44 Saboteur / 20 Assassin / 2 Ranger]
Ranged Saboteur
The ranged variation makes up for it’s slightly less single target damage with the ease of not being in melee range. Choking gas bombs’ silence does find uses in some encounters. High explosives is the reason for going forty four points into saboteur. High explosives gives great damage and does it without using any extra global cool downs. While the multi target damage will not be as high as with deadly dance saboteur, it is still our second best option.
Macros: Note, since this spec has range and melee auto attack you must switch between them as needed. Easiest way for this is to scroll between page one(shift+1) and two(shift+2) of your main ability bar. You might only lose ranged auto attack damage if the target is to close, but as min/maxers we have to squeeze out all the damage we can. ALWAYS apply charges prepull with the melee page!!
#show incriminate
focus tankname
cast @focus incriminate
clearfocus
Page 1 – Ranged Auto Attack
(Do not use prepull)
#show Spike Charge
cast Spike Charge
startrangedattack
#show Shrapnel Charge
cast Shrapnel Charge
startrangedattack
#show Blast Charge
cast Blast Charge
startrangedattack
Page 2 – Melee Auto attack
(Use this prepull)
#show Spike Charge
cast Spike Charge
startattack
#show Shrapnel Charge
cast Shrapnel Charge
startattack
#show Blast Charge
cast Blast Charge
startattack
Rotations:
Single Target
Spike charge x 5 > Detonate
Shrapnel charge x 5 > Detonate
Multi Target
Spike charge x5 > Annihilation bomb > Detonate
Shrapnel charge x5 > Carpet bombing > Annihilation bomb x4 > Detonate *If Carpet bombing is off CD
Shrapnel charge x 5 > Detonate
Notes: Apply spike charge prior to every fight. Incriminate is a valued tool in several fights ensuring mobs rarely hit anyone other than your tank. Cast incriminate before a detonate. As the target gets closer to death remove spike and shrapnel charges from you rotation if they will not run full duration. Instead use blast charge in place of one or both.