This is something that applies to all rogues, no mater your spec. One thing I see a problem with is the type of poisons most rogues are choosing to use in PvP. That problem? Deadly Poison.
Lately, it seems 75% of rogues or more are using Deadly Poison for PvP. I know because most Horde rogues I fight use it against me, and most Alliance rogues I see also use it.
So what's the problem? Well the problem of using Deadly Poison dates back to the start of rogue PvP. Nothing's really changed, Deadly Poison's always been a problem. In fact, unless you recently started playing a rogue or never really started PvP until recently, you should already know the problems.
Uncontrollable DoT's are bad, ya dig?
To start, Deadly Poison is a DoT (damage over time). This isn't the only DoT we have, we have Rupture and Garrote. Both of those are DoT's we control. Ya hear me? We control them. But with Deadly Poison, it's an uncontrollable DoT. You need to understand the importance of that. It's a DoT you can't control.
It's all about blindin' bitches
The reason it's bad to always have a DoT on a target is because it keeps you from being able to Blind or Gouge your target. Combat and Assassination rogues (such as myself) won't use Gouge as much as Subtlety rogues, but Blind is so incredibly important.
As you should know, abilities like Gouge and Blind are immediately broken once any damage hits your target. Only an idiot would put a bleed (DoT) on our target and then try to Blind them. But with Deadly Poison, it's doing just that.
With Deadly Poison, you can only blind a target you haven't hit at all. So that means Blind is only useful to a target you haven't touched at all (such as a healer healing your target).
Not using Deadly Poison, it's possible to do the total stunlock method. This method is meant when your going one-on-one with a target and know no one else is going to join the battle.
You open with Cheap Shot, build combo points and then do a 4-5 combo point Kidney Shot before Cheap Shot wares off. You damage your target without using bleeds, and right as Kidney Shot is about to wear off, you Blind. Then, after 6 seconds, you reenter stealth. Right before Blind wears off, you Sap them (not only does this allow time for all diminishing returns to reset, but also give Kidney Shot's cooldown to finish). Right before Sap ends, you open with Cheap Shot, build combo points to 4-5, then do Kidney Shot. At this point, your target will either be near death or already dead. All without them ever touching you. From then, it's your full health vs. your target's low-ass health.
But with Deadly Poison, it's a DoT you can't control. Blind will be useless in this situation.
It's not just for offensive. For defensive, Blind can be a lifesaver. Let's say you got a warrior on you and your near death, with a 5 second bleed. You can blind it for 10 seconds, run, wait until your bleed wears off and stealth. Or against a warlock, if your low on health, no Cloak of Shadows and a warlock (without a pet) has DoT's on you, blind will allow you to run away, mount up and ride away until you can figure out what to do about those damn DoT's (continuing to eat repeatedly 1 second at a time works great).
Targets won't wait around for Deadly Poison
But that's not the only problem with Deadly Poison. There's the problem of consistent damage. Deadly Poison has to do it's damage over 12 seconds. Deadly Poison can be cleansed or removed by most classes, including rogues (also, remember classes can cleanse other players). Your counting on that damage, and to have it removed before it does it's damage is horrible. And unlike warlocks, we can't instantly reapply our poison DoT like warlocks can if we're being kited.
Envenom is also a problem, because although it's great against plate targets as it's a finishing move that ignores armor, it's not usable until you have one stack of Deadly Poison, and really not effective until you have 4 to 5 stacks on your target. The other problem is, even when our target can't remove the poison, if they kite or try to run away, if their Deadly Poison runs out when you catch back up to them, you can't use Envenom.
Your a rogue, not a warlock!
The next problem is more of a mental problem with your prey. It ain't as complex as it sounds. When your fighting your target, you want them to know your fucking them up. You want them to see how much of their health they're losing. You want to put them info defensive mode. You don't want them to think they have a chance, you want them to flee or overreact.
Think of a warlock. I've seen many times where a warlock will put a crap load of DoT's on a target, and the target doesn't realize how much that shit'll damage them, and they'll foolishly fight the warlock. Within a few seconds, the warlock has enough DoT's on the target that it'll be dead within 10 seconds. But that target turns on the warlock and kills it (when the target could have tried to flee, heal, stealth, etc to fight a more strategic fight). That's why warlocks always hide. Not because they can't handle themselves under attack (fear, portals, etc), but because their targets never realize how badly they're going to be damaged. People don't fear warlocks because they say "Oh, that spell didn't hurt..." and they charge them. So a warlock literally has to fear them manually.
Same for Deadly Poison. You want every poison proc to be instant, so that your target (and yourself) sees exactly how well your doing against it. If you open up with let's say double Instant Poison on a target, and by the time your stuns wear off they're at 50% health, they're gonna' focus on defense as well as offense. A druid moonkin may try to transform into cheetah cat form to run away. But if you damage them to 75% with Deadly Poison and Instant Poison, that same druid will clearly feel more confident and will try fighting you full force. Sure, that Deadly Poison will take that druid down to 50% in 10 seconds or so, but that's after it's rooted you, prevented you from going stealth and is shootin' crap at you. Even if you and your target are at 20% health, instantly damaging poison can kill that druid a second before it killed you. Whereas a DoT poison will mean you died before your damage could do it's full effect. Claiming "I got a kill!" after your already dead is worthless.
It's also worth mentioning that Instant Poison can't be cleansed. Instant Poison can be "resisted" via certain cleansing (a spell buff), but once it goes through, it can't be cleansed. It just goes through. Deadly Poison can be cleansed and you better expect your targets to try and cleanse your poison as soon as it first procs.
Sometimes you only have a few seconds to get your blades on a target before they try to keep you away to heal, cleanse, vanish, etc. You want your damage to be instant. You may be on a healer (or a target receiving heals) and you only have 2 seconds to do damage before your stunned, rooted, etc. Your target could be at 20% health. You need your target dead. Not "Ok, I'm gonna' damage you over 12 seconds now.", because a heal can go through and heal that cheap bitch up.
What PvP poisons should be used?
So what poisons should you use? Well you can use whatever poison you want. But, what I go into battle (as I have been for years) is with either Wound Poison and Instant Poison, or with double Instant poisons. Here's why.
Wound Poison loves only you
First of all, let's see what Wound Poison for what it really is. It's a weaker version of Instant Poison that brings with it a healing debuff. Instant Poison, with my PvP gear, does 785 damage, with Wound Poison doing 447 damage. So Wound Poison does about 60% the damage as Instant Poison. But it brings with it an extremely incredible healing debuff, which reduces all healing done to the target by 50% for 15 seconds.
Think about that... If your target manages to get a heal, it only received 50% of the heal. If a healer could heal themselves from 25% health to 75% health, Wound Poison will make that heal bring them from 25% to only 50%. This works not only against healers healing themselves, but any class that received a heal (including health potions, bandages, healing talents, etc). What good is being able to get your target down to 25% with your "massive damage output" if your target then gets healed to 75%?
Wound Poison is simply amazing. It functions exactly like Instant Poison (although it's healing debuff can be cleansed, which is no big deal). You don't have to do anything with it or even think about it. You simply put it on one of your daggers (your slowest dagger would be my advice) and forget about it. And best of all, in case any of you were wondering, Wound Poison's debuff does not break crowd control.
The majority of the time in PvP, I have Wound Poison and Instant Poison equip.
Double Instant Poison, double the fun
Wanna' do the kinda' damage to your target as an Envenom built but have none of the DoT drawbacks? Soak both your blades in Instant Poison. That shit'll really pack a punch.
A lot of you out there are probably thinking "Wait, wait, wait... why not just do Deadly Poison, as when a Deadly Poison stack reaches past five, it'll instantly proc your other weapon's poison to go off. In this case, Instant Poison.". That's fuckin' pointless. This ain't PvE, so you know the problems with using Deadly Poison in PvP. And Deadly Poison procs based on your weapon, so if you had Instant Poison on that weapon, Instant Poison would proc instead of Deadly Poison. The goal of that strategy is get Deadly Poison to the point where it'll trigger Instant Poison, so fuck that and just go with double Instant Poison.
If you want further proof, look at the damage of Deadly Poison vs. Instant Poison. Deadly Poison does (based off my PvP gear) 862 damage, while Instant does 785. Man, that's damn near the same damage. But Deadly Poison doesn't do all that damage at once, it does 72 damage a second (over 12 seconds), while Instant Poison does 785 instantly (or 785 each second for 1 second if you wanna' view it "per second").
It's important to note that Deadly Poison procs more than Instant Poison however. In the timespan of 5 Deadly Poison procs from let's say your mainhand weapon, you can expect about 3 procs of Instant Poison. But again, Instant Poison can never be removed once it's applied. I call that an edge to Instant Poison
The competitive edge
Mostly all of the really good rogues I've ever faced or fought along beside used either Wound Poison & Instant Poison, double Instant Poison or Wound Poison and Mind Numbing poison (Mind Numbing poison has really started becoming unpopular to use though). But those were the really good, hard to find rogues.
If you really wanna' become competitive and become the best rogue you can be, find out this shit for yourself. Test it out. I did, about a month ago I tried an Envenom build and, although I found it a little better against Paladins, found it horrible compared to most other targets. That shit also got me killed more because I couldn't Blind, Gouge or frag belt bitches or simply kill them fast enough as I could with Instant Poison and Wound Poison.
So figure this shit out for yourself, but if you wanna' know what poisons I use... for my daggers, my mainhand is a Heartpierce dagger, and my offhand is a Flesh-Carving Scalpel dagger. But I have a second Heartpierce dagger that I use to poison swap when needed. So 80% or more of my time (in battlegrounds / world PvP), I'm doing Wound Poison & Instant Poison, and the other 20% of the time I'm doing Instant Poison & Instant Poison.
Prey on the weak,
Nightelf Rogue
Jeaxx - Icecrown
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