This is a short and brief video of Ming the combat rogue vs Alie the frost mage. Widely regarded as a top 3 mage of either faction on LB since early January, Alie made his appearence in a series of dueling videos I did in early 2005 when neither of us had a single MC epic. Today both of us are very well equipped, I switched from CB/Prep to Combat, he dropped ice barrier for POM. And sadly I was owned just as hard as I was back in the days, he won 2-0 with cold snap which wasn't really a surprise for me, but 6-4 without cold snap broke my heart since I thought I would have the definitive advantage in a one set of timer vs one set of timer fight.



POM is devastating in this matchup. When rogues were given the PVP trinket to break polymorph, against mages without it, I had a huge advantage. With POM, a mage can basically force you to waste your trinket, and all he has to do is to get off one more sheep somewhere down the line to win. A single sheep when you are out of cooldowns is fatal. The mage will be back at 100% health 100% mana with sheep->bandage->sheep->mana->sheep->nuke and you are basically a warrior who can't intercept, it is very, very loopsided. With two ice blocks, against a frost mage who knows what he is doing, only CB/Prep spec has enough timers to finish the mage with. Once you are out of timers, you can be 100% health, the mage can be 1% health, 1% mana, a successful sheep would give him the victory.



Thankfully, the combat rogue has improved kick to make up for the lack of ambush/backstab. 2 seconds silence once every 10 seconds, the kick allows you to get two guaranteed sinister strikes and two guaranteed white hits. Compared to ambush, this has many advantages. Mages love to aoe a rogue out of stealth to deny the ambush, but the kick does full damage every single time regardless of whether you are stealthed or not. An ambush that doesn't crit is completely useless against a mage, but by spreading out your damage into four hits, coupled with possible sword/hoj/maelstrom/lifesteal procs, my damage is quite a bit more consistent. During the fight, a gouge would give a dagger rogue one backstab before the mage nova/blinks, for a combat rogue it is still sinister strikes and two white hits, it is far more damaging.



If there is a critical weakness for a combat rogue against a frost mage, it is the lack of cold blood evis. Adrenaline Rush, an overwhelming trump card in all other matchups, is for the most part useless against a frost mage. A combat rogue can not two shot a 50% health mage like dagger rogues can, but from this video I hope you can see the strength of improved kick and why no combat rogue should be without this talent. .