This is particularly true against rogues where you're given a very small number of chances to act. You must plan and react accordingly.
One general thing is that so far the layout for these will be: Their Game, What You Need To Do, How We Win, How They Counter Us, and Mixups.
Before we get started, as WE, I believe you can beat any non-prep rogue with one set of CD if he doesn't stall for pet despawn and second cloak. If he does, you'll need snap against top players. That's my ming-like class balance editorializing, moving on:
Combat Rogues
Their Game:
Garotte chained into imp kick with AR and sinister in between. If they take an early frostbite or nova, they'll burn imp sprint first to close the distance on your blink while they DT to reapply snare after you remove crippling. They'll try to snag the kidney pre cloak of shadows and hope to get you IB'd while they still have cloak. If your pet is nearby during IB, they can kill it, though going for a vanish despawn of the pet is just as good. After your pet despawns, they will wait out cloak if they had to burn it to force IB, and then reopen with a sap bandage or worst case blind bandage-> reopen if they can't get a clean sap. Then its back to garotte, sinister, imp kick, DT as you blink away, cloak to close the cap, land the kidney and finish the duel.
What You Need to Do:
- Do not Ice Block near your pet. This is true pretty much always. You want your pet to be at range while you are in Ice Block. It can be killed easily near you. Or it can be simply gouged, and the rogue can get 3 bandage ticks before getting back on you. If the pet is at distance from you and the rogue tanks the bolts, he is taking 2k+ damage guaranteed.
- He has one vanish; denying it is VERY powerful in this fight. Save pet nova till you are in IB and quickly nova him as he vanishes.
- If he chooses to extend the fight be ready to cold snap and med up during the intermission.
How We Can Win:
As soon as you can, summon your WE. You can do this in between garrote and imp kick depending on if he goes for sinister along with the shiv. If you can get this out before the kick, great, if not, summon it as kick ends. On your second global cooldown, blink, and PvP trinket instantly to gain ground before the Deadly Throw hits you.
Your next global depends on whether he gouges your pet before chasing; almost everyone does not waste energy/time gouging the pet so they will be chasing you in range of Fireblast for your third global. If they don't immediate chase, use this global on putting up new Ice Barrier.
If you still have good distance on the rogue, Barrier if you haven't, Fireblast if you haven't. The rogue should be closing the distance now, and you should nova unless you are extremely cramped, in which case you should Cone of Cold. If you got the nova and have time to Cone of Cold, squeeze it in because Kidney Shot is coming. Ice Block the kidney, you can hesitate to IB if you want to stall for him to use cloak or force him to actually be honest on going for damage with the kidney. This is very much a "know your enemy" thing, but either way, you are Ice Blocking very soon.
If you got the CoC, the rogue has no way of getting to your pet at all to gouge bandage and has to vanish basically, this makes landing the pet nova a decent amount easier. If a rogue creeps for a gouge on your pet at range, drop IB outside of blind range, pet nova before he gets there, and lance then kite to win. It's a mistake for a rogue to go for this gouge->bandage on a WE at range. (He can fake going for it and come back to blind, but that's a bit higher level than a really simple guide can cover!)
If a combat rogue tries to just tank your pet perhaps with CloS, hang out in block as long as you safely can and then blink out of Ice Block to deny the blind if you can. If you eat the blind here, its no travesty as your WE is still at decent range and hitting him during the 8 seconds. You will get reopened on, and must nova and CoC kite for the win as you won't have PvP trinket back up.
Either way this late in the duel, you should have pretty solid hp against a rogue with few remaining cooldowns and low health. The fight is way in your favor.
What He Does to Counter You:
He will save cloak as long as he safely can to escape your nova and force the Ice Block before a Cone of Cold. If he quickly vanishes with cloak up still, he'll resist your pet nova most likely. Often he won't even go for a kidney, he'll just damage you with cloak up at point blank if he can as there is little you can do at that point. He'll try to imp kick you out of Ice Block, then go for a blind, then maybe even imp kick you out of that blind to try to simply out DPS and live out the pet damage -- basically, he'll play it total rushdown.
Mixups:
There are very few unbeatable strategies in anything; good players learn to counter what you're doing so it is important to have mixups to keep your opponent guessing at least a little bit.
- Cone of Cold can be used in many different ways. You can CoC and PvP trinket right after you summon your pet; your outside melee range here with him slowed if you can get good spacing which frostbite procs can really help. If he cloaks, you blink, fireblast, etc like a normal fight but you've done a lot more damage before your Ice Block. If he doesn't cloak the nova, and you know he's the type to always sprint first, you can quickly nova the sprint, force the cloak and then Blink away which really puts him far behind. If you get huge luck and get the spacing for this and manage to avoid getting cripped, you can even blink, pvp trinket kite and the duel is basically GG.
- The classic nova when you can, PvP trinket and summon pet as you run. This is the normal way I see 90% of all strong mages play this matchup; it is great especially if you get to simple blink away from CloS and nova him with pet as it ends before he can reach you.
- If you're fire with WE, you can play this duel much more aggressively and really go toe to doe even with a combat rogue. Cone of cold, AE, fireblast till you force him to CloS with pet out, then blink away and PvP trinket. Good impacts during garotte or imp kick often convince me to switch to going more aggressive because you know that even if forced to IB at lower health than you would like, he's too far behind. You still want to make sure to IB away from your pet.
- If you have 4pc PvP or Gladiator, you can actually tank the first kidney if you re-double shield, and blink away PvP trinket kite. This is only feasible with huge stam/resil type gear, but is definitely more a possibility as new PvP gear with higher stam and resilience becomes available.
- You can pet nova combat rogues right after you blink->PvP Trinket and take the guaranteed lance before they can cloak. It hits and crits as cloak activates if timed correctly, you can then double shield, cone of cold or nova as cloak wears off and really stall until you have to IB. This is basically another way of playing the fight more rushdown. You can tweak this fight in lot of ways to play it more or less aggressively.
Their Game:
Garotte chained into a CB eviscerate as your shields break. Sprint AND CloS as they DT chase to force fast IB. Quick Vanish to avoid pet or simply bandage with remaining time on CloS up. Blind as mage drops IB. Vanish garotte prep into CB eviscerate again as mage has no shields, sprint as they blink and DT chase for the win. The idea is to put huge damage in with CB eviscerates while mage shields are down, limit the amount of time the mage has to do anything (like apply new shields to himself, nova you, damage you, etc)
What You Need To Do:
- Prep Rogues have tons of options; they can play the slow game or they can play a strange rushdown where they destroy your HP by really limiting how much you get to do by maintaining the pressure. You need to stall the fight to a speed where you get to keep shielding yourself and get a chance to use your instants to do damage; your pet DPS alone is nowhere near enough.
- If you do manage to force a tempo shift in your favor, you need to protect yourself from their slow game too. You need to make sure to med up completely when they despawn your pet and wait on their second cloak. You can do this as I do with perception if you have it, otherwise you just need to let combat drop as quickly as possible on yourself, and eat/drink while pet is still up.
- You need mixups to win this fight; there is no strategy that very well counters what a prep rogue can do to you. (That I know of yet!)
Similar as before. If you play the fight as I normally do, you should be forced to IB with about 70% HP, and them at nearly full. If they tank your pet, they'll be at 65-70% as you come out of IB, if you can blink out of blind range, go for a pet nova and lance to force a vanish into a slow game. Perception, and re-apply shields to stay in combat to deny a quick sap, as you get good spacing, drop combat and eat/drink. Snap before you eat a sap and try to get lucky with your last pet nova as you know the sap is coming as your pet timer finishes. (or it is coming 20s later when Cloak is back up) When they open this time, again summon pet as soon as you can, but don't blink yet. Fireblast, Cone of Cold, nova all before blinking to force cloak and sprint reasonably early and then IB to force their last vanish. If you can't catch them with this nova, it's likely over for you as they can simply wait out your pet if you didn't get an ignite or some love from a good pet nova. If you are still both alive as you come out of IB, blink to try to avoid the blind, and try to kite with what you have left.
How They Counter Us:
With talents, Blind has gigantic range. Inevitably they get a blind on us pretty soon after we drop IB, this really prevents us from doing much as we're going back into a garotte silence and another CB eviscerate with no shields.
Mixups:
- IB the opening garotte. Drop IB fast and summon pet before they can blind you. Blink and PvP trinket kite and tank the kidney with double shields, blink, pet nova, manual nova and stall until hypo is off; this works fantastically well especially when the rogue is not fast on blinding you. You avoid taking much damage at all until the rogue catches you during the kidney, but either way, that was a CB eviscerate you were going to eat. The other thing you can do is not PvP trinket till after blinking after the kidney you tank, this puts you a bit deeper in the hole, but in an okay position later when you can actually get good distance and force a slower tempo.
- Use your first frostbite as room to PvP trinket run away to summon pet. When they sprint cloak, Blink the opposite way, pet nova lance as cloak runs out, try to kite, reapply shields and stall until they catch you, then IB and play the fight from there.
- Blink before summoning WE; this can frustrate rogues who try to milk extra damage before the CB eviscerate. You can do a quick pet nova with a guaranteed lance, while trinketing to get at least some distance between you and your pet. Milk as much damage as you can, and as you come out of IB, try to deny the blind and kite for the win.
