I am so tired of this discussion, but about 3-4 Players a day ask me why I prefer using maces over swords or daggers. Its not easy to explain because its more a gut instinct than anything else. Well there are daggers with very high burst damage, while striking from behind. There are fist weapons with 5% increased chance to land critical hits and swords with 5% chance of an additional attack per swing. Those builts are all about maximizing damageoutput. Maces only have the chance to stun the Opponent for 3 seconds, which does not increase damage at all. What makes that even worse is that most mobs in high end instances and especially bosses are immune to this stun.
This means that a guild basically has no benefit, from taking a mace rogue over a sword rogue. Quite the contrary the total raid DPS decreases when they invite you to the raid. But that is not even nearly all. Blizzard decided to make the gap between mace and sword rogues even bigger. The highend swords always have a higher maximum damage and much better stats compared to maces. Before the introduction of Ahn'Qiraij there were merely 2 epic maces worth getting. Just recently they introduced more epic maces. Let us the current high end weapons: high end swords:
Edited with the updated Weapons:
- Gressil, Dawn of Ruin Lvl 60; 138-257 Damage; Speed 2.70; 73,1 DPS; 15 Stamina; 40 Attack Power
- The Hungering Cold Lvl 60, 140 Armor; 76 – 143 Damage;1.50 Speed, 73.0 DPS
- Misplaced Servo Arm Lvl 60; 128 – 238 Damage; Speed 2.80; 65.4 DPS, Equip: Chance to discharge electricity causing 100 to 150 Nature damage to your target.
- The Castigator Lvl 60, 119 – 221 Damage; Speed 2.60; 65.4 DPS, +9 Sta; +1% crit; +1% hit; +16 AP; Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Gressil compared to the Misplaced Servo Arm does not simply have more dps, it also has significant higher max damage, some attack power and stamina, which makes the weapons by far superior. The Hungering Cold is more a Warrior Offhand but very fast. While the Speed of the Castigator is really too slow to make it a good offhand and too fast to even make it a good rogue mainhand.
By reading this You could question why to go mace at all. Gone fishing to Feralas one day, being a happy Dagger Rogue, I noticed some Horde players invade the Stronghold. Being a mean Person in general I decided to harass them a little bit. I remember quite well, my first sight of a Mace Rogue and laughed at this easy prey. "Mace and Rogue … haha how silly can one be."
I remember saying in Guild Chatsomething someting like: "/g haha, in Feathermoon is a rogue using maces – such a noob, maces what a Roooooogguuuueeeeee – haha". About 20 seconds later Elgor replied "Caution Slant, those mace rogues are dangerous", but I was already dead and was puzzled: "WTF????".
It took several weeks until I overcame my refusal to even trying maces. But then I decided to make my own picture about using maces and got myself a Mass of Mc Gowan and a Cruel Hand of Timmy as offhand.
What I found was totally different from what I expected. Since my guild rerolled on a German Server I was more or less dependant on myself and decided to get gear via PvP. If maces do 1 thing, they rock in PvP especially versus leather, mail, plate. Just when going for cloth I was missing the daggers burst damage. The extra stun from maces came always in so handy.
It was a good way to stop players from running away and still have combopoints to finish them off. With improved Kidney shot (it lowered the coodown back then) the stuns were especially annoying for casters and warriors who were basically unable to fight back. I compensated the lack of burst damage with cold blood and adapted my playstyle around the weaknesses of a mace rogue.
I enjoy maces because they helped me win critical fights versus other players, even though I had just blue gear versus their tier II epic gear. Maybe that is my source of mace love. If I was able to get to position 6 on Ravencrest PvP Rankings with blue gear, how good can it become with epix?
Other People say that using maces is not roguelike, that it is not stealthy. But there are a lot of scenes from movies and games where a rogue goes to the back of a person and knocks it out with a blunt weapon. Garret in the Thief Pc Game series for example. If he is not stealthy, who is?
It is currently very tempting to go swords, because they are so much better damagewise. But I have adopted my playstyle all around maces and have at least 140 days played time using maces, which makes it quite hard to change back. Apart from that I like being unique, there are not many mace rogues. When You ask other Rogues about their builds then it is some popular build, that some play even though they suck at playing it and even though they do not enjoy it. They just play it because it is THE build for maximized damage.
I just love to play maces and that is the only thing that really matters, it is what makes me enjoy putting all effort in a good performance. I see my rogue more as a pitfighter, since he is so awesome to play in Zerg situations. Currently I am working on getting the Misplaced Servor Arm and the Castigator. Its just bad, when I have to realize that swords and daggers are passed to rogues, while maces are not. Soetimes this makes me dissappointed and angry, especially since rogues passed items to warriors in Naxxramas. Its just a little upgrade to most, while it would be a huge upgrade for me. In the other hand I calm down fast. After all I am in Borked, which means that eventually I will get all items I could ever want. Until then I will just own poor Hordes with my Sandpolished Hammer and Ebon Hand. (edit: got Misplaced Servo Arm and Castigator now and it owns)
